Maltote and Ranulf shoved them from the room. Corbett pulled back the heavy curtain then gagged at the terrible stench. Maltote turned away to vomit on a pile of straw in the corner; Ranulf coolly squatted down beside the remains.
‘How did this happen?’ he asked, pointing to the crossbow and bolts on the stool.
‘I don’t know,’ Corbett replied. ‘Here we have a man full of life and malice. He takes a crossbow, shoots two bolts in an attempt to kill the king and then, a few minutes later, is a burning cadaver. He is consumed by a strange fire which does not spread to the walls or floorboards.’
‘It would have done,’ Ranulf retorted. ‘Eventually, the wood would have smouldered and then burst into flames. Our arrival here stopped it. The question is, who is he; and how did he die?’
Corbett forced himself to examine the corpse. The face and upper torso were all burnt. The eyes had turned to water. Any hair on scalp and face was now flakes of ash. Corbett swallowed hard.
‘Look.’ He pulled the blanket further down. ‘The top half of the body has been terribly burnt.’ He pointed to the hose and boots the man wore. ‘Yet these are only scorched.’
Corbett eased himself up and went across to the bed. A battered leather saddlebag lay pushed just under the dirt-stained bolster. Corbett pulled this out, cut the straps and emptied the contents on to the woollen coverlet: a Welsh stabbing dagger; a purse full of silver coins, and the soiled white surcoat of the Templar Order with its red cross on either side.
‘A wealthy man, at least for a soldier,’ Corbett observed.
He opened the neck of the purse and shook the coins into his hands. He put the silver on the bed and unrolled the scraps of parchment he’d also found. One was a very crude diagram which Corbett immediately recognised as a rough map of the road leading from Micklegate Bar up through Trinity. The other was a list of provisions bought by one Walter Murston, serjeant of the Templar manor at Framlingham. Corbett sat down on the bed.
‘Ranulf, put everything back into the saddlebag. For God’s sake,’ he waved at the blackened remains, ‘cover that. Here we have,’ he continued, ‘Walter Murston, a member of the Templar Order, who tried to commit treason and regicide. He fired two bolts at our king but then, in a matter of minutes, is consumed by a mysterious fire.’
‘God’s punishment,’ Maltote intoned.
‘If that was the case,’ Ranulf jibed, ‘most of York would burst into flames.’
Corbett got up and stared out of the window. The royal cavalcade was now on its way. The crowd was staring up at the tavern. A curtain of men-at-arms, shields locked together, lances out, now ringed the tavern. On the stairs outside there was a heavy footfall and a deep voice cursing every taverner as ‘fatherless, misbegotten spawns of Satan’. Corbett grinned.
‘My lord of Surrey is about to arrive,’ he murmured.
The chamber door crashed back on its leather hinges.
‘Poxy knaves! Ingrate bastards!’ de Warrenne shouted, his red face covered in sweat. He lumbered into the room like an old bear. ‘Well, Corbett, you bloody clerk! What do we have here?’ The earl pulled back the ragged coverlet and stared down at the corpse. ‘Fairies’ tits! Who’s he?’
‘Apparently a serjeant, probably an arbalester of the Temple Order,’ Corbett replied. ‘He came into this chamber with his crossbow and tried to slay our king.’
‘And who killed him?’
‘We were just debating that, my lord. Maltote thinks it was God, but Ranulf believes that if every sinner in York was to be so punished, the whole city would be a sea of fire.’
De Warrenne hawked and, going back to the door, bawled down the stairs. A group of royal archers came up.
‘Take that out!’ de Warrenne ordered. ‘I want it dragged to the Pavement in York and hung from the highest gibbet!’
The archers neatly stripped the bed and wrapped the corpse in soiled sheets. De Warrenne looked out of the corner of his eye at Corbett. ‘Oh, and get some bloody lazy clerk to write out a notice: SO DIE ALL TRAITORS. Fix it around the bastard’s neck!’
De Warrenne hustled the archers and their grisly burden out of the room, slamming the door behind them. ‘And the bastard’s name?’
‘Walter Murston.’
‘The king will want an answer to all this.’ De Warrenne snapped. ‘I don’t trust those bloody fighting monks!’ He came over and kicked the ash away with his boot, spurs jingling on the wooden floor. He stared through the window. ‘I am frightened, Corbett.’ He whispered. ‘I am terrified. I was with the king thirty years ago when the Assassins tried to kill him. A man pretending to be a messenger.’ The old earl narrowed his eyes, breathing heavily through flared nostrils. ‘He got so close, so quickly. The king was quick. He brained him with a stool. Now they are hunting him again.’ He gripped Corbett’s arm; the clerk stared unflinchingly back. ‘For God’s sake, Hugh, don’t let them do it!’ De Warrenne glanced away. ‘We are all dying,’ he murmured. ‘All the king’s old friends.’
