Nightshade

by P. C. Doherty

  ‘I am sorry.’ She stepped out from the shadows. Ranulf noticed the distress in her eyes and face. ‘I apologise, but …’ He stood back and courteously ushered her in. Corbett apologised for not being suitably dressed to greet her. Lady Hawisa brushed this aside, still smiling at Ranulf’s obvious pleasure at seeing her. ‘Sir Hugh, I must apologise.’ She stared unblinkingly at him.

  Corbett noticed her red-rimmed eyes. She held up the chancery pouch. ‘This arrived while you were gone. I should have brought it earlier, I …’

  Corbett thanked her. Lady Hawisa, hastily recollecting where she was, immediately backed towards the door. Ranulf followed her out into the gallery; when he returned, Corbett was sitting at the chancery desk, his cipher book open as he hastily translated the missive.

  ‘It’s from Drokensford in the Royal Chancery.’ Corbett smiled. ‘The court is moving to Colchester, and two other items. A spy in New Temple claims the Templars have someone here in Mistleham to collect the Sanguis Christi.’ Corbett pulled a face. ‘He, or she, is under the strict instructions of the Master of the Temple not to wait for Lord Scrope to hand it over but to seize it whenever possible.’

  ‘Who, why, when?’

  ‘Drokensford does not know, but apparently the Temple will take what they regard as theirs and not twiddle their thumbs waiting for either Scrope or the King. They must also know we are here.’ Corbett grinned. ‘Perhaps they have spies in our own chancery, or suspect our real purpose for visiting here.’

  ‘Lord Scrope himself could have told them about our arrival and what we intend.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Corbett conceded. ‘Out of sheer malice Scrope might want the Sanguis Christi returned to the Temple rather than to the King.’

  ‘And the second item?’

  ‘Drokensford doesn’t know if this is relevant or not, but according to the records, our plunderer of the royal treasury, John Le Riche, hailed from Caernarvon and served amongst Edward’s royal troop of Welsh archers.’

  ‘So he was a master bowman. He could be the Sagittarius.’

  ‘Correct,’ Corbett breathed. ‘That is, if he is still alive. Now, Ranulf, let’s put pen to paper.’

  Corbett rose and gestured at the chair he’d left. Ranulf sat down and busied himself. He watched as Corbett began to walk up and down. You love this, Ranulf reflected, you adore the Lady Maeve and your children but this is different. You want to resolve problems and mysteries, dig out the truth, apply logic as sharply as a farmer prunes a plant with a knife.

  Ranulf opened one of the pots and stirred the red ink with the tip of his pen. He recalled the King’s eyes at Westminster, that writ hidden away in a secret coffer, then Lady Hawisa’s beautiful face. Would the King grant him Mistleham if they were successful? he wondered. If Lord Scrope died? Such a prize, only a knife-thrust away: to be a great manor lord! For a brief moment Ranulf thought of himself as a boy in a ragged tunic, racing along the foul runnels of Cheapside. So much had changed. A brief moment of time and all was different; a sudden act of mercy by Corbett. But that was how the dice fell. Life could change so abruptly. An arrow or dagger brought death or, there again, riches and preferment.

  ‘Ranulf? Ranulf?’

  He glanced up. Corbett was staring at him curiously with those sharp dark eyes.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘Time, master.’ Ranulf laughed. ‘How time can change someone’s fortune so abruptly.’

  ‘Strange, I was thinking the same. Ranulf, you must read the Venerable Bede’s work On the Nature of Time.’ Corbett recommenced his pacing. ‘A great scholar, Ranulf! Bede was a Saxon monk who lived in a monastery close to the Roman wall. Anyway, he wrote this work, in which he demonstrated how in God’s eyes there can be no time.’

  ‘Sir Hugh?’

  ‘Easily understood, Ranulf. Look at that tapestry.’ Corbett pointed at the hanging on the wall that vividly portrayed the death of Priam during the fall of Troy. ‘You look at that and you understand it at one glance. However, what if you could only understand it by taking each section at a time? Bede, as did the great Aquinas after him, talked of the “eternal now”. In God’s eyes there is no past, present or future, just the eternal vision.’

