by Paul Doherty
‘So what else is to be done?’ Ranulf demanded.
‘I moved from Rievaulx to Tynemouth and from there to Alnwick. Prior Richard and Lord Henry do not know my true purpose. When I have to, I shall reveal it. What I must do is unmask Paracelsus, destroy him and inflict the same fate on his followers.’
‘So why now?’ Ranulf persisted.
‘I have already given you reasons for that,’ the Benedictine retorted, ‘but there is one pressing further reason. From what Master Cacoignes has told us, Darel is convinced you carry, or at least know the whereabouts of, the Lily Crown of Scotland.’ He held up a hand. ‘I know you don’t, yet rumours are rife about that crown. Gossips say it is hidden in or around Tynemouth Priory. You intend to journey there. I am sure adherents of the Black Chesters here at Alnwick have informed their masters about your plans.’
‘Why do they want the crown?’ Corbett demanded. ‘True, it is of pure gold and very valuable.’
‘It was sent by Pope Lucius III to William the Lion,’ Brother Adrian replied. ‘Its gold is very precious and very ancient. It is claimed it once covered the Ark of the Covenant in Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. No,’ he turned testily to Ranulf, ‘do not scoff. The royal regalia of Scotland has a uniquely sacred history, which is why your king, the so-called Hammer of the Scots, seized it and sent it south to Westminster. The Stone of Scone, for example, is said to come from Ancient Egypt and is closely entwined with the story of Moses.’
‘So they want the crown for their own secret purposes?’
‘Yes, Sir Hugh. We may ridicule, dismiss it all as legend, but to the Black Chesters the Lily Crown is as important as the sacrament is to a holy priest. They regard it as sacred and ancient, and believe it holds a potency, a power they could harness. So when you do journey on to Tynemouth, the Black Chesters will certainly be watching.’
‘And Cacoignes?’ Corbett demanded. ‘Do you know anything about him that we should be aware of?’
Brother Adrian pulled a face and shook his head. ‘He is from the English court after all. Don’t they claim he is a gambler, a man who likes hazard? Anyway,’ he got to his feet, ‘I would like you and your comrades to accompany me. Perhaps you can assist as well as act as witnesses to the truth of what I have said.’
Corbett agreed, and within the hour, he, Ap Ythel and Ranulf, with Chanson trailing behind, left Alnwick in the company of Brother Adrian, following an ancient path up onto the wild heathland, galloping under grey skies. The scudding clouds seemed to shadow them as they rode deeper and deeper into what Corbett could only describe as a haunting loneliness. Occasionally they would pass through a copse or spinney of trees where moorland birds circled or swooped, their calls echoing harshly all around. Isolated cottages lay hidden in the shadow of these ancient woods, their presence only betrayed by a smudge of dark smoke against the sky or the raucous barking of a dog, which would be abruptly stilled.
They cantered across a burn, Brother Adrian’s black cloak flapping in the breeze like a banner, and entered a fringe of trees, following a beaten trackway through the bramble and gorse. Corbett wondered if in the past, the entire land had been covered by a great forest, and these trees were its relics. He felt as if he was in an ancient place reeking of memories, a countryside that concealed secrets and kept dark things hidden. He missed the softness of his own shire Essex and felt a stab of homesickness.
Corbett shook himself free from his reverie as the path they followed debouched into a clearing. He reined in, quietening his horse as he tried to control his own sharp-edged apprehension. Something was very wrong here. This was not a haunted place, lonely and desolate; a real wickedness had swept through the lonely glade and blighted the inhabitants of the small cottage built out of wood, plaster and thatch on its rough-stone base. The cottage had its own garden, but the soil was thin and poor, the herbs and vegetables growing there stunted and ill formed. Behind the cottage stood a small piggery and two large hen coops, but these were empty. Both the door and shutters of the cottage were flung wide open.
Corbett slid from the saddle of his horse, handed the reins to Chanson and went inside. It was a poor man’s dwelling, with a few sticks of furniture, and some pots in the buttery, which also served as a kitchen. He recalled the cauldron and spent embers he’d glimpsed outside. The cottagers probably used that for most of their cooking. He stared around but could detect no sign of violence. He walked back outside. Brother Adrian sat slumped in his saddle.
