Hugh Corbett 10 - The Devil's Hunt Read online

  THE DEVIL'S HUNT

  PAUL DOHERTY

  headline

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 1996 P. C. Doherty

  The right of P. C. Doherty to be identified as the Author of

  the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2008

  All characters in this publication are fictitious

  and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 5037 7

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

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  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachettelivre.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Author’s Note

  P. C. Doherty was born in Middlesbrough. He studied History at Liverpool and Oxford Universities and obtained a doctorate at Oxford for his thesis on Edward II and Queen Isabella. He is now the Headmaster of a school in North-East London, and lives with his wife and family near Epping Forest.

  P. C. Doherty’s previous Hugh Corbett medieval mysteries - SATAN IN ST MARY’S, CROWN IN DARKNESS, SPY IN CHANCERY, THE ANGEL OF DEATH, THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS, MURDER WEARS A COWL, THE ASSASSIN IN THE GREENWOOD, THE SONG OF A DARK ANGEL and SATAN’S FIRE - are also available from Headline.

  Acclaim for the Hugh Corbett medieval mysteries:

  ‘Wholly excellent, this is one of those books you hate to put down’ Prima

  ‘I really like these medieval whodunnits’ Bookseller

  ‘A powerful compound of history and intrigue’ Redbridge Guardian

  ‘Medieval London comes vividly to life... Doherty’s depictions of medieval characters and manners of thought, from the highest to the lowest, ringing true’ Publishers Weekly

  ‘A romping good read’ Time Out

  ‘Historically informative, excellently plotted and, as ever, superbly entertaining’ CADS

  To my ‘Beloveds’ Ekene, Ebele and Victor Jr and their parents Victor and Christine Ikwuemesi

  Prologue

  ‘Brutal, sudden death!’ Father Ambrose, Parson of Iffley church, had proclaimed, ‘Shall be sprung like a trap upon every man living upon the face of God’s earth.’

  Piers the plough boy, leaning against a pillar of the parish church, had listened to the sermon half dozing or casting lustful, hot-eyed stares at Edigha, the blacksmith’s daughter. Now, later that same Sunday, Piers was to have his heart’s desire. He’d met flaxen-haired Edigha beside the village well. They’d stolen out of the village, down the beaten track, past the gallows and into the field of ripe corn. Edigha had giggled and pulled at Piers’s hand.

  ‘I shouldn’t really go!’ she whispered, her blue eyes bright with merriment. ‘Father will expect me!’

  ‘Your father’s damping the ashes down in his forge,’ Piers retorted, grinning with a display of cracked teeth. ‘Whilst, Edigha my love, the flames in my belly burn hot for you.’ He said the words proudly, repeating what he’d heard the travelling minstrels say to a tavern wench in the Goat’s Head tavern after he’d come from ploughing the previous Monday. Piers’s short but eloquent speech had the desired effect. Edigha giggled again and trotted along beside him. Keeping their heads bowed, they moved through the sea of waving corn. Rabbits and mice, alarmed by their approach, scuttled for shelter, whilst above them wood pigeons fled like darts from the shadow of a hovering hawk. Piers stopped and looked up at them. For some strange reason he recalled Father Ambrose’s words: the hawk hung against the blue sky, motionless, waiting, watching, before its killing plunge. Piers shivered.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Edigha pressed herself against him. ‘Have the fires gone out?’ She wrapped her arms around his waist, slipping one hand down to brush his groin. ‘We have to be back by sunset,’ she whispered.

  Piers stared at the sun now setting in a glorious ball of fire, lighting up the sky with red-hot sparks. He turned, the breeze ruffling across his brow, and stared across at the small copse.

  ‘There’s something wrong,’ he whispered. ‘It’s so silent.’

  ‘You are frightening me,’ Edigha teased back yet she caught his mood. A tryst with Piers was what she had wanted but now, out here in the open, the corn swaying about her in the whispering wind, she was not so sure. She gazed across at the trees. It would be dark and cool in there, and her stomach jerked as she realised they would have to return the same way. If anyone saw them there would be teasing and whispering in the Goat’s Head and around the village well for weeks to come.

