by Paul Doherty
Song of a Dark Angel
( Hugh Corbett - 8 )
Paul Doherty
Paul Doherty
Song of a Dark Angel
The sharp, cruel wind swept in across the iron-grey sea towards the white headlands. It caught the tops of the waves and spun the icy foam into white flecks like snow. Those who lived in the villages near the eastern shore pulled their cloaks close about them and edged nearer the fire. The north wind, the Dark Angel as they called it, was making its presence felt. Soon it would rise, turning into fierce buffets. The inhabitants of Hunstanton huddled deep in their beds and hoped the storm would exhaust itself before daybreak. The wind, however, sang on; it tossed the sand and brushed the hairs of the severed head fixed on a pole beside the bloodied corpse sprawled on the shingle and rushed on to tease and play with the corpse of the long-haired woman that swung from the scaffold on the cliff top.
The Dark Angel, singing its sombre song, was accustomed to such cruel sights: this was the Wash, the large, inland sea that thrust into the soft Norfolk countryside – a violent, changeable place with its sudden tides, treacherous whirlpools, mud-choked rivulets and crumbling cliffs. It had seen the landing of the Vikings and the invasion of the Danes and, in the old king's grandfather's time, had witnessed the destruction of a royal army and the disappearance of a king's ransom in treasure. The Dark Angel swept inland, leaving behind its macabre playthings. The woman still danced at the end of the rope; on the deserted shingle, the sightless eyes of the decapitated head continued to gaze into the sea mist which boiled and swirled before it, following the wind inland.
Chapter 1
A week later, on the eve of the feast of St Andrew, Apostle of Scotland, two riders thundered along the cliff-top path. They were determined to reach their destination before the grey November daylight died altogether. As they breasted the brow of a small hill, where the cliff path swung inland round the bay, the leading rider reined in. He waited for his groaning, grumbling companion to do likewise.
'For God's sake!' the man muttered. 'How long, master? My arse is sore, my thighs are chapped and my belly thinks my throat is slit!'
From the shadow of his cowled hood, Sir Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the king's Secret Seal and his special emissary, grinned as he blew on frozen fingers.
'Come on, Ranulf,' he urged. 'At least no snow has fallen and we'll be there within the hour!'
Corbett pulled his hood back. He looked away from his manservant, Ranulf-atte-Newgate, and stared out across the mist-shrouded sea which crashed and broke on the rocks beneath him.
'A cold, sombre place,' he muttered.
Ranulf pulled his own hood back and edged his horse alongside that of his master. 'I've told you this before, Master. I hate the bloody countryside.' He stared back across the moorland, where the mist's long, cold fingers were beginning to creep. Somewhere in the gathering gloom a dog howled as if protesting at the elements. 'I hate it!' Ranulf repeated, as if to himself. 'Where the bloody hell are we, Master?'
Corbett pointed down to the sea. 'We are on the Norfolk coast, Ranulf. In summer they say it's beautiful. Beneath us lies Hunstanton Bay.'
He pointed across the cliffs. Ranulf glimpsed a faint light winking and made out the outlines of a building.
'Mortlake Manor,' Corbett said. 'And there is the old Hermitage. Can you see it, Ranulf?'
Ranulf strained his eyes and made out the gaunt, rambling ruin, most of it hidden by a high decaying wall.
'Further inland is the village,' Corbett continued. 'And down there in the mist, probably from where that dog is barking, is Holy Cross convent.'
Ranulf looked where his master was pointing and then, beyond the convent, to the sea. If he hated the countryside, Ranulf-atte-Newgate, born in the warren of alleyways that made up Whitefriars, was terrified of the sea – its grey, cold expanse; the mist turning and swirling like a ghost, muffling and making more eerie the hungry, haunting cries of the gulls. The thunder of the waves on the deserted pebble-strewn beach; those lonely buildings, silent as death, nestling on the cliff tops.
'Where was the head discovered?' he asked. Corbett pointed down to the shore.
'There. High on the beach. The head was neatly severed from the body and placed on a small pole dug into the sand. Beside it lay the corpse.'
