by Paul Doherty
‘Yet someone at Blackfriars was determined enough to murder him and seize those documents?’
‘Brother Alberic may have had enemies here.’
‘So soon?’ Athelstan queried. ‘A visitor from Italy?’
‘Oh, Alberic made his presence felt.’ Fieschi looked away. Athelstan quickly recalled the handsome young messenger who came clattering up the stairs and disappeared just as they forced the door to Alberic’s chamber.
‘There is more to this than the sanctity or not of a long-dead king, surely?’
‘Athelstan.’ The prior chose his words carefully. ‘Edward II was a man of contention. His life still divides our order; his reign, particularly his captivity and death, raises matters of deep concern. The past can and does haunt us. Isn’t that true, Brother Roger?’
The chronicler, half-hiding his face behind his hands, simply nodded. Athelstan glanced at Brother Roger: the reference to the theft of manuscripts from Alberic’s chamber seemed to have agitated him. Athelstan had caught the worried look he had thrown Anselm and the prior’s reply, a slight shake of the head as if warning the chronicler to remain silent.
‘Athelstan?’
‘Father Prior, you were talking about the past haunting us?’
‘It certainly does. My family name,’ Anselm declared, ‘is Mortimer. I am a distant kinsman of Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, the lover of Queen Isabella and the moving spirit behind Edward II’s deposition and destruction. Brother Roger is related to the Despenser family, Edward II’s favourites at the time of his fall. We have old retainers in Blackfriars, men who served in the royal households of Edward and Isabella: they have earned the right of a corrody – a pension – here, comfortable bed and board for years of loyal service.’ The prior waved a hand. ‘For all I know, there may be old Dominicans who were once caught up in those hurling, violent years when Edward II fell from power. Some members of our order disappeared and then re-emerged years later.’ He caught the disbelief in Athelstan’s eyes. ‘Brother, walk around Blackfriars now. There are Dominicans who have come in to shelter, some of whom I have never met before. Look at you. You spend more time at St Erconwald’s than you do here.’
The prior pulled a face. ‘Memories run deep. What is mere history to one person is a living, enduring reality to another. Brother Roger will tell you how Blackfriars became a hotbed of intrigue and conspiracy during the turbulent years of Mortimer, in support of the imprisoned king.’ Athelstan glanced at the chronicler, who nodded in agreement. ‘So,’ Anselm crossed himself, ‘what we must do is help our brothers here move matters swiftly on. You, Athelstan, aren’t needed at St Erconwald’s, so it’s best if you stay at Blackfriars out of harm’s way and assist us.’ The prior broke off at the powerful wailing of a hunting horn, followed by the clanging of the tocsin bell sounding the alarm. The raucous noise stilled all conversation. Again the hunting horn brayed.
‘The water-gate!’ Prior Anselm gasped. ‘Some danger at the water-gate!’
Athelstan followed the prior and the others out of the chancery chamber. The priory was in a ferment. Armed retainers, lay brothers and old soldiers lodged at Blackfriars were busy arming themselves. The barbican tower had been opened, the weapons’ chests unlocked. The sacristan in charge of defence, a tall, burly, bold-faced Dominican, was organising the distribution of crossbows, arrows and quivers, clubs and bill hooks. He called out to Prior Anselm but the prior just shook his head and hurried on, pausing only to beckon at Athelstan.
‘I am sure the rebels are making their presence felt,’ he whispered. ‘They know of you, Athelstan, so they will treat with you, though God knows what they want.’
They left the main building and took a path which cut through bushes and grassy plots down towards the soaring, battlemented water-gate built into the great curtain wall overlooking the Thames. The guard tower was two storeys high and had three entrances: double gates which could be opened when the tide fell, with two portcullises on either side which could be raised on chains. The entrance and steps to the tower platforms thronged with armed retainers dressed in the black and white livery of the order. They stepped aside for Prior Anselm and Athelstan, who hastened up the steps and out on to the fighting platform which provided a clear view of the river. Athelstan leaned against the stonework and his heart sank at the sight. Six great war barges, all displaying huge banners black as soot or blood-red, now faced the water-gate. The barges were oared by professional watermen who skilfully kept their craft in one battle line, carefully spacing out their prows which were jutting towards the entrance to Blackfriars.
