by Paul Doherty
I wonder when Maltote will return? Corbett suddenly thought as they thundered past The Trip to Jerusalem into Friary Lane. Any further speculation ended as he tried to keep his horse away from the sewer and a watchful eye on the overhanging tavern signs and the gilded boards of the furriers, cloth-makers and goldsmiths. Thankfully few people were around and those who were flattened themselves against the walls as Sir Peter and his party thundered by. Shop doors abruptly slammed shut as apprentices, preparing the stalls for a day's business, saw or heard the horsemen and fled for safety. Two dung collectors, their carts half-full of stinking ordure, blocked the route until Sir Peter beat them aside with the flat of his sword.
The city gates were hastily opened and Branwood led them across dew-drenched fields, following the same track as they had yesterday which aimed like an arrow towards the dark sombre line of trees. Corbett's stomach lurched in fear. Surely, he thought, not back there?
'Sir Peter!' he shouted. 'What is this nonsense?'
Branwood failed to hear but spurred his horse faster. Corbett hung on grimly, then suddenly Sir Peter reined in, pulling his horse up savagely, shouting at them to stop.
'Well, where, man?' he bawled at the soldier, who looked as if the recent ride had jarred every bone in his body. The young man blinked and stared at the forest. He turned his horse to the side and galloped along the fringe of trees, Branwood and the rest behind. Abruptly the guide stopped and pointed a dirty, stubby finger.
'I saw them,' he gasped. 'I saw them as I came in after visiting my mother in the village.'
Corbett stared hard. At first he could see nothing then Sir Peter leaned over and clutched his wrist.
'Look, Sir Hugh!' he whispered hoarsely. 'Look at that tree, the huge elm!'
Corbett followed his gaze. The blur of white he had glimpsed before now became clear. Two corpses, their dirty white skin gleaming like the underbelly of landed pike, swung by their necks from one of the high branches of the tree. Friar Thomas pushed his horse further forward, Branwood and Corbett followed, whilst the young soldier leaned over his horse's neck to vomit and retch. The bodies were grotesque in death. They were naked except for loin cloths, their faces a mottled hue; half-bitten tongues protruded from swollen mouths, their staring eyes were glazed and empty.
'Two of the soldiers,' Sir Peter murmured, 'who went missing yesterday.'
The horses smelt the corpses and began to whinny and fret. Corbett turned away in disgust whilst Sir Peter began to roar out orders to Naylor to cut the men down and get a cart from the castle to bring the cadavers in.
'Let's return,' the sheriff moodily announced.
'I cannot,' Friar Thomas spoke up. 'I must visit my church. Sir Hugh, you will stay with me?'
Corbett readily agreed; Sir Peter at the best of times, was a graceless companion, but now he looked like a man awaiting condemnation. Friar Thomas murmured a prayer, sketching a blessing in the direction of the corpses, then led Corbett back to his small parish church. This stood about two miles from Nottingham on the road going west to Newark. Around the church were grouped the stone and wooden houses and tiny garden strips of the villeins and peasants.
'Most of them are free,' Friar Thomas proudly announced. 'Or nearly so. They grow their own crops and only spend two boon days working on the manor lord's domain.'
Corbett nodded. The Franciscan seemed well liked. As they rode into the village he was greeted by a host of thin-ribbed, near-naked children who jumped round like imps from hell, chattering and calling, pointing at Corbett and asking Friar Thomas a stream of questions in high reedy voices. Their parents, faces earth-stained or burnt brown by the sun, also welcomed their priest as they came back from the fields to hear mass and break their fast before returning. Friar Thomas greeted them genially and, by the time they reached the church, a small procession had formed behind him. Outside the cemetery, the friar and Corbett dismounted, two peasant lads taking their horses whilst Thomas led Corbett into the musty darkness of the church. It was a simple building with no pillars or glass windows. The floor was beaten earth, the altar a simple stone slab. Corbett crouched with the rest before a crude wooden altar rail whilst Friar Thomas donned his vestments in an adjoining chamber and came out to celebrate the fastest mass Corbett had ever heard. Friar Thomas did not gabble the words but he spoke swiftly. He moved through the epistle and gospel on to the offertory and consecration before dismissing his parishioners with a swift benediction.
