Murder Wears a Cowl

Chapter 2

The figure in the shadows was waiting. Nothing could be seen in the poor light streaming through the narrow window except the glint of the brass bodkin which the figure was pressing into a small, waxen image. The image had been carefully made: only the purest beeswax had been used, culled from candles which stood on the altars of churches or in the silver and gold candle-brackets of the very wealthy. As an object of hate, the waxen image had been fashioned most lovingly. Only six inches high; its creator had used the skill of a carver to fashion the rounded face, the long legs and arms and the jutting firm tits. A piece of dyed orange wool had been pinned to the head, and red crepe had been tied round the middle so it looked as if the image was wearing a voluminous skirt. Sightless eyes, two small buttons, stared back at its maker who looked at it, chuckled and stuck the bodkin once more into the soft white body. The figure plucked out the bodkin then carefully slashed the waxen image’s neck.

In her small chamber above a draper’s shop in Cock Lane, Agnes Redheard was terrified. She dare not go out. She had not bought food for days and, because of the lack of custom, her small pile of pennies had dwindled. She was hungry, thirsty and so lonely she would have given her body for free just for the solace of someone to talk to or to listen to her chatter. The young girl dressed feverishly because she believed her salvation was at hand. She pulled her bright-red smock down about her voluptuous body, tightened the leather thongs of her wooden pattens and combed her straggling red hair with a steel comb which had seen better days. She looked round the garret.

‘Oh, Lord!’ she whispered. ‘I wish to be free of here.’

The chamber had become a prison ever since that night when, finding herself deserted by a customer, she had slipped along the blackened alleyways hoping her friend, Isabeau, would allow her to sleep on the floor. Agnes Redheard cursed the baker who, instead of taking her home, had roughly used her in the shadowy corner of a street, had paid her only half of what he had promised, then had driven her away with curses, threatening to call the watch.

Agnes had gone along Old Jewry and stopped just as a cowled figure had slipped out of the house where Isabeau lived. She had thought it strange but, in the darkened doorway of the shop, she had glimpsed the face and smiled, then hurriedly climbed the stairs fully intending to tease Isabeau. She was only half-way up when the blood trickling down from her friend’s slashed throat had made her slip on the stair. She had screamed and screamed until the entire street was roused. Nevertheless, Agnes had kept her mouth shut. She had seen the face but couldn’t believe that someone so holy could perpetrate such an obscene act. So Agnes had bought a quill and a scrap of parchment and sent an urgent message to Westminster. Now her benefactor had replied, telling her to come to the small chapel near Greyfriars. Agnes picked up her tattered cloak and skipped down the stairs. Outside, the dirty-faced urchin she paid a penny to, to watch the door, grinned and waved.

‘No strangers here, Mistress!’ he called out.

Agnes smiled and the boy wondered what was wrong for the whore’s face wasn’t painted. He could not understand why she kept hidden in her chamber, paying him money to warn her of any strangers approaching the house. The boy watched her go then hawked and spat. Whatever was wrong, he hoped Agnes Redheard would not discover he had failed to deliver her message at Westminster. Instead, he had dropped the paper into a sewer and spent the penny she gave him on a basket of plums covered in sugar.

Meanwhile, Agnes slipped through the streets, brushing past white-eyed beggars who whined for alms, and a cripple on wooden slats who cried out that he had seen the devil in Smithfield — but no one listened. The booths were open, under the projecting stories of the great houses, and leather-clad apprentices screamed that they had hot mutton, spiced beef and soft bread for sale. Agnes caught the savoury smells from the cookshops and her stomach clenched with hunger. On one occasion she felt so giddy she had to stop and lean against a doorway, watching an old woman at the corner of the alleyway hitch her skirts and squat to pee. The old woman caught Agnes’s eyes and she cackled with laughter in a display of reddened gums and yellow, rotted teeth. Agnes looked away hurriedly, clenched her fists and ran on.

She followed the line of the city ditch, full of offal and refuse, the dead bodies of cats and dogs now ripening under a strong, summer sun. She turned right, down Aldersgate Street into St Martin’s Lane then through alleyways which would take her to Greyfriars. She stopped at a crossroads where the Bailiff of the Ward had piled high on a stool the goods stolen by a burglar now on his way to the scaffold at Tyburn. Different people claimed the same objects and a violent row ensued, blocking all paths. Agnes stopped; she hadn’t the strength to push through. A costermonger came alongside her with a little handcart full of bread, chunks of cheese and cooked eels. Agnes’s hand reached out; she needed to eat, she had to chew something. Suddenly a small urchin threw the dead, bloated body of a toad into the cart. The costermonger picked it up and threw it back, screaming abuse, and Agnes seized her chance. She picked up a small, hard loaf of rye bread, a chunk of cheese and, seeing a gap in the crowd, slipped through, down a narrow, fetid alleyway. Turning left, she saw the small church before her. Agnes, her mouth full of bread and cheese, could have cried with pleasure. She was here, she was safe. She went up the crumbling steps and slipped through a darkened doorway. The message pushed under her garret door had been quite simple: she was to go to the church just before the Angelus bell and wait until her benefactor arrived.

