Alusia paused next to her grandmother’s gravestone and stared up at the church, an old place of ancient stone. The nave was like a long barn, though Sir Edmund had recently retiled the roof and done what he could to dress the stone of the soaring square tower. From one of the narrow tower windows candlelight glowed. Father Matthew always lit that as a beacon when the sea mist swirled in and cloaked the countryside in its thick grey blanket. Only the glow of the candles, as well as torches from the castle, could guide people, for Corfe was a dangerous place. To the north, east and west lay a thick ancient forest, full of swamps, marshes and other treacherous places. The girls talked about the sprites and goblins who lived beneath the leaves or sheltered in the cracks of ancient oak trees, of strange sounds and sights, of will-o-the-wisps, really ghosts of the dead, which hovered over the marshes.
Alusia stared round the sombre churchyard; a mist was creeping in now, even so early in the day, its cold fingers stretching out from the sea. She hitched the cloak she had borrowed from her father close about her, a soldier’s cloak of pure wool and lined with flock, with a deep cowl to go over her head. She wondered whether Father Matthew was in the church, and if he would come out. She would pretend she was searching for herbs, but of course, the real herbs didn’t bloom until May, and spring seemed an eternity away.
Alusia was looking for a grave, Marion’s tumulus, that small mound of black earth which marked her close friend’s last resting place. Marion, bright of eye, always laughing, whose corpse had been found beneath the slime of the rubbish in the outer ward of the castle. She had been the first to be killed, a crossbow bolt, shot so close Alusia’s father said it almost pierced poor Marion’s entire body. The castle leech, together with Father Matthew and old Father Andrew, assisted by Mistress Feyner, had dressed the body for burial. Alusia and the rest of the girls were excluded, but she had stolen up that afternoon and slipped through the door. Now she wished she hadn’t. Marion’s face had been a gruesome white, dark rings around those staring eyes, from which the coins had slipped. Flecks of blood still marked her mouth, whilst so many cloths had been wrapped around the wound her chest appeared to have swollen.
Alusia found the grave, marked by a simple cross, with Marion, Requiescat in Pace burnt in by the castle smith. She knelt down and, from beneath her cloak, took a piece of holly she had cut, the leaves sparkling green, the berries bright. She placed this near the cross. She would have liked to have brought flowers, but it was the dead of winter. Didn’t Father Matthew say the holly represented Christ, the evergreen, ever-present Lord, whilst the berries represented his sacred blood? Alusia scratched her nose and tried to recall a prayer. Father Matthew had taught them the Our Father in Latin. She tried to say this. Latin was more powerful, it was God’s language. She stumbled over the words Qui est in caelo, ‘Who art in heaven’, and gave up, simply satisfying herself with the sign of the cross. Then she sat back on her heels. Why would someone kill poor Marion, and the others? One by one, in the same manner, a crossbow bolt through the heart, or in Sybil’s case through her throat, ripping the flesh on either side. Who was responsible? What had the victims been guilty of? The castle girls, in their innocence, were full of gossip about young men, eagerly looking forward to this feast or that holy day, be it Christmas when the huge Yule log crackled in the castle hearth, or May Day when the maypole was erected under the sheer blue skies of an early summer. Yet what crime in that?
Alusia lifted her head, staring back towards the lych gate. For a moment she thought she had seen someone. The church bell began to toll, the sign for midday prayer; not that many people listened. Alusia made the sign of the cross again and got to her feet. The other girls were buried nearby. Why had they died? The gossip said they hadn’t been ravished, so what was the purpose? Poor girls with nothing in their wallets, not even a cheap ring on their finger.
Alusia walked slowly to the lych gate and on to the narrow trackway leading up to the castle. The trees thronged in on either side, and the mist had grown thicker. Alusia walked briskly, then paused at a noise behind her. She turned swiftly, but there was no one. She walked on until she noticed a flash of colour on the verge beside the track. Intrigued, she hurried over. It was a bundle of cloth, dark greens and browns, and a glimpse of reddish hair. Alusia stood, gripped by a numbing fear. Wasn’t that Rebecca’s hair? Weren’t those her colours? Breath caught in her throat, she stooped and pulled at the bundle. The corpse rolled back: sightless eyes, a blood-caked mouth, and just beneath the chin, that awful bloody wound with the crossbow quarrel peeping out. It was Rebecca, and she was dead yet alive, for Alusia could hear a terrible screaming.
The discussion in the council chamber had grown more heated, Bolingbroke striding up and down, obviously angry that he and Ufford had risked their lives, with Ufford paying the ultimate price, merely to steal a copy.
‘It was necessary,’ Corbett shouted. ‘His Grace the King has taken a deep interest in Friar Roger’s writings. We had to make sure that the book we held, our copy of the Secretus Secretorum, was accurate. I have compared the two, and as far as I can see, with all their strange symbols and ciphers, they are in accordance.’
Sir Edmund sat watching this confrontation; Ranulf was quietly enjoying himself. He liked nothing better than watching old Master Longface in debate. Moreover, he knew Bolingbroke of old as a passionate man, and Ranulf, who had done his share of fleeing from those who wished to kill him, sympathised with his anger.
‘What we must look at, William,’ Corbett kept his voice calm, ‘is the logic of the situation.’
‘Logic?’ Bolingbroke retook his seat. ‘Sir Hugh, I know as much about logic as you do, we are not in the schools now.’
‘Yes we are.’
Corbett smiled, then paused as the servant whom Sir Edmund had summoned brought in a fresh jug of ale and soft bread from the castle ovens. He was glad of the respite as the drink was poured and the bread shared out.
‘We must apply logic.’ He spoke quickly as Bolingbroke filled his mouth with bread and cheese. ‘What concerns me is not the copy, or what happened when you stole it, but why Magister Thibault came down to that cellar on that night of revelry. Why did he bring that young woman with him?’
‘Ufford had no choice but to kill them!’
‘I’m not saying he did. Walter was a dagger man through and through. What I suspect is treachery. Let me describe my hypothesis. Here we have two clerks of the English Secret Chancery, scholars from the Halls of Oxford, pretending to be scholars at the Sorbonne. The order goes out, our noble King wants the French copy of Friar Bacon’s Secret of Secrets. You and Ufford cast about, searching for it. A traitor emerges from amongst the French, this mysterious stranger who offers you the manuscript.’
‘He didn’t offer,’ Bolingbroke answered, his mouth full of cheese. ‘He simply told us where it was and promised that we would receive an invitation to Magister Thibault’s revelry.’
‘Do you know who this person was?’ Ranulf asked.
Bolingbroke shook his head.
‘No, we never met him; he communicated through memoranda left at our lodgings. I have shown you those I kept; the others I destroyed.’
Corbett nodded. He had scrutinised the scrawled memoranda. The Norman French was written in a hand he didn’t recognise, providing information for his two secret clerks.
‘What I do know,’ Bolingbroke continued, sipping his ale, ‘is that a month before Magister Thibault’s revelry, this Frenchman discovered what we were looking for and, in return for gold, told us where it was and how we could take it. I think that somehow or other he alerted Magister Thibault and brought him down to that cellar. We were to be trapped there but Magister Thibault was an old sot, full of wine and lust, and perhaps he refused to believe what he was told or didn’t realize the significance. More importantly, this traitor also told Seigneur Amaury de Craon and the Hounds of the King what was happening. We were fortunate. We were supposed to be trapped either at Magister Thibault’s or at our lodgings in the Street of the Carmelites, but we escaped. We separated; they probably thought Ufford was more important and pursued him-’