Paul Doherty - The Waxman Murders

‘Master, we are sorry.’

Corbett brushed aside their apology. He could not tell them about where he’d been or his meeting with the Gleeman, so he fended off their questions in a flurry of preparations.

Ranulf leaned against the aumbry and narrowed his eyes. Master Long-Face was certainly agitated, but about what? Edward the King often took Ranulf aside and, leaning close, his right eye almost closed, would grasp the clerk’s arm until Ranulf winced with pain. The King would then instruct Ranulf to keep a vigilant watch on Sir Hugh. Ranulf had long realised this was not solely due to affection. In a word, Edward of England did not trust Corbett fully.

‘Too soft,’ he’d whisper. ‘Corbett has a heart and a soul, Ranulf.’ Then the King would add, ‘Which is more than he can say about us! Eh, Master Ranulf?’

The Senior Clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax had never truly answered that question, either to himself or to the King. Ranulf had not decided what choices he would make. All he concentrated on was the road sweeping in front of him, the path to honour, power, glory and wealth. In truth, Corbett was that path, and so he had to keep Master Long-Face safe, not just for Maeve, little Edward and Eleanor, but more importantly for himself.

‘You are ready?’ Corbett, booted and spurred, his cloak tied about him, was ready to leave. Ranulf hastened to follow. They went down to the courtyard, where Chanson had prepared the horses. A short while later they left the abbey precincts. Corbett, slouched low in the saddle, allowed Ranulf and Chanson to lead as they wound their way up past St Queningate church and into the city. He felt strange. He had still to recover from the shock of that gruesome hand. He wanted to concentrate, yet the scenes around him came like images in a dream or wall paintings glimpsed in a church. A row of crows cawed on the side of a cart. Traders and tinkers hurried by, their trays full of trinkets, scent boxes, St Christopher medals, Becket badges, inkwells and quills. A relic-seller, his skin burnt dark by the sun, bearded, with fierce glaring eyes, was bawling how he was prepared to auction the Virgin Mary’s wedding ring, one of Christ’s shoe latchets, and a piece of the door from the church Simon Magus had built in Rome. A master of the drains and ditches, preceded by two ruffians carrying a tawdry banner displaying the city arms, proclaimed to all and sundry how ‘the flushing of the drains and sewers as well as the houses of easement on this side of the River Stour will be carried out before the eve of Christmas’. A group of nuns clattered by in their black soutanes, woollen pelisses, white linen caps and rounded boots. Nearby a beggar had frozen to death in the stocks and the officials were arguing about who should remove the corpse and bury it. Children in rags, feet bare, jumped over frozen yellow pools. Householders pulled sledges across the ice heaped with Yule logs and greenery to decorate their homes for the great feast. Stall-owners shouted prices above the clatter of the carts. Pedlars and pilgrims, merchants and moon people, rich and poor, cleric and lay, all jostled like a shoal of fish along the narrow streets, made even more crowded by the stalls and shops. Somewhere an Angelus bell tolled to remind the faithful to recite one Pater, one Ave and one Gloria. However, most of the faithful seemed more intent on following the delicious odours trailing from the alehouses, taverns and pastry shops where the makers were drawing out fresh batches of gold-encrusted pies full of hot minced beef, highly spiced to hide its age.

Corbett and Ranulf dismounted on the corner of an alleyway outside the piscina of the cathedral church of the Holy Trinity. A lay brother allowed them into the monks’ cemetery, though this was no haven of peace as it also served as sanctuary for wolfsheads, outlaws and other fugitives from justice. A gang of wild men in their ragged hoods and animal-skin hats, they were dressed in garish rags, though all were well armed as they squatted around roaring campfires eating, drinking and arguing with the drabs and whores who’d come looking for custom. They glanced greedily at Corbett and his two companions, but the clatter of weapons and Ranulf’s hard stare persuaded them from any mischief.

‘Where are we going?’ Chanson whispered.

‘To Becket’s shrine,’ Ranulf replied. ‘I’ve explained before. His Grace the King, well, you’ve seen his menagerie at the Tower: dromedaries, camels, lions, huge cats, apes and monkeys; he likes his animals but he truly loves his hawks. On one occasion he almost beat to death a falconer who made a mistake and harmed one of them. Anyway, two of the precious birds at the royal mews near Eleanor’s Cross are ill. The King had two golden coins blessed over their heads and has asked Corbett to bring them here as an offering.’ He nudged Chanson playfully. ‘Better than taking a wax image. I heard about one poor nuncius who carried one of those to Walsingham. By the time he arrived, the image had melted.’

‘And?’

‘Made little difference,’ Ranulf whispered. ‘The bird was already dead.’

They hobbled their horses in the monks’ cemetery, leaving Chanson on guard, while Corbett and Ranulf went round through the deep snow under the brooding cathedral, a splendid mass of stone buttresses, soaring walls, elaborate cornices, grinning masks and stone-eyed faces. They slipped through a side door and entered a mystical world of arches, lofty vaults hidden in the darkness with shafts of grey and coloured light pouring through the windows; some of these were stained and painted, others opaque. They passed a glorious pageant of painted walls and squat round pillars, their cornices gilded at top and bottom, across floors tiled and decorated with phoenixes, turtle doves and sprouting lilies. Plumes of warm, sweet candle smoke wafted through the icy air in a vain attempt to fend off the cold and the stench of pilgrims.

The cathedral was fairly empty, only the most ardent visiting the shrine in the depth of winter. Corbett and Ranulf went singly along the choir aisle, turning right at the presbytery and up a long, worn flight of stone steps into Trinity Chapel, which housed the great table tomb of Becket. Above this the glorious shrine, its protective screens pulled up, shimmered like a vision from heaven. Ranulf gasped in amazement. Notwithstanding its great size, the shrine was entirely covered with plates of pure gold, yet that was hardly visible due to the precious stones which studded it: sapphires, diamonds, rubies, balas rubies and emeralds. Corbett and Ranulf walked around to study this magnificence more closely. On all sides the gold was carved and engraved with beautiful designs and studded with agate, jaspers and cornelians, some of these precious stones being as large as pigeon’s eggs. The tomb seemed to glow as if it housed some mysterious fire, and Ranulf easily understood why so many flocked here from all parts of Europe to pray before the blessed bones of Thomas a Becket.

Corbett approached the monkish guardian of the shrine, using his seal and signet ring to gain immediate access to the small cushioned alcoves in the altar tomb. There he knelt, pressing his lips against the cold marble. He closed his eyes and whispered a prayer, not so much for the King or his blessed falcons, but for himself, Ranulf, Chanson, and above all Maeve and their two children. He paused, crossed himself, then rose and gave the offering of two gold coins to the hovering sacristan. He went down the steps, lit a taper before the lady altar and left.

Ranulf was determined to tell Chanson everything he had seen, but Corbett was insistent. The hour was passing. They must meet Castledene and the rest of them at Sweetmead Manor. They collected their horses and led them out of the cathedral precincts, down narrow, stinking, ice-cold runnels haunted by dark shifting shapes, over a wooden bridge spanning the Stour, past St Thomas’ church and across the wastelands, following the frozen beaten track leading to Sweetmead Manor.