Satan's Fire (A Medieval Mystery Featuring Hugh Corbett)

by Doherty, Paul

  De Warrenne hustled the archers and their grisly burden out of the room, slamming the door behind them. ‘And the bastard’s name?’

  ‘Walter Murston.’

  ‘The king will want an answer to all this.’ De Warrenne snapped. ‘I don’t trust those bloody fighting monks!’ He came over and kicked the ash away with his boot, spurs jingling on the wooden floor. He stared through the window. ‘I am frightened, Corbett.’ He whispered. ‘I am terrified. I was with the king thirty years ago when the Assassins tried to kill him. A man pretending to be a messenger.’ The old earl narrowed his eyes, breathing heavily through flared nostrils. ‘He got so close, so quickly. The king was quick. He brained him with a stool. Now they are hunting him again.’ He gripped Corbett’s arm; the clerk stared unflinchingly back. ‘For God’s sake, Hugh, don’t let them do it!’ De Warrenne glanced away. ‘We are all dying,’ he murmured. ‘All the king’s old friends.’

  ‘Tell His Grace,’ Corbett replied, ‘that he will be safe. Say that I will join him at the abbey of St Mary’s.’

  De Warrenne stomped across the room.

  ‘Oh, my lord Earl?’

  ‘Yes, Corbett.’

  ‘Tell the king I will not return to Leighton Manor.’ He forced a smile. ‘At least, not until this present business is finished.’

  He paused and listened as de Warrenne stamped down the stairs, hurling abuse at everyone in the tavern below. Ranulf and Maltote were standing in the corner watching open-mouthed.

  ‘What’s the matter, Ranulf?’ Corbett asked. ‘If you don’t close your mouth, you’ll catch a fly.’

  ‘I’ve never heard de Warrenne call you Hugh,’ Ranulf replied. ‘He must be very frightened . . .’

  ‘He is. The Assassins’ boast is never hollow.’ Corbett closed the window. ‘But let’s leave. This place stinks. Ranulf, bring that saddlebag.’

  ‘Who are the Assassins?’ Maltote asked.

  ‘I’ll tell you later. What I want to know is why a member of the Templar Order is carrying out their instructions!’

  They walked back down the stairs and into the taproom, a low, dank chamber, its ceiling timbers blackened by a thousand fires. At the far end, near the scullery door, sat the landlord surrounded by his slatterns; he was gulping wine as if his life depended on it. He took one look at Corbett’s face and slumped to his knees, clasping his hands before him.

  ‘Oh, Lord have mercy on me!’ He wailed, staring piteously, though Corbett’s grim face did nothing to ease his panic. He almost grovelled at the clerk’s feet. ‘Master, believe me, we had nothing to do with it!’

  Ranulf drew his sword and brought the flat of its blade down on the man’s shoulder. ‘If you had,’ Corbett’s red-haired servant taunted, ‘within a week you’ll hang, then you’ll be quartered and your pickled limbs dangled above Micklegate Bar.’

  The landlord grasped Corbett’s cloak. ‘Master,’ he groaned, ‘mercy!’

  Corbett knocked away Ranulf’s sword and pushed the man back on to his stool.

  ‘Get your master a cup of the best wine. The same for me and my companions,’ he ordered one of the slatterns. ‘Now, listen sir,’ Corbett pulled a stool up and sat close, his knees touching the landlord’s. ‘You have nothing to fear,’ he continued, ‘if you tell the truth.’

  The landlord could hardly stop shaking. Ranulfs sword was one thing, but this soft-spoken clerk was absolutely terrifying. For a while he could only splutter.

  ‘You are in no danger,’ Corbett reassured him. ‘You can’t be held responsible for everyone in your tavern.’ He took the wine a servitor had brought and thrust it into the man’s hand. Corbett sipped from his own then put it down: the wine was good but the sight of a fat fly floating near the rim turned his stomach. ‘Now, who was the man?’

  ‘I don’t know. He came here last night. A traveller. He gave his name as Walter Murston. He paid well for the garret: two silver coins. He ate his supper and that’s the last I saw of him.’

  ‘Didn’t he come down to break his fast?’

  ‘No, we were busy preparing for the king’s entry to York.’ The landlord groaned and put his face in his hands. ‘We were going to have a holiday. One minute we are by the doorway cheering the banners and listening to the trumpets, the next . . .’ The man’s hands flailed helplessly.

