by Paul Doherty
‘Oh sweet Lord.’ Ranulf leant forward. ‘Sir Hugh, I follow your logic. Those fire arrows and the killing of the sentry, they were not just to terrify but to distract. If the sentries along our defences fear attack, they will seek shelter. They will not be so keen to stare out, to lean against the crenellations and gaze into the dark.’
‘So if anyone wished to move soldiers into the valley,’ Corbett repeated, ‘what better time than at night, especially when the watchmen at Holyrood are no longer vigilant, but hide away, fearful of arrows whipping through the dark.’
‘But what hostile force, Sir Hugh, and why?’
‘Like you, Ranulf, I can only conjecture, I cannot give any logical explanation. I believe this abbey is being brought under close scrutiny, but as for the why and the wherefore . . .’ Corbett waved a hand. ‘We do not know, we can only conjecture, so let us return to the matters in hand.
‘Item. The murders here are most mysterious. As for their motive.’ He shrugged. ‘We cannot say. And the how? Well, we have posed this problem before. How can an able-bodied man be slaughtered by a nail driven through his forehead?’ He rolled the quill pen between his fingers. ‘Brother Crispin showed us how it could be done, but that was on the corpse of an old man. Our three victims were warriors, fighters to their very core; their resistance would have been fierce and ferocious. Oh, by the way, Ranulf, did you find out anything about that old man whose corpse we viewed? Who was he? Where did he come from? How did he die?’
‘Sir Hugh, from the enquiries I made, he was a wandering beggar who presented himself at the abbey gate. He was admitted in accordance with the rule of St Benedict and granted the usual hospitality. He was taken to the guest house and given food and drink. By the time the lay brother returned, the old man had collapsed and died. The cause of his death seems natural enough: old age, exhaustion, the cold . . .’
‘He did not look emaciated to me. I recall a sinewy body, but . . . Never mind, we can return to that by and by.’ Corbett peered at his henchman. ‘Do you know, Ranulf, I heard or saw something today that was not logical, but I cannot recall it because I am so tired.’ He tapped the quill against his face. ‘It will come back to me. In the end, these killings are shrouded in mystery. And what is their cause? Is there enmity between these former knights? Has something happened to provoke sudden bloody murder?’
He returned to his memorandum. ‘Item. We also have visitors here. First, Roger Mortimer, the self-proclaimed justiciar in these parts. Mortimer claims the murders in Holyrood should come under his scrutiny because they occurred in his jurisdiction. In fact, he is stretching the truth. These murders occurred on consecrated ground, church land, in an abbey directly under the protection of the Crown.’
‘Hence our journey here.’
‘Precisely, Ranulf, so what is the real reason for that sinister marcher lord’s presence amongst us?’ Corbett glanced across at his henchman. ‘I understand he has brought a retinue of ruffians with him.’
‘Armed to the teeth,’ Ranulf agreed. ‘The sweepings of every prison along the Welsh March. Most of them should be decorating gibbets rather than riding horses.’
‘They look like veterans, skilled fighters. According to Ap Ythel, they claim to be honest men, not thieves.’
‘I would agree.’ Ranulf laughed sharply. ‘They just find it difficult to distinguish between their property and everybody else’s. I would certainly advise our good father abbot to watch anything that can be moved; they certainly will.’
Corbett smiled and paused to choose a fresh quill pen. ‘Item,’ he continued. ‘Just as mysterious is the presence of the French envoy, Monsieur Amaury de Craon. Oh, I know all about his invitations and his so-called deep concern for one of the brothers slain here, but I don’t believe a word he says. Why is he really here? To meddle, to plot, to conspire? De Craon is attracted to treachery as a mouse to cheese. Something in this abbey warrants his presence here. And so we come to Edmund Fitzroy. Now that the shock of meeting him has receded, I must confront the issue of that young man’s origins, as well as what should happen to him both now and in the future.’
‘And as you have said,’ Ranulf pointed out, ‘we must also consider that our secret is not such a great secret any more. News of our prisoner has seeped out: it could well be the true reason for Mortimer and de Craon’s deep interest in this abbey. Sir Hugh, I appreciate that Fitzroy’s identity is closely guarded, but we all know there is no such thing as a real secret. I suggest both Mortimer and de Craon are here to fish in troubled waters, or even just to disturb such muddy waters for the sake of the stink.’
