Hugh Corbett 17 - The Mysterium (7 page)

‘Yes, I do.’

‘As you know, Sir Hugh,’ the King added bitterly, ‘I hate these covens of rifflers. They disturb the peace, carry out numerous robberies, mock my authority and, above all, are used by the Great Ones of London to settle scores with each other.’

Corbett nodded sympathetically. Indeed he knew only too well. The King nursed a deep resentment, even hatred, for the merchant princes of London, with their vast profits from the wool trade. They in turn fiercely resented royal interference in what they saw as their city, they wanted to enjoy the same status and power as the self-governing communes of Florence and Venice to which they sold their precious wool.

‘The evidence against Evesham was compelling, though at the time he refused to comment,’ Staunton continued. ‘Why was he entertaining such wolfsheads in his own chamber at such an ungodly hour? Why did he have freshly minted gold coins in his coffer filched in a recent robbery? We believe Waldene and the Monk were responsible for that, though of course we had no proof that they had brought the gold there. Moreover,’ he lifted a finger, ‘that pair of rifflers, also trapped in the mire, later pleaded that if they were indicted, Evesham must also account—’

‘They recognised,’ Corbett intervened, ‘that his grace, fearful of hideous scandal, might be prepared to gloss over the matter regarding Evesham but not as regards to them. I’m sure they would have implicated the Chief Justice.’

‘Whatever those two wolfsheads decided,’ the King growled, ‘Evesham was finished. He’d grown arrogant as Lucifer. I confronted him in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster and threatened to put him on trial and seize all his chattels, including his beloved manor of Ingachin on the Welsh March. Evesham, caught red-handed, acted like a broken man. He offered to resign all his posts and retire as a recluse to the Abbey of Syon on Thames. I agreed.’

‘Why here?’ asked Corbett. ‘Why not some other monastery?’

‘Two reasons, perhaps.’ The King gestured with his cup towards the door. ‘Both acts of reparation. Evesham was not a prisoner, but rather a forced house guest. He was under strict instruction to assume the garb of a lay brother and never leave Syon’s precincts. As I said, he may have been thinking of reparation. The lay brother in charge of the corpse chapel beneath which Evesham had his cell, you met him briefly, Brother Cuthbert. Years ago he was Cuthbert Tunstall, Parson of St Botulph’s Cripplegate when Boniface Ippegrave took sanctuary there. After Ippegrave disappeared, Evesham, in his arrogance, even though he himself held the keys of the church, blamed Parson Tunstall. He complained bitterly to the Bishop of London; more importantly, he had Tunstall confined to his house to fast on bread and water, and berated him day and night until his anger was spent. When he had finished, Tunstall was a broken man. He resigned his benefice and asked to be accepted here as a simple lay brother. According to Father Abbot, when Evesham arrived at Syon, he knelt at Tunstall’s feet and asked for forgiveness. Whether it was given or not, I don’t know. Abbot Serlo claimed Tunstall did not seem to care, whilst Evesham kept to himself, ate his meals and studied manuscripts from the abbey library.’

‘And the second reason?’

‘Ah.’ Again the King pointed to the door. ‘In the grounds stands an anchorite cell built near the curtain wall. Adelicia lives there, as she has for the last twenty years.’

‘Adelicia?’ Ranulf asked.

‘Adelicia Ippegrave, beloved sister of Boniface, former chancery clerk. She lived with her brother in Cripplegate and was a parishioner of St Botulph’s, a close friend I understand of Parson Tunstall. When her brother disappeared and Tunstall retired a broken man, Adelicia sold all her possessions and both bishop and abbot gave her permission to retire here as an
ancilla Domini
– handmaid of the Lord – to live the life of an anchoress.’

‘How close were Cuthbert and Adelicia?’ Ranulf asked. ‘I mean,’ he shrugged, ‘some priests have their lemans, their mistresses?’