‘Tell His Grace,’ Corbett replied, ‘that he will be safe. Say that I will join him at the abbey of St Mary’s.’
De Warrenne stomped across the room.
‘Oh, my lord Earl?’
‘Yes, Corbett.’
‘Tell the king I will not return to Leighton Manor.’ He forced a smile. ‘At least, not until this present business is finished.’
He paused and listened as de Warrenne stamped down the stairs, hurling abuse at everyone in the tavern below. Ranulf and Maltote were standing in the corner watching open-mouthed.
‘What’s the matter, Ranulf?’ Corbett asked. ‘If you don’t close your mouth, you’ll catch a fly.’
‘I’ve never heard de Warrenne call you Hugh,’ Ranulf replied. ‘He must be very frightened . . .’
‘He is. The Assassins’ boast is never hollow.’ Corbett closed the window. ‘But let’s leave. This place stinks. Ranulf, bring that saddlebag.’
‘Who are the Assassins?’ Maltote asked.
‘I’ll tell you later. What I want to know is why a member of the Templar Order is carrying out their instructions!’
They walked back down the stairs and into the taproom, a low, dank chamber, its ceiling timbers blackened by a thousand fires. At the far end, near the scullery door, sat the landlord surrounded by his slatterns; he was gulping wine as if his life depended on it. He took one look at Corbett’s face and slumped to his knees, clasping his hands before him.
‘Oh, Lord have mercy on me!’ He wailed, staring piteously, though Corbett’s grim face did nothing to ease his panic. He almost grovelled at the clerk’s feet. ‘Master, believe me, we had nothing to do with it!’
Ranulf drew his sword and brought the flat of its blade down on the man’s shoulder. ‘If you had,’ Corbett’s red-haired servant taunted, ‘within a week you’ll hang, then you’ll be quartered and your pickled limbs dangled above Micklegate Bar.’
The landlord grasped Corbett’s cloak. ‘Master,’ he groaned, ‘mercy!’
Corbett knocked away Ranulf’s sword and pushed the man back on to his stool.
‘Get your master a cup of the best wine. The same for me and my companions,’ he ordered one of the slatterns. ‘Now, listen sir,’ Corbett pulled a stool up and sat close, his knees touching the landlord’s. ‘You have nothing to fear,’ he continued, ‘if you tell the truth.’
The landlord could hardly stop shaking. Ranulfs sword was one thing, but this soft-spoken clerk was absolutely terrifying. For a while he could only splutter.
‘You are in no danger,’ Corbett reassured him. ‘You can’t be held responsible for everyone in your tavern.’ He took the wine a servitor had brought and thrust it into the man’s hand. Corbett sipped from his own then put it down: the wine was good but the sight of a fat fly floating near the rim turned his stomach. ‘Now, who was the man?’
‘I don’t know. He came here last night. A traveller. He gave his name as Walter Murston. He paid well for the garret: two silver coins. He ate his supper and that’s the last I saw of him.’
‘Didn’t he come down to break his fast?’
‘No, we were busy preparing for the king’s entry to York.’ The landlord groaned and put his face in his hands. ‘We were going to have a holiday. One minute we are by the doorway cheering the banners and listening to the trumpets, the next . . .’ The man’s hands flailed helplessly.
‘And no one else was with him?’ Corbett insisted. ‘No one came to visit him?’
‘No, Master, but there again the tavern has two entrances: front and back. People come and go, especially on a day like this.’ The man’s voice trailed away.
Corbett closed his eyes and sat, recalling how he had struggled through the crowds. He had knocked that beggar aside as Ranulf had gone down the alleyway. Corbett opened his eyes.
‘Wait there,’ he ordered, and went out of the tavern.
‘What are you looking for?’ Ranulf hurried up behind him.
Corbett walked to the mouth of the alleyway and stared down. It was a narrow, evil-smelling tunnel between the houses, full of refuse and wandering cats. Two children were trying to ride an old sow which was lumbering amongst the litter, but there was no sign of the beggar.
‘Master?’ Ranulf asked.
Corbett walked back into the taproom.
