Subprior Stephen open his mouth to protest, but Alan hadn’t finished.
‘We have to do something to bring these rumours to an end before the townspeople take it into their heads to storm the cathedral and tear down my tower, stone by stone. Fetch those murderers from the hell-pit at once. I intend to confront them with that head and force them to admit they killed Martin. I swear on God’s bones I will wrench a confession out of those actors even if I have to make them eat that head to do it.’
Henry, Cuddy and John stood unsteadily in the prior’s hall, blinking painfully in the light. It had been two weeks since they had been able to stand up and now their legs trembled beneath them, not helped by the weight of the chains shackling their wrists and ankles. Henry glanced at the other two actors. They were filthy, covered in bits of mouldy straw and excrement. He noticed the monks wrinkling their noses and discreetly taking a few steps back and he was suddenly aware of how much he himself must stink.
But it was nothing to the stench that filled the hall when the lead-lined box was opened and the rotting head and hand were laid out on the great long wooden table. One glimpse of the empty blackened eye sockets, where the ravens had been at work, was enough to make Henry collapse to his knees and start retching.
The prior gestured to one of the muscular lay brothers, who reached down and hauled Henry back to his feet by his hair, dragging him closer to the foul remains.
‘Too cowardly to face the sight of your own crime, are you?’ Alan thundered. ‘Gaze upon the ravaged countenance of your cousin, and weep in shame for what you have done.’
The lay brother pulled Henry’s head up, forcing him to look. At first Henry was too appalled to take in what he was seeing, but something finally worked its way up through the fog of his dazed mind.
‘That… isn’t Martin. It can’t be Martin.’
‘Even his poor mother would not know him now that the maggots and birds have been to work on him,’ Alan said sternly.
‘No, not the face… ’ Henry swallowed hard, trying to bite back the bile that had risen in his throat. ‘His hair… Martin was blond. That hair is dark.’
At once everyone else in the room who had been studiously avoiding looking at the head now stared at it.
‘He’s right!’ Stephen said. ‘I spoke to Martin several times. His hair was the colour of ripe corn, and even allowing for the dried blood-’
Prior Alan rounded on him. ‘Then why didn’t you say that as soon as Brother Will retrieved the head?’
Stephen gulped. ‘I could only bear to look at it once and that briefly. I didn’t even notice the hair. I just assumed-’
‘Then if it’s not Martin, who is it?’ Prior Alan demanded.
There was a loud groan from Cuddy. He was swaying so alarmingly that two of the lay brothers made a grab for him, certain he was going to fall.
‘God in heaven, that’s Luke, that is,’ he whispered. ‘That’s my poor nephew, Luke.’
Shaking off the lay brothers Cuddy suddenly launched himself at Henry, but his chains brought him crashing to the ground before he could reach him.
‘You murdering bastard, you’ve butchered my Luke. I’m going to kill you. I’m going to rip you apart with my bare hands.’
Once again, Alan, Stephen and Will found themselves sitting in the prior’s solar in morose silence. None of them had been willing to eat at the common table, knowing that the wild speculations of their brothers would be even more lurid than those circulating in the marketplace. But they had hardly touched the meal of roast duck and stuffed eel that had been brought to them in the solar, for the day’s events had considerably blunted their appetites.
It had taken some time to clear the hall and return the prisoners to the hell-pit beneath the infirmary. Cuddy, for all that he had been kept chained and on meagre rations for the last two weeks, had surprising reserves of strength and in his rage kept trying to throw his chained wrists round the terrified Henry’s neck and throttle him. And Cuddy’s fury had only increased when he heard the order to return him to the gaol. But Prior Alan was in no mood to release anyone, not until he got to the bottom of this whole sordid mess.
Now Stephen glanced anxiously towards his superior. Stephen hadn’t become subprior by being timid, but all the same he was well aware that not only did his prior hold him responsible for staging the accursed play, but he was now also blaming him for failing to recognise the head. And when a man like Prior Alan was already in a black humour, adding to his fury was as wise as prodding a wounded boar with a sharp stick. Nevertheless, Stephen felt it his duty to speak.
‘Father Prior, now that we know the victim is his own nephew, this must prove the man Cudbert innocent. Surely he at least should be released. He has a wife and children to support.’
‘I see no proof of innocence,’ Prior Alan said sourly. ‘It’s been my experience that men are far more disposed to murder members of their own family than outsiders.’
‘But he seemed genuinely shocked to discover the dead man was Luke and not Martin. All three of the players did. Surely that shows they had no hand in the killing.’
‘Unless there were two murders,’ Will said. ‘We have a body, a head and a hand, but short of digging up the corpse, we can’t tell if they all belong to the same man, and even if we do, if the corpse is in the same state of decay as the other remains, it might be hard to be certain. Cuddy is just the sort of fellow who would’ve taken the law into his own hands and killed Martin in a fit of rage, if he learned that Martin had decapitated his nephew. You heard the threats that he made to Henry.’
‘Exactly so,’ Stephen said. ‘He accused Henry of killing Luke. He wouldn’t have done that if he knew Martin had committed the murder. Besides, he plainly didn’t know that his nephew was dead. He must have thought him fled with the rest.’
Prior Alan stabbed a piece of roasted duck with his knife and brought it to his mouth, then tossed knife and meat together back on the platter, clearly unable to bring himself to eat it. ‘So we now have two possible murders – Luke and Martin. But if the head does belong to our corpse, then Martin is not a victim but one of the murderers, fled with the other actors.’
He rose to his feet, wiping his hands on a linen cloth. ‘It seems to me the only thing we can be certain of is that the missing actors are in possession of the hand of St Withburga and they are hiding somewhere out there in the fens.’
He strode to the casement and stared out as if he could see right into the dark heart of the marshes. ‘I want every village and island out there turned upside down. Take the dogs skilled at tracking quarry. Recruit hunters from the fenland villages who know the marshes and the waterways. The fenlanders have no love for townsfolk or outlanders. They won’t hesitate to turn the actors in if the reward for their capture is big enough. Do whatever you have to, but I want those men found, and quickly.’
‘I’m not going begging,’ little Ben said furiously, blinking back the tears. ‘Father’d be as angry as a nest of wasps if he knew you were trying to make me.’
‘Well, your father isn’t here,’ his mother retorted. ‘He’s sitting around in gaol, and he hasn’t got to worry about where his next meal’s coming from. I dare say he won’t have been dining on roast goose, but at least the Priory gives their prisoners something to fill their bellies, which is more than we will have today if you don’t get out to that alms gate. If the monks are going to go around arresting innocent men and keep them from earning an honest living, the least they can do is provide their starving families with food. Why your father didn’t stick to pagging and loading for the boatmen down on the quay, I’ll never know. I warned him that play was cursed, but would he listen?’