A Psalm for Falconer Read online

  ‘She was found there, face down in the water conduit. She had drowned.’

  LAUDS

  Praise the Lord from the Earth,

  You water-spouts and ocean depths,

  Fire and hale, snow and ice,

  Gales of winds obeying His voice.

  Psalm 148

  Chapter Four

  A solemn procession of monks preceded the body into the church of Conishead Priory, led by the imposing figure Falconer had guessed to be Brother Adam. He had a pompous look of self-importance on his jowly, red face. The monks' demeanour was more dignified than the body, and those that bore it. The corpse was wrapped in nothing more than a coarse grey blanket, and this was held at each corner by four sturdy men in short drab tunics that finished well above their knees. The tunics were all well patched and salt-encrusted around their lower hems. The men's legs and feet were bare. Their weatherbeaten faces, from which their eyes squinted through half-closed lids, spoke of their trade as fishermen. Falconer had heard of these men who spent their days out in the bay laying traps for the flat fish the locals called flukes. Their hours were dictated by the comings and goings of the tide, their lives shortened by the harshness of the conditions. Clearly to them the proximity of death was a constant factor in their lives. The contents of the cheap shroud they carried could have been their father, or their son.

  They followed the line of monks into one of the side chapels, and at Brother Adam's imperious gesture hefted the bundle on to a bench. To Falconer it seemed curiously light, and rather small for a body. God forbid it be that of a child. The monks, including the prior, stood in a hesitant circle, as though afraid to uncover the doleful shape enclosed by the tattered blanket. With a sigh Falconer stepped forward and lifted a corner gently. What he saw was totally unexpected, and he suddenly understood exactly what the men had been digging out of the sandy river bank he had passed the day before.

  Pulling the covering back carefully, he revealed not an identifiable body, but a skeleton. The assembled monks gasped in surprise, and retreated into a huddle near the altar. They had all been expecting a form fully clothed in flesh and were shocked to be confronted by nothing more than a bag of bones. It would not be so easy to solve the mystery of this person's identity. The skull sat atop the ribcage, and the eye cavities stared darkly out at Falconer. The interior of the skull was packed with dark brown sand, and as he examined it a thin trickle of mud ran out of the nose cavity and down the yellowish expanse of cheekbone. Arm and leg bones had simply been thrown into the blanket with no regard for their place in life, but the head, ribcage and hipbone somehow still hung together. They appeared to be held in place by a white, suety mass that mimicked the body shape of whoever this had been in life. A gritty covering of sand was plastered haphazardly to all the bony surfaces.

  As Falconer looked more closely at the jumble, he could see shreds of cloth stuck to the soggy white pulp. Unfamiliar with what burial in wet sand might do to flesh, Falconer assumed the pulp was all that remained of the person's fleshly body. Across the skull the remnants of black hair ran in a fringe around the sides of the head. As he looked more closely, a lugworm poked out of one eye socket, waving its head blindly in the air. He watched entranced as it slithered across the cheekbone and fell to the stone-flagged floor, where it curled up into a tight ring. Returning to his examination of the remains, he saw a dark line tangled in the ribcage, and eased his fingers under it. It was a chain with something on its end that now lay tucked up in the sand inside the skull. Falconer put his hand inside the gaping mouth, and drew the chain out. On its end was a cross, blackened by its time in the sands of the bay. It was only when he rubbed it that he realized it was a very fine silver cross that no ordinary fisherman would have possessed. Its surface glistened in the weak sun that filtered through the chapel's window in a way it could not have done for many years. Falconer felt a restraining hand on his arm. Henry Ussher spoke quietly into his ear.

  ‘This poor soul has long been dead. We should leave his remains for Brother Martin, who is appointed by the King to examine those drowned in the bay. He will not be long in coming from Furness.’

