Company of Liars (44 page)

We trudged back to the chantry in silence. Rodrigo would not allow either of us to help him carry Jofre. He bore the stiff body like a man carrying a heavy burden in penance, staggering under its weight, but shaking us off if we tried to steady him. Behind us, the sun began to set, a blood-red disc hanging over the dark buildings of the town.

Osmond, lantern in hand, came out to meet us. He began to ask what had happened, but Rodrigo walked past him without reply and gently laid the wrapped body on the sanctuary dais where only a few hours before Adela had
given birth to her son. One look at our faces was enough to caution Osmond not to ask any more. Even Zophiel was silent.

We could do nothing until the rigor had worn off. At Osmond's urging we went down to the crypt and picked at some food, but for once, none of us was hungry, except for Narigorm who ravenously consumed her own portion and more. Rodrigo said nothing and ate nothing. He only drank. Drank too much wine for an ordinary man on an empty stomach, but we didn't try to stop him.

Adela sat near the brazier, her hair once more concealed beneath the tightly pinned veil. She was rocking the baby, who whimpered fretfully, screwing up his tiny face in a series of grimaces. Adela was able to sit up now, but her face looked more drawn than ever, as if you could see the face of an old woman lying just beneath her skin. I knew the slightest movement must be causing her great pain from where I had cut her, but she tried hard to conceal it. She watched Rodrigo anxiously as if she was desperately trying to find words to speak, but no words came.

We said nothing to the others of the news from Yeldon. The coroner was right, we had to move on quickly. If Zophiel found out, he would insist on leaving that very night, but with Jofre lying upstairs I knew Rodrigo would refuse and that would only lead to trouble. We had to risk staying another few hours for his sake as well as Adela's. She was not strong enough to travel yet. And she would have to be told that the frosts had not, after all, stopped the pestilence, but not now, I could not bring myself to tell her now.

Eventually, when we could put it off no longer, we all went upstairs, leaving Adela alone in the crypt with Narigorm and the baby. Cygnus fetched water and I lit some rushes. There
was little point in concealing our presence any more. Then tenderly, as if he could still be hurt, Rodrigo peeled back the cover from Jofre's body. Osmond gave a strangled cry and rushed towards the barred door. He only just succeeded in opening it before retching violently, losing what little supper he had eaten. Even though I already knew what lay beneath the covers, I found myself swallowing hard to keep the bitter gall from rising into my mouth.

I glanced at Zophiel. He stood a little way off, staring down at the body, his face a blank mask. But his right hand had moved to the hilt of the knife in his belt and he was gripping it so hard the knuckles were bloodless.

Cygnus, Rodrigo and I washed Jofre. We turned him over carefully and tended to his back first. It was easier than staring into those huge open gaping wounds. The dried blood was hard to remove and when we did the teeth marks showed up blue and ragged against the cold waxy skin. Now that the dirt and blood had been washed away the wounds on his back were more numerous than even I had first thought. He had been repeatedly bitten as if animals had leapt up at him over and over again while he ran or struggled.

Finally we had to turn him over again and face what we did not want to look at. Rodrigo gently wiped his face, washing the blood out of his curls, until his hair glistened wet under the flickering rushlights. The large purple bruise on Jofre's face looked more livid than before under the smoking yellow light.

Cygnus suddenly broke the silence. ‘This is a clean cut! No wolf did this. Look!’ He pointed at the place where Jofre's genitals had been ripped away. ‘See the edges of the wound – this wasn't bitten or torn. It's been sliced.’

Rodrigo pushed him aside and stared. Then he called to Osmond, ‘The rushlight, bring it here.’

Osmond did so, holding the light lower, but letting it wobble as he looked away. Rodrigo impatiently snatched it from his hand. He moved it up towards the wound in Jofre's throat. Here the bite marks were unmistakable, the flesh around the wound jagged and torn, but Cygnus was right, the wound in his groin was too clean at the edges. There were bite marks around it as if something had been snapping at the place, drawn by the smell of blood perhaps, but teeth had not inflicted this horrendous injury.

Rodrigo held the rushlight close to the body, examining every inch, then stopped.

