‘He died here.’
‘Could you take me to this man Thomas?’ Baldwin asked when they were once more outside.
‘My mason?’ Robert asked. ‘The clumsy one? Yes, I can take you to him. He was talking to me only this morning about leaving here and coming with me to another site. Can’t settle.’
‘I should be glad to speak with him,’ Baldwin said, walking into the sunshine and taking a deep breath. In the crypt he had felt the onset of claustrophobia, and it was a relief to inhale the fresh air with the sound of birdsong in the trees, the wind soughing in the branches, and people shouting. In his distraction he missed the Master Mason’s reference to clumsiness.
It took little time for Baldwin to tell the Dean what they had learned. ‘This murderer tempted his second victim into the crypt somehow, and then stabbed him once in the neck. I think that the Coroner will find a stab wound in his throat on the right side. The rope burn was fortuitous, but wasn’t intended to cover the stab, I don’t think. When the man had killed the friar, he carried him over to the works, and put the rope about his neck, lifted him up and had him drop down into the hollow where the Master here found him.’
The Dean gave a firm instruction that the Master Mason should help Baldwin and Simon in all that they required, and then left, his face grim. The Treasurer went off with Matthew to return to their work in the Exchequer, and Simon and Baldwin followed Robert de Cantebrigge over towards the breadhouse.
The odour of fresh baked bread was enough to set Simon’s belly rumbling; they had been asking questions of people all morning, and soon they should think of a meal. Simon was used to the old mealtimes — a breakfast very early in the morning, dinner a couple of hours before noon, and a good supper in the mid-afternoon — and he found it hard to travel to places where the mealtimes were different. He knew that the Exeter canons tended to stick to the routine of monks, so they would have their main meal after Nones, or mid-afternoon, while their supper was after Vespers. Through the morning they survived on the odd hunk of bread and a little breakfast of weak porridge. It wouldn’t keep him going.
As they passed around the tower of St Paul, there was an enclosure, and in it was a group of masons working on a huge rock. They were fashioning it into the shape of a column, cutting the top face smooth and setting rounded edges on the sides. A mason with a thick, bushy beard and long hair tied back in a pony-tail, was using a straight-edged stick to ensure that there were no bulges in the uppermost surface, while at his side was a large wooden mould cut into the precise curve that the stone should follow. Men would take this and measure the outer shape of the pillar to ensure that it would fit with all the other sections that would make up this support.
‘Thomas!’ Cantebrigge called, and the lead mason glanced at him, nodding. He put down his stick, and then seemed to realise that the Master Mason was not alone. His eyes flitted from Baldwin to Simon and back before he made his way to join them.
‘This is Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, this is Bailiff Simon Puttock. They want to speak to you.’
Baldwin did not bother with any preamble. ‘There has been another murder here last night. A friar was stabbed, and then hanged. Where were you last night?’
‘I was in the city earlier in the evening, then I returned here and remained in the Close all night.’
Thomas was a brawny fellow with a beard as thick as a bramble bush. His deep-set eyes were distrustful and apprehensive, from what Baldwin could see of them, and his age was surely comparable with Henry’s confederates. His heavy brow made him look a little slow of thought, but Baldwin reckoned that there was no dull-wittedness here.
‘The dead man was a friar called Nicholas. Did you know him?’
‘Why should I? Friars don’t often come here to the Close.’
‘You may know him because he was one of the men attacked forty years ago when the Chaunter was murdered here,’ Baldwin said grimly. ‘Did you know him?’
‘No. I wouldn’t think so.’
Simon smiled. ‘That’s a lie, friend. You were seen talking to the man last night.’
‘Perhaps the man who told you that was a liar,’ Thomas said sharply.
‘Your accent sounds just like an Exonian’s,’ Simon commented.
‘I’ve been here a while looking to the rebuilding. Maybe I’ve picked up a little of the local way of talking.’
‘Have you heard of the murder of the Chaunter?’ Baldwin tried.
‘Yes. It was after that the Bishop asked permission to be able to build his wall about the place, I think.’
‘That’s right. Because an armed band of assassins came here and slaughtered the Chaunter. We’ve heard that not many escaped that attack.’
‘What? What’s it got to do with me?’
‘Be calm, friend,’ Baldwin said, showing his teeth in a smile that held little humour. ‘It is merely the oddness of this chain of coincidences: we’ve heard that the friar was one of those who was attacked with the Chaunter. He had been there that night and won his scars from those who would have tried to kill his master. He was brave and honourable. And there were others there that night. There was a man called Henry, a saddler. He lies dead now in the Charnel Chapel.’
‘What of it?’
‘How long have you been here working on the Cathedral?’ Simon asked suddenly.
‘Almost a year, I suppose,’ Thomas said with a sidelong glance at the Master Mason.
Baldwin shot Robert a look and caught the brief pause, then the slight nod, as though he was considering and calculating before agreeing. ‘Good. And these murders began a short while ago. Perhaps you would like to tell us where you were before that?’
‘I have been all over the country. Immediately before coming here, I worked on the walls in London, I’ve been to the castle at Conwy, and I’ve helped with many churches.’
‘Where were you born?’ Simon asked.
‘At Axminster.’
Baldwin knew the town slightly. Set in flatlands on the Devon and Dorset borders, not very many miles from the sea, it was a pleasant small market town. He had seen the place when he had visited Forde Abbey some years before. ‘Was that where you learned your trade?’
‘No. I left my home when I was not yet seventeen and went to Dorchester to learn this. There was a church being built there. I helped.’
‘When was that?’
‘I am six and fifty years old now, so it would have been forty years ago.’
Simon and Baldwin exchanged a look. Baldwin knew it was possible. Sometimes men were driven to leave their home cities in order to seek a better life. About forty years ago there had been the Welsh wars, and in the aftermath, men were taken from all over the country to go and build the King’s new castles there; thousands of them. It was a massive undertaking, and it denuded the rest of the country of skilled masons. Many men who left their homes were snapped up by desperate town-dwellers who needed walls mended, new parish churches built, or even simply a new privy added to a hall. When Baldwin was a lad, he could remember his father complaining bitterly about the lack of workmen.
‘It seems curious that there should be two murders in the Close just recently,’ Baldwin said at last. ‘Especially when both are associated with the murder so many years ago.’
‘Why should it have anything to do with me?’ Thomas asked.
‘Because you bear the same name as one man who was there,’ Baldwin said. ‘A man called Thomas was involved in killing the Chaunter.’
‘Then I would be foolish indeed to come here without changing my name, wouldn’t I?’ Thomas said, but without bluster. He sighed. ‘Do you mean to arrest me? I’ve done nothing.’ Except kill poor Saul, of course — and that by accident, he thought.