  Falconer was impatient to continue his own examination, but as a guest of the priory he deferred to its principal. He allowed Henry Ussher to take the silver cross from him, certain it would be useful in identifying the body later. He only wondered at the medical skills of this Brother Martin of Furness Abbey, and whether they were equal to those he could call upon at Oxford University. In the meantime, he supposed he still had his original quest for Grosseteste's books to begin. As he left the chapel, he passed Brother Adam, and noticed the intense interest on his heavyset face. The monk had seen his prior secreting the cross in his robes.

  Ralph Westerdale had no wish to see the body that had been brought in from the bay. Besides, he had other problems. With Grosseteste's collection securely locked away, and for good reason, how was he to tell the regent master from Oxford that he could not look at the books he was seeking? How was he to keep the priory from being involved in a scandal, which must certainly follow if the truth became known? And then there were the missing books. He knew the first thing he had to do was confront Brother Thady, and that was something he was not looking forward to.

  The cellarer frightened him, with his staring eyes and wild manner, and not for the first time he wondered why Prior Henry did not do anything about him. The monk needed disciplining – preferably in a solitary cell out on Coniston Fells. Instead, as his behaviour became more erratic, Ussher had merely transferred him from the post of precentor to that of cellarer, where Thady had begun to wreak havoc with the priory's supply of food and beer.

  Now he was proving elusive, at the very time that Ralph urgently needed him. Thinking the cellarer might be with the others in the chapel where the recently discovered body had been taken, Ralph scurried round the cloisters to make his way to the priory church. The pale winter sunlight cut in shafts across the arched avenue, which was curiously empty for the time of day. It was the period set aside for manual labour, but the arrival of the body had obviously been sufficient cause for most quire brothers to seek to avoid their obligations. The quietness worked in Ralph's favour, however.

  In the normal bustle of activity, Ralph might not have seen Thady Lamport slip out of the side door of the church, and thus might have missed him. Without the distraction of other activity, he did spot him, and called out for Lamport to wait. The tall monk cast a glance over his shoulder, then strode purposefully in the opposite direction. The portly little monk gave a cry of exasperation, and set off in pursuit. Lamport was not going to escape again.

  Reaching the side door of the church where the cellarer had appeared, Ralph was just in time to see his quarry's thin form disappearing under the archway beneath the main dormitory. His route could only be taking him upstairs to the dormitory or beyond to the brewhouse. Ralph called out again, and scurried after the elusive monk. Entering the dormitory archway, he peered up the stairs, but there was no sign of Lamport. Thinking even the cellarer's long legs could not have carried him out of sight already, he went on under the arch and stopped dumbfounded. Lamport was nowhere to be seen.

  In the time he was out of Ralph's sight he could not have reached the brewhouse door that stood at the far end of the range running below the dormitory – it was too far away. The man had disappeared like some unearthly being. Ralph turned back and climbed the stairs to the communal dormitory. The long and airy hall was still and empty, each narrow bed as tidy and regimented as its occupant's life. The sun shone through dust motes that drifted lazily in the air. It was obvious no one had come this way recently. Puzzled, Ralph descended the stairs and stood in the archway looking at the door to the brewhouse. If he had run full tilt, Lamport could perhaps have hidden there, but to what purpose? The first place one might look for a cellarer would be in the brewhouse. Then Ralph realized there was another door leading off the range, and a shiver ran through him that was not the resul
t of the icy draught that blew down the tunnel of the archway. The door to the guest house.

  Falconer was reluctant to leave the bones, but Henry Ussher had been firm in his resolve that Brother Martin should be the first to examine what was left of the corpse. He therefore decided to find Brother Ralph and ask to see the books in his library. Having enquired about the location of the precentor's office, Falconer left the church by the main doors. He had been told that Ralph Westerdale kept his records in the undercroft at the opposite corner of the cloister, next to the kitchens.

  The proximity of food was an attraction to the hungry master in itself. He thought he might be able to beg something to tide him over until the main meal of the day, which was still hours away. But having found the precentor's door, and guessed it was the kitchen door opposite, he was disappointed to encounter no more promising aroma than that of rotting winter cabbage. His appetite thoroughly ruined, he knocked on Ralph Westerdale's door. There was no reply. He knocked again, and when the ensuing silence confirmed the precentor's absence he turned to leave, feeling frustrated that he could make no progress as yet. Only a few paces from the door, however, he stopped, aware of the complete silence that hung over the cloister.