‘Possibly, Ranulf, and that brings us to the next problem.’ Corbett paused. ‘Item. The Valley of Shadows. We now know that a hideous massacre took place there eleven years ago, when the old king seized Edmund Fitzroy. The valley still holds secrets and may well house a coven bitterly opposed to this abbey and any semblance of English authority, though that too is still a matter of pure speculation. It could be the haunt of rebels, but it may also be a resting place, a refuge for the remnants of that malignant cohort, the Black Chesters.’
The clerk put his quill pen down and, despite the warmth of the chamber, suppressed a shiver. He rubbed his face in his hands and stared at his henchman. ‘We see things,’ he murmured. ‘We hear things. We feel things but we don’t know their origin. In a word, Ranulf, what if we are the cause of all this?’ He paused. ‘Have we been brought here for some great hurt, some deeply malicious mischief? Are all these mysteries like strands in a web spun around this abbey, hoping to draw us in? If that is so, then we must discover, track and kill the spider busy at the centre.’
Next morning, just before dawn, Corbett led his cavalcade from Holyrood. The clerk had slept well, risen early and washed at the lavarium. He and his two henchmen had broken their fast alone in the buttery. After they’d finished, Corbett gave Chanson sealed letters and instructions about his swift departure for Tewkesbury Abbey. Once there, he was to seek out the former clerk known as Mistletoe, deliver Corbett’s message and bring back his response. Chanson left, riding one mount, with another galloping beside him.
Corbett’s party mustered in the outer bailey. Ap Ythel and eight of his archers were joined by a similar group led by Mortimer, whilst Devizes fielded sixteen armoured hobelars. Corbett demanded that each of these carry a long kite shield lashed to the side of his high-horned saddle. He also insisted on breaking out the royal pennant proclaiming the king’s personal insignia of three lions rampant against a gloriously coloured field of blue, gold and scarlet. Ignoring Mortimer’s mumbled claims about being the royal justiciar, Ranulf fastened the stiffened pennant in place, positioning the butt of the standard pole in a specially fashioned hole on his right stirrup.
Corbett rode up and down the column, checking that all was in order, then gave the signal and the cavalcade clattered out of the bailey, thundering across the lowered drawbridge and into the stinging morning air. As he stared back at the abbey, it looked even more forbidding, a towering mass of stone against an angry sky. He abruptly crossed himself, raising his hand in salutation to Abbot Henry and others watching their departure from the fighting platform above the fortified gatehouse. Then he pulled his deep capuchon forward, making sure the woollen coif beneath protected as much of his head and face as possible. He had heard the gossip of the stable yard, dire predictions that a fierce snow storm was gathering. He glanced up at the sky, grey and lowering. The chatter was correct. Heavy clouds were gathering over the Valleys of Shadows, floating like sombre angels towards Holyrood. Corbett reckoned it was certainly cold enough to snow, even as he winced against the icy wind, which cut at any exposed flesh.
Head down, the clerk slouched in the saddle, quietly reciting the Mercy Psalm. He glanced quickly at Ranulf riding beside him and noticed how his henchman had wrapped Ave beads around his gauntleted hand. Three of Ap Ythel’s archers rode ahead of them, the rest of the cavalcade behind them, two abreast. The weather was bitter. A
ll conversation died as they entered the mouth of the valley. Despite his years of campaigning in Wales, fighting for his very life on mist-shrouded hillsides, Corbett felt he was crossing a most forbidding landscape. The path they followed snaked along the narrow floor of the valley, and he felt the place, like some living thing, close on them in a deadly embrace.
Both sides of the valley were covered by a dense sea of trees of every kind, ancient forests and copses that had been allowed to grow and spread, tangling into each other to block out the light and create their own special darkness, where any monster or wolfshead could safely lurk, wait and watch. No forester or verderer had even attempted to clear a path. Now, in the heart of midwinter, most of the trees had lost their leaves in the turbulent autumn winds. Stark black branches, swept clean of all greenery, stretched up and out to sway slightly in the wind and so create a constant shuffling noise. Above the trees the hunting birds, hawks and other predators circled and cawed, keeping constant watch for any unsuspecting prey. Occasionally Corbett would glimpse some forest creature, fox, deer or the sloping body of a weasel, flit across their path from one wall of trees into the other. On one occasion he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. He glanced to his left and was sure he glimpsed a woman garbed in a green robe and hood, a fairly old woman, just standing amongst the trees staring out at them. However, when he looked again, she had disappeared. He crossed himself and murmured a prayer for protection.
