[Roger the Chapman 06] - The Wicked Winter (30 page)

He had dropped my cudgel somewhere on the stairs - the clatter I had heard, but barely registered until now, as it rolled off the steps into the room below - and had drawn from the breast of his habit Martha's missing black-handled, long-bladed knife, which she used for slicing meat. He advanced towards me, arm raised, gripping it like a dagger, but suddenly he faltered as his gaze came to rest on my makeshift cross. The custom of years, those years since he had first assumed, and then absorbed, the character of Brother Simeon, conquered, if only temporarily, the devil which had him in thrall. He took a deep, shuddering breath and lowered his arm a little, but without slackening his hold on the haft of the knife.

Carefully, without turning my head to look behind me, I moved a couple of paces to my rear until my back was against the wall and my head on a level with the transverse bar of the crucifix. Out of the comer of one eye, I could see the white, contorted legs of the ivory Christ, with the nail driven cruelly through the arches of the feet, and I edged a step or two sideways, forcing the man in front of me to gaze upon the agony of his Lord and Maker each time he looked in my direction. I still held the candlesticks in their cruciform shape, but was ready, at any second, to use them in my defence.

'Raymond,' I said gently. 'Raymond Shepherd, listen to me! Put down that knife. It can do you no good to kill me.

Martha, the girls, Fulk Disney, Maurice Cederwell all know that I've come to meet you here. You yourself foolishly saw to that. A fourth death, even if you could make it seem like yet another accident, would be too suspicious to be accepted by Sir Hugh
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'

I had made a mistake, however, in addressing him by his proper name, for he had listened to nothing I had said after that. The eyes had clouded over, the face gone blank.

'I am Brother Simeon,' he answered coldly, drawing himself up to his full, imposing height. 'A friar of the Dominican Order
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'

'No,' I replied, keeping my voice as quiet and as reasonable as possible
.
'Brother Simeon was the man you met up with while you were running away after raping your master's daughter; a man of much the same age and build as yourself. You killed him, dressed him in your clothes, mutilated the body and crushed the head until it was uurecognisable, making his death look like the work of outlaws. You then donned his habit, shaved the crown of your head and took his place. But you took more than that. Over the years you began to assume his character. You came to believe that you were indeed Brother Simeon from Northumbria, although you must have been careful never to return to your parent House. But there was no need. You were doing good work here, in the south. You were bringing souls back into a state of grace and you loved your work. You must have discovered, almost from the first, that you had a talent for preaching, something you had never suspected in yourself until circumstances forced you to it. A simple shepherd, of no account for all of his life until then, was suddenly transformed into a person who was listened to and looked up to with awe and reverence. But one unlucky day you were summoned to Cederwell Manor by Lady Cederwell.. who turned out to be that unfortunate Jeanette Empryngham despoiled by you all those years before. If she hadn't recognised you, it would have been all right. But she did recognise you, as did her half-brother, Gerard. They had to be silenced or you would lose everything.'

Brother Simeon - for in spite of all I had said, I could not, and cannot to this day, think of him by any other name curled his lip. He had listened to me with surprising patience, but now made an angry gesture which commanded my attention: it was his turn to speak. His mood had changed yet again and he was for the moment calm, his eyes as blank as pebbles, soulless, without feeling, showing not even the faintest glimmer of remorse. His grip on the knife was as relentless as ever.

'I did not kill the friar;' he said. 'He died in his sleep, that night we spent together in the barn between Campden and Mickleton. God sent him to me in the last stages of exhaustion, to be my salvation. God had need of me. It was all a part of His plan.'

'What about the rape of Jeanette Empryngham?' I asked, trying to keep my voice as level and emotionless as his.

'That, too,' Simeon answered. 'Over the years, I have come to realise that it was also a part of God's plan.'
 

'How - ?' I was beginning hotly, but at my change of tone his head reared up and I hurriedly lowered my voice. 'How can you say that?'

