The Medieval Murderers - The False Virgin

He saw the look of temptation on the boy’s face and guessed it had been some while since he’d eaten and probably only scraps when he had.

‘What if I don’t know the answers to your questions?’ Alan said warily.

‘As long as you speak the truth I’ll be content with that, and you’ll still have your supper… I believe there is meat pie tonight and green codling pudding. I saw a man delivering woodcock too.’

The boy hesitated, but Grey could see from the excitement in his eyes that he needed no more persuasion.

As soon as he ushered the boy into the inn, Grey asked for food to be sent up to the small chamber where he slept. There was a good fire burning in the hearth in there and he thought Alan might be more inclined to talk if they were well away from the curious eyes of the villagers who’d come to sup their ale. He saw the innkeeper and serving maid exchange knowing glances, and guessed he was not the first guest to take a village lad up to his bedchamber, but he was too weary to bother explaining. Besides, he’d learned long ago that men and women always preferred their own imaginings over the truth.

He let the boy eat his fill in silence, though that took quite some time. The boy was still stuffing himself long after Grey was replete, having devoured a woodcock basking in a rich wine sauce, a wedge of meat pie and several slices of cold pork and bread. Alan was eating at such an alarming speed he was certain to give himself a belly ache, but Grey had known hunger himself at that age and knew that no word of caution would stop the boy taking another slice. When have warnings of future pain ever prevented the young from succumbing to temptation?

When Alan finally pushed his wooden platter from him and refilled his beaker from the jug of cider, Grey finally permitted himself to speak. He didn’t look at the boy, but leaned forward, spreading his hands over the blaze in the hearth as if addressing himself to the flames.

‘The churchwarden tells me that you often visited the statue of Beornwyn. You must have been upset when it was removed.’ He heard only a noncommittal grunt. ‘Do you know who took it from the church?’

Silence.

‘It was your master and your priest who removed it. Did you know that, Alan?’ He risked a sideways glance at the boy and caught a brief nod.

‘Did you know Master Richard had the statue of Beornwyn in his house?’

‘He shouldn’t have taken her,’ the boy said savagely. ‘She didn’t belong to him.’

‘No, he shouldn’t,’ Grey agreed, ‘but later someone else stole the statue from Master Richard’s house.’

‘I didn’t do it! I swear it.’ The boy was half-way out of his seat.

‘I know you didn’t,’ Grey said soothingly. ‘Master Richard believes it was another butcher who took the statue, Master Edward Thornton, and that night he was murdered at the Royal Hutt in the forest. You’ve probably heard people say it was Master Richard who killed him, but that is not yet proved. Someone else might well have slain Master Edward.’

‘It wasn’t me,’ Alan said sullenly. ‘I was in the church all night.’

‘All night? Are you sure?’

The lad grunted. ‘Thomas said he’d tell the master I’d refused to cut a sheep’s throat and I’d run off again. He said the master’d kill me this time for sure. I was too afeared to go back to the master’s house, so I ran to the church and hid behind the altar. Yarrow never checks there. I knew old Yarrow’d come and lock the door soon as it were growing dark. Then even if Master came to the church looking for me, he’d not be able to get in.’

Grey frowned, puzzled. ‘Are you sure it was the night Master Edward died? You’re not confusing it with the evening before? Because on the night Master Edward was murdered, Master Yarrow said he drove you out before he locked up.’

The boy took a swig of cider and burped loudly, rubbing his belly. ‘Nah, he didn’t lock up at all. I lay awake half the night, ready to creep out in the dark if the master came looking for me, but he didn’t come neither. Church was still open next morning when I left, and that afternoon Master Richard was brought into the village in the wagon. I saw them pushing him into the gaol.’ He bit his lip. ‘St Beornwyn prayed for those who slew her, I suppose I should pray for him.’ He didn’t sound as if he was eager to do it, whatever the example the saint had set.

To console himself the lad reached for the remains of the leg of pork, but realising that not even he could manage any more meat, he sliced off the sweet honey crackling, which was evidently his favourite part, and chewed happily on the crispy wedge.

Grey idly watched the blade of Alan’s knife as he sliced off yet another piece of golden-red crackling. Then as if the wisp of mist at the back of his head had frozen into a solid and tangible form, he suddenly realised what had been troubling him all this time. The meat that lay on the platter was sliced with a straight, smooth edge.

He pictured in his head the woman slicing through the lump of tongue and Thomas running his great blade down the spine of the young goat. They were all clean straight cuts. Butchers’ knives, or the kind of knife any man would carry in his belt to cut his food or defend himself, all had smooth blades. That’s what you needed to slice flesh and meat swiftly. But the wound on Edward’s neck was not a clean cut. The edges of the flesh were jagged and torn as if his throat had been slashed with a serrated blade, and there was only one profession he could think of where serrated knives were used.

Grey pushed back the chair and rose swiftly. ‘I have to go out. It may be very late before I return.’

He saw a look of alarm flash across the boy’s face. ‘You’re welcome to stay here, lad, if you wish. No one will bother you.’

He crossed to his bed and kneeling, pulled out a low, narrow truckle bed from beneath his own and dragged it to the far corner. The truckle bed was intended for servants travelling with their masters, but he guessed it might be warmer and more comfortable than any sleeping place Richard had assigned the boy.

‘You can sleep on this.’

He’d no wish to find the lad curled up in his own bed when he returned and he knew the boy would be tempted.

Grey did not trouble to rouse his two sergeants-at-arms from their warm seats in the ale room. He was not intending to make an arrest – not yet, anyway. Once the murderer was under lock and key there would be little hope of getting him to divulge the whereabouts of the missing reliquary. He would know that even surrendering such a valuable object would not save him from the gallows.

Grey had the stable boy saddle his horse. The lad was sulky at being dragged out into the cold from his supper, for he plainly hoped all of the guests would be settling down for the night in the inn and would not be venturing out again until morning.

The streets were quiet. The horse’s iron shoes rang on the stones. A couple of men lumbered wearily past, returning from their workshops, their breath hanging about them like a cloud of white smoke in the cold night air. They scarcely bothered to lift their heads to stare at the rider.

Grey slowed his horse to an amble along the street, which just a couple of hours ago had been bustling with housewives and shopkeepers. Now the stone benches in front of the houses were empty of goods, and candles flickered through the holes in the shutters of upper storeys, where the shopkeepers and their families were eating their suppers. Grey looked up at the crudely painted signs above the shops, which indicated what each traded in. A pig’s head for the butcher, thread and scissors for the cloth merchant, and a camel that looked more like a cow with a hump for the spice-seller. He found the sign he sought, and counted the houses down to the end of the row, then he turned his horse, and made for the street behind. He counted the houses back along the row.