‘Pax vobiscum, Brother!’ he called out and sighed with relief as the figure started and turned, one hand going up to push back the cowl. Corbett recognised Brother Dunstan the treasurer. The monk leapt to his feet, hands flailing. Corbett could see he had been crying.
‘Brother Dunstan, this is a cold and lonely place to meditate and pray!’
The monk, feet slipping on the wet grass, made his way forward.
‘I thought you were at the chapter meeting! Brother, what is the matter?’
Brother Dunstan’s eyes were swollen from crying. The man raised a hand to brush away the tears from his cheek, displaying a row of fingernails bitten to the quick.
‘We are going to die, aren’t we, clerk?’
Corbett stared round the monk and noticed the small wine-skin lying on the grass.
‘Brother Dunstan, we are all going to die: that doesn’t mean we must camp out in the cemetery and wait for it to happen.’
‘I didn’t attend the chapter meeting,’ Brother Dunstan slurred. ‘What’s the use, Sir Hugh? I brought some wine here and decided to think.’
‘Is there any left?’
The monk grinned and stepped back. He picked up the wineskin and tossed it over. Corbett lifted the wineskin. He drank and handed it back.
‘Remember the good book: a little wine gladdens the heart but too much dulls the soul. Brother Dunstan, you sat there like a man the world has forgotten.’
‘I am worried, I truly am.’ Brother Dunastan grasped the wineskin as if it was a precious relic. ‘The news of these deaths will soon spread. Pilgrims won’t come. Merchants will be reluctant to stay. Moreover, when the King hears. .’
‘It will pass,’ Corbett reassured him. ‘You are frightened about the abbey’s revenues?’
Brother Dunstan nodded quickly.
You’re lying, Corbett thought: this abbey is rich and powerful enough to withstand a year-long siege.
‘What are you truly worried about, Brother?’
The monk looked away. ‘Sin!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Sin!’ Brother Dunstan repeated. ‘It’s true what the proverb says, isn’t it, clerk? Your sins will find you out.’
‘What sins?’
‘Abbot Stephen was a good father. He was strict yet gentle and kind.’ Brother Dunstan glanced back towards the massed buildings of St Martin’s. ‘He knew our sins but was compassionate.’
‘Did you confess to him?’ Corbett asked.
Brother Dunstan nodded. ‘He shrived me and gave me good counsel.’ The monk’s watery eyes came up. ‘He was a good priest, clerk. I have never met his like before. Now we shall be punished for our sins.’
‘First, what do you mean, his like?’ Corbett stepped closer.
‘It was almost,’ Brother Dunstan bit his lip, ‘almost as if he believed there was no sin.’ He glimpsed Corbett’s puzzlement. ‘You’d have to listen to him to know what I mean.’
‘And yet he was an exorcist?’ Corbett demanded. ‘He believed in Satan and all his power.’
‘I know, I know, it’s a conundrum.’
‘Did Abbot Stephen have a father confessor?’
‘Yes, yes, he did.’ Brother Dunstan’s fingers went to his lips. ‘He told me once that sometimes he confessed to a priest he met on his journeys but there was also someone in the abbey. Ah yes, Brother Luke! He used to be the infirmarian here, and is now almost a hundred years old! Brother Luke says he can remember King John when he progressed through Norfolk. Old Luke! A sharp mind in an ageing body!’
Corbett promised himself that he would seek this old one out.
‘It’s beginning to snow,’ Brother Dunstan declared.
White, soft flakes were lazily floating down. The sky was now low, a dark grey.
‘It will be a cold night,’ Brother Dunstan whispered.
Corbett looked back towards the soaring towers, spires and gables of St Martin’s-in-the-Marsh. Strange, he mused, how a place can change. When he’d first approached the gatehouse, the abbey had seemed welcoming, a pleasant refuge from the wilderness which surrounded it. Now it looked sinister, forbidding, even threatening.
‘I am cold,’ Brother Dunstan murmured, stamping his feet. ‘Sir Hugh, are you walking back?’
Corbett agreed. They crossed the field; the snowfall was now heavy.
‘What did you mean,’ Corbett asked, ‘about Abbot Stephen almost believing there was no sin? You called it a conundrum.’
Brother Dunstan pulled up his cowl. Corbett wondered if it was as much to hide his face as for protection against the biting wind.
‘This is only a thought, Sir Hugh.’ The treasurer measured his words. ‘Philosophers argue about the existence of God. Sometimes I had the impression that Abbot Stephen had gone the other way, that it was almost easier for him to discover the spiritual life through the world of demons, though I wouldn’t dare say that to our community.’
‘So, Abbot Stephen saw the rite of exorcism as a journey into the darkness?’
‘Why not?’ Brother Dunstan laughed abruptly. ‘We live in a sea of evil, Sir Hugh: murder, rape, theft, lawlessness.’ He sighed. ‘You very rarely meet an Angel of Light.’
Corbett was about to continue the discussion when the Judas gate was abruptly thrown open and Brother Perditus appeared waving his hands.
‘Sir Hugh, you’d best come!’
‘Oh no!’ Brother Dunstan murmured. ‘Not another death!’
‘What is it?’ Corbett shouted.
Perditus just gestured at him to hurry. Corbett quickened his stride. The lay brother stood agitated.
‘I bear a message from Brother Aelfric. You must come, he wishes to show you something.’
He led them back through the Judas gate and across the abbey grounds. Aelfric was at the back of the infirmary where a stout shed had been built against the wall. Corbett entered the Death House. Inside it was warm: braziers glowed in the darkness; the hooded candles gleamed and oil lamps threw shifting pools of light. The Death House contained five or six long tables. Hamo and Taverner’s corpses occupied two, and heavy canvas sheeting covered them both.
‘I came back from the chapter meeting,’ Aelfric explained taking a candle, ‘and I noticed the door to the Death House was off the latch. Sir Hugh, look at this!’
He pulled back the sheets covering Hamo and Taverner and lowered the candle to reveal a hideous ‘V’ mark branded into the forehead of each corpse.
‘God and his angels!’ Corbett exclaimed. ‘The assassin has a malevolence all his own. He has come back to claim the corpses — brand them as his own!’
‘How could it be done?’ Perditus whispered.
Corbett pointed to the brazier. ‘It would only take a few seconds. The branding iron would be heated, and then the forehead marked.’ He turned to a bucket of water just near the door. ‘The iron was probably cooled in that. The courtyard outside is quiet, so the assassin would hear if anyone was around.’
‘True,’ Aelfric agreed. ‘And very few people come here. It’s not till the bodies are formally laid out that the community gathers to pay its respects.’
Corbett pulled the sheets back over the bodies. He turned to find Aelfric, Dunstan and Perditus standing in the doorway. The dancing light made them look sinister, secretive.