by Paul Doherty
‘I have heard something about this …’
‘Yes, my little friar. Somewhere between Queenhithe and the mouth of the Thames, a royal war cog, its cargo and crew, apart from one survivor, were annihilated by a horrific explosion. The hold of the war cog allegedly contained not only a hand-held casket of freshly minted gold and silver coin, but barrels of black powder for the cannons and culverins of the Calais garrison.’
‘I saw The Knave of Hearts,’ the Fisher of Men mournfully interjected, ‘close to Sodom and Gomorrah.’
‘Pardon?’ Athelstan queried.
‘Huge, treacherous sandbanks in the middle of the river,’ the Fisher of Men replied. ‘They have brought death and destruction to many craft. I should know,’ he added grimly, ‘I have fished a number of their victims out of the water.’
‘And when you passed the cog?’
‘Brother, all seemed orderly enough. Its sails were billowing; I glimpsed watchmen in the poop, stern and falcon’s nest. We were making our way upriver, back to the city. I remember a bank of sea fog, dense and cloying, rolled in. Ichthus,’ the Fisher nodded to the door where his henchman stood on guard, ‘he claimed to hear an explosion and, despite the mist, a brilliant flash of fire and scorching flame. At first, I thought he was mistaken, but he was convinced of what he had heard and seen so I turned my barge around and made our way back. Of course, Ichthus was correct. The Knave of Hearts was just a blazing, floating wreck. There must have also been some oil on board, which would feed the flame, as would the ship’s woodwork and cordage.’
‘And survivors?’
‘At first, none that we could see. Most of those on board would have been shredded like soft meat on a skillet.’
‘And how many were the crew?’
‘About twelve mariners, including the master and two Cheshire archers bound for the Calais garrison,’ Cranston explained. ‘Trusted men. Nobody else was allowed on board.’
‘Nobody?’
‘Nobody, Brother. Now, it could have been a horrific accident except,’ the coroner pointed at the Fisher.
‘We plucked a body out of the water,’ the Harrower of the Dead replied. ‘Reginald Dorset, master of the war cog, was found floating, clutching a timber. We pulled him on board our barge. There was little we could do for him; he was dying from a savage head wound. We forced wine between his lips and made him as comfortable as possible, but Dorset didn’t seem to be aware of what was happening. He gabbled nonsense about phantoms and nightmares. How the underworld had spat filth into the darkness, vengeful spirits mottled in flesh had appeared on his war cog.’ The Fisher of Men leaned forward. ‘But, listen, Brother, you deal with matters spiritual. Dorset said something very eerie. He talked of a demon dressed like a woman with a painted white face, its head adorned with a wig, fiery-red like the flames of Hell.’
‘Which is,’ Cranston intervened, ‘something similar to those poor whores, their throats cut, their corpses mocked with hideous red wigs.’
Athelstan shook his head and crossed himself. ‘Is there a connection?’ he asked.
‘I cannot say but, to go back to the cog, if its destruction was deliberate murder, then the assassin must have escaped, surely? Though it is a mystery as to how he could do all that. As for motive? Well, it must have been the theft of the royal treasure, the gold and silver held in that hand-held coffer.’ Cranston chewed the corner of his lip. ‘The real mystery is how the assassin escaped and, I concede, there may have been more than one, yet the cog was totally destroyed. The Thames is treacherous, it’s the dead of winter, the water is icy cold, the surge of the river violent, and a deep, cloying mist wouldn’t have helped. So, to return to the assassin, he must have fled by boat.’
‘The cog’s bum-barge was found floating empty a few days later,’ the Fisher of Men declared. ‘Nothing suspicious was found in it. The assassin might have used it to escape. When I passed the war cog, the bum-boat was trailing behind, fastened by ropes with clasps to the stern.’
‘Is that usual?’ Athelstan asked.
‘Yes,’ the Fisher of Men pulled a face. ‘Many masters do not haul such boats aboard until they have passed all the sandbanks. The boat can be very useful in freeing obstacles such as the heavy thick gorse which often trails from such sandbanks coiling out to scrape off the ship’s side. So yes, Brother, what I saw was nothing out of the ordinary. And yes, the assassin may have used it to escape and transport the plunder.’
‘What plunder?’ Cranston laughed drily.
‘Sir John?’
‘There was no treasure! As you know, Master Thibault has a weasel mind and the cunning of a fox. He made great play about The Knave of Hearts taking gold and silver to Calais. It never went. At least not on board ship.’
