Hymn to Murder

by Paul Doherty

Genres: Medieval; Mystery; Historical Mysteries; Religious & Inspirational; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

1312. The shadows around the English Crown grow ever darker in the twenty-first instalment of the much-loved Hugh Corbett series by Paul Doherty. An enthralling medieval mystery not to be missed by fans of C. J. Sansom, E. M. Powell and Bernard Cornwell.

Hugh Corbett returns in the twenty-first gripping mystery in Paul Doherty's ever-popular series. If you love the historical mysteries of C. J. Sansom, E. M. Powell and Bernard Cornwell you will love this.

Secrets simmer in the lonely wasteland of Dartmoor.

Spring, 1312. At Malmaison Manor, Lord Simon is concealing a dark secret - one he arrogantly assumes will never catch up with him. But someone knows about the crime he committed and they've found a way to make him pay. And he's not alone. When he is found mysteriously slain, other deaths soon follow. Meanwhile, ships on the Devonshire cost are being deliberately wrecked, their crews slaughtered, their cargoes plundered.

Sir Hugh Corbett and Lord Simon are bound by the Secret Chancery and their search for one precious ruby - the Lacrima Christi. So, when Corbett learns of Lord Simon's death, he is once more dragged into a tangled web of lies and intrigued and it's not long before secrets of his own start to surface. As the Hymn to Murder reaches its crescendo, can Corbett confront his past and live to see another day?

(P) 2020 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: July 23, 2020

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 384

Sample

Edward I

King of England

Edward II

King of England, son of the above

Eleanor of Castile

Wife of Edward I, Queen of England

Isabella

Wife of Edward II, Queen of England

Sir Hugh Corbett

Keeper of the Secret Seal, Edward II’s personal envoy

Ranulf-atte-Newgate

Sir Hugh Corbett’s henchman, principal clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax

Lady Maeve

Wife of Sir Hugh Corbett and mother of their two children, Edward and Eleanor

Chanson

Clerk of the Stables in the retinue of Sir Hugh Corbett

Ap Ythel

Welshman, master bowman in the retinue of Sir Hugh Corbett

Brancepeth

Welsh master bowman, Ap Ythel’s henchman

John Wodeford

Mailed clerk in the service of Sir Hugh Corbett

Merioneth

Former bestiarius in the service of Sir Hugh Corbett

Richard Puddlicot

Bankrupt merchant, leader of a gang of rifflers

Tooth-pull

 

Rievaulx

Members of Puddlicot’s gang

Adam Warfeld

Benedictine monk, sacristan at Westminster Abbey

Walter Brasenose

Warfeld’s henchman

Glaston

City jeweller

Sir Ralph Hengham

Tax collector in the king’s shires of Devon and Cornwall

Sir Miles Wendover

Sheriff of Devon

Lord Simon Malmaison

Lord of the manor of the same name, former mailed clerk

Wolfram

Mailed clerk also in Corbett’s retinue, Malmaison’s henchman

Lady Katerina

Wolfram’s sister

Edmund Brockle

Steward of the manor of Malmaison

Chandos

Steward of the manor of Malmaison

Lady Beatrice Davenant

Malmaison’s first wife

Lady Isabella

Malmaison’s second wife

Henry Malach

Malmaison’s henchman

Grease-hair

Spit-boy at the manor of Malmaison

Colum the cook

Servant at Malmaison

Master Dunston

Courier at Malmaison

Tallien

Travelling tinker

William Fitzwarren

Captain of the cog The Angel of the Dawn

Odo Beauchamp

Captain of the cog The Galliard

Fulbert

Tanner, leader of the guildsmen of Felstead

Richolda

Fulbert’s wife, leader of the guildsmen’s womenfolk

Parson Osbert

Parish priest of the church at Felstead

Baskerville

Minehost and taverner of the Palfrey in Felstead

Lord Moses

Leader of the moon people

Aaron and Joshua

Lord Moses’s henchmen

Peter Gaveston

Gascon favourite of King Edward II

Philip IV

King of France

Charles of Valois

Philip’s brother

Boniface VIII & Clement V

Popes

‘And darkness fell.’ The chroniclers of London often quoted this phrase, taken from the story of Judas’s betrayal of Jesus Christ, to describe the sinfulness of their own city. In particular the men and women who had made vows to Christ yet spent most of their time and energy in violating such oaths rather than honouring them. This was certainly true in the king’s own chapel, the great abbey of Westminster. By the last week of April, the Year of Our Lord 1303, the Blackrobes of Westminster, Benedictine monks, had waxed strong and prosperous, lavishly patronised by the Crown as they had been since the abbey’s first great founding centuries before. How things had changed! The king’s own chapel was no longer a house of prayer but a den of thieves. The monks, who were meant to follow the rule of St Benedict, had turned their energies to matters of the dark. They were supposed to love the light and live in it. Now they lay firmly under the rule of a false shepherd, the powerful and resolute Adam Warfeld, chief sacristan of the abbey, the monk directly responsible for its security.