  ‘Can’t we go back by the trackway?’ she muttered.

  ‘We’d be seen.’ Piers grasped her hand.

  He made to run forward but then he recalled the ghoulish stories: Ralph, the reeve, standing in the tap room, a tankard in his hand, describing in hushed tones the severed corpses recently found in the woods around the city.

  ‘Bleeding like stuck pigs they were,’ Ralph had warned. ‘Blood bubbling out like wine from a broken jar: their heads wrapped by hair to the branches above.’ Ralph had shaken a warning finger. ‘It’s those bloody ne’er-do-wells!’ he ranted. ‘Those so-called scholars from the town with their airs and graces.’

  Everyone had nodded. Oxford was strange: a town with its own rights and privileges; with its own peculiar smells and sights. All towns were bad enough with their swaggering merchants and sharp-eyed traders but Oxford, with its scholars, many of them strangers from other parts and even from foreign countries across the seas, was worse than Sodom and Gomorrah, or so Father Ambrose said. Whilst the scholars with their bird-like talk and gaudy raiment, were devils incarnate. Now and again some of them came out to Iffley, strutting like peacocks, their knives and swords pushed in their belts. They’d eye the girls and look for anything they could steal. Naturally these same students now took the blame for the hideous corpses found in the countryside around the city .

  ‘If they’re going to commit hideous murders,’ Bartholomew the miller had growled, ‘they should do it within their own walls.’

  ‘But why?’ Father Ambrose had intervened. ‘I’ve heard that the corpses belonged to beggars. Some people claim they were used,’ his voice fell to a whisper, ‘for foul, Satanic rites.’

  ‘Piers! Piers!’

  The ploughboy broke from his reverie.

  Edigha was playing with the laces of her bodice and lust flared again in his belly.

  ‘Come on!’ he muttered thickly. He gently touched the generous swell of her breasts, his fingers fluttering down around the slim waist. He pulled her close. ‘You are so giving!’

  ‘I’ll be your wife, won’t I?’ Edigha enjoined, her blue eyes holding
his. ‘You said so. I’ll be handfast as your wife. At the church door before All Hallows?’

  Piers stooped to kiss her but then jumped, his head snapping back as he looked up. A speck of blood splashed on his face, a feather drifted down: the hawk had plunged to make its kill. Piers didn’t wait any longer; Edigha might change her mind. They hurried on through the corn, stopping now and again to hug and kiss, Piers’s sweaty fingers scrabbling at Edigha’s bodice, tugging at the cords. At last they reached the edge of the wood and ran into its cool green darkness. Piers pulled Edigha down on top of him. She giggled and resisted, then broke free and ran on. Piers sighed. Girls always did that, turning their courting into huntsman’s bluff. Piers got up and chased after her, catching her in a small glade. He sighed with pleasure: her hair had broken loose and was hanging down, a mass of gold on either side of her red, sweaty face, her blue eyes were bright. He grasped her hand, pulling her to him, and they walked between the trees. He began to kiss her, relishing the sweet smell of her skin, licking at the sweat which laced her throat. Suddenly Edigha went rigid. She pushed him away and stepped back, staring at something behind him. Edigha’s face was white, her eyes screwed up, her mouth opening and closing in terror, whilst strange sounds gurgled from the back of her throat.

  ‘What is it, love? What is it?’

  She half raised her hand. Piers turned slowly as if he knew what he was going to see. At first he could see nothing untoward, but then he looked up. From an old oak tree a branch jutted out like a spear and, on its end, lashed by its hair to the branch, was a severed head. Piers took a step closer: the eyes were half-open, the grey cheeks sagging, the mouth gaped bloody like that of a slaughtered animal. The neck was cut and ragged, still caked with gore. Piers’s mouth went dry. His legs began to tremble. Edigha seized his hand, and they both turned and fled from the terror in the woods.

