Hugh Corbett 06 - Murder Wears a Cowl (2 page)

‘Shush!’ he whispered. ‘Let old Ragwort listen!’

The beggar crouched like a dog, his ears straining into the darkness. Then he heard it, the slap of sandals on the cobbles and the sound of heavy breathing: a dark figure hurried towards him. Ragwort drew back into the darkness, almost hiding behind the legs of the corpses hanging there. He peered at the approaching figure. Who was it? A woman? Yes, a woman. She was wearing a dark gown and her footfall was heavy. An old woman, Ragwort concluded, as he caught a glimpse of grey hair beneath the hood and the slightly hunched shoulders. She seemed in no hurry and posed no threat so Ragwort wondered why his heart kept pounding, his throat turned dry and a terrible coldness caught the nape of his neck, as if one of the hanged men had stooped down to stroke him gently. Then Ragwort knew the reason. He heard another footfall, someone was hurrying behind the woman. This person moved with speed and greater purpose. The first figure stopped as she, too, heard the pursuing footsteps.

‘Who is there?’ the old woman called out. ‘What do you want?’

Ragwort tensed, pushing his fingers into his mouth. He felt the evil approach. He wanted to shriek out a warning. Something dreadful was going to happen. A second shape appeared out of the darkness and moved towards the old lady.

‘Who are you?’ she repeated. ‘What do you want? I am on God’s business.’

Ragwort moaned gently to himself. Couldn’t the woman see? he thought. Couldn’t she sense the malevolence creeping through the darkness? The second figure drew closer. All Ragwort saw was a hood and a gown. As the moon slipped from between the clouds, he caught the gleam of white flesh and saw that the second stranger also wore sandals. The old woman relaxed.

‘Oh, it’s you!’ she snapped. ‘What now?’

Ragwort couldn’t hear the muttered reply. The two figures drew together. Ragwort saw a flash of steel and hid his eyes. He heard the gentle slash of a razor-edged knife cutting skin, vein and windpipe. A dreadful scream shattered the silence, cut off by a terrible gurgle as the old woman, choking on the blood which gushed up into her throat, crumpled to the cobblestones. Ragwort opened his eyes. The second figure had gone. The old lady lay in an untidy heap. She moved once but Ragwort sat transfixed by terror at the thin stream of blood snaking across the cobblestones towards him.

Later that same week in a garret at the top of a decaying mansion on the corner of Old Jewry and Lothbury, Isabeau the Fleming carefully counted out the coins in neat little stacks, the fruits of her hard night’s work. She had accepted three visitors: a young nobleman, lusty and vigorous, a yeoman from the Tower garrison and an old merchant from Bishopsgate who liked to tie her up whilst he lay beside her. Isabeau grinned. He was always the easiest, so quickly pleased and so generous in his thanks. Isabeau drew the ribbons from her bright red hair and shook her locks loose over her shoulders. She shrugged off the dress of blue damascene and threw it, together with her undershift and gartered hose, into a crumpled heap. She stood and turned before the shining piece of metal which served as a mirror. She always went through the same ritual every night. Old Mother Tearsheet had advised her to do this.

‘A courtesan who looks after herself, Isabeau,’ the old beldame had cackled, ‘stays younger and lives longer. Always remember that.’

Isabeau went over to the pewter bowl which stood on the lavarium and, using a sponge and a piece of Castillan soap, provided by a grateful Genoese captain, carefully washed her smooth, alabaster-white body. She jumped as a small bird, fluttering under the eaves of the old house, dashed itself against the shutters. A cat, hunting in the dark alleyway below, sang a screeching song to the moon. Isabeau stopped and listened to the old house creaking on its timbers. She must be so careful. The killer had already slain fourteen, or was it more, of her sisters? Their necks slashed so roughly, their heads dangled to the rest of the body only by strips of bone and muscle. She had seen one, the corpse of Amasis, the young French whore who used to trip so daintily up and down Milk Street looking for custom. Isabeau went back to her washing, enjoying the sensuous feel of the sponge against her skin. She cupped her full young breasts and ran her hand over her muscular, flat stomach. She heard a sound on the stairs but dismissed it as some foraging rat, seized a napkin and began to dry herself. She turned, moving the candle to a small chest next to the huge bed, covered with a swan-feather mattress, and donned a crumpled nightgown.

‘Isabeau.’ The voice was soft.

The whore turned, staring at the door.

‘Isabeau, Isabeau, please I need to see you!’