For some time Warfeld had lurked in the twilight. However, during those last few days of spring, he brought his wickedness to full ripeness. On Wednesday 24 April, his great conspiracy to commit treason and robbery at last bore fruit. Warfeld had seduced his community. He and the bankrupt merchant Richard Puddlicot had entertained the Blackrobes to nights of revelry where wine flowed like water, served to the good brothers by a whole cohort of delectable ladies of the night. On that particular evening, however, Warfeld struck.

Darkness fell. All the lights in the cemetery were doused, as well as those across the great wasteland that separated the abbey from the royal palace. Men, hooded and visored, carrying powerful war bows and arbalests, patrolled the nearby royal gardens, God’s Acre and the broad stretch of common. Warfeld and his coven were committed. The frescoes and carvings that decorated the abbey walls, depicting Christ at the Final Judgement, were totally ignored. The statues of saints and angels, the gargoyles and babewynes that festooned the stonework of the main church, meant nothing to the men assembling deep in the shadows. They had planned well. Earlier in the year, hempen seed had been sown, a swift-growing weed that masked their handiwork around one of the windows of the crypt. A great treasure hoard was almost within their grasp: the jewels and royal regalia of England as well as coffers and caskets crammed with precious stones, silver and gold coins, goblets, jugs, chalices, cups, saucers and spoons, not to mention unique treasures such as the Cross of Neath and the Rod of Moses. Above all, the crypt housed what was judged to be the most precious and gorgeous ruby in the world, the so-called Lacrima Christi, nestling in its thick gold casket. The ruby was priceless, worth more than a hundred kings’ ransoms, a stone envied and lusted after by all the princes of Christendom and beyond.

On that night, the chosen night, the eve of the feast of St Mark, the Lacrima Christi was about to begin a strange journey. Edward, King of England, together with his council and troops, was far away. The old king had journeyed north across the Scottish March to wage war with fire and sword against Bruce and other Scottish rebels. The palace of Westminster lay empty except for its steward, William, but he too had been suborned by Warfeld and was a close accomplice to the mischief being plotted.

Edward of England truly believed that his treasure was well housed in the gloomy, forbidding crypt deep beneath the abbey, a sacred, hallowed place. The crypt was an octagonal building, its walls eighteen feet thick, and the king regarded it as most safe and secure. Its sole entrance was a strongly fortified doorway in the west wall that led onto a staircase, broken halfway down by a three-yard gap that could only be spanned by a moveable wooden bridge. It did, however, have one weakness, and Warfeld had discovered this. Its six windows were at ground level; one of these, protected by the screed of hempen seed, had been chosen by the robbers. Its stone sill had been hacked and cut away by a master stonemason, John of St Alban’s. He had worked at night, the glow of his lantern hidden by the tangle of weeds, destroying the sill, and wrenching out the iron bars to create an open space through which the robbers could enter before sliding down into the crypt itself.

Richard Puddlicot, leader of the rifflers drawn from London’s underworld, watched the final preparations. Once satisfied, he stood aside to allow the tall, forbidding Adam Warfeld first passage into the crypt. Warfeld had repudiated his own rule and didn’t give a whit. He had plotted and planned for this great moment, so he had to be the first to slide down into the treasure house. He was followed by Brasenose and other monks, at least fourteen in number, and their henchmen Rievaulx and Glaston. The latter was a city jeweller who had advised Warfeld on what the crypt might hold, especially the Lacrima Christi.

Once they reached the hard tiled floor, lanterns were lit, cresset torches fired and placed in their sconces, the light strengthening to reveal all the treasures heaped there. The cries and shouts of appreciation drew more of the gang down. Scrambling into the crypt, they did not even wait but started to fill their leather bags with fistfuls of jewels, silver figurines and miniature gold crosses. The sight of such precious items only fired their greed, but they paused at the sound of a bone-cracking blow followed by a hideous scream. The robbers stopped their plundering to gape at Adam Warfeld, the bland-faced Puddlicot standing beside him. The sacristan looked a truly sinister, threatening figure in his black robe, a dagger in one hand, a blood-soaked battle mace in the other.

