by Paul Doherty
She brought up the hem of her cloak to cover her nose. Athelstan sketched a sign of the cross in the air and prayed the cart would continue, but it stopped alongside them. The driver tried to quieten the horses as two screeching cats, fighting over some vermin, scurried out of the shadows. Cranston knew what was in the cart. He had recognised the driver as the hangman from Tyburn.
‘Don’t look,’ he whispered.
But Benedicta, her curiosity aroused, leaned on Athelstan’s arm and, standing on tiptoe, peered over the rim of the cart. She stared in horror at the whitened, frozen cadavers which lay there under a tattered, canvas sheet. Their limbs hung all awry but round the neck of each was a thick, purple line, while the purple-red faces were contorted, swollen tongues held fast between ice-cold lips, eyes rolled back in the sockets.
‘Oh, sweet Lord!’ she breathed, and leaned against the wall as the driver cracked his whip and the cart rolled on.
‘What was that?’
‘The hanged from the Elms,’ Cranston answered. ‘At night the corpses are cut down and taken to the great lime pits near Charterhouse.’ He glared at the widow. ‘I told you not to look!’
Benedicta retched before, resting on Athelstan’s arm, following Cranston through Ludgate and up towards the Fleet.
The prison did little to lighten their mood: grey frowning walls with a few sombre buildings peeping above them, and a black gateway with an arch which yawned as if it wished to devour any unfortunate who approached it. Cranston pulled at the bell and they were allowed through a wicket gate built into the ponderous door. A gaoler led them into the porter’s lodge, the fellow bowing and scraping as he recognised Sir John. Athelstan was pleased then that the coroner had accompanied them. They went through a large hall where the debtors were jailed, furnished with side benches of oak and two long tables of the same wood, all covered in greasy filth. The people gathered around them were dirty and foul-smelling, men and women wearing threadbare jerkins and tattered cloaks. They pushed their way through the hall and up a stone-flagged passageway, past grated windows where poor debtors shook their begging bowls through the bars and whined for alms.
At last they went down slimy, cracked steps into the Hall of the Damned, the condemned hold, a massive, vaulted cellar with dungeons in the far wall.
‘Who is it you wish to see?’ the porter snapped.
‘Simon the carpenter.’
The porter hurried across, chose a key and unlocked one of the doors.
‘Come on, Simon!’ he bawled. ‘A rare treat! London’s own coroner, a friar and a fair lady. Who could ask for more?’
Simon crept from the cell. Athelstan hardly recognised him: his face was a mass of sores, his hair long and matted with filth and vermin. The man’s clothing had been reduced to rags and he was loaded with fetters. Simon shuffled awkwardly towards them, lifting his manacled hands to push his hair back. His lips were blue with the cold and his eyes, above sallow sunken cheeks, bright with fever.
‘Father, you have brought a pardon?’ he asked hopefully.
Athelstan shook his head. ‘No, I am sorry. I just came to visit you, Simon. Is there anything I can do?’
The carpenter looked at him, then at Benedicta and, throwing back his head, laughed hysterically until the porter struck him across the face. The condemned man slumped to the floor, crouching like a beaten dog. Athelstan knelt beside him.
‘Simon!’ he murmured. ‘Simon!’
The carpenter raised his head.
‘Do you wish to be shriven? I will hear your confession.’
The man looked up despairingly.
‘There’s nothing left,’ Athelstan whispered. ‘This time tomorrow, Simon, you will be with God.’
The carpenter nodded and began to cry like a child. Athelstan turned.
‘Sir John, Benedicta, please, give me a moment.’
They withdrew. The coroner bawled at the porter to follow them and, for the second time that day, Athelstan heard the confession of a man about to meet Death. At first, Simon spoke slowly and Athelstan had to fight hard to keep his composure as the chill of the dungeons seeped through his robe, turning his legs to blocks of ice, but then Simon allowed his emotions full rein. He talked of everything, a miserable litany of failure culminating in the rape of a child. Athelstan heard him out, pronounced absolution and rose, rubbing his stiff legs to make the warmth return. The porter came back.
‘Tomorrow, Simon,’ Athelstan whispered, ‘I shall remember you. And, Simon?’
The condemned man looked up.
