Hugh Corbett 10 - The Devil's Hunt (13 page)

‘A demon sent from Hell! A goblin who has not done yet!’

‘And you saw poor Passerel die?’

Magdalena’s head came up, a cunning look in her eyes.

‘I was kneeling before my window,’ she replied. ‘Eyes on God’s holy light.’ She pointed down to the sanctuary. ‘I hear the door open and a dark shape creeps in like a thief in the night. Aye, that’s how it happened. Sprung like a trap! Passerel, the stupid man, drinks the wine and dies in his sin before the All Mighty. Oh!’ She closed her eyes. ‘What a terrible thing it is for a sinful soul to fall into the hands of the living God!’

‘What was the shape like?’ Corbett asked.

Magdalena was now studying the silver piece Corbett held.

‘I couldn’t see,’ she replied wearily. ‘Hooded and cowled, no more than a shadow.’ She scrambled to her feet. ‘I have spoken enough.’

Corbett handed over the silver piece, and the anchorite scuttled back up the staircase. Father Vincent led them out of the church.

‘What happened to the jug and cup?’ Corbett asked.

‘I threw them away,’ the priest replied. ‘They were nothing much: the like you’ll see in any tavern.’

Corbett thanked him. They walked down the cemetery path and out under the lych-gate.

‘Shall we have something to eat?’ Ranulf asked hopefully.

Corbett shook his head. ‘No, first let’s visit St Osyth’s.’

‘We learnt nothing back there,’ Ranulf declared.

‘Oh, perhaps we did.’ Corbett smiled back.

They took directions from a pedlar and went down an alleyway and into Broad Street. The day was proving a fine one. The thoroughfares were packed: carts full of produce, barrels and casks jammed the street and strident noise dinned the air as shops and stalls opened for another day’s business. Hammers beat in one place, tubs and vats were being hooped in another, the clinking of pots and platters came from the cook shops. Men, women and children moved down the streets, in shoals, pushing and jostling. The houses on either side leaned out, their buckling walls held up by posts which impeded progress even further. Carters and barrow boys fought and cursed with each other. Porters, drenched with sweat under the burdens they carried, tried to force their way through by lashing out with white willow wands. Fat merchants, grasping money bags, moved from shop to stall. Chapmen, their trays slung round their necks by cords, tried to inveigle everyone, including Corbett and Ranulf, to buy the geegaws piled there. At one point Corbett had to stop, pulling Ranulf into the doorway of a shop. However, an apprentice, thinking they wished to buy, plucked at their sleeves until they were forced to continue on their way.

‘Is it always like this?’ Ranulf whispered.

Any reply Corbett made was drowned by the strident street cries which cut the air.

‘Hot peas!’ ‘Small coals!’ ‘New brooms!’ ‘Green brooms!’ ‘Bread and meat for the Lord’s sake for the poor prisoners of the Bocardo!’

Beggars grasping their flat dishes swarmed like fleas. Costermongers sold bright apples from the city orchards and, on the market cross, chanteurs were locked in bitter rivalry over giving news or singing songs. Even the whores and their pimps, the cross-biters, were out looking for business. Everywhere students, some dressed in samite, others in rags, swaggered in groups, narrow-eyed, their hands never far from the hilts of their daggers.

Corbett stopped at the Merry Maidens tavern and told Ranulf to go in and hire a room which they might use later on. Once this was done, they continued to push across Carfax and down a narrow, foul lane to St Osyth’s Hospital, a shabby, three-storeyed tenement which stood behind its own curtain wall. The gateway was packed with beggars. In the cobbled yard a weary-looking lay brother, dressed in a brown robe with a dirty cord round the middle, was distributing hard rye bread to a group of beggars. They lined up before a wooden table where two other brothers were serving steaming bowls of meat and vegetables. Corbett and Ranulf made their way through.

‘I have never seen a place like this,’ Ranulf whispered. ‘Not even in London.’

Corbett could only agree. There must have been at least a hundred beggars there, some of them young and sprightly, most old and bent and clothed in rags. In the main they were former soldiers, still suffering the horrible wounds of war: a face scalded by boiling oil; an eye missing with the socket closed up; legs twisted and bent; a myriad of men on makeshift crutches. Corbett was struck by something he had seen in other hospitals: despite their age, wounds and poverty, these men were determined to live, to snatch whatever remained from life. In a way, he concluded, the murder of such men was much more cruel than the assassin’s work at Sparrow Hall. These were innocents: men who, despite the overwhelming odds, still fought on.