‘I don’t know.’ The King seemed distracted. ‘Adelicia publicly condemned what had happened. She constantly protested her brother’s innocence and declared she would spend her life in prayer and fasting so that God would eventually make true judgement, and so it was, until yesterday.’ Edward pushed himself away from the table, rose and stretched, then walked to the windows, pulled back the shutters and stared into the night. ‘Yesterday was harvest time, as if the past was not buried deep enough. In Newgate, Hubert the Monk’s followers believed that those of Giles Waldene would turn King’s Approvers in return for a general pardon. A riot ensued. Later on that day, Ignacio Engleat, Evesham’s clerk, was drinking and whoring at the Comfort of Bathsheba near Queenshithe – you’ve seen what happened to him. On that very evening, the same killer perhaps, crept down the steps to the cellar beneath the corpse chapel here at Syon. Somehow he eluded both Brother Cuthbert and his guard dog, Ogadon, persuaded Evesham to lift the bar on his door, entered and cut our former justice’s throat. On leaving, the assassin just as mysteriously managed to lower the inside bar behind him. A true mystery, which is why,’ the king turned and pointed at Corbett, ‘I have summoned you here: to resolve this, to discover the truth . . .’

Polinator
: a doggerel Latin term for undertaker

‘If God had not been our protector, when the enemy rose against us, then they would have swallowed us alive . . .’

Corbett, standing in the shadowy choir stalls of Syon Abbey, joined lustily in the melodious plainchant of the good brothers of St Benedict as they sang the morning office of lauds. Ranulf, standing beside him, suppressed a smile. Corbett liked nothing better than to sing. Ranulf, bleary-eyed, quietly thanked the Lord that his master had slept through the office of matins. He glanced up. It was still early, and the light streaming through the brilliantly painted glass window above the choir remained a dull grey. The abbey church was cold, despite the fiery braziers wheeled in under the lofty rood screen. Ranulf stared around at the pinched white faces peering out of cowls. From the tops of pillars, carved woodmen, gargoyles, babewyns, angels, saints and demons smiled and glowered. Between the pillars flashes of colour shimmered from the wall frescoes, most of them scenes from the Gospels or the life of St Benedict at Subiaco and Monte Cassino.

‘Don’t hold the sins of our fathers against us.’ The powerful chant of scores of male voices thundered like surf into the great open space created by pillars and arches, a resounding plea for God’s help.

Ranulf blinked and found the place in the psalter as the choir swept to its glorious doxology: ‘Glory be to the Father and to the Son . . .’

Corbett lowered the stall and sat down as the reader approached the lectern and, in a clear voice, proclaimed the reading from the Book of Daniel. A phrase caught his attention – ‘Do not treat us because of the treasons we have committed against you’ – and he reflected on the tangle of treasons facing him. After the meeting the night before, the King had taken him aside, finger jabbing, insisting that Corbett resolve matters and remember three important issues. First, Staunton and Blandeford had been friends of Boniface. Second, both had been approached to investigate any wrongdoing by Evesham. Third, now that the Chief Justice was dead, the case against Waldene and Hubert the Monk had collapsed, as the Crown’s principal witness could never be called.

‘But the riot at Newgate?’ Corbett was sure the King was trying to ignore this.

Edward grimaced. ‘According to what I’ve learnt, Waldene and Hubert were held fast in their respective pits. Like Pilate they have washed their hands of any wrongdoing. I’ve given orders for their immediate release.’

Then the King was gone, shouting for his escort. Blandeford and Staunton also made their farewells before following the royal household down to the quayside and the waiting barge. Corbett had immediately sought out Chanson, the Clerk of the Stables, who was responsible for their horses and pack ponies. Corbett had ensured the groom had good lodgings in the abbey guesthouse before adjourning to his own sparse chamber. He had slept well, waking long before dawn. He’d washed at the lavarium and dressed in a fresh shirt, hose and leather jerkin, a welcome relief from the heavy sweaty jerkin and chainmail of the previous day.

‘Master?’

Corbett glanced up. The monks were filing out. He rose, going through the rood screen into the nave, where Chanson squatted at the base of a pillar, his bobbed hair cut, as Ranulf laughingly described, as if a pudding bowl had been overturned on his head. The groom, threading his Ave beads, glanced up, the cast in his left eye giving him a constantly humorous look. Corbett clasped his shoulder, assuring him all was well and thanking him for his work the previous day. In truth Chanson loved and lived for horses and nothing else. Weapons were more dangerous to him than any opponent, whilst his singing voice, so Ranulf asserted, would make the good brothers think that the choirs of hell were mocking their plainchant.

‘We’ll wait for the dawn Mass,’ Corbett told him. ‘Stay only if you want to.’

