Paul Doherty: Satan in St Mary

The church of St. Mary Le Bow stood in its own ground, behind a low stone wall, a little removed from the main thoroughfare of Cheapside. The chancel, broad and sheer, faced the street, its square tower and entrance at the far end behind which lay the cemetery whilst alongside and parallel to the church was what Corbett took to be the clergy house, a half-timbered building, with a thatched roof. Both buildings wore an aspect of wear, decay and dilapidation. There was an eerie sadness about the place, a feeling of quiet but baleful menace which curled the hair on the nape of his neck.

Corbett slowly walked round the church. He noted the main entrance in the square tower and a small entrance into the nave which looked as if it had not been used for years. The windows were shuttered and closed, the main door bolted, barred and immovable. He looked up but only the dripping, evil devil-face of a gargoyle stared back. Corbett scuffed the dirt with the toe of his boot and walked over to the clergy house. It looked deserted but, after hammering on the door, he heard the patter of footsteps and the rattle of a bolt being drawn back.

"Who is it?" The voice was harsh but tinged with fear.

"Hugh Corbett, royal clerk, sent down by the King to investigate Lawrence Duket's death. ' The door swung open and a tall, stooped figure carrying a candle drew back to let Corbett enter.

"What is there to investigate?" Corbett looked at the speaker, the thin, emaciated face, glittering eyes, balding head and straggly beard. He immediately disliked this man in his brown, dirty robe but, at the same time, was slightly wary of him.

"I am on the King's business, not yours, " Corbett snapped back, pleased to see the man's claw-like hand grip the candle even tighter. "Who are you, anyway?" he continued.

"I am Roger Bellet, " the man replied. "Rector and priest of the church of Saint Mary Le Bow. " His eyes slid from Corbett like those of a cowed child and he moved to light more candles.

Corbett looked around the hall of a house, a large room with a door at the far end which probably led out to further rooms and offices. He looked up at the fire-blackened beams and moved nearer a glowing charcoal brazier.

The place repelled him with its dirt-beaten floor and filthy rushes. Corbett was cold, colder in this priestly home than he had been outside. Bellet pulled a stool across for him and offered wine but Corbett refused. He did not trust the man, instead he stretched out his hands to the warmth and waited for the priest to seat himself at the other side of the brazier.

"How can I help you, Master Clerk?" The voice was now ingratiary, the priest's lips stretched in a false smile, showing a row of jagged yellow stumps.

"All you know about Lawrence Duket. " Bellet gazed into the glowing heat.

"Very little, " he replied. "On the afternoon of thirteenth January, Lawrence Duket stabbed another merchant, Ralph Crepyn, in Cheapside. He fled to this church seeking sanctuary. Of course, I gave it, the man was confused, exhausted and frightened. I gave him wine, some bread and left him in the sanctuary. I locked the door on the outside, he bolted it from within, and a watch from the local ward mounted a guard. The next morning about Prime, just after dawn, I went back into the church and found that Duket had moved the sanctuary chair over to the window embrasure and hanged himself from an iron bar. I and the watch ward immediately cut the body down and sent for the local coroner who called in witnesses and delivered judgement. The rest you must know. "

Corbett nodded. "Did you lock the church that night? I mean immediately after you left Duket?"

"No, I came back later. Duket was asleep in the chair, only then did I bolt it for the night. " Bellet replied.

"Where did Duket get the rope to hang himself?"

Bellet shrugged. "There is rope in the church, " he answered. "Old rope, new rope. It is constantly being used in the belfry. Duket must have found some and carried out his terrible self-destruction. "

"The belfry is in the tower?" Corbett asked. "At the far end of the church away from the sanctuary?"

Bellet nodded.

"And Duket?" Corbett continued. "What did he have with him?"

The priest bit his lower lip and leaned back on his stool as if the question really puzzled him. "Not much, " he murmured. "The clothes he fled in, his knife and a purse with some money. Why?"

"Nothing, " Corbett smiled back. "Nothing. I simply wondered. Where is the body?" he asked. The priest stared at him.

"Duket's body! Where is it?" he demanded again.

The priest shrugged. "Duket was a suicide and was treated as such. The under-sheriff of the city had the body dragged by the heels on a sheet of ox-hide to a place outside the walls and it was buried in the city ditch. The usual fate for anyone who commits such an act. "

"No one, " Corbett interjected. "No one pleaded for the body?"

"Master Clerk, " Bellet replied, staring at him fixedly across the glowing coals. "Duket was a suicide and the church's teaching on that subject is not a matter for debate!"

Corbett pursed his lips and tried to look baffled about the whole affair. "Can I see inside the church?" The priest pointed out that it was dark and little could be seen. Corbett nodded understandably and promised to return the following day. He then took his leave, glad to be out of that room with its shadowy menace and away from a church which offered little comfort to either the dead or the living.

Corbett wandered back to the tavern that he had passed earlier in the evening and entered its warmth and light. He sat at a trestle table and drank some beefy broth generously garnished with leeks and garlic, as well as a quart of heady ale. He felt warm, relaxed and decided he could not face the journey home so he hired a blanket from the landlord and a space to sleep on the rush-strewn floor. He lay down exhausted but unable to forget that dark church with its sinister priest. Vague memories stirred about stories he had heard or read about St. Mary Le Bow. An unhappy building. But why? Where had he learnt that? His tired brain groped for an answer when he suddenly remembered something disturbing. The priest had expected him, almost as if the King always ordered a high-ranking clerk to investigate every suicide in the city. Corbett was still puzzling about that as he fell into a deep sleep.

Four

The next morning Corbett was awakened by one of the tavern slatterns. He felt drowsy and thick-headed after the previous evening. He warmed himself at one of the cooking fires whilst he consumed a breakfast of ale and coarse rye bread. He then picked up his belongings and made his way down Cheapside, calling into the open-fronted stall of a barber who shaved his upper lip and chin with consummate skill and, at Corbett's gentle questioning, supplied details about the local coroner who carried out the inquest on Lawrence Duket. He was a physician, Roger Padgett, who plied his trade in one of the side alleyways off Cheapside. After he left the barber's stall, Corbett found the house, a modest two-timbered affair with the huge gilt sign of a bowl and pestle hanging over the door.

Padgett was a garrulous little man inflated with his own self-importance as a doctor and a coroner. A small pretentious figure in his scarlet cloak slashed with blue and lined with taffeta, who carefully inspected Corbett's warrant before inviting him into the lower room of his house which served as his surgery. Corbett did not trust doctors and saw their secret arts as trickery. He looked around the room and supposed Padgett was no different. There was a Zodiac map on the floor, and along the walls shelves full of clay jars and clearly marked 'senna', 'henbane', 'foxglove' or 'eel skin'. A huge wooden bowl stood on the table, full of a fine white dust which made him sneeze and cough until the physician covered it with a damp cloth.