by Paul Doherty
‘Drinking himself stupid at St Bartholomew’s.’
‘And the Lady Maude and the two poppets?’
‘Proud as peacocks! Proud as peacocks!’ Cranston dug his face into the cup of brimming claret. ‘Strange,’ he muttered, smacking his lips.
‘What is, Sir John?’
‘Well, our under-sheriff’s reported, as we expected, that no boats were hired to go to the God’s Bright Light but that mad bugger the Fisher of Men sent me a message.’
‘What did he want?’
‘To see me, but he’ll have to wait.’
Athelstan thanked the tapster who placed a tankard of ale in front of him.
‘Sir John, are you sure no other boat approached the God’s Bright Light the night Bracklebury disappeared?’
Cranston nodded. ‘First, before you ask, Brother, I have already arranged for the city to reward Moleskin. But, to answer your real question, no boat went there.’
‘So, how did Bracklebury leave?’ Athelstan asked.
‘Don’t forget he was laden down with the silver.’
‘He probably swam.’
‘He couldn’t. Ashby told me that.’
Cranston’s face became serious. ‘Tasty tits!’ he muttered, ‘I hadn’t thought of that. What I have done is issue a proclamation throughout the city that Bracklebury is to be taken, if possible, alive.’
They sat for a while discussing plans and possibilities as the day began to die. Cranston demanded and got a pie and a dish of vegetables which he shared with Athelstan.
After that they left, crossing a dark, cold, empty Cheapside and walking through a maze of streets to Theobald de Troyes’ house. A steward let them in, his face full of surprise.
‘Sir John, Master Theobald has gone!’
‘I know,’ Cranston replied. ‘And, while the cat’s away, the mice will play, eh?’
The steward looked puzzled.
‘Where is everyone?’ Cranston continued.
The steward pointed down the passageway to the kitchen. ‘We are having our evening meal.’
Cranston’s podgy nose twitched at the savoury smells.
‘What is it, man?’
‘Capon, Sir John, marinated in a white wine infused with herbs.’
‘I’ll have two plates of that,’ Cranston said immediately. ‘With a couple of loaves. Bring them to the garret. Now, no one here is to leave this house, you included! And no one is to come upstairs until I say. Be a good fellow and piss off and do what I have told you!’
The steward scurried away. Athelstan and Cranston made their way through the opulently furnished house to the bleak garret at the top. The steward, now in total awe of Sir John, came up with the food. Cranston ordered him to bring candles and the thickest woollen blankets he could find. The steward obeyed. Cranston and Athelstan settled down.
At first the coroner insisted on recounting every blow of the river battle, with anecdotal references to his days of glory when he served with Prince Edward against Philip of France. At last, his belly full of capon and after generous swigs from his wineskin, Cranston began to doze. For a while Athelstan just sat in the darkness, remembering his own days in France and his brother Francis who had died there. He shook his head to clear it of the still-painful memories and thought instead about his parish. He prayed that Basil the blacksmith and Watkin the dung-collector would not come to blows. His eyes grew heavy and he, too, slept for a while. Then he found himself being vigorously shaken awake by Cranston, his fat face pushed close to his, a finger to his lips. Athelstan felt cold and cramped, his arm a little sore. He strained his ears. He heard occasional sounds from the house below, then the cry of the watch.
‘Twelve o’clock midnight! Cold and hard, but all’s well!’
‘That will be Trumpington!’ Cranston whispered.
Athelstan was on the point of dozing off again when he heard a movement, a mere slither on the tiles above. Cranston gripped his arm and hissed, ‘Blow out the candles! Don’t move!’
Athelstan stared up through the rafters at the tiles. Was it only a cat? he wondered. Then his stomach lurched as one of the tiles was removed. Another was prised loose, then another, so within minutes a square was opened, revealing the starlit sky. Athelstan saw the evening star and idly wondered why it was there before a dark shape leaned down and a bag was lowered. Cranston heard a clink, a rope slithered through the gap and a dark shape flitted down as quietly as any hunting cat. Cranston waited. The man crouched in the garret, his boots covered in soft woollen rags. He was moving towards the door when Cranston sprang with an agility which took even Athelstan by surprise.
