The House of Shadows

by Paul Doherty

  ‘You know what I’m talking about.’ Athelstan opened his eyes. ‘We’ve asked God to warm our hearts of snow and make us bend our stiff necks. Now, Watkin, the greenery . . .’

  The parish council went through each item, but as soon as they reached the Christmas play, the Holy Spirit was forgotten as the intense bitter rivalry resurfaced. Athelstan shouted for silence but, as he quietly whispered to Benedicta, he was ‘a voice crying in the wilderness’. Nevertheless, he was given a sharp schooling in the language of the alleyways, as Imelda and the rest hurled abuse at each other. Athelstan decided to weather the storm out, keeping one eye on the greedy candle flame. He soon learned that coylums were testicles, a cokeny was a homosexual, a gong was a prostitute, a Jordan was a chamber pot whilst a mamzer was a bastard. For a while he let his parishioners shout themselves into exhaustion, and when they looked to him for direction, turned immediately to Huddle the painter.

  ‘What is glair?’ he asked. ‘You mentioned it a week ago when you proposed to paint the great Chain of Being in one of the transepts.’

  The parishioners stared in disbelief at their priest. He hadn’t answered their question but simply moved on, and of course, once Huddle was asked about paint, there was no stopping him. He immediately began a lecture on how glair was beaten egg white used for binding paint but that it must be mixed with red arsenic to prevent a foul odour and corruption. Athelstan let him talk, and as soon as the red ring on the candle disappeared, he shot to his feet, made a sign of the Cross, and walked up into the sanctuary to pray.

  He knelt in the rood screen, eyes closed. The parish council came to an abrupt ending and the members unanimously decided to continue their argument outside.

  ‘Brother Athelstan.’

  The friar turned. Moleskin stood halfway down the nave, his hand on the arm of an old woman garbed completely in black. Athelstan rose and went down to meet them.

  ‘This is Margot.’ Moleskin stumbled over the name.

  ‘Mistress, you’re welcome.’ Athelstan took her vein-streaked hand; it was icy cold. ‘You had best sit down.’

  Margot, rheumy-eyed, peered up at him. ‘I’ve seen you say Mass, Father. I come here sometimes on the Great Feasts. Moleskin here nearly called me “Fat Margot”.’ She tapped her bony cheeks and moved a wisp of white hair from her brow, tucking it under her black hat. ‘But that was years ago; now I’m as thin as a wand.’

  Athelstan took her back to where the parish council had met and let the old woman warm her fingers over the brazier.

  ‘Margot,’ Athelstan opened his purse, took out a coin and dropped it gently into the old woman’s hand, ‘that’s for your trouble. You’re the widow of one of the boatmen who disappeared on the night of the great robbery.’

  The old woman’s eyes filled with tears as she sat down on a stool.

  ‘Godric was his name, a fine man, Brother. He left that afternoon. I’ve never seen him since, though we found his boat further down the river, caught in some reeds, it was.’

  ‘In Southwark?’ Athelstan asked.

  ‘No, no, where the river bends, going down to Westminster. Just the barge, Father. No pole, nothing. It was as if the hand of some ghostly giant had picked it up and emptied men and goods into the river.’

  ‘Was there any mark of violence – a bloodstain?’

  Margot shook her head. ‘A long, low craft, Brother, built of fine wood, with benches and a small locker at each end for Godric and his partner to store their goods. Painted black, it was, with a high prow and stern. Godric called it the Glory of the Thames.’

  ‘Did your man ever tell you,’ Athelstan asked, ‘why he had been hired that day?’

  ‘He wasn’t hired, Father.’

  ‘Pardon? I thought he was.’

  ‘No, no.’ Margot shook her head fiercely. ‘Godric had been paid well by those two knights. All he told me was that the barge had been hired, but not him.’

  ‘Oh, so they were to bring their barge to the Oyster Wharf and hand it over?’

  ‘I think so. I’m not sure where the knights took it, but Godric was to remain at the wharf until they returned. He didn’t know why, but the knights were respectable so he trusted them. They’d also paid him good silver.’

  She paused as Malachi came through the side door of the church. He raised his hand at Athelstan and walked across to the Lady Chapel.

  ‘Continue,’ Athelstan asked.

