Murder for Christ's Mass - By Maureen Ash Page 0,4
out of the hall.
“The road to the quarry is a mucky mess, Sir Bascot,” the mason said as they descended the steps that led down from the keep. “You might want to ride there, instead of walk, even though ’tis not a far distance.”
While Bascot waited for a groom to saddle a horse, the mason set off to wait for the Templar at the quarry, which was located a little way from the cathedral outside the eastern boundary of the city wall. When the mount was ready, Bascot, with Gianni riding pillion behind, guided his mount through the crowds still thronging the precincts of the Minster to the gate in the city wall. Once they were through the portal, they found that the track leading to the quarry, as Cerlo had claimed, was badly mired from the recent rain.
The mason was waiting for them a little distance from the gate, along a footpath leading off the main road to the top of the cliff face. Despite the mud, he had made good speed on foot. There was a shed near the spot where Cerlo was standing, and Bascot guided his mount towards it and, after he and Gianni had dismounted, tethered the horse to an iron ring in the door, and walked up to the mason.
“That’s where he is, lord,” the mason said as they approached, pointing down over the lip of the precipice. “Down there. I told the quarryman to wait with him ’til I come back.”
Bascot looked in the direction Cerlo was pointing. The floor of the quarry was perhaps fifty or sixty feet beneath the top of the rock face and littered with stone blocks of varying sizes. There were still a few small clumps of snow on the ground and atop the pieces of stone. In the middle of the pit was a huge sledge that had been partially loaded with cut blocks, and a giant winch, its arm extending skywards. Large covers of cowhides sewn together were draped over the sledge and the mechanism of the winch, but the edges did not quite reach to the ground and rivulets of water streamed alongside the metal-rimmed wood on the bases of both pieces of equipment. Almost at the foot of the cliff, and perhaps a space of about four feet from it, was a large stone block. Beside it stood the quarryman, the hood of his cloak drawn up over his head. At his feet lay the body of Peter Brand, partially shielded from view by an old piece of sacking.
“I don’t know how long he’s been lying there, lord,” the mason said with some agitation. “That there block beside him has been waiting to be cut into smaller pieces for some time, but we haven’t been able to work ’cause of the bad weather, so none of us have been down in the pit since before the snowstorm started. I covered him up as best I could for decency’s sake,” Cerlo added. “We’d just come to have a look at the sledge when we saw his feet sticking out.” The mason shook his head. “’Twasn’t a sight to cheer a man on such a holy day.”
“I’ll need to go down and examine him,” Bascot said and pointed to a broad opening on the far side of the quarry where the walls of the pit were much lower. “Is that the quickest way to go?”
“’Tis the only way, lord,” Cerlo replied. “You’ll have to go down Masons Row to the far end and along by the stables where we keeps the mules to reach it.”
Bascot nodded and he and Gianni remounted the grey gelding and followed Cerlo as he trudged back towards the gate and then turned down onto the main track he called Masons Row. It was a long thruway, about a mile in length, with a number of buildings at the far end, just before it turned back on itself and descended onto lower ground and led to the opening Bascot had seen.
“There’s drainage holes bored alongside of this track,” Cerlo said as they went down the stone flags of the pathway, “and sometimes they get blocked with stone dust. That’s what I come to check this morning, but it seems they’ve stayed clear.”
After traversing the breadth of the quarry, Bascot and Gianni once again dismounted and walked up to where the body lay. The quarryman gave the Templar a respectful nod and removed the sacking laid over the corpse.