by Paul Doherty
Once Mass was finished, Corbett questioned Father Vincent.
‘Oh!’ The priest smiled. ‘So you like our paintings?’ He took off his chasuble, folding it neatly before putting it on the altar steps.
‘Yes, they are original,’ Corbett replied.
‘I did them myself,’ Father Vincent replied grandly. ‘I am afraid I am not a very good painter but, in my youth, I was a huntsman, a verderer in the King’s service at Woodstock.’ The priest finished divesting and blew the candles out on the side altar. ‘So, you are the King’s clerk, are you?’ he asked. ‘So many visitors here! But you haven’t come to admire my handiwork, you’ve come about poor Passerel, haven’t you?’
The priest took them down the steps and pointed to the entrance to the rood screen.
‘That’s where the poor man fell, dead as a worm he was! His face all swollen, his body twisted in agony.’ He tapped Corbett on the shoulder and pointed to Maltote. ‘He can sit on one of the stools if he wants. He looks as if he’s not awake yet.’
Maltote happily complied as Father Vincent took Ranulf and Corbett out of the main sanctuary. He led them behind the high altar.
‘That’s where I left Passerel. I gave him a jug of wine and a platter of food, after he’d sought sanctuary. He didn’t say much to me so I left him. I told the crowd of scholars who pursued him here that, if they didn’t leave God’s Acre, I’d excommunicate them on the spot. I left the side door open and went to bed.’
‘Stay awake!’ a voice shouted. ‘Stay awake and be ready! Satan is like a roaring lion who wanders about seeking whom he may devour!’
Ranulf whirled round, hand on his dagger, at the sound of the voice which boomed like a bell round the church.
‘That’s only Magdalena our anchorite,’ Father Vincent apologised.
Corbett stared at the strange box-like structure built over the main door. It reminded him of a nest Maeve had built and placed in the trees during wintertime so the birds could come and feast.
‘You know nothing of Passerel’s murder?’ he asked.
‘Nothing whatsoever.’
‘Wouldn’t Magdalena have alerted you?’
‘Oh, she’s half-mad,’ Father Vincent whispered. ‘As I said, I gave Passerel his food and retired for the night. The side door was left open so, if he wished, he could go out to relieve himself.’
‘And he said nothing,’ Corbett persisted. ‘Nothing to explain his sudden flight from Sparrow Hall?’
‘No, he was just a frightened, little man,’ Father Vincent replied, ‘who bleated about his innocence.’
Corbett looked over his shoulder to where Ranulf was trying to shake Maltote awake.
‘Maltote!’ he ordered. ‘Go back to Sparrow Hall and wait for us there!’
Maltote needed no second bidding but lumbered down the church and out through the main door.
‘I’d like to meet the anchorite,’ Corbett said. ‘I understand she not only saw Passerel’s murderer but, many years ago, cursed the founder of Sparrow Hall, Sir Henry Braose?’
‘Ah, so you have heard the legends?’
Father Vincent led them down the church and stopped before the anchorite’s makeshift cell.
‘Magdalena!’ the priest called up. ‘Magdalena, we have visitors from the King! They wish to speak to you.’
‘I’m here,’ the voice replied. ‘In the service of the King of Kings!’
‘Magdalena!’ Corbett called out. ‘I am Sir Hugh Corbett, king’s clerk. I wish you no ill. I must ask you questions, but I do not wish to shatter your privacy by entering your cell. Before I leave, I would like to make an offering, so you can light candles and pray for my soul.’
Corbett saw the leather covering over the small window pulled slightly aside. He glimpsed a grey-haired, shabby figure shuffling along the narrow gallery, followed by the slap of sandals on stone steps. Magdalena crawled into the church. She was almost bent double, her dirty-white hair fell down to her waist. Her eyes were bright but Corbett was struck by the lurid manner in which she’d painted her face: the right cheek black, the left white. In her hands she carried a small, cracked hand mirror. She shuffled and sat down at the base of a pillar. Magdalena stared into the mirror, even as her thin, bony fingers clawed at the crude rosary wrapped round her right wrist, her lips moving soundlessly in prayer. She glanced up, her bright piercing eyes studying Corbett.
‘Well, dark-faced clerk? What do you want with poor Magdalena?’ Her gaze shifted to Ranulf. ‘You and your man of war. Why do you shatter my stillness?’