  In Sparrow Hall, near Turl Street in Oxford, Death had also sprung like a trap. Ascham the archivist knew he was going to die. He lay, his legs bent in pain, his mouth opening and shutting. He tried to force a scream but he knew it was useless. No one would hear; the doors and windows were closed. His death had come spinning through the air, the crossbow quarrel taking him full in the chest.

  Ascham knew he was dying. He could taste the iron, salty tang of blood gurgling at the back of his throat. Stabs of pain went through his body. He closed his eyes, whispering the words of the Confiteor, seeking God’s absolution: ‘Oh, my God, I am sincerely sorry for these and all the sins from my youth...’ His mind wandered even as his body trembled with pain. Images from the past came to him - his mother bending over him, the shouting of his brother, his early days in Oxford, jaunty, full of life. The girl he met and would have married, sad-eyed and moist-mouthed when he turned and walked away; Henry Braose; his great friend, scholar, soldier and founder of this very Sparrow Hall where he now lay dying. So much evil now! Resentment, fury and hatred. The Bellman proclaiming the Devil’s malice, trying to destroy everything Henry had built up.

  Ascham opened his eyes. The library was dark. He tried again to scream but the sound died on his lips. The candle, flickering under its metal cap on the table, shed a small pool of light and Ascham glimpsed the piece of parchment the assassin had tossed on to the table. Ascham realised what had brought about his death: he’d recognised the truth but he’d been stupid enough to allow his searches to be known. If only he had a pen! His hand grasped the wound bubbling in his chest. He wept and crawled painfully across the floor towards the table. He seized the parchment and, with his dying strength, carefully hauled himself up to etch out the letters - but the pool of light seemed to be dimming. He’d lost the feeling in his legs, which were stiffening, like bars of iron.

  ‘Enough,’ he whispered. ‘Ah, Jesus ...’

  Ascham closed his eyes, coughed and died as the blood bubbled on his lips.

  Chapter 1

  The outlaw standing in the gallows cart moved his head as the chafing rope gripped his neck. He hawked, spat and glared defiantly at Sir Hugh Corbett, former courier and clerk of the Secret Seal but still the powerful lord of the manor of Leighton in Essex. Beside Corbett was the man who had hunted him down, caught him and brought him to trial in Sir Hugh’s court: Ranulf-atte-Newgate, formerly Clerk of the Chancery of the Green Wax, Corbett’s henchman, bailiff and chief steward. The outlaw licked his chapped lips and glared hatefully at Ranulf.

  ‘Well, come on, you red-haired bastard!’ he shouted. ‘Hang me or let me go!’

  Corbett pushed his horse forward.

  ‘Boso Deverell, you are an outlaw, a wolf’s-head, a thief and a murderer! You have been found guilty and sentenced to hang!’

  ‘Go to hell!’ Boso retorted.

  Corbett ran his fingers through his hair: he stared at Father Luke, the village chaplain, who was standing beside the cart.

  ‘Have you shriven him, Father?’

  ‘He’s refused confession,’ the dusty-faced priest replied, his eyes hard, seething with fury.

  Father Luke glanced up at the lord of the manor, studying Corbett’s sallow, clean-shaven face; the black hair streaked with grey; the sharp nose above thin lips. Father Luke held Corbett’s eyes: he knew this clerk, hard on the outside but soft within.

  ‘You are not going to pardon him, Sir Hugh?’ he whispered. ‘Or lessen his punishment?’ The priest gripped the reins of Corbett’s grey roan. ‘He killed two women,’ the priest hissed. ‘Raped them and then slit them from neck to crotch as if they were chickens.’

  Corbett nodded and swallowed hard.