She crouched at the foot of a pillar and pushed the rest of the bread and cheese into her mouth, chewing the last morsel slowly, enjoying the juices the food started in both mouth and stomach. She felt stronger but, oh, so tired. Her eyes were closing when she heard the whispered voice.

‘Agnes! Agnes!’

The girl stood up, peering into the darkness.

‘Where are you?’ she called.

No answer. The girl, frightened now, backed against the pillar. She thought if she stayed there, she would be safe.

‘Please!’ she called. ‘What is the matter?’

She edged round the pillar, her face twisted sideways and her neck exposed: so vulnerable. The murderer on the other side of the pillar killed Agnes Redheard with one slash of a cut-throat knife. Agnes, eyes open, staring with terror, slumped to the hard, paved stone floor as the killer crushed the waxen image into a ball and pushed it up a voluminous sleeve. For a few seconds the killer stood over the girl’s body.

‘Goodbye, Agnes,’ the voice whispered. ‘You may have seen me but didn’t you know I also glimpsed you?’

Corbett and Ranulf left Winchester the morning after Maltote’s departure. The King himself came down to the outer bailey, to say goodbye, and stood for a while chatting to Corbett about a number of minor matters. The King, grasping the horse’s bridle, drew close and stared up at Corbett.

‘You will take care, Hugh. You will end these killings.’

‘I shall do my best, your Grace.’

‘The business of Puddlicott. .’ the King muttered.

‘The man’s a rogue, one day he’ll hang.’

‘It’s not so simple.’ The King patted the horse’s neck. ‘If he has the friendship of Master Nogaret, Puddlicott will soon figure largely in our affairs but,’ the King smiled thinly, ‘we shall see what we shall see.’ He released the bridle and stepped back. ‘Give my regards to the Lady Maeve and to little Eleanor. Keep me informed! I shall stay at Winchester for a while and then move north to Hereford.’

Corbett nodded, patted his horse and, with Ranulf behind him leading the pack pony, he followed the narrow, cobbled path out of the castle and down into the town. Within the hour, just as the bells of Winchester were ringing for Prime, they cleared the city gates, following the winding country tracks east to the old Roman road. The sky was cloudless and, as the sun climbed, Corbett slowed his horse to an amble, enjoying the warm sweet smell of the countryside. The peasants were out in the fields tending their strips of land and in the meadows cattle and sheep cropped, moving sluggishly through the lush green grass, overgrown with primroses, periwinkles and other wild flowers. Dew still dripped from the hedgerows and Corbett listened to cuckoos, wood pigeons and thrushes singing high in the velvet darkness of the trees. A fox, with a fat young rabbit in its jaws, trotted across the trackway and drew curses from a startled Ranulf.

They paused for a while to break fast on watered wine and white bread Ranulf had begged from the palace kitchens. Corbett’s manservant was surly. He hated the countryside. If he had his way, he would ride blindfold until he entered Cripplegate and became lost in the bustle, colour and stench of the London streets. Corbett, however, was happy. He could count his blessings: he was free from the King, returning to London and, if Maltote had done his job properly, Maeve’s temper would have lost its biting edge. Nevertheless, he saw Ranulf’s unhappiness and, as they mounted and continued their journey, he gave his manservant the reason for their return. Ranulf lost his fear of the open countryside, listening round-eyed until Corbett finished then he whistled softly through gapped teeth.

‘Hell’s teeth!’ he breathed, mimicking the King. ‘Someone’s slaughtering the whores of London. A murdered priest. And that bastard Frenchman searching like a rat for mischief!’ Ranulf shook his head wordlessly.

‘And don’t forget Puddlicott.’

Ranulf-atte-Newgate made a face. ‘Who could forget Puddlicott?’ he replied.

‘What do you mean, Ranulf?’

‘Well,’ the manservant shrugged, ‘before I entered your service, Master-’

‘You mean when you were a night-walker and a thief?’

‘I wasn’t a thief!’

‘Of course not, Ranulf, but let’s say, when you found it difficult to distinguish between your property and someone else’s.’