The man crashed to the floor under the full weight of Cranston’s massive body, the wind knocked out of him.
‘I arrest you!’ Cranston roared, leaning over the man and grasping him by the neck. ‘I, Jack Cranston, coroner, have got you!’
The man tried to wriggle free, but Cranston ripped his hood off and grabbed him by the hair.
‘You are trapped, my little beauty!’ he boomed. He banged the man’s head on the floorboards. ‘That’s for me!’ He banged it again. That’s for Brother Athelstan!’ And again. ‘And that’s for that poor maid you killed, you heartless bastard!’
Cranston then dragged the man to his feet. He deftly plucked the dagger from the robber’s sheath, pushed him through the garret door and dragged him down the stairs into the passage on the floor below. Athelstan lit a candle and followed. He held the flame up against the felon’s bruised, dazed face.
‘I’ve never seen him before.’
‘No, you won’t have done,’ Cranston said. ‘But you are right, Brother. I bet this bastard’s a tiler!’
The sounds of doors opening and shouts below showed that the rest of the household had been roused. Cranston went to the top of the stairs and bellowed for silence.
‘Shut up!’ he roared, clutching the footpad in one hand. He shook the man as a cat would a rat. ‘We’ve still got business haven’t we?’
The man could only groan in reply. Cranston marched down the stairs, dragging his prisoner with him. Athelstan followed behind, pleading with Sir John to be careful.
‘I’ll be bloody careful!’ the coroner roared.
The servants had gathered, their faces pallid in the candlelight. Cranston shook the man again, put a finger to his lips for silence and waited by the front door. He must have waited five minutes before Athelstan heard the crunch of a boot and the voice of beadle Trumpington.
‘Well past midnight. Cold and hard, but all’s well!’
Cranston flung open the door, dragging the felon with him.
‘Oh no, it’s not, my lad! The time is bloody ripe to say just how unwell things really are!’
CHAPTER 12
Sir John Cranston stretched his long, stockinged feet in front of the roaring fire. He beamed at his lady, the adoring Maude, who sat beside him, hands in her lap, her girlish face wreathed in a beatific smile, her corn-coloured hair tied in braids. She had been summoned from her bed by her husband’s triumphant, return home. Cranston sipped from his favourite wine goblet and stretched his great legs until the muscles cracked. He wagged a finger at the astonished under-sheriff, Shawditch, who had also been summoned. Athelstan could only stare into the fire and quietly pray that he wouldn’t laugh.
‘You see,’ Cranston explained for the third time, ‘my secretarius and I had the same line of thought.’ He pointed a finger at Shawditch. ‘Always remember, Shawditch, Cranston’s famous axiom "if a problem exists then a solution to it must also exist".’ Cranston winked at Lady Maude. ‘And we knew the problem. A merchant’s house – empty except for the servants, who live on the ground floor – is entered without any visible sign of force and looted. The housebreaker disappears.’ Cranston drummed his fingers on his fat knee. ‘Now that problem would tax any law officer. However, when Athelstan and I visited the last house, where the poor girl was killed, we noticed that the straw beneath the garret’s roof was rather damp. We
ll’ – Cranston leaned over and squeezed Athelstan’s hand – ‘in the normal course of events, the average law officer would have thought, "Ah, I know how the felon got in – through the tiles. He removed some, climbed down, robbed the house, went out through the roof and replaced the tiles behind him. Easy enough for a professional tiler." The trouble with that theory, though, is that another tiler could easily detect what had been done.’ He glared at Shawditch. ‘Is that clear?’
The man nodded vigorously.
‘So we asked Trumpington if a tiler had been summoned, and when he said yes we accepted his story.’ Cranston leaned over for Lady Maude to fill his goblet. ‘And if the beadle had had the roof examined by a tiler, who had found no signs of disturbance, then this could not be how the thief entered the house. But’ – he waved an airy hand – ‘this is where our logic comes in. Brother Athelstan and I considered the following possibility: what if Trumpington, the beadle, was involved in the housebreaking and the tiler used to check the roofs was also involved?’ Cranston slurped from the goblet. ‘A subtle little piece of trickery that might have deceived us had we not noticed those damp rushes.’ Cranston licked his lips. ‘Isn’t that right, Brother?’
