Satan's Fire (A Medieval Mystery Featuring Hugh Corbett)

by Doherty, Paul

  Hitching his swordbelt higher, he began the long walk down to the lakeside. Nevertheless, the sunset was glorious, and a cool evening breeze soothed the serjeant’s sweat-soaked brow.

  ‘Oh, let the old one fish,’ he muttered to himself.

  He sat down on the grass, took off his helmet and pulled back the mail coif beneath. He studied Odo: the old librarian had taken his boat The Ghost of the Tower, and had been fishing for some time.

  ‘More bloody use than what I’ve been doing,’ the serjeant grumbled as he grabbed a clump of grass to cool his sweaty cheeks.

  The garrison at Framlingham had relaxed after that snooping royal clerk and his companions had left: that is, until the messenger had arrived and de Molay and the other great ones had gathered in the hall for a secret council. Orders had gone out, reinforcing the grand master’s edict that no one was to leave Framlingham, whilst any stranger found wandering on the estate was to be arrested immediately. The Templar serjeant chewed on a piece of grass, narrowing his eyes against the setting sun as he watched Brother Odo’s black cloak flap and curl in the evening breeze. The old librarian was apparently fighting to hold the long rod and line he was wielding. The Templar serjeant envied the serenity of the scene after the turbulence of the last few days. The news of the attack upon the king, the killing of Reverchien and Peterkin the cook were known to all. Very few mentioned Murston’s death, though many felt guilty at what he had done. Nevertheless, Murston had always been a hothead: just because he had served in Outremer, he’d set himself up as an authority on what was right and what was wrong.

  The Templar lay back in the grass and stared up at the fleecy clouds.

  ‘I wish I was away from here,’ he whispered. ‘But where?’ The fall of Acre had put a stop to service abroad. No more dark-skinned girls, no more wandering around the bazaars. There was now little excitement about battle or talk of guarding the holy sepulchre. The best one could expect was lonely garrison duty in a God-forsaken manor house or, if you were lucky, some expedition into the Middle Sea to fight the corsairs. The serjeant rubbed his eyes; it wasn’t his duty to wonder or to speculate. Murston’s fate had put an end to all that. And who was he to question the masters of his Order? They knew best. They had the secret knowledge which they discussed behind closed doors. The serjeant remembered that lonely garret at the top of Frarnlingham Manor. What did go on there, he wondered? Why were only de Molay and Branquier allowed to go in? Why the purple wax candles and the chanting? He’d once been on guard outside, when his superiors had come out, he’d noticed how both were covered in dust from head to toe. What was so special in that room, the serjeant wondered, that such important men should lie face down in the dust? He heard a sound and struggled to his feet. Odo was moving as if straining at the rod, but then the Templar serjeant glimpsed the fire burning in the prow of the boat. He dropped his helmet and began to run.

  ‘Brother Odo! Brother Odo!’ He shouted, but still that black cowled figure sat as if impervious to the leaping flames. The serjeant undid his swordbelt, running until his lungs were fit to burst. He watched as the boat and Brother Odo suddenly erupted into a sheet of fire. The Templar fell to his knees, shaking with fright. He watched the fire consuming the boat and its occupant from prow to stem; even the water of the lake seemed to provide no protection.

  ‘Oh, Lord save us,’ he gasped, ‘from Satan’s fire!’

  Chapter 9

  Corbett and his companions arrived back at Framlingham to find the manor in complete uproar. As soon as they dismounted in the stable yard, Baddlesmere, whiskers bristling, hurried out to greet them.

  ‘Sir Hugh!’ He swallowed hard. ‘You’d best come to see the grand master!’

  Despite the warm sun and blue skies, Corbett felt his feeling of oppression return. He glanced round the stables: Templar soldiers, now doing the tasks of the ostlers and grooms, stared blankly at him.

  ‘There’s been another death, hasn’t there?’ Corbett asked.

  Baddlesmere nodded, indicating with his hand for Corbett to follow him.

  The clerk told Maltote to take care of the horses and, with Ranulf striding beside him, walked into the manor. Baddlesmere took them across a small cloister-garth and into the grand master’s chamber: a stark, unfurnished cell, much bigger than Corbett’s but just as austere with its whitewashed walls, black crucifix, and its stone floor covered with rushes. De Molay sat behind a small table, a metal crucifix in the centre. The other Templar commanders were already assembled, their agitation apparent from their grave faces and red-rimmed eyes.