Ranulf glared at his master. His past was a topic they rarely discussed, for if it hadn’t been for Corbett, Ranulf would have hanged at Newgate and his strangled corpse would have been thrown into the limepits near Charterhouse.

Corbett winked. ‘I am sorry, Ranulf, you were saying?’

‘Well, amongst the stews of Southwark and in the thieves’ kitchens around Whitefriars, Puddlicott was a legend. He could break into any house, rifle any coffer. They claimed he could even shave a man without waking him.’

‘Does anyone know what he looked like?’

Ranulf stared at a hawk circling lazily above a field. ‘No. Some said he was short and fat, others described him as tall and thin. One man said he had red hair, another said he had black. He can talk fluently in Latin and can convince you that black is white, that you are a rogue and I am an honest man. However, he can’t be responsible for the whores’ murders!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When I was a boy, something similar happened in London. There was a man — my mother knew his name but I forget it now — he hated women, he used to buy the services of whores but the only way his dick could rise would be to beat upon them. Well, things went from bad to worse. Eventually, he could only have his joy by watching them as he choked their breath away.’

‘A Bedlam man,’ Corbett observed.

‘Mad as a March hare. He used to haunt the streets of Southwark dressed in a red robe. He killed a good score before his own family hunted him down.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘My mother watched him being boiled alive under the gallows near the Bishop of Ely Inn. She told me he screamed for hours. Such a man is our murderer, not Puddlicott.’

Corbett shivered and looked away. De Craon was one thing, but what about this lunatic? He thought of Maeve and his apprehension deepened. Once the hunt began, would she be safe? And why, Corbett wondered, did this madman now kill respectable ladies? Perhaps even the old chaplain himself?

They continued in silence, stopping at an ale house at noon and, later in the day, using their royal licences, gained clean beds and a square meal at a small monastery outside Andover on the edge of the great forest.

They entered London late the following morning, taking the Red Cross route into Cripplegate and down through the city streets. Ranulf immediately relaxed and beamed at the cooks outside the hot-pie shops offering bread, ale, wine and ribs of beef. On the corner of Catte Street, a group of singers, young boys from a local church, sang a carol. Between each verse a sunburnt traveller talked about the church at Bethlehem and a pillar the Virgin Mary had leaned against. ‘Which,’ the speaker shouted, ‘remains moist since the time she rested there, for, after it is wiped, it always sweats again.’

At the corner of West Cheap, Corbett stopped to listen to a fiery preacher. ‘Woe to this city!’ the man bawled, his eyes glowing like coals. ‘Woe to the whores who have died! They have brought this judgement on themselves!’

The preacher, his eyes alight with madness, glared at Corbett and Ranulf. ‘Satan looks after his own!’ he cried. ‘First, he feeds them with tidbits from his own mouth as if they were his own dear darlings but, afterwards, he turns on them and rends them like a fierce hound, gulping them down his foul, black throat like so many juicy morsels.’

Corbett studied the man’s skeletal face. Was a madman such as this, he wondered, responsible for the murder of whores, like those whose red wigs he could glimpse in the crowds ahead of him?

‘Shall we arrest him, Master?’ Ranulf joked.

The clerk stared at the fanatic. The fellow was as lean and lithe as a cat and as he screeched, his eyes bounced from his head like the very devil. His cheeks and jaw were as bare of flesh as any recluse who lived on bread and ditch water. Suddenly the preacher stopped his litany of denunciation, jumped down and did a strange, fantastical dance.

Corbett looked at Ranulf and shook his head. ‘I doubt if that fellow could walk straight,’ he commented. ‘Never mind struggle with some sturdy wench and wield a sharp cutting knife.’

They passed on down an alleyway, dismounting to lead their horses around a group of ragged-arsed children who were dancing round the corpse of a yellow mongrel which had been crushed by a cart, the blue innards bursting from its sagging belly. On the corner the beadles had caught a man who had drained water illegally from the Great Conduit. They were now forcing him to carry a leaking bucket of water on his head which they gleefully refilled.

Corbett grinned at Ranulf. ‘It’s good to be back in London,’ he commented sourly.

Ranulf nodded his head vigorously, staring round at the mass of colour: hoods, mantles and tunics of every hue. The murrey and mustard of the city officials, the golden silk of high-born ladies, the merchants’ woollen cloaks thrown back to display heavy purses and broad, jewelled belts. A group of Templars rode by, the great cross on the shoulders of their cloaks, their pennants and banners snapping in the breeze. Corbett and Ranulf continued across Cheapside, forcing their way through a throng of young noblemen who were admiring a pack of slender, lean-ribbed hunting dogs for sale.