‘Master taverner, in London, and I suppose York is the same, beggars have their favourite haunts: certain corners or the porch of some church. Does a beggar-man stand on the corner of the alleyway, on the other side of your tavern?’
The landlord shook his head. ‘No, Master, no beggar would stand there. It’s well away from the stalls, and the alleyway really goes nowhere.’ He smiled in a display of red, sore gums. ‘After all, my customers are not the sort to part with a penny.’
‘In which case, Master taverner, go back to your beer barrels. You have nothing to fear.’
Corbett beckoned at Ranulf and Maltote to follow and they walked back into Trinity Lane.
‘Sir.’ A serjeant of the royal household came up, one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other cradling his helmet. ‘The Earl of Surrey told us to stay here until you were finished.’
‘Take your men, Captain,’ Corbett ordered. ‘Rejoin the king at the abbey. Tell my lord of Surrey I will be with him soon. Our horses?’
The soldier raised his hand and an archer came forward, leading their three mounts.
‘You’ll have to walk them,’ the soldier observed. ‘The streets are now packed.’
Once they had left Trinity, Corbett was forced to agree. Now the royal procession had swept on, Micklegate was thronged. The stalls had been brought out and it was business as usual: traders, hawkers and journeymen trying to earn a penny in the holiday atmosphere of the city. Corbett walked his horse, Ranulf and Maltote trailing behind: they made slow progress. Outside St Martin’s church, a troupe of players had erected a makeshift stage on two carts and were depicting, to the crowd’s delight, a play about Cain and Abel. As Corbett passed, God, a figure dressed in a white sheet with a gold halo strapped to the back of his head, was busily marking Cain with a red cross. If only it was so easy, Corbett reflected: if the mark of Cain appeared on the forehead of every assassin or would-be murderer.
‘Do you think that Templar acted by himself?’ Ranulf asked, coming up beside him.
‘No,’ Corbett replied. ‘How long, Ranulf, did it take us to leave the king’s side and reach that garret room?’
Ranulf paused as a group of children ran by, chasing a wooden hoop; a mongrel followed, the corpse of a scrawny chicken in its mouth, hotly pursued by an irate housewife, screaming at the top of her voice.
‘They talk strangely here,’ Ranulf declared. ‘Faster, more clipped than in London.’
‘But the girls are just as pretty,’ Corbett replied. ‘I asked you a question, Ranulf; how long do you think it took us?’
‘About the space of ten Aves.’
Corbett remembered pushing through the crowds, losing his way, then entering the tavern and going up the stairs.
‘You think there were two, don’t you?’ Ranulf asked.
‘Yes, I do. The door to the room was locked, probably by the crossbowman’s accomplice as he left. I noticed the key was missing.’
‘So it was the beggar you went looking for?’
‘Perhaps, though that doesn’t explain it,’ Corbett continued. ‘Murston must have fired those two bolts. Yet how could a professional soldier be killed in such a short time, offering no resistance? And then his body be consumed so quickly by that terrible fire?’
‘The other person could have killed him,’ Ranulf replied, ‘then ran downstairs and pretended to be the beggar you knocked aside.’
‘That’s only conjecture,’ Corbett replied.
He gripped his horse’s reins more tightly as they entered the approaches to the bridge across the Ouse. The bridge was broad; stalls had been set up alongside the high wooden rails where traders could offer fish ‘Freshly plucked’, so they shouted, ‘from the river below.’ Corbett stopped, told Ranulf to hold the horses, and went to look through a gap between the palings. To his right, he could see the great donjon of York Castle then, turning to his left, he glimpsed the towering spires of York Minster and St Mary’s Abbey.
‘What shall I tell the king?’ he murmured to himself, ignoring the curious looks of passers-by. He looked down at the river swirling past the starlings of the bridge, and the fragile craft of the fishermen bobbing there. These rowed against the tide, struggling to hold their nets, whilst avoiding the mounds of refuse which swirled about, trapped by the great pillars of the bridge. Corbett couldn’t make sense of the Templar’s death: a fighting man, so expertly reduced to burning ash! He walked back towards Ranulf and, as he did so, a little beggar boy ran up, a penny in one hand, a piece of parchment in the other. He chattered to Corbett. The clerk smiled and squatted down.
‘What is it, boy?’
The smile on the urchin’s thin face widened. He thrust the dirty piece of parchment into Corbett’s hand. The clerk unfurled it and the boy ran away. As he read it, despite the bustling crowds and the warm sunlight, Corbett’s blood ran cold.