‘Sir John?’
‘Brother,’ Cranston held up a hand, ‘I only discovered the truth yesterday. The treasury coffer on board The Knave of Hearts held nothing but rubbish, as the assassin would have soon discovered. No, the gold was taken by sumpter pony and put on board another cog with an escort of two more. The Knave of Hearts was simply a cat’s paw, a ploy to divert any would-be robber. Even Master Dorset was not privy to the secret.’
‘Of course, The Knave of Hearts had no escort?’
‘That was all part of the pretence, news about its cargo being too important to share with another crew. Anyway, the gold and silver are now safely lodged in an arca at Hammes Castle.’
‘And the cannon powder?’
‘Oh that was on board, stored in its hold. Cannon powder is valuable but not precious. Moreover, it’s hard to steal; the barrels are heavy and cumbersome.’
‘So,’ Athelstan scratched his chin, ‘we have a ship leaving Queenhithe; it sails downriver towards the estuary. We must accept that Master Dorset was actually attacked, hence the wound to his head; it means that the assassin showed his hand. He somehow got down to that ship’s hold, silenced the guards and any other members of the crew. He stole what he thought was the treasure, lit a long fuse to ignite the black powder, and then left the ship, having brutally attacked its master. Somehow he managed to get himself and that coffer into a boat, perhaps the cog’s own bum-barge. He then rows away. The flame on the fuse races towards the powder and The Knave of Hearts is no more: that, Sir John, appears to be what happened. What I can’t understand is how the assassin got on board in the first place, do what he did and apparently escape, if he did escape; though I suspect this evil-hearted murderer would save his own skin. In the end, however, Dorset and all those other poor souls were mercilessly slaughtered. God have mercy on them.’
‘Master Thibault wants their killer or killers caught and hanged for all to see.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Athelstan murmured, ‘there may be more than one assassin.’
‘Whatever, Thibault is insistent that those responsible suffer the full punishment for treason, to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Brother Athelstan,’ Cranston toasted the friar with his goblet, ‘the hunt is about to begin. Dorset’s soul cries for justice, Thibault wants vengeance. Once again, little friar, we enter the maze of murder, to pursue the children of Cain to the very death.’
‘As long as it’s not yours,’ the Fisher of Men told them, ‘for whoever destroyed that ship and all those men truly is a godless assassin.’
‘Godless!’ Athelstan exclaimed. ‘What a coincidence! Moleskin on his journey across here claims to have fought on a barge, Le Sans Dieu, along the Seine in Normandy during the war with France. I gather from our bargeman that the memories of his time as a soldier are not at all pleasant.’
‘And I suggest he is correct,’ Cranston agreed. ‘Ah yes, “The Godless”. The coroner ran a finger around the rim of his goblet before pointing at the Fisher. ‘You have heard of it?’
‘I certainly have! Anyone who works along the river,’ the Harrower smiled thinly, ‘or at least those of our generation, has heard about “The Godless”. Indeed, I understand that Dorset, master of The Knave of Hearts, was also a member o
f its crew along with his henchman Bramley.’
Athelstan straightened up in his chair, his interest now quickened.
‘Strange,’ he whispered, ‘how this red-wigged shape from Hell appears to have risen from its pit to plague these waters. Yes, Sir John?’
‘Red-wigged shape of Hell is an apt description.’ The coroner rose from his seat and went to inspect the hour candle on its capped stand in the corner. ‘We must leave soon,’ he declared. ‘We have a meeting with those who served on “The Godless”. I have news for them fresh from France. I need to tell them.’ He smiled over his shoulder. ‘And that includes Master Moleskin. My friend,’ Cranston came to stand over the Fisher, ‘I also bring good coin for you from the Guildhall …’
‘In which case,’ Athelstan rose, clutching his chancery satchel, ‘I shall administer the last rites for poor Rohesia.’ The friar, accompanied by the Seraphim, returned to the death house. He took out the phials of sacred oil and holy water and sketched a cross on the dead woman’s forehead. Once completed, he intoned the prayers for the faithful departed. The Seraphim, acting in as orderly a manner as any choir, recited the responses as Athelstan had schooled them to do during previous visits. Afterwards, the friar walked that macabre chamber. The Hangman of Rochester, St Erconwald’s own painter, had been hired by the Fisher to decorate the walls of the mortuary. Many of the scenes played on the theme Timor Mortis – the Fear of Death. Garishly drawn skeletons sprawled across coffins, stood on gravestones or danced frenetically around a dying man. Demons with the faces of rats, badgers, pigs and cats, all garbed in full armour, solemnly carried a funeral bier towards a yawning furnace, its flames leaping up in hungry expectation. The brilliant red paint the hangman had used reminded Athelstan of those macabre wigs fastened over the heads of dead whores. The friar blessed himself and thanked the gargoyles for their company. At their request, kneeling before him, he bestowed his most solemn blessing on the Seraphim and intoned the first two verses of the ‘Ave Maris Stella’. The Seraphim were delighted and, with their good wishes ringing in his ears, the friar returned to Sir John.
