Paul Doherty - Song of a Dark Angel

He returned to check on his horse and stood looking at the lowering sky.

'Where is Alan of the Marsh?' he muttered, absent-mindedly patting his horse's muzzle. 'Think, Corbett!' he said to himself. 'Alan of the Marsh must have come here as a fugitive hiding from the Gurney of the time. He was looking for a place to hide.'

Corbett stared round the yard. He glimpsed a small, low, brick building, which looked as if it had been standing for an eternity. Corbett went across. It was an old malt house smelling musty and tangy, littered with pieces of wood and shards of pottery. Corbett tapped his boots and shifted the dirt with his foot; the floor was not beaten earth but stone. He began to kick away the piles of rotting straw and sighed as he found the trapdoor. He took the pommel of his dagger, knocked back the bolt and lifted the trapdoor by its rusty, iron ring. He paused to fashion a crude torch, lit it and carefully went down the rotten wooden steps. He held the torch up, away from him, the flames dancing in the light breeze. He was standing in nothing more than a pit, a small cellar. The floor was earthen and the torchlight revealed only the occasional spider's web. He heard the screech of rats as they scurried away.

'No secret passageways,' he muttered. 'Nothing but a dirty cell.'

Then he saw that on one wall someone had scrawled a crude A and an M and a drawing of what seemed to be a skull – two eyes and a nose connected by a triangle. Corbett studied the drawing carefully. He had no doubt that he had found the hiding-place of Alan of the Marsh and that it was he who had scratched the drawing on the wall. In which case the letters and the triangle must convey some secret message. The torch was burning low, so Corbett dropped it and went back up the steps. He was so immersed in his own thoughts that only the sudden awareness of a woman's perfume made him look up. He saw the heavy billet of wood coming down and screamed even as he collapsed unconscious on the steps.

When he came to, he was wet and cold and his head beat like a tambour. He could not understand why people were screaming at him and why his feet and legs were so cold and wet. He dragged himself forward. If only the people would keep quiet. He sat up, trying to calm his nausea. He looked down in stupefaction at the waves swirling around, looked up and saw white gulls circling like angels above him. Something was very wrong. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He had been in that cellar, now he was on a cold, deserted beach. The cliffs were in front of him. From where he sat, he could see the gallows where the baker's wife had been hanged.

He realized he had been knocked on the head, but what was he doing on the beach? And why now? A wave lapped against his waist. Corbett stared out across the swelling sea and realized with horror what was happening. The tide was coming in, not in creeping waves but in one of those surge tides so well known and so treacherous along this coast. The waves were angry, high and swollen, racing in with a fury Corbett had never experienced before. He staggered to his feet and began to stumble across the beach towards the path leading to the cliff top. The sea pursued him. He couldn't run fast – his legs felt heavy and his head was splitting with pain. He choked, retching, missed his footing and fell. The waves swept over him, their icy touch calming his panic.

He ran for his life. He remembered the local gossip and knew that his assailant in the Hermitage had left him there as another casualty of the fickle sea. Corbett staggered on. He could see the waves on either side of him rushing ahead. He could only breath in short gasps and the path seemed as far away as ever. His cloak was heavy with water. Corbett took it off, wrapped it round his arm and ran on. The sea, however, was winning the race, sometimes he was wading through waves thigh deep. The path seemed an eternity away. Then he heard the sound of hoof beats and his name being called. Ranulf was there, screaming down at him from his horse. Corbett tried to mount behind him, but a wave caught him and knocked him back. Ranulf leaned down and dragged him across his saddle, its horn pushing painfully into Corbett's chest and stomach. Then Ranulf rode like the wind, aiming straight as an arrow back towards the cliff-top path. They reached it. Ranulf dismounted and pushed his master into the saddle. He led the horse up the path, slipping and cursing, not stopping until they had reached the windswept gorse on the cliff top. Ranulf threw the reins down and collapsed on to the grass. Corbett leaned over the horse's neck and vomited. Ranulf wordlessly got to his feet and, looping the reins round his wrist, trudged back towards Mortlake Manor.

Gurney was standing in the yard, talking to his retainers, Selditch beside him. Both took one look at the sea-soaked Corbett and Ranulf's angry face and hurried up.

'What has happened?'

'Someone tried to kill my master,' Ranulf snapped. He squared up to Gurney. 'A knock on the head before being tossed on to the beach like a piece of flotsam, to be swept away in a sudden tidal surge. And what would you write to the king then, Sir Simon, eh? Some unfortunate accident?'

Gurney, although he had once been a soldier, paled and stepped back at the fury in Ranulf's green eyes. Selditch hurried to help Corbett out of the saddle.

'Piss off!' Ranulf snarled. He stared around the yard. 'Listen, all of you, and listen well! And you can tittle-tattle about this in the tavern. If my master dies here, I, Ranulf-atte-Newgate, will come back!' His voice sank to a whisper. 'I'll return! With every man I can lay my hands on as well as the king's writ! Believe me, sir, people here will still remember my visit when we are all dead and gone!'

Ranulf then helped Corbett out of the saddle. He put his master's arms round his shoulders, helped him up to their chamber and laid him gently on the bed. Alice came up with a cup of blood-red claret, heavily spiced. She smiled deprecat-ingly when Ranulf made her sip it. He took a drink himself then, closing the door in the lady's face, went back and forced the cup between Corbett's lips. As his master slept, Ranulf stripped him of his clothes, washed him, laid him between the sheets and covered him with blankets. Ranulf then locked the chamber and went down to the kitchen. He ordered the servants to heat small bricks which he placed in Corbett's bed. He demanded chicken gruel and other foods to be prepared.

For the rest of that day and most of that night, Ranulf tended Corbett. He fed his master when he woke and, when he slept, dressed the savage bruise on his head. At last Ranulf was satisfied. Corbett had been beaten unconscious and was badly bruised, but most of his wounds were spiritual: the shock of being left on the beach and that wild murderous race against the oncoming tide. In the morning Corbett woke, pale-faced but rested.

'I'm not dead yet, Ranulf.'

Ranulf grinned. 'You can't bloody well die yet! I am only at the bottom of the greasy pole of preferment.'

Ranulf watched his master anxiously. He owed everything to him. In his more sober moments, Ranulf was as fearful as Maeve of Corbett's sudden death at the hands of an assassin. The manservant went downstairs and brought back a bowl of thick soup and some bread. He let Corbett eat. Sir Simon and Alice also came up and self-consciously asked him how he fared. Corbett was polite but watchful. Maltote returned, eager to tell Ranulf about the brothel and how he was sure he had lost his heart to Rohesia. One look at Ranulf's dark face and Maltote realized how serious the threat had been to his master. The messenger paced up and down, clapping his hands, muttering they should immediately go back to London. Ranulf roared at him to shut up and sit down, or he'd brain him with a stool!

'Who did it, Master?' Maltote asked.