‘No chickens, no pigs.’ Corbett indicated with his head to behind the cottage. ‘And I saw no sign of disturbance in there. You suspect something horrid has happened here?’
‘Sir Hugh,’ Brother Adrian leaned down, ‘Ewen, Margota and their ill-witted daughter Edith lived here, or did so until about four days ago. Good people, they sold this and that and provided lodgings for travelling tinkers and tradesmen. One of these hurried into Alnwick to report what you have seen here. No Ewen, Margota or Edith, nor any sign of them. All valuables gone, livestock too, yet little trace, if any, of violence, robbery or assault.’
‘Yes.’ Corbett stared around. ‘Quiet as a grave, which I suspect is what it is. Outlaws, raiders, wolfsheads would not be so tidy.’ He squinted up at Ap Ythel. The Welshman looked distinctly nervous; he kept staring into the trees as if an enemy lurked there.
‘The Angel of Death,’ Ap Ythel murmured. ‘You can almost feel it, can’t you, Sir Hugh? The Angel of Death has swept through here. These cottagers are not missing, they are dead.’
‘I agree,’ Ranulf declared, trying to quieten his horse.
‘If these poor people have been harmed,’ Corbett replied, ‘we will seek justice for them. Ap Ythel, my friend, can you help?’
The Welshman dismounted along with Ranulf and Chanson, and the clerk of the stables led their horses away, humming a tune that seemed discordant in that grey, blighted place. Ranulf snapped at him to shut up. Ap Ythel, who knew all about Ranulf’s deep fear of the open countryside, soothingly beckoned him and Corbett over, teasing the Clerk of the Green Wax that if he kept silent and observed sharply, he might learn something. The Welshman crouched down, staring at the ground.
‘I suspect,’ he declared, ‘this place was visited by a group of horsemen. They dismounted in the trees then walked into the cottage. They wore very low-heeled boots, perhaps even sandals. The question is, where did they go from here?’
‘Over there.’ Corbett pointed to his right and the narrow dirt trackway snaking off into the trees.
‘Sir Hugh,’ Ap Ythel rose to his feet, ‘I will make a Welshman of you yet.’
They followed the path, going deeper into the copse. They crossed a burn, nothing more than a narrow rivulet. Here the ground became softer, the grass and weeds more lush, the usual signs that they were close to a treacherous bog or marsh. Corbett crouched down. The ground was disturbed, but this told him very little. He suspected, especially from the fetid odours that swirled around them, that this place was also used to dump waste of every kind. The smell became more offensive as Ranulf pushed in a branch and stirred the scum-soaked greenery.
‘I am correct,’ Corbett murmured. ‘The cottager used this as a lay stall, didn’t he?’ He got to his feet and asked his companions to draw daggers and fashion long poles out of tree branches. He insisted that the poles be at least two yards long, the surfaces kept rough so the stumps could act as hooks. Once ready, he, Ap Ythel and Ranulf, with Brother Adrian and Chanson helping, pushed the poles into the shifting, stinking greenery. They jabbed and prodded, and Corbett felt his pole jar against hard earth. He reckoned the morass was no more than five feet deep, yet still treacherous and the perfect place to hide a corpse.
He moved his pole and felt it strike something moving sluggishly beneath the surface. Ap Ythel shouted that he had found the same. Corbett glanced over. The Welshman had bravely stepped into the morass; he had begun to gently sink, yet he was still intent on dragging in what was hooked on his pole. Corbett and Ranulf hastened
to help, pulling Ap Ythel back, helping to shift the swamp-caked corpse further and further from the sticky morass, which seemed so reluctant to give up its secrets. The stench was hideous, deeply offensive, as the incoming corpse broke up the mud and released more filthy water. Using their poles, they yanked it further in. Corbett glimpsed long hair; pale, haggard features; glassy eyes and the most savage wound to the left of the chest.
At last the cadaver lay completely free of the morass. They used water from the nearby burn to clean off some of the bloody mud, only to stand and stare in silent horror at the blasphemies perpetrated on this young woman. Her throat had been cut with a half-moon swipe from the sharpest dagger, the flesh deeply ploughed by the jagged blade. Afterwards – and Corbett quietly prayed that it had been afterwards – her chest had been smashed open with a mallet, hammer or war club, the bones roughly hacked aside so her heart could be plucked out.
