Death's Dark Valley

by Paul Doherty

  Raphael, who seemed deeply distracted, just shrugged and glanced away.

  ‘The murders, the murders,’ Corbett pressed on. ‘When did they begin?’

  ‘Brothers Richard and Anselm were murdered during the last few weeks, whilst Brother Mark was killed on the evening you arrived.’

  ‘Raphael, why do you think they were murdered? Was there any grievance or dispute between these former knights?’

  ‘No, much to the contrary. They were, we all are, good-hearted comrades, loyal and industrious. Hugh, remember that the bonds of our community were forged in battle. We have stood by each other over the years. We became each other’s family. We brought to Holyrood all our experience and skill.’

  ‘And these dead brothers in their former lives?’

  ‘Well, Anselm and Richard were master masons, royal engineers. They lived for construction, for developing strongholds. They chose the location for Holyrood, they cleared the site of ancient dwellings and other obstacles. They planned and supervised its construction and development around the great Eagle Donjon. They lived and worked in the mouth of that sombre valley whilst we toasted ourselves before the fire in royal palaces. They enjoyed nothing more than planning and designing this corridor, that gallery, a tower or a gatehouse.’

  ‘So you know no reason for their brutal murder?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘And Brother Mark?’

  ‘Well, as you know, he was in charge of the abbey kitchen, buttery and wardrobe. Mark, God rest him, liked nothing better than food and how to prepare this dish or that, be it lampreys highly spiced or veal cooked in the creamiest butter.’

  ‘And yet he was found murdered, sprawled in his own kitchen yard?’

  ‘God have mercy, yes he was.’

  ‘And when the murders took place, where were the abbot and other Knights of the Swan?’

  ‘Sir Hugh, that is a difficult question. When Mark was murdered, we were all in the abbey church, chanting compline. When Brother Richard was killed on those tower steps, we’d assembled to hear the lord abbot in our chapter house. As for Anselm, God knows when he was murdered; his cell door was unlocked, his corpse sprawled within.’ Raphael paused, fingers going to his lips.

  ‘My friend?’ Corbett queried.

  ‘Oh, just something about Brother Mark. You may recall how, on the evening of your arrival here, the same time Mark was found murdered, you and your companions were in the refectory. Lord Abbot and the other brothers were in church. I had left the sacristy to give Brother Mark a chest of candles for the kitchen. Anyway . . .’ Raphael chewed his lip, ‘if I recollect correctly, I was in a hurry. Brother Mark was counting the tankards, and as I passed, he made a strange remark. He said, “He hasn’t returned it, and what business did he have taking it in the first place?”’ He shook his head. ‘No, Sir Hugh, I do not know what he meant. I found the remark strange, yet there again, Mark could be a true fusspot, especially about his kitchen and all it contained.’

  He peered at Corbett. ‘You asked for news, Sir Hugh. I live in a world of candlelight, both physically and spiritually. I try to keep free of the gossip and the rumours that run through a community such as ours. We do wonder why you’re here, but I know that if I asked you directly, you wouldn’t give me the full truth. You are a man of secrets.’

  ‘And that’s my calling, Raphael. The king expects me to be what I am. I have taken a great oath, a solemn vow to protect the Crown’s secrets, yet we are still friends.’ Corbett extended a hand for Raphael to clasp. The sacristan then rose, nodded to both clerks and left the chamber.

  ‘Like a mist,’ Ranulf whispered. ‘The mysteries here are like a mist that crawls, twists and turns as it wishes. I am exhausted. I must sleep.’ He made himself comfortable in the chair and closed his eyes.

  The abbey bells began to clang the summons to compline. Corbett put a rug over the sleeping Ranulf and joined the community as they filed into the church, along the nave and into the choir. Here the brothers divided, shuffling into the raised benches either side. Corbett turned and went to the right, waiting to be ushered into a stall by a smiling lay brother who handed him a psalter. He glanced towards the sanctuary, where the candles blazed and flamed in dazzling pools of light. Abbot Henry stood in his throne-like stall, hands gripping the lectern as he gazed stonily around.

  The leading cantor approached the lectern and intoned the opening psalm: ‘In God is my trust, I shall not be confounded.’ Corbett joined heartily in the responsive chant: ‘I rejoiced when I heard them say, let us go to God’s house, and now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the walled city where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord . . .’ The chanting continued, rising and falling, creating its own serene melody, in a place where the light shifted, flared and ebbed to gleam in the polished oak of the stalls and illuminate the earnest faces of the brothers, lost in this last great hymn of the day. ‘One thing I have asked of the Lord, for this I long to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life . . .’

