by Paul Doherty
Corbett patted his thigh, got to his feet, opened his purse and slipped another coin into the Gleeman’s hand. He stared around the old priest’s house, the crumbling plaster, the cracked floor, the gaps in the windows, the sagging roof, the dirt and filth brushed into a corner. On reflection he didn’t like this place, he wanted to be gone. The story the Gleeman had told him about poor Griskin’s death was equally filthy, horrid and menacing. He thought of his walk back through the lonely woods to St Augustine’s. He turned at the door.
‘Master Gleeman, I would like an escort, maybe two of your men?’
‘Sir Hugh, I can’t spare any. I’ve sent some out to snare rabbits in the wasteland, but I can ask two of our boys.’ The Gleeman stood up, and went outside shouting. A short while later two lads, merry-faced, bright-eyed and clothed in rags, came leaping up. They introduced themselves as Jack o’ the Lantern and David of the Mist. They danced around Corbett like sprites, asking him questions, chattering away in a patois he couldn’t understand. He bade adieu to the Gleeman and moved away, the boys dancing in front of him, shoving and pushing, kicking up the snow, scaring the birds, flinging their arms out. Corbett smiled at the sheer exuberance of youth, a welcome relief from that dank cottage and the sombre news he’d received.
‘Come here, lads,’ he called. ‘Come here.’
Both boys fell silent and came running up. Corbett noticed they were barefoot.
‘You have no shoes.’
‘It’s not our turn to wear them, sir; it’s our turn to collect sticks, so we are pleased to act as your guides.’
‘And very good guides you are. Where are you from?’
‘We live in Birch Hall or Birch Manor,’ Jack o’ the Lantern replied.
‘We have lived there for years,’ David of the Mist teased as he chased his brother off.
Again Corbett called them back. ‘Birch Hall, Birch Manor, what do you mean?’
The two lads started laughing, pushing and shoving each other, and pointed to the trees on either side of the trackway.
‘This is Birch Manor; this is Birch Hall: the trees, that’s where we live.’ And chattering like squirrels on a branch, they ran ahead of Corbett, leading him back into the grounds of St Augustine’s Abbey.
Corbett was well down the lane when he heard his name being called. He turned and watched the figure emerge from the mist. The Gleeman hurried limping towards him.
‘Sir Hugh! Sir Hugh!’
Corbett walked back. The Gleeman paused, hands on his side, gasping for breath.
‘What is it, man?’
‘I forgot something about Griskin! When we cut him down from the scaffold and buried him . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘His left hand had been cut off, severed completely at the wrist. I never understood why. I’ve heard stories, but I thought I should tell you.’
Corbett stared down the path; the mist was growing thicker. Behind him he could hear the boys shouting at him to come, how the abbey buildings were in sight, just a short walk, almost as if they could sense his apprehension.
‘I thank you, Gleeman.’ He raised his hand and bowed. ‘I am grateful; as you say, God knows why anyone should do that.’
He went back to join the boys, now skipping and leaping like hares in front of him. They passed through a gate into the abbey grounds. The boys, still dancing from foot to foot, asked him if he wanted anything else. Could they look around? Corbett called them closer and pressed a coin into each of their grubby hands.
‘No, no,’ he declared, smiling down at them. ‘Go back. The Gleeman is waiting for you. I think he has other errands waiting.’
The boys left as swift as lurchers, heading for the gate, jostling each other. Corbett watched them go. For a brief moment he felt a deep sense of envy at their innocence. They had no fear. To them this was not an icy, mist-strewn place where all sorts of demons and dangers lurked. He sighed and walked on across the snow-covered yards and gardens. Now and again a brother would pass him and whisper a salutation, Corbett would reply absent-mindedly; all he could really think of was poor Griskin, naked, bloated, and hanging from that lonely scaffold over those icy marshes. He had reached the small cloisters leading down to the guesthouse when he heard his name being called.
‘Sir Hugh, Sir Hugh!’
He turned round. The guest master came hobbling up, one hand held out, the other containing a leather sack bound and sealed at the neck. The monk handed this over, saying it had been left for Corbett at the abbey lodge, but by whom he couldn’t say. He then questioned Corbett about his lodgings. Were they warm and comfortable? Corbett nodded distractedly and the guest master, remembering other duties, hastened away.