  ‘Who's to know?’ he mumbled to himself, in justification of his next action. ‘I'm sure Brother Ralph would not mind.’

  He sneaked another look round the cloister, then turned back to the precentor's door. He grasped the handle and turned it – as he had hoped, the door was unlocked. He stepped quickly inside and closed the door behind him. The room was neat, and depressingly bare, with an arched ceiling that was not symmetrical. It was obvious that the far wall was a partition that had cut off one corner of the much larger undercroft storage area below the lay brothers' dorter. All the walls were limewashed and devoid of any decoration. Nowhere was there any place for books, except on the table that stood in the centre of the small room. On it lay a heavy tome with ornate leather binding. It was closed, and Falconer noticed that one of the pages seemed to be sticking out at a peculiar angle. He needed no further invitation to investigate. He quickly rounded the table to stand before the book which lay with its back cover uppermost as though someone had just completed a task and closed it. He looked round for a chair but there was none in the room, so it was clear no one was intended to linger here. He lifted up the heavy cover, and leafed through the sheaf of pages at the back of the book.

  On several pages was a list in two columns, written in the neatest of hands. The first column was of people's names, and against each name in the second column were what Falconer immediately saw were titles of books. He scanned the last three lines.

  Henry Ussher, prior Historia scholastica

  Peter Lewthet, monk Testamentum Ciceronis

  John Whitehed, sacrist Topographica Hibernica

  The list was periodically broken up by dates. Brother Ralph obviously kept a meticulous record of the books borrowed from his collection. Most of the loans were noted as returned, but occasionally a work was marked with the accusatory word ‘ perditur’. Falconer wondered what penance the monk who lost a book had to undergo at the hands of Brother Ralph. However, all this was not of immediate interest to Falconer and he turned back some more pages. This looked more promising – the list changed to a different format.

  Here each entry began with a number, followed by a book title, then a name which Falconer guessed was the donor of the book, and a list of contents. This was followed by a location somewhere in the priory, which varied from the regularly used ‘communis libraria’ to the rarer ‘ in archa cantoris’. Occasionally the words ‘ libraria interior’ occurred. Books were obviously scattered around the priory, wherever Brother Ralph and his predecessors had been able to find space. In the circumstances, Falconer was glad that generations of precentor had kept such an accurate catalogue of the priory's holdings. It should make his work much easier. It looked as though the catalogue listed books chronologically as they were added: the last recorded work, entitled De viris illustribus, was numbered 453 and had been added in the previous year. The books belonging to Bishop Grosseteste would have come to Conishead some fifteen years earlier. If they were here at all, Falconer would find them catalogued further back.

  Ralph Westerdale tiptoed up to the guest house door and pressed his ear to the studded oak surface. There was not a sound from within, and he pondered what to do. If both Thady Lamport and Master Falconer were within, then Ralph imagined his brother monk might be blaming the precentor for the disappearance of the books Falconer sought. His own appearance hard on Thady's heels would only seem to support the accusation. If Thady were on his own, then this was Ralph's opportunity to trap him and confront him. He took a deep breath and opened the door. The guest hall was empty, with even the darkest corners devoid of life. At first Ralph thought the house was deserted, and turned to leave before he was discovered. Then he heard a rustling noise like the sound of mice foraging through the rubbish scattered in the corners of the priory kitchen. He stood still and held his breath. There it was again; but this time it was followed by a low uncanny moan. It came from upstairs. Slowly Ralph climbed each step, hardly daring to make a sound. He feared that whatever was present would overwhelm him. Again the rustling sound was accompanied by a low moan, to his ears more human this time. Was Falconer ill? Or was Thady Lamport harming him in some way? He reached the top of the stairs and, summoning the last of his courage, he opened the small dormitory door. Inside was a snowstorm, and at its centre on the floor sat Thady Lamport, moaning in despair. Ralph was confused, until he realized the snow was shredded paper, and he suddenly felt sick with horror at the thought of such destruction. Lamport was tearing a book to pieces, and one written on paper at that, not even cheap parchment. Words laboriously reproduced by a fellow scribe floated in front of his eyes, and he could hardly encompass the scale of Thady's destruction. He snatched the book out of the cellarer's hands, but too late – it was no more than two empty covers. The mad monk's lips still formed the word he had been moaning.