‘You remember me before the throne of God.’
The carpenter nodded. ‘I didn’t mean to do it, Father. I was lonely, I’d drunk too much.’
‘I know,’ Athelstan murmured. ‘God help you and her!’ Athelstan turned to the porter and tossed him a silver coin. ‘One good meal, sir.’
The porter caught the coin and nodded.
‘One good meal,’ Athelstan warned. ‘I shall check on that.’
He was about to leave when Simon called out: ‘Father!’
‘Yes, Simon?’
‘Ranulf the rat-catcher came to see me earlier today. He had been hired by a butcher in the Shambles. He said you were at the Tower because of Sir Ralph Whitton’s death.’ The carpenter grinned. ‘Even though I have been shriven, it is good to know that bastard went before me. A strange place the Tower, Father.’
Athelstan nodded. He felt Simon was only trying to prolong the visit ‘I worked there once,’ the carpenter called out. ‘A strange place, worse than this!’
‘Why is that, Simon?’
‘Well, at least here the cells have doors. In the Tower there are rooms, dungeons, where you go in, the doors are removed, and you remain until death behind a bricked wall.’
‘Is that so?’ Athelstan smiled. ‘God be with you, Simon.’
Athelstan went back up the steps to rejoin Cranston and Benedicta. They never spoke until they were out of the prison, the wicket gate slamming shut behind them.
‘The antechamber of Hell,’ Athelstan murmured as they made their way down Bowyers Row under the dark mass of St Paul’s. At Friday Street Sir John made to leave. Athelstan took him aside and stared into the bleary-eyed face.
‘I thank you for coming, Sir John. Be at peace. Go home and talk to the Lady Maude. I am sure all will be well.’
Cranston scratched his head. ‘God knows, Brother, but I feel the only good I did today was to listen to Fitzormonde and help that child. ‘You know, the one who stood over the beggarman?’
‘You came with us to the Fleet.’
‘Aye,’ Cranston muttered. ‘I could not get a pardon for Simon, you know that, Brother, but I showed him one last mercy.’
‘What’s that, Sir John?’
‘I left a coin for the executioner. Simon won’t dance. He will be taken far up the ladder.’ Cranston snapped his fingers. ‘His neck will snap and it will all be over quickly.’ The coroner stamped his feet and looked up at the star-filled sky. ‘You had best hurry home, Brother. The stars await you.’ He turned and tramped up the street. ‘I only wish,’ he called out ‘we’d found Alderman Horne!’
CHAPTER 9
As Athelstan and Benedicta rode slowly back across the dark, choppy waters of the Thames, Adam Horne left the Crutched Friars monastery near Mark lane just north of the Tower. He’d arrived just after Vespers to collect the message he had been told would be waiting for him. The grizzle-haired lay brother had smiled toothlessly and waved Horne into the door-keeper’s lodge.
‘It’s been here all afternoon,’ the lay brother murmured, handing him a thin roll of vellum. Horne anxiously unfolded the parchment and, begging the brother to bring a candle, hastily read the contents.
‘Oh, my God!’ he groaned as his hopes were dashed. Earlier in the morning he had received a piece of parchment with a sketch of a crudely drawn ship, and a flat sesame seed cake. He had tried to hide his fears from his poor wife and gone down to his warehouse where another message
had been awaiting him: he was not to return home, the short letter instructed, but to go to the House of the Crutched Friars where his anxieties would be resolved. He should fear nothing but put his hopes in the sender who wished him well. Now this short note cruelly dashed his hopes: the mysterious writer apologised for not meeting him but asked him to wait amongst the ancient ruins to the north-west of the Tower. Horne shredded the note, left the friary and made his way through the dark, ice-covered country lanes which cut round farms and smallholdings. He stared up at the starlit sky and shivered, not only from the biting cold but his own sombre fear of what might await him. Horne’s commonsense told him to run but he had waited too long. The threat had hung like a sword over his head for years and he wanted to confront it once and for all. A self-confident merchant, Horne also believed the meeting might end his fears for good. He could then go home, absolved from his part in that terrible crime committed so many years ago.