Corbett walked into a shadowy alcove and lifted the bag up. It was of thick Spanish leather, the string pulled tight, the neck sealed with wax. He broke the seal and undid the knot, loosened the sack and put his hand in. He drew out a linen cloth containing something cold and hard. Even as he undid the folds, he felt a shiver of apprehension, then stared in horror at what he’d uncovered: a human hand, severed at the wrist, blackened like a piece of cured meat, and in between the forefinger and thumb, a blood-red tarot candle, its wick charred from burning. Corbett swallowed hard and tried to control the nausea in his stomach. Bile gathered at the back of his throat. He wanted to scream, to throw it away. He turned the hand over. The flesh had been smoke-dried, shrunk like a scrap of rotten pork. He placed it gently back in the linen folds and dropped the gruesome package back into the sack, tying the knot tightly. Then he sat down on a small bench in the alcove to control his breathing, the hot sweat on his back turning icy.
‘Griskin’s hand!’ he whispered.
He stared across at a small fountain covered in ice, the garden bed around it frosted and dead, then closed his eyes and leaned back. He knew what he’d been sent. A talisman, a diabolic token, the Hand of Glory, the curse of a hanged man. He fought to control his anger. He didn’t believe in such nonsense, but he recognised that Griskin’s killer, possibly Hubert the Monk, had done this to frighten him.
He took a deep breath, rose to his feet and walked through the abbey buildings until he found the smithy in the main stable yard. A lay brother stood at the entrance hammering a piece of metal with a huge mallet. The crashing stilled as Corbett approached.
‘What can I do for you, sir?’ The brother looked Corbett over from head to toe, then glimpsed the ring on his left hand. ‘Ah, you must be our guest, the King’s man.’
‘You have a fire,’ Corbett asked, ‘a forge?’
The man nodded. Corbett handed the sack over. ‘Do not look inside; burn it, burn it now!’
The smith shrugged, took the sack and walked inside. Corbett stood and watched the great door of the forge opened, the abomination was thrust in and the door closed.
‘Push it deeper into the coals,’ he urged.
The smith shrugged, opened the forge, pushed the sack further into the coals with a poker, closed the door again, then walked back outside.
‘Sir, what was in there?’
‘Something devilish,’ Corbett replied, ‘but fire will cleanse it!’
He stood for a while in the smithy, relishing its warmth, the smell of horses, hay, and roasting iron. Then he went across to a makeshift lavarium and, pouring water over his hands, washed them carefully, drying them on a napkin. He thanked the smith, took directions to the guesthouse and returned there. He could hear Ranulf and Chanson as soon as he entered the small downstairs refectory; they were singing, and Ranulf was teasing his comrade. Corbett stamped up the stairs. Ranulf and Chanson came out of their room to meet him, took one look at Corbett’s face and hastily retreated.
Corbett went into his chamber, slamming the door behind him. He slung down the small arbalest from his shoulder, took off his war belt and lay down on the bed. He found it difficult to concentrate. He tried to recall a Goliard song he loved to sing to Maeve: ‘Iam dulcis amica – now my sweet friend . . .’ but the words and tu
ne were difficult to recall. He swung his legs off the bed. Ranulf and Chanson knocked on the door and came in.
‘Master, we are sorry.’
Corbett brushed aside their apology. He could not tell them about where he’d been or his meeting with the Gleeman, so he fended off their questions in a flurry of preparations.
Ranulf leaned against the aumbry and narrowed his eyes. Master Long-Face was certainly agitated, but about what? Edward the King often took Ranulf aside and, leaning close, his right eye almost closed, would grasp the clerk’s arm until Ranulf winced with pain. The King would then instruct Ranulf to keep a vigilant watch on Sir Hugh. Ranulf had long realised this was not solely due to affection. In a word, Edward of England did not trust Corbett fully.
‘Too soft,’ he’d whisper. ‘Corbett has a heart and a soul, Ranulf.’ Then the King would add, ‘Which is more than he can say about us! Eh, Master Ranulf?’
The Senior Clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax had never truly answered that question, either to himself or to the King. Ranulf had not decided what choices he would make. All he concentrated on was the road sweeping in front of him, the path to honour, power, glory and wealth. In truth, Corbett was that path, and so he had to keep Master Long-Face safe, not just for Maeve, little Edward and Eleanor, but more importantly for himself.
