The Medieval Murderers - The False Virgin

‘They must be going to the shrine,’ whispered Avenel.

But Odo and Philip continued past it and the priory, so that Gwenllian could only suppose they intended to visit Merlin’s Hill, from which Odo liked to study the stars. She wondered why Philip should have chosen to go with him: the chaplain had shown no interest in astronomy before. Avenel stooped suddenly and picked something up from the road. It was a buckle, distinctive for being elaborately engraved.

‘Fitzmartin’s,’ he said, peering at it in the moonlight. ‘From his tunic. There must have been a struggle and it fell off.’

‘Here is blood,’ said Cole, bending to inspect dark spots in the dust. He soon found more on the well-worn path that led to the shrine. ‘It is damp, so it has not been here long.’

‘The killer has abducted Fitzmartin,’ declared Avenel. ‘The fool! He should have confided his suspicions to me, and we would have tackled the villain together.’

‘I do not trust any of this,’ hissed Gwenllian, plucking at Cole’s sleeve to whisper in his ear. ‘It has a contrived feel. Avenel intends to win the King’s approval by luring you to the chapel – it will be deserted at this time of night – and killing you.’

‘Hurry,’ ordered Avenel sharply, and Cole had no choice but to obey.

Gwenllian could not move fast enough to keep up with them. She lagged behind, hampered by her skirts, and feeling sick when she saw more splashes of blood. Absently, she noticed that the stream flowing from the spring was now no more than mud; it would not be long before it dried up altogether.

The shrine looked forlorn in the dark, with no roof and no pilgrims, although there was a rosy glow inside where candles had been left burning. Then she heard a familiar voice. It was Kediour.

‘Gwenllian?’ he called. ‘It is safe now. A sharp blow to Avenel’s head has put an end to his mischief. Symon is tying him up for me.’

Gwenllian hurried forward, but stopped in alarm when she saw not Cole securing the sheriff, but both men sprawled senseless on the floor. Then the door slammed behind her, and she turned very slowly to see Kediour holding a crossbow.

‘I am sorry,’ said the prior softly. ‘I had hoped to resolve this business without further loss of life. Now I am afraid you must die, too.’

Gwenllian gaped at Kediour in disbelief. There was a knife in his belt and the crossbow was unwavering. With lurching terror, she recalled that he had been a Hospitaller, a warrior-knight who had earned his spurs in the bloody slaughter of the Crusade. Then she glanced at Cole and Avenel. The sheriff was beginning to stir, hand to his head, but Cole lay still.

‘I was obliged to stab poor Symon,’ said Kediour, in the same apologetic voice. ‘I wish it could have been avoided. I liked him, even if he did admit to manhandling sacred relics in the Holy Land. I only stunned Avenel, though, as I shall need his help to arrange the bodies.’

‘Bodies?’ whispered Gwenllian.

‘Fitzmartin,’ replied Kediour, and she saw a third man on the floor. He had been garrotted, and drips from the wound had left the trail that Cole had followed. She noticed the fine metal chain that held Kediour’s pectoral cross, and recalled what Symon had said about the murder weapon: that it was something hard, not rope that would have left tell-tale fibres. ‘He made accusations, so I had no choice. I brought him here, knowing it would be empty. You were right: people are already forgetting Beornwyn and her so-called miracle spring.’

‘Fitzmartin is the King’s man,’ said Gwenllian shakily. ‘So are Symon and Avenel. His Majesty will send emissaries to discover what has happened to them, and-’

‘His Majesty will have heard the rumours about churches despoiled and parishioners ransomed,’ said Kediour in the same soft, sad voice. ‘He will not look too carefully at the disappearance of Fitzmartin and Avenel, while you and Symon have long been thorns in his side.’

Gwenllian looked at Cole, and felt anger replace shock. ‘I suppose you think you acted righteously,’ she said contemptuously. ‘To prevent a shrine being founded for a saint not recognised by the Church.’

‘I did act righteously,’ averred Kediour. ‘God will not want a blasphemous cult on the doorstep of a holy priory, and it was my duty to crush it. I sincerely doubt those monks had Beornwyn’s real hand, given the inconsistencies in their tale, and the whole thing was based on deceit. The souls of hundreds were in peril, and I did the right thing.’

‘I see it all now,’ said Gwenllian, not concealing her distaste. ‘Indeed, I should have known you were the killer when you refused to have Miles’s body in your priory. You could not bear to let a victim into your domain.’

Kediour grimaced. ‘A foolish superstition for which I am sorry. I was doing God’s will, and I have no cause to feel guilt or remorse.’

‘You were never a suspect because Symon did not know that you had sneaked out of the priory after he had taken you home. But sneak out you did, and you saw Rupe, his men and the two lads praying to Beornwyn. You could not fight five of them, so you decided to secure Symon’s help in cleansing the spot the following day. But Miles was there, too-’

‘Performing heathen tricks with his hazel twigs,’ said Kediour in rank disapproval.

‘And you feared that if he did discover water near where Rupe and his companions prayed, it might be interpreted as the saint’s doing.’

‘Well, I was right,’ said Kediour acidly. ‘That is exactly what happened. I thought the affair would be over with Miles dead and the wood defiled by murder, but then the storm came, and what I had hoped to avoid came to pass anyway. The Devil was busy that night.’

‘He still is busy,’ said Gwenllian coldly.

‘I cannot tell you how shocked I was when I saw the spring the following day,’ Kediour went on, his eyes distant. ‘Of course, the really irritating thing was that it did not flow from the place where they prayed – as Symon noted, it was further to the left. Rupe lied.’

‘And so you killed him, too.’

Kediour regarded her bleakly. ‘He was not only deceiving people with his false miracle, he was profiting from it – taking money from the desperate and the poor. I cannot imagine a greater crime. And now it transpires that he was a cattle thief, too.’

‘Reinfrid and Frossard were next,’ said Gwenllian. ‘It was easy for you, a regular visitor to the castle, to wait for the gaoler to slink away for ale. But why bother with them?’

‘Because Cole was going to hand them to the bishop, rather than hanging them as they deserved, and they might have escaped to ply their evil trade again.’

‘It was you who stole their relic, of course,’ said Gwenllian. ‘You knew they would celebrate their good fortune in a tavern, so you waited until they were too drunk to notice and took it from Reinfrid’s pack. Then you insisted on seeing it the next day, hoping that an empty reliquary would expose them as charlatans.’

‘It should have done,’ said Kediour bitterly. ‘But Rupe salvaged the situation. He would have found some excuse for the spring drying up, too, and gullible folk would have accepted his lies. It had to be stopped, Gwenllian. You must see that.’

Gwenllian saw that Avenel had regained his senses and was listening. Then with a surge of relief she saw that Symon’s eyes were open, too. She stepped towards the spring, ostensibly to dip her hand in the mud, but really so to shield him from Kediour’s sight. She was aware of him and Avenel exchanging a silent signal. They had a plan, although she could not see how they would prevail against a skilled warrior who held a loaded crossbow.