The line of trees ended and Horne stood on the edge of the common, in the far distance the lowering mass of the Tower. Perhaps he should go there? He sighed despairingly. Who could help him? Sir Ralph was dead and the surviving hospitaller would have no time for him. Horne gulped quickly at the realisation of his own guilt. Should he go on? He stared at the ice-covered ground and half listened to the cold wind moaning gently amongst the trees. Above him a raven cawed as it flew to hunt over the mudflats along the river. A fox barked. The sound was strident and made the hair curl on the back of his neck. Horne felt uneasy. He turned and stared back down the muddy track. Was someone there? Had he been followed?
Horne’s face twisted into a snarl. He might be a fat, wealthy merchant now but fifteen years ago he had fought as a knight, shoulder to shoulder with men who feared nothing on earth. Yes, he had been guilty, even as much as Whitton, Fitzormonde and Mowbray had always been soft, they could whine and moan that they had not been to blame, but Horne had agreed to Whitton’s plan and built a thriving business on the proceeds.
He fondled the long dagger he’d pushed through his wallet, drawing comfort from its metal-coiled handle. If there was an assassin about, he reassured himself, best to confront him now rather than be taken in the dead of night. An owl hooted. Horne snarled. ‘Let all the hell hounds come from Satan’s dark abyss! I will match blow for blow!’ His empty words comforted him as he walked across to the ruins, a collection of snow-covered boulders. The old ones said the great Caesar once had a palace there. Horne, deeply agitated by a mixture of fear, terror and forced bravado, went and sat in the middle. He felt safer; despite the darkness, the white, snow-covered common and brittle ice would give him warning of any assassin’s approach.
The merchant stared round the ruined Roman villa. A few yards away was a half-raised wall. Horne glared at it contemptuously. If any murderer lurked there, they would have to cover the ground and he had brought something special. A small arbalest or miniature crossbow swung from his belt, a bolt already in place. The darkness grew deeper. Horne studied the lights of the city. The wine he had drunk earlier in the day, his exertions and fear, made him feel warm and sleepy. A short stab of icy wind made him huddle deeper into his cloak and he stirred to keep the hot blood flowing through his veins. The merchant stared around into the gathering darkness and his courage began to ebb as he wondered who his strange benefactor might be. Horne closed his eyes, half sleeping, dozing. That’s what Bartholomew Burghgesh had always told him to do.
‘Rest whenever you can, my dear Adam. A true soldier always eats, drinks, sleeps and takes a wench whenever the opportunity presents itself’
Horne smiled to himself. Brave, redoubtable man! A veritable paladin! Horne had liked him but Ralph Whitton had always been jealous of Bartholomew for being a better soldier than he. But surely there had been more than that?
Something about Whitton’s wife being rather sweet on the young Bartholomew when he had, for a time, served as a knight banneret in the Tower. Horne sniggered to himself. Strange coincidence, the same place where Whitton had met his death. Horne looked up. Was that a sound he had heard? He sat still, his ears straining, but only the cawing of the ravens and the distant bark of some farm dog broke the chilling silence. Horne moved his feet restlessly. He would wait a few more minutes and then he’d go. He stared at the ground. Who was the murderer? he wondered. Could it be the hospitaller, Fitzormonde? Or Fulke, Sir Ralph’s brother? He’d known Burghgesh quite well. Or someone else who believed he was God’s vicar on earth to dispense justice and retribution? Or had Burghgesh survived, been taken prisoner, and then years later slipped back into England to reap bloody havoc on his foes? Or perhaps his son and heir? Had he really died in France, or else learnt about his father’s terrible fate and secretly returned to stalk his sire’s killers?
Horne chewed on his lip. He had to face the fact that he was a killer, he had been party to Burghgesh’s murder. Sometimes at night this thought would rouse him screaming from his sleep. And was that why God had given him no son or heir? Was his wife’s barrenness due to divine justice? Horne heard a sound, jumped up in terror and stared at the apparition just next to the old wall.
A man clothed in knight’s armour, on his breast the red cross of the crusaders, his face hidden by that helmet! The same steel, conical shell with eagle’s wings on either side and blue tufted crest on top. A chilling terror gripped Home’s heart. ‘My God!’ he whispered. ‘It’s Burghgesh!’ Or was it an apparition from hell? The armoured, visored figure just stood there, feet slightly apart, mailed, gauntleted fists gripping the handle of the great, two- edged sword with the blade resting on one shoulder.
