They went back round the abbey and collected their horses. Ranulf was still silent but now Cade became talkative, he seemed fascinated by the Lady Imelda and made even the withdrawn Ranulf smile at his graphic description of how the old noblewoman would not think twice about walking into the Guildhall to harangue the Mayor and aldermen on whatever caught her fancy. They mounted their horses and left by the northern gate. On the road outside Corbett stopped and looked back at the darkened mass of Westminster Abbey. He clenched the reins tightly. What evil lurked in that great abbey which had so frightened Father Benedict and the Lady Somerville? What had they known which had caused their savage deaths? Corbett stared up at a gargoyle and the stone creature seemed to lunge towards him.
‘When this business is finished,’ Corbett said, ‘the King needs to intervene here. There’s something rotten in our great abbey.’
He turned and spurred his horse into a canter. The cowled, hooded figure hiding in one of the abbey’s rooms above the Chapter House watched the three men ride off along Holborn. The watching figure clenched a set of rosary beads, smiled, then hissed with all the venom of a snake.
At The Bishop of Ely’s inn Corbett and his party stopped and dismounted. Cade left, dourly excusing himself for other duties. Corbett watched the under-sheriff turn right, into Shoe Lane.
‘What is wrong with Cade?’ he murmured. ‘Why is he so silent? What does he have to hide?’
Ranulf merely shrugged, so the clerk decided to move on. They joined the crowds pushing through Newgate as the road narrowed and became blocked with carts trundling into the city loaded with produce, fruit, rye, oats, slabs of red meat, squawking geese and chickens penned in wooden cages. The noise grew deafening as the huge dray horses plodded by, the wheels of the carts rumbling like claps of thunder and raising great clouds of dust. The air rang with strange oaths, sudden quarrels, the lash of whips and the jingle of harnesses. Corbett turned left just within the city gate, leading Ranulf down an alleyway strewn with broken cobbles which filled and blocked the sewer running down its middle. They had to walk slowly for sometimes the ground was broken by wide gaps and deep holes. Some were filled with bundles of broom and wood chip, others were cesspits full of night soil thrown out from the houses on either side.
‘Master, where are we going?’
‘St Bartholomew’s. I want to look into the soul of a murderer.’
Chapter 6
They crossed a street and went down another alleyway dark as night with the houses tightly packed together. The gables of the upper stories jutted out so far that they met each other and blocked out the sunlight. At last they reached Smithfield, the great open expanse still thronged with people attending the horse fair, particularly the rich, eager to bid in an auction for Barbary mares. Young gallants in thick doublets with fiercely padded shoulders and tight waists, their sleeves were puffed out in concoctions of velvet, satin and damask, their legs covered in tight, multi-coloured hose which emphasized the shape of the calf and the grandeur of their codpieces. On the arms of these fops rested ladies equally splendid in rich tapestry dresses, square-cut at the breast and gathered high with cords of silk; their head-dresses were ornate, billowing out above eyebrows and foreheads severely plucked of hair. Corbett smiled when he compared these with the Sisters of St Martha, with their sober attire and unpainted faces.
They struggled through the crowd, past the great charred execution stake where criminals were burnt to death, and entered the arched doorway of St Bartholomew’s hospital. They crossed an open yard, past stables, smithies and other outhouses to the hospital’s long, high vaulted hall which ran parallel to the priory church. An old soldier, now turned servant, basking in the warm afternoon sun, offered to guide them in. They went along corridors, past chambers, clean and well swept, the windows thrown open, the rushes on the floor fresh and sprinkled with herbs. In each chamber there were three or four beds and Corbett glimpsed sick men and women, heads pressed against crisp linen bolsters. In the main, these were the poor unfortunates of the city whom the brothers took in to tend, cure or at least provide their deaths with some dignity. The old soldier stopped and knocked at a door. A voice cried ‘Enter!’ and Corbett and Ranulf were ushered into a sparsely furnished chamber. The air was fragrant with the smell from pots and bowls of crushed herbs and other concoctions. The apothecary, Father Thomas, sat with his back to them, crouched over a table under the window.
‘Who is it?’ he asked; his voice testy at being disturbed from the root he was dissecting with a small, sharp knife.
‘We’ll go if you don’t want us, Father!’
The monk turned, a tall, ugly man yet his face was friendly.
‘Hugh! Ranulf!’ Father Thomas’s long horsey features broke into a smile. He rose and clasped the hand of the clerk he had known since their days at Oxford. Corbett gripped the monk’s hand tightly.
‘Sir Hugh, now, priest.’
Father Thomas bowed mockingly, greeted Ranulf and asked after Maeve. He then turned back to taunt Ranulf, who smiled but did not indulge in the usual banter he so characteristically directed at close friends and acquaintances. Father Thomas pulled stools out.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Corbett replied. He hadn’t eaten since the small bowl of meat earlier in the day and he had vomited most of that in the cemetery of St Lawrence Jewry. Father Thomas went to the door, opened it and shouted down the corridor. A few minutes later a lay brother entered with small freshly baked loaves wrapped in linen and two blackjacks of brimming frothy ale.
‘I brewed it myself,’ Father Thomas announced proudly.
Corbett tasted the cool, tangy ale and smiled appreciatively whilst Ranulf murmured his approval.
‘Well,’ Thomas sat opposite him. ‘How can I help, Hugh? More murder? Some rare poison?’
‘No, Thomas, I want you to let me look into the soul of a killer. You have heard of the prostitutes being killed and Lady Somerville’s murder?’
‘Yes, yes, I have.’
‘I understand Lady Somerville called here on the night she died?’
‘Yes, she did that.’
Corbett leaned forward. ‘So, Father, what kind of man haunts whores, slits their throats then mutilates their sexual parts?’
Father Thomas made a face. ‘Hugh, I know digitalis affects the heart, but how. .?’ He shook his head. ‘I know red arsenic in minor doses will ease stomach complaints but, if large doses are administered, it rips the stomach out. How and why, I cannot tell you. So, when it comes to the mind, the brain, the spirit, I am ignorant.’ He drew in his breath, turned and picked up a yellowing skull from his desk. He held it out in the palm of his hand. ‘Look, Hugh, this skull once housed a brain. In the palm of my hand I hold a receptacle which once had the power to laugh, cry, tell stories, sing, perhaps plumb divine mysteries or plan the building of a great cathedral.’ Father Thomas put the yellowing skull on the ground beside him. ‘When I studied at Salerno I met Arab physicians who claimed the human mind, the contents of the skull I have just shown you, the working of the brain, are as much a mystery as the nature of God.’
He rearranged his gown as he warmed to his theme. ‘To put it bluntly, Hugh, these physicians had a number of theories. First, all physical disease comes from the mind. They even argue that people who are cured by miracles actually heal themselves. They also point out that, as the body is affected by what it eats and drinks, the mind is influenced by what it experiences. Some men are born with cleft palates or malformed limbs. Perhaps some men are born with twisted minds with a desire to kill?’