  ‘But we …’

  ‘We fashion time, Ranulf, because we have to. We must make sense of one moment following another. We are compelled to create order. Now it is midday, and the Angelus bell will soon ring to remind us of truths beyond time, otherwise we’ll forget or ignore them. We have to move across the tapestry of life very carefully so we constantly define time, naming it, dissecting it, making it part of a week or a certain month or a certain year. We create sun dials, hour candles and other mechanisms to assist us.’

  ‘And here at Mistleham?’

  ‘Time is like the seasons outside, Ranulf. They run parallel to each other. We sow in autumn, watch in winter, tend in spring and reap in summer. Here at Mistleham a bloody harvest has sprouted, but the seed … Time is the answer to all the mystery. When did that begin? Why? And who was responsible? So, Ranulf, Principal Clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax, take up your pen and let us impose our own horarium, our own book of bloody hours on the mayhem at Mistleham.’

  Corbett walked over to the window.

  ‘Today is Wednesday the thirteenth of January, the Feast of St Hilary in the Year of Our Lord 1304. It’s also harvest time, Ranulf, for what happened in the past, the fruit of seeds sown at least thirteen years ago, perhaps even earlier.’ Corbett paused as Ranulf began to write using the secret cipher his master had taught him. ‘In 1291,’ Corbett continued, ‘a company from Mistleham, fired by religious fervour no doubt,’ he added sardonically, ‘journeyed to Outremer under two young knights, Sir Oliver Scrope and his cousin Gaston de Bearn. Others accompanied them, including Master Henry Claypole, now Mayor of Mistleham; during that expedition he acted as Scrope’s squire. Now Acre fell on the twelfth of September 1291. We don’t know what really happened, but according to reports …’ Corbett paused in his pacing. ‘I left messages with Drokensford to send me an account of events, what the chronicles tell us. However, what such a document will not divulge is what happened to the company from Mistleham. Acre fell, Scrope and Claypole escaped. Gaston, Scrope’s cousin, died of his wounds in the infirmary, the rest were killed. Now all that could be suspect but we possess no evidence to the contrary. By 1292 Scrope had returned to England with treasures looted from the Templars, particularly the Sanguis Christi. He became lord of the manor, rich and powerful, hailed as a crusading hero by king and council. Already wealthy with his loot and his inheritance, he was given a rich heiress in marriage and settled down to a life of peace and plenty.

  ‘Between 1291 and 1292 his blood sister Marguerite had entered the Benedictine order, a capable woman who, with the support of Church, Crown and Lord Scrope, was appointed Abbess of St Frideswide, the nearby Benedictine convent. All at Mistleham lies quiet and fallow. Father Thomas returns from the wars in Wales; a reformed priest, he takes up residence at St Alphege’s. Again, all is quiet. In the autumn of 1302 Master Benedict Le Sanglier becomes Dame Marguerite’s chaplain, yes? In the following January, Brother Gratian arrives as Lord Scrope’s confessor. The harmony continues until Lent last year and the arrival of the Free Brethren of the Holy Spirit. Now the Free Brethren were one of those wandering groups of religious. Carrying letters from the papal curia at Avignon, they land at Dover, are given safe passage into Essex and settle in the ruins of Mordern.’

  ‘Why should Scrope allow that?’

  ‘He viewed them as no danger. They were patronised by Father Thomas, who, late last summer and early autumn, asked them to devise a painting for his parish church. Dame Marguerite also took a liking to them. The Free Brethren were undoubtedly eccentric, not heretic or schismatic, though they adopted a rather original interpretation of certain Church doctrines. We do not know who they really were; French undoubtedly, but they assumed Old Testament names. They proclaimed themselves as free as the
air. It would take years, if ever, to establish who they really were and where they came from. Then, in November of last year, John Le Riche, one of the gang who plundered the crypt at Westminster, arrives in Mistleham with at least the dagger used on Edward by the assassins in Outremer. Master Claypole and Lord Scrope capture him, seize the dagger, try Le Riche and hang him, but almost immediately Le Riche’s corpse disappears. Now,’ Corbett paused, ‘harvest time arrives. God knows why, but the relationship between the Free Brethren and Mistleham becomes malignant. Weeds, rotting and corrupt, spring up and spread blight in the community. Allegations of theft, poaching and rampant lechery are levelled against the Free Brethren. Suspicions about their true purpose emerge when Lord Scrope, through Brother Gratian and others, discovers they are well armed and practising archery deep in the forest.

