by Paul Doherty
'They are lying, aren't they, Brother? There's something wrong, but what?'
'I don't know, Sir John, but there may be many logical explanations. Something may be wrong but they may not realise it. Something may be wrong but only one or two may know the truth. Or, finally, something may be wrong but known to someone outside the household.'
'Such as who?'
Athelstan looked round and lowered his voice. 'My Lord of Gaunt or even Chief Justice Fortescue. After all, he did lie; the Chief Justice said he left the house about curfew but Sir Richard claims it was much later.'
Sir John rubbed the side of his face.
'Yes, Chief Justice Fortescue. We don't even have a good reason for his being there. Why should he be visiting a London merchant?' The coroner grinned evilly, biting his lower lip with his strong, white teeth. 'I look forward to putting that very question to our Lord Chief Justice, but now for refreshment. Oh!' Cranston grinned and tapped his wallet. 'I've taken the small phial of poison Brampton's supposed to have used.' He tapped the side of his nose. 'I've an idea, but not now. What I need now is a drink!'
CHAPTER 4
Athelstan cringed. He had hoped Sir John's appetite had been curbed but he seemed both insatiable and unable to learn from previous experience. The friar followed him dolefully across the street as Sir John scampered direct as an arrow for the Holy Lamb of God. Cranston took to its dry, dark warmth as a duck to water. He waddled amongst the customers, using his not inconsiderable bulk to force a way through pedlars, tinkers, labourers and farmers fresh from the countryside, spending the profits of their produce on large stoups of ale.
Sir John commandeered a table in the corner, greeting the ale wife as if she was a long lost sister. The lady looked like a female incarnation of Satan. She had a hooked, perpetually dripping nose, skin as rough as a sack and bleary, bloodshot eyes. She munched continuously on her gums and her fingers were dirty and greasy down to the knuckles. Her cloak of Lincoln green covered a red kirtle which hung a few inches above tallow-smeared shoes. Athelstan looked at her and prayed to God to forgive him for all he felt was disgust. She, with her wide hips, dirty grey hair and face as wrinkled as a pig's ear, looked as blowsy as any harridan from hell. Athelstan sat looking at her in wonderment, constantly marvelling at the difference in women, contrasting this hag to the beauty of Lady Isabella. He grimly reminded himself that his vow of celibacy had certain consolations.
Cranston, however, acted as if she was an old friend, flattered and fussed her. She winked wickedly back at him, slyly insinuating that she would satisfy all his wants.
'Enough of that, you wicked wench!' Cranston teased. 'Food and ale first, then other comforts perhaps.' He dropped one eyelid. 'Later.'
The ale wife went away cackling and came back to serve both of them huge tankards slopping over with ale and a shared platter of meat mixed with onions and leeks swimming in a sea of grease. Cranston stuffed his mouth. He downed one tankard and, when the friar nodded, helped himself to the second.
'You are not eating, Brother?'
Athelstan toyed with the food on the platter in front of him.
'I don't feel hungry. I am wondering what we do next.'
Cranston, his mouth full of food, stared up at the blackened ceiling, coveting the leg of ham hooked there to be cured in the smoke.
'There's nothing much to do,' he replied. 'We have our suspicions but no proof. Oh, there's something wrong, we all know there is. Two suicides, one murder… but no proof whatsoever, no evidence. We should file our record, send copies to the sheriff, go back and tell Chief Justice Fortescue that whatever secret Springall had died with him, and then return to our normal business.'
'There's something wrong,' Athelstan repeated. He peered across the tavern, watching a group of men busy baiting a relic-seller who claimed he had Aaron's beard in a sack and was prepared to sell it to them for a few coins.
'It's like grasping a slippery fish or a greasy pole. You think you have it, then it slips away.'
Cranston stuck his red, bulbous nose into a tankard, took one slurp and slammed it down on the table.
'Very well, Brother, what is wrong? What do you think?'
'I believe there were no suicides. I think all three deaths were murder, and I think the murderer still walks!'
'And your proof?'
'Nothing, just a feeling of unease.'
