Ken Follett - World Without End

At this point he had to be subtle. His object was those charters, but he did not want that to be apparent. He had to steal them, but appear not to have done so.

He ordered Joan to open the small chest. It contained a few gold coins. Ralph was puzzled by how little money there was. Perhaps more was hidden somewhere in this room, possibly behind stones in the wall. However, he did not stop to ponder: he was only pretending to be interested in the money. He poured the coins into the purse at his belt. Meanwhile, Alan unrolled a capacious sack and began filling it with cathedral ornaments.

Having let Joan see that, Ralph ordered her back up the stairs.

Tilly was still here, watching with wide, terrified eyes, but it did not matter what she saw. She would never have a chance to tell.

Ralph unrolled another sack and began loading the parchment rolls into it as fast as he could.

When they had bagged everything, Ralph told Alan to break up the wooden chests with his hammer and chisel. He took the wool coats from the hook, bundled them up, and held the tip of his candle flame to the bundle. The wool caught fire immediately. He piled wood from the chests on top of the burning wool. Soon there was a merry bonfire, and the smoke caught in his throat.

He looked at Tilly, lying helpless on the floor. He drew his knife. Then, once again, he hesitated.

From the prior’s palace, a small door led directly into the chapter house, which itself communicated with the north transept of the cathedral. Merthin and Caris took this route in their search for the source of the scream. The chapter house was empty, and they went into the church. Their single candle was too dim to illuminate the vast interior, but they stood in the centre of the crossing and listened hard.

They heard the click of a latch.

Merthin said: “Who’s there?” and was ashamed of the fear that made his voice tremble.

“Brother Thomas,” they heard.

The voice came from the south transept. A moment later Thomas moved into the light of their candle. “I thought I heard someone scream,” he said.

“So did we. But there’s no one here in the church.”

“Let’s look around.”

“What about the novices, and the boys?”

“I told them to go back to sleep.”

They passed through the south transept into the monks’ cloisters. Once again they saw no one and heard nothing. From here, they followed a passage through the kitchen stores to the hospital. The patients lay in their beds as normal, some sleeping and some moving and groaning in pain – but, Merthin realized after a moment, there were no nuns in the room.

“This is strange,” said Caris.

The scream might have come from here, but there was no sign of emergency, or of any kind of disturbance.

They went into the kitchen, which was deserted, as they would have expected.

Thomas sniffed deeply, as if trying to pick up a scent.

Merthin said: “What is it?” He found himself whispering.

“Monks are clean,” Thomas murmured in reply. “Someone dirty has been here.”

Merthin could not smell anything unusual.

Thomas picked up a cleaver, the kind a cook would use to chop through meat and bones.

They went to the kitchen door. Thomas held up the stump of his left arm in a warning gesture and they halted. There was a faint light in the nuns’ cloisters. It seemed to be coming from the recess at the near end. It was the reflected gleam of a distant candle, Merthin guessed. It might be coming from the nuns’ refectory, or from the flight of stone steps that led up to their dormitory; or both.

Thomas stepped out of his sandals and went forward, his bare feet making no sound on the flagstones. He melted into the shadows of the cloister. Merthin could just about make him out as he edged towards the recess.

A faint but pungent aroma came to Merthin’s nose. It was not the smell of dirty bodies that Thomas had detected in the kitchen, but something quite different and new. A moment later Merthin identified it as smoke.

Thomas must have picked it up too, for he froze in place up against the wall.

Someone unseen gave a grunt of surprise, then a figure stepped out from the recess into the cloister walk, faintly but clearly visible, the weak light outlining the silhouette of a man with some kind of hood covering his entire head and face. The man turned towards the refectory door.

Thomas struck.

The cleaver glinted briefly in the dark, then there was a sickening thud as it sank into the man’s body. He gave a shout of terror and pain. As he fell Thomas swung again, and the man’s cry turned into a sickening gurgle, then stopped. He hit the stone pavement with a lifeless thump.

Beside Merthin, Caris gasped with horror.

Merthin ran forward. “What’s going on?” he cried.

Thomas turned to him, making go-back motions with the cleaver. “Quiet!” he hissed.

The light changed in a heartbeat. Suddenly the cloisters were illuminated with the bright glow of a flame.

Someone came running out of the refectory with a heavy tread. It was a big man carrying a sack in one hand and a blazing torch in the other. He looked like a ghost, until Merthin realized he was wearing a crude hood with holes for the eyes and mouth.

Thomas stepped in front of the running man and raised his cleaver. But he was a moment too late. Before he could strike, the man cannoned into him, sending him flying.

Thomas crashed into a pillar, and there was a crack that sounded like his head hitting the stone. He slumped to the ground, out cold. The running man lost his balance and fell to his knees.

Caris pushed past Merthin and knelt beside Thomas.

Several more men appeared, all hooded, some carrying torches. It seemed to Merthin that some emerged from the refectory and others came down the stairs from the dorm. At the same time he heard the sound of women screaming and wailing. For a moment the scene was chaos.

Merthin rushed to Caris’s side and tried to protect her, with his body, from the stampede.

The intruders saw their fallen comrade and they all paused in their rush, suddenly shocked into stillness. By the light of their torches they could see that he was unquestionably dead, his neck sliced almost all the way through, his blood spilled copiously over the stone floor of the cloisters. They looked around, moving their heads from side to side, peering through the holes in their hoods, looking like fish in a stream.

One of them spotted Thomas’s cleaver, red with blood, lying on the ground next to Thomas and Caris, and pointed at it to show the others. With a grunt of anger, he drew a sword.

Merthin was terrified for Caris. He stepped forward, attracting the swordsman’s attention. The man moved towards Merthin and raised his weapon. Merthin retreated, drawing the man away from Caris. As the danger to her receded he felt more frightened for himself. Walking backwards, shaking with fear, he slipped on the dead man’s blood. His feet flew from under him and he fell flat on his back.

The swordsman stood over him, weapon raised high to kill him.

Then one of the others intervened. He was the tallest of the intruders, and moved with surprising speed. With his left hand, he grabbed the upraised arm of Merthin’s assailant. He must have had authority, for without speaking he simply shook his hooded head from side to side in negation, and the swordsman lowered his weapon obediently.

Merthin noticed that his saviour wore a mitten on his left hand, but nothing on the right.

The interaction lasted only as long as it might take a man to count to ten, and ended as suddenly as it had begun. One of the hooded men turned towards the kitchen and broke into a run, and the others followed. They must have planned to escape that way, Merthin realized: the kitchen had a door that gave on to the cathedral green, and that was the quickest way out. They disappeared, and without the blaze of their torches the cloisters went dark.