The girl recognised the voice, smiled and tripped quietly to the door. She drew back the huge iron bolts, swung the door open and stared at the dark cowled figure cradling a small candle.

‘What is it you want?’ Isabeau stepped back. ‘Surely not now,’ she mocked, ‘at this time of night?’

‘Here,’ her unexpected guest replied. ‘Hold the candle!’

Isabeau stretched out her hand and, for a second, glimpsed the broad-bladed knife as it swept towards her soft, tender throat. She felt a terrible fiery pain and collapsed as her life-blood streamed down her freshly washed body.

In the Louvre Palace, which stood on the Ile de France under the towering mass of Notre Dame Cathedral, ran a maze of secret corridors and passageways. Some led to nowhere but blank walls. Others twisted and turned so much that any intruder soon became lost and disheartened. At the end of this maze, like the centre of some great web, was Philip IV’s secret chamber. A room in the shape of an octagon, its walls were wood-panelled with only two small, arrow-slit windows high in the wall. The floor was carpeted from wall to wall in thick wool almost a foot deep. Philip IV liked this room. No sounds were ever heard. Even the door had been cunningly built into wood-panelled walls, so it was difficult to get in and, for the unwary, even more confusing to get out. The room was always lit by dozens of pure beeswax candles, the best the court chamberlain could provide. In the centre of the room was a square oaken table with a green baize top. Behind it a high-backed chair and, on either side of the table, two huge coffers, each with six locks. Inside each of these was another casket secured by five padlocks containing Philip of France’s secret letters, memoranda and the reports of spies from all over Europe. Here, Philip sat at the centre of his web and spun his skein of lies and deceits to ensnare the other rulers of Europe, be they Prince or Pope.

Philip of France now lounged in his huge chair, staring at the gold and silver stars painted on the ceiling, gently drumming his fingers on top of the table. Across from him sat his Chancellor and Master of Secrets, the apostate William of Nogaret. This Keeper of the King’s Secrets talked softly, yet rapidly, as he moved from one European court to another and all the time he watched this most impassive of kings. Philip, whom men nicknamed ‘Beautiful’, with his long, white face, pale blue eyes and hair the colour of burnished gold, looked every inch a king. He exuded majesty, as a woman would perfume, or a court fop an exotic fragrance, but Nogaret knew his master to be a cunning, sly fox who kept his face and his manner inscrutable, leaving others to guess his true intentions.

Nogaret paused and swallowed hard. He edged his stool slightly sideways for he knew that on his side of the desk was a dreadful oubliette, a trap door in the floor controlled by a lever under the rim of the King’s desk. Nogaret knew what would happen if that trap door suddenly opened. He himself had seen a victim fall on to the steel-tipped stakes below.

‘You have paused, William?’ the King murmured.

‘Your Grace, there is the matter of finance.’

Philip’s blue eyes swung lazily at Nogaret.

‘We have our taxes.’

Nogaret’s dark hooded eyes blinked and he gently stroked his skin, a gesture which made his sallow, narrow face look even more drawn and pinched.

‘Your Grace, a war against Flanders will empty the Treasury!’

‘We can borrow.’

‘The Lombards won’t lend!’

‘There are merchants who will.’

‘They are taxed to the hilt.’

‘So, what do you suggest, William?’

‘There is the Church.’

Philip smiled slightly and gazed hard at his master of secrets.

‘You would like that, wouldn’t you? You would like us to tax the Church?’ Philip leaned forward, lacing slender fingers together. ‘Some men, William,’ he continued, ‘some men maintain you do not believe in the Church. You do not believe in God or Le Bon Seigneur.’

Nogaret gazed blankly back. ‘Some men say the same of you, your Grace.’

Philip’s eyes rounded in mock innocence.

‘But my grandfather was the sainted Louis, whilst your grandfather, William, together with your mother, was condemned as a heretic, placed in a barrel of tar and burnt in the public market place.’

Philip watched the muscles in Nogaret’s face tense with fury. He liked that. He relished it when others lost their calm and showed the true nature of their souls. The King leaned back and sighed.

‘Enough! Enough!’ he muttered. ‘We cannot, we will not, tax the Church.’

‘Then “we cannot, we will not”,’ Nogaret snapped back, mimicking the King’s words, ‘invade Flanders.’

