by Paul Doherty
‘Oh, they were telling me the gossip of the area: that little affray we saw in Cheapside this morning? Evidently agents of the Great Community of the Realm are now swarming in the city; their only difficulty is they have no arms.’
‘They seemed well equipped this morning.’
‘Oh, a few arrows, yes. I tell you, Brother. If the storm bursts, this city will see savage fighting. The Tower and the other fortresses along the Thames will be fortified. Many of the merchants like Thomas Parr will turn their houses into castles. The peasants may march on the city with their hoes and rakes, mattocks and old long bows but they’ll need more serious weapons.’
‘Couldn’t they transport them into the city beforehand?’
‘Every cart coming into the city is inspected by the market bailiffs and beadles, not to mention Gaunt’s legion of spies. The scrimperers also informed us,’ Sir John continued, walking slowly on, ‘that an unknown priest has been seen in the area.’
‘Is that strange?’
‘Priests do not come here. Whitefriars is dangerous even for those who live in it. Their leader, Sir Galahad,’ he went on, standing outside an old tavern and looking up at the fly-blown windows, ‘said he was in an alleyway about ten days ago. He was jostled, the man sketched a blessing and whispered his apologies in what Galahad recognised as Latin.’
‘What are you looking at, Sir John?’
‘I used to visit this ale-house when I was a lad. It was called the Mulberry Tree. Oh, it’s seen better days.’ He opened the door.
‘Sir John, if you need refreshment . . .’
‘No, Brother, just your company!’
They walked into the evil-smelling taproom, a dank, musty place. The windows were boarded and shuttered, a few oil lamps were lit, filling the room with a greasy smell. In their flickering light the customers who sat on overturned casks looked even more like shapes and shadows from a nightmare.
‘Good day everyone!’ Sir John bellowed. ‘And God bless you!’
Athelstan narrowed his eyes. He could make out the wine tuns on the counter, the small glow of the oven, a few beer barrels.
‘Piss off, Jack!’
‘Now that’s no way to talk to an old friend is it? Who’s that? My goodness, it’s one-eyed Isaiah! There are warrants out for you, my lad. An unsolved burglary in the Poultry?’
‘I am as innocent as an angel,’ the voice croaked back.
‘What do you want, Cranston?’
A figure came out of the shadows. Athelstan first thought it was a man but, in the light of one of the oil lamps, he realised that, despite the leather jacket, leggings and boots, it was a woman. Her stained cambric shirt, slightly too small, emphasised her swelling breasts and thick, fat neck. The face was grotesque: the nose split, a long red ugly gash from top to tip while dagger marks criss-crossed her face. A large pearl dangled on a silver chain from one ear lobe.
‘Now, now, Jack, you haven’t come to arrest old Isaiah, have you?’
He took one step back and bowed mockingly.
‘No, Mistress Vulpina, I have not. I wish a few words with you.’
‘Then you’d best come.’
She led them into a far corner of the taproom and up some narrow, rickety stairs. The chamber above was a stark contrast to the evil drinking den below. The windows on one side boasted coloured glass. The walls were painted white and hung with coloured cloths.
The floor was red-tiled, scrubbed clean, and the furniture looked as if it had been bought from a guild carpenter in Cheapside. Flowers grew in small containers and sachets, filled with perfume, were fixed to the wooden beams along the ceiling. Vulpina led them across to a far corner where chairs were neatly arranged round a polished, oval table. A silver salt cellar stood in the centre, shaped in the form of a castle. She offered them wine but Sir John, surprisingly, refused. Vulpina laughed throatily. In the full light Athelstan could see how, in former days, she must have been a beautiful woman. Her eyes were dark brown, large and lustrous even though they shifted restlessly from one place to another. She was unable to meet their gaze but moved about, touching the salt cellar, staring out of the window or pretending to listen to sounds from the taproom below.
‘You haven’t come for one-eyed Isaiah.’ She peered at Athelstan. ‘You are the Dominican?’ Her lips curled in a sneer. I have few priests among my customers.’
‘For ale and beer?’ Athelstan asked.
The sneer on Vulpina’s face faded.
‘What do you sell?’ Athelstan persisted.
Vulpina tugged nervously at a tuft of her cropped dark hair.
‘Everything.’
‘Including poisons?’ Cranston asked.
Vulpina sat back in her chair, hands cradled in her lap, and batted her eyelids.
‘Oh, Sir John,’ she cooed.