‘See, bruises on both his arms. Someone has held him tightly.’

Zophiel shifted slightly in the shadows. ‘You gripped his arms yourself down in the crypt yesterday when you were questioning him about him being a thief, remember?’

‘He is no thief!’ Rodrigo sprang at him, knocking the bucket of bloody water flying. He had Zophiel by the throat, but Zophiel's reflexes were as quick as his own and in a flash his knife was pricking Rodrigo's ribs. Osmond ran forward and pulled Rodrigo away, but it was not without a struggle.

‘You are to blame for this,’ Rodrigo choked out. ‘If you had not falsely accused him, he would not have run off.’

‘You no more believed the boy than I did, Rodrigo, and he knew that. Your opinion mattered far more to him than mine. If either of us caused the boy to run off…’ He let the rest of the sentence hang in the air.

Rodrigo's shoulders slumped; for a moment I thought he was going to fall, but he stood swaying, his arms now limp at his sides.

Zophiel, still breathing heavily, lowered his knife. ‘I was merely trying to point out that you yourself gripped the boy
hard enough yesterday to cause bruises. No one blames you for that. I also held him when I questioned him – who knows, I might have caused a mark or two myself. Simply because he has bruises on his arms does not mean he was restrained last night.’

‘He's right, Rodrigo,’ Osmond said soothingly. ‘The bruises mean nothing.’

‘And having his member sliced off, that means nothing too?’ Rodrigo shouted. ‘Jofre was murdered. Whoever did this mutilated him and set dogs on him or left him for the wolf. Either way it was murder. And I am going to kill whoever did this. I swear it.’

I gripped his arm. ‘Rodrigo, we know as well as you do that Jofre was murdered, but you have no hope of finding his killer. The townspeople will defend their own. No one will talk to us, we are travellers, outlanders.’

Osmond nodded. ‘Camelot's right. You go stirring up trouble and they'll turn on all of us. Even in this place, we could not defend ourselves against a mob. Think of Adela and the baby, Rodrigo. You'd not do anything to hurt them.’

‘You do not understand,’ Rodrigo said softly. He walked across to Jofre's body and knelt down in the pool of blood and water. He laid a hand on the boy's chest and bowed his head. His fist clenched around the hilt of his knife.

‘Giuro dinanzi a le tue ferite ti vendicerò!’

I did not understand the words, but there was no mistaking the tone. I shivered.

We covered the body again and lit candles at Jofre's head and feet. All night Rodrigo kept vigil over him. Osmond slept downstairs with Adela, the baby and Narigorm, but the rest of us slept in the chapel, staves and knives in hand,
just in case the townspeople should decide to ensure the body could not rise up and walk.

I lay in the darkness, aching with tiredness from having slept so little the night before, but I couldn't sleep. In the dim light of the candles, I could just make out the outline of Rodrigo. He was kneeling before the painting of Mary, his arms held wide as if on a cross. He stayed there swaying a little, but holding his arms up as if he had imposed a penance on himself or was preparing to undertake a sacred oath. Cygnus sat cross-legged at the foot of Jofre's body, his head bowed. Under his shirt, his wing moved restlessly, fluttering as if trying to escape the bindings. Then from outside came the sound we had all been dreading, the howl of the wolf.

‘Put those candles out!’ Zophiel was on his feet, his knife in his hands, and this time there was no disguising his fear.

He ran from window to window peering out. The yellow candle flames flickered over the still form of Jofre's body, so that it looked as if he stirred beneath the sheet. Cygnus lifted his head and looked round, but Rodrigo didn't move from his position beneath the painting. Another cry. The howl seemed to have a new note in it that night, stronger, more triumphant, like the sound of a beast that has made a kill and is calling others to join it.

‘Put the candles out!’ Zophiel shrieked.

I rose, half fearful he was going to strike Cygnus in his panic. ‘Whether we show a light or not makes no difference now, Zophiel. Whatever is out there knows we are here and I am beginning to believe it has always known where we are.’

