The Medieval Murderers: The Lost Prophecies

‘He was talented with a quill and was put to work in our scriptorium, copying the Psalms and the Gospels,’ said the abbot. ‘Then one night last autumn, when the moon was full, he suddenly fell to the ground and had great spasms of his limbs. When he eventually fell quiet, he slept for a whole night and a day, then woke as if normal.’

‘Not quite normal, brother,’ said Conan dryly. He knew all this from the deliberations of the High Council in Tara five days previously.

Alither nodded slowly. ‘No, you are right, Conan. As soon as he awoke, he went like a man in a trance to the scriptorium and began writing these verses, with such obscure meaning.’

‘He had never written anything like this before?’ growled Conan.

The abbot shook his head. ‘Never. His copying was perfection itself. Over the years he prepared a large section of the Vulgate of St Jerome which was a joy to behold. Others did the coloured illumination, but his penmanship was exquisite.’

‘But the fits worsened, I understand? What did he have to say about all this?’

‘He told us that he always knew when a seizure was coming, as he was transported to some ethereal place where a voice spoke to him, filling him with prophecy and commanding that he record it as a warning to posterity. Then he knows nothing more until, when he recovers from the spasms, he has an irresistible urge to seize his pen and write.’

The bishop frowned. ‘Whose was this voice? Does he claim it was the Lord God Almighty – or maybe the Horned One?’

The abbot shrugged under the coarse brown habit that hung on his weedy frame. ‘He does not know, he says. It is just a voice that must be obeyed. He has no power to resist.’

‘And his chaining? That cannot control his convulsions, surely?’

Alither raised his hands in despair. ‘The fits come more frequently with every week. Now he suffers one almost every day. Lately, he has taken to wandering off like a sleepwalker, when he is in the trance that precedes each seizure. We cannot watch him all the time, so he has been shackled to prevent him walking into a fire – or into the river, which is so near.’

Conan grunted. ‘Maybe it would have been better to let him plunge into the Shannon – it would have saved us a painful task.’

He hauled himself to his feet with a groan. His journey here from Tara had been undertaken with reluctance, both from the distasteful nature of his mission and the effort at his age of riding a pony across the bogs of the Midlands.

‘Let us see this man, if indeed he is a man?’ He sighed, picking up the book again as they left the room.

Outside, in the circular compound that encompassed the wooden buildings and three tiny churches of the abbey, a group of monks and their women stood uneasily, watching the abbot lead this emissary of bad tidings across to a thatched hut on the extreme edge of the enclosure. Just beyond this, the low knoll on which the abbey stood sloped down to the oily waters of the Shannon, gliding silently through its many lakes down to the distant sea.

As they walked through the new spring grass, Alither made one last attempt. ‘Is there no other way, bishop? Can he not be hidden away in some hermit’s cell on the Cliffs of Moher or somewhere even more remote, like the Isles of Aran?’

Conan gripped the speaker’s shoulder in a rare moment of compassion. ‘And how would he manage to live, in his condition? Maybe choke in one of his fits, all alone? It is better this way, Alither. Our pagan forefathers would have strangled him or slit his throat and buried him in a bog-pool.’

Outside the hut stood two burly soldiers, part of the High King’s guard who had accompanied the bishop from Tara.

‘These will do the deed, brother,’ said Conan stonily. ‘I appreciate that no one here should be called upon to take part.’

Men and women, monks, servants, mothers and even children were drifting towards them, to stand in a silent ring around the hut as the two senior priests entered through the low doorway, which was covered with a flap of thick leather. Their eyes adjusted to the dim light that came through a narrow slit in the walls of clay and straw plastered over hazel withies between oaken frames. They saw a man in a coarse brown robe squatting in a corner on a pile of dry ferns. A stool, a wooden bucket and a small table with writing materials were the only furnishings, apart from a long iron chain that was looped around the central pole that supported the rafters. The other end was riveted to a wide metal band that encircled Brân’s waist.

The captive looked up as Conan entered and made the sign of the cross in the air.

‘God be with you, brother,’ intoned the bishop. ‘I am Conan, come from Tara to see you.’

The man on the floor looked up, his blue eyes guileless in a face drawn with exhaustion. ‘I know you, bishop. You were sent to kill me.’

There was no fear or loathing in his voice, just a plain statement of fact, lacking any emotion.

‘Why have you written these strange words, Brân?’ asked Conan, holding up the slim wood-covered volume.

‘I had no choice, father. It could not have been otherwise. I was commanded to set down the voice I heard. I am but a device for recording these awful truths. They emerge not from my mind but only from my pen.’

He shifted a little on his heap of bracken. ‘But it is ended now. There is no need for more writing.’

‘Do you understand what is said in the words you wrote, Brân?’ persisted the old bishop.

‘It is no concern of mine. These events will come to pass far in the future. Maybe I will be there to see some of them.’ He said this in an uncaring fashion, as if it was of no consequence.

‘Who gave you these prophecies, brother? Or are they of your own invention?’

Brân, his dirty red hair embedded with bits of fern and straw, turned a face like a tired angel to the old priest. ‘I know that you wish to discover whether it is God or Satan. But I cannot tell you, for I do not know.’

‘Where did you come from, Brân?’ persisted Conan.

‘Again, I know not! My first memories are of the good people who cared for me as a child. My last memories will be of the inside of this mean dwelling!’

Suddenly, his eyes rolled up so that the whites showed, and he fell back against the wall, lolling inertly with his jaw slack.

‘This is the prelude to a seizure,’ said the abbot. ‘He will be like this for a few minutes, then the spasms will begin. Maybe someone is speaking to him now, inside that head.’

Conan made a sudden decision. ‘It would be kinder to get it over with now, when he is unaware.’

Pushing Alither aside, he went out of the hut to speak to the two warriors who waited outside. The abbot hurried after him in time to hear his commands.

‘Release that chain, but leave the band around his belly – it will help to weigh him down! Bind his wrists in case he recovers, then carry him to the river and throw him well out from the bank.’

He turned to Alither, who was standing aghast and trembling. ‘Must this be, bishop? Is there no other way?’

Conan shook his head as the two guards moved towards the doorway. ‘From the waters he came and to the waters he must return!’

As the words left his lips, an ear-splitting clap of thunder crashed overhead though the sky was clear. On the river, a single high wave rolled smoothly up between the banks, splashing up on to the grass and sending birds squawking into the air. It passed as quickly as it had appeared, but now there were shouts from within the hut. Conan and the abbot pushed aside the leather flap and stared as the two soldiers pointed to the corner.

A metal band lay on the bracken, still chained to the post. Inside it was a brown habit, the coarse cloth crumpled into a small heap in the centre. On the table, Brân’s black book lay as it was left.