The Medieval Murderers - The Tainted Relic

They left through the back door, heading for the narrow alley where their room was located, with Roger waxing lyrical on the delights to be sampled at Abdul’s Pleasure Palace. Geoffrey listened with half an ear, more concerned with Pichard and Julius than with Roger’s analysis of Abdul’s prostitutes. He was jolted from his worries by an expletive from Roger as they were elbowed roughly out of the way by someone wearing a brown habit. Geoffrey’s first thought was that the fellow was Peter, but this man was younger and had more hair. He watched him dart towards a pile of rags, where he dropped to his knees and began a low, keening moan of distress.

Geoffrey felt an acute sense of unease when he saw that the pile of rags was actually a second man in a brown robe, and that he was dead. He strode over to the grieving man and peered over his shoulder. Peter lay there, his face waxy white, and his blue eyes staring sightlessly at the darkening evening sky.

‘There is no blood,’ said Roger, inspecting the body with the professional eye of a man who had seen more than his share of corpses. ‘He must have had a seizure.’

‘He said he would die,’ sobbed Peter’s friend. ‘As soon as he rid himself of…’ He faltered, as if realizing that he should keep his silence.

‘The relic?’ asked Geoffrey, watching the man scramble to his feet and back away in alarm. ‘The piece of the True Cross?’

‘How do you know about that?’ He glanced around fearfully.

‘Peter asked me to carry it to Rome,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I declined, and someone else is taking it. But who are you?’

‘Marcus,’ whispered the man. ‘Peter and I belong to an Order called the Brotherhood of the Cross, and we devote ourselves to worship of the Holy Rood.’

‘Not to who actually died on it?’ asked Geoffrey, thinking their priorities were muddled.

‘The cross is a sacred thing, imbued with great power,’ said Marcus, wiping his eyes on his sleeve and sounding as though he was reciting something he had been taught by rote. ‘It is worthy of our complete devotion, just as some orders pay homage to a particular saint.’

‘How much of the True Cross exists in Jerusalem?’ asked Geoffrey. ‘I was under the impression that there was only a fragment.’

Marcus glanced down at Peter and tears welled in his eyes again, but he answered the question anyway. ‘The fragment here, in the Holy Sepulchre, is more sacred than the rest, because it is stained with Christ’s blood. But there are other pieces in the city, too, and they are also worthy of our prayers and devotions.’

‘There is a huge lump in St Catherine’s Church,’ said Roger, gesturing with his hands to indicate something the size of a water butt. ‘Splinters are being broken off it and sold to anyone with five gold coins.’ He patted his purse in a way that made Geoffrey assume he had purchased one for himself.

‘That particular piece is not recognized by my Order,’ said Marcus, sniffing and wiping his nose on his sleeve. ‘But it may be genuine, I suppose. However, it is not as holy as the one that was here.’

His statement made Geoffrey suspect that some unscrupulous cleric had hacked a piece of wood from a building, and was making his fortune from gullible buyers. He imagined that the splinters would make their way to churches and monasteries all over Christendom, where they would be revered and credited with miraculous cures. There was a lot of money to be made by religious foundations that possessed sacred relics, and most would give a great deal to own one. He sensed the business at St Catherine’s was probably the first in a long line of hoaxes that would result from the Crusade.

‘Poor Peter,’ said Marcus, beginning to cry again. ‘He said he would die, and he was right.’

‘Why did he say that?’ Geoffrey recalled Peter saying that Pichard would die, but he had not mentioned his own demise, as far as he could recall.

‘The curse,’ whispered Marcus. ‘Barzak’s curse.’

‘Curse?’ asked Roger, backing away quickly. ‘What curse?’

‘Barzak said that anyone who laid a finger on the relic would perish.’ Marcus sniffed miserably. ‘Peter touched it, in order to give it to a monk to take to Rome-and he claimed that as soon as he relinquished it from his keeping, he would die. I hoped Barzak’s curse would not work, but Peter was certain it would-which was why he would not let any of us touch the relic but him. He sacrificed himself to spare the rest of us.’

Geoffrey bent to inspect the body more carefully. There was no wound that he could see, and running his fingers across the man’s scalp revealed no evidence of a blow to the head. As far as he could tell, Peter had died from natural causes.

‘And he met his maker as soon as he passed the thing to Pichard?’ asked Roger, regarding his own scrip with its newly purchased splinter uneasily. ‘Lord save us!’

‘That was part of the curse,’ explained Marcus. ‘That once you have set fingers on it, you must keep it about you, if you want to live. Pichard will die, too, once he relinquishes it to the Pope. And the Pope will die after he places it in his vaults.’

‘Peter probably believed in the curse so strongly that when he gave the relic to Pichard he lost the will to live,’ said Geoffrey practically, knowing the power of the human mind in such situations. ‘It seems to me that he brought about his own death.’

‘He did believe,’ agreed Marcus. ‘But so would you, if you had heard Barzak’s curses. They came from a terrible grief, and a deep fury at his betrayal. That relic is tainted, and I am glad it will soon be gone from my city.’

The relic and its curse played on Geoffrey’s mind all evening, to the point where he abandoned Roger to his merry pleasures and left Abdul’s Pleasure Palace early. He thought about Peter’s belief that he would die as soon as he relinquished the relic to Pichard, and reasoned that the old man had perished simply because his heart had stopped beating. Such things happened to the elderly, and it was simple coincidence that he had died on the day he happened to give the relic to Pichard. Or he believed so strongly that he would die, he had frightened himself into doing so. When Geoffrey slept that night, however, it was uneasily.

He awoke the following day before dawn, disturbed by Roger’s thundering snores, and went to mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There were few Crusaders present, because the religious fervour of the previous week was already a thing of the past. He wandered around the building with its many alcoves while the priests recited the office, and eventually discovered a small chapel devoted to the Holy Rood. He entered it quietly, not wanting to interrupt the prayers of the two brown-robed priests who knelt there.

Geoffrey looked at the altar, and saw that it was adorned with a substantial gold cross. In the middle of this splendid item was a recess, complete with a tiny glass window and a minute hinge. One of the priests, who seemed more inclined to talk than to complete his devotions, told Geoffrey that a piece of the True Cross had been kept in it-until Barzak had snatched it out and screamed his terrible curse. It was now empty, and the Brotherhood of the Cross was bereft of its most sacred relic. Some brave man, the monk whispered, had offered to carry it to Rome, where it was hoped the curse would be lifted by St Peter’s holy bones.

When the mass was over, Geoffrey went outside to a city that was coming awake. A cockerel crowed, and the sky was beginning to brighten. Within an hour the sun would have risen, and Jerusalem would bake under its scorching summer heat. Carts were starting to rumble along the narrow streets, carrying provisions to the marketplaces, and the few surviving citizens-spared either because they were Christian, or because they had managed to hide until the murderous slaughter was over-were hurrying nervously about their business. Knights swaggered here and there, victors in the defeated city, while a group of foot-soldiers reeled drunkenly towards the Citadel, their night of drinking and whoring done.