Hugh Corbett 17 - The Mysterium

by Paul Doherty

  ‘I’m a priest, I have no skill—’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Corbett retorted. ‘You trained as a battle squire in Norfolk’s household. More importantly, you are full of hate and anger. You were determined that Clarice would die. Why should such a woman benefit from your mother’s death? You’re brutal. Fink bruises you, but he is knocked to the ground. Clarice, terrified, is next. She too is struck. Both lie stunned. You carry out your next grisly task. You mark their foreheads, then decapitate them. The love chamber is now awash with blood. You place the heads in a leather sack, hasten back down the stairs and out into the streets. Disguised, you walk back to St Botulph’s, where you carry out the charade I described before.’ Corbett paused. ‘I wondered why the severed heads were placed in the baptismal font. I realise now. When someone enters the Church, they’re baptised, initiated into the Community of the Faithful. You were rejecting that, weren’t you? You wanted to desecrate everything you believed in. The heads are tossed there and you go into the sacristy to wait for Master Fleschner. A busy day, priest. You must have been satisfied. You’d almost finished your task; only the woman Beatrice remained.’

  ‘Master clerk.’ Parson John’s voice was almost a drawl. Corbett noticed how he brushed his mouth with his fingers. ‘You were attacked in St Botulph’s.’ He sniffed. ‘Are you blaming me for that? I have no war dog. Skilled I may be with a battleaxe or sword, but—’

  ‘Who said you used a battleaxe?’ Corbett asked.

  ‘Skilled I may be,’ Parson John almost smiled, ‘but an abarlest, a war dog?’

  ‘Hush now!’ Ranulf used his hand to force the priest to look at him. ‘Parson John, across the river in Southwark, around the Sanctuary at Westminster or out near White Friars I could hire killers by the dozen. That’s what you did. It’s easily done, in some darkened shadowy corner, coins exchanged . . .’

  ‘You gave the assassin my name and description,’ Corbett accused. ‘You told him I resided at Westminster. He waited there and followed me to St Botulph’s and struck when he could. Poor Griffyths, a soldier doing his duty, was killed and sent unshriven to God. You did the same to Fleschner. He never suspected that the lamb he was tending was really a ravenous wolf. He took you back to the priest’s house. You wanted a goblet of wine with an opiate to help you sleep. You drank nothing of the sort. Fleschner left and you followed him down to Queenshithe. You attacked him in some filthy alleyway, knocked him on the head, marked him with your murderous sign and hanged him from a street bracket. You are very good at acting the frightened, cowed priest, alienated from his father, not knowing what was happening. You knew everything. You’re a redoubtable man, Parson John. A killer, but still redoubtable, ruthless and ferocious.You missed your calling. I’ve served with the likes of you in Wales and along the Northern March. God knows,’ he whispered, ‘you had cause enough to turn, but why follow the same path as your father, as Waldene and Hubert the Monk?’

  ‘I’m still asking for evidence, Sir Hugh.’ Parson John slipped down in the chair, stretching as if he were listening to a good story. ‘And even if you collect enough evidence, I’m still a priest, I’ll claim benefit of clergy.’ Again he passed his hand before his mouth. Corbett looked down. The chain had been broken, beads lay scattered in the priest’s lap. Parson John followed his gaze. ‘Oh, don’t worry, clerk, I have already decided my way. I know what you are going to say. The King would never put me on trial. He wouldn’t want such a scandal voiced the length and breadth of his kingdom. As for being a priest, that wouldn’t save me from some filthy dungeon, walled up, living on bread and water, to become the plaything of gaolers, or committed to a lonely monastery and the vicious spite of its father abbot. No, no.’ He gestured over his shoulder at Ranulf. ‘Or taken into custody by some royal bully-boy, to be harassed and tortured. After all, there’s my name, isn’t there? I like to be called Parson John, but I’d be hated as the son of Evesham, a murderer like my father.’

  Corbett stretched out and picked up a bead from the priest’s lap. ‘What are these? You’ve eaten some?’