‘Can I help you?’

Corbett turned round. The voice was soft and gentle but the man who had spoken was tall and squat. He was dressed in a brown Franciscan robe, his head neatly tonsured but his face looked like that of a friendly toad, with constantly blinking eyes and fat lips gaped into a smile.

‘I am sorry I’m ugly,’ the Franciscan declared. He patted Corbett on the shoulder, his hand like that of a bear’s paw. ‘I can see the thought in your eyes, sir. I am ugly to man but, perhaps, God thinks otherwise.’

‘I am looking for Father Guardian,’ Corbett said. ‘And no man who works amongst the poor can be ugly.’

The friar grasped Corbett’s hand and shook it vigorously.

‘You should be a bloody Franciscan,’ he growled. ‘Who the hell are you anyway?’

Corbett explained.

‘Well, I’m Brother Angelo,’ the friar replied. ‘I’m also Father Guardian. This is my manor, my palace.’ He looked up, narrowing his eyes against the sun. ‘We feed two hundred beggars a day,’ he continued. ‘But you are not here to help us, are you, Corbett? And you certainly haven’t brought gold from the King?’

He waved Corbett up the steps into the hospital and led him into his cell, a narrow, white-washed chamber. Corbett and Ranulf sat on the bed whilst Father Angelo squatted on a stool beside them.

‘You’re here about the Bellman, aren’t you? We’ve all heard about that mad bastard and the deaths at Sparrow Hall.’

‘The King has also heard about the deaths here at St Osyth’s, or rather-’ Corbett added hastily as the smile faded from the Franciscan’s face ‘- the corpses found in the woods outside the city.’

‘We know little of that,’ Brother Angelo confessed. ‘Look around, master clerk; these are poor men, decrepit, old beggars. Who, on God’s earth, could be so cruel to them? There’s neither rhyme nor reason to it,’ he added. ‘I cannot help you.’

‘You’ve heard no rumours?’ Corbett asked.

Brother Angelo shook his head. ‘Nothing except Godric’s wild rantings,’ he murmured. ‘But you see, Corbett, men come and go here as they please. They beg in the city streets. They are helpless, easy prey for anyone’s malice or hatred.’

‘Do you remember Brakespeare?’ Corbett asked. ‘A soldier, a former officer in the King’s army?’

‘There are so many,’ Brother Angelo apologised, shaking his head. He glanced at Ranulf. ‘You have the look of a fighting man.’ He pointed to Ranulf’s sword, dagger and leather boots. ‘You walk with a swagger.’ He leaned across and nipped the skin of Ranulf’s knuckle. ‘Go outside, young man, and see your future. Once they too swaggered under the sun. But come on. I’ll find old Godric for you.’

He led them out, down a white-washed passageway, up some stairs and into a long dormitory. The room was austere, yet the walls and floor had been well scrubbed and smelt of soap and sweet herbs. A row of beds stood on either wall with a stool on one side and a small, rough-hewn table on the other. Most of the occupants were asleep or dozing fitfully. Lay brothers moved from bed to bed, wiping hands and faces in preparation for the early morning meal.

Ranulf hung back. ‘I’ll not be a beggar,’ he whispered. ‘Master, I’ll either hang or be rich.’

‘Just be careful,’ Corbett quipped back, ‘that you are not both rich and hanged!’

‘Come on!’ Brother Angelo waved them over to a bed where a man was propped up against the bolsters: he was balding, his face lined and grey with exhaustion though his eyes were lively.

‘This is Godric,’ Brother Angelo explained, ‘a long-time member of my parish. A man who has begged in London, Canterbury, Dover and even at Berwick on the Scottish march. Very well, Godric.’ Brother Angelo tapped him on his bald pate. ‘Tell our visitors what you have seen.’

Godric turned his head. ‘I’ve been out in the woods,’ he whispered.

‘Which woods?’ Corbett asked.

‘Oh, to the north, to the south, to the east of the city,’ Godric replied.

‘And what have you seen, old man?’

‘God be my witness,’ the beggar replied. ‘But I’ve seen hellfire and the devil and all his troupe dancing in the bright moonlight. Listen to what I say-’ he grasped Corbett’s hand ‘- the Lord Satan has come to Oxford!’

Corbett laid his hand over that of the beggar.

‘What devils?’ he asked.

‘Out in the woods,’ Godric replied. ‘Dancing round Beltane’s fires! Wearing goat skins, they were!’

‘And did you see any blood?’ Corbett asked.