  ‘And no one else was with him?’ Corbett insisted. ‘No one came to visit him?’

  ‘No, Master, but there again the tavern has two entrances: front and back. People come and go, especially on a day like this.’ The man’s voice trailed away.

  Corbett closed his eyes and sat, recalling how he had struggled through the crowds. He had knocked that beggar aside as Ranulf had gone down the alleyway. Corbett opened his eyes.

  ‘Wait there,’ he ordered, and went out of the tavern.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Ranulf hurried up behind him.

  Corbett walked to the mouth of the alleyway and stared down. It was a narrow, evil-smelling tunnel between the houses, full of refuse and wandering cats. Two children were trying to ride an old sow which was lumbering amongst the litter, but there was no sign of the beggar.

  ‘Master?’ Ranulf asked.

  Corbett walked back into the taproom.

  ‘Master taverner, in London, and I suppose York is the same, beggars have their favourite haunts: certain corners or the porch of some church. Does a beggar-man stand on the corner of the alleyway, on the other side of your tavern?’

  The landlord shook his head. ‘No, Master, no beggar would stand there. It’s well away from the stalls, and the alleyway really goes nowhere.’ He smiled in a display of red, sore gums. ‘After all, my customers are not the sort to part with a penny.’

  ‘In which case, Master taverner, go back to your beer barrels. You have nothing to fear.’

  Corbett beckoned at Ranulf and Maltote to follow and they walked back into Trinity Lane.

  ‘Sir.’ A serjeant of the royal household came up, one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other cradling his helmet. ‘The Earl of Surrey told us to stay here until you were finished.’

  ‘Take your men, Captain,’ Corbett ordered. ‘Rejoin the king at the abbey. Tell my lord of Surrey I will be with him soon. Our horses?’

  The soldier raised his hand and an archer came forward, leading their three mounts.

  ‘You’ll have to walk them,’ the soldier observed. ‘The streets are now packed.’

  Once they had left Trinity, Corbett was forced to agree. Now the royal procession had swept on, Micklegate was thronged. The stalls had been brought out and it was business as usual: traders, hawkers and journeymen trying to earn a penny in the holiday atmosphere of the city. Corbett walked his horse, Ranulf and Maltote trailing behind: they made slow progress. Outside St Martin’s church, a troupe of players had erected a makeshift stage on two carts and were depicting, to the crowd’s delight, a play about Cain and Abel. As Corbett passed, God, a figure dressed in a white sheet with a gold halo strapped to the back of his head, was busily marking Cain with a red cross. If only it was so easy, Corbett reflected: if the mark of Cain appeared on the forehead of every assassin or would-be murderer.

  ‘Do you think that Templar acted by himself?’ Ranulf asked, coming up beside him.

  ‘No,’ Corbett replied. ‘How long, Ranulf, did it take us to leave the king’s side and reach that garret room?’

  Ranulf paused as a group of children ran by, chasing a wooden hoop; a mongrel followed, the corpse of a scrawny chicken in its mouth, hotly pursued by an irate housewife, screaming at the top of her voice.

  ‘They talk strangely here,’ Ranulf declared. ‘Faster, more clipped than in London.’

  ‘But the girls are just as pretty,’ Corbett replied. ‘I asked you a question, Ranulf; how long do you think it took us?’

  ‘About the space of ten Aves.’

  Corbett remembered pushing through the crowds, losing his way, then entering the tavern and going up the stairs.

 
‘You think there were two, don’t you?’ Ranulf asked.

  ‘Yes, I do. The door to the room was locked, probably by the crossbowman’s accomplice as he left. I noticed the key was missing.’

  ‘So it was the beggar you went looking for?’

  ‘Perhaps, though that doesn’t explain it,’ Corbett continued. ‘Murston must have fired those two bolts. Yet how could a professional soldier be killed in such a short time, offering no resistance? And then his body be consumed so quickly by that terrible fire?’

  ‘The other person could have killed him,’ Ranulf replied, ‘then ran downstairs and pretended to be the beggar you knocked aside.’

  ‘That’s only conjecture,’ Corbett replied.

  He gripped his horse’s reins more tightly as they entered the approaches to the bridge across the Ouse. The bridge was broad; stalls had been set up alongside the high wooden rails where traders could offer fish ‘Freshly plucked’, so they shouted, ‘from the river below.’ Corbett stopped, told Ranulf to hold the horses, and went to look through a gap between the palings. To his right, he could see the great donjon of York Castle then, turning to his left, he glimpsed the towering spires of York Minster and St Mary’s Abbey.

