The Medieval Murderers - House of Shadows

Geoffrey dipped down with the lantern and his heart leaped to see what he hadn’t observed before, a small aperture at the base of the wall. He got down on hands and knees, observing that the black cat had rejoined him.

‘Is this a way out?’ he said to his companion.

Depositing the lantern beside him with care to keep it out of the draught, Geoffrey pushed his head into the opening. It was a little wider than his shoulders. A waft of dank, odorous air met his nose. The hole gave on to a kind of shaft, sloping down at an angle. He held the lantern over the hole to reveal ancient stonework. He could hear nothing but had the sense of water below. Probably the aperture gave access to the priory’s drainage system. Somewhere, the descending shaft would connect to a system of channels which would eventually emerge into the open. The prospect of slithering down the shaft and then making his way like a rat through a besmeared and confusing network of underground passages, perhaps for hundreds of yards, did not appeal.

He had a choice. He could make his way back towards the main door and resume his attempt to get noticed, or he could launch himself down the stone shaft. At that moment the candle in the lantern gave a final flicker and went out, and a blanket of dark fell on the chamber. Geoffrey was still on hands and knees, debating. He felt the whisk of the cat’s tail against his sweating face.

At the same instant, and to Chaucer’s overwhelming relief, he heard a banging on the door and a voice calling: ‘Is anyone there?’ He shouted in reply and there was a jingle of keys and the sound of the door swinging inwards. A figure stood at the entrance. It was one of the brothers.

Geoffrey levered himself to his feet.

‘Who’s there?’ said the monk.

‘Geoffrey Chaucer, a visitor to your priory.’

‘What are you doing down here?’

By now Chaucer had reached the door. He recognized the monk. It was the revestiarius, the young man who was assistant to old Peter and whose name was…what was it now?…ah yes, Ralph. The brother also recognized Chaucer as he drew closer to daylight, which reached the bottom of the steps.

‘Why, sir! I did not know it was you.’

‘A foolish error. I was exploring the place and stupidly got myself trapped in here somehow.’

The cat appeared and shot past the two men. Brother Ralph smiled and said fondly: ‘Magnus, you foolish thing.’

Chaucer reflected on the appropriateness of the Latin name. It was a black barrel of an animal, well fed on kitchen scraps. He’d been on the point of describing how he’d been deliberately locked inside but something checked him. Better to treat it as an accident.

The young monk stood fingering the bunch of keys. He said: ‘Someone reported shouting from down here. I dismissed his words, then thought I’d better make certain after all.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

Brother Ralph glanced at the lantern which Chaucer was holding. ‘You were searching for something?’ he said.

‘No, I was only curious to see this place. I have heard stories of it.’

‘Stories?’

‘Of spirits and hauntings and suchlike,’ said Geoffrey. He was truthful enough in claiming he had not been searching for anything in particular, but he grew a little uneasy to find himself blathering away about spirits. Brother Ralph said nothing but stood aside to allow Geoffrey to pass him and then secured the door to the underground chamber. They climbed the steps to the outside. It was early afternoon. The sun shone full into the inner court, giving Geoffrey a better glimpse of Brother Ralph. He was a short young man whose pale complexion was emphasized by his black habit. He had a bland, amiable look. Chaucer noticed the sacrist and librarian, Brother Peter, passing in the background. The sun caught Peter’s spectacles, making them glint under his cowl. It was hard to tell but he seemed to be looking with curiosity at Geoffrey and Brother Ralph.

‘Is that place down there your province?’ asked Geoffrey, indicating the steps they’d just climbed. ‘I thought the revestiarius dealt only in linen and hangings.’

‘You are right, Master Chaucer,’ said Brother Ralph. ‘This whole area is the cellarer’s and the sub-cellarer’s, but I could not find them so I took the keys from their office. I must return them now.’

‘My thanks, Brother Ralph. You saved me from an unpleasant stretch in the dark. I am well rebuked for my curiosity.’

What next?

For the second time that day Geoffrey passed through the outer court of the priory. The hulking gatekeeper was back in position. That is, he was leaning against the wall and picking at his teeth with a twig. Geoffrey wondered if it was the same fragment of wood as before. He halted opposite the man as though a thought had just occurred to him.

‘Did you find it, Osbert?’

‘Find what?’

‘Whatever it was that you had mislaid in Brother Michael’s chamber.’

As on the previous occasion, when he’d warned Osbert of the murderous fugitive, Chaucer was speaking more to discomfit the gatekeeper than anything else. Something about the man set his teeth on edge. But Osbert was ready to give as good as he got. Removing the twig from his mouth, he said: ‘Where are you off to, sir?’

‘To visit a grieving house.’

‘Prior Dunton gave orders that no one was to leave this place.’

‘That was when there was a murderer on the loose. Now he has done away with himself there is no more danger.’

‘Done away with himself! Believe that and you’ll believe anything.’

This chimed with Chaucer’s own opinion. He approached Osbert. The deputy gatekeeper was almost a head taller. Yet Geoffrey was accustomed to dealing with people like this, people with a little authority who turned into jacks-in-office.

‘What do you know, Osbert?’

‘I know what I know.’

‘I expect you do,’ said Geoffrey, turning away. He hadn’t gone more than a few feet before the other said: ‘Don’t you want to know what I know?’

‘If you wish to tell me, man, then do so. Do not waste my time with riddling utterances.’

‘You are going to visit a grieving house, you say. It is the Morton house you mean, isn’t it? But the grief will not be that of a living brother for a dead one. Simon will not be so sorry at the death of John. The only sorrow there will be Mistress Susanna Morton’s. Her you’ve seen?’

Again Osbert made the cupping gesture with his hands at chest height. Geoffrey nodded. The deputy gatekeeper licked his lips.

‘I’ve seen ’em too, all unbuttoned and loose.’

‘If I want dirty talk, Osbert, I can find better sources than you, more inventive ones.’

‘Wait, sir. Listen. I’ve seen Mistress Morton down by the river. I came across her and him one morning lately, going at it hammer and tongs behind some bushes. That woman and her husband’s brother, the one that’s dead and gone. She saw I saw too. He didn’t, he was too busy. But she saw me with her great goggle eyes over his heaving shoulder.’

‘Did her husband know?’

The gatekeeper shrugged. ‘He could smell it on her, I expect. She’s loose in the hilts, that one. For all that she gives herself airs. That’s on account of her parentage.’

Parentage? Chaucer recalled that Mistress Morton was supposed to be the daughter of a priest. But he wasn’t going to indulge Osbert by joining in the slurs on the woman, especially over something for which she bore no responsibility. Instead he said: ‘You’ve tried it on, too, haven’t you, Osbert? You’ve chanced your arm with Mistress Morton.’

And not succeeded, he thought. Otherwise you would not be talking about the woman in quite these terms.

‘So what if I have?’ said the other.