The Deadliest Sin (51 page)

If Robert kept his wits about him, there’d be nothing to link any of them to the missing cross. As to the disappearance of Giles, no one knew of the Black Crows’ existence, save for
the tavern-keeper, and why should anyone start asking questions at the tavern? There were thousands of men in minor orders who became discontented and left to take a wife or to seek more profitable
employment as soon as they got the education they needed. Unlike deacons and priests, those in minor orders did not take lifelong vows. All someone like Giles legally had to do to return to the
life of a layman was grow out his tonsure. His parish priest might call him an ingrate, but no laws had been broken if such a man simply wandered off. There was no reason for anyone to start
looking for him.

As Oswin approached the chapel, he saw the flicker of a light behind the broken shutters, as someone passed across in front of a lantern. His relief that the other Black Crows had come was mixed
with annoyance. Did those fools not realise their light could be seen? Why hadn’t they the sense to shield it inside the Easter Sepulchre as before? Then he realised why and shuddered.

Pressing his ear to the wood of the door, he could hear the shuffle of feet inside and the low murmur of voices. He rapped softly. Instantly all was still. He knew those inside were listening,
as tense as he was himself.

‘It’s Oswin,’ he called, as loudly as he dared. He heard the footsteps crossing the stone flags and the door was opened a crack, impatiently he pushed it wide enough to get
in.

The stench in the chapel was worse than he remembered. Damp, rot and mice as before, but something even more unpleasant. But Oswin only vaguely registered it. He was impatient to get this
business safely over as quickly as possible.

‘Is Eustace not with you?’ Robert asked, the moment Oswin had turned the key in the lock.

‘No sign of him on the track,’ Oswin said,

‘I knew he wouldn’t come,’ Robert grumbled.

‘Typical of him to leave others to clean up the mess while he keeps his hands clean,’ Oswin said.

‘Happen he’s afeared that if he came we’d discover who murdered Giles,’ John muttered. ‘If a murderer touches his victim’s body, the corpse’ll bleed
afresh.’

‘You think it was him, then?’ Robert asked. In spite of the cold, damp air, beads of sweat were running down his face.

‘He’s the only one of us who isn’t here,’ John said. ‘I reckon that proves it.’

Robert unfastened the two buttons that closed his fur-lined cloak and cast about him, trying to find somewhere to drape it, other than on the filthy, wet floor. A small handcart stood ready in
front of the altar, with two spades propped up against it. He dropped the cloak into the handcart.

John scowled resentfully. Unlike Robert, who could afford both summer and winter cloaks, John possessed only one of plain homespun, and he’d been forced to discard that in the water-filled
ditch on his way home last night, because thanks to the others leaving it to him to carry Giles’s body, it was soaked with blood. But he didn’t hear any of them offering to share the
cost of buying a new one or even bothering to ask if he had another.

The three men approached the wooden board that sealed the Easter Sepulchre. They hesitated, grimacing at each other. Was the same thought going through each man’s mind? What if the corpse
starts to bleed?

Oswin took a deep breath. ‘The sooner we get him in the ground, the safer we’ll be. The corpse’ll probably still be stiff, so we’ll roll the body out onto the board. Did
anyone bring anything to cover it?’

By way of an answer, John pulled a folded length of sacking out from the front of his tunic. His jaw was clenched so hard, it seemed impossible for him to speak.

Oswin kneeled down beside the sepulchre. The terrible stench he’d noticed when he first entered the chapel was much stronger here, and indeed seemed to be coming from the sepulchre itself.
But surely it couldn’t be Giles’s corpse. It was the middle of winter and cold enough in the stone chapel to keep ice from melting. His stomach heaved, but he swallowed hard and, trying
to ignore the smell, seized the top of the wooden board and pulled it downwards towards him. A stench of rotting flesh billowed out and even John and Robert, standing some way behind him, began to
gag, hastily covering their noses and mouths with their sleeves.

The recess was deep and low to the floor and John and Robert were standing between the lantern light and the sepulchre, but even before Oswin’s brain had made sense of what his eyes were
seeing in the half-light, he knew that something was terribly wrong. He jerked back. The long board clattered to the ground. He scrambled to his feet and, snatching up the lantern, he held it close
to the recess. John and Robert gasped, crossing themselves as they rapidly backed away.