‘The Guild of Bargemen must have joined the rebels,’ Athelstan whispered. ‘Although I suspect they were given little choice in the matter.’ He pointed at the armed retainers now thronging up the steps, warbows and arbalests primed. ‘We cannot afford a mistake.’
The prior nodded. The noise and clamour from below was rising. Many of the fighting men were deeply agitated. The serjeants were already bellowing for boiling oil and water to be prepared, whilst small war catapults were being dragged out of nearby sheds to be readied for deployment. The prior shouted for calm and, helped by Athelstan, cleared the fighting platform, telling the men to wait below, to do nothing without his order. At the same time, one of the servants was despatched to bring the prior’s crozier, a long bronze pole surmounted by a jewelled cross, which arrived with an altar cloth. Athelstan tied this to the crozier and held it up so the cross glittered in the bright sunlight and the brilliant white linen fluttered and snapped in the river breeze. Silence descended. The hubbub and clamour from both the water-gate and the waiting barges died.
One of the barges crept forward, oars dipping slowly, the tillerman keeping it steady. The boat was crammed with archers, some dressed in pieces of armour, most wearing the green, black and brown jerkin and hose they had donned before leaving their ploughlands in Essex and Kent. Several of the men had strung their bows. Athelstan hid his nervousness. Some of these rebels, indeed many of them, had served in royal arrays and chevauchées in northern France and Spain, master bowmen who could loose one deadly shaft after another in the twinkling of an eye.
‘Pax et bonum!’ Grasping his crozier, Prior Anselm stood up on the fighting step in clear view of the men in the leading barge, which was still edging closer. Breathing a prayer for help, Athelstan stepped up beside his prior.
‘Pax et bonum!’ Athelstan repeated. ‘Peace and goodness to you all!’
‘You are?’ A man had climbed on to the prow.
‘Prior Anselm of Blackfriars and Brother Athelstan, Dominican priest of St Erconwald’s in Southwark.’
‘And I am Wat Tyler,’ the man shouted back. ‘Chief amongst the Upright Men, the one who sits high in the council of the Great Community of the Realm, the commonwealth of free peasants.’
‘I know who you are …’ Athelstan hurled back. ‘We have met. I know what you plot.’
‘Athelstan,’ Prior Anselm hissed, ‘what is this?’
‘Alea iacta,’ Athelstan murmured. ‘The die is cast. I know this reprobate, a true villain out of Kent.’
Tyler was now conferring with his comrades. Athelstan stared up at the blue sky. The breeze had shifted, bringing in the stench of the nearby Fleet river which, as usual at the height of summer, would be clogged with all the filth and refuse of the city. The corpses of cats, dogs and horses mingled with the leavings of the great dung carts which emptied their swill into the mud-encrusted waters of that open sewer. Athelstan wondered idly if London would be cleaned or if that too would collapse and the stench he smelt now would creep across the entire city. He thought of his own little house with its kitchen, bed-loft, scullery and storeroom; he hoped all would be safe. Would Benedicta and the rest look after Philomel, his old warhorse? Would Bonaventure, that wily, one-eyed great tomcat, have the cunning to go into hiding? He hoped no one would hurt Hubert the hedgehog in his little house, the hermitage which Crispin the carpenter had built. The friar shook himself free of such distractions.
‘Brother Athelstan?’ Tyler’s voice echoed across the water. ‘Are you loyal to King Richard and the True Commons?’
‘Is the Holy Father a Catholic?’ Athelstan yelled back, provoking laughter amongst the men on the barge.
‘What do you want?’ Prior Anselm intervened. ‘Why are you here? This is the mother house of the Dominican order who work amongst Christ’s poor and dispossessed.’
‘We know you shelter people,’ Tyler bellowed back. ‘Individuals who the true Commons wish to question. We insist on a thorough search of the friary precincts.’
‘Refused,’ Anselm shouted back. ‘This is a place of hallowed sanctuary, consecrated ground, protected by Holy Mother Church.’