‘You are ready?’ Corbett, booted and spurred, his cloak tied about him, was ready to leave. Ranulf hastened to follow. They went down to the courtyard, where Chanson had prepared the horses. A short while later they left the abbey precincts. Corbett, slouched low in the saddle, allowed Ranulf and Chanson to lead as they wound their way up past St Queningate church and into the city. He felt strange. He had still to recover from the shock of that gruesome hand. He wanted to concentrate, yet the scenes around him came like images in a dream or wall paintings glimpsed in a church. A row of crows cawed on the side of a cart. Traders and tinkers hurried by, their trays full of trinkets, scent boxes, St Christopher medals, Becket badges, inkwells and quills. A relic-seller, his skin burnt dark by the sun, bearded, with fierce glaring eyes, was bawling how he was prepared to auction the Virgin Mary’s wedding ring, one of Christ’s shoe latchets, and a piece of the door from the church Simon Magus had built in Rome. A master of the drains and ditches, preceded by two ruffians carrying a tawdry banner displaying the city arms, proclaimed to all and sundry how ‘the flushing of the drains and sewers as well as the houses of easement on this side of the River Stour will be carried out before the eve of Christmas’. A group of nuns clattered by in their black soutanes, woollen pelisses, white linen caps and rounded boots. Nearby a beggar had frozen to death in the stocks and the officials were arguing about who should remove the corpse and bury it. Children in rags, feet bare, jumped over frozen yellow pools. Householders pulled sledges across the ice heaped with Yule logs and greenery to decorate their homes for the great feast. Stall-owners shouted prices above the clatter of the carts. Pedlars and pilgrims, merchants and moon people, rich and poor, cleric and lay, all jostled like a shoal of fish along the narrow streets, made even more crowded by the stalls and shops. Somewhere an Angelus bell tolled to remind the faithful to recite one Pater, one Ave and one Gloria. However, most of the faithful seemed more intent on following the delicious odours trailing from the alehouses, taverns and pastry shops where the makers were drawing out fresh batches of gold-encrusted pies full of hot minced beef, highly spiced to hide its age.
Corbett and Ranulf dismounted on the corner of an alleyway outside the piscina of the cathedral church of the Holy Trinity. A lay brother allowed them into the monks’ cemetery, though this was no haven of peace as it also served as sanctuary for wolfsheads, outlaws and other fugitives from justice. A gang of wild men in their ragged hoods and animal-skin hats, they were dressed in garish rags, though all were well armed as they squatted around roaring campfires eating, drinking and arguing with the drabs and whores who’d come looking for custom. They glanced greedily at Corbett and his two companions, but the clatter of weapons and Ranulf’s hard stare persuaded them from any mischief.
‘Where are we going?’ Chanson whispered.
‘To Becket’s shrine,’ Ranulf replied. ‘I’ve explained before. His Grace the King, well, you’ve seen his menagerie at the Tower: dromedaries, camels, lions, huge cats, apes and monkeys; he likes his animals but he truly loves his hawks. On one occasion he almost beat to death a falconer who made a mistake and harmed one of them. Anyway, two of the precious birds at the royal mews near Eleanor’s Cross are ill. The King had two golden coins blessed over their heads and has asked Corbett to bring them here as an offering.’ He nudged Chanson playfully. ‘Better than taking a wax image. I heard about one poor nuncius who carried one of those to Walsingham. By the time he arrived, the image had melted.’
‘And?’
‘Made little difference,’ Ranulf whispered. ‘The bird was already dead.’
They hobbled their horses in the monks’ cemetery, leaving Chanson on guard, while Corbett and Ranulf went round through the deep snow under the brooding cathedral, a splendid mass of stone buttresses, soaring walls, elaborate cornices, grinning masks and stone-eyed faces. They slipped through a side door and entered a mystical world of arches, lofty vaults hidden in the darkness with shafts of grey and coloured light pouring through the windows; some of these were stained and painted, others opaque. They passed a glorious pageant of painted walls and squat round pillars, their cornices gilded at top and bottom, across floors tiled and decorated with phoenixes, turtle doves and sprouting lilies. Plumes of warm, sweet candle smoke wafted through the icy air in a vain attempt to fend off the cold and the stench of pilgrims.
