Paul Doherty - The Waxman Murders

Corbett straightened up and grinned. ‘Not this time, Ranulf, it’s. .’ He paused at the knock on the door. The tavern master bustled in with platters heaped high with bread, strips of pork and pots of boiling spiced sauce. Corbett and his companions sat round the table. They ate in silence. Chanson offered to sing, but Ranulf didn’t reply, and the Clerk of the Stables’ joke hung like a sombre sentence in the air. Corbett was about to return to his high-backed chair when there was a further knock on the door and the tavern master crept in.

‘I have a message, sir. A tinker came into the tap room, asked for me, thrust this into my hand and fled.’

Corbett took the tightly rolled piece of greasy parchment. He sensed the threat it contained. He moved a candle closer, undid the parchment and stared at the scrawled hand.

Hubert Fitzurse, the Man with the Far-Seeing Gaze, sends formal warning: King’s man, be gone.

Corbett’s anger rose at the mocking threat. He thrust the parchment into Ranulf’s hand. ‘Burn it!’ he whispered. ‘Read it, Ranulf, then burn it!’

He pushed back his chair. For a while he paced up and down the chamber, trying to marshal his thoughts. ‘I won’t be gone!’ He paused. ‘I am not going to flee! I swear this, Ranulf, Chanson: I’ll see Hubert Fitzurse hang from the gallows! I have the power.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘All I need is the evidence to unmask him, tear off the pretence and see who he really is.’ He went back and sat in the chair, stretching out his legs and trying to relax. After a while he told Ranulf to open his chancery satchel and quickly dictated a short note on a scrap of parchment. He sealed it with some wax softened over the candle flame, impressing his ring hard against it.

‘Chanson, take this to the clerks at the Guildhall. I demand certain records.’

‘About what?’ Ranulf asked.

‘You talked about the causa omnis — the cause of everything,’ Corbett declared. ‘I call it the radix malorum omnium — the root of all evils. It began with that hideous attack on a small manor house in the year of Our Lord 1272. I want to find out more about who lived there.’

‘Why, master?’

‘Nothing much.’ Corbett leaned against the table and stared across at Ranulf. ‘Just a feeling, a suspicion.’

‘What about Wendover?’ Ranulf asked. ‘Is it possible he could be the killer?’

‘Wendover.’ Corbett shook his head. ‘Wendover may have the Cloister Map. He may have some knowledge. Deep down, however, I suspect he is just a bully boy, a braggart, a thief. I wouldn’t be surprised. .’

‘What?’ Ranulf asked.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Master Wendover has decided to flee! He must be becoming very frightened. After all, an attempt was made to kill him at Sweetmead Manor, or I think there was. Anyway,’ Corbett straightened up, ‘Ranulf, settle accounts with the tavern master. Chanson, take this to the Guildhall, and meet us back at St Augustine’s Abbey.’

Corbett collected his belongings and went down into the cobbled yard. Ostlers brought out their horses and Corbett and Ranulf left The Gate to Paradise, going down narrow lanes, shadowed by the dusk. Doors were slammed, laughter rang out through casement windows. They reached the main thoroughfare and paused to allow a funeral cortege to make its way by in a glow of tapers, puffs of incense, chants and prayers. Corbett remained vigilant. He glimpsed a whore with a twisted nose, painted red lips and hard, dark eyes; she was clad in a fur-edged gown, her impudent face shrouded by a veil as she stood with her pimp, who proclaimed himself Master Pudding, at a tavern door. Corbett rode slowly on. The crowds were thinning, the stalls had ceased trading. Market bailiffs and beadles were busy. Pilgrims, some with a range of badges depicting all the shrines they had visited, still desperately tried to reach the cathedral before its doors were closed for Vespers. Corbett felt more settled. He had lost that frenetic anxiety, that heightened sense of danger. He must find and pick at a loose thread in the tapestry of lies before him, and as with all lies, there must be a weakness. Discover that, attack it, weaken it and the rest would tumble loose.

Once they’d reached the abbey, Corbett and Ranulf retired to the guesthouse. Both clerks checked it carefully, calling for the guest master, ensuring everything was as it should be. Ranulf busied himself with other tasks, trying to quell the tingling feeling in his stomach. He’d studied Master Long-Face for many a year. Corbett always reminded him of a hunting dog which would wildly cast about, grow agitated, but once he’d found the scent, ruthlessly adhere to it, pursuing its quarry to the death. Ranulf sensed this was about to happen.

Corbett went down into the yard, summoned a lay brother and gave him a message to take to Les Hommes Joyeuses, camped out near St Pancras. He made the young man repeat it time and again before thrusting a small purse into his hand.

‘Make sure the mummer who calls himself the Pilgrim gets that, Brother, won’t you?’

The lay brother smiled and held up his hand as if taking an oath.

‘And this is for your pains.’ Corbett pressed a silver coin into his hand. ‘Brother, I beg you, tell the Pilgrim to be gone.’ He peered up at the sky. ‘Before darkness falls.’

Corbett was about to turn away when two cowled figures came through the gateway. They shuffled through the slush carrying a makeshift bier; from the sacking thrown on top a clawed white hand trailed. A shock of black hair peeped out from the top. Corbett walked across. The two brothers paused.

‘A beggar.’ One of them spoke before the clerk could ask. ‘Poor man, found frozen to death in the apple orchard. He’s for the mortuary chapel.’

Corbett whispered the Requiem, crossed himself and retired to his own chamber. He prepared his writing desk, laying out sheets of vellum, quills and ink horns. Chanson returned carrying a leather bag of documents. Corbett laid these out on the table and studied them carefully: the tax returns for Canterbury and the surrounding area between 1258 and 1272. He built up the braziers, wheeled them closer to the table, settled himself down and scrutinised the documents. About two hours later Ranulf and Chanson, lounging in their own chamber, heard Corbett shout with joy. Both hurried into his room. The clerk waved them away.

‘I apologise, gentlemen,’ he said, half turning in his chair, ‘but now and again when you go searching in the most unlikely places you always find a treasure, as the parable in the Gospels tell us about the woman searching for the lost coin.’ Corbett paused. ‘Nazareth, Nazareth,’ he repeated. ‘Ranulf, seek out the guest master. Ask if I can borrow a missal which contains the readings for last week, the Epistle and the Gospel. Tell him I want to keep it for a while. I’ve recalled something Berengaria told me, how carefully she listened to Scripture.’

A short while later Ranulf returned with a leather bag containing the missal, which the guest master had described as ‘one of the Abbey’s most precious possessions’, so Corbett had to be careful. Sir Hugh nodded, opened the missal, pulling away the ribbon markers, and carefully sifted through the readings. At last he found the passage which described Jesus going back to his native town of Nazareth, and how the Saviour failed to perform any miracles there because of the inhabitants’ lack of faith.

‘Lack of faith,’ Corbett whispered. ‘Sweet Jesu Miserere — Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. I’ve found it!’ Now he knew why Berengaria had scrawled that word on the wall of her bedchamber in Parson Warfeld’s house. She had heard something from the Gospel, read in Latin but translated by Parson Warfeld in his short homily afterwards; this had been seized on by the sharp-witted Berengaria. She was going to use it, or perhaps she already had.