Satan in St Mary

dogs some twenty years ago.
    Of course, Corbett and Alice became lovers, a kiss at first, an embrace, a meal late in the evening when the tavern was closed. Then, almost as if they were man and wife of many years, Alice took Corbett by the hands and led him up to her own room. A spacious room, almost like a solar, with large cupboards, chests, a table and stools on a polished floor covered in woollen rugs. The walls were green, spattered with gold stars and the small painted heads of men and women. There were small, capped braziers and freshly cut boughs to perfume the room with their fragrance. Alice led Corbett over to a huge, low-slung bed and then, turning her back demurely, began to undo her gown, slipping it over her shoulders, removing hose and petticoats until she stood naked, a pool of lace around her. Corbett smiled when he saw that she had not removed her small black silken gloves and went to pull one off but she smilingly removed his hand and began to undress him in turn while he admired her diminutive Venus-like body.
    Corbett had never experienced such passion and skill as he did that night. Time and again her lips sought his while her body enticed and drew him into a dark whirlpool of passion until eventually their bodies locked and twined together into an embrace, fell into the deep dreamless sleep of lovers. The next morning Corbett woke to find her up, dressed and fresh and lovely as any bride. She sat beside him on the bed, laughing and teasing him and disappeared when he threatened to repeat the performance of the night before. Deep in his soul, however, Corbett knew that the idyll could not last. The burly giant, Peter, stared at him murderously every time he entered the tavern while the group of men, Alice's "protectors and agents", closely watched him. They made no attempt to approach him – or he them. In fact, Alice took every precaution to keep them apart, Corbett did not care, dismissing their quiet malevolence as simple envy and jealousy.
    The Chancellor, Burnell, however, kept sending Corbett sharp, brusque letters demanding reports on what progress he was making. Corbett never replied, secretly hoping that the matter would lapse and be forgotten and was rather surprised that the King's chief minister should still be interested in the suicide of a pathetic little man like Duket. It was Couville who brought him up sharp. One night, a few weeks after he had first met Alice, he returned to his lodgings in Thames Street to find a leather pouch waiting for him. The mistress of the house muttered something about it being delivered earlier in the day. Corbett took it to
    his room and, breaking the seal, drew out a long roll of aged vellum and a short covering letter from Couville which he tossed onto the bed. He then sat and unrolled the long scroll. It was yellow with age, frayed and cracked at the edges and the fine Norman-French writing was quite faded, though still legible. He skipped the usual flowery phrases, discerning that it was a report from one of the under-sheriffs in the city to the Chancellor of Henry II. Looking at the end of the report, Corbett saw the date above the old cracked seal, 'Written at the Tower – 2nd December in the 28th year of the King's reign' which, he quickly calculated, was 1182. He took his own writing-tray and began to transcribe the main substance of the report.
    "It was early in the summer of this year that one William Fitz-Osbert, a traitor and a man of evil life, began to gather people together in a coven bound to Satan, rejecting Mary's son, as he termed Christ our Saviour. This son of the devil held coven meetings beyond the city walls and, because of the absence of our good King Henry, even within the city itself. It has been established that Fitz-Osbert and his retinue celebrated secret rites, the Black Mass, in which they committed desecration of the Host and abominably treated the sacred vessels, statues and crucifixes stolen from churches in London. Fitz-Osbert preached and proclaimed that his Master, the Anti-Christ, was coming, who would sweep away the evil, as he termed the King, Holy Mother Church, and all the pillars of government and law in the country. Time and again their secret ceremonies were performed at houses in the city or deserted ruins around the Tower where they plotted to destroy the government of the King. Secret supplies of arms were smuggled into the city to equip his followers and Fitz-Osbert stirred the people up by