The Chapel of Bones: (Knights Templar 18) (38 page)

‘I do not know. My suspicion is, like yours, founded solely on the man’s sudden disappearance. Why kill the friar? Perhaps because Nicholas saw him kill Henry. And as for Henry – I cannot tell why that should have happened, unless there was a longstanding feud between them.’

‘What of the mason Saul?’ Simon asked.

Baldwin shook his head. ‘I can only assume that he was another man who knew Thomas.’

‘You mean that Saul recognised him from the past and threatened to disclose his identity?’ Sir Peregrine demanded.

‘I suppose so,’ Baldwin said. ‘Thomas may have feared the disclosure of his part in the murder of the Chaunter.’ He frowned. ‘Although dropping a stone on Saul’s head would be an unorthodox method of murder.’

‘But effective,’ Sir Peregrine said.

‘More lucky than effective, if he meant to murder,’ Baldwin commented.

Simon was still considering the motive. ‘Why would this Thomas suddenly fear recognition? The mason Saul was not a local man – so how could he have recognised Thomas? And Henry Saddler was an accomplice of his, so why should Thomas kill him? As for the friar – well, I suppose he could have seemed a threat, but what if we were right and Nicholas was himself one of the assassins? We thought he might have been in on the plot, didn’t we? What could have made him so uniquely dangerous to Thomas? Also, surely the saddler himself, or the joiner, or even the corrodian, would have the same motivation? I do not understand why Thomas should have decided to enter this killing spree.’

‘We may not understand until we have him in our hands and can question him,’ Sir Peregrine said.

A short while later, Baldwin and Simon decided to leave. As Baldwin said, they would need their sleep that night, if they were to rise early to help a posse seek the missing mason.

As they walked along the road, Simon threw Baldwin a look. ‘Were you persuaded by his protestations?’

Baldwin smiled. ‘Am I
so
transparent, Simon?’

‘Only to one who knows you, Baldwin!’

They were only a few scant yards from their own inn when they heard the scampering of feet, and Baldwin’s hand went to his sword.

‘Easy, old friend, it’s only a lad,’ Simon said.

‘It is the sound of running steps; they always raise my hackles,’ Baldwin admitted. It was not only the noise and the reminder that even here in Exeter there were footpads, it was
the dislocation he still felt – the feeling that he was farther apart from his wife than ever – and the curious menace he had sensed at the Charnel Chapel.

The boy hurried past them and went into their inn. There was a sudden calming of the noise of talking and laughter, and in it, they heard the boy calling for the Keeper of the King’s Peace.

Baldwin glanced at Simon, then pushed his way inside. ‘I am Sir Baldwin,’ he said. ‘I am the Keeper of the King’s Peace. What do you want, boy?’

‘It’s the man who killed my father – he’s tried to rob us, and we need someone to come and take him,’ Dan said, trying not to cry.

Udo had not enjoyed the talk with the Keeper of the King’s Peace and his companion. He was not used to such treatment from strangers, and the thought that the men could have been so suspicious of him was worrying. As an outsider, he knew full well the risks he took in remaining here in a foreign country. If there was to be guilt attached to any man, the population would rather pick a stranger than a local man.

He could ride that storm, he hoped, but what about the assertion that someone had heard Henry rejecting Udo’s offer of marriage? If that should get back to Julia, there could be only one course for her to take, which was to obey his last dying wish, surely? Udo must not let her learn of her father’s words.

So he had the two problems now: the matter of his own guilt being decided by his neighbours in preference to their selecting someone from among their own, and the fact that Julia might discover that her father had set his face against her marriage to Udo.

And the two men, the Keeper and his Bailiff, were the interfering cretins who had exposed him to these problems. He could grow to dislike them both.

Thomas came to with his head feeling as if someone had dropped a mallet on it from the top of his own scaffolding. As soon as he had opened his eyes he had to snap them shut. The light was too bright.