  De Molay rose as Corbett came in, snapping at Baddlesmere to bring in extra chairs. Once they were seated, the grand master tapped the top of the table.

  ‘Sir Hugh, whilst you were gone yesterday, Brother Odo died. Or rather, he was killed. Late in the afternoon he went fishing, as he often did, in his small boat, The Ghost of the Tower. He stayed on the lake some time: this was not out of the ordinary. A Templar serjeant watched him and was about to go down to tell him it was time for Vespers and the evening meal, when he saw flames in the prow. He was too late: Brother Odo and the boat were consumed in a sheet of fire.’

  Corbett put his face into his hands and said softly, ‘I spoke to him just before I left for York, I visited him in the library. He showed me his chronicle; I could see how proud he was of it.’ Corbett gazed at the others. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘How could it happen?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Branquier retorted. ‘We don’t bloody know, Corbett: that’s why we’re waiting for you. You are the king’s clerk.’ He jabbed a finger at him. ‘You were sent here to find out. So, find out!’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that.’ Legrave leaned forward. ‘How can Sir Hugh deal with this? Brother Odo went fishing, everything was calm and serene. For the love of God, the boat was in the centre of the lake! Nobody swam out. Nobody else was with him. Yet both he and the craft were consumed by a fire which not even the water of the lake could extinguish.’

  ‘What remains have been found?’ Ranulf asked abruptly.

  The Templars looked at him with disdain.

  Corbett spoke up. ‘My friend’s question is an important one.’

  ‘Very little,’ De Molay replied. ‘Brother Odo’s corpse was charred beyond recognition. A few burnt planks of the boat but that’s all.’

  ‘Nothing else?’ Corbett asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ de Molay replied. ‘Just floating, charred remains. It was difficult to tell one thing from the other.’

  ‘And who pulled these out?’ Corbett asked.

  ‘Well,’ Branquier replied, ‘the Templar serjeant could do nothing. He raised the alarm and we all hurried down to the lakeside. Another boat, moored some distance away, was used: by then the flames were beginning to die down. Brother Odo’s remains have already been sheeted and coffined, he’ll be buried tonight. What we want to know, Sir Hugh, is why this happened? And how can it be stopped?’

  Corbett gazed across the room: the tun of wine he’d brought as a gift from the king stood broached on a side-table, the red wax seal of the vintner now hanging down like a huge blob of blood. He sighed and pushed back his chair.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Though I tell you this: forget the tittle-tattle and gossip about fires from hell.’

  Corbett then told them what he had found on the Botham Bar road. De Molay sat up, his eyes bright with excitement.

  ‘So you know the name of the victim and how he died?’

  ‘Yes. I also believe someone was in that wood, using a strange form of fire. Now, when I listened to Brother Odo’s account of the fall of Acre the evening before last, he talked of the Turks throwing fire into the city.’

  ‘But that was nothing,’ Branquier intervened. ‘Just bundles of wood faggots, soaked in tar, lit, then thrown as a fire ball by a catapult or mangonel.’

  ‘Are you saying the same thing is happening here?’ Symmes asked.

  Corbett saw movement beneath the knight’s gown and real
ised the Templar still had his pet weasel with him.

  ‘But that’s impossible,’ Baddlesmere scoffed before Corbett could reply. ‘Such fires are clumsy. Nothing more than heaps of burning material. How can that explain the death of Reverchien at the centre of a maze? Nobody else was there. Or Peterkin in the kitchen? And, as for Brother Odo . . .’

  ‘What about a fire arrow?’ Corbett interrupted. ‘Covered in tar and pitch.’ He shrugged. ‘I know, before you answer, if a fire arrow had been loosed into Brother Odo’s craft, he would have tried to put it out and, if that failed, just jumped into the water and swam for shore.’ He paused. ‘Grand Master, may I ask one favour?’

  De Molay spread his hands.

  ‘Permission,’ Corbett continued, ‘to go round this manor, to question whom I like, to poke my long nose – as others put it – into your affairs.’

  ‘Granted,’ de Molay replied. ‘On one condition, Sir Hugh. The chambers I showed you yesterday? You must stay well away from those. As for the rest, we are in your hands.’

