crossbows, questions would be asked.’
Ralph then visited Father Aylred in his chamber above the chapel. Despite his warnings, the door was off the latch, the priest was asleep on his bed, a half-filled wine cup beside him. Next he went in search of Theobald whom he found busy in his chamber. Ralph always marvelled at how untidy the physician’s room was. On hooks in the walls hung garish cloths depicting strange symbols which, Theobald had explained, were the signs of the zodiac. An astrolobe stood on a table, dried frogs, toads and rats hung from more hooks. Bottles and jars littered the desk and shelves; manuscripts and documents lay strewn about. The physician was kneeling on the floor sniffing at a jar which gave off a foul odour.
‘You should keep your door locked, Master Vavasour.’
The physician didn’t even bother to turn round.
‘If I am going to die, Master Ralph, I am going to die. Come in.’ He got to his feet, wiping his fingers on his dirty robe. ‘Do you know, you are the only person who comes in here and never complains about the smell. So, what do you want?’
Ralph stared round the chamber. ‘What are these potions and strange odours?’
Theobald sucked on his teeth. ‘You are too young to remember the plague, Ralph, the great pestilence. However, in my journeys, I met a Greek who studied at Montpellier and Salerno.’ He moved to the window and opened a shutter. ‘I lost both my parents, my brothers and my sisters to the plague. All died within a week. I vowed, one day, I’d find a cure.’
‘For the pestilence?’ Ralph exclaimed. ‘Impossible!’
‘That’s what everyone says, except the Greek. He’d studied with the Arabs and claimed the pestilence was carried by the black rat. Remove the dirt, kill the rats and the pestilence would die with them. He also said something else: that if you took milk, let it go sour then mixed it with dried moss you could produce a powder, odiferous and unpalatable but, give it to a plague victim, and he could be cured.’
‘So, why don’t you do it?’ Ralph teased.
‘I have, with varying degress of success. And it set me wondering. Do powders from dead dried things protect the living?’
Ralph moved the astrolobe and sat down on a stool. ‘And have you experimented?’
‘On sick animals, yes. Sometimes they live, sometimes they die. I have to be careful, that’s why I stay at Ravenscroft. It’s easy for someone to point a finger and shout witch or warlock. Sir John Grasse protects me. I’m no witch.’ He pointed to the stark black crucifix pinned to the wall just inside the door. ‘I serve the Lord Jesus in my own way. I fashioned that cross myself from some oak I took out of Devil’s Spinney. It’s a constant reminder to visitors, to reflect before they accuse.’
Ralph studied the little physician. He had always considered Theobald Vavasour a grey man in looks as well as character. Now he regretted his arrogant judgement. Theobald was intent on finding his own treasure, the secrets of alchemy and medicine, as he was Brythnoth’s cross.
‘But you haven’t come here to discuss physic, have you?’
‘Yes and no,’ Ralph replied.
‘The poisoning?’
‘The poisoning,’ Ralph nodded. ‘What would kill so quickly?’
Theobald spread his hands. ‘Look at this chamber, Ralph. If you’ve come to find evidence then put the chains on my wrists and call the guards. I have henbane, foxglove, belladonna, as well as two types of arsenic, red and white. Sometimes I lock my door, sometimes I don’t. Anyone could come in here and take something from my jars. Anyone could go down to the castle’s stores, too, and find poison for rats and vermin in the corners. Any of the poisons I have mentioned could have killed that young woman,’ he snapped his fingers, ‘in a few heartbeats.’
‘So quickly?’
‘Master Clerk, forget the troubadours’ tales. Poison in sufficient quantities will kill speedily.’ He sniffed, doffed his skull cap and placed it on the floor beside him. ‘And you suspect me?’
‘Somebody had the young woman’s trust,’ Ralph replied.
Theobald sighed. ‘I see, and of course everyone trusts a physician, eh, Ralph?’ He shook his head. ‘I swear on my parents’ graves I never spoke to that young woman.’
Ralph studied him.
‘I speak the truth,’ Theobald said. ‘And, do you know, Ralph, I feel calm. I’ve lived my life.’ He shrugged and got to his feet. ‘If I have to die then perhaps Ravenscroft is the friendliest place to end my days.’
Ralph thanked him and left.
Down in the castle bailey two of the coffins had been lifted on to a cart to be taken to the village. Beardsmore’s was being carried up to the chapel. Sir John had placed a black pall over it. Ralph walked on to the green and paused. It seemed an age since he had sat beside Beatrice on that lovely sunny afternoon before the shadows came racing in. He felt a deep sense of sorrow and found himself walking towards the steps to the parapet walk from which Beatrice had fallen. Two sentries now stood on guard at either end. Ralph stopped in the centre and stared across at Devil’s Spinney.
‘It’s the treasure,’ he whispered, the wind catching his words. ‘Brythnoth’s cross caused all this.’
He thought of his visit to Theobald’s room. The cross! The black cross nailed to the wall! Theobald claimed he had fashioned it from an oak in the spinney. Ralph laughed. It was so easy! A child-like solution to a complex riddle, virtually staring at him from the wall of the physician’s chamber. Cerdic’s cryptic message, ‘On an altar to your God and mine.’ Pagan altars were supposed to be drenched in human gore; what had they to do with the crisp linen cloths where the Mass was celebrated? But Cerdic had not been talking about a marble slab or some blood-soaked plinth of stone. He had been taunting the Danes. They did have one thing in common: Christ had died on the wood of the cross while pagan priests often hung their sacrificial victims from the branches of oak trees.
Ralph controlled his excitement and stared out over the silent greenness. He could visualise Cerdic fleeing from the battle, coming here, to the makeshift stockade Brythnoth had set up. It was probably deserted, not a place to hide a precious treasure, so Cerdic had turned, fleeing to the spinney. Was the copse of trees the same in his day? Ralph frowned in thought. He had never noticed any forest clearance. As a boy he had climbed some of the great oaks; two or three of them had hollow trunks. Cerdic must have gone there. Oak trees survived for hundreds of years. Brythnoth’s cross was in Devil’s Spinney!
Ralph heard his name being called and looked down. Father Aylred was gazing up at him.
‘Ralph,’ he called. ‘If I say a Mass in Midnight Tower would you be my altar boy?’
Ralph nodded and, nursing his secret, hurried down the steps.
‘When will you say the Mass?’
Father Aylred looked calm, more composed. ‘Soon,’ he replied. ‘What were you doing up on the parapet, Ralph?’ He stepped closer. ‘What’s wrong? Your face is pale, your eyes are bright. Do you know who the killer is?’
‘Not yet, Father, but God does!’
Chapter 5
‘Why can’t I intervene?’ Beatrice stared desperately as her lover and Father Aylred walked back across the green. ‘What are we?’ she screamed at Brother Antony who watched her, his eyes full of compassion.
‘Beatrice, you are an Incorporeal. I have told you. You are not of their world but of another.’
‘But I can speak, I can see, I can hear, I have my body!’
‘Yes, you have,’ he said kindly. ‘But they have all changed.’
‘That’s not possible.’
‘Yes it is, Beatrice. Even in the world you have left, one substance can take many forms. Water can turn to ice, it can be still or fast-running; it can be small, it can be large, it can be salt-filled, it can be clear. It rises and it comes down. So it is with you. Your body has not been taken away, it has simply changed, as your consciousness has.’