Where the devil was he? Then he realised: he was still in Sara’s house. He was sitting with his back up against one of the two posts in the middle of the floor. The light came from a small tallow candle that smoked repellently over his left shoulder. His legs seemed to have gone to sleep, and he knew that he must move them. He had to get up and run from this place. Whoever had hit him could return at any time.

He tried to lift a hand to shield his face from the deadly beam of the candle, but his hand was stuck behind him. When he jerked his wrist, he felt the pain simultaneously in his palm as well as the wrist, and it was so sharp, it was like pulling against a razor. Giving a cry of pain, he started to topple to one side. To break his fall, he threw his other hand out, only to find that that too was securely bound. Cursing and sobbing, he slid to the side, his arms slowing his painful descent, until his head struck the packed earth of the floor, and he could lie there with the pain throbbing in both wrists, his heart pounding with fear and a feeling of sickness.

‘You wait there,’ came a harsh and unsympathetic voice. ‘You try and rob a poor widow, you deserve all you get.’

‘I haven’t tried to rob anyone,’ he protested, squirming to see who was talking. Peering over his shoulder, he saw that it was the woman, Jen, who had taken his wine on that first day when he brought news of Saul’s death. ‘Woman, why have you done this? I’ve never robbed anyone in my life!’

‘You robbed this family of their father and husband. I’d say that was robbery,’ she said equably. ‘’Tis a shame, too. You bought good wine,’ she added, smacking her lips.

‘Can I have a drink of something? My throat is parched.’

‘Be glad you’ve got one. The boy would have cut it as soon as look at you. You’re lucky I saved you and only sent him for the crowner.’

‘The crowner?’ he repeated dully. If the Coroner was on his way, there was little point in struggling. He was dead already – just like his father. He too would die on the scaffold and be displayed at the Southern Gate. Not for his own crimes, but like his father, for those of other men. ‘Come on, maid, it can’t hurt anyone to let me have a mouthful of water, can it? I’m dying of thirst here.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have come here to take her money, should you?’

‘I didn’t! I left her
my
money to try to help her!’

‘I found you in here and clobbered your head with a stick, so don’t lie to me,’ she snapped.

‘I’d taken the pennies from my purse to give to her,’ he said with resignation, knowing she wouldn’t believe him. ‘I felt guilty about her man’s death, and I wanted to give her something to help her get by. I was going to leave the city and find somewhere else to work.’

‘They fired you, then?’ she cackled. ‘Not surprised, if all you can do is kill off their other workers.’

‘I …’

Thomas was quiet as a shadow slipped in through the door. In sudden fear he recognised the quick movements of Sara’s son, Dan. He couldn’t see the boy because the door was behind him, but the shadow was terrifying, the boy’s shape deformed and sly as it moved about the room until Thomas could see him. He saw the hatred in the lad’s eyes: the fellow would draw his little pocket-knife at the first opportunity.

‘Well, Master Thomas, I think you would have been better served to have waited for us at the Cathedral, rather than trying this frankly unorthodox approach to gaining our attention.’

‘Is that the Keeper?’ Thomas demanded. He was scared still, but less so by the looming shadow that now appeared in front of him.

‘Lad, cut those thongs,’ Baldwin ordered, walking around in front of the man and squatting. ‘Now, Thomas, you are held under my authority and we are going to take you back to the Cathedral to the Bishop’s gaol. When we are there, we are going to ask you some questions, and this time I want the truth from you!’

Thomas let his head hang. ‘I will tell you everything.’

Matthew was surprised to be called to the Treasurer’s hall so late in the afternoon, and he hurried there as soon as the summons came. As the Warden of the Fabric Rolls, he was largely responsible for the new Cathedral as it was building, and if the Treasurer had found a problem with his calculations or book-keeping, he wanted to know about it as soon as possible. It was the one thing about his job that constantly preyed on his mind, this fear that one day there would be a false calculation found in his work.

