Dark Serpent (Hugh Corbett 18)

by Paul Doherty

  Edmund Datchet, former Knight Templar, sat in his cell deep in the enclosure of St Giles hospital, the great lazar house in Queenhithe. The day was drawing on, the sun beginning to set. Both its glare and its cloying warmth had made Datchet’s last day alive as refreshing as anything he could have wished. Of course he did not realise that death was about to tighten its noose and spring its trap, that the demand had been made for his soul, and he was too involved in the past to consider whether he was in a state of grace. He stared around his cell, the place that had become his refuge, his protection against Philip of France and the heinous allegations levelled against his broken, shattered order. Datchet had become a poor knight of Christ to fight under the piebald standard in Outremer, defending Christ’s holy places against the infidel, but that dream had now died. Jerusalem would never be retaken and the coastal towns of Palestine, the castles and great fortified places of Outremer, had fallen one by one to the enemy.

  ‘Acre!’ he muttered to himself. ‘Acre was the Vespers of us poor knights. Our last great cry against the infidel.’

  Datchet, who styled himself a chronicler of his order, picked up his quill pen, licking its feathery tip as he collected his thoughts about the present situation. In truth, everything lay in ruins. Edward of England like many other princes of this world, had declared himself to be against the order, slavishly following the example of Philip of France, who now demanded that every Templar in England be handed over to him.

  ‘Edmund, are you sleepy?’ a voice hissed behind him.

  Datchet, garbed in his thick, sweat-soaked leper robe, looked over his shoulder, pulling down the cloth that covered the bottom half of his face.

  ‘I feel weak.’ He smiled with his eyes at Reginald Ausel, also a former Templar, now master of the lazar hospital. Ausel, a tall, stringy man, lank grey hair falling either side of a deeply furrowed face, smiled back and sat down on the edge of the cot bed. Datchet, as he always did with this particular comrade, hid his unease and turned to face him squarely. ‘Poor Grandison and Boveney,’ he declared, ‘slaughtered, murdered. Brother Reginald, is this the work of that demon incarnate Philip of France? His familiar de Craon lurks only a short walk away.’

  Ausel lifted a hand. ‘It’s all possible, Brother Edmund. The stories coming out of France are hideous …’

  ‘We are reaping what we sowed,’ Datchet interrupted. ‘Minds closed by hostility and suspicion now support the most heinous and vile accusations. Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds. They come out at twilight as darkness descends. Our order is now cloaked in a thick mist of poisonous gossip. We have good reason to believe that the rumour is true.’

  ‘Which rumour?’

  ‘That years ago Philip of France recruited at least a dozen spies to enter our order. Now these have become professional informers against us.’

  ‘He doesn’t need such spies now.’

  Both Datchet and Ausel startled at the voice and then relaxed as the door, just slightly off the latch, was pushed open and the Templar captain Walter Burghesh, his sun-brown face completely unmasked, his blue eyes hard and cold, strolled into the room, scratching his rough-shaven face, its thick, hard bristles sharp as briars. Burghesh joked that his face had the skin of a dogfish and it suited his temperament. He made no attempt to hide his robust rude health. He simply declared he sheltered at St Giles to be with his brothers, safe from the clutches of those who wished to harm him and his order.

  ‘Philip the dog king, with his thick yellow hair and glassy eyes, doesn’t need traitors and spies.’ Burghesh shook his head. ‘The French king gets his evidence from torture. Our brothers in Paris face the thumbscrew, the boot, the rack and the press, stretched out on cobbled yards or the filthy floors of dungeons to be crushed under heavy weights. They have had their feet burned, thick metal spikes pushed beneath fingernails, teeth wrenched out and the bleeding gums prodded with red-hot pins. Some of our brothers are of the willow rather than the oak; they bend lest they break. They sing any tune piped to them. We are supposed to have worshipped a demonic bearded head called Baphomet, summoned devil women from hell and venerated idols smeared with the blood of dead children. One of our brothers said that if he faced such tortures, he would confess to murdering God himself.’ Burghesh paused, labouring for breath as he spoke so vehemently and passionately. ‘Philip, that lord of hell, has pursued us. He will continue to pursue us. He is determined that no Templar attends the planned council at Vienne to speak in defence of our stricken order.’

