The Case of the Clerical Cadaver, page 1
The Case of the Clerical Cadaver
the never ending
Chronicles of Brother Hermitage
by
Howard of Warwick
The Funny Book Company
Published by The Funny Book Company at Smashwords
Dalton House, 60 Windsor Ave, London SW19 2RR
www.funnybookcompany.com
© 2016 Howard Matthews
This work is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, copied, or otherwise circulated without the express permission of the author.
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Cover design by Double Dagger
Also by Howard of Warwick.
The First Chronicles of Brother Hermitage
The Heretics of De'Ath
The Garderobe of Death
The Tapestry of Death
Continuing Chronicles of Brother Hermitage
Hermitage, Wat and Some Murder or Other
Hermitage, Wat and Some Druids
Hermitage, Wat and Some Nuns
Yet More Chronicles of Brother Hermitage
The Case of the Clerical Cadaver
The Case of the Curious Corpse
The Case of the Cantankerous Carcass
A Brother Hermitage Diversion (and free!)
Brother Hermitage in Shorts
Also:
Howard of Warwick does the Middle Ages: Authenticity without accuracy.
The Domesday Book (No, Not That One.)
The Magna Carta (Or Is It?)
Explore the whole sorry business and join the mailing list at
Howardofwarwick.com
Another funny book from The Funny Book Company
Greedy by Ainsworth Pennington
Contents
Introit
Caput I The King’s Investigator
Caput II A Message from The King
Caput III At The Tower of London
Caput IV The Monastery That Doesn’t Exist
Caput V Which Way?
Caput VI Across the Dangerous River
Caput VII It’s The Eels
Caput VIII The Monasterium Tenebrarii
Caput IX We’ve Been Sent
Caput X Behind The King’s Door
Caput XI The Altar of The Tangled Bones
Caput XII From A Great Height
Caput XIII The Goddess of Drains
Caput XIV Pursued Meet Pursuers
Caput XV In The Abbot’s Cell
Caput XVI A Secret Passage
Caput XVII Who Knew?
Caput XVIII Mystery in The Marshes
Caput XIX We’re All Going to Die
Caput XX The Great Revelation
Caput XXI Perhaps it was The Eels
The Case of the Curious Corpse: Caput I The Attack of The Killer Normans
The Case of the Clerical Cadaver.
Introit
The monks were in turmoil. It was as much as Brother Egbert could do to stop them running howling into the night; apart, obviously, from the normal suspects who were taking such a close interest in the body that they had to be moved on, quite firmly.
As the doors of the monastery were sealed there was no question of anyone actually getting out, but the sight of the man lying there like that? Well, it was enough to give even Egbert pause. And he hadn’t paused at much in his long life.
He had been with old King Edward’s forces in Scotland when they killed some total loon called Macbeth who kept going about daggers and spots before his eyes and how much trouble his wife was going to be in when he got home. He had seen some pretty revolting things up there. He’d then been forced to give his blessing and pardon for them on threat of some of the revolting things being done to him. But he’d never seen anything like this. He acknowledged that he was relatively new to this particular community but couldn’t believe that this sort of thing was a regular occurrence.
A barked order from the Abbot brought silence to the chaotic scene. As usual the man had simply appeared in their midst without anyone having a chance to shout a warning.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ the great man demanded as he took in the scene.
The skeletal countenance of the Abbot, rumoured to be as old as the monastery itself, had its usual impact. Everyone found something else to look at and the normal suspects made themselves scarce.
Egbert stepped forward and bowed his head. ‘A great cry was heard, father,’ he explained. ‘Many of the brothers were roused from their sleep and came to find out what was happening.’
The Abbot looked horrified at this news. ‘Sleep?’ his outrage was clear.
‘I mean study and prayer, father,’ Egbert corrected himself.
The assembled brothers mumbled about what a shame it was that their post-midnight study and prayer had been disturbed by this event. Several of them even yawned with disappointment.
The Abbot cast his awful stare around his community. The community looked away.
‘And what is that brother doing lounging there?’ the Abbot pointed a withering finger at the corpse in the middle of the small courtyard.
The cloister of this place was as common as any monastery. A simple square walkway, covered by a roof of stone held up by plain pillars circumnavigated a square courtyard of grass. As in a thousand monasteries, monks would wander their cloister in thought and discussion, or just to keep out of the rain. In this place there were stone seats built into the back wall, upon which the monks were not allowed to sit. From the cloister a monk could be in virtually any monastery in Christendom, such was regularity of design.
Except, of course, this one had a dead body in its courtyard.
The strong moon, hanging in the sky and dropping its pale light onto the monastery could do nothing but make the scene even more gruesome.
‘Erm,’ Egbert was puzzled by the question. ‘He’s dead father.’
‘Dead?’