‘Because you see things.’ Corbett crouched beside her, taking a silver coin out of his purse.
‘Magdalena sees many things in the darkness of the night,’ she replied. ‘I have seen demons spat out from hell and the glory of God light up the sanctuary. I am the Lord’s poor sinner.’ She tapped the mirror against her face. ‘Once I was fair. Now I daub my face black and white and keep the mirror close at hand. Black is the badge of death. White the colour of my winding sheet.’
‘And what other things do you see?’ Corbett asked. He pointed up to her cell. ‘You kneel above the church door. Have you seen the Bellman?’
‘I heard him,’ she replied. ‘The night he pinned one of his proclamations on the door, breathing heavily, gasping for air. Now, says I, there’s a man pursued by demons! But it’s only right,’ she continued, her voice becoming sing-song. ‘Sparrow Hall is cursed. Built on sand.’ Her voice rose. ‘The rains will fall, the winds will blow! That house will fall and great will be the fall thereof!’
‘What curse?’ Corbett asked.
‘Years ago, Dark Face.’ She touched Corbett on the side of his mouth. ‘Your eyes are hooded but gentle. You should not be with me but with your wife and child.’ She glimpsed the surprise in Corbett’s eyes. ‘I can see you are a lady’s man,’ she continued. ‘My husband had your looks. A keen man, he went and fought for the great de Montfort. He never came home - hacked and cut his body was, like collops of meat on a butcher’s slab. I and my boy were left in the house. We lived in the cellar and passageways, dark but safe.’ She blew the spittle from her lips, her rosary cracking against the mirror. ‘But then the Braose came; arrogant he was, carrying his head as if it was something sacred. Him and that beautiful bitch of a sister! Threw me out! My child died and I cursed them!’ Magdalena rattled the rosary beads. ‘Now the Bellman comes, warning of impending death and destruction.’
‘But you don’t know who the Bellman is?’ Corbett asked.
‘A demon sent from Hell! A goblin who has not done yet!’
‘And you saw poor Passerel die?’
Magdalena’s head came up, a cunning look in her eyes.
‘I was kneeling before my window,’ she replied. ‘Eyes on God’s holy light.’ She pointed down to the sanctuary. ‘I hear the door open and a dark shape creeps in like a thief in the night. Aye, that’s how it happened. Sprung like a trap! Passerel, the stupid man, drinks the wine and dies in his sin before the All Mighty. Oh!’ She closed her eyes. ‘What a terrible thing it is for a sinful soul to fall into the hands of the living God!’
‘What was the shape like?’ Corbett asked.
Magdalena was now studying the silver piece Corbett held.
‘I couldn’t see,’ she replied wearily. ‘Hooded and cowled, no more than a shadow.’ She scrambled to her feet. ‘I have spoken enough.’
Corbett handed over the silver piece, and the anchorite scuttled back up the staircase. Father Vincent led them out of the church.
‘What happened to the jug and cup?’ Corbett asked.
‘I threw them away,’ the priest replied. ‘They were nothing much: the like you’ll see in any tavern.’
Corbett thanked him. They walked down the cemetery path and out under the lych-gate.
‘Shall we have something to eat?’ Ranulf asked hopefully.
Corbett shook his head. ‘No, first let’s visit St Osyth’s.’
‘We learnt nothing back there,�
� Ranulf declared.
‘Oh, perhaps we did.’ Corbett smiled back.
They took directions from a pedlar and went down an alleyway and into Broad Street. The day was proving a fine one. The thoroughfares were packed: carts full of produce, barrels and casks jammed the street and strident noise dinned the air as shops and stalls opened for another day’s business. Hammers beat in one place, tubs and vats were being hooped in another, the clinking of pots and platters came from the cook shops. Men, women and children moved down the streets, in shoals, pushing and jostling. The houses on either side leaned out, their buckling walls held up by posts which impeded progress even further. Carters and barrow boys fought and cursed with each other. Porters, drenched with sweat under the burdens they carried, tried to force their way through by lashing out with white willow wands. Fat merchants, grasping money bags, moved from shop to stall. Chapmen, their trays slung round their necks by cords, tried to inveigle everyone, including Corbett and Ranulf, to buy the geegaws piled there. At one point Corbett had to stop, pulling Ranulf into the doorway of a shop. However, an apprentice, thinking they wished to buy, plucked at their sleeves until they were forced to continue on their way.
