A faint scent of incense mixed with the painter’s varnish tickled his nostrils. He gazed at the tombs around him, dimly lit by the candles, and glanced at the dark windows, their shapes and tracery pattern only discerned by reflections of moon and candlelight.
He didn’t recall dozing off. He only realized he had done so when he opened his eyes. Immediately he sat up and cursed himself. He listened. How long had he slept? He checked the windows. Darker than before. The moon’s light had moved across the chapel floor. An hour? Maybe more. What woke him?
He heard it. Steps, light, stealthy. And the murmurs. Those nuns were still at it. But it wasn’t their steps he heard, for the chanting hadn’t changed, wasn’t moving away or coming closer.
There was a pause, as if the world held its breath. Crispin had just enough time to feel a shiver run over his skin before the scream. It became a horrific shriek and went on and on, its echo rolling and meandering into every crevice of the church. Something metal clanged against the stone floor and footsteps scattered.
Crispin ran.
In seconds he was down the aisle, over the steps. He wound through the forest of scaffolding and careered around the corner where the nuns were. He stopped short, astonished and horrified.
The Prioress lay facedown on the stone. A sword lay on the bloodied floor behind her. Dame Marguerite, spattered with the Prioress’s blood, stood stiffly with her fists clenched against her sides, eyes rolled back, an unholy scream issuing from her wide-open mouth.
4
Crispin grabbed Dame Marguerite and clapped her to his chest. Her husky screams turned to gasps and she suddenly collapsed in his arms.
He had to get help. His eyes looked down at Prioress Eglantine’s dark figure on the stone floor, her glistening black robes and veil encasing her. All around her was the debris from a scattered rosary.
A horrible ache started in his chest and traveled up into his throat. If he had not been careless and fallen asleep he could have prevented this. A nun murdered in a church. Such sacrilege! He clutched the limp woman tighter, as if his touch could eradicate the horrors to which she would soon awaken.
A voice rang out, startling him. “Master Crispin!” It was Brother Wilfrid.
“Here! Come quickly!” cried Crispin, his voice unnaturally piercing.
The young monk dashed around the corner and stopped dead. He stared openmouthed at the prioress crumpled on the stone and the blood pooling beneath her.
“Christ have mercy! What have you done?”
“Wilfrid! Don’t be a damned fool. I found them this way. Come help me. Dame Marguerite has swooned.”
The monk moved mechanically toward Crispin, though he couldn’t take his eyes from the lifeless woman on the ground.
“Take Dame Marguerite to the infirmary.”
“But every bed is taken,” said Wilfrid, his voice shrill.
“Then take her back to the inn. And get help. I will … I will stay with the Prioress until you return.” He stared down at the blood-soaked Prioress, his chest heaving.
Even as spare as Wilfrid was, the monk had very little difficulty sweeping the petite nun into his arms. Crispin clenched his hands into tight fists and watched the monk hurry through the darkened church and out the door. Crispin’s quickened breath tasted the cold air and flowered into a white cloud around his mouth.
Looking down at Madam Eglantine’s crumpled body washed Crispin with an uneasy sense of repetition, a vague memory of a broken body at his feet. Then, as now, he suffered a helpless panic that permeated his being. Yes, it had been very like this twenty-five years ago. No sword had done the damage but a horrifying fall down the stairs. Was it worse because he had heard it, every bump and crunch of bone? Maybe because he was the one to find her, and being six years old he hadn’t known what to do. He remembered finally approaching his mother, kneeling, and touching her hand. It was still warm, yet he knew even then that there was no life left in it. He hadn’t gone for help. He knew it was useless. He had simply stayed beside her and held her hand until it grew cold in his own.
Crispin knelt and found the Prioress’s hand. He curled his fingers into hers-the hand growing steadily colder-and didn’t move. Her dark figure lay like a wounded raven, her thin arms crooked at odd angles only the dead could achieve.
A tiny sound like a step and its residual echo. Crispin froze and his neck hairs stood up. Slowly, he turned his head. He could almost have sworn someone stood behind him, but there was no one there.
Footsteps again. He flicked a glance at the sword still on the ground surrounded by a sprinkling of beads. The sword was there. But that didn’t mean the killer didn’t have a knife. I’m a fool! He’s still here.
Crispin rose, huffed a cloud of apology toward the Prioress, and drew his dagger.
Creeping toward the chapel’s wall, he threw himself against the stone and slid carefully along the wall until he reached the archway. He peered around the corner and strained to see through the gray darkness.
The night lay heavily over the long nave. Arches gaped into dusky aisles dimly lit by cloudy moonlight. The thicket of pillars stood like oaks marching away to a murky horizon while the mute quire stalls stood guard in the center of the nave. Their intricate spires seemed like shadowy figures standing tall above the floor.
Crispin crept into the north aisle and stopped to search the gloom. The church was menacing in the dark with its many shadows and hiding places. Slowly, he eased forward and winced when his boots crunched on the tiled floor, but there was little he could do about it. The smell of old incense hovered thickly in the air, but it couldn’t completely mask the coppery stench of blood. His eyes searched. Neck hairs tingling in anticipation of a blow from behind, he glanced over his shoulder into darkness.
There! He turned his head, straining to listen, to see. A shadow swept past his peripheral vision, and he crouched and raised the dagger. His sweaty grip tightened on the handle, and he trotted forward until he reached the south aisle. Slamming into a crevice between a cluster of pillars, he waited, listening, his own musky sweat rising to his nostrils.
A step. Then a sharp noise sounded somewhere in the gated quire. Crispin hesitated. The sound wasn’t right. Not a step. More like the sound of a tossed pebble, trying to send him in the wrong direction.
Cat and mouse, is it? His fingers adjusted their grip on the dagger. Where would the killer try to go? The west door was barred as were the transepts. The cloister door was open, but that was near Saint Benet’s chapel, the scene of the nun’s awful slaying. If the killer wished to escape after the murder he had already been at the nearest exit. Why then did he need to skulk in the church? What else did he want?
Crispin whipped his head eastward toward Becket’s shrine, but he couldn’t see it for the surrounding scaffolding, a maze-work of shade and silky shadows cross-hatching the walls and floors.
A loud bang startled him and then the sound of a door closing.
He raced up the south aisle toward the Chapel of Saint Thomas, dodging webs of scaffolding, before he stumbled going up the chapel stairs. Breathless, he stopped before Prince Edward’s tomb, his shoulders rising in silent gasps. The figure of the prince lay undisturbed and staring up at the dark arched ceiling. His brassy skin gleamed dully in the aura of candlelight. In contrast, Becket’s shrine, planted in the middle of the chapel, gleamed from four bold candles burning brightly at each corner of the rectangular sepulcher.
All at once, one of the candles, hidden by a corner of the shrine, snuffed out. A black thread of smoke wound upward toward the canopy.
Crispin crouched low and tiptoed to the shrine’s plinth. He shouldered the wooden base and eased along it toward the edge of the shrine.