The Medieval Murderers - The Tainted Relic

Entrance into Evangelium. Three turns and into Offertory. A turn back on himself and it was Evangelium again. Then three loops and back into Offertory. Two loops and he was walking Consecration. Like devotion, the route was never straightforward. Two more and he was in the final quarter-Communion. The dizzying, looping walk inward represented the first step of the threefold path.

Purgation.

It was not true to say that the monk’s head had been removed from his body. Rumour, after all, was always a precursor to exaggeration. When Peter Bullock and William Falconer saw the body, however, they realized that in this case the rumour had not much outstripped the reality. But first, they had had to be brought to where the body lay. Miles Bikerdike had taken them to John Hanny, another of Falconer’s students, who was sitting in the cold, cavernous hall on the ground floor of Aristotle’s. Hanny was pale faced and shivering. It was he who had found the body. Still more than a little scared, he agreed to lead the two men to where he had seen the supposedly decapitated corpse. They set off down the High Street, and at Carfax, Hanny was about to turn up to North Gate when Bullock stopped him.

‘Where did you say the body was, boy?’

‘Beyond Broken Hays stews in the lower water meadows.’

‘Then we shall go through the castle, and take the postern gate into the Hamel.’

Bullock was referring to the thoroughfare that the canons of Oseney Abbey used to get to the Chapel of St George inside the castle walls. It would be quicker that way than skirting round the town walls. He led the other two down Great Bailey and into the castle precinct, to which he held the keys. Once through the postern gate, they were out into the water meadows close by Oseney Abbey faster than by taking the normal route. Bullock questioned the boy as they walked over a bridge and along Oseney Lane.

‘And what were you doing here, when you should have been preparing for your lessons?’

The boy blushed, and began to bluster. Before he could say anything foolish though, Falconer stopped him with a raised palm. Bullock’s questioning was pertinent, because anyone in the vicinity of a murder could be a suspect. And at the very least should have started a hue and cry on discovering a body. If the boy was caught out lying, he would be in even deeper trouble. Falconer had an inkling what he had been about, and prompted Hanny to tell the truth.

‘I am sure Peter Bullock will forgive you a small sin, if you tell us the truth.’

Dumbly, the boy looked at his feet, bound warmly in a thick layer of sacking.

‘Master, I was up before dawn to fish for eels. I have been so hungry of late, and have no money for food.’

The eels were the property of the abbey, and to take them was tantamount to poaching. Falconer silently cursed his own oversight concerning the welfare of those in his charge. Why had he not seen that John Hanny was going hungry? Not all the students at the university were from rich families. Many were poor and allowed licences to beg in order to remain at the university. For such as they, an education was their only hope for a future, and a means of advancement. Hanny earned his keep by serving meals to the richer students, and feeding afterwards on the leftovers. Obviously not enough had been left for him. For the first time, Falconer also noted how patched the boy’s outer tabard was. He would not have missed such signs of distress a few years ago.

‘Go on,’ he said gruffly, to conceal his own sense of guilt.

‘I stayed outside the gates last night, and slept in an empty hut on the edge of Broken Hays. It was cold, but dry enough. I was intending to wake up in the night to fish, but I slept on.’ Suddenly his face lit up. ‘I suppose, then, I didn’t really break the law, did I? As I overslept.’

‘Your intention is crime enough for me, John Hanny. Continue.’

Hanny’s face fell again, as he saw the steeliness in Falconer’s eyes. He might have known the master would not allow him to escape so easily. It was going to be a case of memorizing vast swathes of Priscian’s Grammar for the foreseeable future. He sighed.

‘In the end, something woke me up. It was like the howl of a dog. At first, I thought it had been part of my dream. But then I heard it again. I thought maybe a fox had been caught in a snare, so I went out on the meadow to see.’ His voice began to tremble. ‘That’s when I saw him.’

Falconer put a large, firm hand on the boy’s shoulder, and squeezed hard.

‘Is it far from here?’

The boy shook his head, and pointed mutely across a small stream at a raised bank on the other side. At first, the scene looked peaceful enough. Cattle were grazing on the land below the bank, steam forming around their nostrils, as their hot breath plumed out into the cold air of the morning. On the edge of the bank lay a huddled shape resembling a pile of rags.

‘Stay here, John.’ Falconer reinforced his command by squeezing Hanny’s shoulder again. He beckoned Bullock to follow him. The two men continued on along the raised causeway that was the lane until they were close by the shape on the edge of the dyke. They had to scramble down from the lane into the field, where the cattle grazed on, unconcerned by the human activity. The ground was thankfully firm under foot. Falconer’s boots were old and cracked, and inclined to leak. Closer to, the bundle revealed itself as the body of an Augustinian monk. The robes were those of a canon, not a lay brother. He had to be from the nearby abbey. And he had to have been murdered. For the monk’s throat had been slit, and blood soaked the top half of his robe, and the ground around his shoulders. But what was truly strange was the attitude of the body.

‘What do you make of that, William?’

‘A pious murderer?’

The monk lay on his back, his legs stretched out, as though he had lain on the ground to sleep. His hands were arranged one over the other on his chest, and a rosary was linked round the fingers. He resembled a recumbent statue from the top of a tomb. Moving round the body, they could clearly see the man’s face. From his features, now soft and flaccid in death, they could still discern that the man was old. The face was lined, and his sparse, white hair was restricted to a tuft over each ear. His empty eyes were staring blankly up at the pale, blue winter sky.

From a pouch at his own waist, Falconer drew a V-shaped metal device. At the end of each arm was a circular ring in which was set a convex glass lens. He held the point of the ‘V’ to his forehead, and looked at the body through the two lenses. Falconer’s eyes were not as piercing as he liked his students to think, and the eye-lenses, especially crafted for him, allowed him to see more clearly close up. Particularly useful when clarity of vision was of the greatest importance.

It did not matter to the constable what his friend could see through his eye-lenses, though. Bullock had recognized the monk immediately. It was the man with whom Brother Richard Yaxley had been arguing the previous night. What was it Falconer had said in reply to his question just now? A pious murderer. Maybe he had been jesting, but Yaxley fitted the bill exactly.

‘Look here, Peter.’

‘What’s that?’

Falconer pointed at something under the monk’s clasped hands, half hidden in the folds of his robe. He delicately lifted one cuff.

‘It’s a blade. A curved blade.’

Falconer drew the implement from its hiding place. Immediately, he knew what it was. Weren’t they surrounded by the abbey fields where the lay brothers toiled to put provender on the canons’ table? It was the wrong time of year now for any reaping to be in progress. But the curved blade would have found a use some weeks earlier. It was a hand sickle. Now it had been used to reap the harvest of this unfortunate monk’s life.