Falconer and the Rain of Blood Read online

  After spending most of his time at Oxford University drinking in pubs and singing folk songs, Ian Morson reluctantly had to find work as a librarian in the London area, dealing in other writers’ novels. He finally decided he had to prove he could do better, and William Falconer grew out of that decision. The medieval detective has appeared in eight novels to date, and several short stories in anthologies written by the Medieval Murderers, a group of historical crime writers. Ian also writes novels and short stories featuring Nick Zuliani, a Venetian at the court of Kubilai Khan, and Joe Malinferno and Doll Pocket, a pair living off their wits in Georgian England. Ian lives with his wife, Lynda, and after sampling the joys of life in Cyprus, they now reside in Hastings.

  Master William Falconer Mysteries

  Falconer’s Crusade*

  Falconer’s Judgement*

  Falconer and the Face of God*

  A Psalm for Falconer*

  Falconer and the Great Beast*

  Falconer and the Ritual of Death

  Falconer’s Trial

  Falconer and the Death of Kings

  *available in Ostara Publishing editions

  FALCONER

  AND THE

  RAIN OF BLOOD

  A William Falconer novel

  By

  IAN MORSON

  Ostara Publishing

  First published by Ostara Publishing 2013

  Copyright © Ian Morson 2013

  Hardback ISBN 9781906288 969

  Paperback ISBN 9781906288 976

  A CIP reference is available from the British Library

  Printed and Bound in the United Kingdom

  Ostara Publishing

  13 King Coel Road

  Colchester

  CO3 9AG

  www.ostarapublishing.co.uk

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Later, it was difficult to pin down exactly when it all began.

  It could be said that the primary cause was the arrival of Sir Hugo de Wolfson, crusader knight, in Oxford on the Feast of St John Chrysostom in September, 1275. By the time he rode through Eastgate, he was hot and feverish, but then he had been travelling for days and might expect to feel a little out of sorts. What he didn’t know about was the fate of one of his companions with whom he had shared a cabin when crossing the English Channel, and who had complained of a sore mouth. The man had, since they had bade each other farewell, sickened and died close to Canterbury. Sir Hugo had ridden hard for ten days and, still to travel further north, had decided to break his journey in Oxford. His decision had fatal consequences for several people in the town.

  It may also be said that it began a lot earlier, when knights of Western Europe pledged themselves to retrieving the Holy Lands from the Islamic invaders. Many knights returned to England with booty and tales of noble deeds. Some carried unexpected and unwanted stowaways with them in the form of disease. The ill-fated attempt led by Louis of France in 1270 resulted in Prince Edward of England rushing to Louis’s support with a band of fellow knights including Sir Hugo de Wolfson. Edward and Sir Hugo made it to the Holy Lands, but Louis did not. The saintly French king died that August of a pestilence, and was reduced to muttering ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem’ on his death-bed in Carthage. Edward and his knights actually saw little combat as a peace was negotiated with the Muslim ruler, Baibars, in 1272. Though Sir Hugo de Wolfson remained, some of the English knights accompanying Edward returned to their homeland through the port of Damietta on the coast of Egypt. Red plague was rife in the town, and the knights hurried on. The crusaders fled across the sea to Venice, but one knight unwittingly took with him an unwelcome companion. And so began the plague’s insidious crawl through mainland Europe.

  A trader called Peter Hawkmoor was the last link in the chain to Sir Hugo, who thought he had escaped the plague in the Middle East. Unfortunately, it had lain in wait for him in France. The trader he shared a cabin with on the cog Cockerel as it crossed from Honfleur to Portsmouth had made an error of judgement. Hawkmoor had tarried in a small French town to the east of the port, where he knew a widow intimately. She had felt unwell, but had put on a pretence of jollity for her generous visitor. Unknown to Hawkmoor, she was now desperately ill, and he was unaware his dalliance had ensured his own death. Unwittingly, he also passed sentence on his cabin companion and on those Sir Hugo himself encountered later.

  However, some say it only really began when the town constable of Oxford took the terrible decision to close all the gates in and out of the town. It was a decision Peter Bullock came to regret, but at the time he thought it was the correct one. He locked the whole town into close confinement with the red plague to prevent its spread elsewhere. He was not comforted by the thought that other communities in the past had done so, and that down into the future would doubtless carry out similar selfless acts. Not after what came about in the febrile atmosphere of the plague town in that month of September, 1275.

  Some even say now that what swept through Oxford would have happened anyway. That it was a result of too much learning infecting brains with a murderous plague that ran as rampantly through the town as did the red plague of small pox. That mankind was not meant to know so much. That books, and a reaching for an understanding of the world that was rightly the perquisite of God alone was bound to drive a person mad and cause a rash of deaths.

  Others merely said what happened came about because the prophet Merlin had predicted it would.

  Chapter One

  The Feast of St Frithestan of Winchester, 10th September, 1275

  ‘Woe to the red dragon, for his banishment hasteneth on. His lurking holes shall be seized by the white dragon, which signifies the Saxons whom you invited over; but the red denotes the British nation, which shall be oppressed by the white. Therefore shall its mountains be levelled as the valleys, and the rivers of the valleys shall run with blood.’

