Blood Moon (7 page)

Chapter 8

A BODY IN THE MARKETPLACE

Raou
l
didn’t break his neck, more’s the pity, but then I didn’t really think he would. I’ve seen enough drunks to know that they rarely hurt themselves in a fall, ale seemingly able to turn grown men into rag dolls that flop harmlessly onto the hardest surface. It was my back that felt broken for rag doll or not, Raoul was no light-weight and it took the combined strength of both Onethumb and me to get him over the abbey wall. I sent Onethumb home and hurried back inside the monastery grounds hoping no-one found Raoul before I got to him. I found him on the other side of the wall still among the bushes where he’d landed and had to summon Dominic to come and help me haul him back to my laboratorium where we left him to sleep off his excesses on the floor. It would have been impossible to return him to his own rooms without rousing the entire monastery, and I didn’t think the Lady Adelle would have thanked me for trying. I left Dominic to watch over him for the rest of the night while I took myself off to my cell where I collapsed exhausted onto my cot.

*

Next morning I went straight down to my laboratorium where I found Dominic fast asleep on the cot. Apart from a few scuff marks on the floor and a suspicious-looking puddle, there was no sign of Raoul.

I kicked the side of the cot to waken the boy
with a jolt. ‘I thought I asked you to keep an eye on our visitor?’ I castigated him fiercely.

‘I’m sorry, master
. I must have dozed off for a minute.’

‘Hm,’ I frowned. ‘
I take it since he isn’t here he must have survived the night. What time did he leave?’

‘I’m not sure
,’ Dominic yawned rubbing his tonsured pate. ‘I rose to sing lauds at daybreak and he was still here then. By the time I returned he was gone.’

‘It doesn’t look as though you got any more sleep than I did
.’

Dominic shook his head. ‘
I slept badly. He snored noisily and eructed odorously throughout the night.’

‘Eructed?’

‘Belched. He also vomited copiously.’ Dominic indicated some sour mess on the floor covered with a cloth.

‘I see. And did he also go on a murderous
midnight rampage?’ I nodded to a dead cat that was lying on the bench.

‘Oh that. I
found it among the bushes,’ said Dominic stroking the animal’s pelt. ‘Such a shame. I rather like cats. One of God’s gentler creatures, I always think.’

You wouldn’t say that if you saw what they bring in from the garden, I thought. ‘What were you doing out among the bushes at
midnight? I thought I’d asked you to stay with our guest.’

‘We are all slaves to our bodily functions, master. I was in need of micturition.’

Micturition? Eructation? I’d forgotten Dominic came from an educated and aristocratic Norfolk family. Doubtless the whole lot of them spoke to each other in such esoteric terms.

‘Well,
what I want you to do now is go over to the abbot’s lodge and make sure our guest got back safely.’

‘Yes master. Master?’

‘Yes?’

‘Who was
our guest?’

‘
Don’t you know? The Bishop of Norwich’s nephew. And let that be a lesson to you to avoid having a bishop as a relative if you can possibly help it. Now off with you.’

I pushed him out the door before the question I could see forming on his educated brow made it as far as his aristocratic tongue.

While
Dominic was gone I cleaned the place up a bit – I didn’t want patients slipping on puddles of sick while I was trying to treat them. There was a particularly pungent smell to Raoul’s vomit I noticed as I scooped up the mess into a bucket and placed it outside the door for the servants to dispose of. I presumed it was the particular mix of drinks that he had consumed at The Hanged Man the previous night. It must have been quite a cocktail to have had such a potent effect.

Damn the boy!
Why was he still here? I thought he and his family would have gone by now. At least my mother would be pleased they were still here though not by my hand. And frankly I had enough to worry about now with Geoffrey de Saye looming over everything. Assuming Onethumb was right about him and it wasn’t to torment me, why was he here? There had to be a reason. And what was the significance of his meeting with the prior? His
secret
meeting with the prior. Was it connected at all with the one in Stamford that Onethumb mentioned? And then there was this letter my mother wanted me to deliver to Hugh Northwold. What was that about? My eye lighted upon where I’d hidden it on the shelf above the preparation bench. I’d almost forgotten it was there. What message did it contain, I wondered? Something important to be sure, something that couldn’t be entrusted to a regular messenger to deliver. Well, there was only one way to find out. I jumped up and went resolutely over to the shelf where I had hidden the letter, and pulled it out.

T
urning the letter over in my hands I had a terrible sense of
déjà vu
for it reminded me starkly of the last time I was entrusted with a sealed document like this. That time I had resisted the temptation to open it considering it a breach of trust to do so. Had I done so then and acted on what I found much of the subsequent tragedy might have been avoided – a man’s life saved, his home and family kept intact and a murderer apprehended sooner. The murderer then, as if I needed to remind myself, was none other than Geoffrey de Saye. My timidity that time had haunted me ever since and I didn’t want to repeat the same mistake again.

S
till I hesitated. I placed the neat little white oblong on my lectern and studied it carefully. It looked such an innocuous thing sitting there with its huge embossed imprint of the great seal of Ixworth in bright red wax obliterating half of one facet. My fingers itched to open it, but that red seal was daunting. Red for danger - isn’t that right? I’d seen it affixed to so many documents in my lifetime. It was as powerful an injunction not to violate its sanctity as would a decretal from the pope himself. Once broken it would be impossible to put back together again, and no-one would believe I’d done it accidentally. Summoning all my courage and with trembling fingers I gently eased the knife-blade under the seal.

