Sir Hugh Corbett 11 - The Demon Archer

help? He ran across to the open door. The women inside were seated at the table. Jocasta was a tall, swarthy-faced woman, with coal-black hair tumbling down her strong face. Her eyes never flinched. Her daughter, with mousey-coloured hair and vacant eyes, just lifted a hand and went back to crooning over the little wooden doll in her lap.
    ‘I need food!’ Verlian gasped.
    ‘Then you’ll find none here, Robert Verlian!’
    ‘I am innocent.’
    ‘No man is innocent.’
    ‘For the love of God!’ Verlian screamed as the sound of the hounds drew nearer.
    Jocasta went to a basket near the door and thrust two apples into his hand.
    ‘You are a dead man, Verlian. If Sir William doesn’t kill you, his hounds will!’
    ‘Please!’
    ‘Use your noddle! Are your wits as wandering as my daughter’s? You have appealed to God, then to God you should go!’
    She slammed the door in his face. Verlian bit at the apples. They tasted sour; he found it hard to chew, his mouth was so dry. He was about to run on when he remembered what the witch-woman had said and gasped in relief. Of course, there was only one place which could house him. He fled across the clearing. Gasping and retching, Verlian forced his way through the brambles, desperate to seek the path he needed. The hunt grew closer, the howls of the mastiffs sounding like a death knell. On and on Verlian ran, ignoring the bile at the back of his throat, the tears which stung his eyes, the shooting pains at the back of his legs and the terrible cramp in his left side. He stumbled, falling flat on his face, the hard pebbled tracks scoring his hands, bruising his cheeks. He got up, ran on and, at last, he reached the clearing where before him stood the open doors of St Oswald’s-in-the-Trees. Gasping and stumbling, Verlian threw himself inside, slammed the door shut, pulling the bar down and leaning against it. The little church was dark, with only a glow of light from beneath the crudely carved rood screen. He was aware of benches and stools in the darkening transepts.
    ‘Who is there?’
    A figure came through the rood screen. Verlian recognised Brother Cosmas. He stumbled up the church. The Franciscan held a knife in one hand, a candle he had been tapering in the other. Verlian reached the rood screen, pushed by the priest and staggered up the narrow steps. The verderer touched the altar then crouched down beside it as the Franciscan towered over him, a ghostly figure in his brown garb, the lower half of his pale face hidden by the shaggy black beard which fell down below his chest.
    ‘You are Robert Verlian!’ he declared. ‘Once chief verderer to Lord Henry. They say you are a murderer, an assassin!’
    ‘I am no assassin!’ Verlian spat back. ‘I am innocent of any crime! I claim sanctuary!’
    The Franciscan sniffed and crouched beside him.
    ‘There’s little I can do for you, man.’ The hard eyes were kindly. ‘Sir William is lord of the manor.’
    ‘But not lord of this church!’ Verlian retorted.
    ‘No, no, he isn’t.’
    The Franciscan rose to his feet at the hammering which rained on the door.
    ‘And, perhaps, it’s time I reminded him of that!’

    In the spacious, well-timbered house which stood on the corner of the Rue St Denis within earshot of the bells of Notre Dame, Simon Roulles, the perpetual student, the wandering scholar, the loyal servant of King Edward of England , had found his own sanctuary in the opulent bedchamber of Madame Malvoisin. Simon, who now was known to his rather venerable lover as Bertrand, rolled over on the bed and stared down at his latest conquest.
    ‘You are indeed,’ she whispered, ‘a veritable cock, a strutting stag!’
    Simon laughed and threw himself back on the bolsters.
    ‘Why me?’
    The question had been asked many times over the last few days. Simon always tried to be honest. After all, what was he, just past his twenty-fourth or was it twenty-fifth summer? Well, the greyhaired lady who lay beside him was at least twice that age. In her youth Madame Malvoisin must have been comely: lustrous eyes, generous lips and the paint she had put on her face hid the seams and wrinkles of passing time. Her body was plump, warm, soft as silk and, if Simon was honest, a comfortable berth for a wandering soul such as himself.
    He had met her in the marketplace, his hair crimped and prinked. He was wearing his best scholar gown, displaying the coloured silks of the student of the Quadrivium and Trivium at the