  ‘Of course I have,’ the priest replied. ‘Abrin seed; they use it in Venice. You’re given one if you are accused of a crime. If you’re innocent you survive, if you’re guilty you die. The trick is that if you swallow the seed it simply passes through you; the hard shell cannot be digested. If you chew it, as I have, it is a fairly painless death, not now, but soon.’ He clutched his stomach and started forward. ‘I’ll not challenge what you’ve said. I hated my father from the very beginning. I wanted to be different. That is why I became a priest. I knew about his wickedness, his nefarious doings, his alliances, but I never plotted against him, not until I heard that woman’s confession. Then, like a puzzle, pieces fell into place. Things I’d seen and heard. Suspicions, whispers, rumours all became fact. I really did like Brother Cuthbert and Mistress Adelicia. I often visited them. They were two people who truly loved each other. They used to talk about what happened at St Botulph’s. From them I got the description of that ring, my first real suspicion, as I’d seen a similar ring hidden away in my father’s casket. I’d let that pass, but once I learnt the truth, everything died. How could I believe in God the Father when my own father had murdered my mother, a loving, sweet woman? What was the use of candlelight, prayers, the Mass, incense, blessings, holy water? It’s all a pretence: blackness here, blackness beyond. I couldn’t care.

  ‘It is as you say. I thought, I reflected. I went to the Guildhall on business. I took down the coroner’s rolls. I saw the entry about my mother. I wondered what had happened to Mistress Beatrice, then I waited. It was so simple. I kept my father’s house under close watch at night; he always worked under the cover of dark. He only believed in one verse from the Scriptures: “live for the day”, and he certainly did that. He was attracted to wickedness like a bird to flying. I was the writer from the Land of Cockaigne. I like that description; it suited my world turned upside down. I betrayed him to Staunton and Blandeford and then my father fled to Syon Abbey. I knew what he was doing. He’d lurk there, he’d think and plot, then he’d crawl back into the sunlight, offer some pact with the King, negotiate his way back to preferment. He’d betray anybody for that, do anything. So I struck.

  ‘I knew that Brother Cuthbert used to meet Adelicia, that was as obvious as the sun rises. It was so easy to go along the river by boat, climb the wall and just wait. It is as you described. The murderous affray at St Botulph’s? I took that as a sign.’ He paused, swallowing hard, staring up at the ceiling. ‘First my father, or the creature who called himself that. I cut his throat without a whisper of guilt. Engleat the drunkard deserved his fate. The same for the rest. Who would miss Waldene, Hubert the Monk, Clarice the adulteress? My father chose well. I suspect she was playing the two-backed beast with Master Fink long before my father fell from grace. I swept into that house like God’s anger. Up the stairs I strode. Fink was fat and flabby. I knocked him aside. I was their executioner, Corbett. Fleschner, all timorous and pleading? He looked the other way when my mother died; he must have known but he never told me, my faithful parish clerk.’ Parson John wiped his mouth.

  ‘I realised, as you did, that my father was the Mysterium. I reached the truth. It was only fitting for me to assume the Mysterium’s mantle in my pursuit of justice.’ The priest had gone pale, beads of sweat glistening on his brow, but he managed to smile at Corbett. ‘Very subtle and very clever, aren’t you, clerk? You suspected me but you didn’t have the evidence. You fed me, baited me like a fish about how Mistress Beatrice might have had a hand in my own mother’s murder.’ He paused, gripping his stomach, bending forward, gargling at the back of his throat. Mistress Beatrice sprang to her feet, fingers to her lips. Corbett made a sign with his hand, and she stayed where she was. Parson John lifted his face, now ghastly, eyes straining against the pain. ‘How did you do it?’ he said.

  ‘I went to see her,’ Corbett replied. ‘She assured me she’d told no other man, so I simply asked her another
question. Had she at her shriving ever confessed what she called her secret sin, fleeing when her mistress died? I thought she might have done, and she had. She told me how she was shriven last Advent at St Paul’s. I made a few enquiries, but even before that, I nursed suspicions about you, a deep unease.’ He gripped the priest’s arm. ‘You’re dying, Parson John.’

