Satan in St Mary

Corbett was almost shouting. "Somebody gave you information about where I was and what I was doing! Who was it?"
    Alice beckoned with her hand and, when Corbett drew close, quietly murmured a few words into his ear. Corbett stared at her, smiled coldly and drew away. She could have told him outright but, getting close to her, he felt her soft lips near his face, smelt the perfume of her hair and body and realized he could still lose his soul in such a soft deadly trap.
    Corbett shook his head and scuffed at the grass with the toe of his boot.
    "Is the rest as I described?" he asked.
    "Yes, " Alice smiled tightly, like a little girl admitting she was wrong when caught out in mischief.
    "And the others?" he queried.
    She looked at him sharply, the smile had gone. "Your King will have to hunt them down, Master Clerk, " she snapped.
    "That will be easy. They are not far away, " Corbett murmured. "There are those at The Mitre, one will break. "
    "And me? I am not afraid to die, " Alice whispered.
    Corbett looked into her dark eyes and saw the terror there; she was lying and he knew that she was asking for pity. He crouched down and cupped her face in his hands. "I can do little for you, Alice, " he said gently. "I cannot get you a pardon, not for this. I cannot ignore you as some others may well use your name to buy mercy. You cannot hide for the rest of your life for, if you did, they would surely hunt you down. " He stopped talking and kissed her gently on her eyelids, tasting her tears. She was a murderess, a sorcerer and traitor but his love cut through such names.
    "Listen, Alice, " he continued quickly, "tomorrow I will write my report for Burnell. The day after I will send it to him. That is the day he will strike, The Mitre will be surrounded. You must flee today. You must not inform the others. They are lost and, " he lied, "already under scrutiny.
    Do you understand?" She nodded and he kissed her on the brow, smelling the faint fragrance of her hair.
    Corbett rose and walked quickly away. He thought he heard her call his name but he did not turn back and dismissed it as the screech of a gull hunting in the mudflats along the river bank.
    Eighteen
    True to his word, Corbett spent the following day drawing up his report for Burnell, hoping that Alice would save herself and not warn the rest of her coven. Ranulf was still absent so Corbett asked Swynnerton to send one of his more intelligent squires into the city to see if anything untoward was happening in The Mitre. The squire returned late in the evening, quite drunk, but after Corbett had doused him in a tub of icy moat water, he recovered sufficiently to report that he had noticed nothing extraordinary.
    Early the next morning Corbett finished his report; it contained all that he had told Alice with a few additional facts and observations. He re-read it then, satisfied, sanded and sealed it 'for the Chancellor only', and sent it into the city under an armed escort from the Tower. The task done, he wandered out of the Tower back to the place he had met Alice a few days before. The grass where they had sat still bore the scuff marks of their boots and the silence and lonely desolation of the ruins a marked contrast to the passion and fury he had felt when he had first visited the place. He was about to turn away when he saw a posy of spring flowers resting on the top of the wall, tied in a bunch by a small black silk glove. Alice had left them, knowing he would return. Corbett picked them up and slipped the flowers inside his jerkin and sat slumped against the wall,
    cursing his luck, preferring anything rather than face the yawning emptiness in his heart.
    Corbett stared across the fields and realized that he had one more task to accomplish. He hurriedly went back to the Tower and left hasty instructions for Swynnerton and Ranulf. From a cleric in the Tower he borrowed a thick, heavy, brown cloak with a cowl to cover his head, rubbed crushed ash into his hair and face and, disguised in both dress and behaviour like an old monk, left the Tower and took a barge to Westminster. He arrived at the usual place but, when he had slowly climbed the steps from the river, he ignored the usual route to the Great Hall and made his way instead to the main entrance of the abbey. Inside he ambled slowly up the great nave of the church not bothering to stare at the pure spotless white walls, the trellised stonework or the soaring majesty of the pillars which seemed to make the