I joined the rest in the chapel garden. We sat on a turf seat near a trellis covered by climbing roses. The morning was proving clear and crisp, the flower fragrances most pleasing and soothing. It was a place unsuited to the macabre death and secret malevolence we’d just witnessed. Rosselin was still stricken by what had happened. I questioned him closely; he could tell me little. Middleton had been frightened, determined like Rosselin to stay from any high place. He’d turned even more to religion, praying before a triptych of Christ’s Passion in his chamber, worrying at any shadow. Rosselin sat, face cupped in his hands. He confessed how Middleton had discussed deserting Gaveston, but where could they go? Every man’s hand now was turned against them. Rosselin was a squire, a soldier, but this silent, ominous war against him and the others had broken his will and sapped his courage. He talked hauntingly of murder tripping behind him like a bailiff waiting to pounce. About a host of shadows lurking at the top of darkened stairs or gathered in a coven, peering at him from some high place. I asked him what he meant. He retorted how he and Middleton felt they’d been pursued by the furies, by the ghosts of their dead comrades, by wraiths swirling in a black cloud around them. I could not decide if he was being honest or just babbling in fear. He talked of a scraping against his door in the dead of night. How he’d gone out into the stairwell and heard a whispering, as if a pack of hunting demons were plotting in the darkness below. I shivered as I listened. The dead do walk amongst us. Demons lurk in corners watching the affairs of men. Nothing draws them so fast as the feast of murder, a banquet of hot blood spilt in anger. I believe the preacher who said that Satan studies us most intently, lips curling with pleasure as he glimpses another son or daughter of Cain, the father of murder.
‘Do you wish to confess?’ Demontaigu asked. ‘To be shriven?’
Rosselin gazed at him bleakly. ‘Too late, too late,’ he murmured, then he added those sombre words: ‘With hell we have made a compact, with death an agreement.’
‘And your master Gaveston?’ Dunheved asked. ‘Can he not help?’
Rosselin wasn’t really listening.
‘We flew so high,’ he muttered, ‘basking under his sun. Now we’re blackened and shrivelled, falling like stones.’
‘Please,’ I begged, ‘your four comrades are murdered. Can you not help us avenge them? Secure justice against their assassin?’
‘I don’t know,’ he whispered. ‘Yes, your sins do catch you out.’ He straightened up. ‘Who killed them?’ He shook his head. ‘How, why?’ He shrugged. ‘Punishment.’
‘For what?’
‘I choose,’ he lifted a hand, ‘you choose. Mathilde of Westminster,’ he said my name slowly, ‘watch your mistress! Subtle as a serpent she is.’
‘Nonsense,’ I retorted. ‘Are you saying her grace had a hand in these deaths?’
‘Subtle as a serpent!’ Rosselin abruptly paused, as if realising for the first time who he was talking to. Then he rose quickly to his feet, mumbling about having to wait on Lord Gaveston, and strode hurriedly away. We watched him go.
‘A man under sentence of death,’ Demontaigu observed. ‘I wonder if he will stay or flee.’
‘Where?’ Dunheved got to his feet. ‘Where can any of them flee?’
‘Perhaps at least we can find out what was in Middleton’s mind.’ Demontaigu opened his wallet and took out a small, thick key. ‘I found this on Middleton’s corpse; it must the key to his chamber.’
Chapter 8
The siege had begun, help from the King frustrated, the Castle was without food.
The dead man’s lodgings were on the second storey of the soaring keep, immediately beneath Rosselin’s. The key fitted. We walked into that chamber, a chilling experience: everything had been left neat and tidy, as if Middleton was about to return. The bedclothes had been pulled up. Garments hung from wall pegs. A pair of boots and soft slippers lay pushed beneath a writing table holding a jug and pewter cups. Against the far wall the squire’s chest and coffer were closed and clasped. Only the lighted candles flickering under their metal caps betrayed Middleton’s agitation. The tapers had been placed on the table around a triptych of Christ’s Passion, as well as on the floor beneath the rough yew crucifix on the wall, around which Middleton had woven his Ave beads. On the writing table, precisely arranged in the form of a cross, were a number of pewter badges venerating St Christopher, the patron saint of those who feared sudden, violent death. The small psalter lying beside these was well thumbed, especially the page with the litany to St Christopher. On the blank pages at the back Middleton had scrawled his own thoughts.
You have poured us a wine which has befuddled us.
My eyes are wasting with weeping.
The vision we were offered has been misleading and false.
Flight will not save the swift. The bowman will not stand his ground, the horseman is trapped.
‘As he was,’ I murmured, handing the psalter to Dunheved. ‘Middleton was a soul torn by guilt and fear. He realised he was anointed for death.’ Dunheved read the psalter, whilst Demontaigu and I searched Middleton’s other possessions. We found nothing of interest.
‘A man witless with fear,’ Dunheved remarked, putting the psalter down. He turned to face the crucifix and crossed himself.
‘Why, why was he killed like that?’ Demontaigu sat on a stool, staring up at me. ‘And the others? Why not a dagger slipping through the dark or an arrow loosed from the shadows?’
‘Subtlety,’ I replied, sitting down on the bed. ‘Here we are locked in this gloomy castle. Middleton, who ostentatiously prayed for protection, was killed in that chapel. Now a place of blood, it is deconsecrated, its harmony and peace shattered. Mass cannot be celebrated there until a bishop reconsecrates it. An unlawful death in a holy place; now the garrison have no real place for mass. If it was murder, and I think it was, greater mysteries are fostered. How? According to the evidence there are only two entrances to that chapeclass="underline" the sacristy door, but that’s secured fast and sealed with age, and the main porch door. Yet that was locked from within. So,’ I sighed, ‘how did the assassin kill a nervous, wiry young man, stringing him up from that beam like a hunk of meat? Again, there’s that taunting verse about eagles.’
‘But Middleton was not hurled from the battlements.’
‘No, but he was flung from that ladder with a noose around his neck,’ I retorted. ‘Don’t forget, Middleton and Rosselin became very wary of heights, towers and battlements. Middleton stayed well away from such places.’
‘So Middleton’s death,’ Dunheved asked ‘was a subtle attack?’
‘Oh yes! Such a mysterious death, and the despondency it provokes will seep like foul smoke through this castle,’ I replied. ‘Even here, Middleton’s corpse loudly proclaims, the great Lord Gaveston is not safe. Even here, in this strong fortified place, death can strike like some hidden assassin, his bow strung and arrow notched. Middleton, for all his medals, badges and prayers, could not escape his fate. And what was that? To swing by his neck like some crow a farmer hoists on his fence to warn off other marauders.’
‘But why Middleton?’ Demontaigu broke in. ‘The assassin is undoubtedly sly, devious and cunning.’
‘And?’ I asked.
‘Never once,’ Demontaigu lowered his voice, ‘has Gaveston been attacked or threatened in any way — why not? Why kill his retainers but not the Great Lord?’