The Medieval Murderers - House of Shadows

He said this with a prim indifference that made John wonder if he had a deeper interest in a woman’s apparel than he wished to admit.

‘So where is the unfortunate lady now?’ he asked. ‘In the church, perhaps?’

The chaplain looked slightly offended this time. ‘Indeed not, Crowner! She has been dead these past twelve days. We could not have the corrupt remains where we must hold our many offices each day. She is here!’

He waved a hand into the deeper darkness behind him. Bemused, the trio followed cautiously into the gloom, the two wavering candles showing piles of kegs, crates and bales stacked on either side. Above them a vaulted stone roof was festooned with cobwebs, and an ominous rustling of rats could be heard from the corners. They passed through a wide arch into a similar store filled with old furniture, mattresses and discarded material, then another, similar arch led them into another large bay. This was an empty space with a blank wall opposite. Even de Wolfe, as insensitive a soul as could be found anywhere in England, felt a chill as he entered, a frisson that was not related to the temperature, which was the same in here as in the rest of the subterranean vault.

There was something about this third chamber that he did not care for – but a moment later he decided that he had found the reason. Around the corner of the arch, the flickering lights fell on a makeshift coffin, resting on a pair of trestles. It was a crude box made from rough planks, larger than the usual coffin. In the sudden silence that the sight engendered, there was an eerie sound, a steady drip, drip as water fell from the seams into a widening pool beneath the trestles. Thomas jerkily made the sign of the cross and then repeated it several times for good measure. There was something about this empty vault that deeply disturbed him, apart from the ominous sight of a coffin as its only furnishings.

The prior’s secretary seemed oblivious to any oppressive miasma and walked to the wooden box and peered in.

‘Not yet completely melted,’ he observed. ‘She is due for replenishment before evening.’

De Wolfe and Gwyn walked across to stand beside the monk and stared down into the coffin. A linen sheet covering a still figure was soaked with water oozing from shards of melting ice spread over the corpse beneath.

‘Twice a day, two of the servants fetch a barrowful from the frozen pools on the nearby marshes,’ explained Ignatius. ‘It is fortunate that this tragedy occurred in the depths of winter, or your task would have been much more unpleasant.’ He seemed to revel in the prospect and John began to dislike him.

‘We need more light than this,’ he said gruffly.

‘There are candles on a shelf near the foot of the stairs,’ said the chaplain. Immediately, Thomas volunteered to fetch them. He felt an overwhelming desire to get out of this chamber – and though he was still not fully hardened to the sight of violent death that was the coroner’s business, his present unease seemed unrelated to the presence of a cadaver. He borrowed his master’s candle and went off, taking his time in finding the spares, before reluctantly coming back with three more lit in his hands.

In the improved illumination, John de Wolfe and Gwyn went to work. Though they had developed a routine for examining the dead, this was the first time they had had to operate under these strange circumstances, in the semi-darkness and with numb fingers. Gwyn peeled off the sheet that shrouded the body, to an accompaniment of splashes of icy water and the tinkling of innumerable fragments of thin ice. A young woman was revealed, dressed in a plain nightgown of cream linen, all soaked with freezing water. Her long hair was black, but stuck in wet strands to her face and neck.

‘We’ll have to get her out, Crowner. We can’t look at her properly like this,’ grunted the Cornishman. ‘Shall I lift her on to the floor?’

They spread the linen sheet on the ground and Gwyn lifted the girl with surprising gentleness and laid her on it, her arms by her sides.

The four men stood and looked down on the mortal remains of the young woman. In the dim light she looked as if she was asleep. The effect of the ice had been to blanch her features, so that her cheeks, forehead and chin looked parchment-white, especially by contrast with her dark hair. The eyes were closed, and for some reason she did not look pathetic in spite of the tragedy of a young life snuffed out a day before her wedding. There was even the hint of a smile on her pallid lips, as if she was amused at the havoc she was causing to the monastic community at Bermondsey.

Brother Ignatius was holding his candle in front of his chest, and when John happened to glance at him the light threw his face into sharp relief. The coroner was momentarily startled to see what looked almost like the mask of a devil, with an expression of loathing amounting to hatred as the monk stared down at the girl on the floor. De Wolfe blinked in surprise and a moment later the image had passed, leaving him to wonder if he had imagined it.

‘Are we going to take a look at her, Crowner?’

Gwyn’s down-to-earth voice brought John back to reality as he heard the doubt in his officer’s tone. This was a high-born young lady, and it was unseemly to make any extensive examination, especially with no woman available to act as a chaperone. At home in Exeter, if any intimate examination was required, especially in suspected rape or miscarriage, he usually called on the services of Dame Madge, a formidable nun from Polsloe Priory, who specialized in the ailments of women.

‘We’ll confine it to her head and hands for now. If necessary, we can find a woman to help us later.’ De Wolfe squatted on one side of the corpse, with Gwyn on the other, a routine they had carried out innumerable times in the past eighteen months since he had been appointed coroner. He gently lifted her eyelids and looked at the whites of the flaccid globes, now collapsed so long after death. ‘No blood spots there, no marks on her neck, so she’s not been throttled. The windows of her eyes are clouded over after ten days, ice or no ice.’

His long, bony fingers then explored her hair, feeling the scalp underneath.

‘Lift her a little, Gwyn,’ he commanded, and his hands slid under the back of her head. ‘Ha, what have we here?’ he exclaimed. ‘Pull the lady right up, will you?’

His officer lifted Christina by the shoulders until she was in a sitting position, her head lolling loosely to one side. The coroner steadied it and let her chin sink to her chest as he felt around the top of her head and then down to the nape of her neck, all covered in the wet, dark hair.

‘A boggy swelling, almost on top of her skull,’ he announced in a low voice. ‘I can feel the bone cracked beneath it.’

Gwyn repeated the palpation, to confirm what his master had said. ‘And her neck must have gone, too, Crowner. Her head wobbles like a bladder on a stick!’ He was likening it to the child’s toy, an inflated pig’s bladder tied to the end of a twig.

John felt it for himself, flopping the head back and forth in his hands, then motioned to Gwyn to set the cadaver back on the ground. He looked at her hands and arms, visible up to the elbows when he pushed up the wide sleeves of her gown. There was nothing to be seen, and he risked a look at her legs, lifting the skirts as far as her knees, again confirming that there were no visible injuries.

As Gwyn carefully rearranged her clothing, de Wolfe stood up and contemplated the dead girl lying on the floor in the flickering candlelight. It was Brother Ignatius who first broke the strained silence.

‘From what you said, sir, I understand that she has suffered an injury to her head. This is what our infirmarian suspected.’ His tone suggested that he thought it a long and unnecessary journey from distant Devon to confirm what they already knew.