  ‘I’ve told you all I know, Brother. My man was paid good silver, he was to hire out his barge and wait at the Oyster Wharf. He left just before sunset; I’ve never seen or heard from him again.’

  Athelstan thanked Moleskin and Margot, and when they’d left, he sat down in the sanctuary chair. What Margot had told him possessed a logic of its own. Culpepper and Mortimer would never tell anyone what they were doing. And the money given to the bargemen? That must have come from either the Admiral of the Fleet, or perhaps from John of Gaunt himself. Athelstan rose and was about to walk across to the Lady Chapel when the door crashed open and Cranston came in.

  ‘Brother, I have news.’

  Athelstan put a finger to his lips and gestured with his head toward the Lady Chapel.

  Cranston peered through the murky light. ‘Just the person!’ he exclaimed. ‘Brother Malachi, a word.’

  The Benedictine crossed himself and came down.

  ‘Brother Malachi,’ Cranston gestured to the stool, ‘I’ll come swiftly to the point. I’ve just visited Helena Mortimer in Poor Jewry.’

  ‘And, Sir John?’

  ‘You’ve visited her as well. You could have told me!’

  ‘Why, of course, her brother was a close comrade of Richard. It’s logical, isn’t it, to seek such a woman out? Yet, she knows nothing—’

  ‘Did you hire the Judas Man?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Yes, I did discuss such a possibility with Mistress Mortimer. Again, it’s a matter of logic, Sir John. I mean, to hire a man hunter to find a man.’ He spread his hands. ‘My Lord Coroner, what I have done, to quote Holy Scripture, has been done in the full light of day.’

  Cranston’s shoulders slumped. He could tell from the Benedictine’s composure that he wasn’t hiding anything.

  ‘Did you know,’ Cranston sat down on a stool, ‘that Mortimer was a henchman of John of Gaunt?’

  ‘A retainer, perhaps, but there was nothing significant in that. His Grace was deeply upset by my brother’s disappearance, as well as that of Edward Mortimer. Perhaps Sir Maurice hasn’t told you, but John of Gaunt instigated the most thorough search for the missing knights. He alerted every sheriff, bailiff, mayor and port reeve throughout the kingdom. If he could have no success, why should I? I’m not lying. Ask His Grace yourself. The letters and writs ordering such a search are still enrolled in the Chancery, I’ve seen them with my own eyes. Now,’ Malachi got to his feet, ‘Brother Athelstan, I’ve brought down my possessions, I need to store them in your house.’ Malachi nodded at Athelstan, sketched a blessing in Cranston’s direction and left.

  ‘Is he staying here? Why?’ Cranston mopped his face on the edge of his gown.

  Athelstan told him in short sharp sentences everything that had happened since they’d parted the previous day. Cranston held his peace, then he, in turn, related all he had discovered. For a while both sat in silence.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ Cranston shuffled his feet, ‘on my short but very cold journey across the Thames, I met Master Flaxwith. The Judas Man seems to have disappeared. I only wish I knew who had hired him.’

  ‘We keep asking the same questions,’ Athelstan replied, ‘and receive the same answers. The mystery always deepens. I have a special cask of the best Bordeaux hidden in my buttery. I can’t take you there because of Malachi. So, like Melchisedech of old, if you sit there, I will bring you gifts of bread and wine and, here, in the presence of God, we shall sit like master and scholar and dispute what we’ve found.’

  Cranston readily agreed. Athelstan brought across a small j
ug of claret, two pewter goblets and a trancher of buttered bread smeared with honey. While Cranston ate, Athelstan prepared his writing tray, and made himself comfortable on Mugwort’s stool.

  ‘So, let’s list the mysteries.’

  Item Sir Edward Mortimer and Sir Richard Culpepper disappear with the Lombard treasure from Oyster Wharf twenty years ago. At the same time, Guinevere the Golden is seen no more.

  Item The two boatmen also disappear, but they were only supposed to bring the barge to Culpepper and later meet them at the Oyster Wharf, yet they too vanished, their barge found floating downriver near Westminster.

  Item Despite a scrupulous search, by His Grace John of Gaunt, as well as Brother Malachi, no trace of the missing persons, or the Lombard treasure, has ever been found.

