The Chapel of Bones: (Knights Templar 18) Read Online Free PDF Page A

chosen to rule the Abbey, and when he left Exeter, a new Prior was due to be selected. However, the election was contested, and as there was no clear winner, Abbot Roger asked Peter to caretake the role. So here he was in the position of full power, without the possibility of keeping it.
    All because of the malicious treatment he’d been given by the Cathedral’s Chapter forty years ago, and their vindictive Bishop – may he rot in hell!

Chapter Two
     
    Thomas was still feeling that odd juddering in his belly, as if a load of moths were fighting in there. Vicar Matthew had seen his shock, and gave him a little wine to calm his nerves after he’d helped Thomas down from the ruined scaffolding. However, Master Robert de Cantebrigge was entirely unsympathetic, even when he saw Thomas’s raw hands.
    ‘Look at him, you prick! You dropped a ton of rock on the poor bastard, and killed him! That’s criminal carelessness, that is!’
    ‘Christ’s Bones, Master, I didn’t mean it to happen … I don’t know what—’
    ‘You don’t seem to know sod all, do you?’ Robert spat. ‘You can call on Christ as much as you want, but it won’t bring back a bloody good mason, will it?’
    ‘Master, I didn’t mean to … I’m sorry, it was an accident.’
    ‘Oh no, it wasn’t, Tom. You
killed
him – it was sodding negligence, that’s what. Don’t try to get out of it that way. This was no bleeding accident, laddie – it was near as buggery pure sodding
murder
!’
    The Master Mason was almost screaming at him, the spittle flying from his mouth, and Tom averted his head. Unwise move – for doing so made him catch sight of the corpse, and that in itself was enough to make a man heave. Sweet Jesus! Saul had no head left, no upper torso. The rock dropping agood thirty feet straight onto his head had completely removed every vestige of humanity above his belly. It was merely a repellent smudge of blood and flattened muscle, with a few yellowish cartilaginous lumps that made Tom want to puke. At one side he saw a single tooth, snapped off and not quite destroyed, but the rest of Saul’s face and features were gone. It was like a chalk picture smeared away with a damp cloth. That was all Saul was now: a smear.
    ‘I can’t bring him back,’ Thomas said sadly, and he could feel the tickling of tears behind his lids. Matthew shouted for linen bandages as he said quietly, ‘I would if I could.’
    ‘No, you can’t, can you?
Cretin
! Where am I going to find another decent mason like him? God’s Ballocks! What a fucking mess!’
    ‘He was married,’ Matthew said, his voice hushed. He put a comforting arm about Thomas. ‘We should tell his wife.’
    ‘His
widow
!’ Robert rasped. ‘That prickle can do it. He took her husband from her, let him be the one who explains it to her. I’m damned if I can understand a word he’s said about how he managed to lose the block, myself.’
    Thomas looked back up at the pulley at the top of the crane. Still lashed to the hook was the metal wedge that should have remained inside the block, while whips of rope were tossed from side to side in the wind, their ends frayed where they’d broken. That was the first crack he had heard, when those ropes snapped under the weight of the rock. One, he saw, was still blackened with his own blood where he’d tried to hold it. His hands were raw, the flesh stripped from the palms, and he’d covered both with pieces of linen he’d hacked from his own shirt. They’d be dreadfully painful for days, he knew.
    His rope and the others weren’t supposed to support all thatponderous mass. It should have been the iron wedge that took the weight. How could it have slipped out? He couldn’t have thrust the wedge in properly. That was the only explanation. Robert was right: his negligence had killed Saul.
    Poor Saul. Thomas had known him slightly. There were so many men working here on the rebuilding of the Cathedral that it was hard to get to know