Read Chapter 33: The Hidden Hollow

The tower stairs spiraled in tight, shallow steps worn slick by centuries of sandals. Mark held the lantern high, and their shadows lurched along the curved stone walls like creatures testing their cages. The air grew colder as they climbed, carrying the faint metallic bite of old bronze and something else—dust, and the sour smell of trapped damp.

“You ever been up here?” Thomas asked, his voice low despite the emptiness.

“Once,” Mark said. “When I was a novice. Old Aelfric sent me for a rope he’d left in the belfry. Told me not to touch anything else.” He paused on a step, turning slightly. “I remember thinking it strange. A rope. In the belfry, there’s plenty of rope.”

Thomas said nothing. They climbed.

The belfry opened above them like a hollow ribcage. The great bell hung in its timber frame, a massive bronze beast with the smooth, patient stillness of something that had witnessed too much. The donor’s inscription circled its rim—*Malachi, brother of Aelfric, for the souls of the departed.* Thomas ran his fingers over the letters. The metal was cool, unyielding.

“Mark. What do you remember of Aelfric’s brother?”

Mark set the lantern on a stone ledge and rubbed his hands together. “Malachi? He was old when I came. A conversus—came to the faith late, after a life as a soldier, they said. Rough hands. Quiet. He and Aelfric were close, but there was something hard between them. Brother Ambrose used to say they were like two stones grinding against each other.”

“Which stone was Malachi?”

“The one that broke.” Mark’s face was half in shadow. “He left the abbey a year before Aelfric died. No farewell, no blessing asked. Just gone one morning. The bell arrived three months later with a note saying it was for his brother’s soul.”

Thomas studied the bell’s mounting. Bolts of iron, patched with rust. Someone had worked on them recently—the edges of the bolt heads were scored with fresh tool marks. “This bell has been moved.”

“The ringing cracked its cradle,” Mark said. “They reinforced it after the second witness died. I remember the mason complaining about the weight.”

Thomas dropped to his knees, running his hand along the stone floor beneath the bell. Most of the flagstones were dark, uneven, mortared with age. But one—near the north wall, just at the edge of where the bell’s shadow fell at midday—was lighter. The mortar around it was pale and crumbly.

“Mark. The lantern.”

Mark brought it close. Thomas worked his fingers into the gap between the stones. The mortar wasn’t mortar at all. It was lime and sand and something greasy—tallow, perhaps, keeping it soft. He pried. The stone shifted with a dry scrape and lifted free.

Beneath it lay a hollow the size of a man’s skull. Inside, wrapped in oiled cloth, was a bundle of letters.

Thomas’s hands were steady as he lifted it out. The cloth fell away to reveal five letters, their seals broken, their parchment yellowed but legible. The top one bore the name *Sir Athelred, Baron’s Nephew* in a crabbed, familiar hand.

“Aelfric’s writing,” Thomas said.

Mark’s face had gone pale. “Read it.”

Thomas unfolded the first letter. The text was tight, the strokes of a man who wrote as if economy of word were economy of soul.

*To my nephew Athelred—*

*The matter of the grain is settled. The abbey will not oppose your claim to the river meadows if you direct the miller as I have said. But we must be discreet. I have a brother. You do not know him. Malachi was a soldier. He does what I ask and asks nothing in return. But he does not always ask before he acts.*

*The first was an accident. He meant only to frighten Brother Cynric into silence. The scythe was his own idea, to make it look like the harvest accident that took Cynric’s father years ago. But the confession Cynric had written—it burned with him, and I thought that was an end.*

*It was not.*

Thomas turned to the second letter. His mouth was dry.

*The monk Aethelstan had read Cynric’s notes. He came to me with questions. Malachi was listening at the door. He does that. He says a soldier who cannot hear an enemy is a dead soldier. I told Aethelstan nothing, but I knew Malachi would not let him go to the bishop.*

*I did not order it. I must tell you this, nephew. I did not order it. But I did not stop it.*

*They rang the bell at his funeral. Malachi stood at the back of the nave with tears on his face, and I wanted to scream at him that he had no right to weep. He believed he was protecting me. That was the horror. He loved me.*

The third letter was shorter.

*The charter is finished. I have written it so that the abbey’s claim to the river lands extends to the northern woods. When I die, you will find a way to use it. My brother grows unstable. He speaks of God’s purpose. God has no purpose in this. I am writing this so that if I die before the plan is complete, you will know the truth. I have signed my own damnation.*

Thomas read the fourth letter in silence. Mark watched him.

“Well?”

Thomas held it up. “This is the one.” His voice was barely a whisper. “Anselm.”

*Brother Anselm became suspicious. He had found the old measurements of the grain fields and was asking why they did not match the new charter. He came to me, not angry but troubled. He said he wanted to confess the matter to the abbot of a neighboring house, to seek counsel.*

*I told Malachi to watch him. I did not tell Malachi to kill him.*

*The wounds were too clean. That is what I have heard. A soldier’s wound. Not a scythe’s. Malachi still wears the blade. He believes he is a servant of God’s justice, and I cannot unmake what he has done.*

*He has gone to the hermitage at Eastwood. He believes he is praying for my soul. I am praying for his, though I doubt God hears a murderer’s brother.*

The fifth letter was sealed, not with wax but with a smear of dried blood. Thomas broke it open.

*Malachi has written to me. He says he saw the baron’s messenger leaving the abbey and followed him. He says the messenger carried a charter that did not match the one I wrote. He wants to kill the messenger too.*

*I have written to Payn de la Roche to stop this. But I am dying. The cough is in my chest again. And Malachi will not listen to a corpse.*

*If you are reading this, then I am dead, and my brother is still at Eastwood. For the love of God and the salvation of my soul, do not let him kill anyone else. Find this letter. Stop him.*

*I should have stopped him years ago. I thought I could contain him. I thought my love was enough. It was not. It is never enough.*

Thomas lowered the letter. The bell hung above them, vast and indifferent, and in its bronze surface he saw his own face reflected—pale and hollow-eyed.

“Malachi,” he said. “A former monk. A soldier. The bell that tolled for each victim was donated by the man who killed them.”

Mark’s jaw tightened. “Aelfric’s brother. Still alive?”

“At a hermitage. Eastwood.” Thomas folded the letters carefully and tucked them inside his robe. “He sent this bell from his brother’s half-mad guilt. Every peal was a reminder. Every funeral was his confession ringing out over the fields.”

“Do we tell the abbot?”

Thomas shook his head. “The abbot suspects the baron’s nephew. If we bring him these letters before we have Malachi’s own word, it will be one dead man’s words against a hermit’s silence. We need him to confess. Face to face.”

“You’re going to Eastwood.”

“I have to.” Thomas looked at the hollow stone, now empty. “But there’s something else. The fifth letter—Malachi wrote to Aelfric that he saw the baron’s messenger carrying a charter that did not match the one Aelfric wrote. That means someone else altered the charter. Someone who knew the original plan.”

“Brother John,” Mark said.

Thomas’s eyes met his. “John left before the verdict. He carried the knowledge of the conspiracy but never told anyone. What if he didn’t flee out of shame? What if he was the one who changed the charter, and he left because Malachi was sent to silence him too?”

The bell gave a low, resonant hum as a gust of wind moved through the tower’s open arches—a sound like a distant death knell. Thomas turned, climbing back down the stairs with the letters pressed against his heart.

Eastwood was a day’s walk. And someone else might already be on that road.