  Corbett thanked him and left.

  ‘Did you really believe that?’ Ranulf hissed as they walked back to the guesthouse.

  ‘Corbett stopped. ‘Believe what, Ranulf?’

  ‘Fire arrows!’

  ‘What else could I say? Here we have a man fishing in the centre of a lake. Within minutes, nay, seconds even, both he and the boat are consumed by fire. What else could have caused it?’ Corbett shrugged. ‘It’s a wild guess but the best I can do.’ He plucked Ranulf by the sleeve and drew him into a window embrasure. ‘Whatever we discover,’ he whispered, ‘we keep silent about it. I believe the assassin was in that room.’

  ‘What about the masked rider in the woods?’ Ranulf asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but he wasn’t in that kitchen when Peterkin died. Now the assassin, this Sagittarius, could be de Molay, or one of the other four, or any combination of them working together. I don’t know why the assassin strikes and 1 don’t know how but, whoever it is, he now realises, thanks to our discovery on the Botham Bar road, that we have glimpsed some of the truth.’

  ‘In which case he may try to shut our mouths.’

  ‘He’s tried that already,’ Corbett retorted, ‘but yes, he may try it again. In doing so, though, he might make a mistake.’

  Corbett poked his head out and looked down the empty passageway. ‘I said that we would stay together, but now we’ll have to work separately. You and Maltote are to scour this manor. Examine the smithy, go out into the fields and copses. Look for any trace of fire or scorch-marks and, if possible, some secret forge.’

  ‘And you, Master?’

  ‘I am going to the library. Brother Odo may have died not because he lived in this manor but also because he discovered something. The assassin must have seen me visit him. I believe the truth, or some of it, lies amongst Brother Odo’s papers.’

  Ranulf went back to the guesthouse to collect Maltote whilst Corbett, taking directions from one of the guards, traced his steps back to the library. The door was open. He went inside and stared round the long, shadow-filled room.

  ‘God rest you, Brother Odo,’ he whispered. ‘And God forgive me if I was responsible for your death.’

  He walked down the library to Brother Odo’s carrel; the table was littered with scraps of paper and the great roll of vellum containing Odo’s chronicle. Corbett laid this out flat: he turned over the squares of vellum, following the dramatic history of the fall of Acre. Corbett searched this carefully, wondering if the manuscript contained some reference to the secret fire. However, although Odo’s drawings contained mangonels throwing flaming bundles of tar, there was nothing significant. Corbett closed it with a sigh and picked up the scraps of parchment. Some were old scribblings but one caught Corbett’s eye. Apparently done on the day he died, Odo had drawn the picture of a long-nosed clerk and beside it a rough drawing of a crow. Corbett smiled at the pun on his own name, ‘le Corbeil’, the French word for ‘crow’. The rest of the jottings, however, were in some form of shorthand. Corbett remembered Brother Odo’s description of Anglo-Saxon runes. There were the same markings, done time and time again, all with question marks beside them. A few he could decipher, though he found it impossible to make sense of them all. He went back along the library, searching amongst the shelves until he found what he was looking for: a thick, yellow-leaved ‘Codex Grammaticus’, bound in calf-skin and kept together by a huge clasp. Corbett pulled this from the shelf and took it back to the carrel. He opened it and began to leaf through: the codex contained references to Greek and Hebrew and, in a well-thumbed appendix at the end, all the letters of the alphabet with the Anglo-Saxon runes beside them. Corbett seized a quill, took Odo’s scrap of paper and tried to decipher the dead librarian’s scrawls. At first he could make no sense, the runes formed words which did not exist, then Corbett remembered that Odo had used Latin in his chronicle. He tried again and the words were deciphered: ‘Ignis Diaboli’, ‘Devil Fire’; ‘Liber Ignium’, ‘The Book of Fires’, and, finally a phrase repeated time and again, ‘Bacon’s Mystery’.

  ‘Sweet God in heaven!’ Corbett whispered. ‘What on earth can that refer to?’

