The Medieval Murderers - House of Shadows

She saw something in among the low, tussocky grasses and hesitated. With the rain slashing down, she really wanted to be indoors, not picking her way through the boggy wetlands to see whether this was a worthwhile item, but in the end poverty dictated her actions. She grunted to herself, threw a look of resentment at the heavens and began to make her way to it. It could be a spar of wood, from the look of it. Every item had some value to the poor, and few were poorer than she.

Once, when she was only a chit, she had heard a preacher foretell disaster. It was a little after the Holy Land had been wrested from the Crusaders, and his words often came back to her. Famine, aye, and war and plague. Well, there was no plague of men, God be praised, but murrains attacked the sheep and cattle, and that was bad enough. Then the famine came. Christ Jesus! In the summer nine years ago, one in every ten folk about here had starved. There had been times a body couldn’t walk along the road without seeing another poor soul tottering, only to fall and lie still at last in the mud. So many dead. So many starving and desperate.

For a moment she remembered her Thomas. His smile, his cheery hugs, his lovemaking…

Pointless. That was two years ago, nearly. She’d found him the morning of the feast of St Peter ad Vincula, the day after she’d first seen the ghost on the marshes. That was what the ghost did for her: it showed Elena that her man was about to die.

Last night she thought she’d seen the ghost again. A tall, grey figure out on the marshes, clad in hood and cloak.

‘You can’t take my man again,’ she rasped to herself.

Since his death, life had been hard. Always more people about trying to scrape a living. The weak, the hungry, the halt and lame, all came through here to reach London, the great city that drew in all: the rich, the poor, the hopeful, the desperate. It took them in and spat out their bones when the life had been sucked from them.

In this weather the city was almost entirely concealed, she thought, glancing over the pocked river’s surface. The bridge was a faint smudge from here, all of half a mile or more away in the murkiness caused by the rain. Opposite, on the far bank of the river, was the great Tower of the king where the traitor had been held until his escape. He’d have had to take a boat to here. Not that Elena had seen him, of course. He was over the river and on a horse early in the night. The night her man died.

The Tower was a glimmering white vision even in this dull light. When she had been young, not a worn old wench in her late forties, she had been used to staring over at that fortress in admiration, imagining all the rich lords and ladies who visited the place. Now she knew it was a place of terror, a prison for those who had fallen out of favour with the king, like Prior Walter de Luiz. He was in there even now.

It was in between her and the Tower, rising from behind a hillock on the very edge of the water. Grunting with the effort, she made her way to it, slipping and cursing on the fine, watery mud that made up so much of this landscape. Once she almost toppled headlong, but then she reached the hillock and recognized it.

No spar. Nothing but a long, slim, elegant arm sticking up from behind a hillock of muddy sand.

John the novice was studying in the cloister as she stumbled towards it, frowning as he tried to make sense of the words on the page.

A novice’s life was harsh by some standards, but he had been happy here, and would have remained so if he’d be left to do God’s work. There was a genuine delight in his work, a feeling that all was right while he was in here. Of course, he hadn’t taken the final vows yet – he was too young still – but he would. So long as the new prior permitted him, of course.

Prior John de Cusance was an unknown figure. Walter de Luiz was the master of the priory when the novice first arrived, and all had loved him. Lawrence always said that Prior Walter was one of those rare men who would get on in the world even though he was invariably kind and generous. It made him unique. He was a man to emulate…as was Lawrence himself, of course. There were rumours that Lawrence had himself gone out to the muddy flats to help the notorious traitor and rebel Mortimer escape from the Tower. Not that Lawrence ever took any credit for such matters, of course. He was far too self-effacing.

No, John’s friends had never understood his impatience about joining the monastery. They all wanted women, money, ale, or the chance to win renown and glory. There were plenty of them who’d be happy to throw their lives away in a tournament, or in some battle whose only purpose was to win a leader greater prestige, or his soldiers some profit at the point of a sword. What was the use of that?

John had always aimed higher. Yes, if he’d wished he could have joined the warrior monks, the Knights Hospitaller – but he couldn’t in all conscience. No, if he were to do that, he’d be living in the secular world, and there was nothing in that for him. He had decided to renounce that life while a lad, and at the first opportunity he presented himself to the bishop and asked to be allowed to devote his life to God and His works.

Never had he been tempted to reconsider his choice. However, when he heard the shivering scream that burst from Elena up near the river, he was aware of a presentiment of terror that would grow to shake even his iron belief.

There was a fixed procedure here in Surrey when a body was discovered, and there were so often bodies washed up on the banks that all knew it. The First Finder had to go quickly to the four nearest neighbours. There were some folk who lived at the edge of the priory’s lands, and Elena hurried there before sending for a coroner.

Brother Lawrence was quickly on the scene, splashing through the filthy puddles of this benighted land. When he saw her, he crossed himself hurriedly, his face twisted with sadness. ‘This is indeed terrible!’

The vill’s constable, a taciturn veteran from the old king’s Welsh wars, glanced across at him. ‘She was a pretty little thing.’

Lawrence nodded. ‘Do you not know her?’

Constable Hob peered down at her and shook his head. ‘I hadn’t looked at her – why? Should I? There are often bodies down here. Folk are killed in London and the river brings their bodies down this way. She could have been from anywhere.’

‘She was from London,’ Lawrence said. ‘I know her. She was called Juliet, daughter of Henry Capun.’

‘Shite!’ Hob reached down and turned the girl’s head, staring at her features. ‘Oh, God’s ballocks!’

‘Yes. Her father is a paid banneret in the household of Sir Hugh Le Despenser,’ Lawrence said mournfully.

The constable gripped his heavy staff and leaned on it. ‘That will make for a pretty fine.’

Lawrence could not help but agree. It was bad enough to discover a body in the vill, but to have a wealthy and important man’s daughter found dead was doubly so. And any man who could call on the aid of my lord Despenser was a very important man indeed.

Constable Hob looked at the monk with a speculative air, and Lawrence submitted to the question. He beckoned the man to walk with him, and they meandered over the damp marshlands away from the body and eavesdroppers.

‘You know something of this?’ the constable asked.

‘I do not know…How did she die?’

‘She was stabbed.’

‘And then thrown in the water?’

Hob shot a look over his shoulder to see that no one could hear. ‘No. That’s what we always say because sometimes the coroner will give us a lower penalty if it’s clear that the body’s nothing to do with anyone in the vill. This girl was stabbed right here, from the look of her. There’s a dagger in her hand, so perhaps she killed herself?’