Gebmund got down from his chair and, trying not to breathe through his nose, approached the stone slab on which the body was laid. It wasn’t so many days since I’d assisted the Deacon Sophronius across the threshold of death. But it was as if the gross corruptions to which he’d given himself up in life were now seeping out through every pore of his body. Or, if you want a less poetic explanation, a combination of nice weather and excessive corpulency had brought on a speedy dissolution of the flesh. A cloth over his middle to preserve the decencies, Sophronius filled the entire slab. His mottled left arm hung down its side. Just below his hand, a pool of slime was already gathering on the floor. I plucked at the front of my robe. I snuggled deeper into the invisible palisade of my oil of frankincense. Not so lucky, a young deacon opposite me turned green and began to swallow repeatedly.
‘Dear Brothers in Christ,’ Gebmund began after much clearing of his throat, ‘I have called you here today to witness the full and fair inquiry that the Lord High Bishop Theodore and our Lord King Swaefheard have jointly commanded into the death of the Deacon Sophronius.’ He paused and looked about. No one dared stand up and say that the Dear Departed was, in fact, another of our cousins, and that the illiterate drunkard who was currently head of the family had been bullied into allowing this public washing of our linen. Gebmund hurried back to his chair and went into a rambling account of how Sophronius had been found at the bottom of the stairs that led from my place of confinement, his neck broken in two places. He stopped again and waited for the usual pious words to go the rounds.
He started again. This time, his face began to twitch with the strain of what he’d been given no choice but to do. ‘I don’t think anyone would object if I were to announce a verdict of accidental death,’ he said, plainly wishing that was just what he could do. ‘Sophronius was a large man, and a fall down so many stairs could only have one outcome.’ He shut his eyes. ‘However, I have been informed that the discoverer of the body wishes to address the court.’
He opened his eyes and looked about again. ‘Is Brother Ambrose with us?’ he asked hopefully. Hope faded as a creature hardly less bloated than our dear departed Brother in Christ heaved himself to his feet. He’d been sitting close by the body and leaning out of sight to watch the dripping of slime. He stood forward and bowed. Gebmund turned his mouth down. ‘Then I call on Brother Ambrose to explain his belief about the death.’
Ambrose struck a dramatic pose at the feet of the Episcopal chair. He looked about. ‘I am Brother Ambrose,’ he began loudly. ‘I look after the deluded sons of the Church who have fallen away from their vows and must be corrected.’ He stopped and looked up at the roof timbers for inspiration. ‘Me Latin’s gone off and hid somewhere it can’t be found,’ he said in English. ‘Can’t I do me bit in English?’
Put me in that chair and this would have been my excuse to call things off. At the least, I’d have adjourned them. After the briefest dither, though, Cousin Gebmund called for an interpreter and let the charade roll on. Ambrose had been put in charge of me last spring, he explained. Deacon Sophronius had ordered me to produce a long and elaborate report in Greek for the Lord High Bishop Theodore. I’d been confined to make sure I pulled none of my tricks. On the day the Deacon said he was to collect this report, however, he’d fallen down a staircase he’d used every day for months. Ambrose had found him at the foot of the stairs.
‘The fucker had it coming to him!’ someone shouted in English. There was a loud cheer from where most of the English observers were sitting, cross-legged on the floor. ‘Where’s all them kids gone?’ someone else shouted. That got a loud groan.
Gebmund jumped up and banged his staff for silence. ‘Do not interpret these impertinences for our overseas brethren,’ he cried. That got the French and Italian clerics murmuring among themselves. Gebmund coughed for attention. ‘I am able to confirm,’ he said, stammering again, ‘that Brother Aelric’s “long and elaborate” report in Greek turned out to be an essay in Latin on the rules of prosody.’ All eyes turned in my direction. I plucked at my robe, releasing another cloud of perfume. I pushed my teeth back and smiled.
‘I heard the Deacon shouting in anger,’ Ambrose continued. ‘I heard the Prisoner laugh and say something in Latin. Then I heard the door shut and the Deacon begin to come down the stairs. After six steps, he cried out as if in fear and fell all the way down. While I was trying to roll him over and perform the last offices, I heard a scraping at the top of the stairs and another laugh. Then I heard a soft closing of the Prisoner’s door. When I reached his room, the Prisoner was smiling and looking at his face in a hand mirror. I say that Brother Aelric murdered the Deacon Sophronius.’
One of the foreign observers burst out laughing. Someone else got up and walked out in visible disgust. I composed my face into a look of mild outrage. It was an accusation with feeble support. On the other hand — let’s be fair to Ambrose — he was spot on in the accusation. That was exactly how I’d killed the swine. I’d fabricated an argument with him and told him to fuck off. I’d counted his rather agitated steps outside my room and pulled hard on my cunningly hidden cord at number six. Sophronius had done the rest. The bronze pin I’d hidden away. The twine I’d cut into one-inch lengths and scattered, one at a time, from the window.
Gebmund finished his silent prayer. Getting up, he pointed at me. ‘Brother Aelric,’ he said, his raised hands shaking, ‘this is a most serious charge against you. Have you anything to say in your defence?’
I didn’t bother standing. ‘The charge is self-refuting trash,’ I sneered. I thought of the effect I wanted and let my voice rise to an aged whine. ‘No defence is needed. I’m ninety-eight. I can hardly stand up and walk, let alone commit murder. How am I supposed to have killed Sophronius? While he’s at it, my idiot of a jailor might also explain how a man half my age could then have hidden this “long and elaborate report” he claims he heard that I was writing. You won’t find it in the room where I’ve been unlawfully detained almost since my arrival in Canterbury.’
Gebmund held up his arms to quell the chorus of protests and contemptuous laughter that followed my answer. His face hardened. ‘Brother Aelric,’ he said, ‘if this is the only defence you are prepared to make, I must proceed to my verdict.’
That was what he’d been instructed to do — and he could reach any verdict he pleased, no matter how perverse it seemed on the face of it. My only recourse would then be an appeal to Rome. But, as I’d expected, the foreign observers were looking shocked. The natives too were getting restless. ‘It’s a bleeding stitch up!’ an old man shouted in English. ‘We know Old Aelric’s innocent.’ You don’t always need to understand a language to know roughly what’s being said. It was enough to start an increasingly obscene clamour. We’d have to be taken through a few niceties yet.
Gebmund bit his lip and waited for the clamour to subside. He looked once more at the putrid corpse. ‘I must insist, Brother Aelric,’ he said, ‘that you should give a fuller explanation of your actions than you have so far. You might begin by explaining in what sense you have been detained, or how this might be unlawful. As an ordained monk, you have a duty of absolute obedience to those above you in the Universal Church.’
I blinked and looked at Gebmund. Had he really just fallen into that half-hearted trap? I rather thought he had. I relaxed. No need to unleash the biggest scandal in England since the last one. ‘Help me forward,’ I cried in English. ‘I will address the court.’ Half a dozen very big men came forward. Two of them lifted me from my chair, and carried me gently to the speaking place before Gebmund. It hardly mattered whether they believed I was innocent, or that Sophronius had only got what he deserved. They sat down at my feet, giving moral support with their presence.