‘Don’t play “Hotpot Meg” with me! There’s not a herb that grows, not a potion which can be distilled, unknown to you.’ He gazed up at the ceiling. I wonder where you keep them, eh?’
Cranston got up and walked round the chamber. He stopped to inspect the wooden panelling placed against the far wall.
‘A veritable warren!’ he exclaimed. ‘Eh, Vulpina? When I was a lad, the Mulberry Tree was known for its secret passageways and hideouts. People could come and go in the dead of night and not be noticed. I don’t think it’s changed. Who has visited you recently, Vulpina?’
‘If I told you, Sir John, you’d only blush. Come and sit down. You have no warrant or licence to enter here.’
‘I could get one.’ He came back and lowered himself into the chair. ‘Now that would be a good day’s work, eh, Vulpina? Me and a dozen burly lads from the city. I wonder what we’d find here?’ He pulled across the silver salt cellar. ‘I am sure this once graced a house in Cheapside.’
Vulpina snatched it back.
‘What do you want, Cranston?’
‘I want you to tell me about poisons.’
‘Do you wish to buy one?’
‘Yes.’ Athelstan spoke up. ‘I want you to sell me a poison.’ He paused. ‘Which I can take but will do no harm. However, if I poured it into Sir John’s ale he would be dead within an hour.’
‘Impossible!’ she snorted.
‘You are sure?’
‘Brother, there’s nothing grown under the sun, of a noxious nature, which won’t harm everyone who takes it.’ She shrugged. ‘To be sure, some will affect you more than others: just like ale or wine will render one man sotted before another.’
‘And you know of no such poison?’ Athelstan persisted.
‘If I did, Brother, I would be very interested. Why do you ask?’
‘Hawkmere Manor,’ Sir John said.
The coroner had hit the mark; Vulpina tried to school her features but a shift to her eyes, a flicker of her tongue betrayed her.
‘I’ve heard its name, an old, gloomy place.’
‘It houses French prisoners,’ Sir John explained. ‘One of them was poisoned.’
‘Ah!’ Vulpina smiled, clicking her tongue noisily. ‘So you put the blame on old Vulpina? Sir John, I tell you the truth. I sell potions and philtres to lovelorn ladies, to men who may wish to get rid of a rival. I do not ask them who they are or where they come from. I am an apothecary.’
‘You are a killer! A red-handed assassin!’ He got to his feet and leaned over the table. ‘One day, when I have time and the necessary warrants, I’ll come back here.’ He went to the door. ‘We are going to leave this lovely place.’ He waited until Athelstan joined him. ‘And I don’t want to be followed. No fracas or sudden affray in the streets below. You’ve been no help, Vulpina, and I’ll remember that!’
‘Sir John!’
He walked back into the room.
‘You are here on Gaunt’s orders, aren’t you? You’re his messenger boy.’
‘I’m no one’s boy!’
Vulpina sneered, her head going back. She studied Sir John under half-closed lids. Athelstan repressed a shiver. He d
id not like this place: the more he stayed, the more certain he became that he was in the presence of real malevolence, that this woman was steeped in evil. He was used to the rapscallions and rogues of Southwark, people like Pig’s Arse and Godbless who stole and thieved because they had to. Vulpina, however, enjoyed the evil she distilled, revelling in the chaos and the sorrow it caused.
‘I’m waiting, Hotpot!’
‘You are Gaunt’s man.’ She clicked her tongue again and lifted her hand. Athelstan noticed that she wore a skin-tight leather gauntlet on her right hand. ‘I can give you a list of customers, Cranston!’ she hissed. ‘They’d include the so called mighty and good who would have little time for your nose-poking and querulous questions and that includes my Lord of Gaunt! Or rather his lovesick knight. What’s his name? Maltravers? I understand he’s the laughing-stock of the city. He’s taken a couple of French ships so he thinks he can slip between the sheets with Lady Angelica Parr, does he?’
‘What are you saying?’ Sir John took a step threateningly forward.
Vulpina lifted a whistle which hung on a silver cord round her neck.
‘Come on, Fat Jack!’ she taunted. ‘One blast from this and we’ll see how you and your priestly friend can cope with my legion of rats from below!’
He drew sword and dagger. Vulpina’s face lost some of its arrogance.
‘Go on!’ he said. ‘Let’s go at it, Vulpina. Heaven or hell, but you will be dead.’
The Queen of Poisons took a deep breath and let it out noisily.
