[William Falconer 06] - Falconer and the Ritual of Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

lucky windfall, not yet thinking of working harder the next day. This day had finished early for them, and that was enough. They gathered their tools, and started to wend their way back towards North Gate and the stews of Beaumont. There, the cheap lodgings that had been procured for them had the added benefit of even cheaper alehouses and brothels around every comer.
    John Trewoon slung his sacking bag over his shoulder, and looked for his friend Peter Pawlyn. The wiry little Pawlyn was from the West Country, as was John Trewoon, but where Pawlyn was thin, Trewoon was large. Where the one was short, the other was tall and heavily built. They made an incongruous pair. Especially as Pawlyn was clearly not a man to suffer fools gladly, and John Trewoon was so obviously slowwitted. He was a man unlikely to ever proceed beyond his apprenticeship, never able to fathom the esoteric rules of masonry. But for some reason, Pawlyn had struck up a friendship with this ox of a man. Wilfrid put it down to their common origins.
    Trewoon slung a bear-like, hairy arm over the smaller man’s shoulders, almost enveloping him. They started back towards the High Street together, Trewoon now carrying both his own tools and Pawlyn’s. But as they skirted round the edge of Jewry, Pawlyn paused, as though he had seen something down a side alley. He unwound the friendly ann of his companion from his shoulder.
    ‘John, wait here for me. I won’t be long. I just have an errand to carry out for a friend.’
    ‘Am I not your friend, Peter Pawlyn?’
    .Pawlyn put a hand on both arms of the big man.
    ‘Yes, John. But a man may have more than one friend. Besides; this is more in the way of... business. There’s money in it for me. And you, perhaps, if things go well. We can spend it on a good whore in town rather than the drabs of Beaumont.’
    John Trewoon was puzzled, but let his new friend go, and watched him as he slipped down the little alley that led deep into Jewry. After a while, he laid the two sacks of tools on the ground, and squatted on his haunches to await his friend’s return.

    Under Falconer’s guidance, the excavation of the skeleton became much more systematic. As well as being able to observe each layer as it was revealed by the careful application of the master mason’s trowel, he could extricate items of clothing that might in some way explain the man’s identity.
    The body had been shoved in the gap in the wall on its side, and had been covered with the infill. Over time, the rubble that had been poured over it had settled, exposing the left arm, and part of the torso, though still leaving it hidden within the stone wall. As Thorpe dug lower, more of the body came into view until the upper spine emerged from the debris. All three men peered closely at what lay before them.
    ‘It’s definitely murder, then,’ muttered Peter Bullock.
    They could see that the head had been completely severed from the neck, and was nowhere to be found.

Six

    The old rabbi had listened to young Jose’s tale with interest, and it took his thoughts back over twenty years to another time, when King Henry was squeezing his Jews for a tallage of five thousand marks each. King Louis of France, at the head of yet another abortive Christian crusade, had been captured in Outremer, and a ransom had to be paid. The Jews had been taxed in order to help raise England’s share of the ransom. It had been an unsettling time for Christianity, and consequently for the Jews, who lived by the tolerance of the Christian monarchs. Now it seemed those times were back.
    Only last year, Louis had once again raised a crusade to win back all that had been lost in the ensuing twenty years. But news had come that he had died in North Africa before even reaching the Holy Land, and before Henry’s son, Edward, had joined him.
    The Christians still felt they had lost much to the Muslims.
    Jehozadok knew the Jews had lost even more, including their very Temple, the