‘Mistress Mathilde, I beg you, come to the chapel.’ He was breathless, one hand against the wall, half bowed as he tried to catch his breath. Demontaigu, who’d been breaking his fast nearby, joined us as we hurried out of the bailey and along the pebble-packed path to the chapel. Rosselin and the Beaumonts were already there, clustered before the door. A distraught chaplain was tugging at the great iron ring. Demontaigu forced his way through.
‘It shouldn’t be locked, but it is securely,’ the chaplain wailed. He crouched down and peered through the keyhole. ‘The key has been removed,’ he spluttered.
‘Did you lock it last night, Father?’ Dunheved asked.
‘No, I don’t lock it — why should I? This castle is fortified; the chapel holds little of value except the sacred pyx, and who would steal that, eh?’
I walked around the side of the chapel overlooking the garden. The windows were really no more than arrow loops high in the wall, the horn that filled them long discoloured by the elements. I walked back.
‘I’m concerned,’ Rosselin declared. ‘I cannot find Middleton. He used to come here after dawn; he was worried, prayerful!’ I recalled the sacred medallions and badges Middleton had clasped on his jerkin.
‘He has been so distracted.’ Rosselin himself certainly appeared so, pacing backwards and forwards, now and again banging on the chapel door as if to rouse someone within.
‘You think he might be inside?’ Dunheved asked.
Rosselin just shrugged. Dark-faced Ap Ythel, chewing a piece of bread, sauntered over with a number of his archers. I appealed to him for help, and six of his companions were dispatched to fetch a great log from the wood yard to use as a battering ram. The chapel door began to buckle. Ap Ythel’s archers shifted their aim from the lock on the left to the stout leather hinges on the right. The crashing brought others hurrying over to see what was happening. The archers continued their pounding. At last the leather hinges snapped and the door sprang loose, falling back so sharply that the lock tore away from its clasp. Inside was a ghastly scene. The beautiful chapel, with its exquisite silver pyx shimmering in the red glow of the sanctuary lamp, had been transformed into a place of hideous, brutal death. From a beam, twirling slightly at the end of a thick rough rope, hung the corpse of Nicholas Middleton. The medals and brooches pinned on his jerkin shimmered mockingly in the poor light. The makeshift scaffold, with the sanctuary ladder propped against the beam, was as brutal and stark as any crossroads gallows. A truly eerie sight. Middleton’s corpse was all askew, booted feet hung toes down, his legs in their green hose slightly apart, hands dangling, his head lolling oddly as if his neck had been twisted like that of a barn-yard fowl. One glance at that contorted bluish-red face, eyes half closed, swollen tongue pushed out, pronounced sentence of death.
I asked for the corpse not to be touched, then stared around, listing in my mind what I saw. The ladder against the rafters. The key to the chapel lying on the ground. The sacristy door half open. The mercy chair had been slightly moved. I walked up through the sanctuary and into the sacristy; inside was nothing but a dusty silence. The door to the garden beyond was still firmly bolted and locked, both top and bottom all rusted, secure and fast. I walked back into the sanctuary and studied that grisly scene. Ap Ythel’s men now stood in the shattered doorway, driving back the curious. At my request the corpse was cut down and stretched out on the flagstones. Rosselin stood over it, pallid as a ghost. He was trembling, mouth opening and shutting, eyes blinking. I studied him carefully. Was he the killer? He knew Middleton came here, and yet sometimes you can look at a human being and sense his innermost soul. Rosselin was terrified, a broken man. A squire, used to the heat and hurl of battle, this ominous repetition of swift, mysterious death had broken his will.
A disturbance at the door made me turn. Gaveston, accompanied by the constable, swept into the chapel. He took one look at the corpse, groaned and, turning away, just stared at the ground. Eventually he straightened up, his face as pitiful as if he was looking upon his own death. I watched intently for any artifice or pretence. I had seen Gaveston in his glory days and the Gascon had certainly changed: the dark hair was silvery in places, the beautiful, smooth face furrowed, cheeks slightly hollow, eyes frenetic, as if his wits had begun to wander.