Ranulf had now stopped threading the beads and was quietly cursing, muttering how he truly hated such places. Corbett ignored him, turning to nod at Ap Ythel, who raised a hand and shouted an order to two of his bowmen. These skilled hunters slid from their saddles, one darting into the line of trees on their left, the other into the forest on their right, slipping through the darkness but keeping themselves visible to the cavalcade. At the same time both men were deep enough in the forest fringe that they could seek out any threat. This was the usual order of march through such a place; Corbett had done the same during the wars in Wales. He reckoned that any solitary enemy archer or hostile mass of men would find it difficult to hide or prepare an ambuscade unless they first approached the area that Ap Ythel’s scouts were now patrolling. The cavalcade continued undisturbed. Nevertheless, Corbett felt a prickling unease at the oppressive silence, an ominous stillness that could not be explained yet which frayed the mind with all kinds of unnamed fears.
After about an hour’s ride, Devizes declared that they must be halfway through the valley. Corbett ordered a rest so that the men could drink from wine skins and eat some of the fresh bread and dried meats the abbey buttery had supplied in linen bags. He himself took a gulp of wine and, chewing on a piece of bread, dismounted to stretch his legs, telling Ap Ythel to summon his scouts.
Both men were veteran archers with keen sight and a nose for mischief. They pulled back their hoods and eased the woollen coifs beneath. ‘We saw nothing,’ one of them declared in that lilting, sing-song voice of the Welsh.
‘Aye,’ the other agreed. ‘We saw nothing, did we, Owein? But we felt something.’
‘What?’ Corbett turned his face against the sharp breeze, then stared up at the ravens, their black-feathered wings fluttering against a sky that had grown even more sullen and threatening.
‘Sir Hugh,’ Owein murmured, ‘we know the forests of the night. Aye, that’s what we call them. In a word, master . . .’ He lapsed into Welsh before hastily correcting himself. ‘We are not alone.’ He gestured at his companion. ‘Chelling feels the same. Glimpses, Sir Hugh. Shadows fluttering through the trees. You think all paths, if any, would be blocked, but they are not. Occasionally we stumbled on spindle-thin trackways, like those used by the deer, that wind around the trees and cut through the sprouting gorse.’
‘And you suspect these shadows are really hunters?’
‘Master, we are being followed. We are being watched, and whoever they are, I don’t think they mean us well . . .’ Owein broke off as one of the cavalcade yelled a warning, pointing up at the sky.
Corbett glanced up and saw the fire arrows loosed from the trees on one side being answered by two more from the other: flaming shafts streaking across the iron-grey sky. These caused consternation amongst the cavalcade, riders hastily dismounting as their horses, catching the panic, reared and whinnied, sharpened hooves scything the air. Men backed away from them, drawing their swords, archers stringing their war bows. Some of Devizes’ retinue began to loosen the kite shields fastened to their saddle horns. At Corbett’s request, Ap Ythel, assisted by Mortimer, moved amongst the men insisting on silence, urging them to sheath their weapons and calm the horses. At last, order was restored, the cavalcade using their mounts as a ring of defence against any possible attack. Ap Ythel dispatched scouts to search the trees on either side; these quickly returned, reporting they could detect nothing amiss.
Corbett ordered the troop to mount, and they slowly continued their journey. In a sense, he was relieved. There was an enemy; it was not just a matter of frayed nerves or fearful thoughts. A hostile force was following them, and sooner or later, their foe would show their hand.
