Corbett poked his head out and looked down the empty passageway. ‘I said that we would stay together, but now we’ll have to work separately. You and Maltote are to scour this manor. Examine the smithy, go out into the fields and copses. Look for any trace of fire or scorch-marks and, if possible, some secret forge.’
‘And you, Master?’
‘I am going to the library. Brother Odo may have died not because he lived in this manor but also because he discovered something. The assassin must have seen me visit him. I believe the truth, or some of it, lies amongst Brother Odo’s papers.’
Ranulf went back to the guesthouse to collect Maltote whilst Corbett, taking directions from one of the guards, traced his steps back to the library. The door was open. He went inside and stared round the long, shadow-filled room.
‘God rest you, Brother Odo,’ he whispered. ‘And God forgive me if I was responsible for your death.’
He walked down the library to Brother Odo’s carrel; the table was littered with scraps of paper and the great roll of vellum containing Odo’s chronicle. Corbett laid this out flat: he turned over the squares of vellum, following the dramatic history of the fall of Acre. Corbett searched this carefully, wondering if the manuscript contained some reference to the secret fire. However, although Odo’s drawings contained mangonels throwing flaming bundles of tar, there was nothing significant. Corbett closed it with a sigh and picked up the scraps of parchment. Some were old scribblings but one caught Corbett’s eye. Apparently done on the day he died, Odo had drawn the picture of a long-nosed clerk and beside it a rough drawing of a crow. Corbett smiled at the pun on his own name, ‘le Corbeil’, the French word for ‘crow’. The rest of the jottings, however, were in some form of shorthand. Corbett remembered Brother Odo’s description of Anglo-Saxon runes. There were the same markings, done time and time again, all with question marks beside them. A few he could decipher, though he found it impossible to make sense of them all. He went back along the library, searching amongst the shelves until he found what he was looking for: a thick, yellow-leaved ‘Codex Grammaticus’, bound in calf-skin and kept together by a huge clasp. Corbett pulled this from the shelf and took it back to the carrel. He opened it and began to leaf through: the codex contained references to Greek and Hebrew and, in a well-thumbed appendix at the end, all the letters of the alphabet with the Anglo-Saxon runes beside them. Corbett seized a quill, took Odo’s scrap of paper and tried to decipher the dead librarian’s scrawls. At first he could make no sense, the runes formed words which did not exist, then Corbett remembered that Odo had used Latin in his chronicle. He tried again and the words were deciphered: ‘Ignis Diaboli’, ‘Devil Fire’; ‘Liber Ignium’, ‘The Book of Fires’, and, finally a phrase repeated time and again, ‘Bacon’s Mystery’.
‘Sweet God in heaven!’ Corbett whispered. ‘What on earth can that refer to?’
The Devil’s fire, he thought: that’s how Odo described the flames which consumed poor Peterkin and his colleague Reverchien. The ‘Book of Fires’? Was that some sort of grimoire? A book of spells? And ‘Bacon’s Mystery’? What had that got to do with the terrible fires? Corbett, mystified, got to his feet: for a while he searched for an index to what the library contained but, when he found it, he could discover no reference to a ‘Book of Fires’, or anything which would clarify the phrase ‘Bacon’s Mystery’. He was just clearing the desk, rolling up the notes he had made, when he heard a sound at the back of the library, the creak of a door followed by the bolts being driven home. Corbett rose. Drawing the dagger from his belt, he stared down the library, but all he could see were the dustmotes dancing in the sunbeams above the highly polished floor.
‘Who’s there?’ he called. Corbett moved to one side. ‘Who’s there?’ he repeated.
‘Knowest thou that we go forth and return.’ The voice was low and unrecognisable, though the words rang hollow round the library, like the sombre tolling of a death knell.
Corbett heard another sound, a metallic click. He threw himself sideways even as the crossbow bolt whipped by his head and smacked into the wall behind him.
‘Knowest thou,’ the voice grew louder, ‘that what thou possesses shall escape thee in the end and return to us.’
Again the click. Corbett, now hiding behind the shelves, heard the thud as another barbed quarrel sank into the woodwork above his head. Corbett fought hard to control his breathing. He stared wildly around: the windows were too small, no escape there.
‘Knowest thou,’ the voice again intoned, ‘that we hold you and will keep thee until the account be closed!’
Corbett, lying flat, peered round the shelves. His heart skipped a beat. At the far end of the library stood a figure, a tilting helm on his head, a jet black robe covering him from head to toe, an arbalest in his hand. Corbett watched the winch being pulled back, he heard the catch click and a third bolt speed to where his head had been. Another sound, a footfall, the assassin was slowly drawing closer. If Corbett rose and ran towards him, he’d never be fast enough: a crossbow bolt would take him before he reached his mysterious assailant. Corbett’s mouth went dry. He fought hard to curb his fear. For some strange reason he kept thinking of a royal messenger riding up the pathway to Leighton Manor, Maeve hurrying down to greet him. .
Corbett wiped the sweat from his face and gripped his Welsh dagger even more firmly. He looked across the library and glimpsed a small postern door behind one of the carrels. ‘Oh, Christ Jesus,’ he prayed, ‘let it be unlocked.’
He pushed his head out but drew back quickly as another crossbow bolt whirred like a hawk through the air. Then he was up before the mysterious archer could fit another bolt. Swearing and cursing, Corbett pulled the carrel aside and raised the latch, but the door wouldn’t move. Corbett blindly crashed against it even as the footfalls behind him drew closer. Then he glimpsed the bolts on the top. He drew these back, the door opened, creaking on its leather hinges. Corbett was through it, slamming it shut even as the crossbow bolt thudded into the other side. The door led into a passageway and Corbett ran blindly round a corner, so quickly he knocked a Templar serjeant flying. Ignoring his shouts, Corbett continued running until he was through an open door which led into a small disused garden behind the tilt-yard.
For a while Corbett crouched to catch his breath then, resheathing his dagger, he made his way back to the guesthouse. He slammed and locked the door behind him, checked the chamber carefully and sprawled on the bed. Eventually relief gave way to anger, a terrible fury at how he had been so nearly trapped. It was tempting to sweep through the manor demanding to see de Molay and seek an investigation, but what would that prove? Nothing except his own fear. The assassin would have slipped out of the library and be impossible to trace. Corbett got up and splashed water over his face. He dried himself slowly, recalling the cloaked figure, the arbalest and the bolts whistling through the air all around him.
‘At least,’ Corbett whispered, ‘I know you are not from Hell.’
He paused: the attack in the library had been a desperate move. Was that why Odo had been killed? To prevent him discovering the cause of that dreadful fire? The assassin would have checked the carrel but, unaware of the runes, he would have overlooked the piece of parchment Corbett now kept in his wallet. There was a knock on the door.
‘Master!’
Corbett went and unlocked it. Ranulf and Maltote swept excitedly into the room.
‘They are here!’ Maltote exclaimed.
‘Shut up!’ Ranulf shouted. ‘I found them, Master, scorch-marks, the same as we found on the Botham Bar road. You remember the trees which ring the curtain wall around the manor? Well, Maltote and I discovered them there.’ He peered at his master’s face. ‘Don’t you want to come? Master, what has happened?’