  ‘What shall I tell the king?’ he murmured to himself, ignoring the curious looks of passers-by. He looked down at the river swirling past the starlings of the bridge, and the fragile craft of the fishermen bobbing there. These rowed against the tide, struggling to hold their nets, whilst avoiding the mounds of refuse which swirled about, trapped by the great pillars of the bridge. Corbett couldn’t make sense of the Templar’s death: a fighting man, so expertly reduced to burning ash! He walked back towards Ranulf and, as he did so, a little beggar boy ran up, a penny in one hand, a piece of parchment in the other. He chattered to Corbett. The clerk smiled and squatted down.

  ‘What is it, boy?’

  The smile on the urchin’s thin face widened. He thrust the dirty piece of parchment into Corbett’s hand. The clerk unfurled it and the boy ran away. As he read it, despite the bustling crowds and the warm sunlight, Corbett’s blood ran cold.

  KNOWEST THOU, THAT WHAT THOU POSSESSES SHALL ESCAPE THEE IN THE END AND RETURN TO US, the message read. KNOWEST THOU, THAT WE GO FORTH AND RETURN AS BEFORE AND BY NO MEANS CAN YOU HINDER US.

  KNOWEST THOU, THAT WE HOLD YOU AND WILL KEEP THEE UNTIL THE ACCOUNT BE CLOSED.

  Corbett studied the scrawl on the parchment: the sequence of the verses was slightly changed but the threat was just as real. He glanced up: the boy was gone, impossible to follow. Somewhere in the crowds the Assassin had been watching them, tracking their every footstep. The dead Templar had not been alone, he had merely been a pawn – and the game was only just beginning.

  Chapter 3

  Edward of England sprawled in the great wooden bath in the private chamber of the archbishop’s palace. The tub’s surroundings had been covered by a purple buckram cloth, filled by a troop of servants carrying buckets of scalding water, then sweetened by rose-hips and other herbs. The king sat with his arms out on either side, allowing his body to float in the sweet-smelling, soapy water. He glared over the rim at Corbett who was sitting next to de Warrenne. The clerk was trying to keep his face straight: not that Edward lost any of his royal dignity in taking a bath, the clerk was more amused by the pretensions of the archbishop, the owner of this tub, whose coat of arms, not to mention a few crosses, were painted on the bath.

  ‘Do you think it’s amusing?’ Edward snarled. ‘I have just been promised a loan of fifty thousand pounds sterling by the Templars. I have taken their bloody oath to go on Crusade: now you say the bastards are trying to kill me!’

  ‘It wasn’t a loan,’ Corbett retorted, ‘it was a gift. If you go on Crusade, Your Grace, then with all due respect, that tub will sing the Te Deum.’

  Edward rose to his feet, shaking himself like a dog. He stepped out of the bath; de Warrenne placed a woollen cloth round his shoulders.

  ‘I enjoyed that,’ Edward declared. ‘I wish I didn’t have to wait until mid-summer for the next.’ He padded over to Corbett, shaking the water from his hair. ‘You bathe once a week, don’t you?’

  ‘An Arab physician, a student of Salerno, said it would do me no harm.’

  ‘It makes you soft!’ Edward grumbled.

  The king went across to a small table, filled three gold-encrusted goblets with wine and brought them back, thrusting one each into de Warrenne’s and Corbett’s hands.

  ‘So, this Templar loosed two arrows at me then burst into flames?’

  ‘Apparently, my lord, though there must have been someone else there,’ Corbett replied. ‘The same person followed me through York and delivered that warning message.’

  ‘But why should the Templars want me dead?’ Edward asked. And does this attack have anything in common with that poor bastard those two nuns found burning on the road outside York?’ He breathed in deeply. ‘You still look fresh, Corbett. I want you to go out to Framlingham.’ He slipped a ring from his finger and dropped it into Corbett’s hand. ‘Show that to de Molay. He’ll recognise it.’

  Corbett looked at the amethyst sparkling on the gold ring.

  ‘The Templars gave it to my father,’ Edward explained. ‘I want it back, till then it’s your authority to act. You are to investigate, Corbett! Use that long nose and sharp brain, ferret out the assassin and, when you do, I’ll kill him!’

  ‘Is that all, my Lord?’