'Oh, for God's sake!' Cranston bellowed. 'What do we have here? A merchant who likes riddles is murdered by his servant, who later hangs himself; a small, fat, morose man who thinks he is a Hector with the ladies and, when he realises he is not, goes out and hangs himself. A few riddles written on paper. Let's face the truth. That group over there,' he nodded in the direction of the Springall mansion, 'do not mourn for anyone. I suspect they are glad Sir Thomas is dead! And Brampton! And Vechey! More money, less fingers in the pot and a larger portion of the spoils. All you can feel, Brother, is human greed. Look around, there's a whole sea of it lapping at us everywhere we walk, sit, eat, and pray!' He glared at the friar. 'Come, Brother,' he concluded wearily, 'let us tie the ends of this and call it suicide.'
'In a while,' Athelstan murmured.
He asked for a cup of water, finished it, and leaving Cranston to his drinking, went outside. It was now mid- afternoon. The stalls and booths along Cheapside were plying a busy trade, the shouts of their keepers and the bold imprecations of the apprentices creating an unbearable din. A knight broke through on his way to a local joust or tournament, his steel codpiece carved as large as a bull's whilst the helmet which swung from his saddle bow was fashioned in the macabre mask of a hangman. The helmet gave Athelstan an idea. He was curious and, shouldering his way through the crowd, made his way to St Mary Le Bow.
Father Matthew was resting, Athelstan suspected he was half drunk, but he welcomed the friar cheerily enough, trying to force a cup of Rhenish into his hand. Athelstan promptly refused, for the few mouthfuls of ale he had already drunk bit at his stomach. He also felt rather sick when he recalled how in the ale house he had just left, he had seen a hen roosting on the brim of an uncovered beer tub. He just hoped the ale wife strained the ale before she served it to Sir John! Chicken dung would not do even the coroner's innards any good.
The priest listened to Athelstan carefully.
'Yes, yes,' he murmured. He knew the Springalls, a good but rather secretive family. They attended Mass on Sundays, they gave generously to the poor, the chancery priest sometimes celebrated Mass at St Mary's. They were always generous at Christmas, Epiphany and Maundy.
'And the funeral of Sir Thomas?' Athelstan asked.
'It will take place tomorrow morning. Once the Requiem Mass is sung, the coffin will be buried here.'
'And Brampton, the suicide?'
The priest, lounging in his chair, shrugged, wiping his greasy hands on his gown.
'What can we do? Brampton has no relatives and he is a suicide. Canon Law has laid down…'
'I know what Canon Law says,' Athelstan snapped back. 'But for God's sake, man, Christ's mercy!'
The priest made a face. 'Oh, he will be given a burial.'
'Where is the body?'
'In the death house, a small hut behind the church near the graveyard.'
'May I have a look?'
'The man is sheeted already with a canvas cloth.'
Athelstan dug in his purse and took out a silver coin. 'If I rip the cloth open, you will have it resewn. Surely some old lady in the parish?'
Father Matthew nodded and the silver coin disappeared in the twinkling of an eye. 'Do what you want!' he muttered.
He leant over to where keys hung on hooks in the wall and took a huge, rusting one down. 'You will need this.' He went into the small scullery and came back with a pomander, a ball of cloth stuffed with cloves and herbs. 'Hold it to your nose. The stench will be terrible.'
Athelstan took the key and the pomander, left the priest's house and walked down the length of the church to the derelict hut be
yond. The door was barred and bolted. The huge padlock seemed oddly out of place for anyone could have broken in if they had wished. He inserted the key, released the padlock and the door creaked open. Inside it was dark and musty. A strange, sour smell pervaded the air. An ancient tallow candle stood fixed in its grease on one of the cross-beams, with a tinder beside it. Athelstan took it, lit the candle, and the room flared into life.
Brampton's corpse lay on the ground, covered in a dirty, yellowing canvas sheet, inexpertly sewed up. Athelstan carefully ripped the canvas open with the small knife he always carried. The stench was terrible. Putrefaction had already set in. Used to the sight and the smell of the dead, Athelstan did not feel queasy, though now and again he held the pomander to his nose for a welcome respite. Brampton now looked hideous. His face had turned a blueish-yellow and his stomach was swollen, straining against the thin linen shirt. The friar studied the body carefully; the shirt, the hose, but there were no boots. He looked at the soles of the feet, making careful note of what he saw. He then made the sign of the cross, said a Requiem for the poor steward's soul, re-locked the hut, returned the key to the priest and wandered back into Cheapside.
