Paul Doherty - Nightshade

Ranulf glanced at Corbett and sighed. His master was lost in one of his reveries. He looked back towards the church, where carts were lining up. A wandering players’ troupe was busy preparing to stage a play. Their leader had already set up his makeshift pulpit panelled in green and gold and covered with a black pall. He now stood there exhorting the bemused traders and their customers. ‘Brothers and sisters,’ he intoned in a bellowing voice. ‘You who love this age and desire its joys, think of death, of judgement, which our play will describe.’ One of the drunks recently released from the stocks came staggering across bellowing a tavern song to drown the man out:

The troupe leader didn’t object, but simply waited for the drunk to draw closer then smacked him over the head with a skillet, much to the merriment of the gathering crowd.

‘Ranulf!’ Corbett had broken from his reverie. ‘Let’s be gone.’

Ranulf finished what he was eating, put on his gauntlets and gently urged his horse across the cobbles, following Corbett through the milling crowds and on to the winding path that cut through town towards the road to Mordern Forest. At first they had to ride carefully around the carts and sledges, the sumpter and pack ponies, as well as a party of falconers returning from their hunt, poles heavy with the bloodied corpses of rabbits and quail. Pedlars and tinkers surged along the trackway, eager to reach the market square to do a day’s business; these were followed by a group of pilgrims marching on foot behind a banner displaying the likeness of Thomas a Becket, whose shrine they hoped to visit in Canterbury. At last the noisy bustle died. The sea of russet, green, brown and black hoods of other travellers washed around the two clerks and was gone. The clamour of voices died. The odours of cooking, smoke, sweat and the barnyard disappeared as they rode out into countryside. An icy landscape stretched before them, dotted with copses of trees and hedgerows, the occasional farmstead and outbuilding and, in the far distance, the sombre line of Mordern Forest.

Corbett and Ranulf guided their horses carefully along the frozen trackway, hoods pulled well over their heads, mufflersraised against the nipping cold. Ranulf was almost relieved when they eventually entered the bleak, deserted village. The Principal Clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax was certain that Satan, the Warrior of Hell, did not live in smoky, fire-licked caverns but in the white waste of eternal winter. Armed or not, accompanied only by Corbett humming the tune of a hymn, Ranulf was most wary of the brooding loneliness of the countryside, the crows cawing like demons above him, the ravens floating like dark angels across glades echoing with eerie sounds from the undergrowth. They rode into the cemetery, reined in, dismounted and tethered their horses. A cold wind moaned through the trees, sweeping across the battered crosses and stone memorials.

‘The haunt of ghosts!’ Corbett murmured.

They walked over to the funeral pyre, now nothing more than scraps of charred wood and layers of grey ash being swept around by the wind. Corbett stared down. He took his sword and sifted through the debris, then crouched, lifted a handful of dust and let it trail away.

‘Remember, man,’ he murmured, ‘that thou art dust and into dust thou shalt return. Sic transit gloria mundi ; thus passes the glory of the world, Ranulf.’ He glanced sadly up at his companion. ‘Always remember. Golden boys and golden girls must, in their time, turn to dust.’ He beat the dirt from his gauntlets and stared up at the sullen sky.

‘Yet it does not end here, Ranulf. Oh no, we are spiritual beings. Souls survive, hungry for the eternal light. Blood remains blood and, in the realm of the Holy Spirit, cries for justice. That is why we are here, where, I suspect, the veil between what is seen and unseen grows very thin.’

Ranulf stared bleakly at his master and gestured around. ‘Is this God’s justice, Sir Hugh?’

‘No, Ranulf, it isn’t, but it is the beginning of it. In God’s own time, at a place of his own choosing, justice will be restored. Not a tear spilt, not a child abused, not a woman broken, not a man ill used goes unnoticed. All things end well in God’s own time, but he uses us, Ranulf. He keeps us close to his right hand for his own secret purposes.’ Corbett pulled his hood completely over his head. ‘He needs our wits and good sense, those talents he has given us. So look around, Ranulf, what is missing here?’

His companion stared around, then down at the pieces of blackened wood, the slimy grey dust. ‘Master?’

‘Bones.’ Corbett smiled. ‘Fire consumes everything but human bone, yet I cannot see a scrap or a chard. Someone has been here to clear the remains.’

‘Father Thomas?’ Ranulf queried. ‘Or some of the townspeople as an act of mercy? The Free Brethren did have their friends in Mistleham.’

‘Perhaps.’ Corbett shrugged. ‘But first that verse: “Rich, will richer be, Where God kissed Mary in Galilee.” Ranulf, you begin with the first row of graves; I shall start at the far end of God’s Acre.’

‘What we are searching for?’

‘A carving,’ Corbett replied, ‘a depiction of Gabriel’s annunciation to the Virgin at Nazareth.’

Ranulf walked away, boots crackling on the bracken and gorse that curled across the cemetery. Corbett started at the other end. An eerie experience, the mist seeping through the trees, crawling towards them like the souls of those departed who’d lived anddied here, slipping through the air curious as to why the living should be so busy amongst the dead. Corbett moved from one headstone or battered cross to another. Most of them were faded. All of them evoked memories of his own dead, his parents, sister and first wife, those gone before him. He was whispering the Requiem when Ranulf shouted and he hastened over to a tombstone in the middle of the cemetery. It had been carved out of good stone many years before; the names and prayers had been hidden by lichen and moss except for the exquisitely carved roundel depicting the Angel Gabriel, wings extended, hovering over a kneeling Virgin.

‘Master, look!’

The lichen had been loosened to reveal the carving whilst the actual grave was almost smothered in frozen gorse and bracken, most of it taken from elsewhere and piled over the grave bed to conceal it as much as possible. They hurriedly cleared away the vegetation and began to hack at the ground using their swords, daggers and a small axe Ranulf kept in his pannier bags. The ground was hard, though it was obvious that the bank of earth had been piled quite recently. The soil beneath was loose, and as they dug, the noisome stench of corruption seeped out, forcing them to cover their mouths and noses. Corbett, recalling advice given to him by his physician friend at St Bartholomew’s, hoarsely ordered Ranulf to put on his gauntlets and to remember to scrub both hands and face when they returned to Mistleham. The horrid stench grew worse. At last they reached the corpse of the hanged man, still in his hose and linen shirt: all slimy, seeping with dirt and corruption. The belly had swollen and burst, whilst the face was nothing more than a bloated bag of messy decaying flesh, thenoose still tight around the throat. Corbett felt his gorge rise; Ranulf turned to retch. They both had to walk away, pulling down their mufflers to gasp at the clear air.

They returned with fallen branches to prise the corpse free from its resting place. Corbett, experienced as he was in tending the dead on battlefields, found this gruesomely macabre. John Le Riche – and Corbett knew it must be he – was now a hideous mound of putrid flesh. Corbett had to remind himself that this had once been a living soul. They removed the corpse and returned to the grave, where they sifted another layer of gruesomely soaked soil and reached the arrow chest. They pulled this up, tipping back the lid, and drew out several smaller leather bundles. They loosened these and emptied them. Ranulf whispered in awe at the fast-growing pile of rings, bracelets, cups, ave beads, small jugs and platters, a glittering jewel-encrusted hoard of precious metals and stones. Other pouches held diamonds, rubies and mother-of-pearl, crucifixes, signet seals, brooches, head pins, necklaces and armlets. The last item was a wooden casket containing two rolls of parchment. The first depicted a drawing very similar to the painting in St Alphege’s Church. Corbett studied this and handed it to Ranulf.