Giles’s copse was lying in the sepulchre, his hands folded across the blackened bloodstain that covered his chest, just as they had arranged him the night before, but he was no longer
lying alone. A second body had been pushed in beside him, a body so rotted and putrid it must have been dead several months. Her gown was the only sign that the corpse had once been a woman. They
lay side by side, as if whoever had put her there intended some cruel mockery of the carvings of knights lying beside their wives on the tombs in the great Cathedral itself.

Even as the three men gaped wordlessly at each other, a great hammering sounded on the wooden door of the chapel, as if someone was striking it with a sword hilt.

‘Open up, in the name of the King!’

For a moment, they stood frozen, then they sprang into action. John threw the spades into the handcart, covering them with the cloth, while Oswin struggled to try to fit the wooden board back
into the side of the sepulchre.

The hammering sounded again. ‘Open up, or we’ll smash the door down.’

The splintering of the wood of the rotten door suggested they were attempting to do just that.

Robert sprinted the few yards down the small chapel. ‘Hold fast, hold fast!’ he begged. ‘I’m trying to turn the lock, but it’s rusty.’

He jiggled the key as if he was struggling to turn it, but the hammering redoubled and he dared stall them no longer.

As he opened the door, he was almost smashed against the wall as three men came charging through, their swords drawn.

The sergeant-at-arms gestured with the point of his sword. ‘You three, against that wall where I can see you. Search them,’ he commanded the man beside him. ‘God’s arse,
what’s that infernal stink?’ he added, screwing up his nose. ‘Smells as if an animal got itself trapped in here and died.’

The pimpled-faced youth ordered to do the searching carried out his duty with undue diligence, tossing their knives with a clatter onto the floor and running his hands over every inch of their
bodies that might be concealing any weapon or stolen item and a few parts of their anatomy that plainly couldn’t. The other man-at-arms, an older and considerably stouter man, grinned as he
collected the knives from the floor, clearly enjoying watching the prisoners squirm.

‘So,’ the sergeant said, ‘what mischief are you three making? Someone reported seeing a light in here two nights running. They thought the place was haunted the first night,
until they saw you lot creeping in tonight.’

‘Can’t you see we are clergy?’ Oswin said sharply. ‘And in case you hadn’t noticed, this is a chapel.’

‘Can see your tonsures, right enough, but that still doesn’t explain what you’re doing in here behind locked doors in the middle of the night. This chapel’s not been used
for years.’

‘If you ask me, Sergeant,’ the older man said, ‘I reckon they fancy each other and this is where they come to do it, ’cause they know they’d get their balls sawn
off if they was caught at it.’

John gave a roar of outrage and tried to take a swipe at the man. He was only prevented by the prick of the sergeant’s sword in his chest, forcing him back against the wall.

‘Listen, you imbecile!’ Oswin snapped. ‘We came to offer prayers for the souls of the family who endowed this chapel. We’re in Holy Orders and you have no
authority—’

His words were severed by a crash, as the board in front of the sepulchre slipped from the stone and clattered onto the floor. All eyes swivelled towards it.

‘What the Devil . . .?’ His curiosity evidently aroused, the sergeant took a few tentative paces towards it, his sword held defensively in front of him. Oswin closed his eyes and
prayed. But it seemed that not even the most fervent prayers could make one corpse vanish, much less two.

Every prisoner knows there are a few blessed moments that creep between sleeping and waking, nightmares and misery, in which you briefly imagine all is right with the world.
You are safely dozing in your own bed, in your own house. You are happy. Then, as you open your eyes, reality douses you with a bucket of filthy, icy water. You realise where you are and what lies
in wait for you. So it was for Oswin, as he awoke the next morning to find himself in the bishop’s carcer.

Not even Oswin had been able to think of a convincing explanation for the two bodies. But in truth it scarcely mattered, for the sergeant-at-arms, though well used to seeing the worst
depravities that a sinful city could conspire to produce, was so shocked by the sight of those two corpses, one fresh, the other rotting, that if St Michael himself had appeared with flaming sword
and attempted to defend the three clerics, the sergeant would have arrested him as well.