20. Alchemy

The following morning none of us could bring ourselves to broach the question which hung unspoken between us. Where was Jofre to be buried? It was not a decision we could delay. We dared not risk another night in the chantry. If the pestilence had reached the town and people started to flee, they would come this way, people who might already be carrying the sickness. But Rodrigo was adamant that Jofre should not be buried in unconsecrated ground. At first he wanted to carry him with us to the next church, but we persuaded him that questions were bound to be asked if we turned up with a mutilated corpse. One glance at the body and the next parish would hardly be more willing to let him lie with them than the townspeople had been.

‘Bury him here,’ Cygnus suggested. ‘Though the chapel isn't yet consecrated, it's bound to be one day and in the meantime, there is the painting of the Vir…’ He trailed off awkwardly.

‘And where exactly do you plan to bury the body?’ Zophiel snapped. ‘If the chapel was built on solid ground you might dig up the floor, but dig here and you'll fall
straight through to the river. Do you propose simply to leave a body lying about in the chapel?’

Osmond, who had been pacing the floor, stopped and pointed upwards. ‘Under the altar. It must be hollow, a solid block that size would be too great a weight for the vaulting below. It's a ready-made tomb. If we can prise a panel loose, or even the top, we can put him in there. We can replace the panel and I'll paint over it.’

Rodrigo pressed his hand in gratitude. ‘You are a good man, Osmond.’

Osmond flushed with embarrassment. ‘Rodrigo, I never meant to drive Jofre away. It was just the shock when Zophiel said… I never realized, you see. If I hadn't stopped him coming fowling, then he would never have gone into town. He might still be alive… What they did, it was… he didn't deserve that.’

Rodrigo squeezed Osmond's shoulder. ‘You must not blame yourself. You did not do this to him.’

Osmond, uncharacteristically, flung his arms round Rodrigo and hugged him. ‘I'm so sorry, Rodrigo, I know he was like a son to you.’

Rodrigo returned the embrace, then thrust him away, tears shining in his eyes. ‘Come, show me the altar, perhaps together we can move the top.’

Zophiel, for once, had the grace to wait until we could hear them moving about upstairs before he spoke.

‘They're wasting their time. Osmond seems to have forgotten we've no lead coffin to seal the body in. He can paint the altar as much as he likes, but it won't stop the stench that will linger for months, years even. When they come to finish the chantry and smell it, they'll open the altar up. It won't take long for people round here to work out who it
is. Then the corpse will be tossed in the river, or dismembered and scattered. Rodrigo would do better to bury the body in an unmarked grave in the woods. If they can't find it, they can't dig it up again.’

‘But they won't dare throw the bones away if they think it's a monk who's interred there,’ said Cygnus, looking at me.

‘And why, pray, should they think that?’ Zophiel asked coldly. He had obviously still not forgiven Cygnus for failing to put out the candles.

‘Camelot has some monks' robes in his pack. Remember, Camelot, the ones you bartered for at the monastery? Cloth stays whole long after the body begins to decay. All they'll see will be the monk's habit.’

‘You are determined to make a mockery of God in everything, Cygnus, but be warned, God is not mocked.’ Zophiel, a look of disgust on his face, swept up the stairs and disappeared.

The baby, woken by Zophiel's raised voice, began to cry.

Cygnus came over and knelt beside me as I rummaged in my pack for the habits. He glanced over at Adela who was occupied with the child, then whispered, ‘Has it occurred to you, Camelot, that Zophiel was also missing around the time Jofre was killed? He didn't return until well after the curfew. He must have walked back along the same track. Surely he would have seen or heard something, unless he was the one who –’

‘Don't say it. I know what you're thinking. Just pray that thought does not cross Rodrigo's mind. If Rodrigo accuses Zophiel, then I fear for the lives of both of them.’

We interred Jofre's body in the altar. Osmond carved a large wooden cross, such as monks wear, to place in his hands. Jofre seemed to belong in monk's robes. Perhaps
that is where he would have come eventually or should have gone, among the pure clear voices that sing of a higher love than the love of women. We closed his eyes, and now that the rigor had worn off, the look of terror had melted from his face. The cowl over his head and the high-necked robes concealed his wounds so that he looked at the last like a sleeping child.