  ‘But is it just the French?’ Datchet protested. ‘Brother Walter, others have good cause to hate our order.’ He lowered his voice. ‘The accusations of the French king’s lawyers may be ridiculous, but in some of our houses, as in other enclosed communities …’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘What are you implying, my friend?’ Burghesh demanded.

  ‘You know full well,’ Datchet muttered. ‘The love David had for Jonathan, which surpasses any love a man has for a woman.’

  ‘We all love the brothers.’

  ‘Even to the extent of sodomy?’ Datchet pulled at the folds of cloth beneath his chin. He wore these more as protection against contagion rather than to cover the sores that pitted his face.

  His companions did not bother to answer his question, but glanced sheepishly away. Datchet knew that the French king’s accusations, in the main, were heinous and false. However, that secret love between individual members was something his order could not deny. Ausel got to his feet, followed by Burghesh, and, clapping Datchet on the shoulder, the pair made their excuses and left.

  Datchet closed the door behind them and returned to his chancery desk. He made sure his sword and dagger were close by. After all, poor Grandison and Boveney’s corpses were now laid out in the Chapel of the Dead awaiting burial. An assassin was on the prowl and it would be best if he remained vigilant. He turned swiftly as the door opened, but it was only a servitor, masked and hooded, who brought in a tray with a goblet of wine and a platter of small honey cakes. He put these down and left. Datchet nibbled at the sweetmeats and sipped at the goblet as he returned to reflect on what had happened to his order. He recalled a story from Lithuania, where the Teutonic knights attacked an Easterling fortress on the River Niemen. Rather than be captured, the Easterlings built a great funeral pyre of all their goods, cut the throats of their women and children and then allowed an old priestess to decapitate the remaining warriors, a hundred in all, before splitting her own head with a cleaver just as the Teutonic knights forced the stockade.

  ‘Those barbarians could teach us a lesson,’ Datchet breathed, sipping at the wine. ‘We should have gone into the dark like warriors, sword in one hand, shield in the other.’ He grasped his own weapons, turning away from the desk to face the crudely carved crucifix nailed to the wall. He himself had owned a similar cross in the great fortress of Acre, that bastion of the Templar order overlooking the Middle Sea, the last Frankish foothold in Outremer.

  ‘Twenty years ago, to our eternal shame,’ Datchet grated to himself, ‘Acre fell.’ He recalled the arrival of the Mameluke horde, their sultan eager to avenge the slaughter of Saracens massacred in the city. Almost a quarter of a million men with a hundred mangonels, the most fearsome being ‘the Victorious’ and ‘the Furies’, along with powerful catapults nicknamed ‘the Black Bulls’. Acre had fallen under the incessant, deadly barrage of fiery missiles from these engines of war; those who tried to flee were caught on the quayside and butchered, men, women and children. The city had been consumed by terror. Some Frankish ladies even mutilated themselves, cutting off nose and ear lobe, hoping that such disfigurement would be a defence against rape and violation. Datchet could not credit such stories. He and his companions, the Brotherhood of the Wolf, had escaped by sea. Others now accused them of cowardice, of desertion, of treachery deserving of death. Master Crowthorne, leech at St Giles, had lost kith and kin at Acre and constantly reminded the Templars about that. ‘We should have fought on
and gone to God as warriors,’ Datchet whispered.

  He started at a knock on the door and called out, but there was no answer. He rose, opened the door and smiled at the servitor, whose face was almost hidden by his deep hood.

  ‘Oh,’ he exclaimed, ‘you have returned.’ He turned away. The cowled, masked figure followed him into the chamber, closing the door with one hand as the other drove the long stiletto blade deep into the side of Datchet’s neck.

  Sir Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the Secret Seal, stared down at the corpses laid out on the mortuary tables in the death chapel of St Giles. All three were to be buried on the morrow after a requiem mass. He had instructed Ausel, master of the hospital, to have the cadavers naked, exposed; now he wished he hadn’t. All three victims – Grandison, Datchet and Boveney – were free of the dreadful leprosy, though all of them had suffered from some skin infection, whilst old wounds scarred their bony white cadavers from neck to toe.