‘You are Burghgesh?’ Horne hissed.
The apparition moved closer. Only the crunch of mailed feet on the hard ice broke the silence.
‘Adam! Adam!’ The voice was Burghgesh’s though it sounded sombre and hollow. ‘Adam!’ the voice repeated. ‘I have returned! I come for vengeance! You, my comrade in arms, my friend for whom I would have given my life.’ One mailed hand shot out. ‘You betrayed me! You, Whitton and the rest!’
Horne moved suddenly, his hand going to the small arbalest which swung from his belt
‘You’re no phantasm,’ the merchant snarled. ‘And, if you are, go back to Hell where you belong!’
He brought up the arbalest but, even as he did, the great two-edged sword scythed the air, neatly slicing the merchant’s head from his shoulders. The decapitated head spun like a ball in the air, lips still moving; his trunk stood for a few seconds in its own fountain of hot red gore before crashing on to the blood-stained ice. Horne’s mailed executioner carefully cleaned the sword, drew his knife and knelt beside the blood-gushing torso of his victim.
Some hours later Sir John Cranston, muttering and cursing to himself, made his way from Blind Basket Alley up Mincing Lane into Fenchurch Street. Dawn had just broken and Sir John, unable to sleep, had risen early to confer with Alderman Venables about the continued disappearance of Roger Droxford, still wanted for the murder of his master whose decapitated corpse Cranston had found. Sir John had spent a restless night, tossing from side to side in his great double bed. He had tried to remain calm but still seethed with fury at Maude’s continued intransigence in the face of his pleadings and questions: her only answer would be to bite her lip, shake her head and turn away in floods of tears. At last Cranston had risen and gone to his personal chancery but, finding himself unable to concentrate, had finished dressing and gone to rouse Venables. Cranston grinned wickedly. He’d enjoyed that, letting the good alderman know what it was like to be awoken just before dawn. The sleepy-eyed alderman however, could give him no further information on Droxford.
‘He can’t have fled far. Sir John,’ Venables murmured sleepily. ‘God knows, in this weather only a fool would try to flee the city limits, and both the description and the reward have been circulated.’ Venables had grinned. ‘After all, Sir John, he’s a man you would remember.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he had two f
ingers missing from one hand and his face was covered in hairy warts.’ The alderman pulled his fur-lined bed robe around him, moving restlessly on the stone-flagged corridor and making it obvious the coroner should leave. ‘What’s so special about Droxford, anyway, Sir John?’
‘He’s special, Master Venables, because he’s a murderer, a felon who has stolen over two hundred pounds of his master’s monies, and it looks as if he has got away Scot free!’
Venables took one look at Cranston’s angry face and agreed. Sir John had then stamped off, muttering curses about public officials who didn’t seem to care. Yet, in his heart, Cranston knew he was a hypocrite. The business at the Tower was still shrouded in mystery. The fugitive Droxford, not to mention the easy-going alderman, were the nearest butts for Sir John’s foul temper.
He turned into the still-deserted Lombard Street and up to the great stocks just before the Poultry. A group of beadles were standing around a beggar who sat imprisoned there, feet and hands tightly clamped, face frozen, eyes open.
‘What’s the matter?’ Cranston bellowed.
The beadles shuffled their feet
‘Someone forgot to release him last night,’ one of them shouted. ‘The poor bastard’s frozen to death!’
‘Then some bastard will pay!’ Sir John bellowed back, and continued up the wide thoroughfare, past a group of nightbirds, whores and petty felons now manacled together and being led down to the great iron cage on top of the Conduit. A frightened-looking maid let him in. Sir John suddenly stopped, eyes narrowing. Hadn’t he glimpsed a shadow in the alleyway beside the house? He went back. Nothing. Cranston shook his head and, vowing he would drink less sack, brushed past the anxious-looking maid, down the passageway and into the stone-flagged kitchen. He thanked God Maude wasn’t there, he was tired of their encounters.
‘Any messages?’ he barked at a subdued-looking Leif, still sitting in his favourite place in the inglenook of the great fireplace. The one-legged beggar lifted his head from his bowl of vegetables and spiced meat and shook his head.