‘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.