by Paul Doherty
PART FOUR
‘Mattachin’: a mimed battle dance.
The execution cortege moved more swiftly as they approached the Palisade. Athelstan realized that this was the first time he had entered The Candle-Flame from this direction. It was a lonely place, a long line of mudbanks, desolate and windswept, littered with rubbish washed up by the tide: stacks of peeling driftwood, shattered barrels and the crumbling skeletons of former river craft. Gulls swept backwards and forwards, swooping up and down, their constant strident calls buffeted by the wind. Athelstan stared along the river bank. He noticed the clumps of reeds and wild, straggling bushes which sprouted over mud-caked pools.
‘This is where you died, Ronseval,’ Athelstan whispered to himself. ‘You were lured here, but how and by whom?’ Athelstan stared down at Sparwell, who, thankfully, had lapsed into unconsciousness. Athelstan returned to his prayers as the grim cortège, sledges and hurdle rattling and bouncing, made their way up a slight rise on to the Palisade. The crowd thronging here were as dense and noisy as at any summer fair at Smithfield, a restless and unruly mob eager to watch this macabre spectacle unfold. The execution place was on a piece of raised ground opposite the Barbican. Athelstan glanced at that fire-scarred donjon. He recalled battling for his own life against the inferno which had almost engulfed him. The friar grimly promised himself to revisit that dark tower. He would pluck its macabre secrets. For the moment, however, Athelstan decided to concentrate on the present. Sparwell was about to be executed. The clamour of the crowd, the press of sweaty bodies and the smell of such a throng had brought the usually desolate Palisade to gruesome life. All the villains and mountebanks had swarmed here together with the different guilds and fraternities dedicated to offering some consolation to those executed by the Crown. Not that they could, or really wanted to, achieve anything practical. Cranston was correct – heresy was an infection. A mere kindness towards someone like Sparwell might provoke the interest of the Church. Undoubtedly the Bishop of London’s spies would be slinking through the crowd, eyes and ears sharp for any sympathizer.
The Carnifex and his assistants became busy leaping about like imps from Hell. Sparwell, his body one open wound, was unstrapped from the hurdle and dragged to the soaring execution stake driven into a steep hummock of piled earth. Athelstan followed and started with surprise as Cranston strode out of the crowd, his chain of office clear to see, the miraculous wineskin in one hand and a pewter cup in the other. He winked at Athelstan as he planted himself firmly in front of the executioners.
‘A drink?’ Cranston filled the deep bowled cup. One of the bishop’s party rushed forward to object but Cranston bellowed he didn’t give a piece of dried snot what he thought. The coroner was supported by the sheriff’s men, who hadn’t forgotten Cranston’s promise of a free blackjack of ale. Sir John filled the cup to the brim and virtually forced it down Sparwell’s throat. The prisoner drank greedily, coughing and spluttering. Cranston stepped back and the spectacle continued. The executioners had already slipped the barrel over the pole. They now seized Sparwell, bound hand and foot, and lowered him into the barrel. A herald of the bishop’s court read out the billa mortis – the bill of death. How Sparwell ‘was a sinner, obdurate and recalcitrant, steeped in his hellish ways and so deserving of death by the secular arm’. Athelstan had followed Sparwell to the execution stake, but had to step back as the Carnifex and his assistants heaped the brushwood and stacked the bundles of faggots. Athelstan studied these. Cranston was correct. A great deal of the wood was green to the point of suppleness.
‘Homo lupus homini – man is truly a wolf to man,’ Athelstan whispered to himself. He stared over the crowd, now pressing in against the cordon of soldiery: a mass of faces, a babble of voices. Some cursed and yelled; others chanted songs of mourning or hymns for the departed. Athelstan glimpsed members of his parish clustered around Mauger the bell clerk. What caught his attention, however, was Paston’s daughter Martha standing close to the ever-faithful Foulkes. Both young people were markedly different from the crowd on either side. They stood so quietly, staring at the grisly ritual as if memorizing every detail.
‘Let it begin!’ the herald shouted. Athelstan blinked and stared around. The hurdle, sledges and great dray horse were being pulled away. The execution pyre was ready. Oil-drenched branches were fired from a bowl of glowing coals. The air grew thick with the stench of grey-black smoke. The flames on the fire-fed torches leapt up, almost exuding the horror they were about to inflict on this freezing February afternoon under a lowering winter sky. Athelstan glanced at the stake. Sparwell had fallen very silent. In fact, he just lolled against the barrel as if deeply asleep.