But before I could make the final irrevocable cut I was halted by
a pounding on the door. God in heaven, were my mother’s spies even here in the privacy of my own laboratorium now? With a stifled yelp, I dropped both knife and note on the floor and swung round just as the door fell in and Dominic appeared in its frame, his eyes wild with unspoken horror.

‘What is it, child?’ I gasped. ‘What’s happened?’
             

‘The Lady Adelle!’ he panted.

‘The Lady Adelle?’ I repeated stupidly. ‘What about her?’

His mouth was working but no sound was coming out.

‘Breathe boy,’ I urged, ‘or we shall be here all morning.’

He took a deep breath, held it, and let it out all in a rush: ‘Murdered!’ he managed at last.

No, it couldn’t be! Another sealed note, another murder, and Geoffrey de Saye all together at once? The coincidence was too much to bear.

I realised my mouth had dropped open and I snapped it shut. ‘The Lady Adelle has been
murdered
?’

Dominic shook his head. ‘No, not her.’

‘Then who?’ I said impatiently.

He gulped more air. ‘Her maid. She
’s…it’s…’ he panted pointing high in the air. ‘Oh…!’

‘Come along,’ I said shuffling him out the door. ‘Show me.’

‘Oh master, it was horrible!’

‘Fortitude lad,’ I said pushing him ahead of me. ‘Don’t faint on me now.’

*

In the marketplace a crowd had gathered in the south-east corner - a dark, uninviting place
furthest away from the market cross. From the gasps of people as they pushed forward to catch a glimpse of the horror it was clear that this was where the body lay. They were being held back by the beadle, a rotund breathless little man with a thick black beard that hid much of his blotched features, and wielding his mace of office at the more determined gawpers.

‘Keep back, please! Back I say! Stand clear please madam! I’ll thank you sir not to touch. Hey, you there
! What you think you’re doing?’

I’m afraid I was no better than the rest for while the beadle’s back was turned I quickly sneaked a look for myself. I only had a moment or two but managed to take in most of what there was to be seen:
The body lay face down in the muck but was unmistakably Effie - I recognised her clothing. But there was something else. I winced as I saw the thing that was lying next to her: A severed hand – Effie’s
left
hand, presumably, since her right was visible. It looked as though it had been chopped or chewed off by something very big, and lying next to her was the probable culprit: An extremely fat sow, its neat double row of teats prominently displayed on the underside of its belly. It too was dead, pole-axed by an outraged onlooker who was still strutting around and boasting about what he had done. That was as much as I was able to glean before the beadle put his hand on my shoulder:

‘Now brother, you should know better than that. Step aside, if you please.’

I was about to move away when someone else blustered into the confusion: The owner of the pig, apparently, shouting angrily and demanding to know who had killed his prize porker. The guilty man readily owned up and there ensued a bit of a tussle between the two of them with a lot of pushing and shoving but no actual blows being exchanged while bystanders took sides depending on whether they sympathized with the pig-murderer or the pig. The overwrought beadle now had the added problem of trying to separate this warring pair and while his attention was diverted a second time I took the opportunity to have another look at the body.

Unfortunately for the pig the pole-axing appeared not to have killed it outright for a lot of its blood had pumped out of the wound and pooled beneath Effie’s chest. But something else amongst the shambles caught my eye. I picked up a stick and lifted the object clear of the mess. It was dripping with congealing blood but there was no mistaking what it was: The cap that Raoul had been wearing when Onethumb and I saw him in the tavern the previous night – or if not his cap then one identical to it. And attached to it – that is,
holding on to it – was that severed left hand. As I lifted the grotesque object the hand dropped off and a woman in the crowd fainted. But something about it wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t for the moment think what was wrong and it was while I was puzzling over this that I heard something else that made my own blood run as cold as the pig’s:

‘Bone-breaker!’

I froze. Those words and that voice uttering them. I knew instantly who the owner was and turned to see Geoffrey de Saye standing just a few feet behind me surrounded by his usual posse of brutish-looking thugs. I suppose it was inevitable our paths were bound to cross I just wished it hadn’t been so soon. Such was my shock at seeing him that I’d forgotten I still had Raoul’s cap suspended from my twig. With a flick of his glove de Saye signalled one of his men to prise the stick out of my hand and I wasn’t quick enough to stop him.

‘Aow!’ I cried as he nearly twisted my hand off too in the process and walked towards de Saye with his trophy carefully held out in front of him. I was so furious that despite my shock I turned on de Saye:

‘You’ve no right!’

‘I have every right,’ he growled and added with a snarl, ‘
bone-breaker
.’

But
then something curious happened. I’m not sure if it was the epithet itself or the way he uttered it so contemptuously but it must have tickled the fancy of someone in the crowd for they gave a nervous laugh. ‘Bone-breaker,’ I heard them whisper and then chortle. That made someone else giggle which in turn made me start to laugh. Put it down to nerves but I couldn’t help myself. Laughter is infectious. And others must have found it so too for more and more of them started to laugh until pretty soon practically everybody in the crowd was laughing. The one person who wasn’t laughing was Geoffrey de Saye who looked as though he was about to have a fit turning a mixture of purple and blue. He clearly didn’t see the joke and somehow that just made it even funnier. And suddenly I could see him for what he really was: No longer the ogre of yesteryear but simply an old man to whom years of soft living had given a paunch and jowls, and what little hair he had left on his head was grey and wispy made all the more obvious by the contrast with the puce of his cheeks. None of this I had noticed the previous night as I crouched before the prior’s study door with my eye to the keyhole.