Paul Doherty: The Mysterium

‘Sir Hugh?’ Ranulf, red hair damp, green eyes in his white face bright with the fury of battle, was eager to finish this. ‘Soon?’ he demanded. ‘Soon we’ll attack?’

Corbett nodded. Ranulf saw this as an opportunity to excel, to prove that he, a chancery scribe, was as valiant as any knight in battle. Corbett looked beyond Ranulf at the cart, which was now a blazing bonfire.

‘It’s caught the door,’ Ranulf murmured. ‘Master, we are ready.’

Corbett rose and followed Ranulf out into the cemetery, keeping to the trees and crumbling crosses of the headstones. They moved down the side of the church, where a group of men-at-arms stood waiting with a makeshift battering ram, a long sharpened log swung by chains from a wooden framework. Corbett stared at the narrow corpse door. It was undoubtedly blocked, but it was still vulnerable.

‘Listen.’ He pulled the chain-mail coif over his head. ‘Bring the ram up as quickly as possible. The felons will be gathering near the main entrance. There are no windows above the corpse door, and those to the side are narrow. We must force that entrance as quickly as possible.’ The men-at-arms, all liveried in the arms of the royal household, grunted their assent.

Corbett and Ranulf helped lumber the ram across the broken ground, squeezing past the funeral monuments. They reached the church without trouble. Immediately the ram was swung back, crashing into the corpse door so hard it began to buckle. Corbett quietly prayed that the felons would remain massed near the main entrance. The pounding continued. Welsh archers began to feed their way across, bows at the ready; others armed with round shields and short stabbing swords followed. The pounding hammered on remorselessly. An ear-splitting crack and the corpse door snapped back on its hinges. An arrow whipped through the air, skimming over their heads. In reply, the Welsh archers loosed a shower of shafts. Screams and yells echoed. Ranulf, helmet on, followed Corbett into the darkness of the church. Shadows emerged. Corbett parried and thrust with a hulking brute garbed in a woman’s dress, his painted face all bloodied. The stink from his body was foul. Corbett drove the monstrosity back, fending off the huge mallet his opponent whirled. An arrow cut through the air, taking the felon full in the face, and he toppled to the ground, writhing in his death throes.

Corbett wiped the sweat from his face. Smoke from the main door seeped through the nave, which was now riven with the clash of steel, the hiss of arrows, groans and screams. Men staggered away clutching blood-bubbling wounds. As the burning door at the main entrance began to crumble, the ram that pierced it, still smouldering and licked by dying flames, was pushed deeper into the nave. The door finally collapsed, and archers, braving the fire flickering around the lintel, clambered over the smoking wood and poured into the church. The battle was over.

Some of the prisoners tried to escape, only to be cut down or forced back. A few attempted to hold out in the tower; they were pushed to the top, but none chose to jump, as Ranulf remarked, and resistance faded. Corbett ordered chains and ropes to be brought. At last a long line of felons, about twenty in number, lay shackled in one of the darkening aisles, kicked and cursed by the archers. Corbett, joined by Parson John and Ranulf, watched as the bodies of the victims, men and women, some very young, were brought out. They had all been stripped, horribly abused and tortured, their skins scorched by candle flame. Corbett ordered them to be decently tended, and Parson John had all the corpses, including two archers, laid out along the centre of the nave. Corbett had wandered many a battlefield, but this sight was truly piteous. Some of the victims had perished quickly from arrows embedded deep in their chests, others had taken time to die.

‘Harrowing and hideous!’ Corbett crossed himself and stared around. The church was like a flesher’s stall, awash with blood, littered with the detritus of battle. Sheets were brought out and flung over the corpses. Master Fleschner, the parish clerk, was summoned. He first retched and vomited, then began the grisly task of listing those killed: Margaret-atte-Wood, spinster of Jewry, Aegidius Markell, vintner of Moletrap Alley, along with all the other innocent victims of the murderous anarchy.

The archers, with stronger bellies, complained of being hungry. Ranulf, who’d walked the length of the long line of gruesome corpses, ordered their captain to requisition food and drink from nearby taverns and cook shops. Corbett just stared at a wall painting of a demon with bat-like ears, the torso and cloven feet of a goat, its eyes grisly black in a fiery red face.

‘There are demons and there are demons,’ Ranulf remarked, coming up behind him. ‘Those in the flesh are worse.’

‘Much worse,’ Corbett whispered. ‘See what they did, Ranulf? God knows why. Some souls like nothing better than to see the world crack and collapse in a welter of killing.’

‘I have to anoint the dead.’

Corbett looked over his shoulder at Parson John, eyes staring in a pallid face.

‘I’ll give them general absolution but I want to anoint each one. I think I should do that, and afterwards. .’ The parson gestured round. ‘This church is polluted; it will have to be reconsecrated. It happened so quickly, Sir Hugh. Early yesterday evening we had gathered, as we always do, the Guild of St Botulph’s, to sing compline. .’

‘Father, go home.’ Corbett beckoned an archer across. ‘Take Parson John to the priest’s house,’ he ordered quietly. ‘Make sure he drinks a deep cup of claret. Only then let him come back and do what he wants.’

Parson John looked as if he was going to object, then he shrugged and walked off. Screams and groans echoed from the shadowy transepts where the prisoners lay huddled. Ranulf had gone amongst them, kicking and lashing out with the flat of his sword. Corbett went and grasped his arm. Ranulf turned, fist raised, his lean face tense with anger. His green eyes seemed larger, red hair fanned his face like a halo of flame, spittle frothed at the corner of his mouth.

‘Leave it,’ Corbett ordered. He stared Ranulf down, gripping him by the wrist. ‘Leave it, Ranulf. We’ll try them by due process of law, then,’ he glanced down at the prisoners, ‘we’ll send them to God’s tribunal.’

‘Aye, and I’ll join you in that.’

Corbett looked round. Sir Ralph Sandewic, Constable of the Tower, emerged from the shadows, his craggy face wreathed in a smile, his snow-white hair, parted along the middle, tumbling down to his shoulders. Dressed in half-armour, he stood fingering the hilt of his great sword, then he raised a hand and snapped his fingers. Two men-at-arms wheeled their barrow forward. Corbett stared down at the severed heads piled there: the jagged necks, half-closed eyes popping out, mouths and noses encrusted in blood. Flies and insects crawled over the mottled skin of the dead faces. Corbett swallowed hard. He’d seen too much. He walked away even as Ranulf helped Sandewic push the barrow in amongst the chained prisoners so that they could stare, as Sandewic put it, on their own future.

Corbett went outside. The cemetery was now being cleared, all the corpses removed, only black stains on the icy grass showing where they had sprawled. Archers were collecting spears and arrows, scraps of clothing and armour. The fire at the great door had been doused, the half-charred battering ram pulled away. An archer brought across a tankard of ale. Corbett thanked him and gulped it to clear the smoke and dirt from his mouth. He breathed in deeply, then summoned an archer and sent him out of the cemetery beyond the lychgate, where a horde of city bailiffs and men-at-arms kept the curious at bay. A short while later the archer returned with a Friar of the Sack he’d found preaching from a cart on the approaches to Cripplegate. A beanpole of a man, the friar’s lugubrious face was redeemed by merry eyes. Corbett fished in his purse and brought out a coin.