‘Who, why, when?’
‘Drokensford does not know, but apparently the Temple will take what they regard as theirs and not twiddle their thumbs waiting for either Scrope or the King. They must also know we are here.’ Corbett grinned. ‘Perhaps they have spies in our own chancery, or suspect our real purpose for visiting here.’
‘Lord Scrope himself could have told them about our arrival and what we intend.’
‘Possibly,’ Corbett conceded. ‘Out of sheer malice Scrope might want the Sanguis Christi returned to the Temple rather than to the King.’
‘And the second item?’
‘Drokensford doesn’t know if this is relevant or not, but according to the records, our plunderer of the royal treasury, John Le Riche, hailed from Caernarvon and served amongst Edward’s royal troop of Welsh archers.’
‘So he was a master bowman. He could be the Sagittarius.’
‘Correct,’ Corbett breathed. ‘That is, if he is still alive. Now, Ranulf, let’s put pen to paper.’
Corbett rose and gestured at the chair he’d left. Ranulf sat down and busied himself. He watched as Corbett began to walk up and down. You love this, Ranulf reflected, you adore the Lady Maeve and your children but this is different. You want to resolve problems and mysteries, dig out the truth, apply logic as sharply as a farmer prunes a plant with a knife.
Ranulf opened one of the pots and stirred the red ink with the tip of his pen. He recalled the King’s eyes at Westminster, that writ hidden away in a secret coffer, then Lady Hawisa’s beautiful face. Would the King grant him Mistleham if they were successful? he wondered. If Lord Scrope died? Such a prize, only a knife-thrustaway: to be a great manor lord! For a brief moment Ranulf thought of himself as a boy in a ragged tunic, racing along the foul runnels of Cheapside. So much had changed. A brief moment of time and all was different; a sudden act of mercy by Corbett. But that was how the dice fell. Life could change so abruptly. An arrow or dagger brought death or, there again, riches and preferment.
‘Ranulf? Ranulf?’
He glanced up. Corbett was staring at him curiously with those sharp dark eyes.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘Time, master.’ Ranulf laughed. ‘How time can change someone’s fortune so abruptly.’
‘Strange, I was thinking the same. Ranulf, you must read the Venerable Bede’s work On the Nature of Time.’ Corbett recommenced his pacing. ‘A great scholar, Ranulf! Bede was a Saxon monk who lived in a monastery close to the Roman wall. Anyway, he wrote this work, in which he demonstrated how in God’s eyes there can be no time.’
‘Sir Hugh?’
‘Easily understood, Ranulf. Look at that tapestry.’ Corbett pointed at the hanging on the wall that vividly portrayed the death of Priam during the fall of Troy. ‘You look at that and you understand it at one glance. However, what if you could only understand it by taking each section at a time? Bede, as did the great Aquinas after him, talked of the “eternal now”. In God’s eyes there is no past, present or future, just the eternal vision.’
‘But we …’
‘We fashion time, Ranulf, because we have to. We must make sense of one moment following another. We are compelled tocreate order. Now it is midday, and the Angelus bell will soon ring to remind us of truths beyond time, otherwise we’ll forget or ignore them. We have to move across the tapestry of life very carefully so we constantly define time, naming it, dissecting it, making it part of a week or a certain month or a certain year. We create sun dials, hour candles and other mechanisms to assist us.’
‘And here at Mistleham?’
‘Time is like the seasons outside, Ranulf. They run parallel to each other. We sow in autumn, watch in winter, tend in spring and reap in summer. Here at Mistleham a bloody harvest has sprouted, but the seed … Time is the answer to all the mystery. When did that begin? Why? And who was responsible? So, Ranulf, Principal Clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax, take up your pen and let us impose our own horarium, our own book of bloody hours on the mayhem at Mistleham.’
Corbett walked over to the window.
‘Today is Wednesday the thirteenth of January, the Feast of St Hilary in the Year of Our Lord 1304. It’s also harvest time, Ranulf, for what happened in the past, the fruit of seeds sown at least thirteen years ago, perhaps even earlier.’ Corbett paused as Ranulf began to write using the secret cipher his master had taught him. ‘In 1291,’ Corbett continued, ‘a company from Mistleham, fired by religious fervour no doubt,’ he added sardonically, ‘journeyed to Outremer under two young knights, Sir Oliver Scrope and his cousin Gaston de Bearn. Others accompanied them, including Master Henry Claypole, now Mayor of Mistleham; during that expedition he acted as Scrope’s squire. Now Acre fell on the twelfth of September 1291. We don’t know what really happened, but according to reports …’ Corbett paused in his pacing. ‘I leftmessages with Drokensford to send me an account of events, what the chronicles tell us. However, what such a document will not divulge is what happened to the company from Mistleham. Acre fell, Scrope and Claypole escaped. Gaston, Scrope’s cousin, died of his wounds in the infirmary, the rest were killed. Now all that could be suspect but we possess no evidence to the contrary. By 1292 Scrope had returned to England with treasures looted from the Templars, particularly the Sanguis Christi. He became lord of the manor, rich and powerful, hailed as a crusading hero by king and council. Already wealthy with his loot and his inheritance, he was given a rich heiress in marriage and settled down to a life of peace and plenty.
‘Between 1291 and 1292 his blood sister Marguerite had entered the Benedictine order, a capable woman who, with the support of Church, Crown and Lord Scrope, was appointed Abbess of St Frideswide, the nearby Benedictine convent. All at Mistleham lies quiet and fallow. Father Thomas returns from the wars in Wales; a reformed priest, he takes up residence at St Alphege’s. Again, all is quiet. In the autumn of 1302 Master Benedict Le Sanglier becomes Dame Marguerite’s chaplain, yes? In the following January, Brother Gratian arrives as Lord Scrope’s confessor. The harmony continues until Lent last year and the arrival of the Free Brethren of the Holy Spirit. Now the Free Brethren were one of those wandering groups of religious. Carrying letters from the papal curia at Avignon, they land at Dover, are given safe passage into Essex and settle in the ruins of Mordern.’
‘Why should Scrope allow that?’
‘He viewed them as no danger. They were patronised by Father Thomas, who, late last summer and early autumn, asked them todevise a painting for his parish church. Dame Marguerite also took a liking to them. The Free Brethren were undoubtedly eccentric, not heretic or schismatic, though they adopted a rather original interpretation of certain Church doctrines. We do not know who they really were; French undoubtedly, but they assumed Old Testament names. They proclaimed themselves as free as the air. It would take years, if ever, to establish who they really were and where they came from. Then, in November of last year, John Le Riche, one of the gang who plundered the crypt at Westminster, arrives in Mistleham with at least the dagger used on Edward by the assassins in Outremer. Master Claypole and Lord Scrope capture him, seize the dagger, try Le Riche and hang him, but almost immediately Le Riche’s corpse disappears. Now,’ Corbett paused, ‘harvest time arrives. God knows why, but the relationship between the Free Brethren and Mistleham becomes malignant. Weeds, rotting and corrupt, spring up and spread blight in the community. Allegations of theft, poaching and rampant lechery are levelled against the Free Brethren. Suspicions about their true purpose emerge when Lord Scrope, through Brother Gratian and others, discovers they are well armed and practising archery deep in the forest.