Athelstan stood reflecting on what she’d said, finished his bread and left. He decided to stay in the precincts. The day was greying and the bells would soon toll for the next hour of divine office. He went across to the library and scriptorium; he stood just within the doorway revelling in the sights and smells. For Athelstan this was heaven. Shelves, lecterns and racks all crammed with books of every size bound in calfskin or leather. Capped candles, judicially placed, glittered in the polished oaken woodwork and silver chains kept precious volumes secured to their shelf or ledge. The windows on either side were sealed with thick painted glass, now clouded by the poor light though some colours still glowed, springing to life in the reflection from the candle flame. Down the centre of the scrubbed, pave-stoned floor ranged long tables interspersed by the occasional high stool and sloping desk where monks worked at copying or illuminating manuscripts drawn from a cluster of pigeon-hole boxes attached to the walls. Covered braziers, perforated with holes, exuded warmth and a sweet fragrance from the herb pouches disintegrating between the glowing coals. Other sweet odours, ravishing in the memories they provoked, mixed and swirled: ink, paper, paints, sandalwood, vellum freshly honed, wax soft and melting. A hive of learning, the scribes busy with pens or delicate brushes. Athelstan recalled his own days as a novice in the rare world of books, of cleaning a piece of vellum until it glowed white and innocent as a newly baptized soul.
‘Brother Athelstan?’ Richer was standing before him, his delicate, handsome face all concerned.
Athelstan blinked, shook his head and apologized. Richer demanded that he join him. He took Athelstan down past the tables, pointing out the different books and manuscripts: theological tracts by Aquinas, Anselm and Albert the Great; the writings of the early Fathers, Origen, Tertullian, Boethius and Eusebius. The abbey’s collection of Books of Hours bequeathed by the rich and powerful. The works of the Ancients: Aristotle, Plato, Cicero and Lactantius. By the time they’d reached the end of the library, Athelstan had recovered his wits. The distractions of that beautiful, well-endowed scholars’ paradise faded as he followed Richer into the scriptorium. The room was richly furnished with lecterns, shelves and pigeon boxes. Two glowing triptychs adorned either wall depicting St Jerome studying the Bible in his cave at Bethlehem. The far wall was dominated by a huge crucifix with a twisted figure of the crucified Christ beneath the shuttered window. Athelstan, however, was more concerned with the great desk littered with manuscripts and books. Richer had apparently pulled across large sheets of blank vellum together with a napkin from a nearby lavarium to hide what he’d been working on. Athelstan moved towards the table. Richer stepped quickly into his path.
‘Brother Athelstan, can I help you? I am very. .’ Richer, now visibly reluctant at the friar’s curiosity, relaxed as the abbey bell sounded the next hour of divine office. He tactfully shooed Athelstan back towards the door, voluble in his apologies and promises that Athelstan must return, when he would show him particular books and manuscripts. Indeed, was there, Richer asked, any work the Dominican would like to study? He’d heard about Athelstan’s absorption with the stars and St Fulcher possessed a number of valuable treatises by Aristotle and Ptolemy, as well as Friar Bacon’s musings? Athelstan smiled his thanks and left.
‘Now there’s a monk with a great deal to hide,’ Athelstan whispered to the carved face of a satyr hiding in the sculpted foliage at the top of a pillar in the passageway outside. ‘Oh, he has much to hide. As has Mistress Eleanor. She threatened me and wants me gone from here. Why? What does she hide?’
Athelstan returned to his own comfortable chamber. He did not attend divine office but recited the hours kneeling on a prie-dieu. Afterwards he laid out clean clothes borrowed from the good brothers for the morrow, looked at the readings for the Sunday Mass then lay on the bed letting his thoughts drift. Worries about St Erconwald’s, the whereabouts of Cranston, what he’d learnt that day and that sense of brooding danger as he walked this abbey. He fell into a deep sleep and, when he woke, glanced at the hour candle and groaned. Compline must be finished. The abbey was settling for the night. He was wondering if he could get something to eat from the kitchens when the bells began to clang warningly — not the usual measured peals but strident, proclaiming the tocsin. Athelstan grabbed a cloak, thrust his feet into his sandals and hastened out. Others, too, had been aroused. Torches flickered. Lanterns swung in the chilly blackness.
‘Fire, fire!’
Athelstan left the yard, following the lay brothers hurrying along the passageways into the courtyard before the main guest house. Few had yet reached the place. Athelstan immediately realized the fire was serious. The doors of the guest house had been flung open and smoke plumed out. Wenlock, Mahant and Osborne were there coughing and spluttering. Athelstan pushed his way though knocking aside restraining hands. A lay brother, a wet cloth across his nose and mouth, emerged from the smoke.
‘Brokersby’s chamber,’ he gasped. ‘God help the poor man. I cannot get him out.’
Athelstan seized the rag and entered. Smoke choked the corridor. He saw one door open; the near one was locked. Sheets of fire roared at the grille and the stout oak was beginning to buckle. Smoke scored Athelstan’s nose and mouth. Heat and the smell of burning oil closed in. He could do nothing. He retreated to cough and gasp with the rest in the clear night air.
‘The building is made of stone.’ Richer appeared out of the darkness. ‘I understand the door to where the fire started is locked.’ He turned to the assembled line of bucket carriers. ‘Go round,’ he ordered. ‘Force the windows. Use dry sand, not water, at least not yet.’
Marshalled by the sacristan, the lay brothers hurried off. Athelstan crossed to Wenlock and his companions.
‘What happened?’
‘Brother, we do not know. We were aroused by the smoke.’ Mahant pointed to Wenlock and Osborne. ‘They have chambers on the upper floor. Mine was next to poor Brokersby’s. I fell asleep until roused by the smoke and heat.’
‘The door?’
‘Brother, I hammered on it. The fire was already raging. I saw Brokersby slumped half off the bed. I pushed but the door was locked and bolted from the inside. Brokersby must have done that. I mean, since the other murders. .’
‘So you think this was murder?’
‘Heaven knows, Brother! Poor Brokersby! Well,’ Mahant turned back towards the smoke, ‘the least we can do is help.’
Athelstan walked away. He put his hand in the pocket of his cloak and drew out his Ave beads. He recited a Pater and three Aves even though he was distracted. Brokersby was dead. Athelstan recalled that locked door, the sheer ferocity of the flames and returned to his chamber, convinced the fire was no accident. Brokersby had been murdered.
The next morning Athelstan celebrated his Jesus Mass in a side chapel, broke his fast in the refectory and went immediately to the death house. Brother Odo showed him the mangled, blackened human remains. Brokersby had been consumed by the inferno: his eyes had melted, the flesh shrivelled to mere lumps of congealed fat with scorched black skin clinging to charred bone. All vestiges of clothing and footwear had also been consumed whilst his ring and the silver chain around his neck were burnt beyond all recognition.
‘You discovered nothing else?’ Athelstan asked.
‘Nothing,’ Brother Odo replied mournfully. ‘He doesn’t smell now but when they first brought him in he reeked of oil.’