‘Fire the wood!’ the herald shouted. The executioners raced forward, torches held out, thrusting them into the kindling. Smoke and flame erupted, though the fire seemed to find the faggots stacked closer to the condemned man more difficult to burn. The smoke plumed up and billowed out, almost hiding that pathetic, lolling figure. The crowd strained to watch. The smoke grew thicker, forcing the sheriff’s men and the executioners further back, leaving the execution ground to that great, fearsome cloud lit by darting flames, which seemed to just thrust itself up from the earth. The crowd had now fallen silent as if straining to listen to the cries and shrieks of the condemned man. There was nothing.
‘He’s gone,’ Cranston whispered, coming up beside Athelstan. ‘When I left you, Brother, I visited an apothecary and bought the strongest juice of the poppy.’
‘The wine?’ Athelstan asked.
‘Oh yes, Brother. It was in the wine or rather the cup. Sparwell was already exhausted. Such a potion would have put him into a sleep very close to death.’
‘Sleep is the brother of death,’ Athelstan retorted. He forced a smile. ‘Or so a Greek poet wrote. Sir John, I cannot stay here.’ Athelstan raised his hand and blessed the air in the direction of the execution pyre. The smell of smoke was now tinged with something else: a foul odour like fat being left to burn. The flames had reached Sparwell! Athelstan took off his stole and walked away. One of the bishop’s men tried to catch him by the sleeve but Athelstan ignored it and, pushing through the crowd, walked quickly towards The Candle-Flame.
‘Brother Athelstan?’ He turned. Master Tuddenham, face as white as a ghost, strode towards him. The man was deeply agitated, all a tremble.
‘What is it?’ Athelstan walked back to meet him. Tuddenham stopped, crossed himself and went down on one knee.
‘Bless me, Father,’ he intoned, ‘for I have sinned.’
‘I bless you indeed,’ Athelstan declared, ‘even though I am very surprised. Get to your feet, man. What is the matter?’
Tuddenham glanced over his shoulder at that great pillar of smoke rising against the sky. The reek was now truly offensive, and the crowd, disgusted at the stench, was already breaking up. ‘That was my first burning of a heretic, Brother, and, by God’s good favour, it will be my last. You see,’ Tuddenham tweaked the sleeve of the friar’s robe, indicating that they walk on, ‘I am a canon lawyer, a notary. For me, heresy is a blot on the soul of the Church.’ He blessed himself again. ‘Today I found out different. I was shocked by what you did but,’ he stopped to stare straight at Athelstan, ‘I admired it. Sparwell was pathetic. A poor tailor who had certain ideas and could not give them up. Stupid but …’
‘If stupidity was a burning offence?’ Athelstan retorted. ‘We’d all be living torches, yes, my friend?’ Athelstan stared at this confused cleric. A good man, the friar reflected, who had just realized that heresy was not just a matter of belief but the arbiter of a very gruesome death.
‘I never realized what it would entail.’ Tuddenham shrugged. ‘The Bocardo, the sheriff’s men, Blanchard, who really should decorate a gibbet, the crowd baying for poor Sparwell’s blood …’ Tuddenham’s voice faltered, tears in his eyes. ‘Sir John?’ he asked.
‘The Lord High Coroner gave Sparwell wine laced with a strong potion which dulled the prisoner, a true a
ct of compassion. I assure you, Master Tuddenham, for doing less a mercy many a soul will surely enter Heaven. But tell me,’ Athelstan indicated they walk on. ‘Sparwell was denounced?’
‘No.’ Tuddenham’s voice was harsh. ‘That is the other reason I have approached you, Brother. Sparwell was not denounced, he was betrayed. There is a traitor in his conventicle, as the Lollards call it.’
‘Who?’
‘We don’t know but, Brother Athelstan, it makes me fearful. Sparwell’s execution might be the first of many such horrors.’
‘Did Sparwell know of this traitor?’
‘Of course not. It was kept hidden lest, somehow, Sparwell communicated to other members of his conventicle. He was simply informed that he had been denounced.’ Tuddenham pulled a face. ‘Of course, he then convicted himself out of his own mouth. In the end we had no need for witnesses or proof.’
‘And the traitor?’
