The Medieval Murderers - House of Shadows

‘Peter, Peter, they have gone. You can talk to me alone now.’

Falconer gently urged the somnolent monk to open his eyes and acknowledge his surroundings. After a moment, when Falconer thought his urging was going unheeded, the young monk’s left eye abruptly opened, as he tested the truth of the Regent Master’s words.

‘Look, Peter, the prior has gone, and so has Brother Thomas. Tell me, who is dead? What has happened to your friends Martin and Eudo? What were you doing that has frightened you so?’

Peter opened his other eye and looked slyly into Falconer’s face. ‘Who says we were doing anything?’

He sounded like a little boy caught in the act of self-abuse, and it occurred to Falconer that all this might be nothing more than a tale of mutual self-indulgence. God knows, he was used to that at the university. Though it rarely ended in death, perhaps one of these monks had been mortified enough to have killed himself. But the fear in Peter’s eyes suggested that the secret held between these three young men was deeper and more horrific. Once again Peter began to babble.

‘Look for geometric perfection, where the entrance numbers six, between eight and nine is the flaw. There is the three, and the name of God is creation.’

He grabbed Falconer’s wrist and pulled himself up to the limit of his chains. ‘Repeat it to me.’

Falconer balked, but at Peter’s insistence he recited the nonsense twice, fearful that his memory lapses might let him down. His memorizing of the puzzle seemed to calm Peter down, and he fell back on the bed, his eyes closed once again. Falconer waited until the boy’s breath became even and deep, then he rose. He walked down the gloomy passage between the beds towards the door of the hospital. Suddenly he stopped, distracted by something unusual but not sure what it was. He sniffed the air and walked back a few paces. Peering into the darkness of one of the cubicles, he saw a person sitting on the coarse palliasse, knees drawn up to the chest and head down. Long chestnut hair tumbled over the person’s knees. It was the scent of wet hair mixed with a delicate perfume that had told him it was no tonsured monk he had detected on walking past. He slipped into the cubicle and stood beside the bed.

‘Madam,’ he murmured.

The woman started from her reverie and stared up at Falconer. Her face was pale and her features drawn, but it was a face of great beauty, with a chiselled nose and high cheekbones. The eyes were green and almost almond in shape, suggesting some eastern origin. Falconer saw immediately it was indeed the pale figure he had seen at the window above the courtyard – the ghostly apparition occupying the room next to his. He spoke again, calmly and comfortingly.

‘Madam. My name is William Falconer. I believe we have the same goals. You are searching for your son. I, too, would like to find Martin, and his friend Eudo.’

‘Menahem. His name is Menahem, not Martin. Menahem Le Veske.’ She spoke firmly, almost stubbornly. William could see it would be best not to cross such a determined woman, who apparently had travelled far to trace her son. Besides, he was now more certain than ever that she would prove an excellent ally in his search. Saphira, for her part, knew that this William Falconer could be the key to tracking down Menahem. If only they shared their knowledge.

‘My name is Saphira Le Veske, and I think I can explain some of what that poor young boy was saying.’

Captivated, Falconer sat down on the edge of the bed, and in the encroaching darkness the Jewess began to illuminate him.

Brother Thomas, meanwhile, was given the unenviable task of searching the outer court of the priory. This involved the prior staying warm and dry under the cover of the porch leading to the cloister, while the herbalist trudged across the open marshy wastes towards the working buildings on the south of the site. He was soaked by the time he entered the yard that was enclosed on two sides by the granary and brew-house. His feet were frozen and covered in filth, and he left muddy footprints as he poked around the brew-house and its neighbouring bake-house. He knew that the task was hopeless. Everyone had looked here before, and there had been no signs of Brothers Martin and Eudo then. He reckoned they had run away, tiring of the discipline instilled by Prior John. After all, if the old stories were true, it wouldn’t be the first time a monk and those in their care had fled. His search revealed that neither youth was here now, nor were they in the kiln-house or granary. But as the latter was warm and dry, Thomas lingered over his search until he thought the prior would begin to wonder where he was. Reluctantly, he forced himself out again into the heavy rain, getting soaked once again. It was therefore doubly annoying that the prior had not even had the courtesy to wait for Thomas to report the results of his search. John de Chartres was nowhere to be seen.

Falconer was deeply disturbed after listening to Saphira. It seemed the gibberish that had emanated from Brother Peter’s mouth was more than it appeared.

‘The Kabbalah? Though I know many Jews in Oxford, and call them my friends, I have not heard of this.’

‘If they are traditional Jews, then you are unlikely to have done. Its roots are deep in our faith, but not everyone approves of it, nor its recent new flowering. But my late husband was seduced by it, and by the philosophy of Rabbi Azariel. He was obsessed with the idea that, given the knowledge of the right sequence of letters naming God, man could emulate His role as creator. To make a living man, which we call a golem. There are stories that someone succeeded. I suppose it only natural that my son, Menahem, also picked up some of the doctrines.’

‘Unfortunately, it seems it is a case of a little knowledge being dangerous.’

Saphira Le Veske grimaced and nodded her head. Her unrestrained tresses were drying and recovering their startling copper colour. And their natural waviness. She swept the thick hair back through the fingers of her left hand. Then she returned to clasping her knees with both arms like some young girl hugging herself for security in a dark world. The pose was in contrast to her mature command of the situation, however, and her understanding of its dangers.

‘Menahem, Martin – call him what you will – was always a boy who sought others’ approval. If he thought these other boys would cleave to him because of him imparting secrets to them, he would revel in the adulation. I think that is why, when his father died, he was drawn into the seductive promises of the local Christian priest. And I was too engrossed in my own grief to see it until it was too late.’

‘Tell me. Peter talked of the Crown, Wisdom and Intelligence, and called me Adam. What does that signify?’

‘They are the first three of the ten Sephiroth – the mediums between God and the real world. They are the head of Adam Kadmon, the archetypal man.’ She sighed. ‘Forgive me if I cannot explain this properly. I never subscribed to my husband’s mystical beliefs, which some say grew out of a spiritual reaction against the rational world we are surrounded by. The world I am perhaps a little too attached to.’

A smile formed on Falconer’s face. ‘I myself am seduced by the logical. Too much so, some people say. And yet it seems we both have to let a little of the mystical into our hearts, if we are to solve this riddle and find your son.’

‘But not the darkness. We should not let that in.’ Saphira shuddered and looked out of the narrow slit of a window in the cubicle. As if in mockery of her words, it was pitch black outside. The moon had all but disappeared, and with it any light. ‘Our faith warns of the dangers of esoteric doctrines, which no one ought to delve into, unless he is a scholar who has his own store of knowledge to protect him.’