'A quick mass, Father,' Corbett remarked, watching him disrobe in the small vestry.
Friar Thomas grinned. 'It's the belief which counts,' he replied. 'Not the elaborate ritual.' The friar nodded towards the church door. 'My parishioners have fields to tend, crops to harvest, cattle to water, children to feed. If they don't work, they starve. And what then, Master Clerk?'
'Assistance from Robin Hood?'
The friar's fat face creased into a wreath of smiles. 'Well said, Clerk,' he murmured.
'You approve of the outlaw?' Corbett asked.
Father Thomas neatly folded the vestments, placed them in a wooden coffer and padlocked the lid.
'I did not say that,' he replied, straightening up. 'But my people are poor. A girl marries at twelve. By the time she is sixteen she will have had four babies, three of whom will die. She and her husband will wrap the little bodies up in a piece of cheap cloth for me to bury out in the graveyard. I'll say a prayer, wipe the tears from their eyes and quietly curse their misfortune.
'These villagers are the salt of the earth. They rise before dawn, they go to sleep when it's dark, they plough their fields in the depths of winter, leaving their babies under a bush to suck on a wet rag, hoping they will keep warm in the piece of cow hide in which they are wrapped. They make a little profit, and then the tax-collectors come. They fill their barns and the royal purveyors snatch it. The lords of the soil prey on them: if there is a war, their houses burn and they are cut down like grass.'
Father Thomas stuck his podgy thumbs into the dirty white girdle round his waist. 'If the King wants soldiers,' he continued, 'their young go swinging down some country lane, leaving the air full of their chatter and song.' The priest's dark eyes swept up to meet Corbett's and the clerk saw tears brimming there. 'Then the news comes,' he continued, 'of some great victory or some great defeat, and with it a list of the dead. The women come here. They crouch on the dirty floor – the wives, the mothers, the sisters – whilst I,' the friar added bitterly, 'hide like a dog in my vestry and listen to their sobs.' He sighed. 'A year later the wounded return, one without a leg, another maimed. For what?'
'Did you bring us here to tell me this, Father?'
'Yes, I did, King's Commissioner. When you return to Westminster, tell the King what you have seen. Robin Hood is in the hearts of all these people.'
'I know that,' Corbett replied. 'Like you, Father, I come from the soil, and like you I found an escape.' He stepped closer. 'But there's something else, isn't there? You minister here and not at the castle. Your heart's with these peasants. Robin Hood the outlaw, the famous wolfshead, must have made an approach to you.'
Father Thomas turned his back as if busying himself, putting away the cruets in a small iron-bound coffer.
'I asked you a question, Father?'
Father Thomas turned, a defiant look in his eyes. 'If Robin Hood walked into this church,' he retorted, 'I would not send for the sheriff but…' his voice trailed off.
'But what, Father?'
'Well.' The friar leaned against the wall and clasped podgy hands round his generous stomach. 'Yes, I brought you here so you can take messages back to the King. But there's something wrong.' He busily washed his fingers in a small bowl of water and wiped them carefully with a napkin. 'In former years when Robin Hood ran wild with his coven, the villagers were never attacked and the outlaw shared his goods.'
'And this time?'
'Oh, the peasants are safe and the outlaw distributes good silver, but it's to buy their silence.' The fr
iar walked to the door. 'We should go.'
Corbett stood still. 'Father, I asked a question and you did not answer.'
Father Thomas turned. 'I know you did, Sir Hugh. Yes,' he continued wearily, 'I have seen the wolfshead. He came here, late one evening, sauntering up the nave like some cock in a barnyard. I was kneeling at the altar rail. When I turned he was there, dressed in Lincoln green, a hood pulled across his head, a black cloth mask hiding his face.'
'What did he want?'
'He asked for my help. If I would give him information about what I saw in the town and the village. Who was moving where? What monies were being transported? Would I tend to the spiritual comfort of his men?'
'And what was your reply?'
'I told him I'd dance with the devil first under a midsummer moon.'
'Yet you said you understood him?'
'No, Sir Hugh, I understand the poverty of my people.' The priest wriggled his fat shoulders. 'This was before the murders in the castle or the killing of the tax-collectors. But I don't know… I just did not like the man. His arrogance, his coldness, the way he stood leaning on his long bow. I felt a malevolence, an evil.'
