Paul Doherty - The Peacock's Cry

She tried to pull free, gathering spittle in her mouth, but Corbett moved his hands and pressed her lips. ‘This is finished,’ he rasped. ‘ We are finished. Remember that …’

Corbett and Ranulf stood in the Magdalena chamber of Godstow nunnery. They had confronted the abbess with Norbert’s confession. She had murmured distractedly how she was not of the secular order and not under the jurisdiction of the king’s court. Corbett heard her out. She made no reference to their earlier friendship, or times in the past. A broken woman, talking to herself, she had joined Norbert in the cart commandeered by the sheriff to take them both to Oxford Castle to await the king’s pleasure.

‘They will plead their benefit,’ Ranulf remarked. ‘Be tried by the church courts, then what, Sir Hugh? Slapped on the face and banished for life to an austere religious house in some desolate place? In truth, both of them should be torn apart at Smithfield.’

‘True, true,’ Corbett agreed. ‘They will be imprisoned on bread and water in some religious house deep in a wasteland of bog and marsh. Nevertheless, before the year is out, Lady Joan will die from a violent fall down some steps, or choke on something she ate, or drown in a pool, and the same will happen to Chaplain Norbert. What makes it more bitter is that they know this. Murder will haunt them, play with them, then strike. The Beaumonts and the Buchans will not rest until this is done, and it is a justice of sorts.’

Corbett paused at the shrieking of a peacock. He clapped his companion on the shoulder. ‘My friend, is that the cry of a bird or the plea of some murdered soul? Believe me, Ranulf, before the month is out, we will hear that cry again.’