‘Sir John,’ Athelstan said, ‘your logic is impeccable. Trumpington and the tiler were working hand in glove. The beadle would find out which houses were empty and how they were organised. Then, while he was patrolling the streets, bawling out all was well, his accomplice was busy robbing the house.
‘Have they confessed?’ Shawditch asked.
‘Oh yes, and some of the plunder has been found in their houses,’ Cranston replied. ‘They are now in Newgate awaiting trial. For the murder of that girl, both will hang.’
He got to his feet and warmed his great backside before the fire. ‘Master Shawditch,’ he said magnanimously, ‘you may have credit for the arrest.’
‘Sir John, I thank you.’
‘Nonsense!’ Cranston replied. ‘Now be off with you. Make sure that all the stolen property is returned to its owners.’
Once the under-sheriff had left, Cranston was about to continue with his tales of triumph, even threatening to go back to his great victory on the river. But Athelstan yawned and stretched.
‘Sir John, I thank you for your hospitality, but the hour is late and tomorrow we have other business.’
‘I know, I know,’ Cranston replied testily. ‘That bloody Fisher of Men is still sending messages to me. He probably wants to be paid for the corpses he’s plucked out of the river.’
Lady Maude got to her feet and pointed to a corner of the parlour.
‘Brother Athelstan, I have made up a comfortable bed for you.’
Athelstan thanked her, rose and stretched.
‘Now, come on, Sir John.’ Lady Maude seized her husband by the elbow. ‘Come. The poppets will be up early and you know they always cry for Daddy.’
Sir John, mollified, headed towards the door and the stairs to the bedchamber. He turned and waggled a finger at Athelstan.
‘You sleep well, Brother, and don’t worry about Gog and Magog. They are both locked in the kitchen. They won’t get out and eat you!’
Athelstan breathed a sigh of relief- Cranston’s new acquisitions, two great Irish wolfhounds, were harmless enough but so boisterous in their greetings they could knock the wind from the unwary visitor.
Sir John and his wife left. Athelstan snuffed out the candles and knelt by his bed to say his prayers, but his mind kept going back to Crawley lying on the deck and to the words he had uttered just before he swooned.
The door opened behind him.
‘Brother?’
‘Yes, Sir John?’ Athelstan replied without turning.
‘You know I am a terrible teller of tales?’
Athelstan smiled. ‘You are a great man, Sir John.’
‘No, Brother, it is you who deserve the credit. On behalf of that little murdered girl, I thank you. You saw old Jack do justice.’
The door closed. Athelstan finished his prayers, crossed himself and climbed into bed. He had intended to lie awake and think, but his head had hardly touched the bolster before he was fast asleep.
His awakening the next morning, however, was far from peaceful. He woke to find one of the great wolfhounds lying on top of him. The poppets, who viewed Athelstan as a favourite uncle, were staggering about with pieces of bread smeared with honey. They were screaming with laughter as they tried to force the bread between his lips. Athelstan climbed sleepily from the bed in a whirl of hurling limbs, soft little bodies and pieces of honey-coated bread. The other wolfhound, Magog, also appeared and made his contribution to the growing clamour. If Athelstan didn’t want the bread and honey, the dogs certainly did. They began to butt the baby boys in their fat little stomachs.
Lady Maude arrived and her few quiet words had their desired effect. The wolfhounds disappeared beneath the table. The two poppets would have joined them, but their mother grabbed them both and dragged them off for their morning wash. Boscombe, Cranston’s small, fat steward, a model of courtly courtesy, appeared with soap, towel and razor.
Athelstan washed and shaved before the fire then joined Sir John, dressed now in more sober attire, to breakfast in the kitchen. Leif the beggar also arrived. Athelstan was always astonished at the skinny beggar’s appetite – it was as if he was constantly on the verge of death through starvation. Leif had brought a companion, Picknose – so named because of a disgusting personal habit. The two were listening in rapt admiration as Sir John, using knives and pieces of bread, described Eustace the Monk’s attack along the Thames. Athelstan ignored them all, ate a hasty breakfast and went outside. The morning, despite the clear skies, was bitterly cold. Athelstan crossed to St Mary Le Bow, where the friendly priest allowed him to celebrate Mass in a chantry chapel.