It wasn’t very likely, of course. Most men, whether clerks or not, found it difficult to add and subtract the figures which had
been passed down from antiquity by the Romans along with their venerable script for reading and writing. No man could argue that the Romans were not the most marvellous race of men so far created by God. They had built wonderful buildings, invented waterways and roads, and left a legacy of learning which was superior to any other civilisation.

‘You called for me?’

The Treasurer’s house was one of the smaller ones on the canons’ street. It fronted the Exchequer, and suited the modest requirements of the man who was, after all, one of the most powerful men in the Cathedral.

‘Yes, Matthew.’

He was looking old today, Matthew thought. Old and tired, like an apple left on the ground too long – not quite rotten to the core, but very close to it. He suddenly wondered whether the Treasurer would survive much longer. If he were to die, whom would the Dean select as his replacement from the members of the Choir? Surely it would be the man most attuned to the numbers which ruled the life of the Treasurer – the man who could understand the rolls and make the best of the money the Cathedral had allocated for this rebuilding. He suddenly felt a little light-headed.

‘This old affair of the murder of Chaunter Walter is springing up once more. It is regrettable, but there is little we can do to cover it all up if it comes into the open. I wanted to warn you, Matthew. I know that the whole thing must be deeply distressing for you, but there is nothing I or the Dean can do to stop it, I fear. The dead saddler was certainly involved in the attack, and of course the friar was there.’

‘Yes, I remember. Poor Nicholas. I was at his side when he won that terrible wound,’ Matthew said incomprehendingly. ‘But I don’t …’

‘Of course,’ Stephen said. ‘I wasn’t in the Cathedral that night, but when I returned, you were still in a fever, and Nicholas was at death’s door.’

Matthew nodded. It was odd how many men had apparently been out of Exeter that night. The Vicar of Ottery St Mary, for example, had been out of the Close; so had the Vicar of Heavitree. Both were later found guilty of being there at the murder, of course, and they’d paid heavily for their crime in the Bishop’s gaol.

Still, he told himself, there was no point raking up old suspicions. No one really wanted to go into the matter again.

‘If it were possible to ask these two men to hold their investigation, I should do so,’ Stephen said quietly, gazing up at the cross that hung on his wall above the screens passage.

Matthew found his manner disquieting, but then he told himself again that it must surely be Stephen’s great age. The man was exhausted, but he must carry on until he collapsed. That was the sort of man he was.

And then a more unnerving idea came to him: perhaps the Treasurer
had
been one of the men attacking – it might even have been him who knocked Matthew down on the night he so nearly died. A man who had done that would later make amends in any way he might. He could take a novice into his own department and see to it that he was well and carefully trained and nurtured, so that he would himself become indispensable.

Matthew found himself studying his mentor with a feeling of prickly nervousness running up his spine. This man, the one who had given him the better posts, who had looked after him in forty years of life at the Cathedral, had once been there trying to kill him just because … Why?

‘Stephen,’ he said quietly. ‘Was it you struck me down?’

The Treasurer was still staring at the cross. He blinked
then, as though the cross had itself stung him. There was a slight moisture at the corner of his eye, Matthew saw, and he felt the shock thrill through him before Stephen had even answered.

‘The Chaunter was divisive,’ Stephen said. ‘He was a malign influence on the Cathedral – my God, anyone could see that!’ His eyes were on the cross again, as though pleading his sincerity. Gradually his eyes fell, and he turned his attention back to Matthew. ‘But I swear to you, Matthew, I never wanted to see you or anyone else harmed! Only
him
! He was evil, a man who would divert us all from our tasks and drive a wedge between the Bishop and his Chapter. Who could want to leave him in power when his entire efforts were dedicated to ruining us all? Any man who had a relationship, no matter how tenuous, with the Dean and Treasurer, was detested by de Lecchelade, and belittled and demeaned. No one who held the good reputation and honour of the Cathedral in his heart could tolerate his behaviour.’

‘He was the Treasurer, wasn’t he?’