  Corbett closely scrutinised the death wounds. Boveney and Grandison had been struck to the heart, whilst Datchet had received a killing blow to the side of his neck, which had completely severed the blood pulses in his scrawny throat. All three wounds must have been delivered by someone very close to their quarry, yet Corbett could detect no other mark indicating that any of the victims had tried to defend themselves. He was mystified; after all, the dead men had been warriors, with their weapons close by when they were attacked. He shook his head, crossed himself and turned to the narrow, slightly tilting table behind him. He peeled back the stained, tarred sheet and stared at the old woman dressed in a grey smock, her face a hideous mess of congealed blood and bone, caused by the crossbow bolt, which must have been loosed very close.

  ‘Rohesia,’ Ausel whispered, coming alongside Corbett. ‘An old beggar woman. She skinned cats, dogs and God knows what else for their hides and meat. She was killed near the mere that lies at the bottom of the great meadow, not far from where Grandison’s corpse was discovered. We found her sack and wallet close to a disused sewer opening; she probably crawled through this to sleep beneath a bush.’

  Corbett nodded and pulled the sheet back over the body. ‘I would be grateful if you could show me where they all died.’

  Accompanied by Ranulf, Corbett left the death chapel, following Ausel across the cobbled, dirt-strewn bailey and into the tangle of stone passageways that cut through the buildings of the hospital. He considered it a journey across a truly blighted landscape. The hospital lay quiet as the day ended. Bells rang, then fell silent. The patter of feet echoed into nothingness. Ranulf was already highly nervous at entering what he called ‘the contagious precincts of St Giles’. The oppressive silence, the first curling of an evening river mist and the glaring stone faces of statues, gargoyles and babewyns did little to soothe his humours.

  They turned a corner. Ranulf quietly cursed as a figure sitting on a turfed bench abruptly rose. He moved like an apparition through the drifting mist, swathed in cloths from head to toe. The leper stopped, stared at Ausel, then turned and scuttled off, clacking his wooden rattle. They passed other such ghoulish sights as they went deeper into the hospital. Figures emerged from doorways only to swiftly retreat to the ominous clatter of their rattles. The small group skirted the hospital gardens with its various plots – herb, flower, vegetable and fruits – then passed through a majestic lychgate and into the great meadow that stretched down to the high grey ragstone curtain wall in the far distance. A lonely, rather bleak place, a boundary between the hospital buildings and the bustling city beyond its walls. A place where the living dead could walk through the grass with sun, rain and wind on their corrupted faces. The meadow fell away, and at the bottom of the slight hill stretched a mere, a small lake fringed with willow trees, bushes and a tangle of gorse. Like the rest of St Giles, a silent, eerie place, the stillness broken only by the caw of nesting crows and the fluttering of wings as a bird burst out of the trees.

  Ausel led Corbett to a wooden bench on the far side of the mere. ‘Grandison was found here, facing the wall,’ he explained, ‘a spent lantern by his side. He was slouched, crouched forward, that strange Arabic dagger thrust deep into his chest.’

  ‘Show us,’ Corbett ordered. Ausel shrugged and sat down on the bench, hands dangling.

  ‘Rohesia lay over there.’ The master of the hospital pointed to a patch of flattened grass still stained with dry blood. ‘Flat on her back, hands out, her face all crushed and bloody.’

  Corbett sat down on the bench next to Ausel and stared across at the wall.

  ‘Behind that screen of bushes and foliage,’ Ausel observed, ‘you will find the entrance Rohesia used. Some ancient watercourse. I suspect she came here often. A safe place. People tend to keep clear of a leper hospital.’

  ‘But not two nights ago,’ Corbett retorted. ‘Rohesia crawled in; she saw or heard something untoward, edged closer and the assassin struck. He could not allow her to escape. She may have seen something. However, that is not the real mystery.’ He stretched out his legs. ‘Grandison was an old comrade of mine. A skilled warrior, moderate and calm, or he was when I knew him. So what was he doing here in this lonely, bleak place at the dead of night? He had his weapons?’

  ‘Sword and dagger were out on the bench either side of him.’

  ‘Why?’ Corbett rose to his feet. ‘Why does a Templar knight come and sit here? Why bring his weapons? Was he expecting to meet someone? Tell me, was Grandison infected?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he fear anything or anyone?’