Athelstan stood there dreaming, wondering what was happening in St Erconwald's. Who would feed Godric? Would Bonaventure return or take offence at not being fed by him and disappear forever into the stinking alleyways? He wished he was free of Cranston and this matter; free of Cheapside, back at the top of his tower, staring up at the stars. He leaned against the wall and analysed his guilt- laden thoughts. He missed Benedicta the widow. Her face, innocent and angelic, was always with him. How long had he known her? Six months? He breathed a prayer. He had sinned. Yes, he wished he was back in his church with his beloved sky and charts, standing on the tower, letting the evening breeze cool him as he stared up, lost in the vastness. Was he breaking his vows by wanting that? Should he have become a friar or a student? An astrologer, one of those cowled, bent figures who haunted the halls of Oxford.
And what was the attraction of the planets in the sky? Athelstan bit his lip. There was order there. Order in time. Order in motion. Was Aristotle correct? he wondered. Did the planets and spheres give off music when they turned in the universe? A cart crashed by, its driver mouthing oaths. Athelstan stepped back, free from his dreams, and looked around.
There was no order here. A beggar, his face covered in sores, his legs cut off just beneath the knees, scampered about on wooden crutches. A whore tripped by, her eyes ringed with black paint, her thick painted lips lustrous and red like rotting fruit. She smirked and dismissed Athelstan with a flicker of her eyes. He walked across the thoroughfare. In the centre of Cheapside stood the stocks, empty except for one person, a large, fat man, his head securely clasped between the wooden slats. Beneath him were the charred remains of a small fire. Athelstan studied the notice posted above the prisoner's head and gathered that he was a butcher who had sold putrid meat. The friar stopped a water carrier, took his ladle and gave the fellow a drink. The prisoner slurped noisily, thanking him, bleary-eyed. A mounted soldier trotted by and Athelstan remembered the knight's helmet as well as something he had glimpsed in the garret and at the tower gate of London Bridge…
Athelstan made his way north to the Elms near Newgate where a great three-branched scaffold stood stark against the sky; each bore its grisly burden, a corpse swinging by its neck, head askew, hands and feet securely tied. The crowd had gone and a serjeant-at-arms, wearing the florid livery of the city threw dice with his two companions, ignoring the grim carrion swaying just above their heads. The area around them was empty. Strange, Athelstan thought, how men liked to see their brothers die, yet feared the actual sight and stench of death. The Serjeant looked up as he approached.
"What is it, Brother?'
Athelstan pointed to the three dangling figures, trying to ignore their empurpled faces, black protruding tongues, popping eyes and stained breeches.
'These men?'
'They were shriven this morning, Friar,' the soldier interrupted. 'Before we turned them off the ladder.'
'How long will they hang?' he asked.
The fellow shrugged and Athelstan tried not to concentrate on the great yellowing ulcer on the right side of his face, the pus now suppurating, bubbling out, staining his cheek. The soldier, his eyes dead and full of drink, shrugged and grinned at his two companions, sallow, pimply youths already much the worse for wine.
'They will hang, Father, till sunset. Why do you ask?'
'I want to look at them.'
'They are to hang until sunset,' the serjeant repeated. 'Their clothes and belongings are ours. There is a canvas sheet for each of them, a swift prayer, and then into some forsaken grave to meet their maker.' He tapped one of the swaying bodies. 'Don't feel sorry for any of them, Father. They murdered a woman, cut her throat, after they brutally sliced her breasts, raped and burnt her over a fire!'
'Sweet Jesus have mercy on them!' Athelstan whispered. 'But I am here on the orders of Sir John Cranston, coroner of the city. I want to see them.'
He felt in his purse and threw down a couple of copper coins. The serjeant rubbed his chin and looked at them and then at the friar, sucking in air noisily through his blackened teeth. At last he rose and barked an order at one of the young men who placed the ladder lying on the ground against the scaffold, then gestured dramatically at Athelstan.
