Hugh Corbett 06 - Murder Wears a Cowl

 
MURDER WEARS A COWL

 

 
PAUL DOHERTY

 
 
headline

Copyright © 1992 Paul Doherty

The right of Paul 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.

First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2012

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.

This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

eISBN: 978 0 7553 5034 6

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
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Table of Contents

 

 

History has always fascinated me. I see my stories as a time machine. I want to intrigue you with a murderous mystery and a tangled plot, but I also want you to experience what it was like to slip along the shadow-thronged alleyways of medieval London; to enter a soaringly majestic cathedral but then walk out and glimpse the gruesome execution scaffolds rising high on the other side of the square. In my novels you will sit in the oaken stalls of a gothic abbey and hear the glorious psalms of plain chant even as you glimpse white, sinister gargoyle faces peering out at you from deep cowls and hoods. Or there again, you may ride out in a chariot as it thunders across the Redlands of Ancient Egypt or leave the sunlight and golden warmth of the Nile as you enter the marble coldness of a pyramid’s deadly maze. Smells and sounds, sights and spectacles will be conjured up to catch your imagination and so create times and places now long gone. You will march to Jerusalem with the first Crusaders or enter the Colosseum of Rome, where the sand sparkles like gold and the crowds bay for the blood of some gladiator. Of course, if you wish, you can always return to the lush dark greenness of medieval England and take your seat in some tavern along the ancient moon-washed road to Canterbury and listen to some ghostly tale which chills the heart . . . my books will take you there then safely bring you back!

The periods that have piqued my interest and about which I have written are many and varied. I hope you enjoy the read and would love to hear your thoughts – I always appreciate any feedback from readers. Visit my publisher’s website here:
www.headline.co.uk
and find out more. You may also visit my website:
www.paulcdoherty.com
or email me on:
[email protected]
.

Paul Doherty is one of the most prolific, and lauded, authors of historical mysteries in the world today. His expertise in all areas of history is illustrated in the many series that he writes about, from the Mathilde of Westminster series, set at the court of Edward II, to the Amerotke series, set in Ancient Egypt. Amongst his most memorable creations are Hugh Corbett, Brother Athelstan and Roger Shallot.

Paul 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 headmaster of a school in north-east London and lives with his wife and family near Epping Forest.

‘
Teems with colour, energy and spills’
Time Out

‘Paul Doherty has a lively sense of history . . . evocative and lyrical descriptions’
New Statesman

‘Extensive and penetrating research coupled with a strong plot and bold characterisation. Loads of adventure and a dazzling evocation of the past’
Herald Sun
, Melbourne

‘An opulent banquet to satisfy the most murderous appetite’
Northern Echo

‘As well as penning an exciting plot with vivid characters, Doherty excels at bringing the medieval period to life, with his detailed descriptions giving the reader a strong sense of place and time’
South Wales Argus

To my daughter Vanessa Mary

The creaking of the scaffold rope was the only sound to disturb the dark silence which hung like a cloud over the great open expanse outside St Bartholomew’s in West Smithfield. During the day the area bustled with colour and noise but, at night, the ghosts would claim it for their own. The great scaffold with its out-jutting beams and yellow knotted ropes was a common sight, as were the corpses which dangled there, necks twisted, eyes protruding, swollen tongues clenched between yellow teeth. The city fathers decreed that executed malefactors should always hang for three days until their bodies started to rot and the sharp-beaked ravens began to gouge the eyes and soft flesh of the face.

No one ever approached that scaffold at night. The old hags claimed the Lords of Hell came to dance there. Even the dogs, cats and kites of the city left the place alone once darkness had fallen. Ragwort, the beggar, however, thought different. During the day Ragwort always sat at the corner of St Martin’s Lane in West Cheap, his copper-begging bowl extended as he whined for alms from the faithful, the rich and the patronising as they crossed London’s great market place to do business at St Paul’s. At night, however, Ragwort moved back to Smithfield, to sleep beneath the scaffold. He felt protected there. No one would dare accost him and he accepted the grisly corpses hanging above him as his companions, even protectors against the robbers, thieves and nightwalkers who plagued the narrow alleyways of London. Sometimes, when he could not sleep, Ragwort would crouch on the wooden slats he used as legs and chatter like a magpie to the corpses. He would wonder about their lives and what had gone wrong. They were the best, indeed the only listeners, to his own dismal tale: how he had been a soldier, born and bred in Lincolnshire, before becoming an archer in Edward of England’s army in Scotland. How he had attacked a castle with scores of his companions, climbing the scaling ladders and then how God, aided and abetted by a red-haired Scotsman, had brought him low as hell. The ladder had been overturned, Ragwort had fallen into the dry moat and, when he had tried to crawl away, his legs had been drenched in sticky, burning, black oil. He had screamed for days, twisted in agony for months after the surgeons neatly chopped both legs off beneath the knee and strapped on wooden slats. Ragwort had been given a few coins, put on a cart and sent south to London to beg for the rest of his life.

Ragwort had come to terms with this. He had good custom and the great lords and the fat lawyers were generous patrons. He ate well, drank a flagon of red wine each day and, when the weather turned cold, the good brothers in the hospital of St Bartholomew’s always allowed him to sleep in their cellars. Ragwort claimed he had visions, strange fancies which plagued his dreams: sometimes he was sure he saw red-horned demons walking the streets of London. On the evening of May 11th 1302, as Ragwort made himself comfortable beneath the swinging corpses, he had another premonition of impending evil: the stumps of his legs ached, he had a prickling at the back of his neck and his stomach bubbled like a pot of seething fat. He slept fitfully for a while and woke just as a strong breeze sprang up to send the cadavers above him twisting and turning in some macabre dance of death. Ragwort tapped the soles of one of the corpse’s feet.