  ‘Only what we all have to confront, Sir Hugh, the destruction of our order. You will meet with the rest?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I will. But let me see where the others were murdered.’

  Ausel led Corbett and Ranulf back to the main hospital buildings, explaining how Boveney had been found murdered in a small enclave built into the side of the hospital church. Apparently a favourite place for the old Templar to watch the sun set.

  ‘We found him here just before Vespers.’ Ausel pointed to an ancient enclave, once part of a now derelict anchorite cell. The wall of the church was spotted with lichen and ivy. There was a ledge that served as a seat. Above this a leper squint, which provided the recluse with a clear view of the high altar to watch the consecration and elevation of the host during mass. ‘He was sitting here like this.’ Ausel sat down on the ledge and slouched forward, sword and dagger either side of him.

  Corbett stared round. The lazar house was a lonely dwelling, but this place was particularly desolate. The clerk suppressed a shiver, winked at Ranulf and said he’d seen enough.

  They both followed Ausel across into the main hospital buildings and the master’s parlour. A bleak room; a stark black cross nailed to the wall, on either side of this paintings of the Beau-Seant and Piebald banners as well as other standards of the fighting order of monks. Five people sat grouped around the scrubbed table. Two were Templar knights, swathed in robes, their hoods pushed back. Corbett was aware of sharp, lined faces, mouths set grimly, eyes hostile and watchful. Ausel introduced Roger Stapleton and Walter Burghesh. Both men sketched a bow and welcomed Corbett in harsh, guttural tones, but they offered no hand to clasp so Corbett responded in kind. A third person was the hospital leech and physician, Master Crowthorne, a lanky individual with straggling hair either side of his pockmarked face, made even uglier by the ever-dripping nose above prim lips and receding chin. The two women were in stark contrast. Philippa Henman looked radiant even though she was garbed from head to toe in a grey lazar robe, her lovely auburn hair almost covered by a hood that she kept pushing back with a doeskin-gloved hand; her companion, the young, fresh-faced Agnes Sokelar, was dressed similarly. Both clasped hands and exchanged the kiss of peace with Corbett. Mistress Philippa explained how she and Agnes were leading members of the Guild of St Martha, which took its name from the sister of Lazarus in the Gospels.

  ‘I invited them here,’ Ausel explained, indicating the two women, ‘at Sister Philippa’s b
ehest, because I understand from your henchman that these ladies will attest to the truth of what we say and be witnesses to our responses.’

  ‘I certainly do want to question you,’ Corbett declared, ‘but there is one further place to visit. I need to see where Edmund Datchet was murdered earlier this afternoon.’

  Ausel agreed and escorted him back into the passageway and along a stone-paved gallery into the great cloisters. Datchet’s chamber overlooked the ill-kempt garth: its grass had not been cropped, whilst the rose bush in the centre was nothing better than a mass of bramble and briar. Datchet’s door was off the latch. Corbett followed Ausel into the austere chamber and stared down at the great bloodstain on the rough carpet. He swiftly measured the distance.

  ‘Datchet,’ he observed, ‘was killed with a blow to the right of his neck. A deep cut that severed the blood lines in his throat.’ Ausel agreed. ‘I suspect,’ Corbett continued, ‘that he opened the door to his murderer, then turned to lead him in. The assassin closed the door behind him, then struck that killing blow. Datchet collapsed and the assassin fled.’

  Ausel pointed to the sword and dagger lying to one side. ‘Edmund had these at hand,’ he declared, ‘yet apart from the pool of blood, there was no sign of any disturbance, of Edmund defending himself. Nor did anyone see or hear anything untoward. He died in the same silent way as Boveney and Grandison.’

  Corbett pronounced himself satisfied and returned to the parlour, where the others were talking amongst themselves. He took his seat and tapped the table.

  ‘Master Ausel, tell us again why you invited these two ladies to this meeting. I mean in greater detail.’

  ‘Sir Hugh,’ Ausel replied, ‘you are going to question us about the murders of three Templars. Others in this hospital do not like us. They resent our presence at St Giles for many reasons. We have no friends or allies here; no one will vouch for us except Mistress Philippa and her good sisters. They know the truth of the situation.’