The Devil's Priest Read online

  Table of Contents

  Also by Kate Ellis

  COPYRIGHT

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THE DEVIL’S PRIEST

  by Kate Ellis

  Kate Ellis was born and brought up in Liverpool and studied drama in Manchester. She has worked in teaching, marketing and accountancy and first enjoyed literary success as a winner of the North West Playwrights competition. Keenly interested in medieval history and archaeology Kate lives in North Cheshire, England, with her husband and Vivaldi the cat.

  Also by Kate Ellis

  Wesley Peterson series:

  The Merchant's House, The Armada Boy, An Unhallowed Grave, The Funeral Boat, The Bone Garden, A Painted Doom, The Skeleton Room, The Plague Maiden, A Cursed Inheritance, The Marriage Hearse, The Shining Skull, The Blood Pit, A Perfect Death, The Flesh Tailor and The Jackal Man

  Joe Plantagenet series:

  Seeking The Dead, Playing With Bones, Kissing The Demons

  Kate Ellis has twice been nominated for the Crime Writers’ Association Short Story Dagger and her novel The Plague Maiden was nominated for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year in 2005. For more information regarding Kate Ellis log on to her website: www.kateellis.co.uk

  COPYRIGHT

  First Published in 2006 by Nirvana Books

  Copyright © 2006 by Kate Ellis

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

  In memory of my Mum, Mona Ellis

  PROLOGUE

  EVE OF ST. MATTHEW –

  20TH SEPTEMBER 1539

  The tapers by the altar flickered and spluttered as Sister Agnes knelt to pray for forgiveness. Her muttered words rose with the candle smoke in the incense-laden air.

  The flames leaned as the chapel door opened and Agnes felt a draught of cool air on her neck. But her thoughts were on her sins so she felt no temptation to look round. She opened her eyes and fixed them firmly on the statue of the Virgin. The Pope had guaranteed forgiveness to pilgrims who prayed at the shrine of St. Mary del Quay. It didn’t bother Agnes that King Henry had just robbed the Pope of his authority: she was in need of that forgiveness...in need of a miracle.

  As she stared at the gently smiling statue, fervently mouthing the words of the Ave Maria, a dark shape rose behind the fluttering taper flames. Agnes caught her breath and made the sign of the cross. The words came quicker.

  "Ave Maris stella. Dei mater alma. Sancta Maria ora pro nobis."

  The shape began to loom towards her. She closed her eyes tightly and continued to pray.

  "Deus in adiutorum meum intende: Domine ad adiuvandum me festina."

  Be pleased, oh God to deliver me: oh Lord make haste to help me. Her heart beat quicker in the silence of the tiny chapel.

  When the blow came, Agnes fell senseless to the ground.

  *

  Brother Bartholomew - he still thought of himself as "Brother" - walked along the strand, the damp sand penetrating his shoes and the spaces between his toes. No passengers were waiting to be ferried across the grey expanse of the River Mersey so he would have time to offer an hour's prayer at the church of Our Lady and St. Nicholas.

  It was nine o'clock: the hour when he had sung the office of Terce in the fondly remembered days before his ordered world was shaken by the King’s commissioners. For one brought up in the cloister since early childhood, the closure of Birkenhead Priory had come as the bitterest of blows. But Bartholomew was still young ...and an optimist by nature.

  At the edge of the churchyard stood the chapel of St. Mary del Quay, a small stone building tucked against the boundary of the larger church. Bartholomew felt a sudden impulse to forgo the splendours of Our Lady and St. Nicholas and make his personal devotions in the tiny chapel.

  He wasn’t sure what he would pray for. Some prayed that the Lord would rid them of the King. Others prayed for the demise of his advisors, as praying for the death of kings was treason, and the punishment of treason was hideous execution. Bartholomew usually contented himself with praying for a change in the King's heart: but, as he was not acquainted with His Majesty King Henry the Eighth, he was unaware that this request was unlikely to be granted.

  Bartholomew pushed at the chapel’s weather battered door and it opened silently. He stepped from the bright September sunshine into the candlelit gloom and stood near the doorway while his eyes adjusted to the dim light.

  Then he approached the statue of the Virgin, so unadorned yet so powerful in its simplicity, and he was about to kneel on the cold stone floor when something in front of the altar caught his eye. A figure lay on the ground, the body too crooked to be a pilgrim prostrate in prayer. The statue of the Blessed Virgin, wondrously escaped from the commissioners' destruction, stared down at him as he approached warily and knelt down.

  It was a woman, a young woman, and to Bartholomew’s relief she stirred and groaned. She was alive. Blood oozed from a gash on her head and the smooth stone flags beneath her glistened dark red. So much blood for such a small wound.

  "Mistress, what happened?”