‘We know very little. He recently appeared in the shriving chair at St Mary-le-Bow. He was protected by the mercy screen. Let me hasten to add he made no confession, just gave Sparwell’s name, his trade and where he lived, then added that there would be more.’
‘Any indication of his identity?’ Athelstan glanced over Tuddenham’s shoulder; the smoke was thinning, the crowd clearing. He gestured for Tuddenham to follow him away from the throng now intent on slaking their thirst in the Dark Parlour. They walked over to a small enclosure shrouded by bushes.
‘We know nothing,’ Tuddenham replied. ‘The priest reported the spy had a coarse voice, how he’d caught the odour of the farmyard. Whoever he was, his information proved correct.’
‘And the Papal Inquisitor, Brother Marcel?’
‘What of him?’
‘He has talked to you?’
‘He knows of us. Of course, he presented his credentials to the bishop’s curia but apart from that little else. You know how it is, Brother: no bishop likes interference in his own diocese, whilst there are deep differences between religious and secular clergy.’ Athelstan nodded in agreement: papal and diocesan, foreign and domestic, religious and secular, the different rivalries between clerics were infamous.
‘You agree?’ Tuddenham asked.
‘I recall that quotation from the Book of Proverbs: “Brothers united are as a fortress.” It’s certainly doesn’t apply to us priests, does it? So you have had little to do with our visitor from the Holy Father?’
‘No. He has left us truly alone.’ Tuddenham stretched out a hand. ‘Athelstan, the day is going and so must I. Farewell.’
Athelstan clasped his hand. ‘What will you do?’
‘Seek a fresh benefice. Who knows?’ Tuddenham smiled. ‘I might even go to Blackfriars and become a Dominican.’
Athelstan laughed and watched Tuddenham stride away.
The friar remained where he was. He glimpsed Cranston leading the sheriff’s men into the tavern, bellowing at the top of his voice about the virtues of Thorne’s ale. Athelstan silently sketched a blessing in the coroner’s direction. Cranston would be deeply disturbed by Sparwell’s horrid death. The coroner had a good heart and he would hide his true feelings behind his usual exuberant bonhomie. Athelstan continued to wait. Now calm and composed he recited the ‘De Profundis’ and other prayers for the dead. Athelstan’s mind drifted back to the execution and the glimpses which had caught his eye and quickened his curiosity. He left the shelter and made his way back over the Palisade. Twilight time, the hour of the bat. The light drizzle had begun again. The execution ground was empty. The crowd had dispersed. All that remained of the burning was a mound of smouldering grey-white ash blown about by the breeze and an occasional spark breaking free to rise and vanish in the air. Athelstan murmured a prayer and stared around; there was no one. Strange, he thought, that despite the clamour and the busyness of so many to see a man burn, once he had people became highly fearful of the very place they had fought so hard to occupy only a short while beforehand. Were they frightened of his vengeful ghost or the powerful spirits such a violent death summoned into the affairs of men?
Athelstan, whispering the words of a psalm, walked towards the Barbican. He’d noticed earlier how the door hung off its latch. The fire had certainly ravaged that thick wedge of oak, blackening the wood, searing it deep with ash-filled gouges. The door hung drunkenly on its remaining heavy hinges. Athelstan found it difficult to push back but eventually he did and stepped into the lower chamber. The inside of the Barbican had been truly devastated by the fire. Nothing more than a stone cell, all the woodwork on both stories had simply disintegrated, with the occasional piece left hanging. ‘I was almost murdered here,’ Athelstan whispered to himself. ‘And God knows what evidence that inferno destroyed.’ Thorne had already begun to clear away the rubbish. Athelstan peered around; the light was murky but he noticed the deep, black stain on the far wall where refuse was still piled. The place, Athelstan reasoned, where the fire had probably started. He carefully made his way across and, taking a stick, began to sift amongst the rubbish. Athelstan paused at the clear stench of oil. He crouched, poked again and caught the same odour. He dropped the stick in surprise, rubbing his hands together to clear the dust. ‘I wonder,’ he declared. ‘I truly do but let us wait and see.’ A sound from outside alerted him. He rose and quietly turned to stand in the shadow of the main doorway. He looked out and, despite the deepening twilight, glimpsed two people, a man and a woman, both cloaked against the cold, digging and scraping around the execution stake. They worked feverishly and, once they were finished, hurried off into the darkness. Athelstan watched them go and followed them, pausing now and again so that he entered the tavern by himself.
