Chapter Thirty
Isabelle came running up to her as she neared the Priory. The child was bursting with self-importance but it was nearly time for dinner so they went straight to the kitchen. She wouldn’t say anything in front of the others so Linnet ate quickly and took her back outside.
They sat in the quiet, dark church graveyard, the moon showing itself occasionally through the scudding clouds, Isabelle shivering but refusing Linnet’s cloak.
‘I found out something – like you wanted. I was talking to the old monks and they said the Inspector came with the Bishop. He were part of his other seat – I dunno what a seat is. He’d not been to Durham before, he said to them.
Only one of the monks knew about sanc— That thing you was asking about.
Not the one that scribes, another one. He said there was a murderer once, long before, who’d tried to get safe in the cathedral.
Folks remembered as how he’d come flying through the town like a demon, with the people running after and calling for his blood. ’
‘Who had he killed?’
‘Only his wife, but also her brother and that’s why they was after him.
He’d been beating his wife for years they said, and anyways her brother caught him at it one time and tried to stop him.
The murderer killed him with one blow. When his wife wouldn’t stop greeting and carrying on, he’d held her in the water barrel till she did. ’
Isabelle was telling the story with glee, the gory details coming alive. Linnet suspected she was adding some images of her own, the water barrel lying on its side with the dead woman half in, half out, the brother slumped by the hearth, the murderer roaring in his rage.
‘Then the men came running and they was going to do for him, but he took off, like a deer, dodging them all!’
Truth struggled with the temptation to make a good story on her face.
‘Well the monk said he were more like a bear, lumbering about in his rage, I think. But fast, anyways.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘He got to the big door and grabbed the knocker and yelled for the monks. They took him in but the Prior didn’t want him staying past his time.
He were two weeks in the cathedral grounds in his robes with the special yellow mark on it’ – Isabelle gestured towards her shoulder – ‘so then he were sent to the coast to be put on a boat and never to be in the kingdom agin. They sent two monks with him, to make sure he got on that boat, and make sure the men of the town wouldn’t kill him.
That would be another sin, the monk said, but, Linnet, it can’t be a sin to kill a murderer? ’
Linnet wasn’t sure of where that sat in the order of sins.
‘So he went overseas?’
If the murderer had been banished, he could be back here now with a different name and barely anyone would remember him.
‘No, he died. The Lord struck him down with sickness, and one of the monks with him too.’ That sing-song pious phrase must have come straight from the monk who told her the story.
‘Who was it told you?’
Isabelle looked uncertain. ‘Brother Jacob, I think, but he said he weren’t there, he were too young to remember it – it were many years ago.’
‘So how did he know?’
‘It was Brother Oswyn told him!’ And she sat back, pleased with telling Linnet the story.
Linnet considered what she knew. Oswyn had been at Durham then, a novice maybe. When he was there he’d seen a man come in for sanctuary – a killer. He remembered his face, the one who had knocked, but he was now dead.
A thought struck her.
‘What of the monk who lived?’
‘Oh he went mad, they said. He wouldn’t come back to his church and wanted to punish hisself. Brother Jacob said he went overseas.’
Something tickled Linnet’s mind but ran away again before she could trap it. She thought again of the note, ‘never forget face’, ‘knocking however’, ‘killer tell Prior’, ‘but he is dead?’ She’d not asked herself what the last words meant but seized on ‘dead’ and not thought further.
She thanked Isabelle, who was busy inventing more facts about the killing, chatting away almost to herself. They went back to the Priory and both went their ways to bed.
The light outside was on the turn when Linnet awoke, that almost light, when the shapes are real, but the mind can’t grasp them.
She went to the Priory Church, using the door left open for the monks who would be coming in soon for Lauds.
She was quiet, so the novice who was lighting the candles didn’t see her.
She crept up the stairs until she was out the top, in the triforium gallery, and she could watch the monks from above, coming in now, a slow wave, some still half-asleep.
The Prior was at the head, with the Inspector behind him.
Linnet let the plainsong wash over her. She felt dizzy from worry and lack of sleep but the solid stone of the pillar kept her upright.
Her fingers traced the patterns on the stone, the straight lines and the little flourishes.
Even up here in the dark corners, the masons had made beauty.
Not this group of masons, their work was rough but they were cheap and only there for the floor tiles. From her perch up here, she could see where it was waiting to be finished. One last section in the north aisle near the door.
The music, the incense, the flickering candles, it all lulled her. This was her childhood, hiding in corners in a cathedral or a monastery, keeping quiet, watching everyone.
Her finger found a little nick in the pillar.
It had looked perfect but looked at more closely, it was flawed.
She thought of the forgeries she had done with Guy, nearly perfect but with small defects that only a scribe might see.
Oswyn, looking like a drowning, but hard to believe; Maykin’s accident, something clumsy for a light-footed young man; Tom’s self-killing but with a knot he would never tie; and the Sanctuary Knocker, the story of a killer, running through the town like a bear.
Then dying on his way to the coast, and the monk who didn’t come back, punishing himself.
As if drops of ink were gathering in a pot of water, the words swirled around her and she began to draw out an idea, using her finger along the edge of the pillar.
There was a man like a bear – the murderer – and two monks with him.
One monk who wanted to punish himself left, the others had died.
And a self-important bursar who never forgot a face, away on a small island, seeing a man he knew to be dead.
The prayers were over, the monks left and the novice had blown out the candles. Linnet was sitting in the dark, holding the precious bubble of her idea to her.