‘Oh, please no! Please no!’
He heard the click and, before he could move, he took the crossbow bolt full in his stomach. Senex crouched down, his fingers curling in pain, grasping the dirt. He couldn’t move. He tried to edge forward but then he saw the boots. He looked up and, as he did, the great two-handled axe took his head off, clean and sheer.
The next morning, just after dawn, journeyman Taldo, making his way out of Oxford towards Banbury, came across Senex’s corpse. It lay beneath an old holm tree and, from one of the branches stretched across the path, hung the old beggar’s severed head.
Chapter 3
On the day after Taldo had hurried back to Oxford to report his grisly findings to the sheriff, Sir Hugh Corbett, Ranulf and Maltote entered the city. An early downpour of rain had drenched the streets and cleaned the runnels and alleyways, dulling the rotten odour from the middens. Corbett, his cowl pulled back, let his horse find its way through the dirty packed streets of the university town. They’d entered by the south gate but, instead of going straight towards the castle or Sparrow Hall, Corbett took Ranulf and Maltote along the byways and alleyways so they could grasp the feel of the city. Corbett himself felt a little nostalgic. It had been years since he’d returned: now, the sight, sounds and smells brought back the glorious days of his youth. A happy, carefree time when Corbett had lived in shabby apartments and thronged with the rest of the bachelors, students and scholars down to the bleak rooms of the Schools to hear the Masters lecture on rhetoric, logic, theology and philosophy.
Corbett found his return eerie: despite the passing of the years, nothing seemed to have changed. Peasants from the outskirts of Oxford tried to force their way through with heavy wheeled carts or sodden sumpter ponies laden with produce for the city markets. As he passed the open doorways of shabby tenements, Corbett glimpsed children and beldames warming their knees before the fire, and sullen lamps glowing in the darkness. On every street the houses huddled on either side, interspersed by a tangle of alleyways and trackways still rough and slippery after the rains. Nevertheless, as always in Oxford, the streets were thronged. Merchants in fur-lined robes marched purposefully in their high, leather Moroccan boots. Servitors went before them to brush aside screaming children or barking dogs. Franciscans, Dominicans and Carmelites made their way to their respective houses: some walked in devout silence, others were as noisy and chattering as magpies. On a corner a gong cart, full of dung and ordure from the sewers, was now being used as a punishment post. A fellow who had sold faulty cloth had been forced to stand waist-deep in the dung whilst lashed to the wheels were other traders found guilty by a Pie Powder court of selling rotten meat, tawdry goods or trying to break the price code set by the market beadles. Next to this, a dog-whipper, the cage on his cart full of fighting, snapping curs, was formally arresting a lean-ribbed mongrel whilst a group of scruffy urchins screamed abuse and claimed the dog belonged to them. The dog-whipper, his sulphurous face ablaze with fury, cursed and yelled back.
Corbett sighed and dismounted, telling Ranulf and Maltote to do likewise. They took a short cut up Eel Pie Lane which led them on to the High Road. Here Corbett ran into roaming bands of scholars, wags, braggarts, hedge-creepers and rascals from the University, all dressed in their tawdry finery: the short gowns of the bachelors, the tattered hose and shabby jackets of the commoners. The air rang with the noise of different accents and tongues as students spilled out of the Halls or the lecture chambers of the schools. Lost in their own world, the scholars shouted and sang, pushed and shoved each other, totally oblivious of the good citizens and burgesses of the city. These passed the scholars with muttered curses and looks of disdain. Here and there some Masters or lecturers strutted like geese, heads swathed in woollen hoods lined with silk, which proclaimed their status and importance. Behind them beggar scholars, youths unable to pay the fees, staggered along carrying books or other baggage for their masters. Beadles and proctors, the disciplinarians of the University, also strode by wielding lead-tipped, ash cudgels. As they passed the students fell silent, though their presence did little else to curb their high spirits and boisterousness.
Corbett paused, wrapping the reins round his hands, staring up and down the High Street. This had changed: there were more houses on either side, so densely packed that their gables met to block out the light. Pushed in between these, were the cottages of the poorer folk, padded with reeds, straw or shingles which the rain had turned to a soggy mess. The market stalls on either side of the High Road had now re-opened after the downpour and were doing a busy trade. Jostled and pushed, Corbett had to move on. Behind him Ranulf lifted one boot and groaned: the mud and dirt were ankle-deep and he looked pityingly at a group of urchins who, despite the weather, were playing in mud half-way up their legs. Ranulf bit back a curse. He would have loved to have roared his irritation at Corbett trudging so stoically ahead of him but the noise was growing more deafening. Corbett abruptly turned left, going down a sordid alleyway. It was quieter here and, when he led them into the yard of the Red Lattice tavern, Ranulf sighed with pleasure. He joyously threw his reins at a surly ostler who came out quietly cursing at these new arrivals who’d disturbed his rest.
‘Something to eat and drink,’ Ranulf murmured, rubbing his stomach, ‘would satisfy the inner man.’
‘Just a little wine,’ Corbett retorted. Ignoring Ranulf’s black looks he led them into the musty taproom. They stood by the door drinking quickly before going back into the streets.
‘What are we doing?’ Ranulf pushed alongside Corbett. ‘Where are we going, Master?’
‘I want to show you the city,’ Corbett retorted. ‘I want you to feel it in your brain as well as your belly.’ He paused and beckoned his companions closer. ‘Oxford is a world unto itself,’ he explained. ‘It is a city made up of small villages which are the Halls or Colleges. Each stands in its own ground and has its own workshops, dorters, forges and stables.’ He pointed down the street where Ranulf and Maltote could glimpse a great metal-studded gate in the high curtain wall. ‘That’s Eagle Hall and there are numerous others. Each has its own privileges, traditions and history. They take students from France, Hainault, Spain, the German States and even further east. The Halls dislike each other; the University hates the town; the town resents the University. Violence is rife, knives are ever at the ready. Sometimes you may have to flee and — ’ he added,‘- to know in which direction you are fleeing, could save your life.’
‘But you are the King’s clerk,’ Maltote spoke up, stroking the muzzle of his horse. ‘They’ll obey the King’s writ?’
‘They couldn’t give a fig,’ Corbett replied. ‘Let’s say we were attacked now, who’d come to our assistance? Or later stand up as a witness?’ He punched Ranulf playfully on the shoulder. ‘Keep your cowl pulled, your face down and your hand well away from your dagger.’
They went along the High Street and stood aside as a church door opened: scholars, in shabby tabards tied round the waist by cords and leather straps, burst out from the noonday Mass. As Ranulf whispered, the service seemed to have had little effect on them. The scholars jostled and shoved each other, bawling raucously, some even sang blasphemous parodies of the hymns they had just chanted. Despite the wet and the jostling crowds, Corbett persisted in showing his two companions the layout of the city. At last they returned, past the Swindlestock tavern, making their way gingerly around the gaping sewer in Carfax and into Great Bailey Street, which led up into the castle.