  The old man closed the book reverentially, and his rheumy eyes looked up at his guest, who was pacing the small upper room that formed the library of Oseney Abbey. The tall man was fifty if he was a day, and his greying, curly locks were thinning. But he still gave out an air of authority and vigour that the old man found reassuring. The man was a teacher of the clerks at the university close by the abbey, and needed to seem authoritative. The young men required firm guidance, and it was hard to know who provided that these days. Ever since old King Henry had died, and his son Edward had come to the throne, the world seemed to have changed beyond measure. And not for the better, either. Aldwyn was Welsh, and he had heard that the new king was proposing to invade his homeland. The old monk, his mind wandering as it was wont to do recently, suddenly realised that his guest had asked him a question.

  ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

  The man, who was indeed a regent master in Oxford, smiled, and his piercing blue eyes wrinkled at the edges.

  ‘I was asking you if you believed all that Geof
frey wrote in his History.’

  Brother Aldwyn looked scandalised at the master’s deprecating remark. He patted the book on the table at his right hand reassuringly.

  ‘It is as true a retelling of the history of Britain as has ever been recorded. From the days of Brutus’s landing on the island of Albion at Totnes. How King Lud founded London, and my homeland got its name of Cambria from Brutus’s son Camber. And Geoffrey’s recording of Merlin’s prophecies is as I myself remember them told to me by my father.’

  Aldwyn closed his eyes recalling the prophecies his father had recited to him when he had been a stripling no older than most of those youths who thronged the streets of Oxford today. The passage he had just read out to his visitor was the opening of Merlin’s portents, and concerned the feuding between the true Britons of Wales, and the Saxon invaders who laid claim to the country next. Of course since those times there had been the Norman invasion too, which he felt sure was in the prophecies somewhere if only he could decipher the text. Aldwyn felt that he had almost lived through all those times, immersed as he was in the chronicles of Oseney Abbey. And proud as he was of Merlin’s red dragon, it was a humiliation to record how the Anglo-Saxon white dragon held supremacy. Worse still, the Prince of Wales, Llewellyn ap Gruffyd, had bribed the old King Henry to recognise his title with an amount of money he — or Wales — could ill afford. The sum of 3,000 marks had now to be found annually, and Llewellyn was not popular with his subjects for the burden imposed on them. His own brother, David, had rebelled against him, and losing the battle with his sibling, had sought refuge in England. That was another sore on the back of the Welsh pony.

  The regent master coughed gently, to remind the misty-eyed Aldwyn of his presence. He had come to the abbey ostensibly to pay his quarterly rent for the hall he used in Oxford to accommodate a handful of students. His payment for being a regent master was small, and the fees the students paid supplemented that income, even after the rent to his landlord — the abbey — was paid. Oseney Abbey owned many plots of land in the university town, including Aristotle’s Hall in St John’s Street, where William Falconer had lived for almost fifteen years. The rent paid, he had called on the abbey’s librarian, Aldwyn, because he sought some information about the past. It was something to do with the year 1225, around the time when the Friars Minor first came to England led by Agnellus of Pisa. The year, if he guessed right, when Master William Falconer thought he had been born.

  Aldwyn dragged himself back to the present, and smiled at Falconer ruefully.

  ‘Still and all, you do not want to know prophecies of what is to come, but what happened in the past. Am I right?’

  William Falconer nodded in agreement. Old Aldwyn was the latest in a long line of chroniclers at the abbey, and if he was to learn anything about his own origins, he needed the old monk’s memory to be functioning well. So he nudged Aldwyn’s recollections into action.

  ‘Two Englishmen, who came with Agnellus, were responsible for founding the Franciscan friary, I understand.’

  The old monk nodded, almost seeming to be dozing off. But then he roused himself enough to reply.

  ‘Yes, two friars with the same name — Richard — arrived in Oxford in November of the eighth year of Henry’s reign.’

  That year — 1224 — was the year before Falconer’s presumed birth date. Though he knew little about his childhood, he had always been told he was born in the ninth year of Henry’s reign. But that was all he did know, and it was the reason he was here at Oseney making enquiries about the Franciscan friary that had eventually grown like an excrescence on the town wall on the south side of Oxford.

  ‘Yes, and I am told that one of them helped at the hospital of St Bartholomew’s.’

  Aldwyn smiled as nostalgia washed over him.

  ‘Ah, yes, Bartlemas leper hospital.’ He gave the familiar name for the building rather than its formal title. ‘Thirteen prebends were paid for originally, and Augustine brothers here at Oseney were involved in its running, which is why I assume you have started your quest here. Then in that year, a Grey Friar joined us. I recall that Richard Ingworth was the Franciscan in question. I also remember that the hospital possessed many relics, including St. Edmund’s comb, which was a sure cure for headaches.’

  Falconer frowned, an anxious look forming on his weather-beaten face.

