Saintly Murders

by Paul Doherty

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

A miracle... or murder? Paul Doherty writes a gripping novel in Saintly Murders, the fifth Kathryn Swinbrooke mystery. Perfect for fans of Robin Hobb and Ellis Peters. In the late summer of 1472, medieval physician and apothecary Kathryn Swinbrooke is summoned to investigate yet another puzzling situation in Canterbury. She is appointed by the Archbishop as Advocatus Diaboli - the Devil's Advocate - to argue against the beatification of Roger Atworth, a friar in the Order of the Sack and confessor of King Edward's mother. Atworth has died under mysterious circumstances, and there are rumours afloat of miraculous happenings surrounding his body. When Kathryn begins asking questions at the friary about Atworth's death, she discovers that the logical explanation is murder, not a miracle. But Kathryn suspects a link between his death and that of an English spy outside the friary. With the murderer still on the loose, what began as a search for the town's ills becomes Kathryn's pursuit of a killer... What readers are saying about the Kathryn Swinbrooke Mysteries: 'The sense of menace, depth of characterization and interesting cast of characters make this book, and the series, a brilliant read' ' A great romp through medieval England' ' Superb plot and characters. Kathryn is so interesting and insight into the history of the time is so well documented. You feel as if you were there and can even smell it!'

Release date: June 6, 2013

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 263

Sample

Mathilde of Westminster

THE CUP OF GHOSTS

THE POISON MAIDEN

THE DARKENING GLASS

Sir Roger Shallot

THE WHITE ROSE MURDERS

THE POISONED CHALICE

THE GRAIL MURDERS

A BROOD OF VIPERS

THE GALLOWS MURDERS

THE RELIC MURDERS

Templar

THE TEMPLAR

THE TEMPLAR MAGICIAN

Mahu (The Akhenaten trilogy)

AN EVIL SPIRIT OUT OF THE WEST

THE SEASON OF THE HYAENA

THE YEAR OF THE COBRA

Canterbury Tales by Night

AN ANCIENT EVIL

A TAPESTRY OF MURDERS

A TOURNAMENT OF MURDERS

GHOSTLY MURDERS

THE HANGMAN’S HYMN

A HAUNT OF MURDER

Egyptian Mysteries

THE MASK OF RA

THE HORUS KILLINGS

THE ANUBIS SLAYINGS

THE SLAYERS OF SETH

THE ASSASSINS OF ISIS

THE POISONER OF PTAH

THE SPIES OF SOBECK

Constantine the Great

DOMINA

MURDER IMPERIAL

THE SONG OF THE GLADIATOR

THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT

MURDER’S IMMORTAL MASK

Hugh Corbett

SATAN IN ST MARY’S

THE CROWN IN DARKNESS

SPY IN CHANCERY

THE ANGEL OF DEATH

THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS

MURDER WEARS A COWL

THE ASSASSIN IN THE GREENWOOD

THE SONG OF A DARK ANGEL

SATAN’S FIRE

THE DEVIL’S HUNT

THE DEMON ARCHER

THE TREASON OF THE GHOSTS

CORPSE CANDLE

THE MAGICIAN’S DEATH

THE WAXMAN MURDERS

NIGHTSHADE

THE MYSTERIUM

Standalone Titles

THE ROSE DEMON

THE HAUNTING

THE SOUL SLAYER

THE PLAGUE LORD

THE DEATH OF A KING

PRINCE DRAKULYA

THE LORD COUNT DRAKULYA

THE FATE OF PRINCES

DOVE AMONGST THE HAWKS

THE MASKED MAN

As Vanessa Alexander

THE LOVE KNOT

OF LOVE AND WAR

THE LOVING CUP

Kathryn Swinbrooke (as C L Grace)

SHRINE OF MURDERS

EYE OF GOD

MERCHANT OF DEATH

BOOK OF SHADOWS

SAINTLY MURDERS

MAZE OF MURDERS

FEAST OF POISONS

Nicholas Segalla (as Ann Dukthas)

