Nightshade (9 page)

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Authors: P. C. Doherty

BOOK: Nightshade
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‘Sir Hugh speaks for the King!' Ranulf's voice was thick with anger. ‘You, sir, do not gobble wine when he speaks to you.' He leaned forward and knocked the wineskin from the man's hand. ‘No drinking!' He stood high in his stirrups. ‘No eating, nothing until my lord Corbett says.'
The captain pushed back his cloak, hand going for his sword.
‘Come then!' Ranulf teased. ‘Draw, sir, but I'm no unarmed madcap sheltering in a deserted church.'
Robert de Scott's hand fell away.
‘How many of you,' Ranulf shouted, ‘were here at the attack?'
Most of the escort raised their hands.
‘Well you've sown the tempest; now reap the whirlwind. Collect the corpses of those you killed.' Ranulf ignored Robert de Scott and joined Corbett in the narrow porch of the church. ‘A bullyboy, ' he whispered. ‘In God's name, Sir Hugh, what was Scrope thinking of, to attack, to kill but then to leave these dead—'
‘True,' Corbett interrupted, putting a hand on Ranulf's shoulder. ‘Well done, good and faithful servant,' he teased, quoting from the scriptures.
‘Sir Hugh?'
‘Ranulf, you are correct, why did Scrope leave them here? I can understand hot blood running, but later? Surely one of the great acts of corporal mercy is to bury the dead. Even the King does that,' he added drily. He steered his companion into the church. ‘Despite our threats we'll not get the truth from them.' He indicated with his head. ‘I suspect Scrope came here to punish but also to search, but for what? I suspect whatever he was scouring for, he never found, so he left those corpses to frighten away the curious.' Corbett peered around and whistled softly. ‘Truly named,' he murmured. ‘The Chapel of the Damned!' The walls of the ruined church were covered with creeping lichen, its floor a dark, squalid mess littered with the dung of fox, bat and all the wild creatures of the forest. The air smelt rank and fetid. Outside, the men were now busy under the shouted orders of Robert de Scott and Master Claypole. The three priests were chanting the psalms for the dead: Corbett paused and listened to the sombre words:
That you may be correct when you give sentence.
And be without reproach when you judge.
Ah, remember in guilt was I born.
A sinner was I conceived.
‘True, true!' he whispered. ‘Sin stalks this Chapel of the Damned, Ranulf. Ghosts gather, pleading for vengeance. Blood, spilt before its time, demands Christ's retribution!'
Gloomy and shadow-filled, the church had been stripped of all movables, reduced to a mere skeleton of mildewed stone. The light pouring through the lancet windows did little to disperse the ghostly aura. Corbett walked slowly up the nave and paused where the rood screen must have stood.
‘Nothing!' He gestured around. ‘Nothing at all, Ranulf! Yet the Free Brethren must have had baggage, panniers, baskets.'
‘Plundered by the rogues outside,' Ranulf murmured. ‘Master, what is all this? What else are you searching for?'
‘I don't know.' Corbett walked into the darkened sanctuary and stared up at the small, empty oriel window. ‘I truly don't.' He walked into the sacristy, a long, narrow chamber, its walls plastered and fairly clean. He prodded at the dirt on the floor with the toe of his boot, then walked further down.
‘Master?'
‘I suspect this was the refectory of the Free Brethren.' Corbett crouched down and sifted amongst the dirt. ‘See, Ranulf, the imprint of table legs, and look, here're those of a bench. I am sure Scrope's men must have plundered everything.' He rose and walked to the door at the far end. He lifted the latch and opened it. Ranulf glimpsed Scrope's retainers, dragging a corpse from a ditch near the crumbling cemetery wall. Corbett slammed the door shut. ‘They mended this door to make it secure. They met here to sit and discuss. I wonder what?'
‘Sir Hugh?'
Corbett walked over to where Ranulf was peering at the wall. He pointed at the thick black etchings painted there. Corbett opened the door to allow in more light. At first they could not make out the words – several attempts had been made to
obliterate them – but eventually Corbett distinguished the verse inscribed there:
Rich, shall richer be,
Where God kissed Mary in Galilee.