The cathedral was fairly empty, only the most ardent visiting the shrine in the depth of winter. Corbett and Ranulf went singly along the choir aisle, turning right at the presbytery and up a long, worn flight of stone steps into Trinity Chapel, which housed the great table tomb of Becket. Above this the glorious shrine, its protective screens pulled up, shimmered like a vision from heaven. Ranulf gasped in amazement. Notwithstanding its great size, the shrine was entirely covered with plates of pure gold, yet that was hardly visible due to the precious stones which studded it: sapphires, diamonds, rubies, balas rubies and emeralds. Corbett and Ranulf walked around to study this magnificence more closely. On all sides the gold was carved and engraved with beautiful designs and studded with agate, jaspers and cornelians, some of these precious stones being as large as pigeon’s eggs. The tomb seemed to glow as if it housed some mysterious fire, and Ranulf easily understood why so many flocked here from all parts of Europe to pray before the blessed bones of Thomas à Becket.
Corbett approached the monkish guardian of the shrine, using his seal and signet ring to gain immediate access to the small cushioned alcoves in the altar tomb. There he knelt, pressing his lips against the cold marble. He closed his eyes and whispered a prayer, not so much for the King or his blessed falcons, but for himself, Ranulf, Chanson, and above all Maeve and their two children. He paused, crossed himself, then rose and gave the offering of two gold coins to the hovering sacristan. He went down the steps, lit a taper before the lady altar and left.
Ranulf was determined to tell Chanson everything he had seen, but Corbett was insistent. The hour was passing. They must meet Castledene and the rest of them at Sweetmead Manor. They collected their horses and led them out of the cathedral precincts, down narrow, stinking, ice-cold runnels haunted by dark shifting shapes, over a wooden bridge spanning the Stour, past St Thomas’ church and across the wastelands, following the frozen beaten track leading to Sweetmead Manor.
Chapter 8
Desunt sermones, dolor sensum abtulit.
Words fail and sorrow numbs the senses.
Paulinus of Aquilea
Hidden behind a line of trees, Sweetmead proved to be a splendid square three-storey building of shiny black timber and pink plaster which stood on a ragstone base behind its own red-brick curtain wall. The double gate to thi
s had been flung open, and even though all the noonday bells were yet to ring, Castledene, Wendover, Parson Warfeld, Physician Desroches, Lady Adelicia, Berengaria and Lechlade were already gathered on the small pebble-strewn forecourt before the steps to the main door. Corbett noticed how the windows of the house were firmly shuttered. City guards stood everywhere, and had been there for some time judging from the rubbish strewn around the blackened circles in the snow where they’d built their campfires. Hasty introductions and salutations were exchanged. Corbett asked Castledene if Servinus had been seen. The Mayor shrugged.
‘No sign whatsoever, Sir Hugh. The roads are clogged; even so, I’ve sent more couriers to the nearest ports.’ He shook his head. ‘He must still be hiding in the city, though a foreigner would find it difficult to find any sanctuary here. I have given my men his description; sooner or later he’ll be seen.’
Corbett chewed on the corner of his lip and stared around.
‘Lady Adelicia.’ He beckoned her away from the sharp-eyed Berengaria.
‘Sir Hugh?’ Lady Adelicia drew close.
‘Madame, you are enceinte?’
Her cold blue eyes held his.
‘The father?’ Corbett asked. ‘Sir Rauf?’
‘My secret, Sir Hugh. More importantly, I cannot hang or burn, and why should I? I hated him but I did not kill him!’ Adelicia’s voice was quiet but she spat the words out, the curl of her lips turning that beautiful face ugly. Corbett turned away, his patience exhausted; he had decided on his course of action. He strode to the foot of the steps.
‘Open the door.’
He was weary of this Hodman’s bluff, of blundering around, of being poked and pushed like some blindfolded fool. Time was passing. He had questions to ask and they had to be answered. Wendover and the guards hurried to obey. Castledene came over to speak, but Corbett held up a gauntleted hand.
‘Sir Walter, I have decided on what I must do.’ He let his hand drop gently on the Mayor’s shoulder. ‘You must send two of your men back to your clerks in the Guildhall. I want,’ he squeezed Castledene’s shoulder, ‘every record, every scrap of parchment your chancery holds about the pirate Blackstock and his half-brother Hubert. They have to be brought here, now!’ He brushed aside Castledene’s protests and went up the steps. ‘And you.’ He grabbed Wendover by the arm. ‘Light all candles, lamps and lantern horns, refill braziers, every hearth must have a fire. Light the ovens, and then check the stores and the buttery. Send one of your men to the tavern we passed as we crossed the wasteland; it has a red sign.’