A TIME FOR THE DEATH OF A KING

THE PRINCE LOST TO TIME

THE TIME OF MURDER AT MAYERLING

IN THE TIME OF THE POISONED QUEEN

Mysteries of Alexander the Great (as Anna Apostolou)

A MURDER IN MACEDON

A MURDER IN THEBES

Alexander the Great

THE HOUSE OF DEATH

THE GODLESS MAN

THE GATES OF HELL

Matthew Jankyn (as P C Doherty)

THE WHYTE HARTE

THE SERPENT AMONGST THE LILIES

Non-fiction

THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF TUTANKHAMUN

ISABELLA AND THE STRANGE DEATH OF EDWARD II

ALEXANDER THE GREAT: THE DEATH OF A GOD

THE GREAT CROWN JEWELS ROBBERY OF 1303

THE SECRET LIFE OF ELIZABETH I

THE DEATH OF THE RED KING



‘O cursed synne of alle cursedness!O traytours homycide! O wikkedness!’—Chaucer, ‘The Pardoner’s Tale,’The Canterbury Tales

Death had come for Roger Atworth, the former soldier now a member of the Friars of the Order of the Sack in Canterbury.

‘Oh, Jesus miserere!’ the old man murmured.

He stared across at the light streaming under the narrow door. Death had slipped in like an assassin, scuttling padded feet down a gallery, striking quickly from the shadows of an alleyway. Death had sprung his trap. Atworth knew a great deal about suffering: the pains running across his chest and down the left side of his body were like a tocsin warning that he had only a short while to live. Atworth tried to move, but his legs, hands, and arms felt as if they were encased in lead. His mind wandered. What day of the week was it? He had lost all sense of time. He recalled the good brothers preparing to celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation, which came nine months before Christmas. Atworth coughed deep in his throat and licked the phlegm forming on the corner of his mouth. He wouldn’t see another Yuletide. He wouldn’t kneel in adoration before the crib, help decorate it with holly and ivy, and wonder, once again, if the bright red berries truly symbolised the blood of Christ. Atworth tried to concentrate. He knew enough about physic to recognise the symptoms of delirium tremens. Isn’t that how Brother Simon the infirmarian described it? His whole body was wracked with pain. His throat was dry. Atworth hadn’t even been able to eat the meagre scraps the mysterious cowled figure had brought him.

‘Who was it?’ Atworth murmured into the darkness. Yet what did it matter? He was going to die, and like a good soldier, he was prepared for that. He tried to recall the words of the death psalm, the ‘De Profundis.’ What was it now, Psalm 130?

‘“Out of the depths have I cried unto you, O Lord!

Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.

If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities . . .”’

Atworth coughed. He tried to raise his head, but the effort was too much. He stared up into the gathering gloom. Guilt! Oh, Atworth felt guilty! He couldn’t stop the nightmares from pouring back, like black, fetid waters, souring his soul. They were nightmares of the days of his youth, of fighting in the Free Companies under a gold-and-red banner in northern France. It was a time of great plunder and rapine, whole villages put to the torch! Men, women, and children were cut down like lilies in the field.

Roger Atworth shook his head. He recalled a young woman he had taken. Where was it now? Just north of the village of Agincourt, where King Henry had won his great victory. She had been fleeing, with a fardel or bundle over her shoulder, and stumbled into the clearing where Atworth and his men were resting. He had raped her, and so had his men before they let her go, a miserable, bleeding bundle of flesh scarred in mind, body, and soul.

‘Oh, Jesus miserere!’ Atworth pleaded for the mercy he so desperately needed and yet didn’t deserve. He and his men had been cursed for that. An old crone living in the forest had heard the girl’s screams and come hurrying to find out. The woman had stood on the edge of the clearing, her grey hair streaming down her shoulders, her old face vivid with disgust and fury. Even then Atworth had admired her courage. She had walked forward like some prophet of old, bony finger jabbing the air. At first she talked in a patois they didn’t understand, but then, surprisingly enough, she’d lapsed into English.

‘Cursed ye be,’ she’d shrieked, ‘in your eating and your drinking! Cursed be ye in your sleeping and waking! Cursed be ye in riding and walking! Cursed be ye in your lying down and getting up! Cursed be ye at the dawn and at the depth of night! Cursed be ye by my death!’

