by Paul Doherty
Like a condemned man treading the gallows steps, Hobden led them up the darkened, winding staircase to the second floor and along a passageway to a half-open door. He pushed this slowly open and stood, one hand on the lintel, staring into the candle-lit room. Athelstan, Cranston and Benedicta, close behind him, gazed at the young woman lying in the centre of the great four-poster bed, her dark hair bound behind her, the skin of her white face drawn so tight it emphasized her high cheek bones. She stared glassily at her father and the others.
‘So, you have brought visitors, Walter? Witnesses to your crime.’
Athelstan watched, curious, as the lips moved but the voice seemed hollow, disembodied.
‘Elizabeth!’ Hobden moaned. ‘Stop this!’
‘Stop what, Walter? You murdered me, killed me with red arsenic, poisoning me so you could marry another woman!’
‘That is not true!’
Walter was about to continue when the knocking began. At first slow, indistinct, but then it spread up from the bottom floor of the house as if some dark creature from Hell was scrabbling up behind the wainscoting.
Benedicta stood back. ‘Father,’ she whispered. ‘Be careful!’
Athelstan walked into the room and headed towards the foot of the bed. He was fascinated by the girl’s dark, glassy eyes and those lips spouting out their litany of accusation. The knocking continued like a drum beat and Athelstan gagged at the awful stench pervading the room. He gathered his courage.
‘Elizabeth Hobden, in Christ’s holy name, I beg you to stop! I command you to stop!’
Athelstan undid the neck of the bag and, hands shaking, took out the stoup of water and the asperges rod. He sprinkled holy water in front of him and made the sign of the cross but Elizabeth kept talking, her voice strident as she repeated over and over again the accusations against her father. Athelstan tried to hide his fear as he began the exorcism ceremony proper with the solemn litany of invocation, calling on Christ, His Blessed Mother and all the angels and saints. His words were drowned by the girl’s shouts and that awful pounding on the walls whilst the smell became even more offensive.
Athelstan tried to continue even as a small inward voice began to question his own faith. He glanced over his shoulder and glimpsed Benedicta’s white face and Hobden standing terrified at the doorway. Of Cranston there was no sign. Oh, Sir John, Athelstan thought, now in my hour of need!
He looked back at the girl — those hate-filled eyes, shoulders and head rigid against the white bolsters. She seemed oblivious to his presence, staring past him at her father. Then suddenly, in the room below, as Athelstan began his prayers again, he heard a scream, a shout and the noise of running footsteps on the stairs. Cranston, breathing heavily, burst into the room, almost knocking Athelstan aside.
‘You bloody little bitch!’ he roared at the girl.
Athelstan stared at him in astonishment. He was aware that the pounding on the walls had stopped. The girl, however, continued to screech accusations until Cranston strode across to the bed and slapped her firmly across both cheeks. He then grasped her by the shoulders and shook her.
‘Stop it!’ he roared. ‘Stop it, you lying little hussy!’ He gazed angrily at Athelstan. ‘You have been tricked, Brother!’ He shook the girl again. ‘A subtle little conspiracy between this wench and her maid.’
His words had the desired effect. The girl became silent. The glare of hatred in her eyes faded as she glanced fearfully at Athelstan and then Sir John. Cranston sat on the edge of the bed and wiped the sweat from his brow.
‘This little minx,’ he breathed heavily, ‘and her nurse concocted this medley of lies and deceits. Come on, man!’ He waved Walter Hobden forward. The girl’s father stepped gingerly into the room whilst she hid her face in her hands and sobbed quietly. ‘Didn’t it ever occur to you,’ Cranston taunted Hobden, ‘that this was all mummery?’
‘But she drove Anna away,’ he wailed.
‘Listen, tickle brain,’ Cranston replied, getting to his feet, ‘that was part of the masque. The two only appeared estranged! Whilst Elizabeth held court up here, her good nurse, banished to the scullery, used chimney holes and gaps between the wainscoting to create the knocking sounds.’ He walked over to the small hearth. ‘This is an old house,’ he explained. ‘There are funnels and smoke flues, chimneys and other old gaps. If you go down to the scullery where the main cooking hearth is, you can, by rattling rods carefully placed up the chimney stack, create a disturbance all through the house. I have seen it done before. A children’s game, played on the eve of All Hallows.’ Cranston tapped the wainscoting. ‘And this probably helps. It makes the echoes even louder. I went down to the scullery and there was old Anna seated like a night hag beside the hearth, busy with her metal rods.’