Beneath these words were drawings, though most of them had been cut away with a knife. Corbett glimpsed a tower, a siege machine, a man on a couch.
‘I wonder,' he whispered, ‘is this the work of the Free Brethren or someone else? They've certainly been done recently, not years ago.' He walked back into the sanctuary, staring at the dirt-covered flagstones. From outside drifted the shouts and cries of those collecting the dead. Corbett continued his scrutiny, telling Ranulf to do likewise.
‘What are we looking for?'
‘You'll know when you find it,' Corbett murmured.
Father Thomas came in and said that the dead were now collected and the funeral pyre was being prepared. Corbett went out. The corpses, fourteen in all, lay along what was the old coffin path. The retinue from Mistleham now stood about, faces visored against the seeping stench of rottenness. Corbett moved from corpse to corpse. Decay as well as the forest creatures had wreaked their effect, shrunken flesh nibbled and gnawed, faces almost unrecognisable. Corbett crossed himself and murmured a prayer.
‘Beautiful they were, Sir Hugh.' Father Thomas stood next to him. ‘Like angels, and so full of life. God curse Lord Scrope! Endowed with all God's gifts, they could sing beautifully and dance like butterflies.'
‘You are sure they are all here?'
‘Oh yes.' The priest indicated two of the corpses. ‘Adam and Eve, their leaders and the painters.'
Corbett remembered the scrawl on the sacristy wall.
‘Father, does this mean anything to you: “Rich, shall richer be, Where God kissed Mary in Galilee”?'
‘No.' The priest shook his head. ‘Where's it from?'
‘I found it written on the sacristy wall. You said they were painters, Father?'
‘You must visit St Alphege's and see their work. Do so quickly. Lord Oliver has promised the whole church will be repainted and regilded, the same for St Frideswide. Perhaps it is reparation for this, but come, Sir Hugh, the rest are waiting.'
‘Let them!' Corbett turned. ‘Master Claypole, Robert de Scott.'
The mayor and the captain of the guard left the huddle of men. The captain was no longer swaggering. Corbett gestured at them to follow him a little further. They did so, pulling down their visors.
‘You were involved in the attack on this place?'
‘You know that.'
‘And afterwards?'
‘We searched the church and other buildings,' Master Claypole replied.
‘You took all their possessions?'
‘Yes.'
‘But those are King's goods.'
‘Sir Hugh, there was next to nothing,' Claypole replied.
‘A matter Lord Scrope must account for.' Corbett studied the aggressive faces of these two men: hard of soul, hard of heart and hard of eye, they would show little mercy to any enemy.
‘Sir Hugh.' Master Benedict, with a doleful Brother Gratian trailing behind, approached. ‘The men are freezing cold.'
‘And so am I.' Corbett stared at the gentle-faced chaplain; he looked pale, distinctly unwell. The clerk glimpsed streaks of vomit on the front of his gown.
‘We must say the prayers, Master Benedict and I, then be gone,' Gratian murmured. ‘Sir Hugh, this is a haunted, benighted place. I am hungry and freezing cold. I feel the ghosts about me. I understand Father Thomas has brought the holy water and sacred unguents.'
‘And I have the oil.' Master Claypole spoke up. ‘Sir Hugh, beneath the snow we've found dried kindling. We have also brought faggots, dry wood sheltered from the damp.'
Corbett nodded. He ordered the pyre to be completed as swiftly as possible and the corpses laid out. He glanced up at the sky; the day was drawing on. He and Ranulf returned to the Chapel of the Damned and continued their search. Although Ranulf was close to him, Corbett felt a prickly unease: the shifting shadows, the pallid light, the sense of ominous brooding and lurking menace. A mood not helped by the odd scrap of wall painting depicting the horrors of hell or the battered, snarling faces of babewyns, gargoyles and exotic beasts carved on corbels and plinths.
‘Sir Hugh,' Ranulf was kicking with his boot at a paving slab just beneath one of the narrow windows, ‘there's an iron ring here.'
