flesh and . .. and most of it is already melted to liquid. I can't touch him.' Tears ran down the man's face. 'Please, please, don't make me do this,' he begged.
'If he has bones you can tell where his lips were, his private parts, his hands,' Raffe said with a coldness he didn't feel.
It was taking every drop of self-control he had not to burst out screaming and sobbing at the sight of the foul, stinking abomination that had taken the place of his dearest friend's face.
'Do it, Father. Do it now or by God, I shall close these bars and leave you down there to rot until you look just like him.'
The priest bowed his head. Then, as a palsied man struggles to move a deadened limb, he stretched out his shaking hand into the darkness of the coffin. His fingers coated in the precious drops of holy oil, he made the three-times-five crosses — three for the Trinity, five for the senses — anointing eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands, feet and genitals, or at least the places on the rotting flesh where these organs which cause a man to sin had once existed.
'I anoint... I anoint thee with . . . holy oil in the name of the Trinity that thou mayest be saved for ever and ever.'
Raffe bowed his head, crossing himself, and so fervently did he pray that he almost missed the sound of the footsteps crossing the courtyard. But a man who has watched through many a long night waiting for that slight intake of breath that the assassin makes before he sticks the dagger in your back or slices his knife across your throat, can never again give himself over to prayer or sleep or even love-making without his sixth sense remaining ever watchful.
Quicker than an arrow flies from a bow, Raffe had withdrawn the lantern and closed the trapdoor over the prisoner hole. Below him, he heard a shriek of fear from the priest. Raffe stood astride the wooden door in the hope that his voice would carry downwards as well as across the courtyard.
'Who goes there?' he challenged as loudly as he could.
He prayed that the priest would have the sense to stay still and would not in his panic lose his wits so far as to cry out.
'What are you doing skulking in the shadows, gelding?'
Devil's arse! It was Hugh. The last man Raffe wanted to see that night.
Raffe strode as rapidly as he could into the courtyard to draw Hugh away from any sound the priest might be making down there, trapped in the darkness with the rotting corpse.
'Doing my rounds as a steward should, making sure that no one is helping themselves to the stores. And you, what keeps you awake at this late hour — can't find a woman to warm your bed?'
By the scowl on Hugh's face he knew he'd hit the mark.
'A bed-warmer is all the use you can put a woman to, isn't it, gelding?'
Raffe noticed with some satisfaction that Hugh was limping. The rumour among the sniggering servants was that he'd been thrown from his horse earlier in a hunt that day. His fall and the fact that the hunt had failed to kill a single boar had made him even more foul than usual.
Hugh nodded in the direction of the gatehouse. 'One of my brother's men, Raoul, has not returned from Norwich. I intend to rouse that bone-idle gatekeeper to learn if Raoul has sent word about his delay.'
So they didn't yet know about Raoul. Raffe muttered a rapid prayer of thanks for that. But he had to prevent Hugh from going to the gatehouse. If Hugh found the gatekeeeper absent it wouldn't just be Walter who suffered; sooner or later Hugh would be bound to discover who had sent Walter away and his suspicions would be thoroughly aroused.
But Raffe was careful to betray nothing of his anxiety on his face. 'If a message had come, word would have been sent to you straight away.'
'Walter would have sent a servant with a message, but since you never bother to school them in their duties, no doubt the numbskull would have forgotten what he was about before he was half-way across the yard. There's not enough wit between the whole pack of servants in this manor to animate a single slug'
He made to turn in the direction of the gatehouse, but Raffe blocked his way.