Susanna GREGORY - An Order for Death

‘You should block this tunnel as soon as possible,’ Michael advised Lincolne, as he moved away from the graveyard and began to head towards the front gate. His voice brought Bartholomew out of his reverie, who realised he was cold, wet, tired and ready for his dinner. ‘It is too dangerous to leave as it is, given that you have this silly feud with the Dominicans.’

One of the students had lit a lamp, and Lincolne took it from him to inspect the dark entrance to the tunnel, shaking his head in disapproval and casting angry glances at his charges. He leaned forward and put his hand inside it, poking at the damp earth and announcing that the structure was unstable and that his students were lucky it had not collapsed on them. Suddenly, Horneby released a piercing cry of horror that made everyone jump. Bartholomew spun around to look back at him.

‘What is wrong with the boy?’ Michael whispered testily, his hand on his heart. ‘Has he seen a dead worm? Or worse, has he found Faricius’s “heretical” essay?’

‘Brother! Come quickly!’ cried Lincolne in a wavering, unsteady voice, as his students clustered around him to see what had so distressed Horneby.

Michael elbowed them out of the way and craned forward to where the lamp illuminated the inside of the tunnel. Meanwhile, Horneby held a black leather shoe in his hand. Bartholomew peered over Michael’s shoulder, and saw that the shoe had been pulled from a foot that lay white and bare just beyond the entrance of the tunnel. He reached in and touched it, trying to determine whether it belonged to someone he could help, but it was unnaturally cold and still.

‘Well?’ asked Michael in a low voice. ‘Is he alive?’

‘I think you have another death to investigate, Brother,’ said Bartholomew softly, so that only Michael could hear. ‘I suspect Horneby has just located the missing Henry de Kyrkeby.’

‘What in God’s name is it?’ wailed Prior Lincolne, as Bartholomew reached down inside the tunnel and tried to secure a grip on the white-soled foot. ‘It looks like a corpse!’

‘It is a corpse,’ snapped Michael impatiently. ‘And judging from the bit of black habit that I can see, and the fact that the shoe you are holding is made of the black-dyed leather favoured by the Dominicans, I would guess that this is one of them.’

‘A Dominican?’ squeaked Lincolne in alarm. ‘Who? One of the louts who murdered Faricius, and who then decided he had a taste for Carmelite blood and was on his way to claim more of it?’

‘I sincerely doubt it,’ said Michael. ‘The body is wet, and looks to me to have been here for some time. Given that we have only one missing Dominican, I imagine this is Henry de Kyrkeby.’

‘Kyrkeby?’ shrieked Lincolne in agitation. ‘But what is he doing in our tunnel? Was he trying to leave? Or was he trying to come in?’

Bartholomew began to pull on Kyrkeby’s foot, and succeeded in freeing one leg. But the body was stuck fast, as if something was pinning it inside its gloomy resting place.

‘Or has someone just used the tunnel as a convenient place to hide his corpse?’ mused Michael, looking away from the body and studying the faces of the Carmelite students who stood in an uncertain circle around him. The dull grey light made their expressions difficult to read.

‘But why would anyone do that?’ cried Lincolne. ‘We Carmelites are not in the business of hiding the corpses of members of rival Orders in dirty holes in the ground!’

‘Neither are most people,’ said Michael. ‘But you have not taken into account the possibility that whoever hid Kyrkeby’s body might also have killed him.’

He gazed at the student-friars a second time, but could gauge nothing from their reactions. The younger lads seemed frightened by the sudden appearance of death in their midst, while the faces of the older students, like Horneby, were virtually expressionless, and the monk could not tell what they thought about the fact that the Dominican Precentor was dead in their graveyard.

‘I cannot get him out,’ muttered Bartholomew, as he knelt next to the tunnel. ‘He is stuck.’

‘No one killed him,’ said Lincolne uncertainly, ignoring Bartholomew as, like Michael, he began looking around at his assembled scholars, as if not absolutely certain that he could make such a claim.

‘Is that true?’ demanded Michael of Bartholomew. ‘Has Kyrkeby been murdered, or did he die in the tunnel by accident or from natural causes?’

Bartholomew pointed to the white leg that protruded obscenely from the dirty hole. ‘How can I tell that from a foot, Brother? I need to look at the whole body.’

‘Hurry up, then,’ ordered Michael, oblivious or uncaring of the weary look Bartholomew shot him. ‘If Kyrkeby has been murdered, I want to know as soon as possible.’ The expression on his face made it clear that he would start looking for suspects among the Carmelites.

‘But why would any of us kill him?’ asked Lincolne, in what Bartholomew imagined he thought were reasonable tones.

‘Because someone murdered Faricius, and many of you believe that a Dominican was responsible,’ replied Michael promptly. ‘Or perhaps because one of you caught him trespassing on Carmelite property, and decided to kill him before he reported to his Prior all that he had learned from his illicit visit.’

‘What could he report, Brother?’ asked Lincolne in the same measured voice. ‘You are assuming that we have something to hide. We do not.’

‘But you do,’ Michael pointed out. ‘For a start, your students had very successfully hidden the fact that Faricius was writing an essay in defence of nominalism.’

‘No!’ objected Lincolne. ‘That was different–’

‘It was not,’ interrupted Michael brusquely. ‘And secondly, you have only just been told about this tunnel that is supposed to have been here for years. Perhaps Kyrkeby found it, and someone was afraid that if he told his brother Dominicans, you Carmelites would be vulnerable to attack.’

‘None of my students would kill for such paltry reasons,’ said Lincolne, although he continued to glance uneasily at his charges.

‘No?’ asked Michael. ‘Then perhaps there are other reasons why someone here would want Kyrkeby dead. I have just seen two nasty secrets surface in the last few moments – three if we can count the presence of an extra corpse in the tomb of the illustrious Humphrey de Lecton – so perhaps there are yet more for me to uncover.’

Lincolne was finally silent.

‘I really cannot move him,’ said Bartholomew, in the brief lull in the accusations and counter-accusations. ‘I cannot seem to get a good grip. His skin is too slippery.’

‘We did not kill him,’ said Horneby, taking up the defence of his Order where his Prior had left off. Neither he nor anyone else took any notice of Bartholomew, more interested in convincing Michael of their innocence than in retrieving the body that lay in the hole. ‘We have no idea how he came to be here. I swear it.’

‘And who do you mean by “we” exactly?’ asked Michael archly. ‘You Carmelites have at least thirty student-friars. Do you speak for them all? What about the masters? How can you know that no one has taken matters into his own hands and avenged Faricius by killing a Dominican?’

Horneby shook his head slowly. ‘How can we have killed him? We have all been confined to the convent since Faricius was murdered. No one has left except to go to church, and then Prior Lincolne was watching us.’

‘That is true,’ said Lincolne.

‘No,’ said Timothy softly. ‘That is not true. Horneby just told us that he and Simon Lynne went to look for Faricius’s essay in the Church of St John Zachary on Monday. Obviously that was after Faricius had died, and so Horneby is lying when he says no one went out.’