Crown in Darkness

King Alexander's fall into blackness on that dark night? Was the fall an accident or the brutal murder of a royal prince, Christ's anointed? Corbett was still thinking on this as he fell into an uneasy sleep.

TWO
    The day after Corbett finished his letter to Burnell, he felt refreshed enough to begin his search for some answers to the questions he had raised in it. He used his time to recuperate, chatting to the monks in the monastery, visiting their small library and scriptorium where some of the monks, exempt from the offices of Terce, Sext and None, worked throughout the day so they could use the poor daylight to their best advantage. Corbett loved libraries, the smell of parchment, vellum and leather, the ordered shelves and total commitment to study. He felt at ease sitting at a small desk surrounded by the paraphernalia so beloved of any industrious clerk: inkhorns; finely honed quills, thin cutting knives and small grey stones of pumice for smoothing the white scrubbed parchment. Corbett chattered to the monks, he could not understand their native tongue but many were fluent in Latin or French. They informed Corbett of the divisions in their country, the difference between the Highlands held by the ancient Celts and the South Lowlands dominated by the Anglo-Norman families such as the Bruces, Comyns, Stewarts and Lennoxes, very similar in their ways to the great families of England who served the great King Edward I. Indeed, as the Prior, a tall, austere man with a dry, sardonic sense of humour, pointed out, many of the monks in birth, education and tradition were really no different from Corbett. The clerk could only agree and soon felt at home in Holy Rood, offering to help the brothers in their scriptorium, exchanging ideas and constantly praising what he saw.
    Corbett was tactful enough never to draw comparisons or appear to criticise. Privately, he was more than aware of the deep differences between the two countries. There was more wealth in England and so greater sophistication, whether it be in the use and treatment of parchment or the building of castles and churches. He remembered the soaring purity of Westminster Abbey with its pointed arches, trellised stonework, large windows and coloured glass and realised the contrast as he looked at the primitive rather dark simplicity of the Abbey of Holy Rood with its stout round columns, small, deep splayed windows and dog-tooth stone carving above a simple square nave and chancel. Nevertheless, there was an energy and openness about the monks which cut through Corbett's jaded outlook and soft sophistication. Moreover, the monks like those in England, loved to talk, chatter and discuss. The Abbey kept its own chronicle and it was easy for Corbett to turn the conversation to the recent happenings in Scotland and so glean useful information, even though it was based on the gossip of a monastic library. The monks informed him about the court, the current scandals and, more especially, that the young French princess, widow of Alexander III, was still residing at Kinghorn Manor. Corbett decided to visit her and the Prior offered a guide. Corbett gratefully declined this though he did accept a thick serge cloak with a capuchon or hood for, though it was May, the weather was still cold and, wrapped in this, Corbett left the monastery on the most docile cob he had ever ridden. The clerk used a crudely-drawn map sketched out by one of the monks to guide his horse from the craggy plateau of Edinburgh down onto the road to the ferry at Dalmeny. The same route, Corbett reflected, Alexander had taken that fateful night some two months earlier. Now, the weather was calmer; a clear jewel-blue sky across which puffs of white clouds were sent scudding by a stiff breeze. In the distance, Corbett saw the glint of sunlight on the waters of the Forth and, around him, a late spring was making itself felt in the clumps of wild white flowers, soft green grass and the constant chatter of song-birds.
    Corbett turned his long, tired face to the sky and for a moment understood the sheer joy and beauty of Francis of Assisi's "Canticle to the Sun". Then he came to where the rutted track he was following crossed another and saw the three branched gallows, each with its blackening, bird-pecked burden. His mood swung in violent contrast and Corbett felt despair, a terrifying sense of the world's sin, a deep malevolence in the affairs of men. "And the serpent entered Eden" Corbett muttered