‘She said she would come when she was ready,’ Chanson replied.
‘Oh, good.’ Corbett turned back. Marissa was still shivering, and he put his cup down and went across to the cloaks hanging on a peg. He took one down and draped it over Marissa’s shoulders.
‘You’re most kind.’ She preened herself.
‘It is yours,’ Corbett replied. He took two coins from his purse and handed one to each of them. Martin accepted reluctantly. Marissa snatched hers, then drew the cloak close to her, treasuring the coin; she was flattered by the attention of this King’s man who allowed her to sit so close to a fire and drink posset from a pewter goblet. Corbett, glancing down, saw a penny whistle lying on the floor, one Chanson used. He picked it up and absentmindedly put it in his wallet.
‘You said Phillipa was a strange one?’
‘Oh yes,’ Marissa replied, ‘full of herself. She claimed one of the outlaws, a mysterious man she called the Goliard, loved her, and said how they would meet under the forest greenery. She claimed he was a landless knight living in his own castle in the forest.’ Marissa put a hand to her face and giggled. ‘We said she was living in her dreams.’
‘Were you close to her?’
‘No. Some of the others may have been.’
‘And when did she go missing?’
Marissa closed her eyes. ‘On that Sunday when we gave thanks for the harvest. The weather was lovely. I remember seeing her in the cemetery after Mass, then she disappeared. We thought she had gone into the forest to meet her Goliard.’
‘Did you take part in the search?’ Corbett asked the man-at-arms.
‘Yes, I did. From the forest down to the sea. We found nothing. And now, sir,’ Martin scraped back the stool, ‘I truly must go.’
‘Before you do,’ Corbett lifted a hand, ‘did you have a trysting place?’
‘A what?’
‘A secret place,’ Bolingbroke explained, ‘where a man might meet the lady of his heart.’
‘There’s some ruins,’ the man-at-arms replied, ‘at the far wall beyond the keep. A passageway leading down to the dungeons and cellars; it was our place.’ He ignored Marissa’s giggle. ‘I’ve been down there, it’s deserted.’
He was about to leave when there was a knock at the door and Mistress Feyner came bustling in, the sleeves of her gown pulled back to her elbows, her hands and wrists red raw. She totally ignored Marissa and Martin and, without being asked, flounced down on a stool in front of the fire. When Bolingbroke served her some posset from a goblet kept in the inglenook, she snatched it from his hands.
‘I can’t be here long. Are you asking these two about my daughter?’ She drank greedily from the cup. ‘If you have questions about Phillipa then ask me.’
‘She was last seen on the Sunday in the cemetery after Mass.’
‘Yes, she was. She told me she was going to collect flowers.’
‘Not to meet the man known as Goliard?’
Mistress Feyner threw a venomous glance at Marissa, and yet the way she moved her lips and blinked, Corbett could see she was on the verge of tears. She handed him her cup and got to her feet. ‘Don’t worry about Goliard,’ she whispered. ‘My poor Phillipa was lonely.’
‘But she claimed to meet him.’
‘Yes, yes, she did.’ Mistress Feyner rubbed her hands down her gown. ‘I can’t tell you sir, I truly can’t. My Phillipa has gone and so have the rest; now they are searching for poor Alusia.’
‘This trysting place,’ Corbett asked, ‘the passageway leading down to the old dungeons?’
‘That’s a favourite place.’ Mistress Feyner smiled. ‘We searched it for Phillipa as we have for Alusia; there is nothing there. There’s never anything there,’ she added as an afterthought.
‘I must visit it,’ Corbett declared. ‘Perhaps I will meet Ranulf! Mistress Feyner?’ He took her hand in his, letting her grasp the concealed coin. ‘I thank you for your pains.’
Once the three had left, Corbett put on his boots and took his heavy cloak from the peg, fastening the clasp under his chin.
‘I wish to walk this castle; I want to see what’s happening.’ He nodded to Bolingbroke and Chanson, then paused. ‘Chanson, for the love of God, go and find Ranulf. Tell him I want to speak to him before we meet the French, before we sup this evening.’
Corbett went down the freezing cold staircase and out into the bailey. Here and there sconce torches flickered bravely against the darkness. People ran across, moving hastily from one shelter to another, eager to escape from the chilling wind. Corbett pulled the hood over his head and walked around the keep. On one occasion he stopped, staring up at the masonry soaring into the skies, a forbidding, massive rectangle of stone. At various levels torches and candles glowed from the arrow slit windows. He walked along the side of the keep, passing through the small village where the castle folk lived in their wattle-and-daub cottages built against the walls and towers. A busy place, children still ran screaming about, dancing around the bonfires and makeshift braziers. The air was full of cooking aromas, the smell of tanned leather, the stench of horse manure and the sweet fragrance of hay from the barns. Now and again someone called out a greeting and Corbett lifted his hand in reply. He paused to talk to some of the men-at-arms and asked where the passageway was. They pointed deeper into the darkness.
Corbett was now on the other side of the keep. He climbed the brow of the hill which gave the keep its dominating aspect and walked through what must be the gardens of the castle, hidden under their cover of snow, down more steps, stumbling and slipping as he crossed what seemed to be a wasteland of snow and gorse only to realise it must be the castle warren. There were few buildings here: outhouses with empty windows and a few makeshift bothies. Nearby stood the engines of war, two catapults and a large mangonel. Above him on the parapet Corbett could see the sentries, only a few here, standing beneath torches lashed to poles. On the breeze he caught the faint strains of a song a soldier was singing to amuse himself. At last he reached the curtain wall and, going along the wasteland, found the crumbling passageway leading down to what must have been old cellars and dungeons carved out beneath the castle walls like a crypt in a church.
The steps were uneven, made more treacherous by the icy snow. Corbett held his breath as he went down, regretting that he had not brought a cresset torch. They were too steep. Corbett, cursing, clung to the wall and edged his way down. At the bottom the passageway ran on a little further. His hand felt the wall, and he sighed with relief as his fingers touched the thick tallow candle either left by the cellar man or, perhaps, brought by the lovers who met there. He took his own tinder from his pocket and, after a great deal of effort, lit the thick wick. Cupping the flame in his hand, he held the candle up. The walls of the narrow passageway stretched before him, shadows dancing in the candlelight, the beaten earth ending in a fall of masonry. Corbett walked forward, studying the ground carefully, but could find nothing. He returned to the steps and paused. The snow had turned into a muddy slush and he could tell that people had been here, probably looking for Alusia. He climbed the steps carefully. His search was futile, yet this was a lonely place. If a young woman had come here by herself and the killer had been waiting . . .
Corbett reached the top step and, cupping the candle, was about to walk through the ruined stone entrance when he missed his footing and slipped, just as the crossbow bolt smashed into the crumbling masonry above him.
From the flashing and fury of certain igneous substances, and the terror inspired by their noise, certain wonderful consequences follow.
Chapter 8
Ranulf of Newgate, Clerk of the Chancery of the Green Wax, was very pleased and self-satisfied. He had, by mere chance as he told himself, met the Lady Constance and her maid when he returned to the solar to find something he had lost. Of course he never mentioned that he had paid a groom a silver coin to keep him apprised of where the Lady Constance was. Now, with her maid perched strategically on a stool near the door, Ranulf was attempting to show Lady Constance the wonders of the miraculous coin trick so beloved of the cunning men at Smithfield Fair.