Atworth closed his eyes. He recalled the incident as if it had happened only an hour ago. He had drawn his sword and driven it straight through the old woman’s belly, spiking her like he would a rabbit or a pig. Afterwards they’d hung her upside down from one of the outstretched branches of an elm tree. They’d all stood round and laughed at her vein-streaked, scrawny body dangling from the tree like an animal’s cadaver on a butcher’s stall. They had gathered their boots, saddled their horses, and left that blood-soaked corpse without a second glance. How had one of his men described Atworth? ‘A fiend who fears neither God nor man.’ Well, the old woman had been right. From that day on nothing had ever gone right. Two days later they had been ambushed by a group of German mercenaries, Lorrainers who had killed six of Atworth’s men and captured most of their plunder.

Atworth opened his eyes; the pain had subsided. Perhaps someone would come to help. He strained, listening for a sound; the light coming under the door was now fading. No one would come! Atworth returned to his reverie. Every member of his troop had died a violent death, killed amongst the hedgerows and ditches of northern France. They had been taken up in the great disaster that had engulfed the English forces as the armies of France, led by that eerie Maid of Orleans, ‘La Pucelle,’ Jeanne d’Arc, had driven the Goddamns out of France. Atworth had been in the market place at Rouen when they’d burnt the maid. He had watched her thin, emaciated body bubble in the heat, yet her voice remained strong, praying aloud even as her waiflike face was hidden by the sheet of flame. And afterwards? Those sombre days in the castle at Rouen, bodyguard to Duchess Cecily of York, a bond had been forged there which lasted even now. Nothing had changed it, not even when Atworth was captured by the ruthless Vicomte de Sanglier, a young, Godless man. In de Sanglier Atworth had seen his own soul, and again, a bond had been formed, a chain forged and linked; it stretched across the years, and Sanglier still had his hand on it.

After his escape from France, Atworth had returned home to his small village outside Canterbury. He became a man haunted by his demons. Atworth had brought great plunder, set himself up as a prosperous tenant farmer, and become betrothed to a manor lord’s daughter; but it had all turned sour. The girl had died in one of the sudden fevers which swept the shire. Atworth’s businesses never prospered. More importantly, everywhere Atworth went he would glimpse those ghosts: that old crone staring at him from across a tavern room. Or, in the dark watches of the night, he would glance through his casement window and see the harridan’s face, framed by her iron-grey hair, glaring up at him with soul-less eyes and red-rimmed mouth. She was a frightening apparition on the moon-dappled lawn before his timber-and-plaster house. Atworth had known no peace.

‘I became like a bottle in the smoke,’ he murmured.

He had hastened into Canterbury to seek consolation. He had prayed and fasted. One of these brothers had heard his confession. The monk had wept at Atworth’s litany of sins: murder, rape, robbery, and arson. He had refused to give absolution until Atworth had completed a pilgrimage. Atworth travelled to Outremer, experienced the searing heat of Palestine, and returned by way of Rome to seek absolution from one of the Pope’s own confessors; the priest had enjoined upon him a life of strict observance.

Atworth had returned to Canterbury. He had joined the Friars of the Sack and committed himself to a life of prayer, fasting, and penance. Even here his past would not let him out of its iron grasp. He had been ordained a priest and won a name for holiness and for being a shrewd confessor.

Dame Cecily of York, the King’s own good mother, had recalled their earlier bond and hastened to place her soul in his care. Atworth’s jaw tightened. She had good cause to come and seek his absolution. He murmured a prayer. He was being too hard! Now he was a prisoner, taken secretly and questioned about the past! The letters in his wallet had disappeared, yet he had not betrayed his Duchess; she did not deserve that. Atworth wondered what would happen now. He paused in his reflections and shuddered as a fresh spasm of pain coursed through his chest. He couldn’t breathe. He heard a sound and glanced round, breathing in and flinching at the fetid smell of this place. His eye caught a shadow. Was someone standing before the door?

‘Who is it?’ he croaked.