'And what was his reply?'
'He just walked away, slipping out into the night, laughing over his shoulder.' 'Did you tell the sheriff?' 'Sir Eustace or Sir Peter? Never!'
Corbett dipped his fingers in the stoup of holy water just inside the vestry door. He blessed himself. 'I thank you, Father. You'll return to the castle?'
'In a while,' replied the friar. 'You go ahead.'
Corbett walked back into the church, stopping to light a taper before the rough hewn wooden statue of the Virgin Mary. He closed his eyes, praying for Maeve and baby Eleanor, unaware of the figure in the shadows at the back of the church, glaring malevolently towards him.
Chapter 6
Corbett, lost in his own thoughts, let his horse amble back to Nottingham. He was tired, a stranger unused to hunting the evil which hid in the blackness of the forest. He was also distracted by thoughts of pressing business in London where the King would be seething, expecting an immediate solution to the cipher's secret.
Corbett grasped the reins of his horse and half-closed his eyes, listening to the sound of the bees buzzing in the grassy verge on either side of the track, the angry chatter of birds offset by the haunting, bitter-sweet song of the thrush. Concentrate! he thought. Sir Eustace Vechey's death is the key to the matter. He recalled the words of Physician Maigret about the deadly potions used.
'I wonder!' he exclaimed aloud, opening his eyes and watching the white butterflies float on the morning breeze like miniature angels, their wings reflecting the light. Corbett, now intent on the conclusion he had reached, kicked his horse into a gallop and rode into Nottingham.
When he arrived back in the castle bailey, the corpses of the dead soldiers were being laid out on trestle tables to be washed for burial. Beside them women crouched and mourned over their dead. Meanwhile Naylor, assisted by cursing, sweating men-at-arms, brought out two pinewood coffins containing the remains of Sir Eustace and his servant Lecroix. Corbett stared round the bailey. There was no sign of Branwood and he wondered where Ranulf could be. He caught sight of Maigret sitting on a bench at the base of the castle keep, his long face turned to catch the morning sun, a wine cup in his hand, a plate of bread soaked in milk resting in his lap.
'You seem little perturbed,' Corbett remarked, sauntering over.
Maigret opened his eyes and glanced at the corpses being washed and loaded into the coffins.
'In the midst of life we are in death, Sir Hugh. Moreover, what can a physician do about the dead? Will you be on the battlements tonight?' he suddenly asked.
'Why?' Corbett asked, sitting down beside him.
'Well, today's the thirteenth. For the last few months on this date at midnight, the witching hour, three fire arrows are shot over the castle.'
'What?' Corbett exclaimed.
'I thought Branwood would have told you? On the thirteenth of each month, at midnight, three fire arrows light up the night sky.' Maigret shrugged. 'No one knows who does it or why.'
'How long has this been happening?'
'Oh, for six months at least.' Maigret's eyes hardened. He stared at the dark, closed face of the clerk, noting the beads of perspiration on his forehead. 'What do you really want, Corbett? You are a man of few words and yet you sought me out.'
Corbett smiled. I must be careful, he thought. Maigret had first struck him as a typical physician, self-absorbed and overweening, but the man possessed a subtle wit and a sharp intelligence. A possible murderer? he wondered.
'Before you ask, Sir Hugh,' Maigret murmured, 'I have nothing to do with this business. I am a widower who practises physic here in the castle and in the town. I go to church on Sundays and give three pounds of wax a month to my parish church so I will have a chancery priest sing ten thousand masses for my soul when I am dead. I know the properties of medicine but hold no poison. You are free to search my chambers or my house.'
'Sir,' Corbett replied, 'I thank you for your honesty and so I will be equally blunt back. If I was an assassin, where would I buy poison in Nottingham?'
Maigret looked surprised, then his eyes narrowed. 'You are a sharp one, Corbett. Too sharp for your own comfort. I hadn't thought of that. Of course.' The physician leaned forward, putting what was left of the milk sops down for the dogs to eat. 'The answer is simple. If I wanted to procure a noxious substance or some young girl needed to rid herself of a child still in the womb, then I'd go along to that old bitch Hecate. She owns a shop in a three-storied tenement in Mandrick Alley at the back of St Peter's church near Bridesmith Gate. You'll easily see it,' he continued. 'It stands opposite a tavern called The Pig in Glory where, if you have the right amount of silver, you can buy whatever you want.'