At last they entered Bread Street. They left their horses at the Red Kirtle tavern and crossed the street, stepping carefully over the slopping sewer, towards Corbett’s town-house. Ranulf, carrying the heavy saddle-bags, wished his master would walk on, but Corbett stopped to admire the freshly painted front door, which now shimmered under the gloss, noting how the craftsman had also placed heavy steel bolts in serried rows to reinforce it. For the rest, Corbett grinned, Maeve had hired painters to refurbish the three-storied building and, being contrary as Maeve could be, instead of the plaster being painted white and the beams black, Maeve had ordered the plaster to be painted black and the beams white whilst above the door was a vigorous depiction of the Llewellyn coat-of-arms next to the Red Dragon Rampant of Wales.

They slipped down the alleyway at the side of the house and in through the back door. Two old servants greeted them. The Welshman Griffin and his wife Anna. The latter had served Maeve in Wales and faithfully followed her mistress into the ‘Land of the foreigners’, as she termed it, when Maeve moved to London after her marriage to Corbett. Both Griffin and his wife viewed England as alien as Outremer, and the inhabitants of London as demons in human flesh. Corbett, however, they accepted and now greeted him ecstatically, both gabbling away in Welsh. Corbett just smiled and kissed each of them on the cheeks, indicating by signs that he did not wish them to announce his arrival to Maeve. He turned to speak to Ranulf but his manservant had dropped the saddle-bags on the floor and promptly had disappeared. Ranulf was rather frightened of Maeve, considerably in awe of a woman who was not only beautiful but had the wit to match his own and a tongue which could cut like a razor. Griffin looked askance at Corbett and pointed to the bags.

‘Yes, yes,’ the clerk commented. ‘I would be grateful if you would move them in. Ranulf will be back. He’s probably gone to see his baby son.’

The old man shook his head and screwed up his eyes as if he could not understand what Corbett was talking about, though the clerk suspected different. He was sure Griffin understood every word he said but the old man insisted on his Welshness and quietly enjoyed the confusion it caused. Suddenly, Anna, Maeve’s old nurse, grasped him by the hand, her face became serious and she kept repeating words, of which the only one Corbett could understand was ‘Llewellyn’. The clerk just shook his head, clasped each of his servants affectionately by the hand, and crept quietly upstairs towards the solar.

At the top he stood peering through the half-open door. Across the room sat Maeve in a russet dress, fastened closely at the neck, with a blue belt round her waist and a white veil secured by brooches to her blonde hair. She was sitting on a stool next to the fire. Corbett quietly groaned, for his wife was stabbing furiously at a piece of embroidery — a sure sign that the Lady Maeve was not in the best of moods. She detested sewing, hated embroidery but liked to take her temper out on the nearest piece of cloth to hand. Nevertheless, she was singing softly to herself, some strange Welsh lullaby, whilst rocking the small cradle beside her with the tip of her slippered foot.

Corbett, fully aware of the furies to come, stood and admired the peaceful domestic scene. He gazed round the room, admiring how Maeve had turned the solar into a luxurious, even opulent chamber. Carpenters had placed wooden panelling around the room which stretched half-way up the high walls whilst the brickwork above it had been covered in a thick white paint. Some of this was hidden by brilliant-hued tapestries or carefully painted shields depicting the armorial bearings of both Corbett’s and Maeve’s families. Red woollen rugs not rushes covered the floor and at the end of the solar, the windows had been filled by glass, some of it tinted in brilliant, contrasting hues. Stonemasons had refurbished the old hearth with an intricately sculpted fire mantel resting on two huge pillars with dragons, scorpions and wyverns carved there. Corbett leaned against the doorway and smelt the sweet warmth from the herb packets Maeve must have thrown on the small log fire. His wife suddenly raised her head as if she knew she was being watched.

‘What is this, woman?’ Corbett shouted, pushing open the door. ‘To come home and find my wife sitting amongst the ashes!’

Maeve gave a cry, dropped the embroidery and fairly ran across the room, the white veil round her head floating out like a banner.

‘Hugh! Hugh!’ She threw her arms round Corbett’s neck and pressed closely against him, clasping his face between her hands and kissing him passionately on the lips.

‘You should have announced yourself,’ she cried, stepping backwards. ‘A gentleman recently knighted should observe such courtesies!’

‘So, you have heard the news?’

‘Of course, Maltote told me.’

Corbett swallowed hard. ‘And the other news?’

Maeve made a wry smile. Corbett clasped her hands and pulled her back to him. He was surprised she did not seem angry; the smooth, unblemished skin of her face was not drawn tight nor was there any furrow on her brow or round her lips — sure signs that his wife had lost her fiery temper. The lips he had just tasted were soft and warm and her eyes held a teasing look.