‘Well, yes.’ Egbert knew that the Abbot frequently missed the concerns of the ordinary man, but a corpse in your courtyard?
‘He cannot be dead,’ the Abbot said, simply.
Egbert’s overwhelming urge was to say that the Abbot had better go and tell the body that. He knew better.
‘We have no weaklings or disease in this place.’ The Abbot stated loudly, as if his voice alone was enough to banish both. ‘Why is he dead?’
Egbert frowned. He held an arm out towards the body. Surely he didn’t have to explain this. ‘He’s been impaled on the sundial father,’ he pointed out.
The Abbot took half a step forward and peered, as if examining some piece of illumination presented for his inspection in the scriptorium. A rather poor piece by the look on his face.
‘I see.’ The Abbot seemed to reluctantly accept that a monk with a large sundial sticking through him was entitled to be dead.
In fact, not only was the sundial passing through the deceased, but it was raised on a pedestal and it looked like a bit of that had gone in as well. The unfortunate man must have hit the device with some considerable speed and force.
Or been pushed.
The Abbot glared at his monks once more. ‘Back to your study,’ he commanded, with a wave.
The monks departed gratefully, but with many a backward glance at the body. Most of them would rather spend the night with a dead monk that five minutes with their abbot.
‘Well then?’ the Abbot turned his countenance on Egbert.
‘Well then, what, father?’
‘Move him,’ the Abbot instructed impatiently. ‘How are we going to read the sundial with a monk lying all over it?’
Egbert looked around and made sure that the last of the brothers had left the scene. The clatter of closing cell doors assured him they were alone.
‘I think there may be more of a problem than telling the time,’ he said, significantly.
‘Why?’ the Abbot snapped. ‘It’s not the cook, is it?’ He sounded as if he suspected the cook. Just the sort of thing that idle waster would do, lounge about in the courtyard being dead when he should be working.
‘No father,’ Egbert explained wearily. ‘It is not the cook. It is father Ignatius.’
‘Ignatius?’ That had taken the Abbot back. ‘The father Ignatius?’
Egbert rolled his eyes, ‘We only have the one,’ he sighed. He knew the Abbot was a greater leader of men and a devout and pious soul. He had that energy and internal confidence that just made people do as he directed. Egbert just wished the man wasn’t quite so stupid.
He knew that he was a simple soul himself, he had no great understanding of the ideas of the world or the finer points of theology. Or any of the points, really. He had been a plain friar in service of the King’s army. He went where he was told and did what was wanted. He never need to apply much thought to anything.
In his quieter moments though, reflecting on his wide experiences of the world and those who seemed to be in charge, he sometimes wondered why leadership and stupidity seemed to be such frequent companions. And why people leaped to follow those who were plainly wrong. People who instructed them to do the impossible and then berated them for doing exactly what they’d been told, when they knew it was never going to work in the first place.
This Abbot was a prime example. The man could turn from friendly confident to fire-breathing demon at the drop of a sandal. Most of the brothers kept their distance to avoid being caught in the back of the head by one of the violent mood swings. Egbert suspected a touch of madness lurked just under the Abbot’s surface, occasionally sticking its nose out to see if the world was ready for it yet. How the man had been put in charge of anything was a mystery.
Egbert had frequently been told he needed to address this problem with authority that he seemed to have.
‘Just so,’ the Abbot confirmed, thoughtfully. ‘Father Ignatius.’ The disappointment at everyone and everything that habitually camped on his face was disturbed by a veil of worry. His eyes seemed to be moving about of their own accord and his regular frown had transformed to something deep enough to echo.
Egbert thought this might indicate that the Abbot was thinking. He had no idea what the outcome of that was likely to be. Nothing good, he suspected. ‘And I think he may have been put there by someone.’
‘Put there? On the sundial? Why would anyone put a dead body on a sundial?’
Egbert now went so far as to wipe a hand over his face and look to the sky. ‘I suspect he was put there while he was still alive, and then he died.’
‘Death by sundial?’ the Abbot made the connection.
‘Indeed.’
‘Who would do such a thing?’
That, thought Egbert, is a very good question. In fact it is the very good question. Not that the Abbot would realise that of course. ‘I think we need to find that out, father. Before it happens again.’
The Abbot frowned even more, ‘We haven’t got another sundial,’ he said. To which Egbert could not even manage a sigh.
‘I mean before someone else is murdered.’
‘Murder?’ the Abbot was shocked at the word.
‘When someone makes someone else dead? It is the usual term. Unless you’re just a very bad physick. But I doubt even the worst physic in the world would prescribe impaling on a sundial for anything.’
The Abbot actually bit his lip. Egbert had never seen him so disturbed. He was disturbed in many ways but this time events were doing it to him. He looked at risk of losing control. That could only be very bad indeed.
