Corbett became more alert. He was about to enter the Sanctuary, a different world to the opulence of the court and the hallowed atmosphere of the abbey. Smells drifted. The odour of wood smoke, crackling charcoal and roasting meats mingled with the stench of sweat and ordure, all the stinks of the citizens of the night. Campfires glowed. Dark shapes darted about. Donkeys brayed over the clucking of chickens and the harsh cry of geese. A sow lumbered by chased by two ragged children. Corbett threw back his cloak and, hand resting on the hilt of his sword, crossed the small footbridge spanning a narrow ditch. He went through the half-broken gate of the palisade and entered the Sanctuary proper, an eerie underworld, a man-made Hades for those who lived in the twilight, well away from the glare of the law. Rifflers and robbers, prowlers of the night, cheats and cunning men, outlaws and wolfsheads, murderers and assassins, pimps and prostitutes of every kind, all sheltered here. The Sanctuary was supposedly holy ground that, by tradition and law, was well beyond the power of courts, the sheriffs and their bailiffs. In truth it was a place of permanent dusk where, as one preacher described it, ‘unholy lusts’ had free play.
All around Corbett stretched the makeshift huts, bothies and fires of the Brotherhood of the Cowl. Weasel faces glared up at him. Ladybirds from their nagging houses, strumpets and whores sauntered up dressed in their tawdry finery, hips swaying, hair and faces garishly painted. Corbett strolled on. Ranulf constantly warned him about walking so carelessly through what he termed the hog-grabbers, piss prophets and toad-eaters who sheltered here. Corbett did not care. Most of these children of the dark were hen-hearted, fearful of a royal clerk. Why should they accost him and so give the King, his sheriffs and justices good reason to sweep through this meadow of misery with fire and sword? More importantly, Corbett had spread the word through Ranulf and Chanson that anyone who brought him information about the recent riot at Newgate and all the horrid deaths in the city would be amply rewarded. He wondered if he’d be approached.
He passed a group of gamblers taking wages on how many would hang tomorrow, execution morning, on the gibbet outside the great abbey gate. A man dressed garishly as a woman swept by in a cloud of cheap perfume, face all hideous in its coating of paste. This grotesque provoked jeers, laughter and curses from the gamblers, before they lost interest and returned to their game. Deep in the camp, two hellcat women were preparing to fight, stripped to their under-tunics, pennies gripped in their hands to stop them scratching. They circled each other close to a roaring bonfire. When Corbett entered the pool of light, the raucous shouting ebbed away and a few curses were flung.
Corbett passed safely on up the slight incline and across the monks’ cemetery, which stretched to the south door of the abbey. A lay brother allowed him in and he walked through the small porch, glancing quickly at the human skin nailed to the door leading into the chapter house. He crossed himself and murmured a prayer, wishing fervently that the King would listen to his plea and that of the good brothers that the skin be taken down. It belonged to Richard Puddlicott, a felon recently taken in a wheelbarrow to the abbey scaffold and hanged for robbing, with the help of certain monks, the royal treasure stored in the great crypt beneath the chapter house. The King had insisted that Puddlicott’s corpse be flayed and this grisly symbol of royal anger hang there as a warning until it rotted.
‘It frightens me,’ whispered the lay brother standing behind Corbett. ‘They say his ghost prowls here along with all the other dark men.’
Corbett turned and smiled at him.
‘But angels also tread here, yes, Brother?’ He carried on, turning right into the cloisters, where a group of novices stood gape-mouthed around one of the high desks illumined by glowing candles. The ancient scribe perched on his writing stool was relaying the horrors of hell as described in the legend of St Brendan, which he was busily transcribing. In a voice powerful but sepulchral the old monk described how across the river of death swirled a wind stinking of bitumen, sulphur and pitch, mingled with the stench of roasting human flesh. On the shores of hell clustered woods where the only trees were tall poppies and deadly nightshade from the branches of which hung a host of bats. The ground beneath bristled with swords and stakes whilst over these flew birds fierce as flaming firebrands. Corbett, who’d paused to listen, wondered about those souls whose cadavers he’d recently inspected - were they journeying through such a living nightmare?