'Poor old Cerdic,' Ranulf said softly, blowing into his hands. He squinted across at his master. 'I knew him, you know. If ever a man rolled crooked dice it was him. He was such a villain he couldn't even walk straight, never mind look directly at you.'
'Well, he's dead now, murdered by a person or persons unknown. But what intrigues me is that there were no signs of scuffling on the beach. How do you account for that, eh, Ranulf? How could a young man as robust and strong as Cerdic Lickspittle have been taken down to a beach and had his head lopped off without a struggle? There are no footprints, of him or of his murderer.' Corbett bit his lip and pulled the hood back over his head. 'Mind you,' he observed drily, 'what I'd also like to know is what Lavinius Monck is doing here. Ah well, we'll soon find out.'
Corbett gathered the reins in his hand and urged his horse forward along the cliff path, making sure he never looked to his right at the sheer drop only a few feet away. Ranulf, still muttering to himself, followed suit. As darkness began to fall the mist grew thicker and Corbett shouted warnings over his shoulder for Ranulf to take care. Corbett reined in as he reached the gaunt, three-branched scaffold that stood between the edge of the path and the cliff top. He stared up at the scrap of rope hanging from a rusting iron hook.
'Is this where they found the second corpse?' Ranulf asked.
'Apparently,' Corbett replied. 'She was a local baker's wife. Disappeared from her home. The next morning someone found her swinging by her neck from the scaffold. An innocent victim executed where murderers are usually gibbeted.' Corbett turned. 'Now, who would do that, Ranulf? Who would murder a poor woman in such a barbarous way? He stared at the scaffold, which rose at least five feet above his head.
'I suppose she was murdered at night,' Corbett continued. 'But why here?'
He looked down at the base of the scaffold and dismounted, throwing the reins at Ranulf, as something caught his attention. He knelt and picked up a bunch of decaying wild flowers from the bare ground beneath the gallows.
'What's the matter?' Ranulf asked impatiently.
'Who put these here?' Corbett asked.
'Oh, for God's sake, Master, the poor woman's husband or her family.'
Corbett shook his head. He sniffed at the brown, rotting stalks.
'No, they have been here for weeks.'
'Perhaps the relatives of an executed felon,' Ranulf hissed through clenched teeth. 'Sir Hugh, for the love of God, I am freezing! I have lost all feeling in my legs and balls!'
Corbett threw the flowers down, wiped his hands on his robe, grasped his reins and remounted. 'Well, well, we can't have that, can we, Ranulf? What a loss to the ladies of London,eh?'
He urged his horse on. Ranulf stuck his tongue out at him and quietly moaned to himself about the buxom little widow – brown-haired and merry-faced, with the sweetest eyes and softest arms he had ever known – left behind in London. He'd had to give her up just because old Master.Long Face, riding in front of him now, had been ordered north by King Edward.
'Whose balls,' Ranulf muttered to himself, 'I hope are as cold as mine!'
He followed his master, who had now slowed his horse to a trot, fearful that it might slip or lose direction. The mist had thickened and the angry sea still rumbled and crashed belowthem. The ruins of the old Hermitage came into sight, mostly hidden by a high sandstone curtain-wall. Corbett caught the smell of wood smoke and the sweeter scent of roasting
beef, which made his stomach growl and wetted his dry mouth.
'Shall we go in, Master?' Ranulf whispered.
'No, no.'
Corbett followed the path round, kicking his horse into a gallop. He did not want to stop until he had spoken to Sir Simon Gurney. Ranulf followed suit. He was sure he had heard a shout behind him, but Corbett waved him on and they trotted through the mist towards the lights of Mortlake Manor. At last the path turned inland, then slightly downwards. Ranulf could have shouted with joy as the gates of the manor, with fiery sconce torches lit above them, came into view.
'Maltote had better be there!' he shouted. 'I hope the lazy bugger told them we were on our way!' 'He'll be there,' Corbett replied.
Ralph Maltote, the clerk's messenger, may have nothing in his brains but he was a superb rider with a hunting dog's instinct for threading his way along the twisting roads and paths of England. Ranulf dismounted and hammered on the small postern door in the main gate of the manor.
'Come on! Come on!' he muttered. I'm freezing to death!'