  Corbett, who knew many of the texts by heart, glanced around, his gaze caught by the eerie carvings of gargoyles and the comic faces and expressions they portrayed. Incense smoke curled and twisted around these, whilst the air was so cold that the breath of the chanting brothers could be seen hanging for a few heartbeats. The plainsong rolled on until a clatter further down the nave disturbed the service. A lay brother hastily entered the choir and climbed the steps into the abbot’s stall. He whispered to Maltravers, who turned and had a swift word with Crispin and Jude. Both these worthies made to leave, gesturing at Corbett to join them outside the church, where the janitor was waiting, jangling his keys.

  ‘It’s Norbert,’ the man blurted out. ‘Dead in his cell like the rest. You’d best come.’ He flailed a hand. ‘Brother Crispin, Prior Jude, what is happening here?’ He spread his hands as if to embrace the snow, still falling silently and steadily.

  ‘Do not worry, Brother William,’ Jude comforted him. ‘Let us see this for ourselves.’

  The janitor led them off. Corbett was surprised at how deep the snow now lay, a thick carpet that caught the legs and tripped the feet. All the abbey buildings were covered, every ledge, step, cornice and roof hidden beneath a gleaming white blanket. They reached one of the tunnels leading into the basement of the Eagle Donjon, its doorway guarded by two lay brothers wearing mailed hauberks, sword belts strapped around their waists. The janitor explained that similar guards watched the other three entrances. He then led them down a tunnel of deep darkness, a nightmare place despite the flaring torches, until they reached Norbert’s cell.

  ‘I didn’t open it.’ The janitor peered through the grille. ‘Look!’

  Corbett glanced in. Brother Norbert lay sprawled against the far wall, but the clerk guessed what had happened as he glimpsed the stud of a black nail driven through the victim’s forehead. The janitor unlocked the door. Corbett told the rest to wait and went in. The cell was very similar to that which had housed the other two prisoners so recently slain. Norbert slumped dead-eyed against the wall, arms down, legs out. Corbett glanced around, but he could see no mark or sign of violence, no disturbance of the cell. The rickety stool, battered jakes pot and shabby palliasse were undisturbed. He crouched down and tipped the dead man’s head back: Norbert’s face was contorted in death, eyes rolled up as if trying to glimpse the black iron nail embedded deep in his brain.

  ‘Driven with great force,’ Corbett whispered. ‘Though God knows how.’ He got to his feet and returned to the door, beckoning the janitor closer. ‘You know who came down here this evening?’

  ‘Of course, Sir Hugh. Ever since the death of those two prisoners, no one except you is allowed in unless they state their business. You’ve been outside, Sir Hugh, it’s freezing cold. None of our community would want to go out on a night like this to such a place as this. I have questioned those on guard; no one came here.’

  Corbett shook his head in disbelief and left
the cell. He bade his companions goodnight and ordered some food from the buttery, a servant taking the tray up to the clerk’s chamber. Once there, Corbett roused Ranulf from his deep sleep and served the food: fresh chicken broiled and spiced, with the softest white bread from the abbey bakery and a jug of white Rhenish. Ranulf ate hungrily as Corbett told him what had happened. At last he put his horn spoon down.

  ‘Master, how can we resolve all this, and if we cannot, how do we get out of such a benighted place? The snow lies thick; it will get even deeper. We cannot forage, send for help or try to escape. Even if we did, God know what lurks in and around that Valley of Shadows.’

  The Clerk of the Green Wax’s deepening apprehension was proved to be correct the next morning. Corbett and Ranulf had risen early and gone down to the abbey church, where Father Bernard, a former royal chaplain who had joined the community, celebrated a simple mass on the high altar. He had hardly finished the Ite, Missa Est when the abbey bell began to toll the tocsin, the alarm being taken up by the horns of the guards along the parapet.

