The Medieval Murderers - The False Virgin

He descended awkwardly, trying to step sideways, so that he could brace his shoulder against the rough stone wall. With his hands bound he was terrified he was going to slip and by the time he reached the bottom his legs were trembling.

At last he found himself standing in a long low tunnel carved out of the rock. It smelled damp and musty at first, but as Yarrow prodded him along it he began to catch the scent of beeswax and something stronger, which he could have sworn was incense.

He rounded a bend in the tunnel and blinked furiously as his eyes were blinded by a sudden burst of light. They had emerged into a cave that glittered like a crown of jewels. Slender candles blazed all around them from rocky crevices and outcrops, while two fat church candles burned on a broad rocky ledge that had been hewn out at the back of the cave, their light sparkling and glinting from a great silver crucifix, and from the golden crown and jewelled butterfly of the reliquary of St Beornwyn.

Grey was so dazzled by the scene that it took a moment or two for him to realise that they were not alone. Several figures, dressed in the dark robes of the Black Canons, were seated motionless, like a flock of monstrous black birds, on ledges around the edges of the cave, the deep hoods of their black cloaks pulled down low, concealing their faces.

Grey tried to moisten his dry lips. ‘What… what is this place?’

One of the canons rose and slowly glided towards Grey, his hands folded beneath his cloak, his eyes and nose concealed beneath the shadow of his hood. Only his full lips were visible.

‘This… this is now the church of the priory of St Mary. Since we were driven from our home in Newstead, which our order has occupied for nearly four centuries… since we were forced to watch our holy church demolished to build byres and pigsties… we have had to find another place to worship. God will not permit that heretic King Henry and his satanic servants to destroy us or our faith.’

Grey gaped at him. ‘You’ve been hiding down here all these months? But how have you managed to conceal yourselves and survive?’

‘There are many caves beneath Sherwood Forest and many tunnels connecting them. That one leads straight into the crypt in Newstead Priory.’ The canon pointed to a dark hole on the opposite side of the cave from where they had emerged. ‘At night, after John Byron’s builders have left for the day, we’ve been able to return to our home and remove what is ours. It isn’t much. Most of the valuables were stripped out before we could rescue them, and the workmen rarely leave food behind, but such tools and trappings that are small enough to carry through the tunnels we bring away when we can. As long as we take only odd things here and there, the builders think they have simply forgotten where they left them or grumble that one of their fellows has stolen them.’

‘What they can’t use themselves, I sell for them,’ Yarrow said.

Grey jumped at the sound of the voice behind him. In the shock of discovering the cave, he’d forgotten the churchwarden was there, until he remembered the knife still pointed at his back.

‘Master Yarrow has always been a faithful friend to the Austin Canons,’ the hooded man said quietly. ‘And the villagers have helped us too. They bring candles and offerings to St Beornwyn and the Virgin Mary, which by order of Cromwell’s own decree, Yarrow, as churchwarden, is obliged to remove and so they find their way to us, where they are used for the glory of the saints and in the service of the true Church, as the villagers intended.’

Grey remembered seeing Alan hand something to Yarrow. Had the boy too been in on the secret of where the offerings were really going?

‘Father James – does he know about this?’

‘Him!’ Yarrow said contemptuously. ‘He doesn’t know half of what goes on in the village.’

‘He would have betrayed us had he known,’ the prior added. ‘The regular priests have always been jealous of the Austin Canons. We minister far more faithfully to their parishioners than ever they do, sitting through the night with the dying, absolving them of sins their own priests don’t even recognize, for they’re too busy committing their own.’

Grey, his wrists still bound, gestured with his chin up at the altar. ‘And did you absolve Yarrow of the sin of stealing that reliquary for you?’

‘I didn’t steal it!’ Yarrow said indignantly. ‘I’m no thief.’

‘But you are a murderer,’ Grey said coldly. ‘Edward was slain with the kind of serrated knife that fishmongers use to scrape scales off fish and to gut them, not with a straight butcher’s blade. In fact, I suspect he was murdered with the very knife you are pointing at me right now.’

Before Yarrow could admit or deny it, the prior spoke again. ‘When someone is forced to kill in order to defend the servants of God and the True Faith, it is neither a sin nor is it murder. A soldier who kills the enemy in battle is guilty of nothing save bravery and courage. And make no mistake, this is war between the servants of light and Cromwell’s forces of darkness.’

He gestured back to the reliquary. ‘We needed a relic to consecrate the altar. We asked Master Richard to sell the reliquary of St Beornwyn to us, but he refused. So we prayed and God answered our prayers. Edward stole the reliquary from Richard, though it had no more meaning for him than it did for Richard. Both were only interested in the value of the gold and jewels, not in the precious relics of the virgin saint. We didn’t know Edward intended to take it or why he brought it here. But finding himself pursued, he must have tried to hide in the Hutt, hoping Richard would ride on by.’

‘I didn’t know it was Edward in the Hutt,’ Yarrow broke in. ‘I was half-way out of the trapdoor, and the first thing I knew was when someone burst in through the door. Whoever it was gave a yelp and I knew the man’d seen me for there was a candle burning on the stairs below me. But I couldn’t see the man’s face. It could have been anyone – one of the forest wardens, even you.’

Yarrow fingered the wicked-looking knife as if regretting it hadn’t been Grey. ‘Had to stop whoever it was yelling out or running off. If the passage were discovered they’d have found the canons. So I silenced him. Only thing I could do. I heard the thud of something hitting the ground, just before the man crumpled up. Muffled it was, something heavy wrapped in cloth. I was going to drag the body down into the passageway, but I heard someone else outside the door. So I just grabbed what the man’d dropped, thinking it might be food, and slid back into the hole. I pulled the trapdoor shut, just as the door opened.’

The prior took up the story again. ‘It was only when we examined the contents of the sack that Yarrow brought us, that we saw that God had answered our prayers with a miracle and delivered St Beornwyn into our safekeeping.’

All the canons crossed themselves as one, bowing their heads reverentially.

‘But now that you have found us,’ the prior continued, ‘we must move St Beornwyn to a place of greater safety. We’ve been fortunate so far and no one has noticed us coming and going through the Hutt, but now that there has been a killing here and the reliquary is missing, there will undoubtedly be others, like you, who will be keeping a closer eye on the place in the future. Sooner or later one of us will be seen as we go to minister in secret to those who need us and we cannot risk that. We had already been preparing to leave even before you stumbled upon us, Master Grey, but your presence is a sign that we must depart at once. Although I regret that you, Master Grey, will not be leaving, at least not unless your sergeants are disposed to search far more diligently for you than they did for the reliquary, and with tomorrow being Christmas Day, I doubt they will trouble to make a start soon.’