The First Murder Read online

  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

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © The Medieval Murderers, 2012

  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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  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  Hardback ISBN: 978-1-84983-736-1

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-84983-737-8

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-47110-272-1

  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.

  Typeset by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  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 is author of the highly regarded Crowner John series of historical mysteries, based on the first coroner for Devon in the twelfth century; and of the Dr Richard Pryor series.

  Ian Morson is the author of an acclaimed series of historical mysteries featuring the thirteenth-century Oxford-based detective, William Falconer, and a brand-new series featuring Venetian crime solver, Nick Zuliani.

  Philip Gooden is the author of the Nick Revill series, a sequence of historical mysteries set in Shakespearean London, including Sleep of Death and Death of Kings, and also writes 19th century mysteries, most recently The Ely Testament. The author of various non-fiction books on English, his newest title is Idiomantics, and he blogs on language at www.philipgooden.com. 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 Mystery in the Minster and Murder by the Book. In addition, she writes a series set in Restoration London, featuring Thomas Chaloner; the most recent book is The Piccadilly Plot. She also writes historical mysteries 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 Ian Morson tells of Prior Wigod of Oseney Priory writing The Play of Adam, and how the world’s first murder – of Abel by his brother Cain – is enacted with equally murderous results.

  Act One – In which Susanna Gregory relates how The Play of Adam travels from Oxford to Carmarthen in the year 1199, and the castle’s constable and his wife encounter murder among rival clerics.

  Act Two – In which Karen Maitland tells how the townspeople of Ely fear that The Play of Adam has unleashed a demon upon the town, after a gruesome discovery is made in the cathedral.

  Act Three – In which Philip Gooden tells the story of a playwright who wishes to obtain revenge on William Shakespeare and comes to an unfortunate end, while player Nick Revill faces the secret agents of the Privy Council.

  Act Four – In which Ian Morson writes about Doll Pocket satisfying her yearning to become an actress, while Joe Malinferno struggles with the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Unfortunately, the rehearsals for the newly discovered Play of Adam result in a murder. But has it to do with thespian jealousies, or something much more arcane?

  Epilogue – In which Bernard Knight recounts how The Play of Adam is revived by an academic department during the Second World War, which provides an unexpected finale.

  I am gracious and great God without beginning.

  I am maker unmade; all might is in me.

  I am life and way, unto weal winning.

  I am foremost and first; as I bid, shall it be.

  The bliss of my gaze shall be blending

  And flowing from hardship protecting;

  My body in bliss still abiding,

  Unending, without any ending.

  Prior Wigod carefully put down his quill so as not to splash the ink from the nib, and leaned over his work to admire it. He muttered the words he had written to himself, then with an improper sense of pride, got up from his chair and stomped around speaking them out loud. He grunted with pleasure. The words sounded fine echoing round his private parlour. So he knew they would be even more portentous carrying out over the assembled crowd of common people who would come from nearby Oxford to stand before the main doors of Oseney Priory on Easter Sunday in the year of our Lord 1154. Perhaps he would play the part of God himself. Why not? He was prior of the recently augmented Augustinian community, and this play was to be performed to mark their first twenty-five years.

  He looked at the words he had written once again, some admittedly borrowed, it was true, but some his own. Mostly his own, he liked to think. And they were written in the vernacular in order to reach the hearts and minds of the ordinary people of the town. The community he led, instituted by Robert D’Oyly, was of the Canons Regular of St Augustine, and part of their role was preaching and teaching. Feeling an unseemly swelling of pride in his breast, before retiring for the night he hurriedly kneeled before the large crucifix that hung on the eastern wall of his parlour. Bowing his head, he prayed to the Lord for His forgiveness for the sin of pride.

  At daybreak, Brother Paul, who was designated the ‘careful brother’ by the prior because he could be relied on to see that all things were done at the appointed time, rang the bell to rouse the brethren. This was the call to dress and enter the church for prime, the first daylight service of the seven offices ordained by the psalmist. Paul muttered the relevant words under his breath as he cheerfully and lustily tolled the bell.

  ‘Seven times a day do I praise Thee because of Thy righteous judgement.’

  On that cold March morning, Brother Wilfred was the last of the brother canons to rise, and had to hurry from the dormitory, through the cloister court, and into the church transept, where he received a severe look from the prior. Wilfred was often late and regularly chastised for his misdemeanour, but it made no difference. He was young and still not used to breaking his rest at midnight to the sound of Paul’s sleepless bell, only to return to his austere pallet and rough blanket after singing matins and lauds in a dark and cold church. He felt he had only just closed his weary eyes again when the prime bell rang. This morning, like so many before, he found himself stifling a yawn. On the other hand, he could not help but notice the bright fervour that shone in Paul’s eyes at the final exhortation to ‘let everything that hath breath praise the Lord’.