  She looked up at him with grey eyes that kept flickering shut, fighting unconsciousness. Bartholomew touched her face gently, pushing back a strand of fair hair that had escaped from her bloodstained white cap and now intruded onto her lips. She was young, comely. Bartholomew leaned towards her to hear what she was saying, suppressing the thought that the girl was pretty as his training had taught him to do.

  “Who are you?” he whispered. “What is your name?”

  "Agnes...Agnes Moore.”

  “What happened here? Who did this to you?”

  “He came for me. Satan came for my soul.” Her eyes closed as she lost her battle for consciousness.

  Bartholomew gathered her up into his arms, strong from rowing against the currents of the river. Moore. He knew the name: all Liverpool knew it. Old Hall, the Moore's house, was nearby. He held the young woman close to him and felt his arms sticky with the blood that was seeping through her russet gown.

  As Bartholomew strode out into the daylight with his precious burden, two shapes rose slowly and unseen behind the plain stone altar.

  FEAST OF ST. MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS –

  29TH SEPTEMBER 1539

  Mistress Marjory Moore adjusted her snowy white cap and prepared to take the bowl of broth upstairs, seething with annoyance. This was servant's work but she wanted to see the girl; to find out the truth.

  Agnes had been trouble from the moment she arrived: disappearing for hours on end when there was work to be done. And now this: the girl had lain in bed for over a week being waited on hand and foot. And the disgrace of her condition, the lost baby. And to think the girl used to be a nun.

  Mistress Marjory's Christian charity had been sorely strained over the past nine days.

&n
bsp; Agnes's disappearances had become a regular thing; Marjory had grown used to them. But when the young monk - no, he was no longer a monk; she must think of him as a ferryman - carried her unconscious, bleeding body into the courtyard for all the servants to see - for the whole town to see for all Marjory knew - her thoughts had become distinctly uncharitable.

  Now the girl lay upstairs in her chamber and her silence was causing Marjory further irritation. Marjory Moore was a woman who liked to know what was going on in her own household. The wound to the girl's head had been bad enough: she had either fallen or been hit but claimed to have no recollection of it.

  But the blood that had soaked through Agnes's dress... Marjory, having lived upon this earth forty five years, knew the signs. And when the girl had been undressed by Marjory and her maidservant, Griselda, her suspicions had been confirmed. Agnes had miscarried. Marjory had thanked the Virgin that the girl’s condition was not too far advanced and she had instructed Griselda to say nothing.

  Agnes had not said a word, either about the attack or the other matter. Marjory had asked - could not resist asking - but had been answered by a shake of Agnes's fair head.

  Marjory's annoyance bubbled beneath her capable surface. Had she not taken the girl in when the King had closed the nunnery at Godstow? Had Marjory shirked her Christian duty to her dead cousin's only child? Had she not given the girl a roof over her head? And she was repaid with deceit and insolent silence.

  Marjory opened the door of Agnes's bedchamber. The girl lay back against the stained linen sheets, staring upwards and Marjory felt another stab of irritation.

  "I've brought your broth, Agnes. It would not do to let it grow cold." She put the bowl down firmly on the wooden chest at the foot of the bed.

  Agnes looked at Marjory, a strange faraway look. Typical, Marjory thought to herself, not a word of thanks.

  After a few moments the girl spoke. "Aunt, I have thought about what happened."

  "And?" said Marjory impatiently.

  "I saw him rising up behind the altar. Then I remember nothing."

  Marjory took a deep breath. This was the most forthcoming Agnes had been since Bartholomew had brought her back unconscious from the chapel.

  "Who did you see, Agnes?" Marjory sat down on the edge of the bed.

  But the pressure of the question proved too much for the weakened girl. She sank back against the bolster. She would say no more about her experience. Instead she muttered weakly, "I will write to Lady Katheryn. She will advise me."

  "And who, pray, is Lady Katheryn?" Marjory felt her impatience rise again as she looked across at the broth which was congealing on the chest.

  "Our mother Abbess. She is not far from here...but forty miles away in a place called Cheadle. I will send for her."

  Agnes closed her eyes and turned over in bed just as Marjory was about to point out that she alone had the authority to issue invitations to visit the Old Hall: Agnes should be ashamed of her audacity. Then it occurred to Marjory that such a woman as Lady Katheryn would be unlikely to take an interest in the misfortunes of one of her former novices. The Abbess would be leading a new life on a generous pension amongst her gentry kinsfolk and would doubtless ignore a silly girl's ramblings.

  With this comforting thought, Marjory left her rebuke unsaid and crept quietly from the room. All this talk of apparitions in the chapel had convinced her even further that the girl’s brain was addled. But she would get to the root of this matter and find out the truth.

  And she was determined to find the answer to the question that most perplexed her. Who had been the father of Agnes's child?

  FEAST OF ST. JEROME –

  30TH SEPTEMBER 1539

  Salmon were plentiful in the deep green waters of the River Mersey. Peter Fisher owed his livelihood to the glistening creatures, as had his father before him and his father before that.

