Paul Doherty: The Peacock's Cry

‘So, Ranulf, what happened?’

‘Well …’ Ranulf broke from his self-pitying mood, deeply relieved that his mentor, patron and friend had now joined him. He could take Old Master Long Face’s tongue-lashing, for the clerk was genuinely afraid. Deep in his heart, he knew it would be easy enough to indict him for the murder of Elizabeth Buchan.

‘Ranulf?’

‘Master, today is the feast of Zeno of Verona: the twelfth of April, the Year of Our Lord 1311, almost seven years to the day since you surrendered your seals of office and left the chancery. Never once did you look back.’

‘I was tired, Ranulf, very tired.’ Corbett smiled. ‘Now I am not, so I have returned.’

‘They knew you would.’ Ranulf shifted on the bench. ‘The old king and his son never appointed a successor to the keepership of the Secret Seal. Both hoped you would return. Only if you died would they move to appoint a new successor.’

‘Would that be you?’ Corbett teased. ‘You did excellent work resolving those hideous murders in Southampton, tavern wenches whose gutted corpses littered the alleyways down to the quayside; and those mysterious deaths in the Priory of the Holy Cross …’

‘Oh, I was rewarded,’ Ranulf retorted, ‘but I am not Sir Hugh Corbett.’ The Clerk of the Green Wax fought to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

‘You were talking about dates, Ranulf?’

‘Yes, today is April the twelfth. Precisely one week ago, the feast of St Isidore of Seville, Elizabeth Buchan, God rest her, was found near the Creeping Cross at the centre of the great maze.’ Ranulf gestured towards the casket. ‘I understand that her robes and undergarments were in disarray, her groin bloodied. Apparently she had been raped, ravished, and then brutally slain, a crossbow bolt piercing her skull. Now, I had arrived here just after the feast of the Annunciation to investigate the disappearance of another novice, Margaret Beaumont, last seen three weeks earlier.’

‘You certainly thrust your hand into a busy beehive,’ Corbett murmured. ‘And that is what worries me, Ranulf. Indeed, it is one of the reasons why I kissed the royal hand, accepted the Secret Seal and rode as fast as Chanson and I could to this ancient venerable convent. Look around you. All is peaceful here. However, beyond the walls of Godstow, Edward and Gaveston manoeuvre like swordsmen against the great barons, led by Lancaster the lecher, who lusted after both those young women. The king offered them his protection, but, like so much our Edward does, this crumbled into disastrous failure. One noble family now mourns the mysterious disappearance of their kinswoman, whilst another grieves for a daughter, violated and barbarously murdered. Lancaster is brought short in his lechery and acts the grieving lovelorn lord who holds the king ultimately responsible for what has happened. Of course, Edward turns on you, Ranulf, a royal clerk dispatched to Godstow to discover the truth about Beaumont. You failed, and were here when Buchan was found murdered. Worse, they accuse you of flirting with this novice, and of course there is the question of one of your crossbow quarrels being discovered embedded in that young woman’s skull. In a word, you could become the scapegoat, an ideal one, a royal clerk who has failed his masters.’

‘And if you fail?’ Ranulf retorted.

‘Then we both go down, my friend. And talking of friends, there is one final strand, which stretches back into the distant past. Lady Joan Mortimer, our noble abbess?’

‘What about her?’ Ranulf challenged. ‘I heard you knew her decades ago …’

‘An eternity ago,’ Corbett whispered. ‘Oh yes, the Lady Joan Mortimer! Small, pretty-faced, yet when she wanted to, Joan could fill a hall with her presence. Steel and silk, Ranulf; resolute, determined, but she could also act the weak captive lady in the tower. Men fought to wear her colours at the tournament. One glance from those strange violet eyes and she would have the most ascetic cleric quaking at the knees.’ Corbett laughed. ‘This was years ago, when I was a callow clerk in the chancery office. I used to follow my master Burnel to all the king’s festivities, banquets and hosting. Joan was always there. A time of splendour before good Queen Eleanor died and our old king’s soul died with her. Anyway, do not tell the Lady Maeve, but I was deeply smitten by the Lady Joan, fair of form and fair of face. One priest called her temptation incarnate.’ Corbett shook his head. ‘A true beauty.’

‘Yet now she is a nun vowed to chastity, a lady abbess no less.’

‘Oh that’s my Joan,’ Corbett replied. ‘ La damoiselle sans pitie . She was merciless, she broke heart after heart. I once asked her … yes, I remember this. We were at Windsor, I was about to leave for France; I was distraught at being deprived of her company. I asked her what she really wanted from life. She replied, “Everything.” When I returned to court, Joan Mortimer, for reasons best known to herself, had retired from public life and entered the Benedictine nunnery at Oswestry on the Welsh march – and so the years passed. I wager you have crossed swords with her, Ranulf?’

‘More than you-’

Ranulf paused as the door was flung open and Chanson, Corbett’s clerk of the stables, his principal horseman, entered, still hobbling after dropping a dagger on his exposed foot just before they left Leighton. Ranulf had laughed when he learnt of this, the only time he had done so since Corbett had arrived in Godstow. Chanson had taken such mockery as good-humouredly as he always did. Corbett secretly wondered if the cast in Chanson’s left eye was responsible for the man’s utter incompetence with any kind of sword or dagger. Indeed, Chanson’s lack of skill in weaponry was only equalled by his total inability to sing a correct note. As he approached, the clerk of the stables’ round face was weathered in a smile, hair shorn to a bob, the brisk work of Lady Maeve before they left Leighton.

‘Chanson?’

‘The lady abbess’s messenger has arrived, came marching up as if he was the king himself. Ranulf, your man Vicomte stopped him. He-’

Corbett abruptly rose at the shouting outside the death chamber. The door was flung open and a man in the brown and blue livery of Godstow nunnery pushed Vicomte, Ranulf’s principal clerk, into the chamber. Corbett had already met Vicomte, a ragged-haired, thin-faced man with a wispy beard and moustache, watery eyes and a constantly dripping nose. He was hardly a dagger man, but Corbett knew he was shrewd, subtle and very skilled in unlocking ciphers and secret codes. Vicomte was trying to block the Godstow retainer, who, Corbett suspected from the war belt strapped ostentatiously around his waist, the close-cropped hair, moustache and beard, his face weathered to the colour of fresh leather, was the nunnery’s man-at-arms. A common enough custom – a serjeant retired from the royal array and given a lifelong corrody or pension in return for light military duties.

‘Enough!’ Corbett shouted, drawing his sword and clattering it against the pink-plastered wall so violently he disturbed two of the triptychs extolling the virtues of St Benedict and that holy man’s saintly sister Scholastica. ‘Enough,’ he repeated. The two men drew apart.

‘Right, sir.’ Corbett pointed his sword at the man-at-arms. ‘Who are you?’

‘Fulbert Fitzosbert, serjeant-at-arms.’ The man walked forward. ‘Formerly of the garrison at the Tower. Do you remember me, Sir Hugh? You brought me home when the old king sent you north to ransom me and the other prisoners from the Scots.’

‘Of course.’ Corbett clasped Fulbert’s outstretched hand. ‘You were with Cressingham, Edward I’s treasurer in Scotland. He was ambushed and killed by the rebel William Wallace.’