  ‘I’m dying, Corbett. For God’s sake let me go in peace. You condemn me, but if there is a light beyond, if there is judgement before some tribunal, I’ll plead my cause.’ He glanced watery-eyed at Corbett and gasped at the pain. ‘I was a good priest, clerk, I truly was. I rejected everything my father did, everything he was, until I heard that woman’s confession, then my world fell apart. Do you know what it’s like to suddenly realise that everything you believe in is a lie? There’s no justice, there’s no right? You told me once how we are all murderers. We kill each other in our thoughts. Men like my father must be brought down by men like me or you. They are made by the sword. They die by the sword. They live bad lives, they die bad deaths. Tell me, Corbett, who amongst those I killed was innocent?’ He paused, a white spittle dripping from his lips. ‘That attack in St Botulph’s when the prisoners of Newgate barred themselves in? Look at the innocents who died there – why, Corbett? Look at my poor mother going out to an almshouse, doing good, slaughtered like some wandering pig in the streets.’ He leaned back in the chair. ‘I’ve said enough,’ he gasped. ‘Leave me.’ His fingers fluttered. ‘Leave me . . .’

  ‘We’ll not leave you,’ Corbett replied. ‘We’ll stay with you. We’ll watch you go, priest, and I shall murmur a prayer that God in his mercy will show you some favour.’ He gestured with his hand at the others to remain silent. Parson John became lost in his own world of pain. He made no attempt to talk, but sat hunched in the chair, hands on his belly, coughing and spluttering as the white spittle thickened around his lips. Abruptly he jerked, head back, heels kicking the ground, then he gave a great sigh and sagged, head drooping, eyes half open.

  ‘I didn’t believe.’ Mistress Beatrice rose to her feet and came round to stare down at the priest. ‘I truly didn’t believe that God’s justice would wait so long. Sir Hugh, why did he take his life?’

  ‘Because he was correct, mistress.’ Corbett pressed a hand against the dead priest’s neck; already the skin was cold and clammy and he could feel no life pulse. ‘His life was finished when he heard your confession about his mother. After that, a blackness descended, a deep, dark night of the soul. He lived for one reason and one reason only, to wreak hideous revenge. Once he achieved that, what else was there? Go back to being a priest, to shriving people’s sins and offering Mass in reparation for all our wickedness? Parson John’s world had collapsed. He would have killed you and then continued to murder anyone associated with his father or his father’s nefarious schemes until he was either caught or killed.’ Corbett rose. ‘Mistress Beatrice, I thank you. As for your son, Parson John is right about that too: innocents died at St Botulph’s; that riot was deliberately caused.’

  ‘Clerks,’ Beatrice murmured, ‘all royal clerks are ambitious, following the King’s will, seeking the King’s favour, his gold, the status and power he can confer. That’s the root cause of all this, Sir Hugh.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Corbett struck his breast. ‘We all have it in us, mistress, a desire for power, to lord it over others, to make our presence felt. Ah well,’ he gave a deep sigh, ‘Ranulf, have the corpse removed to some death house at a local church. Tell the priest to bless the corpse, arrange for a requiem Mass to be said, bury his body in the poor man’s lot. That’s the best I can do.’

  ‘And you, Sir Hugh, you will go to Westminster?’

  Corbett picked up the priest’s belt and placed it on the chair he’d just vacated. ‘You’ll come with me, Ranulf. We must have words with the King.’

  ‘First I’ll remove the corpse, I’ll even say a prayer for him. He did us all a favour, certainly the King. His grace will be pleased at such a silent death, no scandal, no public outcry, no trial. But before I join you at Westminster, I have certain business to complete.’

  ‘What business?’ Corbett asked sharply.

  Ranulf refused to meet his gaze. ‘Master, you have your tasks and I have mine.’

  Ranulf-atte-Newgate entered the Bowels of Hell, a tavern deep in the labyrinth of the needle-thin alleyways and runnels around White Friars. He paused just within the doorway, threw back his cloak and adjusted his war belt so that all could see the sword and dagger in their brocaded scabbards. Then he glanced around and smiled.

  ‘Home from home,’ he murmured, ‘sweet memories of my youth.’