  ‘After the attack Scrope undoubtedly discovered evidence that the Free Brethren were planning to attack his manor as well as secure swift and easy passage abroad. He may have suspected that Le Riche was somehow involved with them. Le Riche might have sheltered in that crypt that the Free Brethren also used in their secret designs. Scrope never found that crypt. Or did he, but just ignored it when he discovered it contained nothing he was searching for? I must reflect on the secrets held by that Chapel of the Damned, but not just yet.’ Corbett paused.

  ‘Anyway, Scrope decides to wipe out the Free Brethren root and branch and does so late last year. All are killed. He leaves their corpses to rot. He seizes whatever possessions they had, including incriminating documents and weapons, and, to all appearances, harmony returns to the community. At least until the New Year, when the Sagittarius emerges blowing his horn and dealing out death indiscriminately amongst the people of Mistleham. The same killer destroys Lord Scrope’s guard dogs. He also pays a midnight visit to our parish priest Father Thomas, where he describes himself not as the Sagittarius but as Nightshade, and warns Scrope to make a public confession of all his sins before the market cross within a certain time or suffer the consequences. Now what else is there? Well, we know Lord Scrope has been threatened by two different sources, the Temple and one other. He has decided to deflect this by handing over the Sanguis Christi to the King, though not through us but Brother Gratian. That is a matter I will have to decide for myself. Well, Ranulf, is that a fair summation?’

  The Principal Clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax, as nimble with his wits as he was with his pen, nodded in agreement.

  ‘There are other mysteries, such as the horn-blowing last night as well as today out at Mordern, though no Sagittarius appeared. Then there’s Jackanapes, killed by not one but two shafts …’ Corbett paused as Chanson knocked on the door. The groom stumbled into the chamber trying to straighten a buckle and wanting to know when they would next eat. Corbett made him sit by the fire, poured him a goblet of wine and offered the platter of bread and cheeses the servants had left under a piece of linen. Chanson made himself comfortable, ignoring Ranulf’s glare as Corbett returned to his pacing. ‘Now that’s the story being peddled, Ranulf, but is it the truth? Primo: what truly happened at Acre, the Year of Our Lord 1291? Why are events that occurred during the fall of that last Christian fortress in Outremer the root of all this malignancy? Secundo: those warnings sent to Lord Scrope: is it the Temple, some other enemy or both? The threats refer to time, about the Mills grinding slow, a reference surely to a long period of justice being planned, but for what and by whom?’

  ‘The Sanguis Christi?’ Ranulf asked.

  ‘Oh, I think there’s more to it than that, Ranulf. Tertio: the Free Brethren of the Holy Spirit, who were they? Why come to Mistleham in the first place? Where did they obtain their weapons? Were they truly planning an assault on Lord Scrope at Mistleham Manor or elsewhere? Why such violence? There were fourteen in number; all were killed during the assault, no one disputes that. However, what was the real reason for the deaths? Why did Scrope lie about them practising archery in the forest? That would have been foolish, surely? A great deal of evidence indicates that the Free Brethren hid their weapons and exercised their skill in that gloomy crypt in the Chapel of the Damned.

  ‘Quarto: the Sagittarius – is he killing out of revenge for the slaughter at Mordern? If so, why? Was there a fifteenth member or a sympathiser here in Mistleham who wants vengeance for Lord Scrope’s victims? Now, there is no doubt that the people of Mistleham were involved in the assault, so they will pay, but for how long? Until fourteen are dead? The Sagittarius kills indiscriminately, yet it is strange that Jackanapes was murdered by not one arrow but two. Why? Apparently the madcap was befriended by the Free Brethren, and if Dame Marguerite is correct, and I do not see why she should lie, and he was a witness to the massacre at Mordern, he may have been able to help us. The townspeople call the killer the Sagittarius, the Bowman, but when Father Thomas’ sinister visitor appeared, he called himself Nightshade. Why? What is that a reference to?’

  ‘Who created the name Sagittarius?’ Ranulf asked. ‘It must be a scholar, someone educated, knowledgeable in Latin.’

