‘Yes, yes,’ Corbett interrupted. ‘If some supper could be served we’d be grateful. Perhaps more braziers? The night is chillingly cold.’
The guest master nodded. He was about to turn away when he paused, peering at the wine jugs Corbett had placed on the table beside the candle.
‘Sir Hugh?’
‘Yes, Brother?’
‘You brought your own jugs?’
Corbett felt a tingle of fear curdle his stomach. ‘Brother, what are you talking about?’
The guest master walked across and picked up the napkin. He held this up and peered at the stitching along its hem, then crouched down and moved the jugs.
‘I know every jug and cup in this guesthouse.’ He straightened up. ‘That napkin was not fashioned by us, whilst the jugs certainly do not come from our kitchen.’ He picked up one of the jugs and went to sip from it.
‘Don’t!’ Corbett urged. He walked across, took the jug from the surprised monk’s hand, sniffed and caught a rather faint bitter smell, as if some herb had been crushed and mingled with the red wine. He picked up the white and detected a similar odour.
‘Brother, do you have rats?’
‘Does a cat have fleas?’ the guest master replied. ‘Of course we do, we are plagued by them.’
‘Then give them a feast,’ Corbett urged. ‘Take some fresh bread and cheese, mingle them together, soak the mix in this wine, and put it in the cellars where no one else will see it. Tomorrow morning, or maybe even later tonight, come back and tell me what you found, but I urge you, Brother, do not drink this wine. I believe it is tainted.’
‘Tainted?’ The guest master’s wrinkled face became all fearful. ‘Sir Hugh, someone wishes to do you evil.’
‘Yes, Brother, they do. I’m the King’s messenger in Canterbury and perhaps not everyone welcomes me as they should. I ask you to keep this matter close, even from your own abbot, as well as from my companions downstairs. Brother, how easy would it be for a stranger to enter this guesthouse?’
The monk stepped away from the table, wiping his hands on his robe, gazing suspiciously at the jugs. ‘Why, Sir Hugh, it’s very easy to enter the guesthouse itself. But as for your chamber, they would have to hold either your key or mine.’
‘So it’s quite possible,’ Corbett asked, ‘for someone to have brought those two jugs in and left them outside my chamber?’
‘Oh yes, Sir Hugh. I mean, people are going to and fro all the time, very rarely is any mischief caused.’
Corbett thanked him. The guest master gingerly picked up both jugs and napkin and left the room, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. Corbett waited until he’d gone, then slumped down on the edge of the bed. He unbuckled his sword belt and cloak, letting them fall around him, pulled off his boots and put on his buskins. Then he went to the top of the stairs and shouted for Ranulf. When his manservant came, Corbett met him halfway down the stairs.
‘Ranulf,’ he patted his companion on the shoulder, ‘I’m tired and worn out. I have eaten and drunk enough. Give my apologies to Master Desroches. You and Chanson entertain him; I intend to sleep.’
He went back to the chamber and checked it most carefully. Nothing had been disturbed. He doused the candles, except those glowing under their bronze caps, and climbed into bed, wrapping the blankets around him. Then he pushed his head hard against the bolster, closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep.
He woke early, long before dawn, and left the guesthouse. He crossed the frozen yard, braving the winter darkness, until he reached the prior’s kitchen, which served visitors to the abbey. He knocked hard on the door. A sleepy-faced servant opened it and ushered him into the warm, fragrant bakehouse. Corbett told him what he wanted, and a short while later he left carrying a pannier of hot water from the pot dangling on a tripod above the hearth.
Once back in his own chamber, he stripped, washed and shaved. He put on fresh linen undergarments, choosing dark brown hose, a white cambric shirt and a thick fleece jerkin for protection against the cold. He built the braziers up, then drank a cup of water and went across to the writing desk. Once ready, he opened the leather pannier resting beside the leg of the table, pulled out a sheaf of parchment and sharpened a quill pen.
‘Now I will impose order,’ he murmured. ‘Now I will establish a pattern.’