  Corbett and Ranulf joined the rest surging out of the church, braving the icy-cold breeze, which whipped up the snow. Corbett muttered a prayer of thanks that at least the blizzard had spent itself. They crossed the inner and outer baileys, heading for the steps leading to the fighting platform above the massive gatehouse. Devizes let them through, telling the others to wait. The two clerks clambered up the steps. Thankfully, both these and the parapet had been strewn with sand and pebbles to provide a better grip for their boots. Abbot Henry, Jude, Crispin and Raphael stood leaning against the crenellated wall, staring out across the broad frozen moat at the horrors placed there: two poles, each bearing a severed head, and close by, the mangled torsos almost sinking in a pool of bloody slush.

  ‘Who are they?’ Abbot Henry whispered. ‘Jude, you have good sight. Devizes,’ he shouted over his shoulder, ‘silence those bells! Corbett, what do you think?’

  ‘They are my men.’ Mortimer came onto the parapet, his face flushed with fury. He leant against the wall, bracing himself as the wind whipped up the ice, then wiped his face and stared out at that sinister, silent abomination. ‘They are my men.’ He turned to Corbett standing beside him. ‘You see, Sir Hugh, that brown and blue jerkin on the torso to the right; you can catch glimpses despite the snow and the blood. I am sure that’s Gruffydd, a good man. I am not leaving him there. We have to bring his body back. Look!’ Corbett did so. Already the glossy black ravens were circling the expected feast. ‘Battle bird to the blood drinking,’ Mortimer murmured. ‘We cannot let them.’ He turned as if to go, but Corbett caught him by the arm.

  ‘Be careful, my lord, it could well be a trap.’

  ‘What?’ Mortimer snarled. ‘Look to your left and right, clerk, there’s no tree, bush or rock to hide behind.’

  Corbett glanced across the great stretch of snow leading up into the narrow mouth of the valley. Mortimer was correct. Such open ground afforded little shelter, if any, to a lurking assassin. Yet the clerk still sensed a pressing danger. The poled heads were intended to warn and terrify, but they could also be a lure, the trap it concealed cunningly contrived.

  ‘I will go with you,’ he declared. ‘No, Ranulf, you stay. Mortimer, order your hobelars to form a battle ring, kite shields locked together. It will be slow, but definitely safer.’ Abbot Henry made to object, nervously fingering the pectoral cross hanging on the broad red ribbon around his neck. Corbett shook his head. ‘Believe me,’ he insisted, ‘this mischief is not over yet. Our enemy is counting on us being stupid. He wants to draw us out to inflict murder and mayhem, so bear with me.’

  Corbett clattered down the steps and nodded at Devizes, who stood, his scarlet hood pulled close against the cold. De Craon, clustered nearby with his clerks, smiled wolfishly. Corbett just glared back and followed Mortimer into the gatehouse. The marcher lord’s hobelars swiftly assembled there. Corbett put on the mailed jerkin Ranulf brought, as well as a conical helmet, its broad nose-guard almost hiding his face. Then he and Mortimer stood in the shelter of the shield ring, along with Ap Ythel and four of his master bowmen. Sacks, rope and sheeting were loaded onto a sledge, pulled by two of the archers. Corbett gave a signal. The portcullis was raised and the drawbridge lowered in a clatter of wood, chain and screeching steel, a strident noise that must have echoed across to the valley mouth.

  ‘If there is an enemy close by,’ Mortimer murmured, adjusting his helmet, ‘they now know we are coming.’

  At Corbett’s order, the shield ring moved out, crossing the drawbridge, booted feet shuffling through the deep snow that clogged and hindered their march. As he lurched forward, Corbett recalled Norbert’s death and wondered what had truly happened in those cold, grim cells. How could a man be killed in such a way, a nail driven through his forehead? But that was only one mystery. How had the assassin got in? Norbert had been protected by a door, which had not been opened or forced. Nor had the cell inside been disturbed: it showed no sign of resistance or defence, or indeed any vestige of a struggle. Norbert’s cell, like that which had housed the other two prisoners, was merely a block of hard stone, with no hiding place or secret entrance. Nevertheless, bloody murder had been committed. The only logical explanation was that the janitor had been involved in these deaths; that he had opened the door for the assassin. Or did someone else hold a key to those cells? Yet in the last resort, such explanations were tenuous. Even if the killer could somehow have slipped into the cells, Norbert and the other two victims would certainly have fought back, but not a shred of evidence pointed to this.