‘Is it always like this?’ Ranulf whispered.
Any reply Corbett made was drowned by the strident street cries which cut the air.
‘Hot peas!’ ‘Small coals!’ ‘New brooms!’ ‘Green brooms!’ ‘Bread and meat for the Lord’s sake for the poor prisoners of the Bocardo!’
Beggars grasping their flat dishes swarmed like fleas. Costermongers sold bright apples from the city orchards and, on the market cross, chanteurs were locked in bitter rivalry over giving news or singing songs. Even the whores and their pimps, the cross-biters, were out looking for business. Everywhere students, some dressed in samite, others in rags, swaggered in groups, narrow-eyed, their hands never far from the hilts of their daggers.
Corbett stopped at the Merry Maidens tavern and told Ranulf to go in and hire a room which they might use later on. Once this was done, they continued to push across Carfax and down a narrow, foul lane to St Osyth’s Hospital, a shabby, three-storeyed tenement which stood behind its own curtain wall. The gateway was packed with beggars. In the cobbled yard a weary-looking lay brother, dressed in a brown robe with a dirty cord round the middle, was distributing hard rye bread to a group of beggars. They lined up before a wooden table where two other brothers were serving steaming bowls of meat and vegetables. Corbett and Ranulf made their way through.
‘I have never seen a place like this,’ Ranulf whispered. ‘Not even in London.’
Corbett could only agree. There must have been at least a hundred beggars there, some of them young and sprightly, most old and bent and clothed in rags. In the main they were former soldiers, still suffering the horrible wounds of war: a face scalded by boiling oil; an eye missing with the socket closed up; legs twisted and bent; a myriad of men on makeshift crutches. Corbett was struck by something he had seen in other hospitals: despite their age, wounds and poverty, these men were determined to live, to snatch whatever remained from life. In a way, he concluded, the murder of such men was much more cruel than the assassin’s work at Sparrow Hall. These were innocents: men who, despite the overwhelming odds, still fought on.
‘Can I help you?’
Corbett turned round. The voice was soft and gentle but the man who had spoken was tall and squat. He was dressed in a brown Franciscan robe, his head neatly tonsured but his face looked like that of a friendly toad, with constantly blinking eyes and fat lips gaped into a smile.
‘I am sorry I’m ugly,’ the Franciscan declared. He patted Corbett on the shoulder, his hand like that of a bear’s paw. ‘I can see the thought in your eyes, sir. I am ugly to man but, perhaps, God thinks otherwise.’
‘I am looking for Father Guardian,’ Corbett said. ‘And no man who works amongst the poor can be ugly.’
The friar grasped Corbett’s hand and shook it vigorously.
‘You should be a bloody Franciscan,’ he growled. ‘Who the hell are you anyway?’
Corbett explained.
‘Well, I’m Brother Angelo,’ the friar replied. ‘I’m also Father Guardian. This is my manor, my palace.’ He looked up, narrowing his eyes against the sun. ‘We feed two hundred beggars a day,’ he continued. ‘But you are not here to help us, are you, Corbett? And you certainly haven’t brought gold from the King?’
He waved Corbett up the steps into the hospital and led him into his cell, a narrow, white-washed chamber. Corbett and Ranulf sat on the bed whilst Father Angelo squatted on a stool beside them.
‘You’re here about the Bellman, aren’t you? We’ve all heard about that mad bastard and the deaths at Sparrow Hall.’
‘The King has also heard about the deaths here at St Osyth’s, or rather-’ Corbett added hastily as the smile faded from the Franciscan’s face ‘- the corpses found in the woods outside the city.’
‘We know little of that,’ Brother Angelo confessed. ‘Look around, master clerk; these are poor men, decrepit, old beggars. Who, on God’s earth, could be so cruel to them? There’s neither rhyme nor reason to it,’ he added. ‘I cannot help you.’
‘You’ve heard no rumours?’ Corbett asked.
Brother Angelo shook his head. ‘Nothing except Godric’s wild rantings,’ he murmured. ‘But you see, Corbett, men come and go here as they please. They beg in the city streets. They are helpless, easy prey for anyone’s malice or hatred.’
