‘I am dying,’ the Unknown whispered.
The terrible sickness raging within him had manifested itself in more great open sores. He had tried to hide these behind the cowled cloak which shrouded him from head to toe, the gauntlets on his hand and the black band of cloth which covered the lower half of his face. The old war horse which he’d bought at Southampton snickered and whinnied, its head drooping in exhaustion.
‘We are both finished,’ the Unknown murmured. ‘God be my witness, I can go no further.’
He had spent days journeying around York, then out through Botham bar towards Framlingham Manor. He had seen the Templar commanders and their seigneur, Jacques de Molay, as he’d sat hidden in the shadow of the trees. The sight of their surcoats, flapping banners and pennants had tugged at his heart and brought tears to his fading eyes. Since his release, the Unknown had found his thirst for vengeance had faded. Before he died, he wanted to make peace with his brothers and with God. Death was very close. For years, in the dungeons of the Old Man of the Mountain, the Unknown had evaded death, but now, out in God’s sunlight, back in a country where church bells tolled across lush green meadows, what was the use of vengeance? God had already intervened. .
‘Can I help?’
The Unknown turned, his hand dropping to the dagger thrust in his belt. The kindly face of the aged friar didn’t flinch as the Unknown dragged down the black, silk mask over his face.
‘You are a leper,’ the brother whispered. ‘You want help?’
The Unknown nodded and stared into those gentle, rheumy eyes. He opened his scarred mouth to speak, his horse jerked and the Unknown grew dizzy; the friar was hazy, the walls of the lazar hospital behind him seemed to recede. He closed his eyes, sighed, then crumpled into a heap at the friar’s feet.
Chapter 4
At Framlingham, the Templar serjeant led Corbett up the dark mahogany staircase and along a bare, hollow-sounding gallery. Crosses and shields bearing the escutcheons of different knights hung on the walls, interspersed by the stuffed heads of wolves and stags which stared glassily down at him. Only a window at the far end lit the gallery and gave it an eerie atmosphere, where light and darkness mixed so mysteriously. On corners and in doorways, men-at-arms stood on guard, silent as statues. They went up another short flight of stairs and into the council chamber. Oval-shaped, the walls were bare apart from two great banners bearing the Templar insignia. There was no fireplace, just an open stone hearth with a flue high in the roof; it was a bleak, awesome room, bereft of furniture and carpets, the windows mere arrow-slits. It smelt strangely of sizzled fat, which curdled Corbett’s stomach and brought back memories of the burning villages in Scotland. The Templar commanders, sitting in heavy carved choir-stalls formed in the shape of a horseshoe, fell silent as he entered. De Molay, in the centre, waved Corbett forward to a stall on his immediate right. The clerk made his way past a table which bore a corpse covered by a sarcenet, gold-edged pall and ringed by purple wax candles. A ghastly sight, the source of the sour smell, made rather pathetic by the dirty boots peeping out from beneath the cloth.
‘We thought you’d come, Sir Hugh.’ De Molay gestured at the table. ‘We are holding a coroner’s court according to the rule of our Order. The keeper of the manor here, Sir Guido Reverchien, was mysteriously killed this morning, burnt alive in the centre of the maze.’
Corbett glanced round at the Templar commanders; they looked alike with their stony, sunburn faces. Not one of them made a gesture of welcome.
‘Every morning, just before dawn,’ de Molay continued, ‘whatever the weather, Sir Guido did his own private pilgrimage to the centre of the maze. Over the years he’d come to know it so well, he could find his way in the dark, chanting psalms and carrying his beads.’
Corbett looked down at the burial pall. He’d heard about the construction of such mazes, so those who were unable to perform their vow to go on pilgrimages or Crusade, could make reparation by following the tortuous path of a carefully contrived maze to a cross or statue of Christ in the centre.
‘How could a man meet such a death in the centre of a maze?’ Corbett asked.
‘That is why we are assembled,’ Legrave explained. ‘Apparently Sir Guido reached the centre. He had lit the candles at the foot of the cross when this mysterious fire engulfed him.’
‘And no one else was present?’ Corbett asked.
‘Nobody,’ Legrave replied. ‘Very few people knew the mysteries of that maze. His old friend Odo Cressingham, our archivist, used to stand on guard at the entrance. No one had gone into the maze before Sir Guido, and no one followed him. Odo was sitting on a turf seat, as he did every morning: Sir Guido’s knees and legs would be sore by the time he left the maze and he always required help to go back to the refectory. Odo said it was a beautiful morning; the sky was lighting up when he heard Sir Guido’s terrible screams. Standing on the turf seat, Odo could see a heavy pall of smoke rising from the centre. He raised the alarm. By the time he and some serjeants reached the centre, this was what they found.’ Legrave got up and lifted back the pall.
Corbett took one look and turned away. Reverchien’s body had been reduced to a cinder. From the frizzled scalp to those pathetic boots, the fire had burnt away all features and reduced flesh, fat and muscle to a cindery ash. If it hadn’t been for the shape of the head and the holes where the eyes, nose and mouth had been, Corbett would have thought the corpse was a blackened log.
‘Cover it!’ de Molay ordered. ‘Our brother Guido has gone. His soul is in Christ’s hands. We must decide how he died.’
‘Shouldn’t the corpse be handed over to the city coroner?’ Corbett asked.
‘We have our rights,’ Branquier snapped. ‘Approved by the Crown.’
Corbett wiped his lips on the back of his hands.
‘And why are you here?’ the treasurer continued harshly.
‘Let’s be courteous to our guest,’ William Symmes intervened.
Sitting next to Corbett, he smiled across the choir-stall, but then the clerk started as a small, furry bundle leapt from Symmes’s lap into his. Corbett’s consternation eased the tension. Symmes sprang to his feet apologising, and deftly plucked the little weasel from Corbett’s lap.
‘It’s my pet,’ Symmes explained.
Corbett peered over the stall at the weasel’s small, russet body, its white pointed features, twitching nose and the unblinking stare of those little black eyes. Symmes cradled it as if it was a baby, stroking it gently.
‘He’s always like this,’ Symmes explained. ‘Curious but friendly.’
De Molay rapped his fingers on the side of the stall and all eyes turned to him.
‘You are here, aren’t you, Sir Hugh, because of recent happenings in the city? The attack on the king!’
‘Aye, by a serjeant of your Order, Walter Murston.’ Corbett ignored the indrawn hiss of breath. ‘According to the evidence, Murston fired two crossbow bolts at the king as the royal procession was moving up Trinity.’
‘And?’
‘By the time I reached the tavern garret where Murston was lurking, he, too, had been killed by a mysterious fire which consumed the top half of his body.’
‘How do you know it was Murston?’ Legrave asked.
‘We found his saddlebag, Templar’s surcoat and a list of provisions in his name. I am sure,’ Corbett added, ‘that if you search, you will find the serjeant gone and your armoury lacking an arbalest.’ The clerk stared across at Branquier. ‘And you will not be sitting in judgement on his corpse. Sir John de Warrenne, Earl Marshall of England, has ordered it to be gibbeted on the Pavement in York.’
De Molay leaned back in his choir-stall. Corbett saw how his saintly, ascetic face had now turned an ashen grey. Dark rings under the grand master’s eyes showed he had slept very little, and betrayed the anxieties seething within him. You know, don’t you, Corbett thought; you know there’s something rotten here. Something festering within your Order.