The Mysterium

11

Mistress Elizabeth, still chattering, allowed Chanson to escort her out of the chamber. Corbett sat down and heaved a sigh. ‘Ranulf,’ he glanced up, ‘when Chanson returns, go about your business. You must be hungry. One final thing, send a courier to Cripplegate ward, find out who holds the keys to St Botulph’s and have them brought here.’

When Ranulf had left, Corbett paced the chamber for a while. He shifted the brazier close to his desk, moving candles and lamps to create a pool of light and warmth, and settled himself. He tried to imagine being Ippegrave, so close and secretive, then smiled: he was that already.Yet in truth, Boniface had been different from him, a bachelor with a doting sister and a secret lover whose name began with M. Corbett smoothed the piece of vellum in front of him, dipped his quill pen in the ink and began to write.

Item: This mysterious Beatrice, Emma Evesham’s maid, had been present when her mistress was attacked and murdered. Was the assault simply a bloody street affray and Emma Evesham the wrong woman in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or was it a planned assault? Was Beatrice party to it? And what had happened to her? Was she killed and her corpse taken elsewhere? Evesham and Coroner Fleschner appeared to have searched for this elusive maid but discovered no trace of her alive or dead. So did Beatrice flee, but where? To whom? Why? Was she abducted and still alive? Again why? What had happened to her?

Item: Why had Boniface collected some of those horrid messages left on the corpses of the Mysterium’s victims? What was he searching for?

Item: How had Boniface been able to discover the secret machinations of the Mysterium and his use of the great hoarding at St Paul’s? Evesham had only established the truth of that after he had trapped the merchant Chauntoys and Boniface in Southwark.

Item: Why had Boniface listed Emma alongside other victims of mysterious death? She was certainly murdered, but there was no real proof that Bassetlawe, Furnival and Rescales had been. All three deaths could have been accidents, the verdict recorded at the time.

Item: Why had Boniface listed other clerks, Blandeford, Staunton, Evesham and Engleat? For what purpose?

Item: Boniface had protested his innocence.What was that phrase he’d scrawled on the page of the Book of the Gospels at St Botulph’s: ‘I stand in the centre guiltless and point to the four corners.’ What did it mean?

Item: Why did Evesham and others believe the Mysterium was a chancery clerk? Who had reached that conclusion? Why not a scribe at the Guildhall?

Item: Why did the Mysterium always leave that mocking message, ‘Mysterium Rei — the Mystery of the Thing’, on the corpses of his victims?

Item: Evesham, Engleat, Waldene, Hubert the Monk, Clarice, Richard Fink and now Fleschner had all been killed within a short period of time by the same killer: why? What linked all these victims to this bloody mysterious mayhem?

Item: Nevertheless, there were incidents that seemed out of harmony with this murderous pattern. The writer from the Land of Cockaigne, who was he? The riot at Newgate: who had really caused both that and the furious fight at St Botulph’s?

Item: If Boniface was innocent and, for sake of argument, had survived, why had he returned to his sister to proclaim that he was carrying out vengeance? Why his interest in the woman Beatrice?

Corbett put his pen down. He felt lost, unable to form a rock-hard conclusion on which to construct a thesis that would match the evidence. He rose, paced the chamber, ate some of the stale food left on Chanson’s platter and returned to his chair. He dozed for a while and startled as the door latch rattled and Staunton and Blandeford strode in. Corbett immediately grasped the hilt of his knife. Both men looked sinister in their heavy cloaks and deep cowls, more like monkish rats than judge and clerk. They parted to go around the table, walking swiftly towards Corbett, who, hand still on his dagger, rose to his feet. Staunton stopped abruptly, drew a set of keys out of the pocket of his cloak and waved these tauntingly in Corbett‘s face.

‘We were coming to see you, Sir Hugh. We found the catchpole from Cripplegate wandering the galleries below. One of the guards stopped him. He was demanding to see you, so we took his keys. I gather,’ he smirked, ‘your companions Ranulf and Chanson are savouring the joys of a nearby tavern.’

‘They have worked hard.’ Corbett grasped the heavy bunch of keys and slammed then down on the desk. ‘So these are the keys to St Botulph’s?’