Tyler climbed down from the prow platform to engage in deep discussion with the others. Two of the barges pulled closer, packed with men all bristling with weapons. Athelstan glimpsed a small moveable catapult. However, though he could not make out individual faces or hear even a word of what was being said, he sensed there was little desire amongst the fighting men for a confrontation with Blackfriars. He suspected the war barges had moved along the north bank of the Thames to test the defences of different places, from the quaysides of the Wine Wharf and the Duke of Norfolk’s Inn to the formidable fortifications of nearby Castle Baynard. The rebels were simply unfurling their standards and making their authority felt. Both he and the prior gave a deep sigh of relief as the barges started to pull away, but then the leading one came darting back, aiming like an arrow towards the water-gate. Orders rang out, oars were lifted. Tyler – Athelstan was sure it was he – stepped back on to the prow platform.
‘Brother Athelstan?’ he yelled. The friar raised his hand and Tyler leaned forward. ‘We know your allegiance is to the King and the True Commons, as is mine …’
‘Liar!’ Athelstan whispered.
‘Brother, I assure you, you have nothing to fear from us, but I should tell you this. Your parishioners, the loyal Upright Men of St Erconwald’s and their Earthworms, have disappeared, vanished.’
‘What do you mean, vanished?’ Athelstan called.
‘Disappeared,’ Tyler repeated. ‘Gone like thieves in the night. Are you sheltering them? Do they lie imprisoned in your priory dungeon?’
‘No one lies in my dungeons,’ Anselm shouted, ‘on my solemn oath over the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ whose feast we celebrate tomorrow. God be my witness, I have no knowledge of what you say.’
Tyler stepped down off the platform and the barge withdrew.
‘What does he mean?’ Athelstan fought the panic bubbling within him and grasped Anselm’s arm. ‘Father Prior, I must go to Southwark. I must find out what is happening. I promise, just one visit, then I shall return.’
Anselm stared into the anxious eyes of this little friar who meant so much to him. A true priest, Anselm considered, an honest son of the soil who loyally followed Christ the ploughman, Christ the ditcher, Christ the harvester. A priest who truly cared for his flock and not just its fleece. He patted Athelstan on the shoulder.
‘You may go, but be back by the morrow. We need you here.’
Athelstan thanked him. They left the water-gate fortifications and returned to the main building. Fieschi stood in the hallway gossiping with Cassian, Isidore and Brother Roger. They were apparently deep in discussion over the issue of Edward II’s love for his Gascon favourite, Peter Gaveston. Athelstan was invited to join them but he excused himself, adding that Prior Anselm would inform them about the confrontation at the water-gate. He wanted to be away, to hide his confusion over what he had just learnt. According to Tyler, his parishioners had simply disappeared. Watkin the dung-collector, Pike the ditcher, Moleskin the bargeman and all the rest were Upright Men. They should have been on those barges, yet, according to the rebel leader Tyler, there had been no sight or sound of them.
Agitated, Athelstan wandered into the main church, now deserted after the high Mass and the recitation of Divine Office. A ghostly, shadow-filled, incense-perfumed place; the long nave stretched before him with shafts of light pouring like coloured moonbeams through the stained-glass windows high on either side. At the far end a red sanctuary lamp glowed through a gap in the heavy, exquisitely carved rood screen. Athelstan could make out the aisle leading to the choir, the gleam of candlelight on the oaken stalls where he had stood so many times to sing Matins, Lauds, Vespers and Compline. He walked slowly along the nave then paused. He felt a cold prickling between his shoulder blades. He was not alone, he was sure of that. He turned quickly, staring at the sunlight pouring through the half-opened main door. Nothing! Yet he was sure he heard the scuff of a sandal, a quick intake of breath. Was he being followed, and if so, why? Blackfriars, like so many religious houses in London, had become a sanctuary, but what else might be happening here? This investigation into a long dead king, what was the relevance of all of that?
Again, Athelstan heard a sound. He whirled round, staring to the left and right at the dark-filled transepts. He walked back to the entrance porch and stood near the baptismal font, close to St Christopher’s pillar where a picture of the saint, a hairy, burly figure, moustache and beard all bedraggled, carried the Christ Child on his shoulder. Athelstan murmured the St Christopher prayer which his mother had taught him when he was knee-high to a buttercup, a special plea that the great saint would protect him against sudden, violent death.