  ‘Keep in formation.’ Mortimer’s harsh voice made Corbett glance up. They were now approaching the poles, with their hideous declaration. The clerk noticed how the ground around the gruesome scene had turned a frozen scarlet. He could detect no trace of any footprint or disturbance, and recalled how some Welsh tribesmen strapped thin wooden platters to their feet to slide across hard-packed snow. ‘Heaven protect us,’ Mortimer whispered. He raised his voice and shouted orders, and the hobelars parted.

  Corbett and Mortimer went and knelt before the poles, while Ap Ythel helped drag the mangled torsos deep into the shield ring and onto the broad canvas cloth the archers had unrolled. Corbett tried not to look at the ravaged face in front of him. He put gauntleted hands firmly either side of the severed head and pulled it off the pole, a sickening sound, like that of sludge sliding down a sewer. Then he placed it in one of the sacks they had brought. While Mortimer did the same with the other head, the clerk stood, eyes closed, murmuring a prayer. At last he opened his eyes and stared at the two poles, black with the blood that had drenched them.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he murmured. ‘Let us leave this horrid execution ground.’

  The hobelars reassembled. They were about to begin their cumbersome march back to the gatehouse when two arrows whirred through the air. One narrowly missed Mortimer’s face, but the other struck a hobelar full in the nape of his neck. The shield wall had gaps, some at least a foot wide, that a sharp-eyed enemy could exploit.

  ‘There!’ Ap Ythel growled. Corbett followed his pointing finger and glimpsed just in time what looked like a flapping white sheet fall to the ground. He ordered the shield wall to pause and close, then knelt in the middle with Mortimer and Ap Ythel.

  ‘An old trick, Sir Hugh.’ The captain of archers grinned. ‘I’ve played it myself in the snow. Our enemy bowman, garbed completely in white, digs a pit and shelters there. Perhaps he brought a charcoal pot to keep himself warm. He definitely brought a white sheet to cover himself.’ Ap Ythel pointed to the fallen hobelar. ‘Very sharp, very good, precise, clean and swift: that man would have been dead before he fell. Be careful,’ he added. ‘There may be more than one.’

  Mortimer turned and shouted to a soldier to collect the man’s corpse and place it on the sledge so that it could be dragged back to Holyrood.

  ‘We can’t keep kneeling here like three nuns,’ Mortimer snarled.

  �
��Oh, don’t you worry,’ Ap Ythel retorted. ‘If they can play tricks, so can we!’ He winked at Corbett and moved at a crouch to peer through a gap in the shield wall. ‘Brancepeth!’ he called over his shoulder. One of the bowmen hurried towards him, and Ap Ythel spoke to him swiftly in Welsh. Brancepeth nodded and rose to his feet, rubbing his hands in glee. Ap Ythel then called over the remaining three bowmen. Two knelt, bows strung, on one flank of the shield wall. The third joined Ap Ythel on the other.

  ‘What’s happening, Corbett?’ Mortimer wiped the snow-encrusted sweat from his face.

  ‘I don’t know, my lord, but I have a suspicion.’

  ‘A clever Welsh game.’ Ap Ythel grinned in a display of sharp white teeth. ‘It’s called “hunt the hunter with the hunted”. Watch, my lord and you may learn something. Sir Hugh, let me do what I am best at.’

  Corbett raised a hand. Ap Ythel notched an arrow and placed three more shafts on the ground beside him. His companions did the same. ‘Are you ready, Brancepeth?’ he called. ‘Can you act the rabbit, the man fleeing from the terror of battle?’

  ‘I am ready as ever, sir.’

  ‘Good!’ Ap Ythel gestured forward. Brancepeth moved to the front of the shield wall. ‘Now!’ the captain of archers shouted.

  Brancepeth pushed through, knocking hobelars aside as he lumbered through the snow as if he could no longer stand the tension, desperate to reach the gatehouse. Corbett glimpsed a flurry of white, and an archer seemed to rise out of the ground, war bow in one hand, arrow shaft in the other.

  ‘Brancepeth!’ Ap Ythel screamed.

  The fleeing man collapsed onto the snow as Ap Ythel loosed his own shaft, and his companion followed suit. Corbett glanced over his shoulder, peering through a gap. Another enemy bowman had appeared, but he seemed disconcerted by what was happening. A blood-chilling scream made him stumble back into the snow. Corbett looked towards Ap Ythel. The master bowman had been successful. The other enemy archer now lay stretched out on the ground, flung back by the two arrow shafts that had pierced belly and chest.