Paul Doherty - The Mysterium

Corbett tried to ignore Fleschner’s horrid face. He unpinned the scrap of parchment and stared at those words scrawled in blue-green ink: Mysterium Rei — the Mystery of the Thing . He put this into his wallet, then rose and walked across to the group of women. They were a desolate sight, wrapped in heavy cloaks, hoods protecting their pallid faces against the biting river wind. They were all comforting Mistress Fleschner, a plain-faced woman, her red-rimmed eyes still full of shock at her husband’s sudden, brutal death. Corbett grasped her gloved hand. When he introduced himself and offered his condolences, Mistress Fleschner abruptly withdrew her hand.

‘Sir, royal clerks have never brought me or mine good fortune.’

‘Mistress, I am sorry to hear that. What do you mean?’

‘Evesham.’ She spat the word out. ‘Master Miles has never been the same since he visited our home.’

‘When was this?’

Mistress Fleschner swallowed hard, dabbing her eyes. ‘Years ago, when Evesham’s villainy was green and fresh. He visited us often. No, sir, I don’t know why. Master Miles never said. I tried to discover but he remained tight-lipped, so why should I worry? Soon afterwards he resigned his office as coroner. I was pleased; no more sitting over corpses dragged from the river or horribly murdered. He could spend more time with me. He was happy to be parish clerk at St Botulph’s. I thought that was where he was last night. I know he was with Parson John. He must have comforted and looked after him. I thought he would come straight home afterwards or send me a message, but oh no, and now. .’ She burst into tears and crept back amongst the other women.

Corbett bowed and walked over to where the bailiff, now joined by his companions, was organising the removal of the corpse. He stared at the pitiful remains of Miles Fleschner being bundled on to a makeshift stretcher and covered with a piece of rough sacking. The chatter amongst the bailiffs was that Fleschner had been murdered by footpads who’d decided to mock their victim by hanging him from the iron bracket. Corbett knew different, but why? What had Fleschner to do with the other deaths? He glanced back to where Mistress Fleschner was still being fussed by the other women. They would accompany her husband’s remains to the corpse house of the nearest church. He glanced beyond them at the mist boiling over the river. Queenshithe was coming to life. Figures trailed here and there, the odd shout, the rattle of a wheelbarrow, the clatter of a cart.The city would soon be wakening. He heard a sob and glanced pitifully at Mistress Fleschner as she knelt and placed her hands on the covered corpse of her husband. He recalled her words. Had Fleschner been killed not because of any connection with St Botulph’s but because he was once coroner in Cripplegate? Was that the reason? Had the assassin made a mistake at last?

Corbett studied the bailiffs and chose the youngest, a bright lad. He drew him away from the rest and handed over a seal cast and a coin, then gripped the young man by his shoulder.

‘Your name?’

‘John, sir, John-atte-Somerhill.’

‘Well, John-atte-Somerhill,’ Corbett smiled, ‘I want you to memorise this.’ He pressed the bailiff’s hand. ‘Take a wherry to Westminster. Show this seal to any guard or bailiff who tries to stop you. Ask for Ranulf-atte-Newgate, Clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax.’ He made the bailiff repeat the name and title. ‘You’ll find him busy already. Show him the seal and ask him to go to the archives at the Guildhall. He is to ask for all the coroner rolls from when Master Miles Fleschner was coroner in Cripplegate. Do you understand that?’ He made the young man repeat it, and once he was satisfied, let him go.

Corbett made his farewells of the rest and walked back up the lane towards Cheapside. The previous evening Ranulf had scoured the chancery records and discovered that the widow of the merchant arrested with Boniface in Southwark still lived in a splendid mansion in Milk Street off Cheapside. She must know something. Although hungry and unshaven, Corbett felt almost elated. Fleschner’s murder, he reasoned, was another move forward across this murderous chessboard, for it opened the door to other paths. Corbett was determined to follow these.

He glanced around. The city was stirring. Whores and pimps, topers and cunning men, all the creatures of the night were scuttling back into the dark. Doors were being opened, lanterns doused, buckets emptied into the sewer channels running down the centre of the streets. Apprentices and slatterns, faces heavy with sleep, were busy fetching water, buying milk from the carriers or hurrying through the murky lanes to the bakers and cookshops where the ovens and spits had been fired. A multitude of odours seeped through the misty morning air. Bells rang. Carts and barrows were on the move. Horses and donkeys brayed. People called out greetings. Sheriff’s men were roughly organising the night-walkers, drunks and whores caught breaking the curfew, herding them up to the stocks. The bells of St Paul’s boomed out their summons to the Jesus Mass. Corbett decided to attend. He went through the great gates, past the noisy Sanctuary, where wolfsheads were scrambling across the high wall one step ahead of the greedy clutches of bailiffs and bounty-hunters. At the Great Cross in the centre of the cemetery, a city herald was proclaiming how a certain corner in Lothbury, where a Scottish traitor had been executed on a movable gallows, was not a holy site, a martyr’s shrine. The gibbet, the herald bellowed, had been burnt, whilst gong carts would deposit a load of filth on the spot. Any citizen who insisted on regarding that place as sacred would be viewed as outside the protection of both the Crown and Holy Mother Church.

Corbett went in through the ‘Si Quis’ door, where lawyers and scribes were beginning to gather, for the nave of St Paul’s was truly a place of business rather than a house of prayer. The church was gloomy, lit fitfully by dancing torch and candle flame. Corbett moved up under the carved rood screen with its stark depiction of the crucified Christ. The sanctuary mass was about to begin. He knelt by a pillar and watched the old priest unfold the dramatic enactment of Christ’s passion and death. The Book of Gospels was passed around to be kissed before the Eucharist. Corbett tried to concentrate on the liturgy, but memories, images, scraps of conversations milled around in his tired brain, sharpening his impatience with the task in hand. As soon as Mass was finished, he left and broke his fast at a cookshop on a pastry filled with fresh spiced mince and a cup of wine to warm his belly, then made his way leisurely through the colourful bustle towards Milk Street.

The hour was still early. The market horn had yet to sound, and traders were busy setting up stalls. Corbett, slipping and slithering on the icy trackway, decided that the merchant’s widow, the Lady Idola, would perhaps not be ready to receive him, so he continued up into Cripplegate, through the narrow runnels and under the lychgate of St Botulph’s. The bleak church tower brooded over the ghostly mist-hung cemetery, where the branches of ancient yew trees curled and twisted, stretching out over the countless tombs and graves, their crumbling headstones and crosses an eloquent testimony to the forgotten dead. The great front door of the church was barred and shuttered, the steps leading up to it blackened and stained by the furious battle recently fought there. Corbett followed the line of the building along the north side, up through an open wicket gate to the two-storey priest house. Its front door, ancient and tar-stained, hung slightly open on its thick leather hinges.