Paul Doherty - The Magician

‘Well, well.’ Father Matthew came striding down the nave, black robe fluttering. He clasped Corbett’s hand. ‘Sir Hugh, you wish to have words with me?’

‘First, Father, the smell?’

‘A little sulphur,’ the priest replied. ‘Sometimes I leave the door open; we’ve even had the occasional vixen nest her cubs in here. They always leave their offerings to the Lord!’

‘Could we go to your house, Father?’

‘I have to take the Viaticum to some of our sick,’ the priest apologised. ‘But one day soon, Sir Hugh . . .’ His voice trailed off.

‘Tell me, Father, do you have a crossbow?’

‘Yes, I do,’ the priest replied wearily. ‘And a quiver of quarrels. I wondered when you would come and question me, Sir Hugh, yet I’ve told you all I can. As regards those young women, I school them here in the nave, I hear their confessions, and on Sundays and Holy Days I share the Eucharist with them.’

‘They are not unruly or disobedient?’ Corbett asked.

‘Sir Hugh, if you wish to find out what they think of me, why don’t you ask them? On the morning I found poor Rebecca, I was here in the church. I heard Alusia scream. It cut like a knife.’ Father Matthew stared at this sharp-faced clerk and the other one standing deep in the shadows. ‘I really must press on.’ His words came out in a rush. ‘Soon it will be the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and after that comes Christmas. I must start collecting wood for the crib, as St Dominic taught us.’ He gestured towards the door. ‘Sir Hugh, you are always welcome to return.’

‘I think he wanted us to go.’ Ranulf grinned as they unhobbled their horses.

‘He did seem nervous,’ Chanson intervened.

‘Yes, yes, he did.’

Corbett gathered the reins in his hands and stared back at the church, an ancient building with crumbling steps, though the door was new and reinforced with iron studs.

‘A strange one, Father Matthew,’ he mused as he thrust his boot into the stirrup and swung himself up into the saddle. ‘His Latin is perfect, yet he held the Host in a way he should not. After the consecration, Ranulf, the priest is to keep his thumb clasped against his forefinger; it’s a petty part of the ritual.’

‘Perhaps he was cold, as I was,’ Ranulf snapped.

‘And for a poor parish priest he seems to know a great deal about the Virgin Mary and the teaching that she was conceived without sin, and yet,’ he urged his horse on, ‘he doesn’t seem to remember that it was St Francis, not St Dominic, who fashioned the first crib.’

Horehound sat on the edge of the snow-fringed marsh. He was freezing and famished. He wanted to sleep and dream about a charcoal fire above which venison steaks, basted with oils and herbs, slowly roasted. He shook himself from his reverie – he had seen men of the woods lose their wits; hadn’t that happened to Fleawort three winters ago, when he had run himself to death chasing a stag no one else could see? The cold was intense. Horehound’s belly had had nothing more than watery viper soup, and he realised how desperate the situation had become. Game was growing scarce, or was it simply that they were losing their skill? Foxglove had died chattering his sins whilst Horehound pretended to be a priest and mumbled words which sounded like Latin. One day he would ask a priest if Foxglove would have escaped the pains of Hell. Horehound stuck a finger in his mouth and rubbed his sore gum. The idea which had occurred to him in the warmth of Master Reginald’s kitchen had grown like a seed in the ground. He’d crouched behind the tombstones and watched that King’s man. The stranger was like Sir Edmund – a just, honest officer of the law.

‘I’m sure it is here.’ The outlaw known as Skullcap nudged his leader.

‘I’m not getting too close,’ Horehound snapped. ‘If there is something here to show me, what is it?’

Skullcap edged forward, forcing aside the brambles and the thick hardy bushes. Horehound glanced quickly around. They were not far from the Tavern in the Forest, close to the trackway leading to the castle. He had to be careful. Sir Edmund’s verderers were not unknown to go on patrol even in this weather.

‘Come on,’ he snarled.

Skullcap, eager to prove his case, was now crawling forward. He reached the snow-encrusted reeds and pulled these aside.

‘There!’ he exclaimed.

Horehound edged nearer and moaned quietly at the sight of the corpse bobbing in the shadows. Skullcap, stretching out his cudgel, forced the corpse to turn. Horehound glimpsed a mud-encrusted face with long hair; the dried blood ringing the mouth had mixed with the slime. He stepped back and stared around; whoever had killed that woman, and it must be a young woman, had brought her down here, murdered her and thrown her corpse into the marsh. He padded back, searching the ground for any sign, yet he could find no trace of a horse or a wheel in the frozen snow. Here and there a disturbance, but Horehound’s own footprints, as well as those of Skullcap, would be difficult to distinguish from those of an assassin.

‘What do you think?’ Skullcap crawled close, crouching beside his companion, his thin spotty face flushed with excitement, eyes gleaming, the tip of his nose as red as a cinder glowing in a fire. On any other occasion Horehound would have made a joke of it and stretched out his fingers to what he always called this fiery ember. ‘I saw it this morning, it wasn’t there last night,’ Skullcap hissed. ‘Or I don’t think it was.’

Horehound made his way back to the marsh to take a second look; this time he was bolder, allowing his boots to sink into the icy mud. He took his own cudgel and tipped the corpse. Yes, it was a woman, a young woman, probably from the castle. Her features were hard to distinguish, but he glimpsed the dried blood round that awful wound high in her chest. He retreated hastily, aware of the sombre silence. There was no birdsong, none of that flurrying in the thicket, the sounds of the forest which always reassured him. It seemed as if the winter snow had smothered all life. Horehound curbed his panic. He ran back, grasped Skullcap by the shoulder, and hastened with him into the trees.

‘What shall we do?’ Skullcap demanded. ‘Now we have another horror. You know what they’ll say.’ Horehound tried not to flinch at his companion’s sour breath. ‘They’ll say she was going for a walk down to the church or tavern and one of us killed her.’

Horehound didn’t disagree. If this continued Sir Edmund would be forced to go hunting. He would summon up the levies and they’d enter the forest and see the horror hanging from that oak; it would only fan the fire of their anger. Horehound and the rest of his gang would be tracked by verderers and huntsmen; they would bring hunting dogs and not rest until they had cornered them in some glade. Justice would be quick. They would be either hanged there and then, or taken back to swing from the castle walls.

Horehound looked up through the bare black branches, the melting snow dripping down, splashing his face. A sudden sound made him start, and a rabbit sped from one bush to another, but Horehound was so frightened, so cowed, he couldn’t even think about hunting fresh quarry.

‘I wonder how long?’ he muttered.

‘And we are hungry,’ Skullcap moaned. ‘The meat we are eating is rotten. What can we do?’

Horehound crouched, assuming what he thought was his wise look. What could he do? Master Reginald’s generosity had been stretched far enough. And Father Matthew? Horehound recalled that fire leaping up and shuddered. The villagers? He breathed in. They had little enough to share, and once they heard about that girl’s corpse, every peasant’s hand would be set against them. So who was responsible? How could a young woman’s body, a crossbow bolt embedded in her chest, be floating in that marsh so near to the tavern? Was Master Reginald responsible? Had the wench gone down there? The taverner could be a brutal man, well known for his liking of the ladies. What about Father Matthew? Was the priest a warlock? Why should he be sprinkling powders on his own at the dead of night in his church?