  ‘What more do you want?’ Edward sneered. ‘The archbishop’s tub to sing the “Te Deum” for you? Oh,’ he called out as Corbett rose, bowed and made his way to the door, ‘I want you to stay at Framlingham until this business is finished. However, to show my friendship to the grand master, take that tun of wine I promised.’

  There was a rap on the door and it was abruptly pushed open, almost knocking Corbett over. Amaury de Craon, Philip IV’s envoy to the English council, stalked into the room all afluster. He scarcely seemed aware of de Warrenne, but immediately sank to one knee before the king.

  ‘Your Grace,’ he murmured. ‘I heard about the attack on you.’ He raised his red-bearded, foxy face. ‘On behalf of my own master I give thanks to God for your safe deliverance. I pray that your enemy will soon be brought to destruction.’

  ‘As he will be. As he will be.’

  Edward stretched his hand out for the French envoy to kiss. De Craon did so, then rose to his feet.

  ‘Our dear and well-beloved clerk, Sir Hugh Corbett, Keeper of our Secret Seal,’ the king continued, ‘will search out the truth.’

  ‘As I have done on other occasions,’ Corbett added, closing the door and leaning against it.

  De Craon turned. ‘Sir Hugh, God save you!’ And, going over, he grasped the English clerk by the arms and kissed him, Judas-like, on his cheek. ‘You look well, Sir Hugh!’

  Corbett stared at his inveterate enemy: Philip’s spy-master and the source of all his intrigues. He admired the Frenchman’s ostentatious dress: the damask tunic, edged at the neck and cuffs with gold; the hem over shiny red leather boots, studded with miniature gems.

  ‘And you, Sir Amaury, have not changed.’

  De Craon smiled, though, keeping his back to the king, his eyes betrayed a deep antipathy for this English clerk he’d love to kill.

  ‘Congratulate me, Sir Hugh. I am married and my wife is already with child.’

  ‘Then you are twice blessed, Sir Amaury.’

  ‘But I did not come to share pleasantries.’ De Craon turned. ‘Nor even to rejoice in His Grace’s narrow escape.’

  ‘Then what?’ Corbett snapped.

  ‘Warnings from my master,’ de Craon continued. ‘You heard of a similar attack on him whilst hunting in the Bois de Boulogne?’

  ‘Continue,’ Edward said softly.

  ‘The culprit was found,’ de Craon explained. ‘A Templar, a high-ranking serjeant from their fortress in Paris. My master’s agents arrested him. He made a full confession after a short sojourn i
n the dungeon of the Louvre.’

  ‘And?’ Corbett asked.

  ‘Apparently there are high-ranking Templars who view their expulsion from the Holy Land as the fault of the Western kings, the Holy Roman Emperor, even the Pope himself; more especially, Philip of France and Edward of England.’

  Corbett walked across. ‘And so you bring warnings?’

  ‘Yes, Sir Hugh, I bring warnings. England and France are about to sign a great treaty of peace. It will be cemented by a royal marriage between the two houses. Both our countries have had their differences. However, this is a common danger which threatens us both and could shatter that peace.’

  ‘And what else did this serjeant confess?’ Edward asked.

  De Craon plucked a parchment from his sleeve and thrust it at Corbett. ‘See for yourself!’

  Corbett unrolled the parchment and read it; as he did so, he realised that his suspicions about de Craon were, on this occasion, apparently unfounded.

  ‘What does it say?’ the king asked, sitting down on a bench.

  Corbett studied the manuscript, taking it over to a window for better light. ‘It’s a confession,’ Corbett explained. ‘By a serjeant based in the Temple at Paris. He admits to trying to kill Philip in the Bois de Boulogne. Apparently, the serjeant was carrying out the orders of a high ranking officer known only to him as “Sagittarius” or “The Archer”.’

  ‘And Philip’s torturers wrung this out of him?’ Edward asked.

  ‘No,’ Corbett looked up, ‘not the royal torturers.’ He saw de Craon’s smile of satisfaction. ‘No less a person than the grand inquisitor.’

  ‘And you know,’ de Craon intervened, ‘the Holy Inquisition is a law unto itself.’

  ‘Apparently,’ Corbett continued, studying the manuscript carefully, ‘certain artefacts were found in the Templar’s possession: a pentangle, a picture of an inverted cross, and other tools of the black magician.’ He glanced up. ‘Which is why the Inquisition took the matter over. The serjeant maintained that he and other Templars were part of a warlock’s coven, participating in Satanic practices, the worship of demons and a disembodied head.’