The door swung open. A busy-faced porter peered out and beckoned them into the large cobbled yard that stretched before the fortified manor house of Sir Simon Gurney. Grooms hurried up and took their horses. A servant collected their saddlebags and the porter led them in through the main door of the house. They went down a sweet-smelling, stone-vaulted passageway past the busy kitchen, the smells from which whetted Corbett's and Ranulf's hunger, and into the solar where the grey-haired Sir Simon Gurney and his wife Alice waited to greet them.
The old knight, one of the king's former companions, smiled and rose from his chair by the fire; his petite, sweet-faced wife stood smiling behind him.
'Hugh! Hugh!'
Gurney clasped Corbett's hand. He peered into the clerk's dark, saturnine face and noted the flecks of grey in the hair on either side of his temples and the furrows around his mouth and hooded eyes which had not been there when they had last met at Westminster.
'You look tired, Hugh.'
'A bad day, Sir Simon. Cold and hard. I have had pleasanter rides.' Corbett stared into the knight's weathered face, with its white, bushy brows above eyes that seemed still young, and neatly clipped moustache and beard. 'The king misses you,' he continued. 'He sends greetings and his good wishes to you and' – he turned to Gurney's wife – 'the Lady Alice.'
Alice, who was at least twenty years her husband's junior, came up and offered one soft hand for Corbett to kiss. He brushed her fingers gently and felt a slight tinge of embarrassment as she took his hand and pressed it a little too firmly.
'The same Hugh,' she said in her deep, rather husky voice.
Corbett caught the hint of mischief in her dark brown eyes. He catalogued to himself her still-perfect features – the warm, generous mouth, thin, finely etched nose, the neatly plucked eyebrows and the rich brown hair, now neat beneath a green and white wimple.
'Madame, you are as mischievous as ever,' he breathed.
He prayed Gurney would not take offence. Alice always made a fuss of him. Corbett, constantly tongue-tied in the presence of beautiful women, never knew whether to be embarrassed or pleased. Ranulf-atte-Newgate had no such reservations. After Gurney had clasped his hand and greeted him with affectionate abuse, remarking that he looked as villainous as ever, Corbett's manservant sank to one knee to kiss Alice's hand. He held it so long that, bubbling with laughter, she pulled it away and walked back to her chair near the fireside.
'Nothing changes,' Gurney observed drily. 'You, Corbett, still as shy as a child in company.' He pushed two chairs between his and that of his wife. 'You, Ranulf, still with all the cheek of a travelling friar. Come on, your cloaks!'
He took them and threw them to a servant. Corbett and Ranulf unhitched their sword belts and hung them carefully on a hook on the wall.
Corbett and Ranulf eased themselves into the chairs, spread their feet and revelled in the fierce warmth from the log fire. A servant brought them posset in pewter goblets with white napkins wrapped round them as the claret had been spiced then heated by a red hot poker. Corbett sipped the wine slowly, savouring each drop as his legs and body thawed out. He felt warm, even drowsy, but did not want to disgrace himself by falling asleep. While Ranulf smacked his lips and crowed with delight, Corbett stared around the darkened solar. It was opulently furnished; woollen cloths and damask hangings covered the walls; the windows were glazed, some of them even tinted; the candelabra held pure beeswax lights – no tallow or cheap oil-lamps here. Corbett felt the carved wooden chair; oak or yew, he reflected, and the same was true of the cupboards and other chairs around the room. Underfoot, the carpets and rugs were of pure wool. As a pageboy hurried to remove his boots, Corbett looked up and saw the black, white and gold of the Gurney arms on a huge shield above the fireplace; beneath this, silver plate glinted and glowed in the candlelight.
Gurney threw another log on the fire. A small pouch of fragrant herbs had been pushed into a split in the log and, as the flames licked the wood, fumes from the hot herbs spread the aroma of summer across the room. Corbett tasted the wine, half-listening to Ranulf's chatter about their journey. On the opposite side of the hearth, Alice watched him closely.
You've changed, she thought. Corbett had always been secretive, taciturn and shy, but now she saw in him a certain hardness; the laughter lines around his mouth were not as pronounced as before and his dark eyes, usually so gentle, had a slightly haunted look.
