‘What is it? Has something else happened?’ Judith asked, beginning to feel as scared as he looked.
Aaron took a deep breath. ‘I need to show you something. Come, please come.’
‘Where to?’
Aaron shook his head as if he couldn’t trust himself to speak, and after an anxious glance through the half-opened door he urgently motioned her to follow him. Judith was outside before she realized she still had the pieces of parchment in her hand and quickly stuffed them in her scrip before running after Aaron.
He strode rapidly, his hood pulled far down over his face as if he feared to be recognized. Judith had to keep breaking into a trot so as not to lose sight of him. When they reached Conesford Street, Aaron finally stopped. The breeze from the river was stronger here, and Judith was glad of it for she could feel the sweat running down her back.
They were standing in front of Jacob’s house, a fine stone building with a heavy oak door guarding the entrance. Aaron withdrew a large iron key from under his cloak and slid it into the lock. As the door swung open, he pushed Judith through the door, locking it behind them. It was dim inside the small entrance chamber. All the shutters were closed, and the only light came from two small slits in the thick stone walls either side of the door. Judith shivered. It had been just a week since Jacob’s death, but with no fires lit in the house the air felt damp and chill.
She rubbed her arms uneasily. ‘What are we doing here, Aaron?’
‘Upstairs… please,’ he begged her.
He led the way up the stone steps to the upper hall. A huge fireplace occupied one wall, but the logs in it were blackened and dead. A long table stretched down the centre of the room, set about with chairs. Chests and side tables were ranged along the walls. The lower half of the walls was wainscoted with timber panels, painted green and dotted with gold stars, while the stones on the upper half were lime-washed white. At the far end of the room was a wooden partition.
Judith hovered uneasily by the door. ‘We shouldn’t be in here. How did you get the key?’
‘I went to Nathan’s house to find out if there was any news of him. I saw the key on a shelf and guessed what it was. It was too big for any lock in that cottage. Nathan’s mother must have taken it home with her for safe-keeping when she dismissed Jacob’s servants after his death. I suppose the house would come to Nathan, in due course, unless Jacob bequeathed it to another relative.’
‘So Nathan’s mother knows you are here.’ Judith felt more comfortable knowing that.
Aaron looked wretched. ‘I took… borrowed the key when she was out of the room. No, wait, please, Judith,’ he pleaded. ‘Rumours are beginning to spread that the corpse was a monk. I even heard someone say he was a wealthy abbot. If the justices believe that, they won’t rest until his killer is caught. I have to get out of England. But I need money to buy a passage.
‘I can’t go to my father. He always puts his principles before anything, even his own son. He’d hand me over to the bailiff himself. I was sure Jacob would have something valuable in the house. I persuaded myself that Jacob didn’t need it any more and Nathan had run off with Eleanor. Who knows if he would ever come back to claim his inheritance? I wasn’t going to take much, just a few coins or something I could sell. But I couldn’t find anything small enough to carry. Nathan’s mother probably took anything of value to her own house in case of thieves breaking in.’
‘And it seems she was right to do so,’ Judith said pointedly, but Aaron ignored her.
‘Then I remembered once, when I was a child, I was playing here with Nathan and your brother and Benedict. Old Jacob was out and Nathan showed us the place where his grandfather hid his most treasured books. I thought there might still be something in the old hiding place.’
‘And was there?’ Judith asked.
Aaron nodded. Without saying anything more, he led the way behind the partition. Here a large bed, draped with hangings against the cold, occupied most of the centre of the room. Aaron went to the far wall and paused in front of the wooden wainscoting. Taking a deep breath, he ran his hands over the panelling until he found what he was searching for, then lifted the section away. There, set into the stone wall, was a long, low recess lined with wood, an ideal place in which to conceal books or anything else of value.
And it was filled with something covered in sacking, but from her position at the end of the bed Judith couldn’t make out what it was. She was aware only of a terrible stench filling the room. Her guts had turned to iced water, but she forced herself to move closer and then stifled a scream as she caught sight of what was lolling out of the top of the sack. The face was blackened now where the blood had congealed, the skin was beginning to peel, but for all that there was no mistaking that the body in the hidden recess was that of Jacob’s grandson, Nathan.
Judith didn’t know how long she stood there staring at that nightmare vision, but then cold fear pushed her into action. She’d been right all along. Aaron had killed Nathan and now he was going to do the same to her. That’s why he had lured her to an empty house. She ran back through the hall towards the stairs and clattered down them, slipping on the final steps in her haste and having to grasp the rail with both hands to stop herself crashing backwards on to the stone. She flew at the door, twisting the great iron handle, but the door wouldn’t budge. She could hear Aaron pounding down the steps behind her and she turned, trying to make for the door to the lower chamber, but at that moment Aaron reached the bottom of the stairs and stood barring her way.
He held out his hands. Terrified, she backed away. A look of bewilderment crossed his face.
‘I’m sorry, Judith. I should have warned you instead of showing you, but I didn’t know how to say it. I thought you wouldn’t believe me unless you saw for yourself. Judith, you’re the only one I can trust now. I must leave today, before the city gates close. I’d take you with me if I thought you wouldn’t be in even greater danger if they come after me, but I couldn’t leave you here with them without warning you.’
‘You think I’d go with you, a murderer?’ Judith screamed at him.
‘I told you I didn’t mean to kill the friar.’
‘Nathan! I’m talking about poor Nathan lying up there. What did you do, go back and strangle him after you’d finished butchering the friar?’
Aaron sank down on to the bottom step. ‘Is that what you think, that I killed Nathan? Judith, I swear that Nathan was alive when I left him, and I did not go back. I thought… I really thought he’d run off with that girl, until this afternoon when I removed that panel and found him there. I swear to you on my life, I did not kill him.’
‘Who else could have done it? Who else could have put him there?’ Judith raged at him.
Aaron covered his face with his hands and moaned. ‘I wish for your sake I had killed him, Judith, because the alternative…’ He raised his anguished eyes and looked at her. ‘Only five people knew of the existence of that recess. Jacob, Nathan and the three little boys Nathan was playing with that day. There was no one else Nathan would ever have shared the secret with except me, Isaac and Benedict. I know I didn’t kill Nathan, so that leaves only two others who could have done so and hidden his body here — your brother or your future husband.’
Judith sat shivering in her room. It was growing dark, but she hadn’t bothered to stoke up the fire or prepare supper. She couldn’t seem to think how to carry out even the simplest of tasks which she had been performing since she was a child.
Aaron had left Norwich. She had given him the small silver amulet in the shape of a hand that she wore around her neck. She didn’t suppose it would fetch much, but it was all she had, and Aaron had been grateful. Her mother had given her the amulet the day she and Judith’s father had fled before the trial. Judith remembered the fierce hugs. How she’d clung to her parents, desperate for them to stay, but urging them to go, scared that if they didn’t leave at once it would be too late. She’d felt that same fear again that afternoon when she hugged Aaron and pleaded with him to go quickly. His last words to her had been, ‘Take care of yourself.’ Her mother’s last words had been addressed not to her but to Isaac. ‘Look after your little sister, Isaac. You must be father and brother to her now.’