‘I should not be surprised. I have heard similar stories, and I think that it is possible, although I’d have thought that the murders could have been committed for another reason. We killed the Chaunter forty years ago, Bailiff. Why should someone hold a grudge for so long? Why set out to do these things only now?’
‘I don’t know,’ Simon admitted. ‘But I will find out.’
Thomas said slowly, ‘I remember another novice.’
‘There were many of them?’ Simon asked.
‘Aye. Many enough on both sides. I myself attacked one whom I’d always called my friend,’ Thomas said. He experienced the shame, but felt he had to admit to his crime. ‘It was I who struck poor Nick. He’d always been my friend, but that night we were all mad, I think. I struck and struck at him in a fury, just because he was opposed to my Dean. And then Peter came up from-’
‘Peter? Yes, Peter was there,’ Stephen said suddenly. ‘He might know something. He’s the Prior of St Nicholas’s now.’
Simon was still eyeing Thomas. ‘You said last night you were the man who so injured the friar?’
‘Yes. And my God, how I regretted it afterwards. I used to go to my church and apologise for it at every Mass afterwards, begging forgiveness. I confessed my sin to my priest, but he only said that a man who sided with the Bishop was clearly as good as an excommunicate and refused to give me a penance. I felt that very sorely … and then I saw how God punished me.’
‘How, Thomas?’
Thomas had a vision of bodies swinging hideously in the twilight. ‘He executed my father.’
Vince left the meal feeling sickly, wondering what had become of his father.
Yesterday, they had eaten and drunk themselves into a comfortable drowsiness after a meal, and his father had told him again all the stories he recalled of Vince’s uncle, how decent and kind he had been, how honourable. It was dull, but Vince sat and listened, knowing that this constant repetition was his father’s only means of exorcising the demon within him. His brother had been accused of taking part in a murder and had been denounced as traitor to his master. Now all Wymond could do was relive the good parts of Vincent’s life as though by doing so he would somehow overwhelm all the lies.
It was that which had made his father renounce the city itself, Vince knew. That was why he was aghast when Vince told him he intended living in Exeter itself. ‘You can live here with me, boy, you don’t have to go up there. You can’t trust folk in a place like that. They lie to each other, and if you’re on the side of one man, his enemies will invent stories to insult you.’
But he had been adamant, and now he felt sure that it had been the right thing to do at the time, although now he wondered whether he could continue, knowing that Joel his master had taken part in the murder of the men in the Close.
His father had been dreadfully shocked by the revelation, he saw. That was why he stayed there through the afternoon when he should have returned to his master’s workshop. He was worried about Wymond.
But there is something strange about older men. Those who have drunk strong cider and ale all their lives can sometimes drink more even than a young apprentice. Where Vince had intended to drink his father into another drunken sleep, he found last night that his eyes were growing heavy, his limbs incapable. He was laughing more than he ought, while his old man was resting back on his bench, eyes bright. At some point, Wymond picked up his bow and began to wax the string, protecting it from the wet by putting a thin coating of beeswax on it. Then there was a light oil which he used to buff the bow’s wood. It was a simple yew bow, his, but Vince knew that it could propel a steel-tipped arrow through a half-inch-thick plank of oak. A fearful weapon, Vince couldn’t even draw it to shoot one of his father’s clothyard arrows.
Wymond had owned a bow since he was a young boy, and he’d practised with it at least once every week all his life since then. Now he used it to clear the rats and birds from his vats, so that they couldn’t ruin his skins and leathers as they cured, and his eye was good for a shot of anything up to eighty yards for even a moderate-sized rat. On a good day, Vince had seen him fire that bow two hundred and fifty yards. They had paced it out afterwards.
And this morning, when Vince rose, his father was gone, and so was his bow.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Thomas sniffed, but without rancour. ‘It’s all a long time ago now. When I arrived back here, I was hoping to find a little peace and rest in my old city, but I hadn’t counted on how the death of my father would affect me. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve to be executed like some felon.’
‘What happened?’ Simon asked.
‘I left the city after I so nearly killed Nicholas. I was disgusted with myself. There I was, supposedly a novice, readying myself for a life in the Church, and I had drawn a knife to murder my own best friend, purely because of the politics at the top of the Cathedral. That day I went home to my father’s house and sat up until morning, wondering what had become of me.
‘My father came down as he always did just as dawn broke, and he saw me there. He saw the blood all over my clothes and hands, and he went out and fetched me water, then crouched before me and cleaned me. Only when all the blood was washed from me did he ask me how I’d come by it, and I told him.
‘He was very upset. I could see that. He’d always brought me up to be Christian, and here I was stabbing a man in a rage who was no enemy of mine. It was mad, and I saw that. And because of that, shortly afterwards, I left the city. I made no song and dance, but just packed some belongings and walked out. I eventually ended up in Winchester, and helped a stone waller, and began to learn my trade.’
‘What of your father?’
‘When I came back, I learned what had happened to him. The King came to hear the case when the Bishop petitioned him. He was told that the city’s gates had been left open on the night of the attack. Because of that he ordered two executions. My father was one. While I walked away to find a new life, he lost his.’
‘I’ve heard that there was another man there,’ Simon said. ‘A fellow called William.’
‘I know him,’ Thomas said. ‘A madman. He would kill for the pleasure of testing his blade’s sharpness.’
‘And Matthew was there too, but on the opposing side,’ Simon mused.
‘Yes.’ Stephen nodded palely. ‘He was there. And I almost hit him with my sword, but managed to avert my blow when I saw who he was. I had always liked him. It was Peter who actually struck him down. At the time I remember thinking he was lucky. He fell so swiftly, all thought him dead and he was safe. Indeed, it was some weeks before he recovered from his wounds. Afterwards, when I was given ever better jobs, I brought him with me as a means of honouring his valour and integrity that night. He never flinched when all the men attacked. Others fled in terror, but not he. He stood his ground although he had no weapons on him, and was felled like a sapling under the axe.’
‘Could he not have learned to hate the men who attacked and killed his master?’ Simon asked.
‘He is essentially a mild, kindly fellow,’ Stephen said. ‘I am sure that he would not do such a thing. And if he were to wish to do so, again, why wait so long? He has had the opportunity to kill his attackers many times over the years.’
‘True,’ Simon said. ‘Which surely means that it’s more likely that the murderer is someone like William, who has been away from the city for many years.’
‘Or me,’ Thomas said without humour.
‘Perhaps,’ Simon allowed. ‘Except you forget that last night when Baldwin was attacked, you were safely in the gaol. I am sure that one man is responsible for the murders, and it’s farfetched to think that someone else attacked Baldwin. No, it must be the same man.’