  The Devil’s fire, he thought: that’s how Odo described the flames which consumed poor Peterkin and his colleague Reverchien. The ‘Book of Fires’? Was that some sort of grimoire? A book of spells? And ‘Bacon’s Mystery’? What had that got to do with the terrible fires? Corbett, mystified, got to his feet: for a while he searched for an index to what the library contained but, when he found it, he could discover no reference to a ‘Book of Fires’, or anything which would clarify the phrase ‘Bacon’s Mystery’. He was just clearing the desk, rolling up the notes he had made, when he heard a sound at the back of the library, the creak of a door followed by the bolts being driven home. Corbett rose. Drawing the dagger from his belt, he stared down the library, but all he could see were the dustmotes dancing in the sunbeams above the highly polished floor.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called. Corbett moved to one side. ‘Who’s there?’ he repeated.

  ‘Knowest thou that we go forth and return.’ The voice was low and unrecognisable, though the words rang hollow round the library, like the sombre tolling of a death knell.

  Corbett heard another sound, a metallic click. He threw himself sideways even as the crossbow bolt whipped by his head and smacked into the wall behind him.

  ‘Knowest thou,’ the voice grew louder, ‘that what thou possesses shall escape thee in the end and return to us.’

  Again the click. Corbett, now hiding behind the shelves, heard the thud as another barbed quarrel sank into the woodwork above his head. Corbett fought hard to control his breathing. He stared wildly around: the windows were too small, no escape there.

  ‘Knowest thou,’ the voice again intoned, ‘that we hold you and will keep thee until the account be closed!’

  Corbett, lying flat, peered round the shelves. His heart skipped a beat. At the far end of the library stood a figure, a tilting helm on his head, a jet black robe covering him from head to toe, an arbalest in his hand. Corbett watched the winch being pulled back, he heard the catch click and a third bolt speed to where his head had been. Another sound, a footfall, the assassin was slowly drawing closer. If Corbett rose and ran towards him, he’d never be fast enough: a crossbow bolt would take him before he reached his mysterious assailant. Corbett’s mouth went dry. He fought hard to curb his fear. For some strange reason he kept thinking of a royal messenger riding up the pathway to Leighton Manor, Maeve hurrying down to greet him. . .

  Corbett wiped the sweat from his face and gripped his Welsh dagger even more firmly. He looked across the library and glimpsed a small postern door behind one of the carrels. ‘Oh, Christ Jesus,’ he prayed, ‘let it be unlocked.’

  He pushed his head out but drew back quickly as another crossbow bolt whirred like a hawk through the air. Then he was up before the mysterious archer could fit another bolt. Swearing and cur
sing, Corbett pulled the carrel aside and raised the latch, but the door wouldn’t move. Corbett blindly crashed against it even as the footfalls behind him drew closer. Then he glimpsed the bolts on the top. He drew these back, the door opened, creaking on its leather hinges. Corbett was through it, slamming it shut even as the crossbow bolt thudded into the other side. The door led into a passageway and Corbett ran blindly round a corner, so quickly he knocked a Templar serjeant flying. Ignoring his shouts, Corbett continued running until he was through an open door which led into a small disused garden behind the tilt-yard.

  For a while Corbett crouched to catch his breath then, resheathing his dagger, he made his way back to the guesthouse. He slammed and locked the door behind him, checked the chamber carefully and sprawled on the bed. Eventually relief gave way to anger, a terrible fury at how he had been so nearly trapped. It was tempting to sweep through the manor demanding to see de Molay and seek an investigation, but what would that prove? Nothing except his own fear. The assassin would have slipped out of the library and be impossible to trace. Corbett got up and splashed water over his face. He dried himself slowly, recalling the cloaked figure, the arbalest and the bolts whistling through the air all around him.

  ‘At least,’ Corbett whispered, ‘I know you are not from Hell.’

  He paused: the attack in the library had been a desperate move. Was that why Odo had been killed? To prevent him discovering the cause of that dreadful fire? The assassin would have checked the carrel but, unaware of the runes, he would have overlooked the piece of parchment Corbett now kept in his wallet. There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Master!’

  Corbett went and unlocked it. Ranulf and Maltote swept excitedly into the room.

  ‘They are here!’ Maltote exclaimed.

  ‘Shut up!’ Ranulf shouted. ‘I found them, Master, scorch-marks, the same as we found on the Botham Bar road. You remember the trees which ring the curtain wall around the manor? Well, Maltote and I discovered them there.’ He peered at his master’s face. ‘Don’t you want to come? Master, what has happened?’