‘So the catchpole said.’

‘And you, sirs, what do you want?’

Staunton, uninvited, sat down on a chair; Blandeford pulled a stool up close.

‘We’ve heard rumours, Sir Hugh. You seem to be concentrating on events of twenty years ago rather than-’

‘I dig for the roots,’ Corbett intervened, asserting himself. He did not like the arrogance of these two men, who seemed slightly menacing in the shifting shadows. ‘Tell me,’ he sat down, ‘Boniface Ippegrave put your names on a list.’

‘So?’ Staunton pushed back the deep cowl from over his head.

‘Were you suspected of being the Mysterium?’

‘What do you mean? What are you implying? How dare you. .’

‘Oh, I dare.’ Corbett laughed. ‘And I would dare again. Listen, Evesham believed the Mysterium was a chancery clerk, someone like us, party to the chatter of both city and court.’

‘That’s logical,’ Staunton conceded.

‘I disagree.’ Corbett crossed his arms and leaned closer, holding Staunton’s arrogant stare. ‘Learned judge, it is not logical. What about the clerks at the Guildhall, or even those of the merchants?’

‘What are you implying?’

‘Who first raised the possibility that the Mysterium must be a chancery clerk?’ Corbett glanced down the floor, waiting for the answer. Outside, the strengthening night breeze rattled the shutters, the icy draught seeping in making the timbers of the ancient palace creak.

‘I don’t know,’ Staunton blustered. ‘I cannot remember. Old Chancellor Burnell was beside himself. An assassin was loose in the city, hired by the great merchants to settle scores with their enemies. The Mysterium was taunting the authority of the law. You know how the King would regard that, especially in London. Burnell turned to his clerks for advice and help; that’s how I suspect the conclusion was reached that the Mysterium was a chancery official.’ Staunton rose abruptly. ‘Sir Hugh, we simply came to give our greetings.’

‘No you didn’t.’ Corbett also stood up. ‘You came to give me a bunch of keys and pry on what I’m doing. Why, sirs, are you reporting to the King? Or are you worried about your clerk Lapwing? I hold you responsible for him.’ He wagged a finger in Staunton’s face. ‘I must have close words with Lapwing on a number of matters. Now, sirs, unless you have further information for me. .’

He ushered them to the door and closed it quietly behind them, drawing across the bolts. If Staunton and Blandeford could wander in here. . Corbett felt uneasy. Why had those sly courtiers visited him? Did they also suspect something was wrong with the accepted story about Ippegrave? He heard a scratching at the door. He drew back the bolts and allowed the two cats through. They immediately went and sprawled near one of the braziers. ‘I wish I could do that.’ Corbett smiled. He crouched beside them, stroking them softly. ‘You’ve been hunting and I think you’ve killed, whilst I’m still prowling in the dark. Now, my two fine sirs, you’re more welcome than the other two who’ve just left, but what do they want? What are they frightened of? What are they concerned about?’ He stared at the fiery mess in the charcoal brazier. ‘What if. .’ He rose and returned to his chair. ‘What if Boniface Ippegrave was not the Mysterium? Then who was?’

Corbett pulled across the crude copy he’d made of Boniface’s diagram of the first nine letters of the alphabet:

A,B,C,

D,E,F,

G,H,I

He was concentrating so hard, his eyes grew heavy and he dozed for a while. He started awake at a cry from the yard below, followed by the sound of swords being drawn. He hastened to the window, pulled back the shutters and stared down at the serjeant-at-arms and liveried guards standing in a pool of torchlight.

‘What is it?’ he called.

The serjeant-at-arms, shading his eyes, gazed up.

‘Is that you, Sir Hugh?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought so, all the other chambers are in darkness. Sir Hugh, it’s nothing. We thought there was an intruder, but it’s only the shadows, perhaps some dog. One of our lads is missing his sweet-heart. He imagines many things.’