At last the trackway turned sharply and widened. The trees receded on either side and Corbett glimpsed the summit of Caerwent cliffs, a grim ridge of grey stone soaring above the treeline. They reached the village Fitzroy had described, a great clearing stretching either side of the trackway. As they entered, the first snowflakes fluttered down, thick white feathers cascading silently through the air. Corbett pushed on into the centre of the village, noting the ruins either side, wattle-and-daub cottages, their wooden pillars and thatched roofs much decayed. All the doors and lintels had been removed, and he recalled the old king’s assault on the caves. He must have seized already-cut timber, both here and elsewhere, to build his fighting sledges and platforms. The tavern the Glory of the Morning stood at the centre of the village, nothing more than a derelict ruin, with only a bare shell of crumbling walls. As with other dwellings, the fencing, pens, stables and outhouses had either collapsed or been wrenched down. Corbett felt he was entering a land of ghosts, a place of devastation and desolation, the haunt and home of birds and wild animals.
‘Nothing,’ Ranulf murmured. ‘Look around, master, nothing but the faded, shattered remnants of what used to be a village, with all of its . . .’ He paused as one of the outriders Corbett had dispatched along the trackway came thundering back.
‘Sir Hugh!’ the man shouted. ‘My lord.’ He gestured at Mortimer. ‘You must see this.’
He turned his horse. Corbett raised a hand at the cavalcade and followed. The snow was now beginning to thicken, a falling sheet of white that would soon cover everything. They left the village and rounded a sharp corner to face a stretch of shale-covered ground that stretched to the foot of the cliffs. The outrider reined in, pointing to five poles in the middle of this open area. The poles had been hammered into the earth, and on each a severed head had been thrust, the faces hidden by straggling, blood-caked hair.
Corbett told the rest to wait as he, Ranulf and Ap Ythel dismounted.
‘I’ll go too!’ Devizes shouted.
Corbett nodded in agreement and walked slowly towards the poles. As he approached, he saw that what had appeared to be mounds of rags were, on closer inspection, actually blood-soaked torsos. Once he reached the gruesome sight, he stood and stared at the pathetic remnants. All five heads had been greatly mauled by the weather, time and the hungry plucking of predators. The soft parts – nose, lips, ears and eyes – had been brutally scavenged, making hideous masks of what had once been the faces of men. Corbett stared pityingly at the abomination and quietly invoked the De Profundis, the church’s psalm for the dead. Then he turned and walked round to the bundled torsos, staring down at the arrow shafts that had pierced the chest of each victim. He also noticed how their wrists had been tightly bound behind their backs.
‘It’s the hunting party.’
Corbett glanced over his shoulder. Devizes now
stood before the poles, staring closely at the faces of the severed heads. ‘I recognise them still,’ the master-at-arms declared. ‘Retainers of Brother Raphael, skilled hunters; they will be sorely missed.’
Corbett nodded and turned back, muttering a swift requiem as he and Ranulf walked closer to the cliff face. The snow was now falling heavily. Corbett stared at the bleak landscape before him and fought to control his fears, to quieten the panic curdling within him. This was a desolate place, a wilderness for both body and soul. He glanced up at the cliffs, then at the treeline on either side. Here Edward of England had sacrificed men, women and children to his own implacable will. According to Fitzroy, he had hanged his prisoners from these trees after he had slaughtered others.
Corbett peered up through the falling snow. Now that he had drawn closer, he could make out the mouths of the caves, noting how the rock around them was still blackened by the fiery missiles Edward had launched. He could also make out the arrow-thin trackways that threaded the rock face. He now understood the full story of what had happened here in the Valley of Shadows. Edmund Fitzroy, that mysterious royal prisoner, had been taken here as a child. Slowly but surely, the rumours about his parentage and his close similarity to the old king had leaked out. Fitzroy had stupidly confided in a hermit, and he, possibly because he was an adherent of that satanic coven the Black Chesters, had informed his masters, who would realise only too well the potential for mischief Fitzroy posed.
The mercenaries who had arrived here were Black Chesters, sent to collect Fitzroy; they in turn had been watched by the old king, who had also been alerted about what had happened. Only God knows how long Edward of England had watched and waited. However, once the Black Chesters made their move, he had taken action. The Knights of the Swan had swept into this valley like God’s vengeance on horseback. Edward had followed to wreak his anger and utterly annihilate the threat. He had slaughtered the Black Chesters and their adherents, then captured Fitzroy, though he could not bring himself to execute his own blood.