‘On their hands and faces. Oh yes,’ Godric continued. ‘You see, sir, when I was greener, I was a poacher. I can go out and hunt the rabbit and take a plump cock pheasant without blinking. Since early spring this year I’ve tried my luck again and twice I saw the devils dance.’

‘How many devils?’ Corbett asked.

‘At least thirteen. The cursed number,’ Godric replied defiantly.

‘And have you told anyone else?’ Corbett asked.

‘I told Brother Angelo but he just laughed.’ Godric laid his head back on the bolsters. ‘That’s all I know and now old Godric has got to sleep.’ The beggar turned his face away.

Corbett and Ranulf left the infirmary. They followed Brother Angelo out, down the stairs and into the still busy yard.

‘Have you heard such stories before?’ Corbett asked.

‘Only Godric’s babble,’ the friar replied. ‘But, Sir Hugh -’ Brother Angelo’s lugubrious fat face became solemn ‘- God knows if he’s roaming in his wits or what?’ He lifted one great paw in benediction. ‘I bid you adieu!’

Corbett and Ranulf left the hospital and entered Broad Street. The crowd had thinned because the schools were open, and the students had flocked there for the early morning lectures. Corbett led Ranulf across the street, stepping gingerly along the wooden board placed across the great, stinking sewer which cut down the centre of the street.

Outside the Merry Maidens tavern, a butcher, his stall next to that of a barber surgeon, was throwing guts and entrails into the street. Beside the stall, a hooded rat-catcher, his ferocious-looking dog squatting next to him, was touting for business.

 

The man hawked and spat; he was about to begin again but stood aside as Corbett and Ranulf kicked their way through the mess.

‘Do you have any rats, sir?’ the fellow asked.

‘Aye, we have,’ Ranulf replied. ‘But we don’t know where they are and they walk on two legs!’

Before the startled man could reply, Ranulf followed Corbett into the tavern. The greasy-aproned landlord, bobbing like a branch in the breeze, showed them to the garret Ranulf had rented: a stale-smelling chamber with a straw bed, a table, a bench and two stools. Ranulf stretched out on the bed only to leap up, cursing at the fleas gathering on his hose. He sat on a stool under the open window and watched as Corbett opened his chancery bag and laid out his writing implements: quill, pumice stone and ink horn.

‘What do we do now, Master?’ Ranulf asked sharply.

Corbett grinned. ‘We are in Oxford, Master Ranulf, so let’s follow the Socratic method. We state a hypothesis and question it thoroughly.’

He paused at a knock on the door and a slattern asked if they wished anything to eat or drink. Corbett thanked her but refused.

‘Now,’ he began. ‘The Bellman. Here is a traitor who writes proclamations espousing the cause of the long-dead de Montfort. He pins them up on church or college doors throughout the city. This, apparently, is always done at night. The Bellman claims also to live in Sparrow Hill. So, what questions do we ask?’

‘I cannot understand,’ Ranulf broke in, ‘why we can’t discover the identity of the Bellman by his writing and style of letters?’

Corbett dipped his quill into the open ink-horn and carefully wrote on the parchment. He handed this to Ranulf who pulled a face and passed it back.

‘The Bellman,’ he declared. ‘It’s the same letters, you’d think it was the same hand.’

‘Precisely,’ Corbett replied. ‘A clerkly hand, Ranulf, as you know, is anonymous. All the clerks of the Chancery or Exchequer are taught what quills to use, what ink, and how to form their letters and the Bellman hides behind these. Even if we did find the scribe, it does not necessarily mean he is the Bellman.’

‘But why does he claim to live at Sparrow Hall?’ Ranulf asked.

Corbett rocked backwards and forwards on his stool.

‘Yes, that does puzzle me. Why mention Sparrow Hall at all? Why not the church of St Michael’s, or St Mary’s or even the Bocardo gaol?’

‘There’s the curse?’ Ranulf offered. ‘Maybe the Bellman knows of this? He not only wishes to taunt the King but also the memory of Sir Henry Braose who founded Sparrow Hall.’

‘I would accept that,’ Corbett replied. ‘There is a bravado behind these proclamations, as well as a subtle wit. The Bellman might truly be from elsewhere but he hopes the King will lash out and punish Sparrow Hall. Yet-’ he scratched his head ‘- we do suspect the Bellman is at Sparrow Hall, what with Copsale dying mysteriously in his bed; Ascham in his library; Passerel poisoned in St Michael’s church and Langton’s death last night.’