Corbett smiled at the laughter this caused, then raised his hand and closed the shutters. Nevertheless, despite the cheery words, he felt uneasy. A prickling fear as if he was walking down some night-filled alleyway. He might be in this sealed chamber warmed and lit by glowing coals and leaping tongues of candle flame, where wall tapestries glowed colour and crucifixes and statues glinted in the jittering light, and yet. . Guards patrolled downstairs, and he had his own sword-belt within reach, but Corbett sensed Murder was prowling, a demon deep in the shadows like some scuttling, ravenous rat. An assassin was loose. Whether it was the Mysterium or not was immaterial; this was a killer who struck swiftly and savagely with a keen eye to his own advantage.

Corbett sat down and picked up the scrap of parchment with the square of letters.

‘I stand in the centre,’ he whispered. ‘That is the E. I point to the four corners: A, C, G, I.’ He wrote out the four letters, rearranging them several times but could still make no sense of it. ‘I should be back at Leighton,’ he whispered. ‘God knows, Maeve, I miss you so much. I’m tired. I want to sleep.’

He thought of Staunton of Westminster, of himself, Corbett of Leighton, of Boniface of Cripplegate, Blandeford of the Guildhall, the way people defined themselves by the place they called home. He glanced down at the letter E and those in the four corners and his mouth went dry. He rummaged amongst his papers and found what he was looking for. He studied it carefully, then went back to those four letters.

‘The Land of Cockaigne,’ he whispered. ‘The world turned topsy-turvy, the hunted becomes the hunter, the righteous the wicked.’ He snatched up a piece of parchment, took a pen and listed the evidence.

Item: The Mysterium was a chancery clerk.

Item: The Mysterium used the great hoarding at St Paul’s.

Item: The Mysterium gloated about his work.

Item: The Mysterium’s murderous campaign ended with Boniface Ippegrave’s disappearance.

Item: Boniface Ippegrave maintained his innocence until now.

‘No, no,’ he murmured, and crossed out ‘until now’. ‘Go back,’ he told himself. ‘Go back twenty years and stay there. That’s where the truth is.’

Item: The Mysterium — Boniface Ippegrave — was captured red-handed with his accomplice in that tavern in Southwark.

Item: Only after that did Walter Evesham claim he knew how the Mysterium carried out his dreadful crimes.

Item: Boniface Ippegrave was taken into custody but escaped.

Item: Boniface Ippegrave remained in sanctuary for two days at St Botulph’s. No one visited him except the parson, Evesham and Engleat. He received his mother’s ring from his sister and scrawled his proclamation of innocence on a page of the Book of the Gospels.

Item: On the third day, Boniface Ippegrave disappeared, but how?

Corbett glanced up. ‘I think I know,’ he whispered fiercely. ‘Yes, I’m sure I do, but how does it all fit?’

He rose and paced the chamber, lost in thought, trying to track down the assassin who’d prowled the city some twenty years ago. He kept returning to the table, fingering the scraps of parchment, scribbling down notes. He was certain that he had a hypothesis, but how could he link it to present events? He gathered his cloak about him, wheeled the brazier closer to his chair and sat down. Staring into the sparkling coals, sifting the evidence, his eyes grew heavy again. He fell asleep, and when he woke, the light outside was greying. He went to the garderobe, then returned and washed himself at the lavarium, and as he dried his hands and face, he glimpsed the ring of keys to St Botulph’s. He had to go there.

‘St Botulph’s,’ he exclaimed. ‘You are truly a house of secrets! I need to search you to test my hypothesis.’

He sat and wrote a short letter to Ranulf, then another to Sir Ralph Sandewic at the Tower. Dressing quickly and preparing himself, he went out along the gallery and down to the bailey. The early morning was bitterly cold; a river mist still hung heavy. Torches glowed. Muffled sounds echoed through the murky gloom. Corbett loosened his sword in its scabbard. Danger threatened, he sensed it. It was always so. The hunt was on! The assassin, clever and subtle, must have realised Corbett had not given up. The killer would ponder his own survival. What chance did he have? If Corbett closed and trapped him for such heinous crimes, a hideous punishment awaited, being forced up a ladder to slowly strangle to death on a Smithfield scaffold. Corbett murmured a prayer for help.

‘It is your face I seek, O Lord, hide not your face. Do not dismiss your poor servant in anger, for you have been my saving help.’