‘But the voice?’ Eleanor Hobden came into the room.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, woman!’ Cranston scoffed. ‘Haven’t you ever heard anyone imitating a voice?’ He stared up at an astonished Athelstan. ‘I believe Crim, your altar boy, small as he is, can give a very good imitation of me?’
Athelstan smiled faintly. He felt relieved at Cranston’s abrupt revelation and curt dismissal of all this mummery and trickery yet still he felt a deep unease.
‘But the smell?’ Athelstan sniffed.
‘Oh, I am sure there’s an answer for that.’
Cranston knelt down, put his hand under the bedstead and drew out two small unstoppered pots. He then went to the other side of the bed and found the same. Cranston picked one up, sniffed at it gingerly and recoiled in distaste as he handed it to Athelstan.
‘God knows what it is! I suspect goat’s cheese.’
Athelstan sniffed and turned away in disgust. ‘Goat’s cheese,’ he coughed, ‘and something else.’
‘A well-known trick,’ Cranston observed. ‘Take off the stoppers and a pig sty would be sweet compared to it.’ He grinned. ‘Put the jars open under the bed, move the blankets, and a stench is wafted from Hell.’
Athelstan gazed down at the sobbing girl whilst the sound of a commotion outside indicated that the fearsome Eleanor Hobden was now dragging the old nurse upstairs. Eleanor entered, cast a look of disdain at her husband and threw the struggling Anna, who looked on the point of fainting with fear, down on to the rushes. She went across and grasped Elizabeth’s hair, pulling back her head. Despite her evil game, Athelstan felt a pang of compassion for the girl. Her face looked ghastly: red-rimmed eyes and pallid, tear-soaked cheeks. Elizabeth had bitten her lips and a trickle of blood ran down her chin.
‘Leave her alone!’ he ordered.
Eleanor gave another vicious tug to the girl’s hair. Athelstan grasped her by the wrist.
‘For God’s sake, woman, leave her!’
Eleanor reluctantly obeyed but glared at Cranston.
‘She is guilty of a crime, isn’t she? The pretended raising of demons and the use of such trickery is almost as grave a charge as dabbling in the Black Arts themselves.’
Cranston, who had taken a deep dislike to the woman, nodded.
‘Are you saying I should arrest her?’
‘If you don’t, I’ll throw her and that bitch of a nurse out into the street!’
‘Eleanor!’ Walter moaned. ‘Don’t!’
‘Oh, shut up!’ she spat back. ‘I told you this little minx was a liar and a cheat.’ She went across and shoved her face only inches from her husband’s. ‘Either they go or I do.’
Cranston stole a glance at Athelstan. The friar looked helplessly down at the sobbing girl whilst Anna still crouched like a dog amongst the rushes. Eleanor walked back and dug the girl in the shoulder.
‘Get out of this bed and leave the house as you are!’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ Cranston snapped.
‘My Lord Coroner,’ the Hobden woman replied, ‘you were not invited to this house. You are here as an officer of the law. You have seen a crime committed yet you have no sympathy for its victims, only the perpetrator.’
; Cranston glanced across at Walter Hobden but that man of straw just stood rubbing his hands together with all the courage of a frightened rabbit.
‘For God’s sake!’ Benedicta walked across the room and, though she’d been frightened by Elizabeth’s acting, betrayed no fear of Eleanor Hobden. ‘For God’s sake!’ she repeated. ‘Woman, the girl may well be witless.’
Athelstan went and sat down on the bed, put his arm round the sobbing girl and looked at her father.
‘Why did your daughter make such accusations?’
‘Because she hates me,’ Eleanor retorted. ‘She always has and she always will. Now she can get out!’
Benedicta’s eyes pleaded with Athelstan. He nodded at her to help the old nurse back to her feet.
‘Listen,’ he declared, ‘I insist, Mistress-no, I demand this because I came here at your invitation. True, Sir John was not invited but he is owed something too for delving into the truth.’
The woman nodded.
‘Accordingly,’ Athelstan continued, ‘Elizabeth and her nurse will stay here tonight. Tomorrow morning the lady Benedicta will return and take both of them to the Abbey of St Mary and St Frances which lies at the junction of Poor Jewry and Aldgate Street.’
