‘On the King’s authority!’ he shouted. ‘I want that door clean off its hinges!’
Limmer hurried off.
‘And some others had better bring a ladder!’ Corbett called. ‘The longest they can find!’
Corbett stood, looking at the treasury door waiting for the soldiers to return. Behind him, Ranulf and Maltote muttered dark warnings, William of Senche was gibbering with fright. Brother Richard lounged against the wall, arms folded, whilst the sacristan just stood like a sleep-walker drained of all emotion.
The soldiers returned. Six carried a very heavy church bench and behind them two more held a long thin ladder. Corbett stepped aside; Limmer pushed the three prisoners away; and the archers, thoroughly enjoying their task, drove their battering ram against the great door. Backwards and forwards they swung the heavy bench until the crashes reverberated through the empty abbey like the tolling of a bell. At first the door withstood the attack but then Limmer told them to concentrate on the far edge where the hinges fitted into the wall. Again the soldiers attacked and Corbett began to hear the wood creak and groan. One of the hinges broke loose and the soldiers stopped for a rest, panting and sweating before resuming their task. At last the door began to buckle. With another crash, followed by an ear-splitting crack, the door creaked and snapped free of its hinges. The archers heaved it to one side, snapping the heavy bolts and lock, and Corbett stepped into the low, dark stone-vaulted passage. A candle was brought and having ordered the sconce torches on the wall to be lit, Corbett grasped one.
‘Limmer, leave two, no, three archers to guard the prisoners, the rest follow me but walk carefully! The passageway is steep and ends in stairs but they have been smashed away. Take care!’ He turned. ‘Oh, by the way, where is Cade?’ Corbett realised how the under-sheriff had kept very much in the background.
‘He’s outside,’ Ranulf muttered.
‘Then bring him in!’
They waited until Ranulf returned with Cade, who stood astounded at the broken treasury door.
‘Sweet Lord, Master Clerk!’ he whispered. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing!’
‘Sweet Lord!’ Corbett mimicked. ‘I think I am the only one who does!’
They went down the passageway, the flames of the torches making their shadows dance on the walls; their footsteps sounded hollow and echoed like the beating of some ghostly drum. Corbett stopped abruptly and pushed the torch forward. Suddenly the passageway ended, and he edged forward gingerly, crouching and waving the torch above the darkened crypt below. The staircase was there — well, at least the first four steps — then it fell away into darkness. The ladder was brought, lowered and, once it was secured, Corbett carefully descended, with one hand on the rung, the other holding the torch away from his face and hair. He looked up, where the others were ringed in a pool of light.
‘Leave two archers there!’ he called. ‘And come down. Bring as many torches as you can!’
He reached the bottom and waited while the archers, with a great deal of muttering and cursing, came to join him. More torches were lit and as their eyes became accustomed to the light they glanced around. The crypt was a huge, empty cavern, the only break being the central column which, Corbett deduced, was the lower part of the great pillar rising to support the high soaring vaults of the Chapter House above. He sucked in his breath. Was he going to be right? Then he glimpsed it: the precious glint of gold and silver plate from half-open coffers, chests and caskets.
‘Surely, they should be locked?’ Cade muttered, seeing them at the same time as Corbett did. He ran across to one. ‘Yes! Yes!’ he said excitedly. ‘The padlocks have been broken!’ He held his torch lower. ‘Look, Sir Hugh, there’s candle grease on the ground.’ He edged towards a white blob of wax. ‘It’s fairly recent!’ he cried.
The others dispersed, examining the various caskets and chests. Some of them had their locks broken, others had been smashed with an iron crowbar or axe, and the contents had been rifled. But none was empty.
‘The crypt has been plundered!’ Corbett announced. ‘Some plate has been taken! But that is bulky, cumbersome and unwieldy and very difficult to sell. Look!’
He pulled from a chest a small silver dish encrusted round the rim with red rubies. He held it close to the flame of his torch. ‘This is engraved with the goldsmith’s hallmark and the arms of the royal household. Only a fool would try to sell this. And our thief is no fool.’
He went back to stare at the great pillar and noticed that portions of the column had been cut away by a stone mason to form a series of neatly made recesses. Corbett put his hand into one of these and drew out a tattered empty sack. ‘By all the saints!’ he muttered. ‘Everyone. Here!’ He held up the tattered remnants of the bag. ‘Our thief did not come for the plate but for the newly minted coins of gold and silver. I suspect these recesses were once full of bags of coins and now they have all gone. These sacks were the thief’s quarry.’
‘But how did he get in?’ Cade asked.
Corbett walked over to the grey mildewed wall of the crypt, built with great slabs of granite.
‘Well,’ Corbett murmured, his words echoing through the darkened vault. ‘We know the thief could not come from above. He certainly didn’t come through the door.’ He tapped his boot on the hard concrete floor. ‘From below is impossible, so he must have burrowed through the wall.’
‘That would take months,’ Limmer answered.
‘You’ve been at a siege?’ Corbett asked.
The soldier nodded.
‘These walls are thirteen feet thick. No different from many castles. How would a commander breach such a wall?’
‘Well, a battering ram would be useless. He would probably try and dig a hole, a tunnel beginning at the far side of the wall under the foundations and up.’
‘And if that didn’t work?’
‘He would attack the wall itself. But that would take a long time.’
‘I think our thief had plenty of time,’ Corbett muttered. ‘I want you to examine the wall with your torches. If the flame flutters from a violent draught, that’s the place.’
It took only a few minutes before Ranulf’s excited yell, from behind some overturned chests, attracted their attention. Corbett and the others examined the place, and Ranulf pushed against the stone.
‘It’s loose!’ he said. ‘Look!’ He pointed to the mounds of dusty plaster around the foot of the wall.
‘Oh, Lord!’ Corbett whispered. ‘I know what he’s done.’ He tapped the wall. ‘On the other side of this is what?’
‘The old cemetery.’
‘Let’s go there.’
They rescaled the ladder. Corbett ordered the archers to guard it whilst, outside the door, the three prisoners stood silent and forlorn, their hands and feet quickly bound. Corbett and the others, at a half-run, went out of the abbey and into the old cemetery. They had to wade through the waist-high hempen coarse grass and other shrubs before they stood before the walls of the crypt. Here the signs of an intruder were more apparent: a broken spade, a rusting mattock, pieces of old sacking and Ranulf even found a silver noble shining amongst the weeds. Corbett tried to visualise the inside of the crypt and pointed to a fallen, battered headstone.
‘Pick that up!’ he said.
The stone was easily shifted to one side, revealing a hole large enough for a man to go down. Corbett looked round and grinned to hide his own nervousness. He could not stand such enclosed spaces and knew what terrors would assail him if he got stuck or was unable to turn. He shrugged uneasily.
‘I have a fear of such places,’ he whispered.
Ranulf needed no second bidding but, on hands and knees, wriggled down the hole, Corbett heard him scuffling down the tunnel like some fox returning to its earth. After a few tense minutes Ranulf returned, covered in dirt, but smiling from ear to ear.
‘The tunnel gets wider as you approach the base of the wall.’