Alice had heard about Corbett's second marriage to the Welsh princess Maeve and knew how deeply he loved both his wife and his daughter Eleanor. But she had also heard other rumours, of how iron-haired Edward was becoming a harder taskmaster now that he was waging bloody war against the Scots and deeply immersed in a life-and-death struggle with his rival, Philip of France. Corbett, despite his knighthood, his honours and his preferment, looked as if he was paying the price. Alice idly wondered what sights Corbett had seen. She caught his eye.
'Hugh, do you wish to sleep?'
'No, thank you, my lady. Perhaps later. There are matters to be seen to, questions to be asked.'
Alice felt her stomach lurch with fear. Corbett had been her friend. Now, with his sharp eyes, brooding thoughts and clever questions, he was here for other reasons. He would begin to ferret out the truth. Alice, despite the cloying warmth of the room, felt the cold prickle of fear on the nape of her neck. What would this subtle clerk discover? She caught her husband's eyes and gave him a warning look. He saw the glance and looked away. He, too, was apprehensive, fearful of Corbett's visit. All he had wanted was to be free of Edward's court and camp so that he could plough the fertile fields of his manor, raise sheep and export the wool to Flanders for heavy bags of gold. The king's campaigns against the French had stopped all that. Although at this moment Edward and Philip were technically at peace, in practice war still disrupted commerce. Gurney, like others, was suffering the consequences. Now Corbett was here, holder of the royal secrets and, if some men could be believed, custodian of the king's conscience.
'A bloody business!' Gurney blurted out the words before he could stop himself.
Corbett spread his hands out towards the flames and turned to him.
'What is?'
Gurney laughed sourly. 'Hugh, I am your friend. Don't play your subtle games with me.'
Corbett smiled an apology and inclined his head.
'A bloody business,' Gurney repeated. 'A woman found hanging on the gallows. A servant decapitated on the beach. Graves plundered. Stories of black magic, of fires at the crossroads, of strange noises at the dead of night, of demon hags riding the air. And now the bloody Pastoureaux!'
'A time of troubles indeed, Sir Simon.'
Corbett spun round. Lavinius Monck was leaning rather languidly against the door lintel, arms folded. Corbett rose and went towards him.
'Lavinius!' He stretched out his hand. 'It's been some months.'
Monck limply took Corbett's outstretched hand and patted it.
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'My dear Hugh,' he lisped, though Lavinius's obsidian eyes never moved.
Corbett stepped back. Why do I always find this man so sinister, he thought? Lavinius, dressed now in black leather, always reminded Corbett of a cruel raven, with his black, greasy hair, smooth-shaven, sour face, beak of a nose and eyes which never seemed to close. Lavinius slapped his leather riding gloves from hand to hand and walked into the room.
'Sir Simon, Lady Alice.'
'You had a good day, Master Monck?'
Gurney got to his feet. From the set of his mouth and his dour look it seemed that he too disliked the secretive, sly clerk of John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey. Monck smiled, or rather twisted his face in a grimace, took off his cloak and threw it on a bench. He took a cup of posset from a servant and sat down in the chair another had pushed up to the half-circle in front of the fire. Monck crossed his legs arrogantly, flicking flecks of mud from his knee. He stared into the fire with an infuriating smile that suggested he was the guardian of some great secret. Gurney refilled his own cup from a jug of claret on one of the aumbries and rejoined his guests, shaking off his wife's warning touch.
'I asked you a question. Did you have a good day?'
Monck smiled and sipped from his cup.
'Sir Simon, for me every day is good. I have ridden around your estates. I have drunk some foul ale at the tavern in the village and I have listened.' His face grew hard. 'I will continue to listen and I will continue to hunt until I find the murderer of my servant Cerdic and see him or her dangling from that gibbet of yours on the cliff top!' 'And the Pastoureaux?' Alice asked.
'Crouching like rabbits,' Monck replied contemptuously. 'They never seem to leave their Hermitage. And you, dearest Hugh, your journey?'
'Hard and cold. The King sends you his greetings, as does the Earl of Surrey.'
Monck moved in the chair, his leather jacket creaking. Corbett realized that the man, despite his heavy clothing, was impervious to the raw heat of the fire.