Perhaps it was Jonquil come searching for him. The figure came forward. Atworth tried to scream but found he couldn’t. Was it a phantasm? He closed his eyes, yet even in his pain-filled mind, Atworth recognised those pus-covered rags, the wooden sabots, that harridan’s face, the steel-grey hair, and those black, soul-less eyes.

‘Ah, Jesus!’

Atworth’s head went back, and the death rattle sounded strong in his throat. He fought for breath, but he’d lost his last battle. Father Roger Atworth of the Friars of the Sack shuddered and died.

‘“From sudden death.

Lord, deliver us.

From famine.

Lord, deliver us.

From pestilence.

Lord, deliver us.

From the evil which stalks at mid-day.

Lord, deliver us.

From fire and sword.

Lord, deliver us.

From the scourge of the Evil One.

Lord, deliver us.”’

On the eve of Sts. Perpetua and Felicity, a solemn procession of friars from the Order of the Sack left their house and processed dolefully through the main gate out into the streets of Canterbury. The friars walked in solemn file, preceded by a cross-bearer and two thurifers swinging censers from which poured grey, perfumed clouds of incense.

They walked down the centre of the street making their Procession of Rogation, pleading with God to intervene in the great scourge which now afflicted the city. At first their prayer in the busy thronged streets and alleyways of Canterbury went unheard. However, the rise and fall of their chanting, like the solemn beat of a drum, soon made itself felt: it reminded the good burgesses how this truly was a time of evil. The shopkeepers, the pedlars, the hucksters, as well as the pilgrims on their way to Becket’s glorious shrine paused in their business and drew aside. Some knelt on the muddy, cobbled ground and crossed themselves. They eagerly watched one friar who, with a stoup of holy water and an asperges rod, was busy sprinkling either side, as if this would save them from the scourge which had so suddenly appeared in their fair city.

Even as one thread-maker knelt, he gazed across the street and glimpsed the small, black, furry body dart out from a needle-thin alleyway and race to hide itself in a small gap beneath the timbered pillar of a house. The thread-maker clutched the wooden handle of the dagger pushed into his belt. If it wasn’t for the good brothers, he would have pursued it! Rats, black and slimy, spike furred with twitching snouts and pattering feet, seemed to infest the city. What was it now? Almost the end of March. Soon it would be April. The air would be spring fresh. The trackways and roads would harden, and the pilgrims would come pouring like a river into the city. They all wished to kneel before Becket’s jewel-encrusted shrine, press their hot faces up against it, and make their petitions to Canterbury’s great saint. But what would happen now? Over the last three weeks, the city appeared to be infested by a plague of rats causing chaos and confusion.

The line of Friars of the Sack passed, and the thread-maker got to his feet. He walked on into the small ale-house which stood on the corner of Black Griffin Alley. Somewhere behind him he heard a child shriek, ‘Rat! Rat!’

The thread-maker just shook his head. He stared round the dingy tap-room, a ramshackle place with dirt-stained table and unclean stools. The ale-wife, standing behind the cask, beckoned him forward, creasing her greasy face into a smile, wiping her hands on a dirty apron. The thread-maker would have declined, but he was thirsty. He sat on a stool, and the ale-wife brought across a black jack, white and frothing at the top. The thread-maker was about to snatch it out of her hand, but she stood back.

‘Pay first, drink second!’

The thread-maker fished into his wallet and took out a coin.

‘I’ll take two,’ he offered.

The ale-wife’s smile returned, and the black jack was placed on the table beside him. The ale-wife went to the door and stared down the street as if trying to catch sight of the procession.

‘Much good that will do.’

The thread-maker whirled round at the voice from a shadow-filled corner. The man sitting there got to his feet and came forward, quiet as a ghost, and, without invitation, sat on a stool on the other side of the thread-maker’s table. In fact he did look like a ghost, with his pallid face, greying hair, deep-set blue eyes, furrowed cheeks, thin nose, and bloodless lips. The man was dressed in a none-too-clean shirt under a moleskin jacket tied with a cord, his breeches were worsted, pushed into mud-stained leather boots, yet his fingers and face were clean. The thread-maker, who prided himself on his sharp eyesight, noticed that the war-belt slung over the stranger’s shoulder was of fine leather with close purple stitching; the sword and dagger in their sheaths seemed to be of shiny, grey steel.