‘Listen!’ Warfeld pointed at the man lying on the ground before him, his skull shattered, blood, brains and fragments of bone, seeping across the tiled floor. ‘Listen and listen well.’ His powerful voice echoed around the crypt and up to where others stood on guard in the cemetery. ‘All treasure must be piled here.’ He turned and, using the battle mace, pointed at a stretch of canvas Brasenose had rolled out across the floor. ‘Fill your bags by all means, but only to carry the treasure here. Blacktongue’ – he kicked the dead felon’s corpse – ‘thought he could hide a pendant down the front of his filthy jerkin. He paid the price and you must heed the warning.’

The gang, at least twenty strong, murmured their agreement. They moved the treasure, piling it up on the canvas cloth so it could be inspected by Glaston the goldsmith, who was almost beside himself with excitement. One of Warfeld’s monks had brought over a bulging velvet pouch. Glaston loosened the cord, drew out the small but heavy gold casket and opened this to moan in pleasure at the sight of the world’s most precious ruby, the Lacrima Christi.

‘Keep it well.’ Glaston spun around. Warfeld, still holding the battle mace, was staring down at him. ‘Glaston, that’s your portion. It will be very difficult to sell, so what you do with it is up to you.’ Warfeld pointed to the open window. ‘Goodbye, my friend, but rest assured, you will be watched . . .’

Six months later, on the eve of All Hallows, Glaston the jeweller had good cause to recall that night and his first glimpse of the Lacrima Christi, which was now hidden away in his house just off Thames Street. Earlier that winter day he had joined the crowds surging out of London to witness the execution of Richard Puddlicot. The great robber and crypt breaker had been seized and tried before a special commission in the Tower. Puddlicot could offer no defence and had been sentenced to hang on a specially erected gallows outside the main gate of Westminster Abbey, as close as they could to where he had committed his outrageous crimes.

Glaston made his way down a needle-thin runnel. At least the frost had frozen the dirt and ordure strewn across the broken cobbles. The jeweller pulled his patched cloak closer about him. The weather had turned savagely cold, yet he was soaked in a deep sweat. In truth, he was terrified. His heart beat like that of a hunted hare, his skin soaked by the terrors that never seemed to leave him. Glaston lived alone: his wife had left him a decade ago and his trade had suffered. He had been reduced to selling gewgaws, paltry items for a few pence. Six months ago, he had hoped to use the Lacrima Christi, his portion of the plunder, to escape abroad and build a new life.

He clutched at his belly and winced at a sudden spasm, so strong he almost threw himself into a corner tavern boasting the sign of ‘The Morning Star’. He hurried across its sweet-smelling taproom into the cobbled yard that housed the latrines. Once he had finished, his points tied securely, his cloak firmly clasped, he re-entered the taproom, where he sat in an ill-lit corner and ordered a goblet of Bordeaux, staring around furtively at the other customers. In the main, these were journeymen who had been entertaining the crowds as they surged down to Westminster. The garishly garbed storyteller now sat with the relic-seller with his tray of so-called holy items on the floor beside him. Across the taproom, the fire-eater quenched his thirst, raising his tankard in toast to the two whores he had hired to tumble in an upstairs chamber.

Glaston supped at his wine, trying to quell the tremor in his hand. He was certain he was being watched, followed, kept under close scrutiny, a feeling he could not shake off even though he failed to define the shadows haunting him. He cradled the goblet and stared down at the floor, kicking at the filthy rushes as a rat, sudden and swift, scurried for shelter. Glaston felt as if he was the same. He was hiding from the light, fearful of everything and everyone. How things had changed. Fortune’s fickle wheel had turned. At first the great robbery at Westminster had been a triumph. The rifflers of London had toasted the perpetrators, hailing them as great lords of the underworld. Puddlicot and his gang had promptly disappeared into the stinking slums of Whitechapel and elsewhere. They did not wish to glory in their plunder. Most of the leaders desperately tried to seek passage abroad; until then, they would remain hidden. Adam Warfeld and his monks, however, had simply retreated behind the walls of their abbey, ever ready to claim clerical privilege and benefit of clergy to any law officer stupid enough to try to force his way into the monastic enclosure.

Sandewic, Edward I’s boon companion and constable at the Tower, had tried his best, as had the London sheriffs, all to no avail. The king was being openly ridiculed and taunted. The London mob, that ever-hungry beast, flexed its muscles. Proclamations mocking the king and glorying in the robbery had been posted on the Standard at Cheapside and the Great Cross in St Paul’s churchyard – and then Sir Hugh Corbett had arrived. The Keeper of the Secret Seal brought a retinue of mailed clerks to assist him: Ranulf-atte-Newgate, Wolfram, Wodeford, Lord Simon Malmaison and others.

