Michael JECKS - The Devil's Acolyte

Gerard was stirring again. He grunted, then shouted out, ‘Joce, please, no! Don’t kill me!’

‘That,’ Baldwin said, ‘appears to be proof of that man’s guilt. I had not suspected that Joce could have tried to do this.’

‘A town’s Receiver attacking an acolyte. It is almost unbelievable.’

‘As is the idea that a Receiver should try to force an acolyte to steal plate from the Abbey,’ Baldwin agreed. ‘I wonder why he felt he could do that?’

‘Has he been arrested?’

‘No.’ Baldwin stared sorrowfully at the figure of Gerard. Now that the blood had been washed away by Peter, Gerard’s wounds stood out more more horrifically. His nose was notched, almost cut in two, while his ear had been taken off. The obscene flap of cheek had been cleaned and rested back in place, but Baldwin doubted that it could remain. That cheek would remain a hideous scar for the rest of the boy’s life.

‘You go and rest, Sir Baldwin. You look very tired,’ Mark said understandingly.

‘That is very kind,’ Baldwin said, but then he grew aware of more feet ascending the stairs. ‘Simon? Did you learn anything?’

‘I think so, yes,’ Simon answered. He shot a look at Gerard, relieved to see that he was alive. Facing Mark, he said, ‘I am glad to have seen you again, Brother. I was thinking about the day when I had seen the Abbot and saw you at your room.’

Mark smiled but his face was largely blank. ‘I don’t think I understand.’

‘You will. I had been so tied up with the murders, I forgot all about the theft of the wine. The pewter being taken, and the dead miner – both seemed so much more important. Yet of course they were no more important. A man who is prepared to steal from the Abbot of a place like this, would be prepared to commit any crime.’

‘I could hardly disagree in principle,’ Brother Mark said politely, ‘but the theft of wine is surely very different from stealing pewter from the Abbey’s guests. Anyway, we know who the thief was: as I told the Abbot some days ago, it seems certain that the thief was Gerard.’

‘ You told the Abbot?’ Baldwin exclaimed. ‘I thought Peter must have told Abbot Robert.’

‘I don’t know why you would think that. Heavens! Peter tell the Abbot something like that? I shouldn’t think so. He prefers to keep secrets from others, not blurt them.’

‘Perhaps he feels other men’s secrets are their own to keep or divulge,’ Simon said pointedly. ‘And the master of a thief might decide to surrender him in order to save his own hide.’

Mark gaped. ‘You think to accuse me of controlling the lad? You suggest I was his accomplice?’

‘Simon,’ Baldwin interrupted hastily, ‘Peter and I were here when we heard Gerard declare Augerus was the man who persuaded him to steal; Augerus and Joce Blakemoor.’

‘I am sure Augerus was,’ Simon said. ‘Guilty of taking the pewter and having Walwynus carry it away to Joce, more than likely. But I will say this: Augerus was not guilty of stealing the wine. Was he, Mark?’

‘I couldn’t say, Bailiff.’

‘No? Then let us consider the matter. The room where the Abbot kept his wine is quite large, and there are only tiny windows, aren’t there?’

‘Yes. I certainly couldn’t break in through one.’

‘No. Augerus, of course, if he wanted to steal the Abbot’s wine, would merely have taken his key and filched what he wanted. Except if he entered by unlocking the door, everyone would know it was he who had stolen the stuff. He couldn’t do that. So if Augerus had done this, he would have made it more obvious, and would have shown a forced door or window to cover his crime. But another man wouldn’t have keys. Such a man might decide to get in anyway, but how would he get the wine out ? The barrel remained inside, yet it was emptied, as though a party had been going on inside there.’

‘It is a mystery,’ Mark offered.

‘No. All the man needed to do was let an accomplice get in, then pass him a tube under the door, and let the wine run from the Abbot’s barrel, out under the door, and into a fresh one. It wouldn’t be very neat – there would be wine spilled all over the floor – but substantially more of the wine would make it. And then the acolyte could be retrieved and no one the wiser. Especially if you had someone like Gerard, whom you could blackmail.’

‘Blackmail?’

‘Yes. You knew he had stolen things. Perhaps you caught him red-handed and forced him to steal for you as well.’

Mark shook his head, but he had grown deathly pale. ‘I would do no such thing.’

Simon continued relentlessly, ‘And then you killed Walwynus. You were seen. Ellis saw you – so did Hamelin. He told his wife. Was that why Hamelin had to die as well? Did you know he saw you up there?’

‘No! My God in heaven, this is all nonsense!’

‘Then you had best tell us the truth,’ Simon said. ‘Because if you don’t, I swear I shall take all this information to the Abbot myself and accuse you.’

‘How could you think I would do such a thing as steal from the Abbey?’

‘You took the wine, didn’t you? You made a point of showing me where your syphon tube was, coiling it before me after I saw the Abbot, as though you wanted me to be quite convinced that anyone could have got hold of it.’

Mark allowed a small smile to pull at the corners of his mouth. ‘I did show you that, yes, but only so you could see how anyone could have got in there. Look, all I did was share some wine with Augerus. We had been in town that evening, and when we returned here, we went to his master’s undercroft and tried some wine. We didn’t think much about it. Augerus was going to refill it with other wine, and if the Abbot noticed, he’d simply say it was a bad barrel. He’s done it before.’

‘The barrel was empty,’ Simon reminded him.

‘Yes, well, the Abbot had been away for some weeks. We had gone there a few times. It was so tempting. That wine was excellent. Much better than the horse’s piss we usually get in here. And one morning we woke up and heard the Abbot was coming back… Well, the night before we’d had a few more drinks than usual, and when we went to the undercroft to top up the barrel with some cheaper wine, we realised we’d emptied it. The tap was open and wine was puddled all about it.

‘Augerus panicked. I said we should fill it with some rough stuff that had turned to vinegar, and tell the Abbot that it was gone off, but Augerus said that the Abbot could always tell a good wine which had gone off compared with a bad wine. He kept insisting that there was nothing to be done other than we should show that the wine had been stolen. It was his idea to prove that there had been a clever thief by leaving the door locked. Either someone had taken the keys from him, or they had entered without keys. Whichever was true, he reasoned that it would be a mystery.’

‘And that this boy would probably be blamed, although he was blameless,’ Baldwin observed.

‘Blameless? When he robbed people inside the convent, to the risk of the convent’s reputation?’ Mark said pointedly. ‘I should not feel too much compassion for someone with that guilt on his conscience.’

‘On the day Wally died,’ Simon said, ‘you were up on the hill. You spoke to Wally. You were seen there by Hamelin and Ellis.’

‘Yes. I spoke to him.’

‘Come on, man!’ Simon exploded. ‘You were the last man seen with him. Do you tell us you killed him?’

‘No! I was there to demand that he return the things he had taken from the place. He denied it all, of course, but I knew that he was a thief.’

‘Did he continue to deny being involved?’

‘No. He said, “Oh, so Brother Peter has told everyone, has he?’”