'Brother, the ladder awaits. Do what you want!'
Athelstan climbed the ladder slowly. He studied each of the corpses, noting how the rope had been tied firmly behind one ear. He moved around, inspecting each body carefully, holding his breath against the sour smell of corruption. At last he came down. Another coin was thrown on the ground. The serjeant looked up.
'What now, Brother?'
'Who hanged these men?'
'Well, we all did.'
'No, I mean who tied the ropes around their necks?'
'I did!' One of the pimply youths got up. 'I did, Brother. I do it expertly.'
'Would you say,' Athelstan asked, trying to hide his distaste at the glee in the young man's face, that each hangman arranges the knot in his own way?'
'Of, of course!'
'And from the noose you could tell which man you'd hanged and which you had not?'
'Naturally. A goldsmith has his mark, leaves his insignia on a plate. An artist who sketches a painting can recognise his own work. The same with the hangman. My knots are unique. I place them carefully.' The young man beamed expansively. 'I am skilled in my trade, Brother. I always make sure they take a long time to die.'
'Why?'
The fellow shrugged.
'Why not?'
'Do you enjoy it?'
'Well, the bastards deserve to suffer long.'
'And how do they suffer?'
'Oh, they kick a lot. They always kick.'
Athelstan pointed to the feet of the corpses.
'So, you always hang them without their boots on?'
'Yes, of course. Otherwise they would kick them off and we'd lose them. Some thief from the crowd might steal them and we'd be all the poorer. Why do you ask, Brother?'
The friar smiled and sketched a sign of the cross in the air.
'Nothing, my son, nothing at all.'
Athelstan turned and left the grisly bodies and walked back up Cheapside towards the Holy Lamb of God. He was convinced that Brampton and Vechey had been brutally murdered, though by whom he could not say.
He found Cranston dozing, comfortably ensconced in the inglenook of the tavern, a number of large empty pewter tankards arranged on the table before him. The ale wife walked over. Athelstan tossed her a coin and asked her to bring a fresh tankard and some wine whilst he roused Sir John. The coroner woke like a child, mumbling to himself, wondering where he was. Athelstan told him of the visits to the death house and the gibbet. The coroner nodded off to sleep again so, crossing to a barrel of dirty water, Athelstan filled the ladle and splashed it over Cranston's face. This time S
ir John woke, shaking himself like a dog, mouthing the most terrible curses. He was only placated by the ale wife placing a frothing tankard in front of him and throwing him the most longing and sly of glances, as if he was Paris and she Helen of Troy. In the presence of such flattery and with the taste of ale once more on his lips, Sir John regained his good temper and this time listened attentively as Athelstan spoke. He belched loudly when the account was finished and picked at his teeth with a sliver of wood. Athelstan thought he was going off to sleep again but the coroner took one further gulp from his tankard.
'Sir John,' Athelstan said testily, 'we must discuss matters!'
'Yes, yes,' the coroner bellowed. 'Buy me another one of these and I will listen to you again!'
Athelstan did so. Sir John, now fully awake but still in his cups, belched and gazed around the tavern, murmuring what an excellent place it was. Athelstan remembered the hen roosting over the beer barrel and kept his own counsel. He sipped slowly at a cup of watered wine and decided to return to his church. The roof might not have been repaired. Cecily the courtesan might still be plying her trade. And what would happen to Godric? Fleetingly, he wondered once again if Benedicta had missed him. He looked through the narrow tavern window. The sun was beginning to set, it was time he was gone. The Springall business was hidden by a tissue of lies. He was too tired to probe and Cranston too drunk.
Athelstan rose to his feet. 'Sir John, look!'
The coroner glanced up Wearily.
'Sir John, I can do nothing with you. I must go back to my church. Tomorrow or the day after, when you are in a better frame of mind, join me there.'
Athelstan picked up his leather bag, marched out of the tavern, collected Philomel and made his way slowly through the empty streets to London Bridge.
Cranston watched him go, then leaned back against the wall.
'Christ!' he murmured. 'I wish you'd stay, Athelstan, just for once!'