He felt the church keys weighing heavily in the pocket of his cloak. He would not go there alone. Nightmare memories warned him against that!

‘Aux aide! Aux aide!’ he shouted in Norman French, and was immediately answered by the rattle of armour as the serjeant-at-arms and two archers came hurrying through the mist.

‘Sir Hugh, what is the matter?’

‘Nothing.’ Corbett grasped the serjeant’s shoulder. ‘Nothing for now, but listen.’ He handed over the two letters. ‘Send one of your archers to my colleague Ranulf-atte-Newgate; rouse him wherever he is. The other to Sir Ralph Sandewic at the Tower. Both are urgent dispatches. You,’ he pointed at a bearded archer whose hood almost covered his face, ‘are to come with me to St Botulph’s, where we’ll meet the rest.’

A short while later, Corbett and the archer, who introduced himself as Griffyths from South Wales, clambered into a wherry near King’s Steps. The two bargemen pushed away, hugging the bank along the misty, choppy river. Corbett sat in the stern, the archer beside him. Griffyths wanted to talk, but Corbett remained lost in his own thoughts, so the archer turned his attention to the bargemen, engaging them in good-natured banter, loudly asking if Englishmen did have tails and was it true that one Welshman was worth at least a dozen English? Corbett half listened. The river was shrouded in mist, bitterly cold, and very little could be seen except for the lantern lights of ships and torches flaring along the bank. Here and there scaffolds rose, grim spectacles, some decorated with corpses, others empty, awaiting what would be offered later in the day. Corbett recalled Fleschner hanging from that iron bracket, Waldene and Hubert the Monk slaughtered in the tavern chamber. All these squalid deaths were surely linked to what happened twenty years ago, but for the moment, Corbett did not want to speculate further. St Botulph’s would hold the key.

They disembarked at Queenshithe and made their way up through the still empty streets. The mist was like a veil, abruptly parting to reveal hideous sights. Beggars, faces distorted, their bodies displaying horrid wounds, scuttled out on all fours on their makeshift little carts, hands gripping wooden pegs as they clattered across the cobbles whining for alms. Corbett disbursed some pennies and moved on. Whores and their pimps still searched for customers. Night-walkers and dark-dwellers gathered at the mouths of alleyways and watched the two men pass. The icy weather had hardened the track beneath their feet, but the stench was still offensive, and Corbett glanced away at the sight of mangled corpses of cats and dogs struck down by carts. Occasionally a troop of bailiffs crossed their path pursuing a malefactor, their cries of ‘Harrow! Harrow!’ muffled by the mist. Griffyths had now found his tongue again and inveighed stridently against the night-walkers, dismissing them as ‘a dirty, everlastingly gruesome assembly, not a Christian amongst them, with their base dark faces, nothing more than swift, ravening demons’.

Corbett smiled to himself. The Welshman was most eloquent in his dismissal of all they saw.

‘This is,’ Griffyths declared, ‘the most hideous depths of hell, Sir Hugh. I’d give a year’s wage to be back in the loveliness of South Wales.’

Corbett didn’t answer. He remembered the ‘loveliness’ of South Wales! Trees clustered together, the light barely piercing them, the grass underneath slippery. He recalled waiting with men-at-arms and archers for the Welsh bowmen with all their hideous skill to appear and loose their shafts, a rain of death clattering against their armour before disappearing as swiftly. .

‘You’ve served in Wales, Sir Hugh?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you never met the Mouldwarp? He is an ugly-coloured, dismal, lurking character with a hump. He wears a ragged thread-bare cloak and his every limb is blacker than a blacksmith’s.’

Corbett paused and put a hand on the archer’s shoulder.

‘Griffyths, we are going to a place more ominous and threatening than any monster prowling the woods of South Wales or, indeed, any night-walker on these streets. I bid you say your prayers.’

‘St Botulph’s?’ Griffyths refused to be abashed. ‘I know of it, sir. I’ve heard the stories. I was there at the battle. All kinds of legends flourish about it being haunted, a place where people disappear. Is that true, Sir Hugh?’

Corbett sighed, tapped the archer on the shoulder and led him on. ‘Listen, Griffyths, what I want you to do is guard me and watch that church. Now, this monster from the Welsh woods, have you ever met him?’