‘Don’t you believe in prayer, Brother?’ the thread-maker asked.

The uninvited guest grinned: His teeth were fine, sharp and even. He stretched out a hand. ‘My name is Monksbane.’

The thread-maker clasped the hand.

‘You are a scholar?’

Monksbane’s smile widened. ‘I like that,’ he murmured. ‘I used to be at the Inns of Court in London until I became a rat-catcher.’

The thread-maker toasted him genially with his black jack of ale.

‘So you know all about this pestilence?’

‘There are two types of rats’ – Monksbane cradled his own drink, a faraway look in his eyes – ‘black and brown. Neither has a right to be in the kingdom. Oh no.’ He didn’t pause at the thread-maker’s questioning look but tapped the side of his nose. ‘People are so clever. Do you know that there weren’t even rabbits here until the Conqueror came? And the same is true of rats! Brought by ship they are. The brown is all right but the black – ’ He pulled a face. ‘Some people claim they bring pestilence whilst they breed worse than flies. In one year two rats can produce many litters.’

The thread-maker sipped at his ale. He now considered himself fortunate to have stepped into this ale-house and met such an interesting teller of tales. Was the man true or a counterfeit? A cunning man? Despite his drab apparel, his war-belt, sword, and dagger looked of fine quality, and when he moved, the thread-maker heard the clink of coins.

‘You really are a rat-catcher?’

‘Was,’ Monksbane replied.

‘Is that your real name?’

The smile disappeared.

‘Are you here to catch our rats?’

The smile returned.

‘Nowadays I hunt different quarry.’

‘But you were saying about the rats?’ The thread-maker didn’t want to upset his mysterious guest.

‘Ah, yes. I was chief rat-catcher in Farringdon Ward in London a number of years ago.’ He stretched out a hand and pointed to the scars on the back of his wrist. ‘Rat bites,’ he declared proudly. ‘Oh, ale-wife, bring two more fresh stoups! I’ll be paying!’

‘Can I have my coin back?’ the thread-maker shouted.

The ale-wife turned in the doorway, came back, and threw the coin into the thread-maker’s outstretched hand. She smiled flirtatiously at Monksbane and waddled back to the great cask standing against the far wall.

‘Rats,’ Monksbane continued, ‘breed like flies, especially the black ones. They swarm all over the place.’ He lowered his voice and leaned across the table. ‘Do you know I have heard stories how, at sea, they have eaten away the planks of ships and made them sink?’

‘And what can they do here?’ the thread-maker asked.

‘Worse than the plague of locusts in Egypt,’ Monksbane declared. ‘They’ll get into the cellars. They’ll eat everything! The more they eat, the more powerful they become, and they breed even more.’

‘What about poison?’ the thread-maker asked.

Monksbane spread his hands. ‘God knows why, but they become used to it.’

‘And cats?’

Monksbane sipped from the fresh tankard the ale-wife had placed in front of him.

‘You might not believe it, but I have seen three rats attack a cat. Dogs are good, a rat-catching pack, but’ – he sighed – ‘there’s a short supply of them in Canterbury.’

‘Is it a plague?’ the thread-maker asked.

‘No, it’s an infestation. A mysterious one as well. You see’ – Monksbane leaned across the table, his voice low – ‘I’ve been in Canterbury since the Feast of the Purification,’ he tapped the side of his nose, ‘on the business of the Archbishop, though I’ve always got an eye out for rats. I can smell them, no matter how rank the odour is in a place like this! You see that table over there?’ He pointed across the room. The thread-maker followed his gaze. ‘The ale-wife doesn’t know it, but there are two under there.’

‘You said it was mysterious?’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’ Monksbane preened himself. ‘At the end of February . . .’ He pulled a face and shook his head. ‘Nothing. Oh, the usual ones. Now, down the Mercery, in the market place, even in the Cathedral close, rats swarm as if they had popped out of the earth!’