‘Father Ignatius. Murdered?’
‘It would seem so.’
The Abbot took a cautious step into the courtyard and approached the bizarre scene.
Father Ignatius was on his back, spread-eagled in mid-air, the spike of the sundial emerging from his front like the mast of some dread ship. The morbidly minded might still be able to tell the time by the position of the sun’s shadow on the various bits of Ignatius’s anatomy, after all, he wasn’t using them anymore. Half past Terce was going to be a bit embarrassing though.
Egbert joined the Abbot at the side of the dear departed. Not that anyone would have conceived of the word “dear” in any description of Ignatius. This situation constituted the sunniest disposition the man had ever had.
The priest was the opposite of the Abbot in many ways, or rather, he had been. He was frighteningly intelligent, being able to pierce either a complex text or the schemes of brothers intent on avoiding their duties. As a leader of men though, his personal qualities were such that people wouldn’t have followed him out of a burning building. Even young novices were prepared to mutter about the man within his earshot. They wouldn’t have even allowed such thoughts about the Abbot into their heads. After all, the Abbot was in their heads with them.
Ignatius’s very particular role in the monastery made this situation complicated. Granted, an ordinary monk, done to death on the monastery time-piece would be trouble enough, but that might be put down to some personal conflict, or piece of brotherly revenge.
Ignatius though. The Sacerdos Arcanorum, priest of the mysteries, was separate from the rest of the place. His duties and rituals were known only to him. Egbert immediately suspected that it was the Sacerdos Arcanorum that had been murdered. It was just unfortunate for Ignatius that he happened to be in the job at the time.
Which in turn meant the murder was probably for a very specific reason. What that reason might be, Egbert had not a clue. He had no idea what the Sacerdos Arcanorum did. Nobody had. Or, perhaps the Abbot? If anyone in this place would know, surely the Abbot.
‘The Sacerdos Arcanorum,’ Egbert said, hopefully prompting the Abbot to reveal something.
‘Great Lord,’ the Abbot cried out.
That scared Egbert more than being in a sealed monastery where people were impaled on the furniture. ‘What?’ he shrieked.
The Abbot’s trembling finger pointed to Ignatius.
Egbert couldn’t see any new surprises that hadn’t been visible from a distance.
‘Look where he’s pointing, man.’
Pointing? Egbert moved so that he could see Ignatius’s left hand. It did look like it was pointing, but that could just be the result of his recent experience with the sundial. Three fingers were clenched tightly, the remaining one sticking out like a sign. He moved again at looked at the priest’s right hand. This was more normal. It was thrown wide open, which Egbert imagined would be the natural reaction to events.
He followed the line of the pointing finger. And drew a sharp breath.
It was too much of a coincidence. Surely a man, speared on a sundial, would not go to the trouble of pointing as his life departed. Much less would he point straight at the small, dirty and unused door set in the wall of the monastery; the door that was the subject of so much speculation.
Newcomers asked questions about what lay behind the door, but they were never answered. Nobody knew. The natural result of this was that the contents of the room behind the door were reliably and positively known to contain any one, or combination of the following;
The Abbot’s private collection of tapestries by Wat the weaver. The ones that showed all the details of human anatomy, from the outside.
The body of the previous abbot.
The current Abbot’s wife and children.
The Abbot’s mother - an impossible prospect but apparently eternal life was a certainty for any who got through the door.
Great treasure.
Even greater treasure.
The relics of a saint.
A saint in person.
A huge supply of food and drink.
Virtually all the tableware from the last supper.
Joseph of Arimathea - having given up his own tomb.
King Arthur, several knights and a table of some sort.
A dragon, or at least a dragon’s egg. Or a chicken, whichever came first.
Another door which led back to the first door again which was then slightly smaller. (This was the firm conviction of Brother Daly, but Brother Daly had a lot of very strange ideas.)
And, of course, the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail was hidden in virtually every hidey-hole in Christendom. If every Holy Grail that everyone absolutely positively knew the location of was gathered together in one spot there would be enough to give the five thousand a drink to wash down the loaves and fishes.
Perhaps now was the moment Egbert was going to find out. Surely the Abbot carried the secret.
‘The door, father?’ Egbert asked. ‘What does it mean?’ He looked back at the pointing finger.
The Abbot sighed heavily, some new weight pressing down on him. ‘We must send word.’
‘Send word? Who to?’
‘The King.’ The Abbot said it simply but it sent a shock through Egbert.
‘The King?’ What on earth was going on that the King needed to be told of this?
The Abbot faced Egbert and his gaze was terrible. That was normal, but this time it carried an added intensity. The Abbot even laid a hand on Egbert’s shoulder. It had all the substance of a light breeze from yesterday, but it was clear Egbert was being given a great confidence.