He allowed Griffyths to chatter as they made their way through the streets, until eventually they reached St Botulph’s. Here the Welsh archer fell silent. The heavy mist thinned to reveal the gnarled yew trees and crumbling cluster of tombs. The church itself looked silent and forbidding. No beacon light glowed in its steeple, no sound carried. God’s acre was strangely empty, as if the beggars and the other dispossessed who usually sheltered there had recognised the sinister atmosphere and fled. Griffyths threw back his cloak, hand on the hilt of his sword, muttering prayers in Welsh. He pointed to the main door and whispered something about the recent battle. Corbett patted him on the shoulder and led him into the trees, along the path to the corpse door. Griffyths abruptly paused, one hand on Corbett’s arm.

‘Sir Hugh, did you hear that?’

Corbett stared into the mist closing behind them.

‘What?’

‘A footfall, something snuffling.’ He forced a smile. ‘Like the Mouldwarp.’

‘Ghosts.’ Corbett smiled, tapping the archer’s broad forehead. ‘Ghosts in here, Griffyths.’

He brought out the keys and eventually found the correct one. The corpse door creaked open and they entered the nave. A musty, damp smell seeped out of the chilly blackness to greet them. Corbett, recalling where the sconce torches were positioned, took out a tinder and moved to the left, feeling along the wall. Griffyths followed, muttering incantations against the Evil One, his boots slithering over the paving stones. Corbett lit a torch and used it to fire the others. The flickering flames created a ghostly atmosphere along that cavernous nave with its fat rounded pillars and shadow-filled aisles. The light picked up the vivid wall paintings proclaiming the story of Man’s fall from Paradise and his constant battle against the powers of hell. Painted faces, scowling, angry, beseeching, lovely and ugly, celestial and demonic, peered out as Corbett, followed by a now subdued Griffyths holding a sconce torch, made his way round that haunted church, carefully inspecting everything. He confided to Griffyths that they might have to wait for the full light of day, though he was certain no secret cellar, recess, crypt, tunnel or passageway existed. The church grew bitterly cold. Griffyths voiced his unease as they went up into the sanctuary towards the sacristy. Corbett teased his companion, promising that they would soon break their fast before a roaring fire in some nearby tavern. He unlocked the sacristy door, then went back into the church, where a thought occurred to him He returned to the sacristy and stared down at the place where Parson John must have been assaulted and bound. A sound echoed from the church.

‘Griffyths?’ exclaimed Corbett.

The archer slipped out into the sanctuary. Corbett loosened his own sword, then startled at a clatter. He stepped out of the sacristy and immediately retreated. The church was dark, the sconce torches doused. He peered round the lintel of the door. Only one cresset still flamed.

‘Griffyths?’ he shouted. A click alarmed him, and he threw himself down even as a crossbow bolt whirled like some angry wasp above his head. He slammed shut the door to the sanctuary, pushing across the rusty bolts at top and bottom, then unlocked the door to the outside and hastened into the mist-strewn poor man’s lot, the burial ground for strangers lying to the north side of the church. Hot sweat cooling in the freezing air, he slammed the door shut and fumbled with the keys but couldn’t find the correct one. He slipped the bunch into the pocket of his cloak and drew both sword and dagger, edging out across the waste-land trying to control his panic. This was his nightmare, one that had haunted him ever since he had fought in Wales, whether it was here in this graveyard or in some lonely copse or filthy alleyway. He was facing death, hunted by an assassin hungry for slaughter.

Slipping and slithering on the icy ground. he made his way around wooden crosses, stumbling over mounds, ruts and holes. A sound forced him to stop and turn. A shape moved in the mist. Corbett crouched. He glimpsed a mongrel scavenging at the dead underneath their thin layer of dirt. The dog turned, a bone between its jaws. Corbett lunged with his sword, and the dog yelped and fled. Immediately a crossbow bolt hissed through the air to smash against a headstone. Corbett stared back at the church. He’d made a mistake: he’d have been safer inside. He took a deep breath and whispered a prayer. The mist was thinning, the light strengthening, but he was not safe. St Botulph’s, now seen as accursed, was desolate; very few would enter here. His attacker, armed with a crossbow, would simply hunt him down, drive him into a trap or wait for a mistake.