  The careful brother was no older th
an Wilfred, but had been rewarded for his zeal by the prior. His recent appointment as the toller of the bells that regulated the daily affairs of the priory had filled Wilfred with envy, though he did not know why. The last thing he wished for himself was to have to be awake before everyone else in order to rouse the Augustinian community out of their beds. It’s just that envy was Wilfred’s natural state. He envied the rotund Brother William, who had long held the position as kitchener, because he obviously filled his belly with extra food. He envied Brother Alfred the infirmarian, because he had an easy time tending the sick and elderly monks, which kept him indoors on cold and inclement days such as today. And he envied Brother Roger, who was the cellarer and had access to the stores where the casks of wine were kept. From Roger’s sometimes unsteady gait, Wilfred suspected him of ‘sucking the monkey’, as the novices called it. This practice involved sticking a long piece of straw in the bunghole of a cask and sucking out the contents without apparently broaching the barrel.

  Wilfred knew why he envied all these people, but he could not say why he especially envied Brother Paul. Perhaps it was not because of his position, but due to the fact that he and Wilfred had begun as novices on the same day. And yet Paul had progressed so much further and faster than Wilfred. Even the next ritual of the long day reminded Wilfred of his junior status. For it was in order of seniority that the canons silently processed out to the cloister to wash their hands and faces at the stone trough that ran the length of one side of the court. Wilfred was in the rearmost echelon, preceding only the young novices who had just begun their long journey towards priesthood. As he stood in the lengthy queue for these ablutions, Wilfred heard one of the novices behind him, unused to the rules on silence, whispering to the young boy next to him a choice piece of news that Wilfred had not heard.

  ‘I heard it said that the prior has written a play to be performed as part of the Easter liturgy.’

  The other novice must have been more concerned with observing the Augustinian rules. Wilfred heard only a noncommittal grunt from him before the novice-master scurried past him towards the original offender. Wilfred, his eyes still looking ahead, heard the crack of an open palm on tonsured head. The offending novice had been duly reprimanded for his infraction. But not before he had planted a seed in Wilfred’s head.

  Of course, it could be nothing but the exaggeration of an overwrought boy, this talk of a play. For many years the canons of Oseney Priory, built on the southernmost arm of the water meadows close by the walls of the university town of Oxford, had included small dramatic episodes in the Easter liturgy. On Easter morning, after the third responsory of matins, two canons clothed in albs walked to where a wooden cross had been laid on the floor of the church just below the altar. It represented a grave, and they seated themselves there until three more canons carrying censers and representing holy women, joined them. At this point one of the seated canons in the guise of an angel asked the holy ‘women’, ‘Whom do you seek?’ The three canons answered, ‘Our Lord, Jesus Christ.’ The angel then gave the holy ‘women’ the message of the Resurrection, and told them to go forth and proclaim it. They then intoned the antiphon, ‘Surrexit enim, sicut dixit dominus. Alleluia.’ Finally, the choir, as always, finished matins with the Te Deum.

  So the rumour of a play to be performed at Easter could amount to nothing. On the other hand, if it were true, Wilfred had a desire to take part in it. Life at the priory was one of endless, dull repetition. He knew it was a state of existence that he should have realised before he committed himself to God, but when he was a novice it had all seemed so new and exciting. Now, the thought of doing something unusual, like taking part in a pageant, served to lift his spirits. He could not wait until the daily assembly in the chapter house. Perhaps the prior would make an announcement. Easter was only a matter of weeks away, and much would need to be done to prepare the scenes he had heard other priories and abbeys had performed as a way of teaching the lay community some of the key points in the Bible.

  It was finally Wilfred’s turn to wash. He plunged his hands into the shallow runnel of icy water that trickled down the stone trough in the cloister, and splashed some on his face. He risked darting a quick look behind him to try to identify the novice who had broken the news of the play. From the reddened mark on his forehead, he saw it must have been Alcuin, a ginger-haired youth from Wales with big, ungainly hands and feet. The novice’s pock-marked face had a sour look on it that intimated he resented being humiliated by the novice-master. Wilfred wondered if he would last the course, and graduate into the order. He himself had had to contain his prideful anger on more than one occasion, and knew how the new boy felt. He tried a smile of sympathy on him, but Alcuin looked away in embarrassment. Wilfred shrugged and walked through to the refectory. There, the assembled canons ate the usual light breakfast of bread and ale standing up in silence, as was the custom. He groaned inwardly when, all too soon, he heard the ‘careful’ Brother Paul tolling the inexorable bell calling everyone to Mass.

