Paul Doherty - Corpse Candle

‘But I managed the dispute,’ Prior Cuthbert intervened. ‘That’s how Father Abbot wanted it.’

Corbett stared across at a painting on the wall, a piece of canvas stretched across a block of wood. Its colours were brilliantly vivid, the brushwork vigorous. He narrowed his eyes. At first the figures it contained meant nothing: he glimpsed a tower in the background all a-fire. A young man in armour was leading an older one whose eyes were bandaged. Corbett at last recognised the scene: Aeneas leading his father from Troy. He gazed round the room. Other paintings had similar motifs. He recognised the story of Romulus and Remus, Caesar and other themes from the history and legends of ancient Rome. Prior Cuthbert had followed his gaze.

‘An idiosyncrasy of Father Abbot,’ he explained. ‘He liked all things Roman. I understand that, both as a knight-banneret and as a monk, he often served on embassies to the Holy Father in Rome. He was much taken by the ruins there and collected ancient histories.’

‘Abbot Stephen was, in all things, a lover of ancient Rome.’ Brother Francis the librarian spoke up. ‘He collected books and manuscripts about it.’

‘Why?’ Corbett queried.

‘I asked him that once myself,’ the librarian replied. ‘Abbot Stephen answered that he admired the gravitas of ancient Rome, its honour, its love of order and discipline. We even have a copy of the “Acts of Pilate”. He was a great scholar,’ the librarian added wistfully. ‘He lived a good life and deserved a better death.’

Corbett glanced quickly at Ranulf who was busily writing. He found it difficult to hide his disappointment and frustration. Here was an Abbot foully murdered but, apart from the issue of Bloody Meadow, Corbett could sense no antipathy or hatred towards the dead man, certainly not enough to cause murder. And just how had it been perpetrated? He closed his eyes and suddenly felt the weariness of his rushed journey here. The King had been so insistent that they leave immediately. Corbett wished he could lie on his bed and pull the coverlets over his head to sleep and dream.

‘Sir Hugh?’

He opened his eyes quickly.

‘Sir Hugh.’ Prior Cuthbert smiled placatingly. ‘If there are no other questions? The daily business of the abbey demands our attention and we do have the requiem Mass?’

Corbett apologised and agreed. The Concilium left, followed by Archdeacon Adrian and Perditus. Corbett waited until Chanson had closed the door behind them. Ranulf threw his quill down on the desk and buried his face in his hands.

‘Nothing, Master, nothing at all! Here we have an abbot, a scholar, a theologian with an interest in antiquities, well loved and respected by his community.’

‘But is that only the surface?’ Corbett asked. ‘Or is there something else?’

He banged the desk in frustration. He was about to continue when there was a knock on the door. Archdeacon Adrian stepped into the chamber.

‘There is one thing, Sir Hugh, that the brothers never mentioned.’ He took the seat Ranulf offered. ‘I have only been here a few days. .’

‘And how do you find the community?’ Corbett asked. ‘After all, Master Wallasby, you are an archdeacon, a sniffer-out of scandal and sin.’

Wallasby took this in good heart.

‘I’ll be honest, Sir Hugh, the abbey is well managed. If I was making an official visitation. .’ He shook his head. ‘The divine office is orderly and well sung. The brothers work assiduously in the library, scriptorium, kitchen and fields. No women are allowed within the enclosures. There are the usual petty rivalries but nothing significant except. .’

‘And that’s why you’ve come back?’

‘It’s the huntsman,’ the Archdeacon explained. ‘Two nights before the Abbot died I couldn’t sleep. I went for a walk in the grounds. At first I thought I imagined the first blast but two more followed, similar to that heard in a hunt before the hounds are released. I understand, from talking to some of the older brothers, that Lady Margaret Harcourt’s husband, the one who disappeared, used to sound a hunting horn at night as a jest, pretending to be the ghost of Sir Geoffrey Mandeville. I have also learnt that the horn has been heard frequently over the last four or five months.’ He got to his feet. ‘But more than that I cannot say.’

‘What will happen to Taverner?’ Corbett asked.

The Archdeacon shrugged. ‘I suppose the good brothers will give him some money, food, a change of clothing and he’ll be sent on his way. However, I understand from Brother Richard that Taverner has asked to stay for a while, and our good Prior is inclined to permit this.’

He left quietly. Corbett turned to his companions.

‘Ranulf, Chanson, I want you to wander the abbey.’ He grinned. ‘Act, if you can, like wide-eyed innocents.’

‘You mean snout amongst the rubbish?’ Ranulf retorted.

‘Yes, to be blunt.’

Ranulf and Chanson left. Corbett stared round the chamber and got to his feet. It was well furnished, with paintings and crucifixes on the wall, statues of the Virgin and saints in small niches. The floor was of polished wood, and the many beeswax candles exuded their own special fragrance. In a small recess stood the bed, a narrow four-poster with curtains, testers and blankets. Woollen carpets, dyed different colours, covered some of the floor. Corbett moved these aside and began to look for any secret entrances or trap door but there was none. The walls were of hard stone, the floor of unbroken, shiny planks of wood. He moved the bed, desk and tables but could detect nothing.

Corbett then moved to the chests and coffers but these only confirmed Abbot Stephen’s ascetic nature. There were very few rings or trinkets; the large chest contained pieces of armour, a surcoat, war belt, relics of the Abbot’s days as a knight. Nothing remarkable or significant. Corbett gathered up the papers and books and placed these on the desk and slowly began to go through them. He could find nothing untoward: letters, bills, treatises, most of these concerned the government of the abbey, Abbot Stephen’s journeys abroad and, of course, his work as an exorcist. Some of the books were histories of ancient Rome or tracts by Fathers of the Church on demonology and possession. There was a Book of Remembrance listing those individuals Abbot Stephen would pray for at Mass but this too was unremarkable. Corbett picked up the sheet of vellum containing the quotation from St Paul about seeing through a glass darkly, the reference to corpse candles and that enigmatic quotation from the Roman philosopher Seneca. What did all these mean? Corbett studied the doodle or diagram at the bottom. He’d seen it on other scraps of parchment: a wheel sketched in ink with a hub, spokes and rim. Did this hold any special significance?

Corbett pushed the parchment away and stared at the door. Here was a man, he reflected, a churchman, between fifty-three and fifty-five summers old, with very little to show concerning his past. Corbett, exasperated, left the chamber and went down to the spacious abbey kitchens for some bread, meat and ale. The brothers there were kindly but distant and Corbett realised that the abbey was now preparing for the solemn requiem Mass. He met Ranulf and Chanson wandering like lost souls along the corridors and galleries. They, too, reported that the brothers were friendly enough but they had learnt nothing from them. Corbett sent them back to the guesthouse and returned to the abbot’s chamber. Going through letters and books, he could find no clue, no reason why this saintly abbot’s life ended so brutally.

A servant came to announce that the requiem Mass was about to begin. Corbett joined the community in the great abbey church with its long nave and shadow-filled transepts, cut off from the sanctuary by an ornately carved rood screen. The lay brothers gathered here whilst the monks sat in their stalls. Prior Cuthbert entered, garbed in the magnificent pontificals for the mass of the dead: black and gold vestments. The Abbot’s coffin, draped in purple cloth of gold, lay in state on trestles before the high altar.