‘So the good brothers are right to pray?’

‘Yes,’ Monksbane answered, ‘though prayer won’t get rid of them. Something else has to be done. Certainly if the brothers pray hard and long enough; then God, in his goodness, might reveal the source of this “devilish infestation,” as I call it.’ Monksbane drained his tankard and got to his feet; he undid the buckle and strapped the war-belt round his waist. ‘The Devil’s children: From Satan they come; to Satan they can return! But how, when?’ He patted the thread-maker on the shoulder. ‘Only the good Lord knows.’

Going back to pick up his cloak, Monksbane left the frightened thread-maker staring at the two dark shapes lurking beneath the table beyond.

In the Falstaff Inn, just outside the west gate of Canterbury, the royal spy Robin Goodfellow eased himself up on his bed and rubbed his face. He heard a rap on the door and recognised it as the sound which had roused him from sleep. He slipped his hand beneath the bolster, took out his Italian stiletto, and holding this behind his back, walked across and pulled back the bolts.

‘Who is it?’ he called.

‘Master Goodfellow, your supper.’

The spy turned the key in the lock. He pulled the door open a crack and stared at the young slattern. She was comely enough, with long, blonde hair almost hiding her dirt-stained face. Her drab gown was open at the neck, and its ragged hem hung just above her bare feet. The tray she carried bore a goblet, a large jug of wine, and a wooden bowl of steaming pottage steeped in herbs with a small, white manchet loaf placed on the top. Robin Goodfellow studied the girl closely. She smiled again.

‘Your supper, sir.’

Goodfellow pulled the door open and waved the girl in. The slattern placed the tray on the table, picked up the jug, and filled the goblet. She turned, hands provocatively on her hips, and tapped her foot on the floor.

‘Is there anything else sir requires?’

‘There’s nothing else sir requires.’ Goodfellow gestured to the open door. ‘But if there is, you’ll be the first to know. Tell Master Taverner it was good of him not to forget me.’

The girl flounced out. Goodfellow locked and barred the door behind her and stood for a while listening to her receding footsteps. He walked to the window shutters, lifted the bar, opened them, and stared out. It must be about six o’clock, he thought; darkness was already falling. He had taken a chamber overlooking the yard behind the tavern. He closed his eyes and relished the smell of the spring, the sweet fragrance of the herb gardens, the perfume of the early flowers. He stared to his left and then to his right. The shutters of the chambers on either side were closed, as were the shutters of the chambers above. He looked up. The spy noticed how the walls of the tavern, an ancient place, were slightly crooked. He would have preferred glass-filled windows.

Goodfellow grinned; he was becoming soft! This was not some sumptuous manor here in Kent or a château along the Loire Valley. The shutters were sturdy enough; the bar would keep it locked. Goodfellow closed them and peered through the crack: it was narrow enough. The leather hinges were thick, strong, and secure, whilst the wooden bar felt as hard as iron. The spy felt his stomach rumble with hunger and walked back to the table. He sat on the stool, took his horn spoon from his pouch, and began to eat the pottage. He smacked his lips. The meat was fresh but highly spiced; the thick gravy had been enriched with herbs and diced vegetables. He heard a sound in the far corner of the room; he picked up a boot and threw it in the direction of the sound: a squeak and a scampering of feet were the only responses. The spy returned to his meal. The rats didn’t bother him. He had eaten and slept in worse places. He put down the horn spoon and picked up the goblet of wine, sniffed at it carefully, and sipped.

‘Robin Goodfellow!’ he murmured and laughed to himself.

That was no more his name than it was the rat’s which had disturbed him. He went back to his meal. He had been born Padraig Mafiach at Clontarf, near Dublin. He had entered the service of the Duke of York as an archer and soon found he had a gift for both languages and disguise. Now he worked for England, bearing important messages for the House of Secrets in London. However, the King was on pilgrimage to Canterbury, staying at his palace in Islip just outside the city. Padraig was to meet the King’s Master of Horse, Colum Murtagh, the following morning and then be taken out to meet the King and deliver his message.

Mafiach heard a so. . .