  Once Mass had been celebrated, Brother Paul hurried off to toll the bell calling the canons to the chapter house. His duty was hardly essential at these times, as the routine of the priory – indeed, of every religious house in England – was rigid and regular. Everyone knew to move from the church and into the chapter house at this time of day. The only times the sound of the bell was of use was late morning, when the canons had dispersed to carry out various tasks concerning the business affairs of the priory and needed to be called together for High Mass; and also for vespers. After dinner, the canons had a short rest period, terminated by the office of nones. Then there began the five-hour working day, which the canons spent in the gardens, fields, workshops, kitchens and storehouses of Oseney Priory. The vesper bell was essential to call them for evensong from their various allotted tasks in the scattered buildings and grounds of the ever-growing priory. But Paul took his task seriously at all times of the day, and even though he knew some canons grumbled about his zeal, that did nothing to dim his enthusiasm. The marking of the set points of each and every day with the sound of a bell was as important to him as his sevenfold daily praise of God.

  As he was ringing the bell to call his brothers to the chapter house, he noticed that Brother Wilfred was for once at the head of those entering through the grand doors of the room on the east side of the cloister. This was most unusual. Wilfred was forever dragging his feet from one part of the priory to another, and from one task to another. Paul had tried more than once to rectify this, suggesting that Wilfred should show more enthusiasm as everything the canons did was in praise of the Lord. He had thought that Wilfred would have responded well, as they had been friends from the day they had arrived together as novices at the priory. But on the third occasion that Paul had chastised him – in the friendliest of ways – Wilfred had turned on him, and suggested he mind his own business. Paul preferred to forget the actual words, which had been, ‘Go kiss the Devil’s arse, Paul. Are you trying for early sainthood or something?’ He had put the outburst down to the fact that it had been Lent, and Wilfred, as were some of the other inexperienced canons, was always fractious when hungry. Paul himself relished fasting at Lent as it gave him a curious feeling of flying out of his own skin, and therefore closer to God.

  Slipping quietly into the chapter house, Paul waited whilst a few brothers shuffled up along the stone bench that ran around the whole chamber, and then sat in the space made for him. The coldness struck through his vitals, and he silently praised God for his discomfort. He listened as Brother Martin finished the reading of the daily chapter of the Rule, and then the prior stood up.

  His seat was set in the rounded apse at the eastern end of the chapter house, and stood at the top of three steps. So when Prior Wigod rose from his chair, he presented an imposing figure appropriate to his position. It had been said in the dormitory that morning that he had an important announcement to make. But Wigod still stuck rigidly to the proper procedure. His first words wer
e to lead the canons in the praise for the saints and martyrs of the day.

  ‘Let us praise St Piran of Padstow, St Caron of Tregaron, and St Kieran of Ossory in Ireland.’

  The assembled twenty-five canons and six novices intoned prayers and praise for the saints. It was as if the prior’s own words were echoing around the vaulted chamber. Next there came the prayers for the souls of the benefactors.

  ‘Let us pray for the soul of Robert D’Oyly, and his wife, Editha. She it was who saw a group of magpies chattering in the marchlands of Oseney Meadows and realised they symbolised souls in purgatory crying for prayers. In 1129, Sir Robert granted the lands on which our priory now stands. And so this is the twenty-fifth year since our founding.’ He paused dramatically. ‘And in order to celebrate that founding, and to further our purpose as canons regular, I have decided that a pageant or play will be performed outside the church doors on Easter Sunday.’

  A murmur of excited comment rippled around the chamber, which on any other occasion would have been the cause of a severe reprimand from the prior. But on this special day he was pleased beyond measure at its occurrence, and let the lapse pass. He continued to explain his plans, ensuring the canons knew the source of the text.

  ‘The scenes I have written so far include “The Creation of the World”, “The Fall of the Angels”, “The Fall of Man”, “The Story of Cain and Abel”, and “The Deluge”. I shall complete the central piece of this Easter celebration shortly, with “The Nativity”, “The Passion” and “The Resurrection”. It will be called Ordo Representationis Ade – The Play of Adam.’

  The only canon capable of interrupting the prior did so at this moment. He was Brother Sylvanus, and had stood for election as prior against Wigod three years earlier. The previous prior, who had died of a fever, had been quite severe in his sense of duty, and Sylvanus looked to carry on his stern discipline. Unfortunately for him, the twenty-five canons who were in a position to vote on who became prior – the lay brothers being excluded from this process – had expressed a desire for a gentler approach to the praise of God. Wigod had been elected, and the defeated candidate had never let him forget the perceived snub. Sylvanus questioned every proposal and every decision that Wigod came up with. This time it was concerning the language of the pageant. With a sneering tone in his voice, Sylvanus made his position clear.