Cranston was in the Dark Parlour roistering with the sheriff’s men, regaling them with stories about his military service in France. Athelstan raised a hand in greeting and moved around the tavern, noting where everything was. Servants bustled by, now used to his presence and constant curiosity. Athelstan entered the spacious, cobbled tavern yard with its different buildings: smithy, stables, storerooms and wash house. As he passed the latter, a door was flung open and a woman bustled out with a tub of dirty water, which she tipped on to the cobbles.
‘Good evening, Father,’ she called out. ‘So many guests, so much to wash.’ She made to go back. ‘Oh, by the way, Father, are all you monks the same?’
‘I beg your pardon, mistress, but I am a friar.’
‘Just like the other one,’ the woman replied.
‘Brother Marcel?’
‘Yes, that’s him. Ever so clean, he is. Fresh robes every day and of the purest wool.’ She gestured at Athelstan’s dirt-stained robe. ‘Not like yours. But you see, pure wool is difficult to wash. Not that I am complaining …’ And the woman promptly disappeared back into the wash house. Athelstan was about to walk on when he remembered his conversation with the maid at The Golden Oliphant. He hastened back into the Dark Parlour, nodding at Roger and Marcel, who were closeted together in a window seat. At another table, Sir Robert Paston, Martha and Foulkes were deep in conversation. The friar tried to catch Cranston’s eye but failed. Sir John was now lecturing the sheriff’s men on the Black Prince’s campaign in Spain. Athelstan felt a touch on his arm. Eleanor, Thorne’s wife, beckoned at him pleadingly. Athelstan followed her out of the taproom into the small, well-furnished buttery, where her husband sat at the top of the table with Mooncalf beside him. Athelstan took a stool.
‘Master Thorne, mistress, what can I do? Why do you—?’
‘This.’ Thorne undid his wallet and placed six miniature caltrops on the table, very small but cruelly spiked barbs no bigger than polished pebbles. Athelstan picked one up and scrutinized it carefully. Once he had, he sent Mooncalf into the taproom to ask Sir John to join them urgently. He waited until the coroner swaggered in, face all red, lips smacking, in one hand a piece of capon pie, in the other a blackjack of ale. Cranston sat at the far end of the table toasting them all until he glimpsed the caltrops.
‘Sat
an’s tits,’ he breathed, putting down both food and drink. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve clapped eyes on such vicious instruments. Where did you find them?’
‘Let me explain.’ Eleanor Thorne, despite all her pretty ways, was now cold and determined. ‘On the night of the murders, my husband left our bed.’
‘Why?’ Athelstan asked.
‘I …’
‘Simon.’ Eleanor indicated that she would answer for him. ‘Well, we were both concerned about the goings and comings in our tavern. Earlier in the evening Mooncalf had glimpsed someone slip out of the stables.’
‘A mere shadow,’ the ostler added. Athelstan studied Mooncalf’s pocked and shaven face, his rough voice and leather garb all splattered with mud. The friar had promised himself to have close words with Mooncalf, though not now – that would have to wait.
‘A mere shadow?’ Athelstan repeated.
‘Mooncalf informed me.’ Thorne wiped his hands on a napkin and picked at the minced chicken on the platter before him. ‘I went down to the stableyard but I could not find anything wrong, yet you know how it is, Sir John. Like it was in the fields of Normandy when you can see or hear no enemy but you know they are close by. I was uneasy. I checked the horses but could discover nothing. After I retired, what with Marsen and his coven carousing and others moving about the tavern, I still remained agitated about the stables. I couldn’t rest.’ He waved a hand. ‘I went down again. I was away some time but I truly searched, yet all remained quiet. The horses were having their evening feed, saddles and harnesses were hung drying after the day’s rain. I found this close by.’ Thorne tossed across a pouch. Athelstan examined it, battered and empty, the ragged neck pulled tight by a filthy cord. ‘I wondered why it was lying there and who had dropped it. I continued my search but I eventually gave up. What with the hideous murders, the deaths here, I didn’t give it a second thought until this morning. I was preparing to send back Marsen and Mauclerc’s possessions to Master Thibault. I decided to clean the harnesses of their horses. I brought the saddles down from their rests and discovered these caltrops embedded deep in the woollen underbelly of both Marsen and Mauclerc’s saddles.’