‘In God’s name!’ Corbett exclaimed. ‘What demon did this? It must be the Black Chesters. They wanted her heart and those of her parents for their obscene rites. Brother Adrian?’
‘Peasants have vanished,’ the Benedictine had now dropped to his knees beside the corpse, ‘but rarely has anything like this been found.’ He held up a hand. ‘I am sure if we visited those places where other disappearances have occurred, such horrors would lie close by.’ He sketched a cross in the air. ‘My parishioners talk of glimpsing the swift passage of hooded, visored horsemen. They arrive clustered together, cloaks flapping. There is no calling out, no reining in; they just gallop apparently out of nowhere and then disappear. The travelling troubadours call them the night-riders, the dark-dwellers, the minions of the mansions of midnight. Demons incarnate,’ he breathed, ‘and this is their handiwork, I will bless the body.’
Corbett crouched and scrutinised the cadaver even as Brother Adrian murmured how he would ask Lord Henry to send men to drag the morass for other corpses. Corbett half listened. He rose and walked away, then stopped as he glimpsed something lying on the stem of one of the spiky bushes. He plucked this up, examined it and quickly put it in his belt wallet. He had seen a similar decorated leather bracelet on Cacoignes’ wrist. He stood staring into the darkness created by the interlacing branches. A bird called, a harsh, strident sound.
Corbett breathed in slowly, trying to clear his mind of the gruesome images of that ragged, violated corpse. He was frightened, he admitted that to himself. He was a royal clerk skilled in the pursuit of killers, but this was different. He was facing terror, sheer terror for the sake of it. He could only imagine what had happened here. The Black Chesters, all cloaked and cowled, guiding their horses through the trees, a group of demons hungry for human life. They would dismount, hobble their horses and set up guard. Did they come in the dead of night, first thing in the morning, or at the hour of the bat, just as daylight faded and darkness closed in? They entered that cottage and seized those poor people who could not resist. Corbett could only imagine the shock and fear of the simple peasants as they realised they had fallen into the hands of monsters.
The Black Chesters would take their prisoners out to that morass. They would be shivering, begging for their lives, pleading for mercy, but they were only lambs bleating on the way to slaughter. He could imagine a member of the coven slipping behind each of the captives, their hair grabbed, heads pulled back and throats slit from ear to ear. Afterwards their chests were broken and the hearts plucked out so the Black Chesters could carry out their macabre practices. They had done the same before and they would undoubtedly do it again. Corbett breathed deeply to control his fear and rage. He made a vow to himself. If God gave him life, health and wit, he would track these cruel killers down, try them and hang them. He would dig them out both root and branch.
He felt the bracelet he’d slipped in his wallet and wondered how Master Cacoignes could be involved in this dreadful business. He accepted Cacoignes’ story of fleeing with Ravinac to Tynemouth, of trying to escape further south when he was captured. But one thing he found illogical: why had Cacoignes remained in the north and joined Edmund Darel’s comitatus under a different name? To be close to the Lily Crown hidden in Tynemouth Priory? That made sense, but there again, why didn’t he just go back to London, present himself at Westminster and describe exactly what had happened? Perhaps it was not just the lure of gold that kept him in the north but a real fear of going home. What could he possibly be frightened of? Was it fear that had compelled him to join Ravinac’s party in the first place? Corbett understood from Gaveston that Cacoignes and all his group had been volunteers. So – he drummed his fingers on the pommel of his sword – what had frightened Cacoignes in London?
‘Sir Hugh?’ Ranulf strode through the undergrowth, kicking away the trailing briars and snaking brambles. ‘Sir Hugh, we are finished here.’
‘True, true,’ Corbett called out over his shoulder. ‘We are finished here but not finished with this. In fact,’ he turned and came back, ‘I strongly suspect we are going to go deeper and deeper into the darkness.’
‘And I shall go there with you,’ Brother Adrian declared. ‘I am grateful for your help, Sir Hugh, but now we should return to Alnwick.’
Back at the castle, Brother Adrian hastened, as he put it, to have secret and urgent words with Lord Henry, while Corbett decided to seek out Cacoignes. He found the cunning man standing on the parapet overlooking the main gate, staring out across the open countryside. He seemed distracted, his eyes on the far horizon though his mind appeared to be elsewhere. Corbett greeted him and then passed on. He had seen what he wanted: on Cacoignes’ wrist was a bracelet identical to the one Corbett had found in that hideous place of slaughter.
