Paul Doherty - Song of a Dark Angel

'Why did she leave?' Gurney asked harshly.

Master Joseph stared back, waiting as Father Augustine's squeaky quill recorded the question.

'She said,' he finally answered, 'that she wished to see her father. I was reluctant to let her go but had no right or cause to prevent her. However, I got then the impression that she was lying to me – that it was really someone else she was meeting.' He looked over his shoulder at Fulke the tanner, who was squatting at the base of one of the pillars, his arm around his sobbing wife. 'I don't know who. Marina was due to leave us soon. Her purification was complete and, at the end of the month, we hoped to secure her passage to Outremer. She could have been in Bethlehem for Christmas.'

Corbett whispered to Gurney, who said quickly, 'Sir Hugh Corbett would like to ask a few questions.'

Corbett got to his feet. 'Master Joseph, while Marina was at the Hermitage, did anyone from outside attempt to speak to her?'

'Yes, Gilbert, the old witch's son.'

'And did Marina go to the gates to speak to him?'

'She did on two occasions. But the last time she refused to see him.'

'And how did Gilbert receive that?'

'Angrily, a little hurt, but he left peacefully enough.'

'Master Joseph,' Corbett smiled faintly. He was aware that the villagers were looking at him intently, nudging each other to draw attention to this important man, the king's representative, whom they regarded with a mixture of admiration and awe tinged with a deep suspicion of any outsider.

'Master Joseph,' Corbett repeated. 'I must ask you this. Last night, did anyone else leave the Hermitage?'

'No. Master Nettler can swear to my presence there as I can to his, and all the other members of the community can vouch for each other.' Master Joseph looked directly at Gurney. 'Sir Simon, we have been on your lands for over a year and, as you know, when spring comes we may move on.' His words provoked a deep sigh of disappointment from the watching villagers. 'Never once have we abused either your hospitality or that of this village; never once told a lie or been involved in any fraudulent trickery. I make this assertion now so it can be challenged.' He paused and stared around the now quiet church. 'Good!' he said, and added quietly, 'And I tell no lie now, on my oath!'

Corbett nodded and sat down. Master Joseph was dismissed and quietly slipped out of the church. Fulke the tanner was called next. He identified his daughter's corpse. He said that Marina had been happy at the Hermitage. Then he told the court that a small amber-bead necklace, a gift from him and his wife, was missing from the girl's body.

'She always wore it,' he said flatly. 'And now, like her soul, they have gone.'

The villagers clapped when he returned to his place. Others were called to give evidence. They named Gilbert time and again, telling how, in the village tavern, he had bitterly attacked the Pastoureaux for taking Marina from him, how he had missed her and how, on one memorable occasion, he had boldly asserted that she would never leave Hunstanton.

Corbett could see Gurney's unease deepen as other witnesses began to hint that Gunhilda, Gilbert's mother, now described as a well-known witch, had tried to help her son. Perhaps she was also the perpetrator, the blasphemer who had been pillaging graves in the village churchyard?

'The use of dead men's skulls and bones,' one reedy-voiced villager intoned, 'is well known to the Masters of the Gibbet and to the night hags!'

Father Augustine was then called. 'I cannot say,' he replied to a question from Gurney, 'whether Gunhilda or her son were responsible for robbing the graves. It has been going on for the last year and seems to have neither rhyme nor reason.'

'Why do you say that?' Corbett asked.

'Because the graves that are pillaged are never recent ones but often decades old. Nothing remains except a few bones.'

'And has anything been taken?' Corbett asked.

'To my knowledge, nothing.'

The church began to grow dark as the day died. Gurney gave a pithy summary of what had been said. The jury retired, but came back a short while afterwards. They trooped in behind their reeve, Robert, who looked, as Ranulf whispered to Corbett, as important as a cockerel on a dung heap.

'You have a verdict?'

'We have, my lord. We find that Marina, daughter of Fulke the tanner, was murdered by Gilbert with the connivance and support of his mother Gunhilda. We demand that they both be arrested to stand trial for their lives.'

Gurney held up his hand. 'They will be arrested,' he promised. He looked warningly down the table, then at the other villagers clustered in the nave, who were murmuring threateningly amongst themselves. 'They are to have a fair trial,' he said firmly. 'They must be given a fair trial.'

There were mutinous sounds from the villagers. 'The business of this court is concluded,' Gurney said. He dug into his purse and placed two silver pieces on the table. 'This is for Fulke the tanner, to pay for his daughter's funeral Mass. I shall also give Father Augustine a chantry fee for Masses to be sung for the repose of her soul between now and Easter Day.'

The villagers, humming like an overturned beehive, swarmed around the jurymen, slapping them on the back as they left the church. Father Augustine, murmuring he had other business to attend to, left his record of the proceedings with Gurney and hurried after his parishioners.

Gurney beckoned Catchpole forward. 'Take some men,' he.ordered, 'and go and arrest Gunhilda and Gilbert. Pray God that we do so before the villagers, now thronging in the taproom of the Inglenook, become so full of ale they take the law into their own hands.'

Catchpole hurried off. Gurney rose, stretched and looked at Corbett.

'Well, Hugh, a bloody day's business.'

'Aye, and it won't end well.' Corbett pursed his lips and looked down at the door of the church. Your tenants, he thought, want justice and blood.

'Are you going back to the manor, Hugh?'

'Perhaps in a while. The day is drawing on. I would like to see more of the countryside before darkness falls.'

Corbett excused himself and, accompanied by a taciturn Ranulf and Maltote, collected the horses idly grazing in a small paddock behind the priest's house. They rode back through the village. Corbett, going ahead, stared around at the white-washed, thatched cottages, each standing in its own little plot of land. A prosperous, thriving place, he thought. Nevertheless, he felt the heavy hand of violent death. The place was deserted. The women were indoors with their children, the men in the tavern opposite the village green with its now ice-covered pond.

Some of the villagers standing at the door caught sight of Corbett and shouted greetings. Corbett raised a gloved hand in reply. He saw Robert the reeve leave his house, a freshly painted, half-timbered building, and wondered about the reeve's newly found wealth. Further along was the baker's house, with its small, gaudily painted sign depicting three white manchet loaves on a silver platter. Corbett would have stopped, but the house was shuttered and closed, as if the young girl's death had reminded the baker of his own tragedy. Corbett rode on out of the village, taking the path towards the cliff edge.

The darkness was drawing in and the mist seethed above the angry waves sweeping in at low tide. The haunting cry of sea birds sounded above the low, moaning wind. Corbett sensed the desolation of the moors. He recalled legends of the place. Someone at Swaffham had called the wind the Dark Angel and told Corbett how this part of Norfolk had once been ruled by an ancient tribe which had rebelled against the Romans and drenched the land in blood. Corbett almost jumped as Ranulf pushed his horse alongside.

'Master,' he began cautiously, glimpsing Corbett's close-set face. 'Maltote and I were wondering how long we are to stay here?'