  ‘And that’s just the start of it,’ the priest continued remorselessly. ‘He’s responsible for other deaths.’ Father Luke pointed at the few villagers who had assembled just after dawn to witness royal justice being done. ‘If you show mercy,’ the priest declared, his hand on Corbett’s knee, ‘every wolfs-head—’ He threw his hand dramatically out towards the forest. ‘Every wolf’s-head will learn from it.’ The priest’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘I don’t want to bury any more of my flock. I don’t want to have to tell husbands, fathers, lovers that their women were raped before their throats were cut! Hang him!’

  ‘Do you want his life so badly?’ Corbett replied, his eyes never leaving those of Boso.

  ‘God does.’ Father Luke turned to the outlaw. ‘Are you ready to die, Boso?’

  The outlaw coughed, brought his head back and spat, catching the priest on the side of the face. Ranulf pushed his horse up.

  ‘How many did you kill, Boso?’

  ‘More than you’ll ever know.’ Deverell’s eyes shifted back to Corbett. ‘It’s a pity you were at home, lord of the earth! Otherwise I’d have come calling on that flaxen-haired wife of yours!’

  Corbett pulled his horse’s head around. He glanced at the villagers, their grimy, brown faces passive; his stewards and bailiffs stood slightly apart from them. Corbett drew his sword and held it up, clasping his fingers round the crosspiece.

  ‘I, Sir Hugh Corbett, the King’s loyal servant, lord of Leighton Manor, by the power granted to me of axe, rope and tumbril do sentence you, Boso Deverell, to be hanged immediately for the diverse and horrible crimes of murder, rape and theft!’

  As Corbett’s death sentence rang out, a strange silence descended upon the crossroads; even the birds in the trees and the rooks circling above the gallows fell silent. Corbett looked at the priest.

  ‘Father, say a prayer. Ranulf, hang him!’

  Corbett turned his horse away and rode back along the track, waiting round the bend behind a fringe of trees. He closed his eyes, gripping the pommel of his saddle. He heard the creak of wheels, followed by a murmur of approval.

  ‘God have mercy!’ Corbett whispered.

  He hated hangings! He knew Boso had to die but it brought back memories: the rain-soaked forests of Scotland with corpses hanging by the score as Edward’s troops crushed the Scottish rebels under Wallace; fields blazing in sheets of flame; villages covered by a thick, heavy pall of s
moke; wells choked with corpses; women and children dying in ditches.

  ‘Thank God!’ Corbett breathed. ‘Thank God! I’m not there!’

  ‘It’s done.’

  Corbett opened his eyes and saw Ranulf-atte-Newgate, his long, red hair hidden under a hood, his white face solemn though the green eyes reflected a task well done.

  ‘It’s over, Master. Boso’s gone to hell. Father Luke’s pleased and so are the villagers.’ Ranulf straightened up and stared up through the overhanging branches. ‘By dusk the news will be all over Epping. The other wolf’s-heads will learn to leave Leighton alone. And you’ll keep your promise, Master?’

  Corbett took the leather gauntlets from his belt and put them on.

  ‘I’ll keep my promise, Ranulf. Within a week, I’ll issue a Commission of Array. You can take every able-bodied man into the forest and hunt down the rest of Boso’s followers.’

  Ranulf smiled.

  ‘Are you so bored?’ Corbett asked.

  The smile died on Ranulf’s face. ‘It’s been three months, Master, since you left the royal service. The King has written to you five times.’ He saw the flicker of annoyance on Corbett’s face. ‘But, yes, I am bored,’ he added hastily. ‘I liked being a royal clerk, Master, busy on the King’s affairs.’

  ‘As in Scotland?’ Corbett snapped.

  ‘That was war, fighting the King’s enemies on land and sea - we took an oath.’

  Corbett studied Ranulf; his henchman was no longer a stripling but an ambitious clerk. Sprung from the gutters of London, Ranulf had educated himself, and was now skilled in French, Latin and the art of drafting and sealing letters. To put it bluntly, Ranulf hated the countryside and loathed farming, and he was growing increasingly restless. Corbett put his gloves on slowly.