Walter murmured his approval. His wife chewed on her lower lip, glowering at her step-daughter.
‘Agreed,’ she snarled eventually. ‘But the bitch is to be gone by noonday!’
Cranston stood at the corner of Bread Street and West Cheap and stared across at his house.
‘Oh,’ he moaned, ‘I wish Lady Maude was back.’ He stroked the muzzle of his horse, licked his lips and looked at the welcoming warmth and light of The Holy Lamb. He had left Benedicta and Athelstan in Southwark and made his own way back to Cheapside, talking loudly to himself as he often did about the hardness of the human heart and the stubborn hatred of the likes of Eleanor Hobden. His horse snickered and nuzzled his chest.
‘I suppose you are right,’ Cranston muttered.
He led his horse down a side street and into the yard of The Holy Lamb where he and the Lady Maude stabled their horses. Once the horse was settled, and resisting all temptation, Sir John strode across a deserted Cheapside back to his own house.
He had his hand on the latch when he heard his name called. Two figures detached themselves from the alleyway at the side of the house and stepped into the pool of light provided by the lamp hung on a hook next to the door. Cranston’s smile faded.
‘What the bloody hell do you want?’ he snarled.
Rosamund Ingham pushed back the hood of her cloak with one hand, the other resting lightly on the arm of the slack-faced Albric. Her face was as imperious and harsh as Eleanor Hobden’s. Cranston quickly noted the similarity between the two women: beautiful but hard-eyed, with a sour twist to their mouths. He put his hand back on the latch.
‘I asked what you wanted?’
‘Sir John, leave us alone. Tomorrow morning, as you know, my husband will be buried. I don’t suppose you’ll be there?’
‘No, I won’t! I loved Sir Oliver as a brother. I won’t stand before God in the presence of his murderers!’
‘That’s a lie!’
‘That’s the truth and I’ll prove it!’
‘And if you don’t,’ Rosamund pushed her face forward, ‘I’ll see you in the courts, Sir John.’
‘Piss off!’ he replied, his hand falling to his dagger as he saw Albric move forward.
‘Go on,’ Cranston sneered. ‘Draw your sword and I’ll tickle your codpiece.’
Rosamund waved her lover back with one hand. ‘Take the seals off my husband’s room,’ she demanded. ‘And leave us alone or…’
Cranston stepped forward. ‘Or what, My Lady?’
Rosamund sneered. ‘I am asking you, Sir John. And I’ll not ask again.’
‘Good night, My Lady.’ He pushed open the door and slammed it behind him.
He sniffed the air appreciatively and walked into the kitchen. A red-faced Boscombe was removing a golden-crusted pie from the oven next to the hearth.
‘Just in time, Sir John,’ the little man beamed. ‘Beef stew pie, garnished with onions and leeks. A glass of claret?’
Sir John beamed. ‘Philip, if you were a woman, I’d marry you tomorrow.’
He washed his hands in a bowl of rose water and went to sit at the table.
‘You have not entered the bliss of nuptial grace?’
Boscombe shook his head. ‘No woman would have me, Sir John, and Sir Gerard was the harshest of task masters.’
‘In which case,’ Cranston muttered, ‘you haven’t met the Lady Maude.’
He was about to lift his cup when suddenly Gog and Magog, who had been resting in the garden, burst into the kitchen. Gog knocked Cranston flying off his chair whilst Magog, skilful as a falcon in flight, leapt up and plucked the pie right out of Boscombe’s hands. Cranston, cursing, got to his feet but the two dogs now had the pie and, even before he could reach them, were wolfing it down without a by-your-leave. Boscombe stood and wailed. Cranston stared at the dogs and, if animals could smile their thanks, he was sure these two had.
‘Lovely lads!’ he whispered.
Both hounds broke off their unexpected feast and leapt up to lick his face and nibble at his ears until Cranston roared, ‘Enough is enough!’ and pushed them down.
He looked across at Boscombe who stood, tears trailing down his cheeks. Cranston went over and patted him on the shoulder, almost knocking him to the floor.
‘Come on, man!’ he growled. ‘At least they fed well.’
The pie had now disappeared. The two dogs, licking their lips, gazed admiringly at the new master who was so liberal with his food. They sat like carved figures as Cranston shook a warning finger at them.