'She was a harlot. She deserved what she got, roaming around her father's fields with never a maid to accompany her, often barefoot, her skirts tucked into her girdle, and all the time pretending to be so pious. She was a whited sepulchre,' he hissed, 'and when God put it into my head to defile her in order to free me from my lowly position, He chose an unworthy vessel for His purpose.'

I wondered how long this madness had lain dormant within him. Probably for many years. A steadily increasing belief in his mission to save souls had demanded self-justification for what had happened. So when he thought of the past at all, when, with greater and greater infrequency, he remembered that he was really Raymond Shepherd and not Brother Simeon, he had created his own version of events to cover all the facts, and then buried it deep inside his mind.

And now, when at last it was needed, he was able to dredge it up into the light of day. But the rankness of its smell had turned his brain.

Trying to imbue him with a sense of guilt was useless. I was wasting my breath. Nor was he any longer possessed by a sense of self-preservation. He believed that he could kill me with impunity and still walk free; free of suspicion and of the consequences of his crimes, because he was incapable of reason. Any moment now his present, precarious calm would desert him and he would return to the attack.

Hard upon the thought, I saw his expression alter; the spark of insanity was rekindled in his eyes, and his docile, almost friendly smile was replaced by a wolfish grin. Neither the crucifix nor my candlestick cross could offer me any further protection. His fingers tightened around the handle of the knife and he seemed to grow in stature until I had the oddest impression that his head was touching the ceiling.

He was between me and the final short flight of stairs which led to the tower's look-out platform, and I could not have reached them even had I wished to try. But my feet seemed to be rooted to the spot where I was standing. My arms felt as heavy as lead and the silver candlesticks had doubled in weight, dragging my hands down to hang at my sides.

I have never, either before or since, felt the presence of pure evil as potently as I did that day, nor have I ever been so transfixed with terror. I was young, I was very tall and strong. I should have been able to overpower Simeon, even armed as he was, without too much difficulty. But I watched him advance towards me and could do nothing to protect myself.

Far away, as in a dream, I heard a door open and shut, the slap of leather-shod feet against the stone treads of the stairs, the sound of raised voices. But the noises meant little to me; they did not whisper the word 'salvation'. I watched the knife rise higher and higher above my head, gleaming in a shaft of light from one of the window slits, and then begin its slow descent. Behind it, Simeon's face spread wide to fill my vision, and all the while, the constriction in my chest grew ever tighter until I could scarcely breathe...

And then, suddenly, Simeon was not there any more. He was on the floor, a sorry heap of emaciated flesh and bones clad in a rusty black habit, while Fulk Disney and Maurice Cederwell sat on him, pinning him to the ground, encouraged from the top of the stairs by Sir Hugh himself. The knife had fallen from his grasp a few inches from me, and a horrible whimpering, like a wounded animal, issued from his bloodied mouth.

'Chapman, are you all right? Are you injured?' demanded Sir Hugh, and a moment later his arm was supporting my waist, urging me away from the wall and lowering me as best he could to sit on the unpadded rail of Lady Cederwell's prie-dieu.

For a second or two, the attention of Maurice and Fulk was distracted from their prisoner, and the former had half risen from his knees to help his father. It was enough for the friar who, with more than human strength, rolled clear of their restraining hands, heaved himself to his feet and made for the stairs which led to the look-out platform. There was a brief, stupefied silence before we all went scrambling after him in a concerted rush which hampered our ascent, as we all tried to squeeze past one another, becoming wedged together in the process. And when we finally emerged on to the roof of the tower, we were just in time to see Brother Simeon climb on to the snowy parapet.

He gave one last desperate glance over his shoulder and then, with a scream which would have opened graves, hurled himself over the edge, to his death.

Chapter Twenty

'Now then, Chapman, let's have the rights and wrongs of what's been happening here over the past three days.' Sir Hugh settled himself in one of the carved armchairs beside the fire, Mistress Lynom ensconced opposite him in another, which had been brought down from the solar.

