Matins, Ides of April

Cloakroom, The Ivory Tower

The changing of guards was a swift and silent procedure. Only four guards were stationed at any given time in the room wryly called the “cloakroom”. Each guard faced outwards towards his designated cardinal direction. When the bell rang softly for Matins, four guards entered, exchanged a few curt words with the guard they were relieving, then took their post.

The relieving guard for the northern post, Jeremiah, had been an incumbent of this role since he was sixteen years old. He was now coming onto fifty.

Every shift had been the same as the next.

But that day Jeremiah felt that something had changed. He felt that something was very wrong.

At first he remained unmoving at rigid attention. But soon the discomfort became so great that he had to turn his head. He coughed into his left shoulder and in doing so looked over his shoulder at the podium in the centre of the room.

For a moment he was frozen, unable to move or speak. Then he said, almost as a mutter, “raise the alarm”.

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The east-facing guard turned to look at him. Then he looked behind him towards the podium. He dropped his spear, which landed onto the floor with a loud clang. Only the west-facing guard was able to regain his composure and rush out of the cloakroom and call for Lieutenant Cole, overseer of the Ivory Tower, and deliver the message: the Black Cloak was missing.

Prime, Ides of April

Main Hall, The Ivory Tower

Lieutenant Cole stood, his usually plethoric face blanched white, his moustache trembling, in front of four guards. In his left arm he held a lance. Then, with the accuracy for which he had made a name for himself during his days as a knight, he struck each man in the heart with four clean, successive, devastating blows. Then he threw the blood-stained lance onto the floor and retreated to his chambers.

Lieutenant Cole’s Private Chambers, The Ivory Tower

Lieutenant Cole opened the bottom drawer of his bedside armoire and produced from it an obsidian dagger, a gift from the Rinehart Family from the time when he briefly trained their only child, the daredevil Kate. He unsheathed the blade and stared at it for a while. Then he looked at his bed, where his wife, Catharine, lay sleeping. She was a beautiful girl of just seventeen years old, now two months pregnant, in a flowing peignoir, her brunette hair sprawled elegantly. Lieutenant Cole reached forward and undid her top bottons to reveal her pale breasts. Then he stabbed her nine times in the heart with the obsidian blade. Catharine awoke at the first stab, her mouth opening in a silent scream, but was already dead by the third. Turning around swiftly, Lieutenant Cole unwrapped the bedside curtains and deftly hung himself.