‘Don’t ever,’ he admonished them, ‘try that with the Lady Maude!’
The two dogs seemed to sense the significance of the word ‘Maude’ and Gog even looked fearfully at the door, but it was only Leif stealing into the house, attracted by the rich savoury smells.
‘Time for supper, Sir John?’
Cranston grinned. ‘You’ll be lucky.’
Leif looked nervously at the dogs. ‘But, Sir John, I have scarcely eaten all day.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Cranston went back to the hallway, picked up his cloak and, with the threatening face of Rosamund Ingham still in mind, wrapped his sword belt around him. ‘Come on, Boscombe. And you, Leif, you lazy bugger! We’re off to ‘The Lamb of God!’
The two dogs made to follow.
‘No, no, lovely lads! Stay!’
Both animals crouched down as Cranston pushed a protesting Boscombe and more eager Leif towards the door.
‘Shouldn’t we lock it?’ Boscombe asked, once they entered Cheapside.
‘Listen, man,’ Cranston replied. ‘What do you think the lovely lads would do if some night hawk made the mistake of walking in there?’
Boscombe smiled.
‘Come on,’ Cranston urged. ‘That pie smelt delicious. Let me give you your just reward.’
Two hours later, full of claret and mine host’s onion pie, Cranston, with one arm round Boscombe and the other hugging Leif, walked out of The Lamb of God and gazed expansively across Cheapside
‘So you were at Poitiers?’ Boscombe asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Cranston replied. ‘Slimmer and more handsome then-’
He was about to continue when he heard a faint cry for help from a nearby alleyway. Ignoring Boscombe’s warning, and despite the cups of claret he had drunk, Cranston sped like an arrow into the darkness. He glimpsed two figures in black holding a torch above another sprawled on the ground. Cranston caught the glint of steel and heard another piteous moan. He wrapped his cloak round his left arm and carried on like a charging bull.
‘Aidez! Aidez!’ Cranston shouted, the usual hue-and-cry call for help.
The two figures looked up and he knew something was wrong. They didn’t retreat, they had masks on their faces, whil
st their ‘victim’ suddenly sprang to his feet. Cranston stopped, breathing heavily, and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
‘You are never too old to learn,’ he muttered. The Coroner cursed himself for falling into a well-known trap, hastening to a supposed victim’s help only to blunder into an ambush. He gazed quickly over his shoulder, back up the alleyway where Boscombe and Leif were beginning to make their way down.
‘Go back!’ he roared.
He drew his own sword and gingerly began to retreat. He dared not turn and run. He might slip or a thrown dagger might wound him and bring him down. Anyway he was old and fat whilst these three assailants crept like macabre dancers towards him. Cranston kept moving backwards then suddenly sideways to protect his back against a narrow, jutting buttress of the alley wall.
The three black-garbed assassins crept closer. Each carried sword and dirk. They separated as they advanced. Cranston recognized them as professional killers, much more dangerous than the street rats who would run a mile at the sight of naked steel. He tried to control his breathing. Who had sent them? he wondered. The Ira Dei? Cranston blinked. No, no, that was too obvious. Then he remembered Rosamund Ingham’s hate-filled face, her unspoken threats, and rage replaced any fear.
The three slithered forward, arms out, legs spread, the elaborate street dance of professional fighters. Cranston watched the middle figure, catching a glimpse of an eye, then shifted his gaze to the two companions as if he was more concerned about them.
‘Come on, my buckos!’ he taunted. ‘So you have brought old Jack on to the floor. Come on, let’s tread a measure together!’
The two killers on the outside crept forward. Cranston kept shifting his gaze but knew this sort. They were only feinting. He looked to his right then quickly back as the middle killer closed in, sword low, dagger high. Cranston suddenly shifted his long sword back, then forward in a blinding arc of steel. The assassin died before he even knew it as the pointed, sharp edge of Cranston’s sword severed his exposed windpipe.
Cranston, now smiling, parried forward, first to the right, then the left. He sensed one of the attackers was inexperienced, moving further back than he should. Cranston turned and charged at the other, knocking the wind out of him. Then, standing back, the Coroner shoved his sword with all his strength straight into the man’s stomach. He looked round but the third attacker was now running like the wind back into the darkness. Cranston stood back, resting on his sword as he sucked in the night air and looked at the two dead assailants.