The Subtle Serpent by Peter Tremayne Page B

towards the wooden chapel.
    ‘Six days have passed since the unfortunate was taken out of our well. Had you been longer in your arrival then we would, of course, have had to bury the corpse. However, as it is winter, the weather has been cold enough to retain the body for a while and we have a cold place for food storage under the chapel, a subterraneus, where we have placed the body. There are reputed to be several caves under the abbey buildings. But, even in these conditions, we could not have kept it forever. We have arranged to bury the body in our abbey cemetery tomorrow morning.’
    ‘Have you discovered the identity of the unfortunate?’
    ‘I am hoping that you will solve that matter.’
    The abbess led the way through the cloisters, along the stone-paved corridor, passing the chapel doors, to the entrance of a small building made of rough-hewn granite blocks whose walls were built in the dry stone method, simply laid one on top of another. It was an appendage built
on the side of the wooden tower. This stone building, which also connected with the tower, was apparently a store room and the pungent aroma of stored herbs and spices caught at Fidelma’s senses making her momentarily breathless. However, it was a pleasing, refreshing odour.
    Abbess Draigen crossed to a shelf and took up a jar. She then took, from a pile, two squares of linen and soaked them with the liquid from the vessel. Fidelma inhaled the piquant odour of lavender. Solemnly, Abbess Draigen handed her the impregnated square of cloth.
    ‘You will need this, sister,’ she advised.
    She led the way to a corner of the room where a flight of stone steps descended. They wound down into a cave which stretched about thirty feet in length, was twenty feet wide and whose naturally arched ceiling rose ten feet or more. Fidelma noticed what at first seemed to be some scratch marks on the entrance arch and then realised that it was the etched outlines of a bull; no, not a bull. It was more like a calf. The Abbess Draigen noticed her examination.
    ‘This place was once used in pagan worship, so we are told. The well which Necht blessed, for instance. There are a few remains from ancient times such as this scratching of a cow or some such animal.’
    Fidelma silently acknowledged the reception of this information. She noticed another series of stairs ascending into the darkness just beyond the arched entrance.
    ‘Those lead directly up to the tower of the abbey,’ explained the abbess before Fidelma could frame the obvious question. ‘It is where we house our modest library and, at the top of the tower, our pride … a water-clock.’
    They passed on into the cave itself. It was deathly cold. Fidelma reasoned that the subterraneus must be below sea level at this point. The cave was lit. She saw at once that the flickering light came from four tall candles at the far end.

    Fidelma did not need to be told what it was that was lying under the shroud of linen on what appeared to be a table whose four corners were marked by the candles. The outline was easily recognisable except that the body seemed foreshortened. She approached cautiously. There was not much else in the cave. Some boxes were stacked against one wall and nearby were rows of amphorae and earthen containers, whose faint odours identified them as being used for storing wine and spirits.
    In spite of the cold, Abbess Draigen was right. She did need the piece of lavender-impregnated cloth. While herbs and other scented plants had been strategically placed around the body, there was no mistaking the bitter stench that rose from the already decomposing corpse. Fidelma involuntarily caught her breath and raised the linen to her nostrils. Winter chill or not, the corpse was reeking with putrefaction.
    Abbess Draigen, standing on the other side of the corpse, smiled thinly, her face half hidden by her own lavender-impregnated cloth.
    ‘The burial service will be performed at first light tomorrow,