He passed on into the great soaring nave. Torches, candles and lanterns glowed to make it a place of creeping shadows through which peered the carved and painted faces of the holy, the ugly and the demonic. He approached the sanctuary, where the majestic oaken choir stalls gleamed in the glow of freshly lit candles. Each tongue of flame shimmered in the precious cloths, jewels and ornaments that decorated the royal tombs either side of the high altar. The air was fragrant with perfumed incense smoke, the eerie silence broken by the shuffling of sandalled feet as two long lines of black-cowled monks filed into the stalls. It was too late for Corbett to join them, so instead he squatted just within the rood screen and watched the drama unfold. The monks took their positions in the stalls, psalters at the ready; the lector and cantor went to their places. A small handbell was rung and vespers began with its usual impassioned plea: ‘Oh God, come to our aid. Oh Lord, make haste to help us.’
Corbett closed his eyes. He needed such help if he was to clear the cloying murk gathering around him and bring to justice a most sinister killer.
In the chamber of oyer and terminer, Ranulf still sat at the chancery desk sifting amongst the papers. Chanson had wandered off. Ranulf paused as the royal choir, gathered in the small chapel below, rehearsed a song for some banquet or feast. He listened intently to the words:
My song is in sighing,
My soul in longing,
Till I see thee my King,
So fair in thy shining.
He glanced up as the door abruptly opened and Edward the King slipped in. Ranulf made to rise, but the King gestured at him to sit. Wrapped in a heavy military cloak, spurs jingling on his hunting boots, Edward strode across and sat in Corbett’s chair, turning slightly to stare at Ranulf, the amber-flecked eyes in his dark leathery face scrutinising the clerk as if searching his soul. The King’s iron-grey hair was all a-tangle, though the greying moustache and beard were neatly clipped. He smelled of rosewater, sweat and leather. Ranulf made to speak, but the King held up a hand for silence as he waited for a certain line of the choir’s song: ‘I want nothing but only thee.’ Then he let his hand drop, grinned and leaned a little closer.
‘Do you, Ranulf-atte-Newgate, Clerk in the Chancery of Green Wax, desire nothing but the King’s will?’
‘If it go not against God’s law or my conscience.’ Ranulf quoted Corbett’s common axiom.
‘You learn well, Ranulf.’ The King pointed to the stack of parchment. ‘And this business, tell me now . . .’
Ranulf did so, swiftly listing what had happened, and emphasising Corbett’s questions about the murderous mysteries confronting them. Edward listened intently, saying nothing, though now and again he would glance swiftly around as if fearful of an eavesdropper. Once Ranulf was finished, the king slouched in his chair, eyes half closed.
‘I was hunting today,’ he remarked, ‘out on the moorlands north of Sheen. Good weather for it, Ranulf. I flew Roncesvalles, my favourite peregrine. Sickly he was, or so I think, wouldn’t listen to my voice. I’ve had a wax image of him sent to Becket’s shrine in Canterbury. Our martyred archbishop was a keen falconer; he’ll help. I’ll make an offering.’ Edward turned in a creak of leather to face Ranulf. ‘A king’s hawk is swift and dangerous. It can see and do what the King cannot, but,’ he picked at his teeth, ‘it is still a royal hawk. It brings down the quail and the herring not for itself but for the King, remember that! This business . . .’ He rose to his feet. ‘I want no public clamour, Ranulf; the least said, the soonest mended.’ He grinned. ‘Yes, Waldene and Hubert the Monk are dead. Good, that’s how I like it! All dispatched to be judged by God, clean and quiet. I prefer to hang people by the purse rather than the neck; remember that as well. Do not forget,’ he leaned down and pressed a finger against the clerk’s lips, ‘the King’s will is paramount.’
‘You’ll say the same to Sir Hugh, your grace?’
‘No, Ranulf, I said it just for you. You do understand?’
‘Yes, your grace.’
‘Good.’ For a moment Edward’s eyes turned sad. ‘I can’t say that to Hugh. God knows, Ranulf, he’s a better man than you, and as the Lord is my witness, certainly a better one than I.’ And spinning on his heel, the King left as quietly as he’d entered.
In the darkened abbey, Corbett was becoming restless. The words of the psalm echoed powerful and sombre.
Lions surround me,
Greedy for human prey,
Their teeth like spears and barbs.
Their tongues like sharpened swords.