Maurice Cederwell and Fulk Disney sat decorously apart, each man at either end of a bench drawn as near to the leaping flames as the scorching heat would allow. Adela Empryngham, much to her obvious disgust, was forced to occupy a stool, as was Father Godyer, who had quit his sickbed and, swathed in a blanket, extended his sandalled feet towards the warmth, toasting his toes at the same time as the icy draughts seeped in under the doors and made him shiver. Tostig Steward, Phillipa Talke, Martha Grindcobb and the three kitchen-maids, together with Audrey Lambspringe, had also been summoned to the great hall and were ranged on another bench, dragged from the dais by Jude and Nicholas Capsgrave. These two, with Hamon and Jasper, had been sent for to join the company, but were expected to keep their distance from the circle grouped about the hearth.

As for myself, I occupied a place of honour close to Sir Hugh and facing Ursula Lynom. Mulled wine had been served to everyone on the knight's express orders, and the smell of roasting meat drifted along the passageway from the kitchen.

In spite of the pall of tragedy hanging over Cederwell Manor, supper was to be a festive meal, for the master of the house could at last foresee a brighter future with his chosen woman beside him. Whether or not others shared in his happiness was a moot point, but one which would not concern me. By this time tomorrow, I should be several miles closer to home.

'So,' Sir Hugh continued, slewing round in his chair to look directly at me, 'when did you first entertain suspicions that the friar was not all he seemed?'

Adela Empryngham interrupted, leaning forward to stare earnestly into my face.

'Are you saying, Chapman, that Brother Simeon was really Raymond Shepherd? The villain who raped Jeanette and whom we all thought dead these six years past? How could it possibly be? Are you certain you haven't been dreaming?'
 

'I'm quite sure,' I answered. 'He made no denial when I charged him with it. But I believe that the knowledge of my discovery, of being forced to face the truth after years of self-deception, finally destroyed his mind.'

'Yet he came to see me,' Father Godyer protested. 'Surely I would have recognised him.'

I shook my head. 'Your sight is poor, Father. Do you recollect, in your chamber, during my first visit to you, I put on your cassock for added warmth? And although your gaze was fixed on me throughout, later you were surprised to find that I was wearing it.'

'Oh dear, oh dear!' The priest rocked himself to and fro in some distress. 'I have to admit that my eyes are not what they used to be.' He cast Sir Hugh a timid, sidelong glance as though expecting to be reprimanded for this failing.

But the knight was busy with thoughts of his own.

'Gerard!' he exclaimed. 'Gerard recognised him, though!'
 

'I think he may have done.' I set down my mazer, empty now of its contents, and propped my chin in my hand. 'But he wasn't so convinced that he felt able to speak out there and then, in this hall, the night of our arrival. He said something about not being deceived, about not being able to prove anything "at this moment", but that he refused to keep silent for much longer.' I did not add that, at the time, I had assumed him to be talking of Sir Hugh and Mistress Lynom.

It did not seem politic. Instead, I turned to Father Godyer.

'Is it not true, on your own telling, that Raymond Shepherd would have known that Master Empryngham walked in his sleep?'

The priest shrugged his shoulders beneath the enveloping blanket.

'Quite true, yes. It was a widely known fact at Campden. It reached many ears. But I don't understand,' he added pathetically. 'How could Brother Simeon and Raymond Shepherd be one and the same? I saw the latter's body with my own eyes.'

I reached out a hand and laid it on his arm, where its outline showed beneath the blanket.

'And by your own admission, his body was all you did see. You had previously told me that you identified the corpse by the clothes, and when I suggested to you, this afternoon, that the head was crushed in, you did not deny it.'

'But they were Raymond Shepherd's clothes!' Father Godyer protested.

'Of course. According to Simeon - for I cannot think of him by any other name - he shared a barn with a Dominican friar, the first night that he was on the run. No doubt they got talking. The friar described his life on the road, where he came from, what he did. And then, again according to Simeon whose word I have no reason to doubt, the holy man died in his sleep. Simeon saw his chance of escape and took it. He changed garments with the friar, crushed the man's head with a stone or whatever else happened to be handy in the barn, and left the body in a ditch. The gamble worked, and everyone believed Raymond Shepherd to have cheated the gallows, but nevertheless to have come by his just deserts.'