Corbett hurried across. The ring was embedded near the edge, rusting but still strong and secure. He tugged and the entire stone loosened. Assisted by Ranulf, he pulled it free, sliding it across the next stone as a gust of musty air made them cough.
Corbett grasped the lantern and glimpsed the steep, narrow steps leading below.
‘Ranulf, there're more lantern horns outside. Take one, get it lit and come back.'
A short while later, the lantern horns glowing, Ranulf shouting at the curious now congregating in the porch to busy themselves elsewhere, Corbett led the way down. At the bottom of the steps he lifted the lantern and quietly whistled.
‘A crypt,' he murmured. ‘Look, Ranulf.' He pointed to cresset torches, still thick with pitch, fastened in their sconces. Ranulf hurried across and lit some of these. The light flared, illuminating the long, sombre chamber with its curiously bricked walls and the remains of battered pillars that must once have reinforced a ceiling above. The floor was of shale, patched here and there with faded tiles; crouching down, Corbett studied the elaborately intricate designs, then the ledge that ran either side of the chamber. More torches were lit. The light glimmered. Ranulf shouted; Corbett glanced up. At the far end of the room, piled against the wall, rose a heap of shattered skeletons. Corbett hurried down to inspect the grisly pile of cracked dark brown bones, a hideous sight in the dim light. The stench was noisome. He drew his sword and sifted amongst the shards; sharp ribs, leg and arm bones and cup-like skulls.
‘God rest them. These have been dead a long time,' he muttered.
‘And the stench?' Ranulf asked.
Corbett sifted the dust with the point of his sword.
‘Herbs thickly piled on but now decayed. Rosemary, withered hyacinths, cypress leaves and new shoots. This is an old charnel house, Ranulf, a place of gloomy midnight. All that is missing,'
he glanced over his shoulder, ‘is a screeching owl, a cauldron of bubbling mandrake, and it could be a warlock's cavern, but no.' He sheathed his sword. ‘The truth is that the soil outside is hard to dig, hence the village's eventual decay. Accordingly, every so often the inhabitants of Mordern would empty God's Acre for fresh burials and bring the bones of their long-departed down here. I suspect the church above was built on something more ancient still, when Caesar's people ruled this island.' He walked round, pausing near the ledge, and, in the light of the lamps, studied the ground. ‘Food and wine?' He picked up scraps of bone and hardened bread. ‘Why should anyone eat or drink in such macabre surroundings?'
‘Unless they were hiding.'
‘John Le Riche,' Corbett replied. ‘And richer still? I wonder if that verse applies to him. Did the Free Brethren hide him here? Which,' he got to his feet, ‘brings us to a more pressing problem, Ranulf. If you were a member of that Westminster gang, fleeing through the wilds of Essex with treasures stolen from the King's own hoard, you would be very careful, surely?'
‘Of course.'
‘And you wouldn't proclaim the fact. Yet Le Riche, cunning enough to break into the royal treasury, astute enough to escape the King's searchers, finds sanctuary in Essex but then becomes a babbling infant. He actually turns up at Mistleham guildhall offering to sell a dagger belonging to the King. A dagger not of English origin but Saracen, which would certainly arouse suspicion. Master Claypole and Lord Scrope are not telling us the truth, but that will have to wait. What I do suspect is that this crypt was used to house Le Riche; he hid here, the Free Brethren
fed him. They probably also stored their weapons here against the curious. They made mistakes … No, no,' he shook his head, ‘no they didn't, at least not then.'
‘What do you mean, master?'
‘Scrope's story — that a verderer was wandering in the woods and by chance came across some of the Free Brethren practising archery — that doesn't ring true; it's not logical, is it? Here are a group who were planning a secret attack, yet practised with their weapons in the greenery where verderers, foresters, beggars, wandering tinkers and chapmen could see them.' Corbett pointed down the chamber at the pile of bones. ‘They were collected,' he said, ‘and piled there deliberately.' He went back and moved the bones away to reveal the great beam embedded in the wall beyond. ‘Ranulf, bring the lantern closer.' His companion did so. ‘Look.' Corbett pointed at the countless fresh marks in the thick dark beam.

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