  Item There is no doubt that Culpepper and Mortimer received monies for the secret task assigned to them. I thought this was just to pay for the boatmen and barge but there was considerable wealth. Mortimer could give gifts to his sister and buy her a narrow house in Poor Jewry.

  Item The Lombard treasure was held in trust by His Grace, John of Gaunt, who hired these two knights so that the movements of this treasure could not be traced. No one, apart from Gaunt and the two knights, knew when, where and how the treasure was being transported.

  Item Although Mortimer and Culpepper disappeared, Helena Mortimer receives, every quarter, five pounds sterling in a little pouch bearing the Mortimer crest. This is delivered to the goldsmith Lundy, who has no knowledge of who or why such a request is made. Again, that’s logical. There is no crime in giving a lonely spinster the means for a comfortable life. We also know that Guinevere the Golden was boasting of some unexpected wealth which would transform her life, but she too has gone into the dark.

  Athelstan paused, and sipped at the claret. ‘Now, Sir John, we move forward twenty years.’ He continued his writing.

  Item Who murdered those two unfortunates in the hay barn? Probably the same person who hired them. Was it Chandler, or did that dead fat knight merely stumble on the corpses? There is no proof of anyone else approaching the hay barn on that murderous occasion.

  Item Who hired the Judas Man? Who is the Judas Man?

  Athelstan glanced up. ‘We don’t even know his name. He was given the task of hunting down the Misericord. Why?’ He kept writing as he talked. ‘Because the Misericord was a rogue who had deceived Sir Stephen and composed a poem about him?’ He shook his head. ‘Definitely not.’

  Item The Misericord was a frequenter of the tavern the Night in Jerusalem. Twenty years ago, when the great robbery occurred, he vouched that all the others concerned, apart from Malachi, stayed in that tavern carousing all night. Again that is logical. Culpepper’s companions, not to mention Master Rolles and Mother Veritable, did not even know that the Lombard treasure was being transported along the Thames. There is no evidence whatsoever that the knights, Rolles or that Witch Queen ever came into any unexpected wealth.

  Item A relationship did exist between the Misericord and the two sisters, Beatrice and Clarice. They too began to hint of unexpected wealth, of transforming their lives, of knowing what had happened to their mother. The only clue they would give was a veiled allusion to something Edith, the Misericord’s sister, wore upon her person. I cannot discover that.

  Item Mother Veritable had good reason, therefore, like Sir Stephen Chandler, to hate the Misericord, who may have been plotting to take away two of her favourite girls. All three of them had mocked a very valuable customer. Yet there is no evidence whatsoever that Mother Veritable, or indeed anyone else, went to Cheapside to deliver that poison pie to silence the Misericord. Of course the Judas Man has disappeared, except for his horse and harness. He may have killed the Misericord and returned to attack Malachi in the church. But why?

  Item What did the Misericord mean by shouting ‘Askit, Askit’ before he died? And what were those strange etchings on the prison wall? The quotation ‘Quern quaeritis’, not to mention the numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5?

  Athelstan paused in his writing and carefully scrutinised his conclusions. Cranston, who had listened as he finished off the bread and wine, came over and sat next to him. He studied the clerkly abbreviations Athelstan had made in listing all his points.

  ‘In the end,’ Cranston muttered, ‘we come back to the great robbery.’

  ‘There are two people,’ Athelstan replied, ‘we haven’t questioned. And we should, sooner or later. His Grace, John of Gaunt, and Signor Teodoro Tonnelli.’

  Athelstan stared across at the glorious red rooster Huddle the painter had begun to depict on one of the pillars. It was supposed to represent the cock which crowed three times, marking Peter’s denial of Christ during the Lord’s Passion. On the other pillar an elegant pelican stabbed its own breast to feed its young, a symbol of Christ giving His Body and Blood to the world. The friar realised only now, sitting here, how he had underestimated Huddle’s consummate skill in bringing these two symbols to life, and he felt a pang of regret at not congratulating that dreamy-eyed painter more forcefully.

  ‘Brother?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Athelstan replied, ‘we should do it now. But Tonnelli won’t see us without John of Gaunt’s permission, he’ll act the cautious banker.’

  ‘I’ll send the letter myself,’ Cranston offered. ‘His Grace the Regent is at his palace in the Savoy.’