‘Fine, fine, Sir John. I want you out of here and I don’t want your enmity.’ She let the whistle fall. ‘Gaunt’s man has been here.’
‘Maltravers?’
‘The same.’
‘What did he want?’
‘A love philtre.’
‘For what?’
‘I didn’t ask him. He also bought some poison. I asked him why. It was nothing exceptional, some henbane, a little belladonna.’
‘And did he give the reason for that?’
‘He said it was rats. In his own chamber. He asked for it as an afterthought.’ Vulpina smiled. ‘But I saw your quick-eyed Dominican friend, when you mentioned Hawkmere Manor. I’ve had visitors from there. Limbright for one, Sir Walter constantly comes here, takes a little digitalis he does, and a few other potions, St John’s wort for a start.’
Athelstan studied this woman and wondered how many secrets she held.
‘Oh, and the list goes on. The good physician Aspinall? He, too, is in my book.’ She realised what she had said and quickly tapped the side of her head. ‘My ledger is between my ears, Sir John. And, Sir John, that’s all I can tell you.’ Vulpina waggled her fingers in mock farewell.
‘Thank God we are out of there!’ Athelstan breathed as they walked back up the main alleyway out of Whitefriars. ‘Sir John, what a tangle of weeds we’ve got here.’
‘It’s a tangle all right.’ The coroner stopped and scratched his head. ‘We really should visit the Lady Angelica, but Brother . . .’
‘No need to apologise. My legs are tired and my belly’s empty. I want to go back and talk to Bonaventura.’
‘Not to mention Judas the goat!’
‘Thaddeus,’ Athelstan corrected him. ‘It’s Thaddeus now, Sir John. But, what about this?’
‘We frightened Vulpina. And so she threw us morsels. Don’t forget, my good friar: Lady Maude visits an apothecary up Cheapside and buys poisons for the rats in our cellars, but that doesn’t make her a murderess.’
‘Yes, but she doesn’t hide it, Sir John. Limbright, Maltravers and Aspinall have questions to answer.’
Sir John chewed on the corner of his lip then abruptly turned and stared down the alleyway.
‘What’s the matter, Sir John?’
‘Vulpina’s a murdering bitch, Athelstan, but she’s no fool.’ The coroner scratched his whiskers. ‘Earlier, when we stopped to talk to the scrimperers, I had the feeling of being followed. Now I am certain of it. A shadow down the lane moved a little too slowly.’
He took a step forward but Athelstan caught at his arm.
‘Sir John, let us go home.’
Athelstan stared about at the dingy houses, the lean, pinched faces which peered out from behind shabby doors, the clusters of beggars in alleyways. He saw one of them move and caught the glint of steel.
‘Let’s go home, Sir John,’ he repeated. ‘This is all a tangled web and we have truly entered the Devil’s Domain!’
CHAPTER 7
Athelstan sat at his table and moved the candle a little closer. The evening had turned surprisingly chill so he had lit a fire which now crackled merrily in the hearth. Bonaventure, not yet ready for his nightly hunt, sat on the table delicately lapping a dish of milk. Every so often he would lift his head, his one good eye fixed curiously on his strange, eccentric master. Athelstan tickled the cat’s nose with the tip of his quill. Bonaventure didn’t flinch. He blinked and turned, staring into the far corner.
‘I know what you are after,’ Athelstan said.
The friar had seen a mouse scuttle across the floor of the hearth.
‘But it’s only a small mouse, Bonaventure. A harvest one. He’s probably wandered in and will certainly wander out.’
Bonaventure purred deep in his throat.
‘Soft as a shadow,’ Athelstan went on. ‘Sleek and fast. What do you think of Thaddeus?’
Bonaventure, of course, had gone out to inspect both the goat and Godbless. He had brushed the beggar man’s leg with his body and sniffed at the goat. Athelstan, who had been present, knew that this lord of the alleyways regarded Thaddeus as beneath his attention.
Godbless had certainly made himself at home. Benedicta had kindly provided a straw-filled mattress, a bolster, two blankets, a dish and a pewter cup. Godbless now acted like a lord of the manor while Thaddeus was busy cropping the grass. Athelstan had taken him out a dish of stew from the pot Benedicta had brought together with some bread wrapped in a cloth and a jug of watered wine, a gift from Joscelyn at the Piebald Tavern.