  ‘True, true,’ Corbett murmured. ‘Then there’s John Le Riche, former royal archer, an outlaw, a man of wit and sharp intelligence, so why did he blunder so foolishly into Master Claypole’s trap? Did the Free Brethren shelter him? Why? Out of charity, or some other reason? And when he was captured, why the swift trial and even swifter execution? Was he truly hanged or did he escape? Is he the Sagittarius? If he did die, why steal his corpse? Who would do that? Then there’s that verse, “Rich, shall richer be, Where God kissed Mary in Galilee.”’ Corbett paused. ‘Quinto: Lord Scrope.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘So many, many questions to ask of him: Acre, Le Riche, the Free Brethren, the Sagittarius, Nightshade, his secret sins; Scrope has much to hide. He is now threatened on every side. Above all, why did he organise that massacre? What was he searching for? Why did he leave those corpses to frighten off the curious? Does that mean he never found what he was searching for?’

  ‘We must question him, master.’

  ‘Eventually,’ Corbett replied, ‘but I doubt if he will tell the truth. He knew we were coming, Ranulf, he is well prepared and advised. Not even the best lawyers of the Exchequer could trap him …’ Corbett paused at the sound of feet running along the gallery outside, followed by a pounding on the door, Chanson hastened to open it and the servant almost fell into the chamber.

  ‘Sir Hugh, my lord Corbett,’ he gasped, ‘Lord Oliver beseeches you to come. The Sagittarius has returned to Mistleham …’

  The chronicler of the nearby Convent of St Frideswide as well as the town clerkWalter Bassingbourne recorded the terrifying events surrounding that hideous incident late on Wednesday 13 January 1304 just as the beadles and bailiffs prepared to ring the market bell, the signal for the closure of business. A good day, though the frost had hardly thawed and in icy breeze kept nipping at the skin. A thin mist had seeped in as daylight faded and stall-holders ordered their apprentices to put away stock in barrels and casks. The beggars crept out to search for scraps outside the bakers, cookshops and taverns. Pedlars, chapmen and tinkers stored away their precious pennies in hidden purses. Pilgrims on their way to St Cedd’s hermitage on the Essex coast stowed their bundles in stables after reaching agreement with the tavern masters. A group of whores in their tawdry finery had been released from the stocks to the jibes and jeers of a gang of roisterers who were trying to encourage four blind beggars to fight for a goblet of wine and a piece of juicy crisp pork. Apprentices and shop boys followed their masters to the goldsmiths to lodge their day’s profits safely away, all unaware that death had entered Mistleham and was stalking them with a sharp eye for suitable prey.

  Robert de Scott, captain of Lord Scrope’s retinue, was the first to die. Full of resentment at Corbett, he had adjourned to the Honeycomb tavern, then on to the Portal of Heaven, which also fronted the marketplace. There he had drowned his sorrows in cheap ale, then bought the favours of a slattern to entertain him in a grubby garret upstairs. He came
lurching out of the Portal of Heaven even as three long blasts of the hunting horn announced that bloody mayhem had once again returned to Mistleham. Robert was so drunk he could only stand staring bleary-end whilst others fled. He swayed on his feet, meaning to move just as the yard-long iron-tipped ash shaft pierced him in the heart. A deadly shot, which threw him on to his back to quiver gargling on his own blood. Chaos engulfed the marketplace as traders fled or hid beneath their stalls. Women grabbed their children and ran shrieking into alcoves, doorways and runnels. Two brave souls raced across to help Robert de Scott, but he was dead and all they could do was drag his corpse into the tap room of the Portal of Heaven, locking the door behind them. A short while passed. People peeped out of their hiding places, the light greying, the air turning colder as evening set in. William Le Vavasour, another of Scrope’s men, died next. Confident that the danger had passed, he crept out of the runnel where he’d hidden, glimpsing another of Scrope’s retainers emerging eager for the warmth and shelter of the tavern. Vavasour moved first and was struck in the throat, the iron barb piercing skin, muscle and bone. Mutwart, the second retainer, had reached the door to the tavern and was thumbing at the latch when the arrow came thudding into his back and out through his chest, pinning him like a fly to the wood.