  Athelstan became busy, hurrying across to his house for a sheet of better vellum, a sander of pounce and a slice of sealing wax. Sir John dictated the letter. Athelstan melted the wax and used the sander to sprinkle the very fine dust, so that the ink wouldn’t blur. The letter was sealed by Sir John, and sealed again when Athelstan folded it.

  ‘Benedicta’s in the house,’ Athelstan declared. ‘I think Malachi is getting under her feet. She’ll take this over to the Savoy.’

  He hurried off and came back to find Cranston beating his boot on the paved floor.

  ‘There’s the other mysteries,’ the coroner declared mournfully. ‘In God’s name, Athelstan, how was Chandler poisoned? And that psalter of his, what great wrongs had he done to keep begging forgiveness?’

  ‘He was a soldier, and only the mind of God knows what horrors he committed in Outremer whilst his lust for soft flesh must have been a canker in his soul. But for his murder? I can’t say, Sir John, and the same for Broomhill. Oh, he was lured into that cellar, but by whom, how and why remain a mystery.’

  Athelstan sat on his stool, head in his hands. Cranston stared at him out of the corner of his eye. Such mysteries often perplexed him; he was more concerned that Athelstan, this little dark-faced friar, was mystified. Time was slipping away like sand in a glass. How long could he detain those knights? Sooner or later they would assert themselves and seek the writ of the Chancellor or a Justice of the Bench at Westminster, and he would have to let them go. Athelstan lifted his face and smiled.

  ‘Now I know,’ he sighed, ‘what the ancients meant by psychomachia.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘A Greek term, Sir John, signifying war in the mind or the soul, the conflict of different ideas. Contradictions impede any progress,’ he tapped the side of his head, ‘in all this confusion.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, I’ll quote the great Archimedes, and his famous phrase, “Pou-sto”; it means “I act from where I stand”. Archimedes meant that if you stand in the right place with the right instruments, no problem is impossible.’ He gestured round the sombre church. ‘This is where we begin, Sir John, this is our place.’

  ‘And the right instruments?’

  ‘Well, I recall my studies of that brilliant Dominican Thomas Aquinas, and his quinque viae.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Cranston groaned.

  ‘No, Sir John, Aquinas had to study a more complex problem than the one facing us – the existence of God. He established what he termed the quinque viae, the five ways. To summarise, Sir John, everything must have a cause. So let’s look at the cause of all this, and the place
where it all began. Well, my Lord Coroner?’

  ‘Why, the robbery of the Lombard treasure, twenty years ago on the Oyster Wharf.’

  ‘Right, let’s start there. We are told the treasure was brought to the wharf.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sir John grunted.

  ‘Why?’ Athelstan asked.

  ‘Well, because it was away from the City but near the Crusaders’ fleet.’

  ‘How do we know that?’

  ‘Well,’ Cranston spread his hands, ‘it’s the accepted story.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what intrigues me. Indeed, old Margot was less specific. Would you send treasure to a quayside in Southwark? What guarantee would you have that the quayside would be safe, that footpads and outlaws weren’t sheltering there? The Good Lord knows Southwark has enough of those, and always has. And if you are going to rob it, would you launch an attack on four strong men and just hope that there would be no witnesses? No beggar loitering in the shadows, no footpad sheltering from the law, no lovers locked in close embrace? If you had planned such a robbery you would be taking a terrible risk. After all, you didn’t know John of Gaunt wasn’t sending a company of archers with it.’

  ‘But that proves Culpepper and Mortimer are guilty,’ Sir John retorted. ‘We now know they were by themselves.’

  ‘No we don’t. The boatmen must have been accomplices because they have disappeared as well. I know what you are thinking, Sir John, but your hypothesis is weak. I find it difficult to accept that Culpepper and Mortimer received the treasure chest, loaded the barge, persuaded two honest boatmen to go out on the river with them, journeyed to some lonely place, broke the chest open and disappeared into the night for ever. I don’t think, Sir John, that Culpepper and Mortimer stole the treasure, which means others did, which in turn brings us back to the problem of how the attackers felt so secure in robbing a valuable treasure on one of the well-known quaysides of Southwark. Remember, Sir John, the Oyster Wharf is mentioned in all accounts, but according to old Margot, that was only the place her husband was to reclaim his barge. Did he take it there or somewhere else?’