Corbett fulfilled one verse from scripture in resolving the challenges and problems facing him. He feared neither God nor man. He had taken Sandewic’s troops from the Tower and forced himself into the abbey, totally ignoring its abbot’s strictures. He and his cohort had carried out a ruthless ransacking. Some of the monks had been very stupid. Treasure was found beneath beds, behind aumbries, in herb plots, flower beds, even in a latrine. Corbett had swept Westminster like God’s own storm. Both abbey and palace were turned upside down. He then moved across the city, empanelling juries in every ward, listening to reports about anything suspicious. Arrests were made.

The rifflers decided to break and flee; those caught red handed faced summary justice. Two thieves were beheaded at the Cross in Cheapside, eight more hanged just outside Newgate. The gang scattered, every man left to his own devices. Some – and Glaston ground his teeth – had turned king’s evidence; they became approvers, Judas men, suing for a royal pardon in return for a full and frank confession, listing the names of accomplices and providing evidence against them. The most serious of these was the betrayal by the riffler Rievaulx, who wreaked hideous damage with his revelations. Corbett had then divided his mailed clerks like a huntsman would a pack of hounds. Wolfram pursued this felon, Wodeford that. Lord Simon Malmaison – wolf-faced Malmaison with his slanted eyes, narrow, pocked face and thin, bloodless lips – was assigned to search for the Lacrima Christi and other precious stones. Glaston moaned quietly to himself as he slurped at the wine. He had glimpsed Malmaison around the city with his bullyboy Wolfram. A man of blood, Lord Simon had acquired a most chilling reputation.

A bell began to toll, and the other customers shuffled to their feet, shouting excitedly that the execution was about to begin. Glaston drained his cup. In truth, he should avoid the gallows and scaffold in Tothill Street, close to the abbey, yet he felt compelled to witness Puddlicot’s final moments. He pulled his hood over his head and joined the rest hurrying along the maze of alleys and runnels, which reeked to high heaven of dirt and filth. The tenements, the mumpers’ castles of the lost of London that lined these spindle-thin paths, were propped up by makeshift struts and rotting planks, their windows sealed by bulging iron-bound shutters. Nevertheless, people lived here; the dark-dwellers, the midnight folk crammed in like lice on a slab of putrid meat. Puddlicot had drawn his gang, his supporters from these nightmare places where smoke and stench constantly circled and shifted. Now and again a voice cried, a woman screamed, a man shouted. Glaston kept his head down, then froze when he heard his name called. He paused at a corner and turned to confront the weasel-faced man behind him.

‘Master Glaston.’ Weasel-face grinned, his sore mouth gaping to reveal yellow stumps. ‘I am Tooth-pull,’ he declared, bleary eyes glittering. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I was with you at the abbey. I stood guard.’

Glaston stared in horror at this filthy shadow-dweller, then shook his head and hurried on. He pushed his way through the crowds and reached the execution ground at the end of Tothill Lane under the magnificent brooding mass of Westminster Abbey, a sheer forest of stone with its sculptured cornices, ledges, sills, statues and gargoyles. The entire area heaved with a throng seldom seen; all of London seemed to have emptied to witness Puddlicot hang.

The soaring three-branched gallows had been well prepared, the black hanging tree rearing up starkly against the sky with a thin ladder leaning against one of the gallows’ branches. On the platform beneath, the hangman and his henchmen stood waiting, fearsome figures in their scarlet masks and caps, black leather jerkins and leggings. It was now late morning, a sharp grey day; the showers had died away, though everything remained soaked and slippery. The weather had certainly not dampened the enthusiasm of respectable citizens, or that of the horde of dark-dwellers from the Kingdom of Chaos and the Mansions of the Moon, where Puddlicot had been hailed as a prince amongst thieves. Miscreants of every kind and hue were impatient to watch the hanging of one of their own lords.

The grotesquely painted whores in their blood-red wigs and white-plastered faces were eager for business. These ladies of the night were herded by their pimps, garbed in motley rags, knives pushed through their rope belts; each carried a small bucket ready to collect the coins of anyone desperate enough to hire a common whore. The conjurors also sought business, clacking their dice ready to predict the future for anyone stupid enough to believe them. Heralds of the dusk, tale-tellers living in the twilight of the city, now emerged to recount stories and legends about the man set to hang. Executions always whetted appetites, so itinerant cooks, water-carriers, ale-sellers and wine-servers hustled and bustled to sell their goods. Guilds and fraternities continued to chant psalms and hymns of mourning. The air was riven by singing, jeering and catcalling. Smoke curled up from the moveable stoves to mingle with the stench of human sweat and other odours. Roasting meat, well past its prime as it crackled in rancid fat, exuded a foulness that merged with the sweet fragrances gusting up from incense thuribles and herb pots.