Corbett steeled himself to ignore the growing sounds from the abbey as the monks rose and prepared for the first office of the day. He was tempted to go down and stand in the great oaken stalls and join them in their chanting of Matins, but that would have to wait. He dipped his pen into the green ink and wrote: Primo: The Brothers.
Corbett tried to marshal everything he’d learnt about Adam Blackstock and his half-brother Hubert the Monk, or Hubert son of Fitzurse, ‘The Man with the Far-Seeing Gaze’. His pen raced across the parchment. Blackstock, according to the documents in the Guildhall, had been the pirate’s family name, so why did Hubert use the ‘son of Fitzurse’, his mother’s maiden name? Was he just emphasising that two sons had survived that dreadful massacre? And why did he proclaim himself ‘The Man with the Far-Seeing Gaze’? Was that a reference to his planning and plotting these murders? Had he waited and bided his time? But where did this all begin? Corbett wrote the date 1272, then glanced up and stared at the crucifix on the wall. He remembered how the old King had died gasping at Westminster and the London mob had taken to rioting in the streets. There had been a breakdown in law and order, the king’s peace being openly violated in the shires. The same thing had happened in Kent. According to what he’d learnt, Adam and Hubert’s parents had been wealthy farmers; their manor house had probably been a fine building with vegetable gardens, herb plots, flowerbeds, stables, fertile fields for corn and lush pasture for sheep. Attacks by armed gangs on such manors became commonplace. Usually the rifflers plundered the house and drove away cattle and other livestock, but this attack had been different. Had people from the city of Canterbury been involved? Royal justices had investigated, but no culprits had been produced. Fortune had then turned her wheel again. Adam was put to trade as an apprentice, while Hubert had continued his schooling here in St Augustine’s Abbey. Corbett made a note on a scrap of parchment beside him. He must look out for the magister scholorum, Brother Fulbert, and ask him what he knew.
Apparently Adam had been an industrious worker, and if he’d followed the usual path, he would have finished his apprenticeship, becoming a tradesman and eventually a merchant, a member of the Guild. Instead he had left Canterbury, finding his true calling as a sailor, working in the various ports along the east and south coasts of the kingdom before moving to the more exciting fleshpots in the coastal ports of Hainault, Flanders and Brabant. There he consorted with pirates and privateers, eventually becoming one himself, and securing swift promotion to command a redoubtable pirate cog, The Waxman, a veritable plague on shipping along the Narrow Seas and the wine routes to Bordeaux.
Corbett paused. His own childhood had been warm and loving, but he’d met others, at court and camp, brutalised by barbaric events in their early lives. Was this true of Adam Blackstock? Could he not forget the images he’d seen that hideous night, the screams of his mother, the futile attempts to resist by his father and others? Blackstock had later waged war against English ships, in particular those of Sir Walter Castledene. Was that because the mayor was a prominent merchant of Canterbury, or were there more secret reasons? Corbett had searched the official documents scrupulously, but now he quietly promised himself that he would return to the Guildhall manuscripts and study them more closely.
Hubert the Monk had acted in a similar fashion. Highly intelligent, he might well have graduated to becoming a magister in the schools. He finished his education at St Augustine’s and in the Halls of Cambridge, took the solemn vows of a Benedictine monk, entered the community at Westminster under Abbot Wenlock, then he too had changed, swiftly and abruptly. According to the prior at Westminster, a mysterious visitor had visited Hubert and imparted certain information which had radically changed that young man’s life. He had fled his monastery, renounced his vows and become a venator hominum, tracking down outlaws and wolfsheads, and handing them over to sheriffs, port reeves or town bailiffs in return for a reward. Hubert had certainly kept his distance from Canterbury. Why? Because he hated the city, or was there some other reason? He had plied his bloody trade in the south-eastern shires of the kingdom, keeping himself visored and hooded, a careful enough precaution by a man who did not wish his face to be known to the thieves and villains he pursued along the byways and country lanes of various shires.