‘Is it always like this?’ Ranulf whispered.
Any reply Corbett made was drowned by the strident street cries which cut the air.
‘Hot peas!’ ‘Small coals!’ ‘New brooms!’ ‘Green brooms!’ ‘Bread and meat for the Lord’s sake for the poor prisoners of the Bocardo!’
Beggars grasping their flat dishes swarmed like fleas. Costermongers sold bright apples from the city orchards and, on the market cross, chanteurs were locked in bitter rivalry over giving news or singing songs. Even the whores and their pimps, the cross-biters, were out looking for business. Everywhere students, some dressed in samite, others in rags, swaggered in groups, narrow-eyed, their hands never far from the hilts of their daggers.
Corbett stopped at the Merry Maidens tavern and told Ranulf to go in and hire a room which they might use later on. Once this was done, they continued to push across Carfax and down a narrow, foul lane to St Osyth’s Hospital, a shabby, three-storeyed tenement which stood behind its own curtain wall. The gateway was packed with beggars. In the cobbled yard a weary-looking lay brother, dressed in a brown robe with a dirty cord round the middle, was distributing hard rye bread to a group of beggars. They lined up before a wooden table where two other brothers were serving steaming bowls of meat and vegetables. Corbett and Ranulf made their way through.
‘I have never seen a place like this,’ Ranulf whispered. ‘Not even in London.’
Corbett could only agree. There must have been at least a hundred beggars there, some of them young and sprightly, most old and bent and clothed in rags. In the main they were former soldiers, still suffering the horrible wounds of war: a face scalded by boiling oil; an eye missing with the socket closed up; legs twisted and bent; a myriad of men on makeshift crutches. Corbett was struck by something he had seen in other hospitals: despite their age, wounds and poverty, these men were determined to live, to snatch whatever remained from life. In a way, he concluded, the murder of such men was much more cruel than the assassin’s work at Sparrow Hall. These were innocents: men who, despite the overwhelming odds, still fought on.
‘Can I help you?’
Corbett turned round. The voice was soft and gentle but the man who had spoken was tall and squat. He was dressed in a brown Franciscan robe, his head neatly tonsured but his face looked like that of a friendly toad, with constantly blinking eyes and fat lips gaped into a smile.
‘I am sorry I’m ugly,’ the Franciscan declared. He patted Corbett on the shoulder, his hand like that of a bear’s paw. ‘I can see the thought in your eyes, sir. I am ugly to man but, perhaps, God thinks otherwise.’
‘I am looking for Father Guardian,’ Corbett said. ‘And no man who works amongst the poor can be ugly.’
The friar grasped Corbett’s hand and shook it vigorously.
‘You should be a bloody Franciscan,’ he growled. ‘Who the hell are you anyway?’
Corbett explained.
‘Well, I’m Brother Angelo,’ the friar replied. ‘I’m also Father Guardian. This is my manor, my palace.’ He looked up, narrowing his eyes against the sun. ‘We feed two hundred beggars a day,’ he continued. ‘But you are not here to help us, are you, Corbett? And you certainly haven’t brought gold from the King?’
He waved Corbett up the steps into the hospital and led him into his cell, a narrow, white-washed chamber. Corbett and Ranulf sat on the bed whilst Father Angelo squatted on a stool beside them.
‘You’re here about the Bellman, aren’t you? We’ve all heard about that mad bastard and the deaths at Sparrow Hall.’
‘The King has also heard about the deaths here at St Osyth’s, or rather-’ Corbett added hastily as the smile faded from the Franciscan’s face ‘- the corpses found in the woods outside the city.’
‘We know little of that,’ Brother Angelo confessed. ‘Look around, master clerk; these are poor men, decrepit, old beggars. Who, on God’s earth, could be so cruel to them? There’s neither rhyme nor reason to it,’ he added. ‘I cannot help you.’
‘You’ve heard no rumours?’ Corbett asked.
Brother Angelo shook his head. ‘Nothing except Godric’s wild rantings,’ he murmured. ‘But you see, Corbett, men come and go here as they please. They beg in the city streets. They are helpless, easy prey for anyone’s malice or hatred.’
‘Do you remember Brakespeare?’ Corbett asked. ‘A soldier, a former officer in the King’s army?’
‘There are so many,’ Brother Angelo apologised, shaking his head. He glanced at Ranulf. ‘You have the look of a fighting man.’ He pointed to Ranulf’s sword, dagger and leather boots. ‘You walk with a swagger.’ He leaned across and nipped the skin of Ranulf’s knuckle. ‘Go outside, young man, and see your future. Once they too swaggered under the sun. But come on. I’ll find old Godric for you.’
He led them out, down a white-washed passageway, up some stairs and into a long dormitory. The room was austere, yet the walls and floor had been well scrubbed and smelt of soap and sweet herbs. A row of beds stood on either wall with a stool on one side and a small, rough-hewn table on the other. Most of the occupants were asleep or dozing fitfully. Lay brothers moved from bed to bed, wiping hands and faces in preparation for the early morning meal.
Ranulf hung back. ‘I’ll not be a beggar,’ he whispered. ‘Master, I’ll either hang or be rich.’
‘Just be careful,’ Corbett quipped back, ‘that you are not both rich and hanged!’
‘Come on!’ Brother Angelo waved them over to a bed where a man was propped up against the bolsters: he was balding, his face lined and grey with exhaustion though his eyes were lively.
‘This is Godric,’ Brother Angelo explained, ‘a long-time member of my parish. A man who has begged in London, Canterbury, Dover and even at Berwick on the Scottish march. Very well, Godric.’ Brother Angelo tapped him on his bald pate. ‘Tell our visitors what you have seen.’
Godric turned his head. ‘I’ve been out in the woods,’ he whispered.
‘Which woods?’ Corbett asked.
‘Oh, to the north, to the south, to the east of the city,’ Godric replied.
‘And what have you seen, old man?’
‘God be my witness,’ the beggar replied. ‘But I’ve seen hellfire and the devil and all his troupe dancing in the bright moonlight. Listen to what I say-’ he grasped Corbett’s hand ‘- the Lord Satan has come to Oxford!’
Chapter 7
Corbett laid his hand over that of the beggar.
‘What devils?’ he asked.
‘Out in the woods,’ Godric replied. ‘Dancing round Beltane’s fires! Wearing goat skins, they were!’
‘And did you see any blood?’ Corbett asked.
‘On their hands and faces. Oh yes,’ Godric continued. ‘You see, sir, when I was greener, I was a poacher. I can go out and hunt the rabbit and take a plump cock pheasant without blinking. Since early spring this year I’ve tried my luck again and twice I saw the devils dance.’
‘How many devils?’ Corbett asked.