The coroner had finished his business so they made their farewells and left, hurrying along the narrow runnels and thread-like alleys leading into Queenhithe ward. Despite the weather, the streets were busy, clogged with stalls, carts, barrows and horse-pulled sledges. Athelstan always experienced a spasm of passing fear whenever he had to push his way through the noisy, colourful throng of the city crowds. He kept very close to Sir John who, hand on the hilt of his sword, surged through the busy streets like a war cog in full sail. The coroner was soon recognized by the denizens from the mumpers’ castles, the tribe of thieves who perpetrated their mischief across the city: naps, foists, cunning men, pickpockets, forgers and pimps; these glimpsed the coroner and disappeared like snow before the sun. The street-lurkers sank back into the shadows. The whores and lady-boys withdrew into the dark.
A lunatic, set free to beg and plead for alms, danced before them; a leaping, macabre figure in his brightly coloured rags. Cranston threw him a penny. The lunatic expertly caught this and promptly danced away into an alehouse. Now and again, the coroner was greeted with catcalls and insults. Cranston ignored these, marching on. He whispered to Athelstan to be careful and keep a wary eye on the windows above them, from where jakes’ pots and stool pans were emptied, a rain of filth cascading down into the street, its deep sewer already choked with every kind of slop.
Athelstan, walking in Cranston’s shadow, calmed himself down, staring around at the different sights: the beadles leading a line of bedraggled peace-breakers down to the stocks, thews and pillories. Three other city officials, ‘bum-snatchers’, as they were lewdly called, had caught two ancient whores plying their trade where they shouldn’t. The bailiffs had stripped them of their ragged skirts and were now beating the ancient crones’ sagging buttocks with a leather strap, whilst their aged pimp had to balance a piss-pot on his head, the punishment of all three being proclaimed to the mocking wail of bagpipes and the incessant beat of a drum.
The noise was now strident. Shouts and cries. The screams of half-naked children dancing around the midden heaps or chasing a cat, which raced along the street with a rat dangling from its jaws. Funeral processions were assembling. Wedding parties thronged in alehouses. A gang of mummers tried to attract an audience with their grisly depiction of the martyrdom of St Agnes. Smells billowed backwards and forwards, the delicate sweetness of the pastry shops mingling with the rank odour of cheap fat sizzling in pans and skillets set over moveable stoves. Cranston murmured that it was also execution day outside Newgate, over Tyburn Stream as well as on the great gallows at Smithfield. The execution carts, with all the paraphernalia of gruesome death – axe, noose and cleaver – hanging over their sides, were slowly making their way along the streets. The gibbet men who accompanied the carts, hooded and visored, guided their great black dray horses, pushing away those who clustered close seeking information about the condemned. The executioners pointed behind them to the heralds who followed the carts and tried to proclaim the list of felons to die that day.
Athelstan sketched a blessing in the direction of the executioners and followed Cranston into an alleyway which cut down to the quayside. The coroner paused outside a tavern on the corner of a runnel. He pointed up at the huge, garish sign which displayed a gigantic sea monster and, above this, the title The Leviathan.
‘The great prowler of the seas,’ Cranston whispered. ‘This is the home and hostelry of a sept, a division of the Worshipful Guild of Barge- and Watermen.’ The coroner and friar entered the dimly lit taproom; a high-beamed chamber, clean and well swept, the floor covered with coarse matting rather than the usual mess of rushes. Tables, stools and overturned barrels stood around the taproom; the three windows overlooking the enclosed garden were shuttered, though the piercing breeze made the flames of a host of candles and tapers flutter wildly. At the far end of the taproom stood the brewers stall, where ale, beer or wine were served. Athelstan sniffed, revelling in the sweet cooking smells. He glanced up at the hams, flitches of bacon and other meats hanging in their nets to be cured by the smoke from the great hearth built into the sidewall of the taproom.