  ‘But, a leper hospital, you say?’

  Aldwyn waved a hand by way of reassurance.

  ‘Not at the beginning. It was set up to care for the poor infirm of Oxford. Though it later became a place of sanctuary for lepers, and that was what attracted Richard Ingworth to it. The Grey Friars were ever dedicated to those poor outcasts of our world.’ He scrutinised William Falconer more closely all of a sudden. ‘But what brings you to ask about Bartlemas?’

  Falconer’s brilliant blue eyes darkened, and he cast his glance down to the floor.

  ‘I am curious about someone who was taken in there. But it was some time ago. Are there any records kept, would you know?’

  Aldwyn shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I believe there are records of those who passed through the hospital’s doors, but how accurate they are I cannot say. Let me make enquiries, and when you next come to pay your rent, I may have some news.’

  Falconer would have liked a faster response to his enquiries, but knew Brother Aldwyn of old. Living in a monastic world governed by regular and timeless routine, he would not be hurried along at the pace of the secular realm. And in truth, Falconer wasn’t sure his quest was all that urgent. Finding out about his own birth and ancestry had been a subject he had ignored for many years. Such long-ago events had seemed irrelevant to him. Until he had met Saphira Le Veske.

  *

  Saphira was a Jew, and placed great store by her birthright. Her surname was one she had adopted in the Christian style when she married her now long-deceased husband. But two weeks ago, lying beside Falconer in the bed in her rented house in Fish Street, she told him of her true family name. And tried to explain the intricacies of the Jewish naming of names.

  ‘It is only living with Christians that we Jews have adopted surnames like Le Veske. Before then, everyone simply took their father’s first name to describe their ancestry. And besides, Le Veske is just a version of the French word for bishop or priest — l’évêcque. It means that some ancestor of my late husband’s was a rabbi.’

  Falconer eased on to his elbow and faced his lover, tearing his eyes from her rounded breasts with difficulty.

  ‘Then tell me what your name really is, strange woman in my bed.’

  Saphira prodded his belly, which she had noticed was growing more soft and rounded lately.

  ‘We are occupying my bed, regent master William Falconer. And you are supposed to be a celibate cleric, who I should by rights throw bare-arsed out into the street. As if you needed reminding of that fact.’

  Saphira pulled the covers over her bare chest. Falconer grinned, and held up a placatory palm.

  ‘Pace, Saphira … But then if you are not Le Veske, what do I call you?’

  ‘I was born Saphira, daughter of Habib of Nimes. Now, there’s a name to conjure with.’

  ‘Habib is Arabic!’

  ‘And yet my father was a Jew. So he must have come to France by way of Outremer or North Africa. We Jews are good at fitting in wherever we live, and fashioning our names to suit. So you can see how our very name speaks of our origins.’

  She settled back on the feather pillow, tucking her hands behind her head, and exposing her nipples again in the process. Her shock of flame-red hair spread across the white linen.

  ‘Now, tell me of your family.’

  Falconer had nothing to say, because he knew nothing, having been brought up an orphan by Augustine monks in far-off Bardsey Abbey. No-one there had told him of his parents, other than to hint that his mother had died in a hospital near Oxford at his birth. His surname had been given him by a prior to whom the boy’s blue eyes had suggested the
piercing stare of a bird of prey. Sadly, even that attribute had proved incorrect, and though his eyes had been good enough to carry him through a career as a mercenary, he now needed eye-glasses to see anything clearly.

  Still, if he looked closely, he could see well enough, and he saw that Saphira’s bare nipples were hardening in the cold air of her bedroom. He had then slipped his hand underneath the covers, and for a while his childhood was forgotten. But later he began to think about who he was, and he spent the following two weeks making enquiries. Largely frustrated, and guessing the hospital near Oxford was St Bartholomew’s he had finally spoken to Brother Aldwyn on the occasion of his quarterly payment of rent for Aristotle’s Hall.

  *

  The Feast of St Eanswida, 12th September

  After waiting a day or so for Aldwyn’s news, Falconer became impatient for information. He decided he would go to the leper hospital himself and see what he could find out. It was late afternoon, and his teaching duties were over for the day. He had a rendezvous with Saphira later, but felt some fresh air and a brisk walk would be beneficial. Bartlemas hospital was beyond East Gate on the Cowley Road that led south-east towards London. He could be there and back before dark. Though he knew the centre of town and its market stalls would be quiet at this time of day, he chose to cut through the narrow lanes that wound through from South Gate, past St Frideswide’s Church, and along Schitebarne Lane. He loved the dark, winding alleys and vennels that made up the real Oxford for him. Here stood the low, half-timbered houses of the working population of the town. You didn’t find the rarified atmosphere of intellectual speculation on the numbers of angels on a pin-head here. This was the sordidissimi vici of stews, cheek by jowl with stinking tanners’ homes, and those of book binders who used the leather made by their smelly neighbours. To Falconer it had the odour of honest toil and sweated labour, and he returned to wallow in it when he was tired of the other world of his fellow regent masters and their petty concerns.