Corbett got to his feet.
'I suppose you are going there now?'
'Of course. And if you see my servant Ranulf…'
'I doubt it. He left the castle at least an hour ago, his hair prinked and curled, freshly shaven, as smart as Prince Frog going a-wooing.'
Corbett grinned. He would have words with young Ranulf, though that would have to wait. He ordered a surly ostler to saddle his horse again, snatched a quick ladle of water from one of the butts outside the kitchen and rode back into town. In the market place he hired a young urchin, scraggy-haired and dirty-faced, to take him to The Pig in Glory. The young rogue grinned from ear to ear in a black-toothed smile. Corbett, who had offered him a coin to lead him, had to double the fee to stop the urchin telling all and sundry that the sombre-faced clerk he was guiding was off to The Pig in Glory 'to get his whistle blown'. A phrase Corbett half-believed he understood, but decided not to query.
The area behind St Peter's was as dark and noisome as any web of alleyways in Southwark. Large timbered houses which had seen better days crowded in on each other, blocking out the light, turning the rubbish-filled streets into a warren of alleyways packed with every type of rogue under the sun. A few studied Corbett closely but were warned off by his sword and dagger whilst the young urchin proved to be as much a protector as a guide. They entered Mandrick Alley. Above them the higher stories of the houses nestled cheek by jowl. A few tinkers and journeymen sold bric-a-brac, pigeon flesh or the skins of rabbit from shabby stalls. The Pig in Glory stood in the centre of the street, a tawdry blue and gold sign swinging from the broad ale beam jutting out from its eaves. The door of the tavern was thronged with hucksters. A few whores in their shabby gowns and colourful wigs stood laughing with two soldiers from the castle garrison.
Corbett paid the boy his fee, promised him more if he guarded his horse and hammered on the door of the witch's house. He looked up; the windows of the upper stories were all shuttered whilst a small casement above the door was covered in grime and speckled with the corpses of long-dead flies. Corbett pounded again on the door, cursing softly because the knocking was beginning to attract the attenti
on of customers from The Pig in Glory.
'Are you looking for Hecate?' a gap-toothed woman shrieked, her tawdry wig held in one hand whilst she scratched her bald pate.
Corbett turned, throwing back his cloak to show his sword and dagger.
'Yes, I am.'
He flicked a coin at her which she caught in her grimy paw.
Some of the other customers jostled her.
'You won't find her there!' another voice shouted.
Corbett leaned against the door as the crowd began to edge across towards him. Even the boy holding his horse looked frightened. Corbett quickly drew his sword and wished Ranulf was with him.
'I am Sir Hugh Corbett,' he called, 'King's Commissioner!' He glimpsed the soldiers skulking behind the rest. 'And you, sirs, belong to the castle garrison. Come forward!'
The rest of the crowd drew back. The two soldiers sheepishly shouldered their way through and stared dully at Corbett.
'Am I,' the clerk demanded, 'who I claim to be?' The soldiers nodded.
'Then, sirs, you are under my orders. Take a bench from that tavern and force that door off its hinges. Are you deaf?'
Corbett took a step forward. The two soldiers scampered back into the tavern and returned carrying a rough bench. A greasy-haired landlord came out to protest. Corbett told him to shut up and diverted the rest of the crowd by throwing a handful of coins on to the dirty cobbles. All resentment vanished like mist under the sun. Corbett stood back. The soldiers began ramming the bench against the door until it creaked, buckled and snapped back on its leather hinges.
'Stay outside!' he ordered.
He went down a dank, dimly lit passageway. The first entrance on the right led into the shop and Corbett gagged and swore at what he saw and smelt. The shop was tidy enough, nothing more than a chamber with shelves bearing jars of various sizes, small pouches and wooden boxes clasped and locked. But Hecate was also a skinner, a person skilled at removing the entrails of animals then stuffing them with herbs, turning them into mummified likenesses. A red-coated, glassy-eyed fox stared up at him from the floor. A rabbit, ears back, crouched in frozen stillness. The putrid smell came from the corpse of a small squirrel which lay on the table, its entrails spilling out from its slit stomach. Above these a mass of black flies buzzed.