‘How?’ The question came as a croak. ‘How?’ he repeated.
‘Only God knows,’ Dunheved whispered.
‘You!’ Gaveston shouted, pointing a finger at me. ‘You were commissioned to discover the cause of all this.’ His eyes had that hunted look. I wondered if I should question him, but what was the use? He would lie. Gaveston was never one for revealing his innermost thoughts.
‘Well?’ he shouted.
‘My lord,’ I retorted, ‘how can I, when we flee up and down this kingdom like robbers put to the horn?’
Gaveston raised a fist. Demontaigu’s hand fell to his dagger. Ap Ythel hurried across and whispered into the Gascon’s ear. Gaveston half listened before spinning on his heel and sweeping out of the church. I curbed my own anger, becoming busy with the corpse. Dunheved picked up the key and walked away, his sandalled feet tapping on the flagstones.
‘No secret entrance here,’ he called, ‘no passageway.’ He paused, shook his head and came back to ask Demontaigu to give the dead man the last rites. My beloved agreed, kneeling to one side of the corpse, myself on the other. The words of absolution were whispered whilst I scrutinised the corpse: his fingers, the palms of the hands and the head. I could not detect any contusion or bruise, nothing to suggest that Middleton, his sacred medals and badges still glistening in the light, had been murdered. I stared around. Dunheved was now at the porch door, pushing the key in and out of the broken lock.
‘It would seem,’ I whispered once Demontaigu had finished, ‘that Middleton came here, moved that ladder and dispatched himself. The rope?’ I called out to the chaplain.
‘Oh,’ the chaplain hurried over, ‘there’s rope kept in the chapel chest in the sacristy.’ He spread his hands. ‘Mistress, this is a castle; rope is easy to find. .’ His voice trailed away.
‘So,’ I gestured, ‘Middleton came here early this morning.’ My raised voice stilled the clamour as the rest gathered around, including the Beaumonts, who acted like spectators at a mummery.
‘He brought in or collected some rope,’ I continued, ‘then locked the door, took the key out, moved that ladder, climbed up to secure the rope, fashioned a noose, tightened it around his neck and hanged himself.’ I paused. Demontaigu, ignoring Rosselin’s muttered objections, was now searching the dead man’s clothing. He removed his right boot and shook out a small roll of vellum. He undid this, read it and passed it to me. The large scrawled letters proclaimed the usual message: Aquilae Petri, fly not so bold, for Gaveston your master has been both bought and sold.
I read the words aloud. Rosselin moaned quietly like a child.
‘Not suicide but murder,’ Demontaigu whispered.
‘So it is finished,’ Ap Ythel murmured in his sing-song voice. ‘Genethig — little one.’ He crouched down beside me. ‘Gaveston is both bought and sold. He is ruined.’
‘True, fy cyfaielin, my friend,’ I whispered back. ‘The only questions are when and how.’
I asked the chaplain to take care of the corpse. Demontaigu and Dunheved escorted Rosselin out into the garden. I knelt and inspected the corpse once more, as well as the ladder and rope. One of Ap Ythel’s archers was sawing at the noose just above the knot. He cut this and handed it to me for scrutiny, then I examined the rest of the chapel. The horn-glazed windows were narrow and sound. The door from the sacristy to the garden was rusted fast, as if it hadn’t been opened for years. The chaplain confirmed that there was no crypt or hidden entrance. Finally I inspected the door. The key had been fitted back into the ruined lock. I studied this and the rent hinges, then I glanced back down the small nave: nothing, no mark or sign of how Middleton had been murdered. Or had he, I wondered, received that taunting message about the Aquilae and decided to commit suicide? But would a man brimming with religious scruples and anxieties commit Judas’ sin? On the other hand, if he, a young warrior, had been murdered, how?