Alan held up his hand to silence him. ‘Have you forgotten half the men are out combing the fens for the other actors and the rest are trying the keep the townsmen and pilgrims from killing one another? Besides, we’ve no proof that Dereham men did this, and I certainly don’t intend letting them know the hand is missing. You said yourself, Brother Stephen, whoever put the hand in the coffin murdered Martin. What cause would anyone from Dereham have to do that? Unless you’re suggesting that they murdered the first stranger they came upon just to obtain his hand, and if that’s so, why cut off his head and remove it? No, only his fellow actors had sufficient grudge against him to do that.
“Beware the sins of envy and vainglory,
Else foul murder ends your story.”
Isn’t that what is written at the end of that wretched “Cain and Abel” play? And when a man such as Prior Wigod of Oseney writes such words it is never for his own amusement. He wrote it as a warning, a warning you should have heeded before engaging those players, Brother Stephen, for I can think of no breed of men more steeped in the sins of envy and vainglory than base actors.’
Stephen’s mouth fell open, but before he could speak Will leaned forward frowning.
‘But even if it was the actors, Father Prior, what I don’t understand is, how could they have accomplished it? All the time the cathedral is open to the pilgrims, I insist on there being a monk on duty up in the watching loft, in addition to the lay brothers keeping guard at ground level. A skilled thief might manage to snatch one of the offerings, or even a precious stone from the outside of the shrine if he was working in league with others who could set up a distraction for him, but to get inside the shrine and open the coffin unseen, that’s beyond the powers of any mortal man.’
‘Are you suggesting that this was the devil’s work, Brother Will, witchcraft?’ Stephen said, his eyes widening in alarm.
Prior Alan leaped from his chair. ‘No!’ he said firmly. ‘There is to be no talk of that. I forbid you even to think of it. If rumours should start to circulate in the town that the cathedral can’t even protect one of its own saints from the forces of darkness, then-’
But whatever warning Alan intended to issue was severed by a scream that rang out over the priory, a shriek that continued so long, it seemed that whoever was screaming had forgotten how to stop.
The stonemason’s apprentice was still howling when Prior Alan, Stephen and Will, all panting, emerged from the narrow spiral staircase onto the roof of the octagon tower. He was several feet higher up and further out, clinging to one of the little stone pinnacles. A narrow, rickety wooden scaffolding bridged the gap between the pinnacle and the roof ’s parapet, behind which the stone mason and two anguished-looking monks were gathered.
‘What ails the lad?’ Prior Alan asked. ‘Has he suddenly grown afraid of heights?’
It would hardly be surprising if he had, it was a dizzyingly long way down.
‘Can’t get any sense out of him, Father Prior,’ the stonemason yelled above the boy’s shrieks. ‘He bounded up there like a squirrel, same as always, next thing I know he was screaming like a girl.’ He raised his voice still louder, fingering the stout leather belt squeezed around his corpulent belly. ‘I’ll give you something to yell about, my lad, when I get hold of you.’
‘Threatening the boy isn’t going to make him come down,’ Stephen said. ‘Are you stuck, lad? Don’t look down. Just try to climb back slowly.’
But the boy’s arms seemed have become part of the turret they were clinging to, and he would neither loose his grip nor stop shrieking. Prior Alan glanced down at the swelling crowd of pilgrims and townspeople who were gathering below, all craning up to see what was amiss.
‘Someone will have to climb up and fetch the boy down.’
The stonemason was clearly too stout and aged to climb the narrow scaffolding to retrieve his apprentice. Alan glanced around him and selected the lighter and more nimble-looking of the two young monks for the task.
But even when he climbed up and grabbed the boy around the waist, the lad would not budge and the monk came perilously close to toppling from the scaffolding himself as he wrestled with the boy. Finally he was forced to deliver a few sharp slaps to make the lad let go. But as the boy, sobbing, dropped down from his perch, it was the monk’s turn to cry out in horror as he glimpsed what had been hidden behind the boy. It was too far round the turret to be visible from the parapet, but up on the scaffolding it was all too evident what had scared the wits out of the lad. For there, among the grimacing grotesques and carved saints, was a human head, not made of stone but of rotting flesh and blackened blood.
Prior Alan stared dismally out of the casement of his solar. Masses of delicate pink and white apple blossom covered the trees below like a fall of new snow, but that sight, which normally lifted his spirits, did nothing to raise them now. The blossom was abnormally late this year, yet another sign, if one were needed, that chaos was once more descending upon the fragile world.
‘A t least now we have the whole corpse,’ Stephen said, desperate to break the icy silence. ‘We can bury the head with the rest of Martin’s remains and his spirit will surely rest easier for it.’
Prior Alan turned and glowered at his subprior. ‘His spirit will not rest easy until his murderer has been punished, and nor will mine. We may have been able to keep the theft of St Withburga’s hand between ourselves, but thanks to that wretched boy screaming from the rooftops, news of what he found will be across Ely before nightfall and what the townspeople lack in facts they will surely make up.’
‘They already have,’ Will said grimly, striding through the door and closing it firmly behind him. ‘I’ve just come from Steeple Gate. The crowds are as thick as flies on… ’
He closed his eyes briefly and swallowed hard. He’d never thought of himself as a squeamish man, but being forced retrieve two maggot-infested body parts in one day was enough to sicken any man’s stomach.
‘The rumours have already started, Father Prior. They say a demon must have placed the head where no mortal man could.’
‘Utter nonsense!’ The words exploded from Alan’s lips. ‘Any man who was reasonably agile could have climbed that scaffold and put it there. After all, you climbed up and you’re certainly mortal.’
‘I certainly felt my mortality up there,’ Will said with a shudder. ‘But the trouble is, Father Prior, the crowd can’t see the scaffolding from the ground and they’re not in a mood to listen to reason. They’re claiming a demon flew down from the octagon tower, slew Martin, then carried his head back up to the tower to devour at its leisure.’
Prior Alan shook his head in utter disbelief at the notions that filled the heads of men. As sacrist, he had designed the octagon himself, after the original tower collapsed, and he always took any slight directed at his beloved creation as a personal affront.
‘And that’s not the worst of the rumours, Father Prior…’ Will saw his superior’s jaw clench in anger and hesitated, but Alan had to be told. ‘The townspeople may not know we found Martin’s hand in the shrine, but they do know there was a stench as foul as hell coming from St Withburga’s tomb. Now they’re saying that a great evil has come upon the whole priory and cathedral, because of that play. The Glovers have wasted no time in telling everyone the play of “Cain and Abel” is cursed and that by performing it on cathedral grounds we’ve raised a demon of death, which is hunting human prey. Apparently not a man, woman or child in Ely is safe. It will slay them all just as surely as Cain slew Abel.’
‘This has gone far enough!’ Prior Alan slammed his fist down onto the wooden table so hard that both Will and Stephen flinched. ‘I hold you entirely responsible for this, Brother Stephen. If you hadn’t given them leave to perform that wretched play, there’d never have been a murder, never mind these bits of rotting corpse popping up all over the cathedral.’