He walked around the pillar, his gaze caught by glimpses of the different wall paintings. One in particular was quite startling: a devil with a salamander-like face and body, was using another demon as an ink horn to write out the offences of a sinner kneeling before him. Next to the salamander, a rat-headed fiend pierced a usurer’s head with a pointed candlestick. The usurer was blindfolded with an execution sword buried deep in the back of his neck. A devil with a bloated belly and a grape as a navel waited close by with a dish to receive the usurer’s severed head. Another demon, with a gaping toad-mouth and whip-like tongue, grasped a piece of parchment covered with warnings against fornicators, jugglers, dancers, gorgers and guzzlers. Nevertheless, the demonic preacher advocated lechery without shame and gluttony without blame to a group of ribalds, drunkards, pimps and ladies of the night. Athelstan smiled. He was always fascinated at how sin seemed to attract artists. Giles of Sempringham, for example, the Hangman of Rochester, when he wasn’t busy around the scaffolds of Tyburn and Smithfield, loved nothing better than to decorate the walls of St Erconwald’s with dramatic paintings. Where was the Hangman of Rochester now, and his companions?
Athelstan walked up into the north transept where the chantry chapels, each separated by a trellised oaken screen, stretched the full length as they did along the south transept, small altar shrines, each carefully enclosed and dedicated to this saint or that. Athelstan realised it was years since he had visited any of these: his gaze was caught by the lighted candles flickering on one of them further up the transept close to the Lady Altar. Curious, he walked towards it and entered the altar shrine dedicated to St Edward the Confessor, whom the Plantagenet royal family regarded as the founder of their dynasty. He found a comfortable, well-furnished chantry, the floor carpeted with thick, soft turkey rugs. The walls proclaimed different scenes from the Confessor’s life, all executed in the Plantagenet colours of scarlet, blue and gold. The roundel window high in the outside wall was filled with painted glass depicting the saintly king’s head circled with a shining blue and gold halo, whilst the table altar was covered in costly cloths of scarlet trimmed with silver.
Candles glowed in their gilt spigots. Apparently Mass had recently been celebrated here: the air was sweet with incense smoke and the rich tang of altar wine. The sacristan had failed to douse the candles. Athelstan stepped on to the dais and, wetting his fingers, extinguished each of the dancing flames. His gaze was caught by the reredos, the wooden decorated screen behind the altar, cleverly carved out of polished elmwood with small, lozenge-shaped enclaves, each boasting an insignia repeated time
and again, either a double-headed eagle or a crown in chains. Athelstan wondered about the symbolism behind the emblems. This was a chantry chapel, consecrated to the Confessor, yet Athelstan could not recall these heraldic insignia being associated with that saintly Saxon king.
Mystified, he moved to the door of the chantry chapel and stood there, thoughts teeming like wheels, then he sat down on the altar server’s stool and tried to marshal his own thinking. First, Prior Anselm had summoned him from his parish and kept him kicking his heels here at Blackfriars. Secondly, a papal delegation led by Fieschi had arrived in England because of King Richard’s determination to hallow the memory of his unfortunate ancestor, Edward II, deposed, detained and barbarously executed at Berkeley Castle. Fieschi and Cassian were promoters of the cause. Isidore and Alberic were to act as Devil’s Advocates. Thirdly, they had come, not just because the Dominicans were responsible for the Inquisition, but also because Edward II had a deep devotion to the friars, hence the Pope entrusting this task to the Order. Blackfriars had been chosen because it was the mother house of the Dominicans in England: it also possessed extensive records and archives and was close to the royal muniments of the Exchequer, Chancery and the different courts. Apparently, relevant records had already been despatched by the Crown for the papal envoys residing at Blackfriars.
‘So far, so good,’ Athelstan whispered to himself. To all intents and purposes, a scholarly exercise, an investigation into a murder, albeit a royal one, which had apparently occurred some fifty-four years ago. Nevertheless – and fourthly – this royal death still played a part in the lives of others. It apparently held its own dangers, and these had surfaced last night, or early this morning, when Alberic had been cruelly stabbed to death in his chamber – but how, why and by whom? The chamber was sealed, the only entrance being through a door which was strongly hinged, bolted and locked. Nevertheless, someone had gained entrance to that chamber, murdered a vigorous former soldier without any sign or noise, cruelly stabbing him with a dagger. The assassin had also stolen some documents and slipped into the dark. Yet how could that be? How did the murderer get in and get out?