The commotion had begun just after he was beginning to enjoy their company. One voice was unfamiliar, but the other was clearly Sir Thomas Dalyson’s. Both voices were muffled by the trusty oak door that protected the King’s person, but for a moment the man’s voice rang out loud and clear. He remembered what was said.
‘The King is being duped.’
Then the stranger’s voice was suddenly stifled. Dalyson had entered his bedchamber, and whoever it was had been seen off.
‘Duped?’ asked the curious master.
The King eased his bony frame against the cushions whose softness seemed to have turned to stone. ‘I’m always having hangers-on questioning my decisions.’
Saphira then asked the question that had been on Falconer’s lips. Both had been recalling the scene they had witnessed yesterday. ‘Sir Thomas whispered something to you when he first came in.’
The King looked a little furtive briefly, then passed off the whispered exchange as unimportant. ‘It was nothing more than what he then said out loud in your presence. The intruder was someone whose lands I had transferred to another, and he had come to petition me. The man must have committed some serious crime to warrant the loss of his lands. Though be damned if I can remember what it was.’
He sighed, and his eyes glazed over as once again he drifted off towards the other world that beckoned him. Anxiously, the regent master leaned forward to ensure that Henry was doing no more than merely dozing. It would not do to have the King of England expire in the presence of a renegade Oxford master and a Jew. Henry’s breathing was shallow but regular, and Falconer silently beckoned Saphira to follow him out of the room.
Once outside, he whispered to her. ‘Show me where you found the body. And then I would like to take a look at Ralph for myself.’
The Bishop of Narbonne waited until the wife of the dead man had left the little side chapel where Ralph’s body lay. Events had overtaken his seeking out Dalyson and had led him to the corpse. Now he did not want anyone to know what he intended to do. The newly widowed woman spent what seemed like an interminable time with the skinny little corpse, weeping and touching him. She straightened his wet hair and tidied his robe, which was still clinging wetly to his frame. She appeared oblivious to the water that dripped off the edge of the slab on which Ralph lay. It pooled at her feet, and the hem of her dress got wetter and wetter as the woollen material soaked the water up. Finally, she gave up her vigil and, pulling her wet skirts around her ankles, hurried off.
Pierre de Montbrun took his chance and slipped out of the shadows. He wanted to finish what he had begun earlier in the night. But he could see instantly that the stone was not on the body. Ralph’s clothes clung so tightly to him that there was no possibility the stone was hidden in them, and he had no purse about him. Maybe the wife had removed it. Instinctively, he turned and dashed away in the same direction as the stout lady with the wet hem. On the way, he almost bumped into the Oxford master and his delectable companion.
Once he had mumbled an apology and departed, Saphira offered an opinion. ‘I would not have expected the great bishop to have been mourning at the bier of a lowly servant.’
Falconer tended to agree with Saphira’s assessment. ‘Perhaps he was here for another reason.’
He looked closely at the body on the slab but could see no sign of interference with it, other than his hair being tidied. Narbonne had not searched Ralph, or done anything to disturb the body. Neither could Falconer see anything that offered him a clue to the murder. Ralph had been drowned in a butt of water, presumably by a man bigger and stronger than he. Falconer had been shown the brewhouse by Saphira and noted that the upper edge of the barrel was chest high. Whoever tipped Ralph into it must have overpowered him sufficiently to lift him high in the air. But the former wardroper was a skinny individual and looked even more so in death, with his thin robe clinging to his frame. It would not have taken much for a well-made man to force him over the lip of the barrel and hold his head under the water. There had been considerable displacement of water, and many splash marks stretching out from the barrel. Enough to suggest that Ralph had struggled, but that it had all been in vain. He now lay as dead as a fish out of water in a dark side chapel at Westminster Palace, lit by a single flickering candle.
‘Come, let us return to bed. There are still some hours before the sun will be up, and I need to rest.’
Saphira poked him in the ribs. ‘Is it really sleep that you are thinking of, William?’
Falconer grinned like a sheepish boy caught peeping into a lady’s chamber. ‘It was, but if you have a better idea…’
Saphira took his arm and led him towards their rooms. ‘Yes. I want you to tell me more about that Roman emperor, the cult of Elagabal and castration.’
Falconer winced and reminded himself never to take Saphira Le Veske for granted.
Henry, for whom the earliness of the hour meant nothing, levered his aching frame out of the bed. He had feigned tiredness and sleep when Master Falconer had begun asking him probing questions. It was a ploy he often used when bored or facing awkward situations. No one dared keep the King from his bed, after all. He shuffled his now scrawny shanks to the side of the bed, regretting the disappearance of all the muscle and fat that used to shield his bones. Now it was purgatory sitting on a throne without a thick cushion under his buttocks. As he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, he felt something sharp dig into his left hip. Lifting his leg, he slid his fingers under him, and felt around in the folds of the sweat-stained linen sheet. Pulling the offending article out, he lifted it to his rheumy eyes, recognizing it immediately. It was his seal ring that had gone missing a few days earlier. He had been afraid to tell his chamberlain about the loss. And when, on the night of the intruder, Dalyson had whispered in his ear that he might need a royal edict sealed in order to banish the man, Henry had become worried. Now it didn’t matter. The ring must have slipped off his ever-scrawnier fingers to come to rest in the folds of his bed. Relieved, he slid it back on his finger and called for his wardroper.
Once dressed, he was going to show Falconer how to solve the murder without resorting to all that syllogism nonsense. But as he stood up he felt dizzy and slumped back down on the bed. He cursed the loss of the sky-stone, sure that he had felt healthier when he had held it in his hands. It occurred to him that whoever had stolen the stone might have done it to speed along his death. If Ralph had seen the thief take the stone, it would be a good motive for murdering his wardroper. Stealing the stone was tantamount to killing the King. High treason, no less. He clutched at his chest as he felt his heart race. When the new wardroper poked his head around the King’s door, he went pale at the sight of his monarch leaning heavily on the edge of his bed, a cold sweat covering his brow. He called for the King’s physicians.
Saphira tucked her unruly red hair under a modest snood and finished her dressing. ‘So the Sol Invictus cult was a Syrian religion brought to Rome by soldiers.’
Falconer, whose entire morning wardrobe consisted of splashing water in his face and throwing on his undershirt and sturdy black robe, sat on the edge of the bed they had shared, watching in fascination at Saphira’s preparations. ‘Er, yes. And some members of the imperial family. Heliogabalus was part Syrian. And he it was who placed Elagabal above even Jupiter, building a temple to his god.’