  But sometimes the river gave up other, more grisly, catches from its depths. Peter swallowed hard and made the sign of the cross when he saw what was caught in his net. Like a huge amorphous black jelly fish, the thing was dragged behind the boat as Peter and his son rowed frantically for the strand.

  Peter had said nothing: there was no need for words. The poor creature, the bloated thing that was once a man, had to be returned to the shore to be claimed by his kin and given Christian burial. The body, born up by the putrefying gases within, sailed behind the small craft, its voluminous garments spread out in its wake. A monk's habit perhaps, Peter thought. But not the familiar Benedictine habit of the brothers of Birkenhead Priory. A priest’s gown maybe? Peter could not quite make it out.

  When they reached the strand, Peter and his son dragged their craft up the sand into the shelter of the Tower's high stone battlements, the body slithering behind. Peter approached slowly, signalling to his son to stand back. The corpse stank and Peter's hand went automatically to his face to shield his nostrils.

  Peter moved the sodden robes aside to reveal the face, then quickly replaced them, not wishing to look at the horror of the swollen mess and the staring empty eye sockets. He touched the corpse again with his foot and the gown - definitely a priest’s gown - fell aside to reveal part of the right arm.

  Peter stepped back, staring at the white of the bone protruding from the hacked stump in the place where the corpse's right hand should have been.

  CHAPTER 1

  Lady Katheryn Bulkeley rose from her prayers. Thomas Cromwell - the Chancellor and the most powerful man in England after the King - had refused her eloquent request to spare her nunnery from the fate of so many others, but he could not stop her doing her duty to her Maker.

  A scuffling sound in the rushes by the door made her turn. Jane, the mouse-haired maidservant, stood in the doorway, open mouthed, holding a piece of parchment between two fingers as if she were afraid the thing would burn her.

  "Begging your pardon, my lady. I didn't wish to disturb you when you were..."

  Lady Katheryn smiled. "What have you there, Jane? Something for me?"

  Jane stared at her new mistress cautiously and held the parchment gingerly in front of her. "The chapman called, my lady." She swallowed hard. "He brought this letter for you...from Liverpool he said. From the household of Mistress Moore."

  "Did you ask the chapman to stay, Jane? I should like to see his wares. Did you buy anything from him?"

  Jane, emboldened by her mistress's friendly manner, relaxed. "Needles, my lady...and some ribbon." She looked down, blushing. "He is still in the village, my lady. I could send for him if you wish."

  "I should like that." Katheryn smiled. "Just because I've spent much of my life in a nunnery, it doesn't follow that I've lost all interest in pretty things. Has he any laces?"

  "Oh yes, my lady...some fine laces."

  "Then please find him and ask him to call again."

  Katheryn took the letter graciously and the girl bobbed a curtsey and scurried from the room. Katheryn sighed and smiled to herself: the charm she had used to put nervous novices at their ease seemed to work equally well with maidservants.

  She looked at the letter with curiosity. Moore? Where had she heard that name? But if she didn't read it, her curiosity would never be satisfied. She broke the seal.

  "Mother Abbess," the letter began - a title to which, according to those in authority, Katheryn was no longer entitled. "I beg you to help me in my time of trouble. I remember with much gratitude your kindness to me at Godstow and I do not know where else I should turn except to you and my Saviour. Having no family, I stay with my father's cousin, Mistress Moore of Liverpool, at the Old Hall there. I have sinned grievously and I fear I am in great danger both of body and soul. I am, Mother Abbess, your humble servant, Sister Agnes Moore."

  Katheryn reread it twice. She remembered young Sister Agnes, a pretty, nervous dreamer little suited to the cloister. Katheryn had once suggested to the girl that a husband and string of demanding children would have had a beneficial effect on someone of her over-rom
antic nature (Katheryn, a realist herself, had never been one for dreaming). But Agnes had been resigned to the religious life: and with her lack of rank and wealth, she had probably had little choice in the matter.

  Katheryn looked at herself in the burnished metal of her mirror; a treasure rescued from her well appointed quarters at Godstow and brought to her new home, the family’s manor house which - because of her brother’s calling - doubled as the village Rectory.

  She was still an attractive woman, even at the age of thirty five, she thought to herself murmuring a quick prayer asking the Almighty to forgive her small sin of vanity. She pushed back a wisp of brown hair which was escaping from beneath her white linen cap and smoothed down her gown. A gown that displayed her figure to the best advantage - so much more fetching than her nun's habit.

  Katheryn turned her attention once more to Agnes’s letter. She read it again and found herself wishing that the girl had been more specific. The devil had devised many traps for the unwary. Grievous sin could mean anything. From what she recalled of Agnes, the girl was far too timid to indulge in serious sin, but who could tell; times and people change. She sighed. Maybe the chapman would throw some light on Agnes’s situation when he returned to the Rectory.