‘You are not angry, Maeve?’

‘Why should I be? My husband has returned.’

‘About the news?’

‘Sir,’ Maeve answered in mock surprise. ‘You have been knighted.’

‘Madame,’ Corbett rasped. ‘We are not going to Wales. You will not see your uncle!’

Maeve slipped her arms round his waist.

‘True, true,’ she mocked. ‘We will not be going to Wales.’ Her face became serious. ‘But I will see my uncle.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He is coming here. I have already despatched Maltote with the invitation.’

Corbett steeled his face, though he would have dearly loved to have screamed. He hadn’t thought of that: the Lord Morgan ap Llewellyn sweeping into his house like some wild wind from the mountains of Wales. Oh, Lord, Corbett thought, he’ll be here, he’ll drink and eat as if there’s no tomorrow. His retainers will get drunk in the London taverns, be arrested by the watch and get thrown into gaol when they try to break their necks. There will be nights of song and roistering as the Lord Morgan sings some savage song before breaking into tears at the vanished glories of Wales. In the morning, however, the Lord Morgan will rise as fresh as a daisy to argue about Edward’s policies in Wales. He will challenge Ranulf to gamble and the house will ring with their curses as they do their best to cheat each other. Corbett slumped down on a stool.

‘The Lord Morgan is coming here?’ he said weakly.

Maeve crouched beside him and grasped his fingers.

‘Oh, Hugh, don’t object. He may be wild but he’s growing old!’

‘Your uncle,’ Corbett grated, ‘will never grow old!’

‘Hugh, he loves me and, beneath his temper, he deeply admires you.’

Oh, divine sweetness, Corbett thought. He was about to object when he glimpsed the tears brimming in his wife’s eyes — one of her favourite tricks: either accept now, she was saying, or I’ll wander round this house like some martyr about to be burnt.

‘How long is he staying?’

‘Two months.’

In other words, six, Corbett thought. He sighed. ‘Let the Lord Morgan come.’

Maeve kissed him again. ‘We’ll all be together,’ she whispered, her eyes alight with pleasure.

Yes, Corbett thought wearily, we’ll all be together.

Maeve clapped her hands. ‘He can have the chamber at the back of the house and his servants can use the hall below or perhaps stay in a tavern.’

Corbett rose and caught the tendrils of his wife’s hair and grinned. ‘I’ll be busy,’ he observed, then he suddenly grasped Maeve by the shoulders.

‘The King told me you had visitors, Maeve. The Frenchman, de Craon and his companion, de Nevers.’

Maeve made a face. ‘De Craon was charming. Oh, I know Hugh, he is a fox but he brought me a scarf, pure silk from the looms of Lyons and a silver spoon for Eleanor.’

‘Get rid of them!’ Corbett rasped.

‘Hugh!’

‘De Craon is a cruel bastard who wishes me nothing but ill.’

‘Hugh, he was courteous.’

‘And how was his companion?’

‘De Nevers?’ Maeve made a face. ‘He was handsome, quieter than de Craon, diplomatic and affable. I liked him.’

Corbett glared at his wife, then realised how ridiculous he must look. ‘I am sorry,’ he muttered. ‘But de Craon always makes me uneasy.’

Maeve grasped him by the hand. ‘Then forget him like I have. Come and see your daughter.’

Corbett followed her and stared down at his baby daughter. At three months, Eleanor already looked like Maeve: beautiful soft skin, clear regular features. He touched one of her tiny fingers. ‘So small!’ he whispered. The baby’s hand felt warm, soft as a satin cushion. He squeezed gently and, under her small quilted blanket, Eleanor moved and smiled in her sleep.

‘She is well?’

‘Of course.’

Corbett placed his hand gently against the baby’s forehead and Maeve watched him guardedly. Her husband, usually so calm, even cold, harboured the most terrible fears of what might happen to the child. Maeve looked away. Much as she could try, her husband’s mind was still plagued by ghosts. The most frightening, surprisingly enough for a man so detached, was of losing those close to him, of being left alone. She seized him by the hand.

‘Let’s go,’ she whispered. ‘Our chamber is ready. There is wine, bread and fruit, next to the bed.’ Maeve grinned. ‘A bed covered in red silk,’ she whispered. ‘And in the centre, two embroidered turtle doves.’ Her face became serious. ‘You may want to rest? Drink something sweet? You must be tired after your long journey.’

Corbett grinned back. ‘Call Anna,’ he murmured, pulling Maeve close to him. ‘Let her sit with Eleanor and I shall show you, Madam, how tired I am!’