  The taproom of the Bowels of Hell was spacious and dark, a true hiding place for the counterfeits, cranks, cunning men, forgers, outlaws and wolfsheads from the nearby Sanctuary. They all clustered here in the juddering light of the squat, rancid-smelling tallow candles, a garish, motley gang of London’s underworld, all dressed in their tawdry finery, consorting with the bawds in their strumpet rags and shiny cheap jewellery. No one looked directly at Ranulf. They all recognised Corbett’s fighting man, his dagger-boy, a dangerous character made even more so by the ring he wore and the chain around his neck. They glanced quickly at him, then returned to their business, quietly praying that they weren’t his.

  The clerk stood for a while, then moved over to the counter, a long board laid over a row of casks. Minehost, a former pirate in the Thames estuary who, as he often boasted, had escaped the scaffold on at least two occasions by murmuring the first line of Psalm 50, moved to present him with a tankard of his finest ale.

  ‘Brewed with pigshit,’ Ranulf murmured, pushing it away. ‘You’ll not have me fuddled, sir.’ He plucked at Minehost’s bloodstained apron. ‘I’ve talked to Mouseman. He’s lodged in a chamber at Westminster. He awaits his pardon being sealed by the chancellor.’

  ‘And?’ Minehost’s fat, sweaty face creased into a smile.

  ‘He mentioned a dog-man, a dagger-lad with a war hound.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  Ranulf plucked at the apron again. ‘Very good,’ he hissed, ‘then I’ll be gone, but . . .’ His smile faded and he paused at the screeching of some whore as she was thrown to the floor and her skirts pulled back.

  ‘But what?’ Minehost asked.

  ‘I’ll be back with a comitatus.’ Ranulf pulled a face, moving his head from side to side. ‘I’m not too sure when, but late one night we will break in here. We’ll arrest all law-breakers and those who shelter them. I’ll try to be fair and careful.’ He moved his arm swiftly, knocking over one of the candles. ‘Sorry!’ He picked it up. ‘I’ll really try and make sure we are careful. I mean that no fire breaks out, that the bailiffs don’t plunder here or the treasure you’ve undoubtedly hidden away in the cellars below.’ Ranulf shrugged. ‘And, of course I’ll do my best to protect you personally.’

  ‘Over there.’ Minehost supped from the tankard he’d just offered. ‘In the far corner. He’s sitting facing you. He has a scar across his face.’

  Ranulf smiled and swaggered across the ill-lit taproom, shoving aside bawds and pimps, boots scuffing the strewn rushes now turned to a mushy mess. From the cellar below echoed the raucous shouts of gamblers wagering on the cock fight about to begin. He reached the corner, picked up a fallen stool and pushed his way through to the great squat tun that served as a table. He took out his own dice and cup from his wallet and grinned cheekily at the gamblers.

  ‘Good evening, my lords,’ he intoned, ‘and a finer collection I’ve not seen, even on the execution cart bound for the Elms.’

  The gamblers, their unshaven faces betraying their nervousness, peered back warily from hoods and cowls. The man sitting opposite, with a greyish scar running from his left eye right across his face, hastily scooped up the few silver coins, hands disappearing beneath the table. Ranulf just shrugged and shook his own dice.

  ‘Call a number.’ He smiled at the dog-man. ‘You go first!’<
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  ‘I don’t want to gamble. I have no silver.’

  ‘You have a war hound. Choose a number.’ Ranulf rolled the dice. ‘Seven!’ he exclaimed and rolled again. ‘Eight.’ He picked up the dice. ‘My number’s higher. I’ve won your dog.’

  ‘I didn’t wager it.’

  ‘Why, where is it?’

  ‘I don’t have one.’

  ‘You did have,’ Ranulf grinned, ‘but you had to kill it in St Botulph’s cemetery . . .’

  The dog-man’s knife hand came out above the table. Ranulf was swifter, a clean straight thrust into his opponent’s throat. The dog-man choked, gagged and spluttered, hands beating the air.

  ‘You tried to kill my friend, my master,’ and pressing again on the dagger, Ranulf watched the soul-light in those dark eyes fade before withdrawing his blade. The dog-man, coughing blood, collapsed over the table, sending tankards and platters hurtling to the floor. The hubbub in the tavern immediately stilled. Ranulf rose, leaned over, wiped his blade on the shoulder of the dead assassin, pocketed his dice and stared down at the other gamblers, who sat hands gripping whatever weapons they carried.