The Medieval Murderers - The Deadliest Sin

At the top, the gaoler reached around him and rapped on the door at the head of the stairs. The mumble from inside might have been, ‘Come in’ or ‘Go away,’ but the gaoler evidently took it for the former. He twisted the iron ring and, once more gripping Oswin’s arm as tightly as if it was a live eel, propelled him into the room.

Oswin found himself in a richly decorated chamber. The plaster above the wainscoting was painted with colourful scenes from the life of the blond and bearded Edward the Confessor. Gold leaf glinted on his crown and on the ring he was holding out to a beggar.

Below the painting and behind a long, heavy oak table sat three men, who Oswin recognised as the Subdean William de Rouen, Precentor Paul de Monte Florum and, to his dismay, the Treasurer of the Cathedral, Thomas of Louth. Ranged along the table were platters of mutton olives, roasted quail, and spiced pork meatballs set amid flagons and goblets. At the sight of the meats, Oswin’s stomach began to growl. Supper the night before was now but a distant memory.

The only other occupant of the chamber was a pallid man who was hunched over a small table set in front of the casement, angled so that the light from the window might best illuminate a stack of parchments on it. He had the wary look of an ill-used hound.

‘Here he is, Fathers,’ the gaoler announced cheerfully. ‘This ’un’s Father Oswin.’

‘We know who he is.’ The subdean impatiently flapped his hand at the gaoler, his florid jowls wobbling, like the wattle of a chicken. ‘You may go. I’ll toll the bell when Father Oswin’s to be taken back to his cell.’

Oswin had thought his spirits could sink no lower, but they did. It seemed his superiors had already made up their minds, before a single question had even been asked, that he was not simply going to be released.

‘That,’ Father William continued, indicating the man at the writing table, ‘is my clerk. I will conduct this interview in English, but he will take note of your answers and later translate them into good Latin, so that they may be entered into the record books.’

Subdean William had become even more punctilious since the death of the dean, Henry Mansfield, a week earlier. It was widely rumoured that he was expecting to be appointed dean himself now that the post was vacant, and he was determined that nothing should prevent that. Oswin knew he would be far from pleased that his nephew had got entangled with one corpse, never mind two. Even a whiff of scandal would not reflect well on Father William if it was thought he couldn’t keep his own family in order.

Father Paul selected a mutton olive from the platter and delicately bit into it. He had one eye that wandered off at a slight angle so that it was hard to tell where he was looking. Strictly speaking, as precentor he was the senior in rank after the dean and should have temporarily assumed the dean’s duties following his death, but everyone knew Father Paul had little interest or aptitude for anything other than his music and was quite content to let Father William take over the role until a new man should be appointed.

But it was the treasurer, Thomas of Louth, whose presence most worried Oswin. The disciplining of clerics was not normally something he needed to involve himself in. Was he here because he’d discovered the cross was missing? He was a man who, it was whispered, had never heard of the concept of forgiveness or mercy, and to add to his fearsome reputation he had a puckered white scar that ran from his temple to his chin, twisting his mouth into a perpetual snarl. There were as many stories circulating in Cathedral Close as to how he’d come by that as there were tongues to whisper them, and each of the tales was more chilling than the last.

‘So, Father Oswin,’ Father William said, ‘suppose you begin by explaining to us what the three of you were doing in the disused chapel after the curfew bell.’

Oswin, though he knew the question was coming, still hesitated. No better explanation had come to him than the one he had tried to give the sergeant-at-arms the night before.

‘We’d gone there to say Mass as an act of piety to pray for the souls of the dead family. We heard, from your nephew,’ he added pointedly, ‘that the family who had endowed the chapel had died out and there was no one left to pray for their souls in purgatory.’

‘Did someone offer you money for these prayers, a family friend, perhaps?’ the precentor enquired.

Oswin shook his head.

‘You were giving up a night’s sleep and putting yourself to this trouble for no payment?’ The precentor’s eyebrows shot up so high, they vanished beneath the fringe of hair around his tonsure.

‘It was a penance,’ Oswin said hastily.

‘And which of your confessors imposed such a penance on you?’ Father William asked.

‘We imposed it on ourselves, as an act of piety. We had feasted and drunk too well a few nights before and wanted to make amends with some act of charity.’

‘Thereby committing a greater sin,’ William said, ‘by thinking yourselves wise enough to act as your own confessors and determine the penance for a sin that you were too proud to confess before others.’

Oswin felt his face grow hot, but he could hardly deny it without refuting his own explanation.

The treasurer impatiently shuffled in his feet. ‘Whether or not he should have confessed the sin of gluttony, Subdean, is hardly worthy of discussion, given the far more serious matter of these young men being discovered with two dead bodies. That, surely, is what we should be investigating here.’ Before Father William could answer, he turned to Oswin. ‘Do you have an explanation for that, Father Oswin?’

‘I… was just as shocked as the men-at-arms. I swear we didn’t know they were in the Easter Sepulchre until the door fell off. The men-at-arms slammed the chapel door as they came in. It must have shaken the wood loose. We were horrified by what was revealed.’

The precentor made a studied selection of a roasted quail and, ripping one of the legs off, dragged the flesh through his teeth before waving the bone at Oswin. ‘Surely, you saw the door was on the sepulchre when you entered. You had, after all, been there two nights running. Didn’t you think it strange the Easter Sepulchre should be sealed? From Easter Sunday until Good Friday, it is left open to proclaim the joyful news that Christ has risen. Why didn’t you remove it straight away?’

‘It was dark in the chapel, Father Precentor. We didn’t notice. We came in and immediately kneeled to pray and, naturally, we didn’t look around as we prayed.’

‘Naturally,’ the treasurer repeated with heavy sarcasm. ‘And I suppose you were so immersed in prayer you didn’t notice the stench either.’ He turned to address his colleagues. ‘I’ve inspected the body of the woman personally and I could hardly hold onto my breakfast, the smell was so bad.’ He picked up a pomander of spices from the table in front of him and wafted it under his long nose, sniffing hard as if the stench of death still lingered in his nostrils.

‘It wasn’t nearly as strong when the door was in place, and the smell of damp in the chapel masked…’ Oswin trailed off. It was plain from his expression, Father Thomas believed not one word of it.

‘Did you recognise either of the corpses?’

Oswin had prepared himself for that one. ‘As the sergeant-at-arms will tell you, Father Thomas, we never got close enough even to glimpse them. He had his men drag us from the chapel straight away. The sergeant was the only one who actually saw them.’

‘I think that explains everything satisfactorily,’ Father William announced, ignoring the expressions of incredulity on his brothers’ faces. ‘There is just one tiny detail that still puzzles me,’ he continued blithely. ‘Do you normally take spades and a handcart when you go to say Mass for someone’s soul? I must confess it is a new refinement to me. But then perhaps the archbishop has issued a decree that you, as an eager young student, have read, but I, as a dullard, have not. Have you been privy to some synod council meeting perhaps, to which us lesser men were not invited?’