The Holy Innocents

Painfully, I got to my feet, tenderly stretching each part of my body, feeling along each limb with cautious fingers, examining my bruises. The latter were plentiful, some already turning an angry purple, others were still a sickly yellow. But there was little else wrong with me, apart from the general feeling of having been soundly beaten. I went into the yard and stripped, holding my head beneath the pump and allowing the cold, clear water to trickle through my hair and down across my neck and shoulders Then I hauled up water from the well, ignoring the effort it cost me, and emptied bucket after bucket over my aching body. Water has great healing properties and, after a while, I began to feel better. I rubbed myself dry with the piece of rough linen I always carried in my pack for such a purpose, dressed again and was almost ready to face the prospect, when I had shaved, of breakfast at the castle ale-house.

Before that, however, I had things to do, the first being to inspect more closely the broken strut where the boards of the gallery had given way. There was no doubt, after a closer examination, that the planks were rotten and had shattered beneath my weight and heavy-footed pounding, but the rest of the walkway was in no better condition. Why, then, had it collapsed at that particular spot? I picked my way through the fallen timber and looked carefully at the strut which had supported it. The top was cut cleanly through, no jagged splinters protruding as there should have been had the structure been torn apart by accident. Someone had taken a sharp knife or cleaver to it, weakening the whole fabric of the gallery. Someone, too, had lured me on to walk across it.

But why? Such a short fall could not possible have killed me. It could, however, have injured me, and that quite seriously. Even at the time, I had considered myself lucky to escape as lightly as I did. I might well have broken an arm, a leg, a shoulder, or twisted my ankle more severely, and been laid up in the Priory’s infirmary for weeks, By which time, my interest in the disappearance of Mary and Andrew Skelton would have waned – or so, at least, my attacker would happily have imagined. But who was my attacker? Who wished so strongly for the matter to be forgotten? Who found my interest a threat to his peace of mind? Above all, who would have another set of keys to let himself in and out of the house at will? There was only one answer. Eudo Colet.

I went across to the kitchen door, unlocked it, mounted the ladder to the servants’ quarters and opened the shutters.

Here, where the dust lay thick on the floorboards, there should have been evidence of only one set of footprints, my own from the day before yesterday. Now, however, the dust had been scuffed into lines and whorls, evidence of some attempt at obliteration. I passed into the storeroom and again let in the morning sun. The same scuff marks were everywhere apparent. This was not the work of a spirit. A human foot had made this effort to wipe out all trace of its owner’s presence. And who, in the dark, would be aware of the dust on the floor, except someone who knew how long the house had stood unoccupied? Yet again, the name of Eudo Colet came to mind.

I tried the door which opened on to the gallery, but it remained fast shut until I unlocked it with my key. It swung easily and soundlessly inwards, and when I stooped and touched the hinges, my fingers were smeared with a thick, black grease. Most certainly, my nocturnal visitor had been no denizen of the after world, but made of flesh and blood, like me. Yet it had been a child’s voice singing, I would swear to that, a child’s voice, thin and high and pure. I began both to shiver and to sweat. There was something deeply evil here, and as yet I did not know what it was. I still was no nearer to the truth.