The Medieval Murderers: Sword of Shame

And had he been alone, Elias Haskell?

Why, yes, he must have been alone. Because there was only one set of footprints leading from the porch and they belonged to the slippers which protruded, heels uppermost, from the snow.

Or rather there had been one set of footprints. Now they had been joined by another pair belonging to a witless player from London. And something else was nagging at the edge of my mind. Something which suggested that the dead man might not have been altogether alone when he met his end, footprints or no footprints. Something to do with an action I’d performed only moments earlier. What was it?

Yet even then, looking at my own tracks and knowing that something was amiss, I did not grasp my danger.

What I did grasp instead was an object lying in the snow at some distance from Elias’s outflung left arm. I hadn’t seen it at first because it was half buried in the snow and because the sight of the dead man was more pressing. There were no tracks or other marks around the sword, indicating that it had been thrown there rather than dropped on the spot. I bent down and once again gripped the sword which I had originally lifted from the wall-brackets in Elias Haskell’s bedchamber. The sword which was hundreds of years old and had been discovered up the chimney. The sword which seemed to possess-how had Elias put it?-a mind to think with or wings to fly with. And now, in an easy action considering its weight, the sword seemed to rise free of the snow in which it was embedded. The hilt and pommel were cold to the touch. When I’d handled the thing before it had been by firelight and candlelight. But even in the dazzling sun, the blade was dull as if tainted with those bluish patches and other stains which I didn’t care to examine too closely. I noticed what I hadn’t noticed in the chamber, that an inscription ran the length of the blade down the centre. Two inscriptions, for there was another on the reverse. They were in Latin. I made out the words as best as I could but they did not seem to be much help or use in this present situation. How had the sword come to be out here? Had someone taken it from Elias’s room while the old man slept? Was the blood in the snow the result of wounds caused by the sword?

Well, there was a mystery here but it was nothing to do with me.

I was wrong, of course. It was everything to do with me.

Something else about the sword drew my attention but before I could do anything further a movement in the corner of my eye made me look up. There was a cluster of people standing in the entrance to the house. With that clarity which sometimes comes with great danger, I saw myself as they must be seeing me. Here is an old man lying dead and bloodied in the snow. Has he been unlawfully killed? It seems so. Two sets of footprints, and two only, are linked with the body. One of them belongs to the corpse. The other belongs to an interfering player, who has most definitely stumbled onto the wrong stage. To make matters worse, the player is brandishing a sword which, to all appearances, could be the murder weapon. That he now lets fall the weapon, so that it drops with a dull thud into the packed snow, makes no difference. In fact the panicky gesture only makes him look the more guilty.

I was sitting on the chest in the bedchamber, the third time I’d attended on Elias Haskell in less than twenty-four hours. As before the old man was lying on his great bed with its bulbous foot-posts. The only difference now was that he was dead. When I first saw him, his long face illuminated by the candles which glimmered in the recesses of the head-board, I’d been reminded of a shrine or tomb. Now it was that, almost literally.

But, otherwise, being in Elias’s chamber was like being in a cell. I was a prisoner or near enough, confined and unable to make my escape without violence. The heavy curtains remained drawn as a mark of respect but a gap between them admitted a shaft of winter sun which provided enough light. By now it was mid-morning. Lounging near the door-and preventing my exit should I have attempted to make one-was the young, hulking fellow from the stables, the one called Andrew. He smelled of horses. Sometimes I caught his eye, the one that wasn’t covered by his forelock of straw-coloured hair. When I did catch his eye he grinned, vacuously. He obviously did not share in the general mourning for Elias Haskell. Whenever I got up from the chest to stretch my legs he stiffened by the door as though as I was going to attack him. He hadn’t said a word in the couple of hours or so we’d been penned up together in the dead man’s chamber. If I hadn’t heard him wooing Meg the previous afternoon-‘I’d rather take care of you’ he’d said-I might have wondered whether he could actually speak at all. It hardly mattered anyway, since I didn’t feel much like talking.

The members of the household, clustered in the doorway, had witnessed me standing over the corpse of Elias Haskell, sword in hand. They’d observed my footprints in the snow alongside those of the dead man. They had come to the obvious conclusion, which was the very one I would have arrived at, had I been in their shoes. I had killed the old man outside in the snow in the morning just as the sun was rising. I had killed him for reasons best known to myself. And I’d been caught red-handed.

Scarcely had I let fall the sword to the snow-covered ground than the individuals in the doorway began advancing on me in a timorous fashion as if they were approaching a dangerous dog. There was the furious-looking Abigail, the tottering Valentine, the shocked-seeming Martha, the dapper Rowland, the imperious Elizabeth, the lawyerly Cuthbert. The bad-tempered gatekeeper came from the other side while the hulking lad with the forelock of hair emerged from the stable-block.

I might have made a run for it but something kept me rooted to the spot. Was it fear? Anger? Disbelief? All of these, perhaps, but the main thought in my confused head was: this is absurd! I haven’t done anything. I’m not even meant to be in this house. It’s all a mistake. A moment or two of explanation will clear matters up. Besides, if I had run, it would have confirmed my guilt in the eyes of the others. Protesting that I’d done nothing, knew nothing, I allowed myself to be led inside. For a time we all stood around in the great hall, while singly or in twos and threes the rest of the household went out to examine the corpse of Elias, some of them several times. Martha Haskell returned with a frozen expression, but the others, such as Cuthbert or Dame Elizabeth, put on long faces like paid mourners. Not wishing to view the body again, I remained where I was, standing by the chimney-piece as far as possible from the entrance. The servants-Abigail and the kitchen-girl and her sister, in company with the shambling stable-hand-came clustering into the hall. I heard speculation about the ill-fated ‘flying’ sword, and all the time they darted glances at me and I felt their suspicions hardening into certainties.

When the cousins had done with their viewing of the corpse, a short conversation ensued between them. The purpose of this was clear. They had all gone to bid goodnight to Elias after I’d gone to bed the previous evening. They were all eager to assure each other-and possibly to assure me as well-that he’d been alive when they left. Tired, yes, on the verge of sleep, yes, but living and breathing still. As far as I could tell, they had entered the chamber in the following order: Elizabeth Haskell first, because she had actually been summoned by Elias and hadn’t yet seen him on this visit to Valence House; then Cuthbert, followed by Valentine and, after him, Rowland. To hear them talk, everything had been easy and natural between these loving cousins, all of them. Inevitably, some slight suspicion attached to Rowland, as the last of his kin to visit him, but Abigail butted in at this point to say that she had entered the chamber shortly afterwards to ensure that her master had drunk his soporific. And, she stated categorically, he was alive when she’d been there.