‘Can I help you?’ A woman appeared out of the doorway to the kitchen. She walked quickly across, wiping her hands on a napkin, which she then tucked into the broad leather belt around her slim waist. A young-looking woman with a long, thin, pallid face, made pretty by the large smiling eyes and pert rosebud lips. ‘You must be Sir John Cranston?’ She turned, her smile widening. ‘And this must be the illustrious Brother Athelstan?’
‘Flattery is like a perfume,’ Athelstan quipped back, ‘to be smelt but never drunk.’
The woman laughed, adjusting the veil which covered her dark, lustrous hair. She again wiped her hands, but this time on her grey gown, gathered at the neck and falling to hang just above soft leather boots. She sketched a mocking curtsey before gesturing at her visitors to follow her through a steam-filled kitchen into the adjoining buttery; a narrow chamber dominated by the long table around which four men, one of them a priest, had gathered. The woman introduced herself as Mistress Alice Brun and invited the others, who sat morosely glaring at her, to do the same. Greetings and courtesies were reluctantly exchanged, interrupted by the arrival of Moleskin who burst into the buttery, gabbling his apologies and excuses.
‘I am sorry,’ he spluttered, ‘I was delayed. Sir John, your messenger Tiptoft—’
‘Ordered you to be here,’ Cranston finished his sentence. ‘So, Master Moleskin, take your seat.’
Mistress Alice served morning ales and small wedges of freshly baked bread. The taverner talked breathlessly as she scurried backwards and forwards. She assured Cranston that she had followed his instructions and closed her tavern to all except the guildsmen gathered about the table. Athelstan, sitting next to Sir John Cranston, cradled his chancery satchel as he stared around at the bargemen. Moleskin seemed to be their leader
, though Athelstan was impressed by the quiet manner of the guild chaplain, Father Ambrose, a serene-faced cleric, his greying hair cut in the conical tonsure, his black robe simple, with no ornamentation except for the white bands around the collar and cuffs. A man sure of himself, Athelstan concluded, content in his own skin. Apparently Father Ambrose had once been a bargeman. He had served in France but, on his return, entered the church and was appointed as priest of nearby St Olave’s, as well as acting as chancery clerk to the guild. The priest sat relaxed, his writing satchel expertly tied on the table beside him. The rest of the sept were fairly nondescript, in many ways like Moleskin, with their hard faces, skin chapped by the rain and wind. All of them were well past their fortieth summer. Athelstan noted their names: Alexander Cromer, Walter Desant, John Falaise and Matthew Hornsby. Mistress Alice was also one of them; a recent widow, her husband Luke Brun dead and buried within the last month. Alice now owned The Leviathan; she worked as taverner and had taken her husband’s place amongst the guildsmen.
Athelstan sat still and silent whilst the chatter and gossip continued. The bargemen acted as if nothing was wrong, though the friar could sense the tensions seething beneath the surface. At last Cranston leaned forward and rapped the top of the table.
‘My lady,’ he bowed at Mistress Alice, ‘gentlemen, we have a path to follow, one which will lead us back into the past. So let us be honest, blunt and stark with the truth.’ Cranston paused. ‘You know, I know, we all know about the prostitutes who have been murdered, their naked corpses set adrift on some skiff, their heads adorned with cheap, fiery red wigs. You must have also heard about the destruction of The Knave of Hearts, a war cog shattered to fragments, its crew annihilated, their souls sent unprepared to judgement. Now you may not know this but,’ Cranston shrugged, ‘there again, gossip and rumour sweep the Thames like a strong breeze. To cut to the quick. Reginald Dorset, master of The Knave of Hearts, died gabbling about some red-wigged apparition who appeared on his ship.’ Cranston paused at the cries of exclamation his revelation provoked. ‘And so we come,’ the coroner continued, ‘to something we probably all know. All of you are members of the Worshipful Guild of Barge- and Watermen, but in your youth, each and every one of you, apart from you, Mistress Alice, served on a war barge, Le Sans Dieu – “The Godless”, fighting the Valois and their armies the length and breadth of the Seine. The French called you the “Flames of Hell”. You certainly inflicted devastation along that river, waging war sharp and cruel against the enemy.’