Paul Doherty - Corpse Candle

‘For what?’

‘To be perfectly honest, I don’t know. If it yields nothing, we’ll stay two more days.’

Corbett stared at the crucifix and recalled Aelfric’s words: ‘I have sinned! I have sinned!’ The clerk picked up his cloak.

‘Where’s Chanson?’

‘Where he always is, down at the stables admiring the horses.’

‘As long as he doesn’t sing.’

Corbett smiled as they left the chamber. He had strictly ordered Chanson that, if he attended the Divine Office of the abbey, he was not to sing. Corbett had also warned Ranulf not to bribe or encourage him. Chanson was an excellent groom and a deft hand with the knife, but his singing! Corbett had never heard such an atrocious sound! The only person who appeared to admire it was his daughter Eleanor. She often begged Chanson for a song and, whilst Baby Edward screamed his head off, his daughter would laugh until the tears streamed down her cheeks.

They clattered down the stairs and out into the abbey grounds.

‘Where to, Sir Hugh?’

‘Why, Ranulf, to be shriven.’

‘Confession? Absolution?’ Ranulf teased. ‘Should the Lady Maeve know of this?’

Corbett threw his cloak over his shoulders and fastened the clasp. He stamped his feet on the icy ground and stared up at the overcast sky.

‘Abbot Stephen spoke openly with no one or appeared not to. He had no real confidant but, like any man, he had to be shriven. I am looking for Brother Luke.’

Corbett went up into the cloisters and stopped by a desk. A young monk, his face and hands almost blue with the cold, was poring over a manuscript. Corbett made his enquiries and the young monk’s face lit up with a smile.

‘My fingers are freezing, even the ink is sluggish. I’ll take you to Brother Luke.’

They crossed the abbey grounds to a long, one-storeyed, grey-ragstone building with a red tiled roof and a shaded colonnaded walk on one side. Their guide explained that this was where the ‘ancient ones’ lived: too old or infirm for other duties except prayer, reflection and, as the young monk laughingly put it, ‘chomping on their gums’. He paused at a door and knocked.

‘Go away!’ a voice bellowed. ‘I don’t want to be disturbed!’

The monk sighed, pressed down the latch and opened the door. The chamber inside was sweltering: it contained at least four braziers as well as a large chafing dish filled with charcoal on a table beside the high-backed chair where the occupant sat. The chamber also boasted a table, a stool, a small trunk and cupboard, a cot bed in the far corner and a lectern with a psalter on it facing a stark crucifix. Brother Luke certainly looked ancient with his scraggy neck, almost skeletal face stained with dark liverish spots, and a head as bald as an egg, but his eyes were bright with life. He pushed away the footstool and leaned forward.

‘You are the clerk,’ his voice was surprisingly strong. ‘A royal clerk and his bully-boys come to see poor old Brother Luke. I wondered if you would. You, Brother!’ he thundered at Corbett’s guide, ‘stop grinning like a monkey and go back to your studies!’

The young monk fled.

‘Prior Waldo once had a monkey,’ the Ancient One remarked. ‘God knows why the Abbot at the time allowed him to bring it in, for it climbed everywhere whilst its habits were none too clean!’ Brother Luke gave Corbett a red-gummed smile. ‘But that can be said for many of the sons of God. Come on! Come on!’ He gestured at a bench along the far wall. ‘Bring that over and sit down. I have some wine.’

Corbett shook his head. He and Ranulf sat down like schoolboys before a master.

‘I thought you’d come! I thought you’d come!’ A bony finger wagged in Corbett’s face.

‘Why, Brother?’

‘Because of the deaths — the murders! I always said this was an unhallowed place.’

‘St Martin’s?’

‘No, clerk, the marshes!’

‘Poor Abbot Stephen. You were his confessor?’ Corbett asked.

‘Aye, I listened to his sins and shrived him. And, before you ask, clerk, you know I can’t tell you anything of that. I have not many days left: for a priest to reveal what’s heard in confession is a sin to answer for in hellfire.’

‘But what sort of man was he?’ Ranulf demanded.

‘Why, of mankind.’ Brother Luke threw his head back and cackled with laughter. ‘He was like you or I, Red Hair.’ He peered at Ranulf. ‘A fighting man born and bred, eh? I wager the ladies like you.’ He patted his stomach. ‘They used to like me too. Sprightly, they called me, a nimble dancer. Aye, I’ve danced on moon-washed greens and listened to the tambour beat and the jingle of the bells.’

Corbett glanced at Ranulf and winked.

‘But, to answer your question,’ Brother Luke pushed out his chin, ‘Abbot Stephen was a good man but very troubled by something in the past. In many ways he was a sinner, perhaps even a great sinner: that’s why I felt comfortable with him for so am I.’

‘Did he ever talk of Heloise Argenteuil?’

Brother Luke stared impassively back.

‘Did he ever talk about Reginald Harcourt?’

Again the hard-eyed stare.

‘Did he ever talk about a wheel?’ Corbett insisted.

‘Yes, but in confession.’ The vein-streaked, brown-spotted hand clasped Corbett’s. The old monk’s eyes grew gentle. ‘The Good Lord and his Holy Mother know you have a dreadful task here, yet I can only speak on those matters not heard in the confessional pew.’

‘Why was he an exorcist?’ Ranulf asked.

‘Now, Sharp Eyes, I can answer that! I asked the same. Stephen had doubts, grave doubts, about everything! Sometimes he thought there was nothing after death but extinction: no heaven, no hell, no purgatory, no God, no demons. So, he took the view that, if he could prove the existence of demons, then it might mean something.’

Corbett nodded. He had heard this before, not only about Abbot Stephen but about others who struggled with their faith. As one priest had confided in Corbett, ‘If there’s a hell, there must be a heaven.’

‘He was trying to prove to himself,’ Brother Luke continued. ‘As the Creed puts it, “I believe in things visible and invisible”. He wanted to shift the mist which blinded his soul. I suppose he was searching for the truth.’

‘And Bloody Meadow?’ Corbett asked.

Again the old priest’s head went down.

‘I can tell you something of that. Abbot Stephen swore that, as long as he lived, that burial mound would not be opened. On that point he was obdurate. I don’t. .’ His voice trailed off. ‘I have spoken enough.’ He sighed.

‘What of the days before he died?’ Corbett demanded.

The old priest licked his lips. ‘Yes, he came to me agitated, troubled. A great darkness clouded his mind, heart and soul. I can tell you this, clerk, and I’ve told no one else — if you had not come to me, I suppose I would have asked to see you.’

Corbett held his breath. He could see the old monk was torn by the fear of betraying a confidence.

‘So, in his last days Abbot Stephen did not come for confession?’

‘No, clerk.’

The old priest turned away, his lower jaw trembling. Corbett grasped his hand and squeezed it gently.

‘You must help me. Blood has been shed. The souls of your brothers sent brutally, unshriven, before God’s tribunal might not cry for vengeance but they do call out for justice. God’s justice must be done and the King’s law upheld.’

‘Very well.’ The old priest grasped his Ave beads and threaded them through his fingers. ‘Abbot Stephen knelt before me. He did not confess his sin but he claimed how one of his brothers, a man close to him, had accused him of a hideous offence, not against the Rule but against God.’