A shout went up. The execution party was approaching! Standing on tiptoes, Glaston glimpsed the wheelbarrow in which Puddlicot had been placed, a small cart being pulled by horses and escorted by Tower archers. It was pushed forward and stopped before the steps leading up to the execution platform. The noise of the crowd was deafening. The Fraternity of the Hanged and the Brotherhood of the Noose tried to chant the Miserere. A group of Friars of the Sack recited the De Profundis – ‘Out of the depths do I cry to you, O Lord’ – but their words were swept away by the hideous din. The bellowing of the mob was now constant as it surged backwards and forwards. A coven of witches, wizards and warlocks fought to draw closer, desperate to crawl beneath the execution platform, daggers at the ready, because the flesh and clothing of a hanged man allegedly contained magical properties.

Puddlicot, a mass of bruises from head to toe, simply stood, hands hanging by his sides, head down, moving like a sleepwalker, pushed and shoved to where the hangman wanted him. The executioner now moved a second, thin ladder to rest beside the one already in place against the gallows’ branch. The sheriff in charge clapped his hands. The heralds flourished their trumpets and blew one fanfare after another until a profound, brooding silence descended like a mist over Tothill. One of the sheriff’s men then proclaimed how Richard Puddlicot had been judged guilty of heinous felonies and was worthy of death with no hope of pardon, so sentence should be carried out immediately.

The hangman moved with alacrity. Held by the archers, Puddlicot was pushed up one ladder whilst the executioner scaled the one alongside it. He reached the top rung and, balancing himself carefully, fitted the noose around Puddlicot’s neck, positioning the knot directly behind the left ear. Then he hurriedly descended, leaving the condemned man, hands tightly bound before him, perched on the top rung. Tambours began to beat. The hangman seized the ladder Puddlicot was perched on and abruptly twisted it. Puddlicot fell like a stone and the crack of his breaking neck could be clearly heard. A great sigh echoed from the crowd, a prolonged gasp of breath. For a few moments there was silence, but then the crowd’s interest quickened as Puddlicot’s corpse was stripped naked and placed on the cutting table. Glaston recalled how the king had proclaimed that the corpse should be peeled. The skin would then be cured and dried before being nailed to the door of Westminster Abbey, a grim warning to its miscreant monks.

Glaston had seen enough. He turned, pushing his way through the crowd, desperate to reach his narrow two-storey house on Thames Street. A dilapidated, decaying building, it nevertheless stood in its own large plot and was comfortable enough, even though the great city cesspit just beyond its garden wall was a perpetual nuisance, deep, thick and reeking of every filth. He scurried down the street and unlocked the front door, creeping along the stone-flagged mildewed passageway to the small kitchen and buttery. As soon as he entered, he realised he was in danger. It was cold. He glanced at the windows; one of them had its shutters pushed back. He looked to his right and gasped at the dark, threatening figure sitting in his chair at the end of the kitchen table.

‘Good morrow, Master Glaston.’

The intruder lifted the large lanternhorn from the floor beside him and pulled back its shutters so the dancing light bathed the sharp, wolf-like face of Lord Simon Malmaison, mailed clerk, man-hunter, Corbett’s living scourge. He bent down again and picked up a small hand-held arbalest, its feathered bolt ready in the groove. This he carefully placed on the table together with a Welsh stabbing dirk, its razor-like blade winking in the light.

‘Sit down, Master Glaston, please sit down.’ He gestured to the stool at his right. ‘Sit down,’ he bellowed. Glaston hastened to obey. ‘Very good.’ Malmaison leant closer. ‘I won’t waste your time so you must not waste mine. Understood?’ Glaston gulped and nodded vigorously. ‘You see,’ Lord Simon continued as if conversing with a close friend, ‘I am so very, very busy. I have so many matters to attend to here in the city yet I must hasten back to Malmaison, a fine manor house, my friend, high on Doone Moor. Do you know it?’

Glaston just shook his head; this intruder truly terrified him.

‘I am needed back there,’ Malmaison continued quietly. ‘I have heard stories about my dear, darling wife Beatrice. Then there is my steward Chandos, whom I must hold to account. I really should hasten back. I have also got my eye on two young leopards. They are kept in the royal menagerie in the Tower – have you seen them?’ Again Glaston, soaked . . .