  ‘Evil. Evil. Evil,’ he repeated. Ralph bent down and shook him by the shoulders.

  ‘Why have you done this?’

  The monk's penetrating eyes bored into Ralph. ‘Because it is evil. Like the other ones.’

  Ralph glared back at Lamport, his anger at the desecration overcoming his previous fear. ‘The other ones – do you mean the missing books? Did you take them and destroy them?’

  ‘Evil.’ The cellarer's eyes sparkled with cunning. Then he spat the words out in Ralph's face. ‘He took them.’

  ‘What do you mean, he took them? Who is he?’

  But he was to get no more out of Thady Lamport, who unwound his legs from under him and rose above the little precentor. He shrugged off Ralph's grip and strode out of the room, leaving Westerdale surrounded by devastation.

  *

  It was fast approaching terce and time for Mass, and Henry Ussher had still not resolved what to do about their visitor. Harm enough that he should poke his nose into the matter of Bishop Grosseteste's books. There was a bad odour around those, which he would no doubt sniff out given half a chance. And the stench still clung to the prior's clothes. Almost in unconscious reaction to his thoughts, Ussher drifted to the open window of his office as though the breeze there might cleanse him, though he knew it was only by constant prayer and deed that he might effect such a cleansing. The passage of time had led him into a false sense of safety. Worse still that all those years had now been bridged in a single moment, and the memory of them flooded back.

  It had begun innocently enough, with his curiosity piqued by the arrival of Grosseteste's collection. The bishop had a fearsome reputation that lived on after his demise, not least for asserting the friars were heretical for not denouncing the sins of the rich. Not a statement likely to endear him to those rich and powerful who ruled England. The first book of Grosseteste's he could lay his hands on was entitled De finitate motus et temporis, and it fired his imagination
from the start. It averred that the pagan philosophers fell into the error of believing the world had no beginning. The bishop stated that before time and motion there was the eternity of the creator. And as the world was created by God it must have a beginning and thus be finite. There was nothing there to challenge belief, and he shared the concept with his friend and rival John de Langetoft. He was shocked when John sneered and asserted that anything the old Bishop of Lincoln wrote must be an error. As he stood there fiddling with the silver cross that hung suspended by a chain round his neck, he gave Henry the first intimations of his narrow-mindedness.

  As soon as Falconer had lifted the cross from the body, Henry Ussher had known who the bones belonged to. Fifteen years, and the past was back to haunt him. He ran his long fingers through his thick mass of silver hair and stared blankly out of the window arch, seeing nothing. His gaze was turned inwards towards his own soul, and he feared for its safety. In the other hand he loosely held the tarnished silver cross. There was no doubt about it – the last time he had seen it was fifteen years ago, about the neck of his greatest friend and rival. What had happened then must never come to light, or his very future would be imperilled. Ussher sighed and crossed to his desk. One way or another this Master Falconer must be got rid of.

  Chapter Five

  Working slowly back through the library catalogue, Falconer was fascinated by the contents. He had been diverted from his main task by the sight of old familiar friends, and works he had heard of but never seen. The lists encompassed Horace, Sallust, Statius, Macrobius, Claudian, Boethius and Apollonius of Tyre. There were histories by Jordanes, Bede, Josephus, a Hystoria Britonum, a Mappa mundi, and a Cronica Francorum. He noticed that most of the rarer works were located in the ‘ libraria interior’, and supposed it to be a safe repository for irreplaceable texts. He imagined that that was where Grosseteste's books might be located. But so far he had not come across them in the catalogue.