‘Do you remember Brakespeare?’ Corbett asked. ‘A soldier, a former officer in the King’s army?’
‘There are so many,’ Brother Angelo apologised, shaking his head. He glanced at Ranulf. ‘You have the look of a fighting man.’ He pointed to Ranulf’s sword, dagger and leather boots. ‘You walk with a swagger.’ He leaned across and nipped the skin of Ranulf’s knuckle. ‘Go outside, young man, and see your future. Once they too swaggered under the sun. But come on. I’ll find old Godric for you.’
He led them out, down a white-washed passageway, up some stairs and into a long dormitory. The room was austere, yet the walls and floor had been well scrubbed and smelt of soap and sweet herbs. A row of beds stood on either wall with a stool on one side and a small, rough-hewn table on the other. Most of the occupants were asleep or dozing fitfully. Lay brothers moved from bed to bed, wiping hands and faces in preparation for the early morning meal.
Ranulf hung back. ‘I’ll not be a beggar,’ he whispered. ‘Master, I’ll either hang or be rich.’
‘Just be careful,’ Corbett quipped back, ‘that you are not both rich and hanged!’
‘Come on!’ Brother Angelo waved them over to a bed where a man was propped up against the bolsters: he was balding, his face lined and grey with exhaustion though his eyes were lively.
‘This is Godric,’ Brother Angelo explained, ‘a long-time member of my parish. A man who has begged in London, Canterbury, Dover and even at Berwick on the Scottish march. Very well, Godric.’ Brother Angelo tapped him on his bald pate. ‘Tell our visitors what you have seen.’
Godric turned his head. ‘I’ve been out in the woods,’ he whispered.
‘Which woods?’ Corbett asked.
‘Oh, to the north, to the south, to the east of the city,’ Godric replied.
‘And what have you seen, old man?’
‘God be my witness,’ the beggar replied. ‘But I’ve seen hellfire and the devil and all his troupe dancing in the bright moonlight. Listen to what I say-’ he grasped Corbett’s hand ‘- the Lord Satan has come to Oxford!’
Chapter 7
Corbett laid his hand over that of the beggar.
‘What devils?’ he asked.
‘Out in the woods,’ Godric replied. ‘Dancing round Beltane’s fires! Wearing goat skins, they were!’
‘And did you see any blood?’ Corbett asked.
‘On their hands and faces. Oh yes,’ Godric continued. ‘You see, sir, when I was greener, I was a poacher. I can go out and hun
t the rabbit and take a plump cock pheasant without blinking. Since early spring this year I’ve tried my luck again and twice I saw the devils dance.’
‘How many devils?’ Corbett asked.
‘At least thirteen. The cursed number,’ Godric replied defiantly.
‘And have you told anyone else?’ Corbett asked.
‘I told Brother Angelo but he just laughed.’ Godric laid his head back on the bolsters. ‘That’s all I know and now old Godric has got to sleep.’ The beggar turned his face away.
Corbett and Ranulf left the infirmary. They followed Brother Angelo out, down the stairs and into the still busy yard.
‘Have you heard such stories before?’ Corbett asked.
‘Only Godric’s babble,’ the friar replied. ‘But, Sir Hugh -’ Brother Angelo’s lugubrious fat face became solemn ‘- God knows if he’s roaming in his wits or what?’ He lifted one great paw in benediction. ‘I bid you adieu!’
Corbett and Ranulf left the hospital and entered Broad Street. The crowd had thinned because the schools were open, and the students had flocked there for the early morning lectures. Corbett led Ranulf across the street, stepping gingerly along the wooden board placed across the great, stinking sewer which cut down the centre of the street.
Outside the Merry Maidens tavern, a butcher, his stall next to that of a barber surgeon, was throwing guts and entrails into the street. Beside the stall, a hooded rat-catcher, his ferocious-looking dog squatting next to him, was touting for business.
‘Rats or mice!’ he chanted above the din,
‘Have you any rats, mice, stoats or weasels?
Or have you any old sows sick of the measles?
I can kill them and I can kill moles!
And I can kill vermin that creep in and out of holes!’
The man hawked and spat; he was about to begin again but stood aside as Corbett and Ranulf kicked their way through the mess.