Nevertheless, Corbett was suspicious. Once past Cacoignes, he stopped and took the bracelet out of his wallet, scrutinising it carefully. Nothing more than small beads and medals on a piece of tough twine, with no clasp or pin, it seemed designed for a certain wrist, to be squeezed on over the fingers. So how had it come off and caught on that briar bush where the blasphemy had occurred? Those who had attacked the peasant family had been cunning and careful, doing their best to remove any sign of the abominations they had carried out. So how was it that a bracelet, tightly clasped around a killer’s wrist, suddenly became loose and slipped off? Moreover, Corbett had confronted assassins since his days as a young mailed clerk, and one thing he’d noticed was that they often wore gloves or gauntlets. Surely they would do so in a place such as that copse, where briar and thorn jutted out to rip exposed flesh? Gauntlets or gloves would be a true obstacle to anything slipping from wrist or finger.
Corbett put the bracelet away. He would watch and wait. Meanwhile, he chattered to his companions and kept drafting and revising all he had learnt, heard and seen. He was surprised by Brother Adrian’s revelations, but on reflection, he accepted the logic of the monk’s assertions. Holy Mother Church always took decisive action against the practitioners of the black arts, especially when such creatures of the dark plotted the destruction of the Crown’s rights and the gross violation of the king’s peace. Over the years Corbett had heard about the Sanctum Officium – the Holy Office – directly mandated by the pope to deal with Secreta Negotia. The truth of the situation was now clearly emerging. Edward I, by his brutal and bloody war here in the north, had sown dragon’s teeth, and now that it was harvest time, a bitter, savage conflict raged like a fire out of control along the entire Scottish march. The violence created a deep pool of malignant malevolence for the likes of the mysterious Paracelsus and the Black Chesters to fish in.
Corbett did not believe for one moment the powers such covens claimed, either individually or as a group. He had witnessed enough human wickedness to understand that its perpetrators needed very little help, if any, from the powers of darkness. Nevertheless, he fully understood how such malignancy worked. First, their secret macabre rites drew members of a coven closer to each other. Bonds were created that bound them as tightly as any knight who took a feudal oath to his lord or a re
ligious who swore his vows to his superior. Deeds done in the dark created a conspiracy in which every member was involved; there was no turning away or going back along that long road into eternal night. The ritual murders of Ewen and his family, the sacrificing of their hearts to the eternal shadows and the demons they sheltered, divided such people from the normal community. They lived, ate and drank in their own wicked world, a baleful way of life to which they were committed as passionately and fervently as a monk or nun to their rule and community.
Second, the odour of evil they created truly terrified everyone else. They played vicious games to freeze the will and so crush any opposition. Corbett had already witnessed this chilling pageantry when the Black Chesters had appeared before the gates of Alnwick. They’d performed their own murderous masque with hooded garb, ominous warnings, the display of a rotting corpse and the taunting possibility that their leader was a woman who had returned from the dead.
‘No, no,’ he whispered to the silence of his chamber. ‘You, my enemies, are human enough, with all the frailty of our kind. You make mistakes. You can be detected. You can be trapped and so still hang for your abominations.’
The following afternoon, the alarm was raised. However, this was abruptly quietened as the small group of horsemen who approached the main gateway held up a pole with a broad white cloth flapping in the breeze. Messages were exchanged and the horsemen parted to allow two young children, a boy and a girl, to walk to the front, carefully shepherded by a woman, apparently their nurse. The drawbridge was lowered. Brother Adrian scurried across and crouched down before the children, clasping their hands, kissing them on each cheek before doing the same to their guardian. The Benedictine had words with her, then led all three across the drawbridge, under the portcullis to where Lord Henry, Corbett and others were waiting.
‘Darel’s children,’ the monk explained. ‘I recognised them immediately with their nurse, Ursula. Sir Hugh, Darel has agreed to meet you now at Clairbaux. He will be waiting in the church of St Cuthbert with the Lady Hilda and one other. He stipulates that his retinue, including the four riders outside, will stay at least one mile from the walls of Clairbaux. You are to bring an escort of the same size; one of these will be allowed to accompany you inside. Sir Edmund will meet you in the church and, God willing, make his peace with you.’