The False Virgin
Authors: The Medieval Murderers
Also by The Medieval Murderers
The Tainted Relic
Sword of Shame
House of Shadows
The Lost Prophecies
King Arthur’s Bones
The Sacred Stone
Hill of Bones
The First Murder
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © The Medieval Murderers, 2013
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of The Medieval Murderers to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A small group of historical mystery writers, all members of the Crime Writers’ Association, who promote their work by giving informal talks and discussions at libraries,
bookshops and literary festivals.
Bernard Knight
is a former Home Office pathologist and professor of forensic medicine who has been publishing novels, non-fiction, radio and television drama
and documentaries for more than forty years. He currently writes the highly regarded Crowner John series of historical mysteries, based on the first coroner for Devon in the twelfth century; the
fourteenth of which,
A Plague of Heretics
, has recently been published by Simon & Schuster.
Ian Morson
is the author of an acclaimed series of historical mysteries featuring the thirteenth-century Oxford-based detective, William Falconer, a series
featuring medieval Venetian crime solver, Nick Zuliani, and many short stories set in various historical periods.
Philip Gooden
is the author of the Nick Revill series, a sequence of historical mysteries set in Elizabethan and Jacobean London, during the time of
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. The latest titles are
Sleep of Death
and
Death of Kings.
He also writes 19th century mysteries, most recently
The Durham Disappearance,
as well as non-fiction books on language
.
Philip was chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association in 2007–8.
Susanna Gregory
is the author of the Matthew Bartholomew series of mystery novels, set in fourteenth century Cambridge, the most recent of which are
Murder
by the Book
and
The Lost Abbot
. In addition, she writes a series set in Restoration London, featuring Thomas Chaloner; the most recent book is
Murder in St James’s
Park.
She also writes historical mysteries with her husband under the name of
Simon Beaufort
.
Karen Maitland
writes stand-alone, dark medieval thrillers. She is the author of
Company of Liars
and
The Owl Killers
. Her most recent
medieval thrillers are
The Gallows Curse
, a tale of treachery and sin under the brutal reign of English King John, and
Falcons of Fire and Ice
set in Portugal and Iceland amid the
twin terrors of the Inquisition and Reformation.
Prologue
; In which Karen Maitland tells how a grisly discovery in St Oswald’s Church in Lythe, near Whitby, turns a Saxon princess into a
venerated saint.
Act One
; In which Susanna Gregory and Simon Beaufort tell how Beornwyn’s hand is stolen from Lythe by two unscrupulous thieves in the year 1200,
and taken to drought-stricken Carmarthen. A violent thunderstorm follows . . . and so does murder.
Act Two
; In which Nick Zuliani and his grand-daughter Katie travel to a Greek island on a mission for the Doge of Venice, and encounter murder and the
cult of virgin saint Beornwyn.
Act Three
; In which Philip Gooden describes how John of Gaunt’s Thames-side place is shaken by a murder linked to a poem about Saint Beornwyn,
composed by Geoffrey Chaucer, Gaunt’s protégé.
Act Four
; In which Bernard Knight tells how Saint Beornwyn led to a murder enquiry in 1405 in an obscure priory near the Malverns, which was resolved
by Owain Glyndwr.
Act Five
; In which Karen Maitland relates how a Master of the Butcher’s Guild is determined to conceal the guild’s valuable reliquary of
Saint Beornwyn, to prevent Thomas Cromwell’s most feared enforcer from destroying it. But when Cromwell’s enforcer arrives in Sherwood Forest, murder follows in his shadow and threatens
to destroy more than the precious relic.
Epilogue
; In which Philip Gooden tells of an encounter between a dealer in saints’ relics and a Russian oligarch.
Lythe, near Streanæshalch (Whitby),
AD
848
On the dais at the far end of the mead hall, Badanoth, the grey-bearded ealdorman, slammed his huge fist down on the table, causing the horn beakers on it to tremble as
violently as the men around him.
‘Oswy is a coward and a traitor, with the heart of a bleating sheep. He will never again be received in this hall. I will not share my cup with any man who crawls on his belly to hide from
the enemy. I swear on the skulls of my fathers, if Oswy or his sons set so much as a toe on my lands, I shall impale them on stakes and set them up on the beach for my men to use as targets for
archery practice. That at least would put some metal into those wretches.’
One of the bondmaids, Mildryth, glanced over at Badanoth’s daughter, who was staring miserably down at her clenched fists. Beornwyn’s father had never been the most mild-tempered of
men – not that any leader could afford to be gentle and forbearing if he had any hope of maintaining a strong rule – but since the death of his wife, Badanoth had grown increasingly
irascible and violent. It was as if her passing had made him realise he was growing old and, like an ageing hound, he had to growl and snap ever more savagely to keep the young dogs from turning on
him.
And turn on him they might very well do, for Badanoth was the King’s thane, sworn to uphold the law in these parts, but a king’s thane is only as strong and secure as his king, and
with the death of King Aethelred of Northumbria, the would-be successors were squabbling over the throne like gulls over a dead fish, with even blood brothers feuding on different sides.
The heavens, too, seemed to have joined in the argument, and the skies had sullenly refused to yield any rain for weeks, leaving the streams dry, crops withering and the livestock needing to be
watered by hand from the deep wells. Mildryth sighed. More bad news at this time was the last thing Badanoth needed, but it had arrived, none the less, whether it was welcome or not.
The messenger had come not an hour since with news of another Viking raid on the east coast of the kingdom, the third since the full moon. This last attack had been against the lands of their
neighbour, Oswy, a lesser thane, who’d been granted the land that lay along the coast to the north of Lythe, which he was sworn to defend. But, according to the messenger, Oswy had made no
attempt to fight to defend the abbey and village where the sea-wolves had landed. His men had simply shepherded the villagers and monks to safety inland, leaving the Vikings to take whatever spoils
they pleased, then torch the village and abbey before they sailed away. The flickering orange glow of the flames had been seen for miles in the darkness, making women clutch their children to them
and moan.
‘My own countrymen have grown soft,’ Badanoth bellowed, ‘too content to warm their backsides by their fires, telling stories of past glories, instead of practising for war.
Ploughing fields and milking cows are all our young men are fit for now.’
He seized the arm of one of the young lads who had the misfortune to be standing close behind him. He pulled back the boy’s sleeve and savagely pounded the hilt of his dagger into the
muscle of his forearm.
‘You think this scrawny arm could wield a sword from dawn to dusk in battle? This squab couldn’t even overpower his own grandmother, much less a berserker. At his age I could fire
off a dozen arrows in the time it took for the enemy to raise his bow.’
Mildryth saw the lad gritting his teeth, trying not to flinch and desperately attempting to look as if he were ready to fight the entire crew of a Viking warship single-handed. To his credit,
when Badanoth finally released his arm, the boy manfully resisted the temptation to massage the bruises, though his jaw was clenched hard. But there was no mockery on any of the faces in the hall.
Recounting tales of ancient wars was one thing, but Badanoth was right: it had been several generations since any in those parts had been forced to don a helmet and fight in bloody battle.
They were farmers and fishermen now. They might draw knives or even swords over slights to their honour, but who among them would have the stomach to face the fiercest of all the Viking
warriors, the berserkers, men who hurtled into battle clad only in bearskins or wolfskins, who ran howling like wild beasts to hack their victims into pieces? Their onslaughts were so violent that
not even hardened warriors could stand against them. Men said that the berserkers became so crazed with bloodlust that when they had slaughtered every man, woman and child in a village they would
even turn upon their own comrades, disembowelling one another in their frenzied madness, and all in the name of their murderous god Odin.