Paul Doherty: The Peacock's Cry

For most of the next week, Corbett remained closeted in his thoughts. He attended the midday Mass, after which he would light tapers before the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham in its shrine to the left of the high altar. Occasionally he returned to sit in the stalls, and he also took to wandering the precincts of the nunnery: its cloisters, outhouses, yards, baileys and gardens. He stayed well clear of the maze, murmuring that it was a mansion of murder and the abode of sin.

Four days after the slaying of Vicomte, the clerk was buried in God’s Acre in Godstow, following a simple Requiem Mass. Once they had finished dining on the funeral collation in the refectory, Corbett, lost in a deep reverie, plucked at Ranulf’s sleeve.

‘Let us adjourn,’ he declared, ‘and you be scribe for my thoughts.’

Corbett locked the door to his guest-house chamber. Ranulf laid out his writing instruments on the chancery desk, then sat on the chair with Corbett close beside him on a stool.

‘ Muri aures hic habent ,’ whispered Corbett. ‘The very walls here have ears. So, as we begin, let us be most prudent and expedient. Let us not repeat what is well known, but list my conclusions.’

Ranulf dipped his quill pen in the ink pot carved in the shape of a grinning babewyn, and smoothed out the long piece of creamy-coloured vellum held down by small chancery weights.

‘First,’ Corbett began, his voice hardly above a whisper, ‘Elizabeth Buchan and Margaret Beaumont steal two albs and pretend to be ghosts, a mummer’s game often played out during the season of All Hallows. However, in their nightly hauntings, did they see something highly suspicious here in Godstow? Elizabeth Buchan mentioned as much to you, Ranulf, but never elaborated. Second, Margaret Beaumont wants to escape. She hints to her friend that someone here in the nunnery will help her. Beaumont also insinuates that she’s the one who knows about something very irregular happening at Godstow.

‘Beaumont disappears completely, she and all her possessions. However, her great friend Elizabeth Buchan is not concerned until she realises that Margaret truly has vanished. Her kin know nothing of her; they appeal to the king, and you, Ranulf, are dispatched here to investigate. Third, Elizabeth Buchan now changes. She becomes fearful about her friend and wary for her own safety. She believes she is being threatened by great danger. She borrows that arbalest from you, Ranulf.’ Corbett paused abruptly. ‘Of course,’ he whispered, ‘now that was a mistake, using it to attack us.’

‘Master?’

‘No, no.’ Corbett raised a hand. ‘Let us continue. Elizabeth Buchan is seen near the maze, then she too disappears. The following morning she is found, raped and murdered, slain by a crossbow bolt to the brain.’ He paused. ‘We must challenge this version of her death.’ He emphasised his points on his fingers. ‘Elizabeth Buchan was a virgin, a young woman. She would have fought her attacker. Vigorous and strong, she would have resisted intensely. Moreover, there should be signs of this not only on her clothing but, more importantly, on her body itself: bruises and scrapes, wounds on her hands, knees and elsewhere. If she was raped, she was taken violently, and again some part of her would have been seriously bruised. But again, nothing.

‘Elizabeth Buchan was allegedly killed in the maze near the steps to the Creeping Cross. However, I could detect no blood there. In addition, according to all the evidence, she died silently. Listen.’ Corbett held up a hand as the shriek of a peacock carried across the nunnery. ‘A peacock cries and is clearly heard. A young woman is raped at the centre of a maze, let us say at dead of night, but not a sound is heard. No real wound to the body to testify to such an assault. Nothing but a bolt to the head and a bloodied groin. No, Ranulf, Elizabeth Buchan was killed elsewhere, swiftly, silently and up close.’

‘And the rape?’

‘I don’t think she was raped, certainly not when she was alive. As I’ve said, there are no defence wounds.’

‘I have,’ Ranulf chose his words carefully, ‘heard of men abusing a woman’s corpse.’

‘No, that is not the case here, I am sure of it. Elizabeth Buchan was not killed in that maze but elsewhere, and her corpse was abused not for some filthy pleasure but to make it look as if she had been ravished. Other evidence also makes me conclude that the accepted story is a farrago of deception. How could she have entered that maze and threaded its treacherous paths to reach the centre, a herculean task during the light of day, surely an impossible one when darkness had fallen? No, no, she was taken there by someone else.’

‘Vicomte believed there was an easy way to thread the maze. He argued that somewhere there must be a map that would demonstrate this.’

‘Did he now?’

‘Yes, some secret entrance hidden in the outer wall of hedge.’

‘Vicomte said something more interesting when we were discussing the secret of Rosamund,’ Corbett declared. ‘He argued how mysteries and riddles, complex and complicated though they might be, often have a simple solution.’ Corbett rubbed his chin. ‘I wonder,’ he mused. ‘I wonder if he was right. We should explore such a possibility, would you agree?’

‘Master, of course. Oh, by the way, why were you so interested in those choir stalls?’

Corbett laughed softly and rose to his feet. ‘Ranulf, a seed of deep suspicion has been sown and is ready to come to flower. First, though, send Chanson to the sheriff, Sir Miles Stapleton, at Oxford Castle. On the king’s authority he is to raise the shire’s posse, his own comitatus, and bring them here. They should be prepared to camp close by. This matter is urgent …’

Once again Corbett withdrew into himself, making lists and wandering the precincts of the nunnery, excusing himself from invitations to this or that. Four days after Vicomte’s funeral, the Sheriff of Oxford, Sir Miles Stapleton, a balding, sour-faced man, rode into Godstow with a comitatus of thirty soldiers. Corbett was there to greet him. He and Stapleton knew each other from years previously. Lady Joan and the senior nuns of the convent protested at this incursion of armed men. Corbett, who had given them prior warning, ignored their objections and immediately ordered the comitatus to probe the entire hedge wall of the maze under the sharp watch of Sheriff Stapleton and Ranulf. The search lasted a full day. Nothing was found, so Corbett ordered it to be repeated, but they found the same: there was only one entrance to the maze, with no secret path or passage in.

‘Does this,’ Ranulf asked as they sat in a guest-house chamber, ‘hinder your conclusions?’

‘No, no, far from it. Though,’ Corbett tapped the side of his head, ‘one tantalising mystery remains.’

‘Which is?’

‘Elizabeth Buchan was murdered. Margaret Beaumont was also led like a lamb to the slaughter, but her corpse has not yet been found. So, Ranulf, ask our good friend Sheriff Stapleton and his comitatus to do a thorough sweep of the woods around Godstow, no more than a mile from the walls. Then I will take action.’

After two further days, Stapleton reported that they had scrupulously searched the copses and woods looking for freshly dug earth, any sign of a makeshift grave. They’d found nothing. Corbett listened carefully.

‘Very well,’ he murmured. ‘Beaumont’s corpse must be hidden here in Godstow. So, Ranulf, Sir Miles, I am now ready to spring the trap I have prepared, but,’ he smiled thinly, ‘one thing at a time. These murders are going to be resolved not as in some cases before the King’s Bench or the justices of oyer and terminer. Oh no, they will be settled by bluff, trickery and deception. We were led into a maze of deep conceit, and deep conceit will lead us out. Now, these are my instructions …’