He blessed himself, got to his feet and left, hurrying back along the cloisters. He could not understand his own anxiety; he knew only that he was restless, impatient to make some progress in the mysteries confronting him. He left the abbey, following the winding path through the monks’ cemetery and into the Sanctuary, where he strolled purposefully, sword and dagger drawn, the glint of the steel sending the creatures of the night scuttling out of his path. He’d almost reached the far gate when he heard his name called. He whirled round, lifting sword and dagger up as a figure stepped out of the gloom.
‘I mean no ill, Sir Hugh. I heard your proclamation.’ The voice was low, almost cultured.
Corbett moved forward.
‘I’ll not talk to you here, sir. You’d best follow me.’ The Sanctuary man seemed reluctant.
‘Don’t worry.’ Corbett smiled through the darkness. ‘You have my word as Keeper of the King’s Secret Seal that no harm will befall you. If we can do business then we shall; if not, you will be allowed to return safely here. The choice is yours. Follow me.’
He led the way into the vestibule of the palace, where he turned and surveyed the wolfshead who had followed him. The man was of moderate height, with lank, greasy hair, face pitted with scars, beard and moustache stained with food. His clothing, a cotehardie, leggings and boots, was scuffed and dirty, his fingernails thick with black, though the eyes he rubbed were sharp and alert. Corbett sat on a stone bench just within the door and indicated for the stranger to join him.
‘What’s your name?’
The man remained standing.
‘You may sit down,’ Corbett declared.
The man sighed and did so. Corbett tried to ignore the offensive smell.
‘They call me Mouseman.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there is not a door, chest or coffer I cannot enter. I was baptised Edmund Arrowsmith at the font of the abbey church in St Albans.’
‘And now you’re utlegatum,’ Corbett declared, ‘beyond the law. Yes? Picking locks when you shouldn’t have done?’
‘Only one,’ Mouseman retorted in clipped tones. ‘I worked at the Abbey at St Albans. The prior owed me money. He refused to pay.’
‘So you went back in the dead of night, opened the coffer and paid yourself.’
‘In a word, lord, yes.’ Mouseman’s eyes crinkled in amusement. ‘But I was a skilled tradesman, I served my apprenticeship. I had a wife and family.’
‘How long ago did this happen?’
‘Oh, at least two summers. Sometimes I went back, but on one occasion I was nearly caught, so never again. The Prior of St Albans would love to hang me from his gibbet.’
‘Have you been tried before the King’s justices?’
‘They haven’t caught me yet, lord.’
‘So what do you want now?’
‘A full pardon, some money, a belly full of food and permission to return to St Albans and live in peace.’
‘So pleads everyone who lives in Sanctuary,’ Corbett joked. ‘How can you earn it?’
‘Lord, I drifted into London. I became involved in this mischief and that. Eventually I joined the coven of Hubert the Monk. He needed a locksmith like me. Parish coffers wait to be riffled. I had no choice. Hubert said that if I didn’t work for him, he’d hand me over to the sheriff’s men. So it was either steal or be hanged for stealing. I chose the former.’
Corbett stared hard. There was something about the man’s voice, his steady gaze, the certainty with which he held himself that reassured the clerk. Edmund Arrowsmith, also known as the Mouseman, was good-hearted, a desperate man eager to break free from the trap in which he found himself.
‘Just tell me then,’ Corbett said quietly. ‘I may not give you a pardon, yet you’ll have coin enough to buy a full belly of food. No lies, though.’
‘I heard about your offer to anybody who could provide information about the riot at Newgate or the deaths of Waldene and Hubert the Monk. Oh yes, we heard about them in Sanctuary – there’s been some rejoicing. Waldene and the Monk were feared, not liked. They were bully-boys, well protected by . . . well, how can I put it . . .?’
‘Lord Evesham?’
‘And others. The city sheriffs often took bribes to look the other way.’
‘And you are going to claim to be the innocent in all this.’
‘My lord, I never said that. I’ve done my share of mischief but I was rounded up with the rest.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘Well, when Waldene and Hubert the Monk were arrested, the sheriffs decided to make a full sweep. It’s easy enough to catch us. We assemble at various taverns or inns, and of course, rewards and bribes were offered.’
Corbett quietly agreed that was the way of the world. Once a gang-leader fell, his followers were vulnerable to capture or betrayal.
‘So we all ended up in Newgate.’ Mouseman stretched out his legs, knocking the broken heel of one of his boots against a paving stone. ‘We weren’t given much to eat or drink. Waldene and Hubert were moved from the Common Side and put in the pits; a living death, lord?’