A low growl made him turn swiftly, and in doing so he struck one of the wooden crosses, which snapped and broke. Corbett however could only stare in horror at the huge mastiff, belly low to the ground, creeping towards him. He kept still, recognising the breed. Royal levies had used them in Wales and Scotland: a war dog with a spiked collar to protect its thick, muscular throat, the hound had been trained to hunt silently. The assassin had released it to track Corbett down, flush him out and, if he stood still or tried to defend himself, attack. The mastiff growled again, huge cruel jaws slightly open, sharp, tufted ears going back, black eyes intent on its prey. Corbett stepped to the right. The dog, muscular flanks quivering, halted, eyes intent on him. A twig snapped. The assassin was also creeping forward. Corbett crouched down and caught the pungent smell from the freshly dug burial mound over which the fallen cross lay. He recognised the odour of the unadulterated heavy lime used by the grave-diggers. He dropped his sword. The soil was hard, the lime lay loosely strewn. He collected a brimming handful in his gauntleted hand. The war hound half rose, and Corbett lunged, throwing the lime at that great ugly head just as the dog charged. The lime, a congealed mess, hit the hound as it sprang. Corbett moved swiftly to one side. The dog had misjudged its leap, and Corbett scored it with the tip of his dagger. The hound turned in a swirl of muscular black flesh but then broke its stride, confused by the ugly knife wound to its flank as well as the lime burning its eyes, nostrils and mouth. Its great head went back as the lime scorched deeper, and Corbett lurched forward and, grasping his sword, drove it deep into the dog’s exposed throat. The hound rolled in agony on to its side.

Corbett moved swiftly at a half-crouch back to the sacristy door. A bolt winged dangerously close, but he reached the door and hurled himself inside. He scrambled up and pushed one bolt home, then raced out of the sacristy through the sanctuary, down the steps and across to the corpse door, which he slammed shut. Hands trembling, he snatched out the bunch of keys, finding the correct one as a hideous yelping echoed from outside. Then he sank to the ground, pressing his sweat-soaked face against the icy-cold flagstones. He heard the sacristy door rattle, then silence. He waited. A short while later the door beside him shook violently. Corbett pulled himself up.

‘God damn you,’ he shouted. ‘Go down to hell, you and your killer dog.’ He stood up and waited again. Nothing. Swaying on his feet, he kicked aside his sword, dagger and keys and stumbled over to where Griffyths lay in a widening pool of blood. He pushed aside the archer’s fallen sword, turned the corpse over and groaned. Griffyths’ face was smeared with blood, which had gushed from both nose and mouth. The crossbow bolt was embedded so deeply in the archer’s chest it was almost hidden, except for the feathers on the end of the wicked-looking quarrel. Corbett knelt and made the sign of the cross on the man’s forehead and whispered the ‘De Profundis’. Hands clasped, he prayed that the Welshman’s faithful soul would journey unchallenged into the realm of light. Then he sat back on his heels, glancing round this hateful church. He recognised what had happened. The murderer, that hideous assassin, had been hunting him. The serjeant-at-arms at Westminster had been wrong. Some evil killer had gone there to spy Corbett out. He’d withdrawn to lurk in the shadows, then pursued him and Griffyths to this desolate church. The assassin must have left the war hound quiet outside, followed them in through the corpse door, doused the torches and waited. Griffyths simply walked to his death. If Corbett had not been so fortunate, he would have met his out in that ghostly cemetery.

Corbett stumbled to his feet and went down the church to the small cask of holy water beside the baptismal bowl. He took off the lid and filled the ladle inside, then took it back and dripped the water over Griffyths’ corpse.

‘It’s the best I can do for the moment,’ he murmured. ‘I can do no more.’ He tossed the ladle to the ground and went across to the Lady Chapel, pausing on the steps leading into it. He’d noticed how one of the flagstones was smooth, recently replaced, but apart from that, he’d observed nothing untoward in this ghost-filled church.

‘It should be burnt,’ he murmured. ‘If I had my way, I would burn this house of blood and build anew.’