Before they could even open their mouths to protest, all three Black Crows found their arms bound behind them so tightly they were in danger of losing both limbs, and they were being marched, at
sword point, back to the city gate. Once inside the walls, they were taken at once to the Bishop’s Palace, opposite the Cathedral, for clergy could neither be detained nor punished by the
civil courts. Which, the sergeant muttered beneath his breath, was a gross injustice, for he’d have willingly hanged them from the castle walls himself, for what he had witnessed was surely
more foul and depraved than any crime a layman could commit.

There was nothing to be done that night, so all three men were marched to separate cells and ushered, none too gently, inside. Oswin found himself alone in a tiny cell below ground, with nowhere
to sleep save in the straw on the floor. There was a single narrow window so high up on the wall, that its only real function was to add to the prisoner’s misery by admitting freezing winds,
rain and snow, and the occasional piss of passing dogs or choir boys, the latter finding it highly entertaining to compete as to which boy could most accurately drench the incumbent below.

Oswin sat huddled against the wall, his fingers pressed to his forehead, trying to make sense of all that had happened. If only he could work out how or why the second corpse had come to be in
the chapel, he might be able to come up with some sort of defence. But he couldn’t. Only the fact that he was sitting in the cell convinced him that what he’d seen hadn’t been
some ghastly nightmare or vision. He was still trying in vain to reason it out when he heard a jangle of keys outside the stout oak door. He clambered stiffly to his feet as the door opened.

The gaoler, a grizzled man with a belly as round as a farrowing sow and tunic that bore testimony to every meal he’d ever eaten, regarded his prisoner in silence for several long minutes,
as if Oswin was some unknown creature he’d never before encountered.

Finally, he jerked his head towards the passage. ‘Sent for you, so they have.’

Without warning, the gaoler reached in and grabbed Oswin’s arm, gripping it so tightly that Oswin was sure he was going to snap the bone.

As he dragged Oswin up the stairs at the end of the passage and out under the grey skies, the gaoler added cheerfully, ‘You’re the first. Means you can get your story in afore the
others. Mind you, that’s not always a good thing. If the others gainsay you, you’ll look like a liar, so you will. If they think you’re lying, they’re bound to think
you’re guilty. So what you been up to, then?’

‘Nothing!’ Oswin said hotly. ‘And there’s no need to break my arm. I can’t exactly run off, can I?’

The courtyard was closed in on all four sides by high-walled buildings and all the doors were firmly shut.

‘If I was you, I’d admit to whatever they say you’ve done. Throw yourself on their mercy. Swear you repent. Go at lot easier on you, they will, if they think you’re
contrite. You deny it and they’ll come down as hard as an axe on wood, ’cause that’s the sin of pride, so it is, refusing to admit you’re a miserable worm.’

They’d reached a narrow archway in one wall, which opened onto a spiral staircase. Here, the gaoler was finally forced to let go of Oswin’s arm, since they couldn’t climb the
stairs side by side. He flung Oswin in front of him with such force, he fell onto the steps, banging his knees. The gaoler prodded him to his feet and he limped up the stairs, rubbing his bruised
arm, his stomach knotting tighter with each step.

At the top, the gaoler reached around him and rapped on the door at the head of the stairs. The mumble from inside might have been, ‘Come in’ or ‘Go away,’ but the gaoler
evidently took it for the former. He twisted the iron ring and, once more gripping Oswin’s arm as tightly as if it was a live eel, propelled him into the room.

Oswin found himself in a richly decorated chamber. The plaster above the wainscoting was painted with colourful scenes from the life of the blond and bearded Edward the Confessor. Gold leaf
glinted on his crown and on the ring he was holding out to a beggar.

Below the painting and behind a long, heavy oak table sat three men, who Oswin recognised as the Subdean William de Rouen, Precentor Paul de Monte Florum and, to his dismay, the Treasurer of the
Cathedral, Thomas of Louth. Ranged along the table were platters of mutton olives, roasted quail, and spiced pork meatballs set amid flagons and goblets. At the sight of the meats, Oswin’s
stomach began to growl. Supper the night before was now but a distant memory.

The only other occupant of the chamber was a pallid man who was hunched over a small table set in front of the casement, angled so that the light from the window might best illuminate a stack of
parchments on it. He had the wary look of an ill-used hound.