Paul Doherty - Prince of Darkness

Corbett stared around whilst the Lady Prioress was speaking and noticed how troubled Dame Frances looked, but then the Lady Prioress snapped her fingers and imperiously summoned him forward. Drawing a deep breath to hide a flicker of nervousness, he stood at the great carved oak lectern and looked along the stalls at the nuns who sat before him there, so composed in their wimples of white and the dark garb of their Order. He glimpsed Dame Agatha smiling mischievously at him and felt comforted by her friendship.

'Lady Amelia…' Corbett felt his nervousness return at the wall of silence which greeted him. 'Lady Amelia,' he repeated, 'Reverend Sisters, eighteen months ago in the neighbourhood of Godstowe, a terrible murder took place. A young woman and her male companion were barbarously killed.'

A gentle, collective sigh greeted his words.

I wish to ask you a question, and ask it on your allegiance to God, the King and this Order.' Corbett quietly cursed his own pomposity. 'Do any of you know the true identity of the victims, or does the phrase or family motto "Noli me tangere" mean anything to you?' Corbett quietly prayed no wit would cap his remark with some repartee, and blushed as he heard a few of the sisters giggle. 'I ask you again,' he felt his cheeks growing hot, 'does that phrase mean anything to you?'

He looked along the rows of silent sisters. Some gazed back, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Dame Agatha had her face in her hands and Corbett wondered if she was laughing at him. There was no response. Corbett bowed towards Lady Amelia, stepped from the lectern and walked quietly out of the church. He stood for a while in the darkness, hoping that perhaps one of the nuns, Lady Amelia or Dame Agatha, would follow him out, but no one came. So he walked back to the guest house where Ranulf and Maltote were locked in a fierce game of dice.

'Beware of Ranulf!' Corbett called out. 'With him nothing is what it seems to be.'

The dice players ignored him so Corbett lay on his cot bed and tried to marshall his thoughts.

Item – Lady Eleanor had died during Compline when the other sisters had been in the chapel. All had gone from there to the refectory.

Item – Lady Eleanor had been seen alive just before the service began by Dame Martha and Dame Elizabeth. However, the former had seen something amiss but hidden her thoughts behind the riddle 'Sinistra non dextra', literally translated: 'On the right not the left'.

Item – there had been horsemen seen near the priory, but who were they and who had sent them?

Item – Lady Eleanor was preparing to leave the priory and go to her secret admirer, but who was he?

Item – somehow de Craon was involved in all this and had bribed the unwitting Father Reynard.

Item – the Prince had claimed he had no involvement in Lady Eleanor's death but both he and his favourite appeared nervous.

Item – Gaveston had hated Lady Eleanor, and he, so Corbett secretly believed, was capable of cold-blooded murder.

Item – he believed the deaths of the mysterious young man and woman some eighteen months previously held the clue to the riddle surrounding Lady Eleanor's demise, but who were they and what did the motto 'Noli me tangere' signify?

Corbett turned these questions round in his head. He thought of Maeve and realised how desperately he missed her. He also thought of Dame Agatha's smiling face before drifting into a dreamless sleep, leaving Ranulf and Maltote to argue over the fortunes of dice.

In his private chamber in the priest's house Father Reynard was also lost in his own thoughts. Had he done wrong in taking the gold and silver from de Craon? He thought of the widow in her ramshackle hut at the end of the village and the gratitude in her eyes when he gave her a purse of coins. No, he considered it all worthwhile. Father Reynard lifted his head and listened to the sounds outside. Autumn, the season in which he had been born, was here again. The wind was growing stronger, whipping the branches of the trees and shredding them of their fading leaves. Soon it would be Michaelmas, then the feast of All Souls, a time to remember the dead.

He felt a flicker of disquiet Those corpses, the ones he had buried in their makeshift grave under the old elm tree -who were they? Why had they been killed so barbarously and so mysteriously? He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. What would a high-born lady be doing in the wilds of Oxfordshire? Visiting a friend at the university or maybe one of the towns like Abingdon? Yet if so, why had no one come forward to claim the corpses? Or were they connected with Godstowe?

'Father Reynard!'

The Franciscan felt the hair on the back of his neck stir as he looked towards the door. Someone was standing outside in the cemetery calling his name. It sounded like a child's voice, lilting and clear.

'Father Reynard! Please, Father Reynard, help me!'

The Franciscan made the sign of the cross in the air. Was it a ghost? An apparition? An earth-bound soul? The ghost of the dead Lady Eleanor?

'Father Reynard, come out!'

The voice was becoming petulant. The Franciscan rose and walked cautiously towards the door, picking up the thick cudgel which leaned against the wall.

'Father Reynard, do come! Please!'

Again the lilting voice cut through the darkness and the priest paused with his hand on the latch. Was it some demon raised by a witch or warlock? On his arrival in the village, the Franciscan had had some trouble with those who practised the black arts and used the cemetery for diabolical activities. There had been strange lights and incantations, the sacrifice of a black cock at midnight, but he had cleared them out and barred the graveyard, threatening the congregation with the pains of excommunication in this life and Hell fire in the next.

'Father Reynard, I mean no harm.'

The priest grasped the cudgel tighter, opened the door and stepped into the darkness. The wind caught his face as he closed the door behind him. He stared into the blackest night.

'Who's there?' he shouted. 'In God's name, child, who are you? What do you want?'

Only the wind moaning through the trees answered his cry. Father Reynard walked across to the cemetery, making out the dark shapes of the wooden crosses, mounds of earth and ghostly elm trees.

'Who are you?' he repeated. 'Where are you?'

He strained his eyes and glimpsed a shadow darker than the rest He gasped in horror. A child, a small, dark, hooded figure was sweeping across the grass towards him with hands joined as if in prayer. Father Reynard too began a prayer and was half-way through it when the crossbow quarrel hit him full in the chest, ripping open skin, bone and muscle. The priest collapsed, the blood pouring through his mouth and nose tasting like iron. He felt the soft grass against his cheek. He saw himself as a child, running towards someone. His mother was holding our her arms to him. He knew he was dying.

'Absolve me, Domine!' he muttered as his eyes closed and his soul was extinguished.

The next morning Corbett was up early, shaking awake a tousled-headed Ranulf and a heavy-eyed Maltote.

'Come on,' he shouted good-naturedly. 'Maltote, you will stay with us. We go to London and then on to Leighton.'

Ranulf sprang up, pleased to abandon the fresh air of the country and head back to the seamy streets of London and the rounded pleasure-giving body of Mistress Semplar. Maltote staggered to his feet and went down to relieve himself in the necessary house. Corbett met him coming up the stairs.

'Master, shouldn't I return to the royal camp?'

Corbett noticed his surprised expression.

'No, Maltote.' He put his hand on the messenger's shoulder. I need a man-at-arms, someone to protect me.' And, before the young soldier could ask whether he was being sarcastic, Corbett slipped by him.