Chanson said he would, and Corbett left him bantering with Ranulf as he turned to the grandeur of the nave, admiring its soaring pillars, darkened transepts, and the intricacies of the carved screens outside the various chantry chapels. Humming the tune of a hymn, Corbett carefully examined the paintings. One made him smile. Apollinaria, the patron saint of tooth drawers, holding the pincers and tongs of her martyrdom. Now in heaven, she was depicted dispatching help to poor unfortunates as they sat on a row of stools, each with a tooth drawer inflicting more pain than relief. An artist who suffered toothache, Corbett reflected. He walked back up into the Lady Chapel, his mind drifting back to St Botulph’s. He had ringed that church and secured the doors: the main one, the sacristy door, the north door and the corpse door. The windows were narrow and high. The tower, with its plastered walls winding steps and small enclaves, held no secrets. At the top, the crenellated platform provided only a dizzying drop to the steep slate roof below. So, how had Boniface Ippegrave escaped? How had he managed to disappear from such a close, fast place? Corbett paused to light tapers for his wife, for their two children, Edward and Eleanor, for himself and his two companions. By the time he had finished his Ave, the Jesus bell was ringing for the dawn Mass.

Afterwards Corbett and his two companions, laughing about Chanson’s singing, broke their fast over bowls of oatmeal at the ale table in the buttery before leaving the abbey precincts. The morning was dull. Clouds blocked the sun and a sharp breeze whipped their faces as they made their way out through the Galilee porch into Goose Meadow, which stretched down to the corpse chapel of St Lazarus. Already the brothers were filing out to the outlying fields and granges. Corbett heard their chanting, so strong on the morning breeze not even the cawing of a host of rooks could drown it. The grass was still frosty and wet, the feeding ground for a nearby warren of rabbits, who disappeared in darting flashes of brown and white. Ogadon, on guard outside the entrance of the chapel, close to the ledge beneath the bell, lumbered to his feet growling.

‘
Pax et Bonum
,’ called a voice. The old war hound collapsed, relieved that he didn’t have to exert himself, as Brother Cuthbert crept out of the door. A tall, angular figure in his shabby Benedictine robe, a grey cord around his waist, stout sandals on his feet, his long neck and small, pert face gave him a bird-like look, heightened by the stiff movements of his arms, hands and legs. Corbett suspected the lay brother suffered severe inflammation of the joints. Cuthbert was old, his white hair shorn on three sides; the little on his pate displaying the tonsure. He was cheerful and welcoming enough, nodding quietly as Corbett introduced his companions, watery blue eyes crinkling in amusement when Corbett expressed regret at the death of Lord Evesham.

‘You’d best come down to the pit of hell,’ he said sardonically. ‘My humble abode below.’

Corbett pointed to the snoring Ogadon. ‘Brother, on the night Evesham was murdered?’

‘The same as every night,’ Cuthbert replied. ‘Compline is sung. My lord abbot has excused me from that, as there are usually corpses to be washed or a recluse to be cared for. Anyway, once it is over,’ he continued so breathlessly Corbett wondered if the man’s wits were sound, ‘a servant brings me a goblet of wine and a platter of food from the buttery. My other guests,’ he gestured over his shoulder, ‘are past all sustenance.’

‘And Walter Evesham?’

‘He had his own food brought, though much earlier than mine: a goblet of wine and a platter. The servant puts the tray on the ledge and . . .’ Cuthbert pulled at the rope and glanced up as the bell clanged. ‘You see, not everyone likes to enter a death house,’ he whispered. ‘I go up, collect the tray, then bolt the door from inside.’

‘You secured the door?’ Corbett exclaimed.

‘Yes, yes, come in, come in.’

Corbett and Ranulf followed Cuthbert into the corpse chapel. The lay brother slammed the door shut and drew across the iron bolts at top and bottom. Corbett stared around. It was a truly chilling place now the light had faded. Shadows and shapes flittered around the macabre bundles on the mortuary tables. The only light came from the windows along one wall, nothing more than narrow apertures, their shutters flung back.

‘I close the shutters and bolt the door,’ Brother Cuthbert continued conversationally, ‘then I am fastened in for the night. You see, Domine,’ he drew back the bolts, led them out again and pointed, ‘beyond the chapel, bushes and trees fringe the high wall of the abbey, lofty as that of Troy. On the outside it stands on a ramp of earth; its top is covered with sharp shards of tile and pottery. The wall has to be a good defence against the river along which flow the barges of wickedness oared by pirates and other river monsters.’ Cuthbert’s light blue eyes crinkled, Corbett glimpsed the intelligence and humour there. Brother Cuthbert was not just an old lay brother, but a clever man pretending to be distracted.