The Medieval Murderers - House of Shadows

‘You could fall from your horse here in my yard, and no one need know what happened to you,’ Sir Henry scoffed. ‘I could have you dropped by arrow, and all would declare you had an accident. Go and leave us.’

‘This man is innocent! He did not kill your daughter!’

Timothy stepped forward. ‘So? He may not have stabbed her, but he raped her.’

‘A man cannot rape his wife,’ Baldwin grated.

‘He didn’t have permission to marry her. He took my sister and persuaded her to lie with him so he could insult my family, but there was no marriage – I deny that she was married!’

Baldwin looked about him at the men standing still and quiet. ‘Sir Henry, you are safe. You are a friend of my Lord Despenser, and anything you do here today will be forgiven. But any man here,’ he lifted his voice, ‘any other man here who attempts to hinder me or harm this man will be arrested and held by my authority as keeper of the king’s peace. And if William is harmed, I will have you all taken and I will see you hanged.’

‘Where is your authority for that?’ Timothy sneered. ‘There are only two of you!’

Baldwin felt an unbounded relief as he heard the rushing of feet outside, and as men poured into the yard wearing the livery of Walter Stapledon he smiled nastily and glanced down at Timothy.

‘Stand back.’

The bishop leaned back in his chair. ‘You are quite sure of this?’

Baldwin had explained all. ‘There is little doubt. John was utterly devoted to the cellarer, and through him his prior. The young lad was appalled by what the girl did, telling others about the ruse of using a ghost, and it was as a result of her informing that the prior was arrested. William’s son was innocent, of course. That was why he was set out so neatly. John was sorry to harm him, I suppose, but he wanted revenge on the girl, and he wouldn’t let a little thing like Pilgrim being there get in his way.’

Bishop Walter looked down at his hands. ‘It seems far-fetched.’

‘I was happy enough to believe that her brother was responsible. Timothy was very keen to preserve his family’s honour. Not his father – he still loved Juliet, but not Timothy. She was only ever a half-sister after all. But then it seemed clear that it must have been Pilgrim’s father. William was clearly hurt by his wife’s change in affection. She once loved him, but then the attraction of a man nearer her own age overwhelmed her. Yet when I considered the strange disparity in the way the two bodies were treated and learned how her words may have affected the priory, it seemed more and more likely that there was an element of revenge involved. Perhaps in a way it was the same motive as Timothy’s. A means of retaliating against an insult to the honour of a group. Not a family, but a monastery.’

‘I shall discuss the matter with the bishop here and suggest that the boy be punished.’

‘Please do so. And now I would like to re-enter the city and find my bed,’ Baldwin said.

‘You have done well, Sir Baldwin. I am grateful.’

Baldwin nodded, but as he followed Simon from the hall, along the screens corridor and out into the bishop’s yard beyond, all he could see in his mind’s eye was the faces of those whom he had suspected: Sir Henry’s, twisted with pain and hurt; William’s, torn with longing and despair; and, last, Brother Lawrence’s. A man who had seen all that his faith stood for destroyed by a novice.

Of all, Baldwin felt that the monk’s loss was somehow the worst of them all. The others at least had the strength of their hatred of each other to sustain them. Lawrence had nothing.

July 1373

Geoffrey Chaucer fiddled with his pen. He peered at the other pens that were lined up to his right. He counted them, although he already knew how many there were. Did any of them need sharpening? With his left index finger, he touched the end of the one he was holding. The goose-quill did not need sharpening, not really. He put down the pen. He reached out and brought the ink pot an inch or two closer to his writing hand. Then he straightened the few sheets of paper on the table. This particular task didn’t need doing either.

He sighed. He was familiar with these little devices whose purpose was to delay the moment, the inevitable moment, when he’d actually have to put pen to paper and start writing. Anything to put that moment off.

He was sitting by an open window. Sounds of activity came from down below, from the area around the entrance to the gatehouse. On his arrival the previous evening, Geoffrey Chaucer had observed an excavated space in a corner between wall and buttress, a space large enough to hold a seated man. There was a neat pile of stone near the cavity, which was kept stable by stout wooden props. Water damage, Geoffrey supposed, looking up at the gargoyle that leered above his head. Rain pouring down over the centuries. Or perhaps water seeping up from an underground spring and slowly dissolving the mortar, for this was a marshy area.

Now there came the scrape of trowel on stone, or a shared joke or an inaudible curse as one of the workmen lifted an especially heavy block. Geoffrey considered shutting the window to keep out the sounds. After all, he’d come to Bermondsey Priory to get some peace and quiet. London bustled on the other side of the Thames, but you’d expect a silent order of monks to provide a bit of peace and quiet. The only noises should be the bells summoning the brothers to prayer. And, as if on cue, a bell rang at that instant. Closing the window would mean depriving himself of the soft airs and smells of a summer morning and breathing the stuffy air of the room. Chaucer glanced around at the room. It was barely furnished – a bed in one corner, a substantial chest in another, and the stool and table beneath the window where he was sitting. But, compared with the cells or dormitories that were reserved for the monks, it was like a chamber in a palace.

Geoffrey Chaucer knew something of palace chambers. His wife Philippa and their three young children had only lately left their private lodgings in John of Gaunt’s little place on the banks of the Thames. John of Gaunt’s little place was the Palace of Savoy. Geoffrey was sometimes employed by Gaunt – third son to King Edward – in private business or secret matters relating to the court, although that wasn’t the principal reason for his family’s residency at the Savoy. Geoffrey stayed in the palace from time to time when he wasn’t on his travels. But he had never felt at home in the Savoy. Unlike his wife Philippa, who was the daughter of a knight and who in her earlier life had been under the protection of the late queen of England. Philippa felt at home in palaces.

Whenever he could, Chaucer retreated to the gatehouse in the city wall at Aldgate, which he’d bought around the time of his marriage. That was home to him, that was where he kept his books and papers and his writing implements. And now, for various reasons, the Aldgate house had once more become the residence of Chaucer’s entire family, his wife, his children and servants. The city gatehouse, which had looked so spacious when he’d first seen it, was transformed into a cramped dwelling filled with domestic demands. So Geoffrey was spending a few days on the south bank of the river at Bermondsey Priory to get away from them. Neither husband nor wife had expressed it in those terms, but both of them knew that he was, temporarily, escaping his family on the pretence of work.

By chance, Geoffrey Chaucer was staying in a room in another gatehouse on this summer’s morning. It was a guest-chamber on the first floor of the inner entrance to the priory. It was where the more important lay visitors were accommodated or those to whom the abbot, Richard Dunton, wanted to show favour. Geoffrey had met Richard Dunton for the first time on the previous evening when he’d arrived at the priory. Geoffrey recalled with pleasure the prior’s words at their meeting. He was a handsome man, with a commanding presence which he combined with an easy air. He seemed genuinely glad to see Chaucer. He’d said…