Athelstan lifted his head and listened to the sounds of the night. Sometimes he would go out and wander the alleyways, stopping to talk to the beggars and night-walkers, the whores and drabs, the flotsam and jetsam of this decayed quarter of the city. Other times, when his mind was teeming, he would climb to the top of the church tower and stare up at the sky. Athelstan felt guilty at such indulgence but, the more he stared at the stars, the more he became aware of the power of God and the sheer beauty of this Creation. If only he could discover more. If he could only test the theories. Did the planets sing while they turned? Why did some stars gleam brighter than others? What held them in their place? They moved but, like the moon, kept their courses. What stopped them from falling to earth? And the meteors, particularly those bright ones which seared the heavens with their fiery tails, did they govern the affairs of men? Athelstan picked up his cup and sipped at it. He really must raise that matter with Prior Anselm. The Church condemned astrology but hadn’t Christ’s birth been heralded by a new star? And when the Saviour died hadn’t the skies been blotted with darkness? Or was Aquinas the great writer correct? Was Creation the reflection of God, nothing to do with the affairs of Man?
Athelstan stared down at the parchment. ‘From the sublime to the ridiculous,’ he observed. He looked at the heading, ‘Hawkmere Manor’, and the questions he had listed.
Item – Five Frenchmen were imprisoned in that solitary place waiting to be ransomed. Was one of them a traitor? Had he revealed to the English Crown the movements of the St Sulpice and the St Denis! If that was the case, why wasn’t one prisoner favoured more than the rest? It could be arranged. More comfortable quarters in the Tower. Or would that expose him? Show the truth and so make it impossible for him to return to France?
Item – How did Serriem die? He was definitely poisoned. But how, if he only ate and drank what the others did? Or had he been inveigled into eating something, a delicacy which,
to such an imprisoned man, might prove irresistible? But surely that would put him on his guard? Moreover, in that atmosphere of suspicion, surely no prisoner would want to be seen favoured above the rest?
Item – Who was the murderer? One of his companions? But where would they get the poison from? And how would they administer it without provoking suspicion?
Item – Sir Walter Limbright was a bitter, resentful man who hated the French. He claimed there were no poisons in the manor. However, if Vulpina was to be believed, he had been one of her customers; the same could be said of Sir Maurice Maltravers and Master Aspinall. Was the good physician embroiled in the affairs of Hawkmere? Had he taken offence because of a possible liaison with the girl-faced Gresnay?
Item – What happened the night Serriem died? Who had locked the door? Had anyone checked on the prisoners? What was the state of the room when it was opened?
Item – Did the French know there was a traitor in their midst? Had all these men been condemned to die? Was the poisoner Gaunt? Had he instructed this traitor, if he was at Hawkmere Manor, to poison the rest? But wouldn’t that expose his agent? And what would happen to him? A simulated death, before being secretly pensioned off to some lonely manor on the Welsh marches?
Item – An unknown priest had been seen at Whitefriars. A possible customer of Vulpina? But who would that be?
Athelstan glanced up. I wonder what Sir John’s doing, he thought. He smiled to himself as he recalled the two poppets. Never had he seen two sturdy sons so resemble their father: balding heads, fat, red faces, little paunches and sturdy legs. The poppets spent most of their day telling each other off or chasing Gog and Magog around the house. Athelstan returned to the parchment.
‘There’s something wrong here, Bonaventure,’ he said. Something intangible he couldn’t grasp. He recalled Gaunt slouched in his chair. ‘That’s it!’ Athelstan stroked Bonaventure. ‘My Lord Regent is like a cat who has taken the best of the cream and intends to go back for more.’
What was he so pleased about? Gaunt had a lot to gain, Athelstan reflected. The Commons would be pleased that notorious French privateers were now in prison. He had the ransoms to look forward to while Maltravers was one of his henchmen so the Regent could bask in his reflected glory. And Vulpina? Despite the wine he had drunk, old Jack Cranston had really shaken that woman’s wickedness. She was nervous, eager to give tidbits of information so she could hide the rest. Athelstan put his face in his hands. There were links: Maltravers had taken the two French ships; Gaunt was now furthering Sir Maurice’s cause with the divine Lady Angelica. Sir Thomas Parr partly owned The Great Edward, the ship Sir Maurice had used in his fight against the French privateers. Sir Maurice had bought poisons. He also supplied Hawkmere Manor with food. Why should a knight banneret be engaged in such petty details? True, in a great lord’s household, even a retainer like Maltravers would have a wide range of tasks: some petty, others matters of life and death. But where was all this leading to?