Cranston was waiting when Athelstan left the church. He handed the friar his cloak and staff.
‘I have just visited that old nag of yours,’ he said.
‘Philomel is not an old nag, Sir John. He’s a bit like yourself, a stout warhorse who may have seen better days.’
Cranston roared with laughter as they made their way down Bread Street across Old Fish Street and Trinity towards the quayside. The city was beginning to stir, carts crashed along, pulled by great dray horses with hogged manes, the steam from their sweaty flanks raising clouds in the cold morning air. Pedlars pushed their barrows; sleepy-eyed apprentices, not alert enough for mischief, laid out stalls and extinguished the lamps hanging outside their masters’ houses. Night pots were being emptied from upper windows and a burly-faced trader, covered in someone’s night soil, was fairly dancing with rage. The dung-carts were out scraping the muck from the sewers and picking up the detritus from the previous day, which included dead cats and a dog, its back broken by a cartwheel. A group of Benedictine monks escorted a coffin down towards one of the churches. A chanteur entertained the early morning crowds with a story of being spirited away to a fabulous fairy city under a mountain outside Dublin. Some drunken roisterers, halters around their necks, their hose pulled down about their ankles, were being led up to the Tun to spend the morning in disgrace in the huge cage there. At the entrance to Vintry two poles stuck in the ground bore the heads of executed French pirates, their features unrecognisable under the muck and refuse that had been thrown at them.
Cranston and Athelstan reached the quayside, which was thronged with merchant ships; the sky was almost blacked out by a forest of masts, spars and cranes. They passed the Aleppo, the George, the Christopher and the Black Cock, their holds open to receive bundles of English wool, iron, salt, meat and cloths from Midland towns. Athelstan looked between the ships and glimpsed the war cogs riding at anchor. Cranston led him down to the alehouse where they had last met the Fisher of Men. He quietly asked the tapster to fetch the fellow, ordered two blackjacks of ale, sat in the same corner of the tavern as before and waited. The Fisher of Men soon appeared. His narrow, skeletal face glowed with pleasure at
the profits he had harvested by plundering the dead and taking corpses from the river. His gargoyles thronged in the doorway waiting. The Fisher of Men refused Cranston’s offer of refreshment but clapped his hands and gave Cranston and Athelstan a mocking bow.
‘My Lord, your Holiness! At last you grace us with your presence!’
‘Bugger off!’ Cranston snapped. ‘You are wasting time!’
‘Would I waste the time of the mighty Cranston? No, come with me, my lord coroner, I’ll show you a great mystery.’
Cranston shrugged. He and Athelstan followed the sinister figure and his motley gang out into the alleyway and through a maze of urine-smelling runnels until they stopped before a large, shabby warehouse.
‘Oh Lord!’ Cranston breathed. ‘Mermaid’s paps! He is going to show us his wares!’
The Fisher of Men produced a key, unlocked the door and led them into the darkness. Athelstan immediately gagged at the fishy, stale-water smell mingled with the sickly-sweet stench of corruption. The gargoyles thronged around him. ‘Lights!’ the Fisher of Men shouted. ‘Let there be light, for the darkness cannot comprehend the light.’
Athelstan put his hand out to steady himself and felt something cold, wet and spongy beneath him. He peered down and bit back his cry as he saw it was the grey, puffed face of a corpse. He rubbed his hand on his robe and waited as torches and candles were lit.
‘Oh, for the love of God!’ Cranston breathed. ‘Brother, look around you!’
The warehouse was built like a great barn. Everywhere, in makeshift boxes which the Fisher of Men must have filched from different places, were the corpses of those hauled from the Thames – forty or fifty at least. Athelstan glimpsed a thin-faced young woman, an archer with a bloody wound in his chest, an old woman who lay on a sopping yellow rag, even a small lapdog that must have fallen from someone’s arms.
‘Come this way! Come this way!’