Philip curbed the rush of fury within him and smiled. He gently smoothed the green-baized table top. ‘Be careful, William,’ he murmured. ‘You are my right hand.’ The King lifted his fingers, ‘But if my right hand knew what my left hand was doing, I would cut it off!’

Philip turned, grasped the wine jug and filled a cup to the brim, watching the wine wink and bubble around the rim. He handed it to Nogaret.

‘Now, my Master of Secrets, enough of this bandying of words. I need money, and you have a plan.’

Nogaret sipped gingerly at the wine and stared back.

‘You do have a plan?’ Philip repeated.

Nogaret placed the cup down. ‘Yes, your Grace, I do. It will involve us in the affairs of England.’ He leaned forward and began to talk quietly.

Philip listened impassively but, as Nogaret described his scheme, the King folded his arms, almost hugging himself with pleasure at the honeyed words and phrases which dripped from Nogaret’s lips.

Edward of England sat slumped in a window seat in the small robing chamber behind the throne room of Winchester Palace. For a while he watched one of his greyhounds gobble the remains of some sugared wafers from a silver jewelled plate, then gently lope across to a far corner to squat and noisily crap. Edward smiled to himself and gazed under bushy eyebrows at the two men seated on stools before him. The old one, John de Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, gazed blankly back. Edward studied the Earl’s cruel face; his beaked nose, square chin and those eyes which somehow reminded Edward of the greyhound in the corner. De Warrenne, he mused, must have a brain in that close-cropped hair but Edward could not swear to it. De Warrenne never had an original idea, his usual reaction to anything would be to charge and kill. Edward secretly called de Warrenne his greyhound for, whatever Edward pointed to, de Warrenne would always seize. Now the Earl just sat there perplexed by the King’s angry litany of questions, watching his master and waiting for the next order to be given. Despite the early-summer morning, de Warrenne still wore a thick, woollen cloak and, as always, a chain-mail shirt and the brown, woollen leggings of a soldier, pushed into loose riding boots, the spurs still attached. Edward chewed his lip. Did the Earl ever change his clothes? the King wondered. And what happened when he went to bed? Did his wife Alice bear the imprint of that mail on her soft, white body?

Edward glanced at the man next to de Warrenne, dressed simply in a dark-blue cote-hardie bound by a broad, leather belt. This man was as different from de Warrenne as chalk from cheese, with his dark saturnine face, clean-shaven chin, deep-set eyes and unruly mop of black hair which now showed faint streaks of grey. Edward winked slowly at his Master of Clerks, Hugh Corbett, Edward’s special emissary and Keeper of the Secret Seal.

‘You see my problem, Hugh?’ he barked.

‘Yes, your Grace.’

‘Yes, your Grace!’ Edward mimicked back.

The King’s sunburnt face broke into a mocking smile, his lips curling so he looked more like a snarling dog than the Lord’s Anointed. He rose and stretched his huge frame until the muscles cracked, then he ran his fingers through his steel-grey, leonine hair which fell down to the nape of his neck.

‘Yes, your Grace,’ the King jibed again. ‘Of course, your Grace. Would it please your Grace?’ Edward lashed out with his boot and caught the leg of his clerk’s chair. ‘So, tell me Master Corbett, what is my problem?’

The clerk would have liked to have informed the King, bluntly and succinctly, that he was arrogant, short-tempered, cruel, vindictive and given to wild bursts of rage which profited him nothing. Corbett, however, folded his hands in his lap and stared at the King.

Edward was still dressed in his dark-green hunting costume, his boots, leggings and jerkin stained with fat globules of mud. Moreover, every time the King moved he gave off gusts of sweaty odour; Corbett wondered which was worse, the King or the King’s greyhound. Edward crouched before Corbett and the clerk stared coolly back at the red-rimmed, amber-flecked eyes.

The King was in a dangerous mood. He always was after hunting; the blood still ran hot and fast in the royal veins.

‘Tell me,’ Edward asked with mock sweetness. ‘Tell me what our problem is?’

‘Your Grace, you have a revolt in Scotland. The leader, William Wallace, is a true soldier and a born leader.’ Corbett saw the annoyance flicker across the King’s face. ‘Wallace,’ Corbett continued, ‘uses the bogs, the fens, the mists and the forests of Scotland to launch his attacks, plan his sorties and arrange the occasional bloody ambush. He cannot be pinned down, he appears where he is least expected.’ Corbett made a face. ‘To put it succinctly, your Grace, he is leading your son, the Prince of Wales and commander of your forces, a merry jig.’