by Paul Doherty
Athelstan startled from his daydreaming as he almost stumbled over a midden heap reeking in the summer sun. The friar blessed himself and looked around. He was now standing at the mouth of the alleyway leading down to St Erconwald’s. He could see his parishioners congregating outside Merrylegs’ pie shop, and at the Piebald tavern further down the street.
‘If they spent as much time in church as they do in those two establishments, I’d be in charge of saints,’ he murmured. ‘I wonder what mischief they are plotting?’ He muttered a prayer for patience and hurried down.
If he had hoped to escape the attention of his flock, he was truly mistaken. They glimpsed him immediately and surged to meet him. Merrylegs brought him a mince pie.
‘And I truly mean beef.’ Merrylegs winked at Athelstan to reassure him the pie did not contain cat flesh. The friar bit into the light, soft crust; the spiced mince tasted delicious, as did the frothy tankard of ale thrust into his other hand by Jocelyn, the one-armed former river pirate and now proud owner of the Piebald. Athelstan’s parishioners were clearly excited about the forthcoming pilgrimage. Judith the parish mummer described how they were rehearsing their own mystery play, entitled ‘Thomas a Becket meets St Erconwald’. Athelstan vainly tried to point out that Erconwald lived at least four hundred years before Becket, but this was ignored in the rush of words as everyone else joined in the conversation. Apparently the play had taken up most of the morning and everybody had been given a role. Even Godbless, the beggar who now occupied the derelict death house in the middle of God’s Acre, along with his bosom companion Thaddeus, the omnivorous goat, had been assigned a part. Ursula the pig woman, with her great sow who followed her everywhere, was also involved. Athelstan quietly thanked God for small mercies. He hated that sow almost as much as Bonaventure, the one-eyed tomcat, did. Athelstan drew comfort from the fact that if the sow had been involved in the play then the beast would not have been ravaging his vegetable garden. Athelstan had carefully cultivated his different plots. He was very proud of his shallots and cabbages, as well as the different types of beans and the wide range of herbs and kitchen spices. He was equally proud of Hubert the hedgehog, who had taken up permanent residence in the Hermitage, a special nest cleverly constructed by Crispin the carpenter.
Athelstan gratefully accepted the invitation to step inside the sweet-smelling taproom of the Piebald and sit down at a table where he could finish both food and drink. His parishioners immediately crowded around him, delivering their news in noisy shouts. How the envoy of the Archdeacon of London had arrived searching for Athelstan. How Peter the Penniless, the great miser, had sought sanctuary and was now sheltering in their church. When he heard this, Athelstan got to his feet, thanked Jocelyn and Merrylegs and said he must visit St Erconwald’s immediately.
He pushed his way through the throng, assuring his beloveds that he would soon return. Once outside, he grasped his leather satchel and hurried along the concourse. He passed the majestic lychgate leading into God’s Acre. Athelstan paused and stared across the cemetery which sprawled to the left of the church: a sea of grass, gorse and bushes where a horde of butterflies floated and swarms of bees constantly quarried the wild flowers for their sweetness. Crickets kept up their monotonous hymn whilst the liquid call of woodpigeons echoed from the green darkness of the ancient cypress trees. Athelstan was about to move on when he heard a faint cry, followed by several more. He stood on a plinth and peered over the cemetery wall. The cries were repeated, not in pain or distress, but joyous, like a woman being pleasured. Athelstan sighed, crossed himself and murmured a prayer as he glimpsed legs, long and slender, the toes on the bare feet splayed, and the glittering bracelet around one of the rounded ankles.
Cecily the courtesan was clearly busy with a customer. In summer she spent more time in God’s Acre than many a corpse did – living proof that not everybody stretched out in the cemetery was dead.
Athelstan hurried up the steps of his church, through the narrow side entrance and into the musty nave of St Erconwald’s. He stared down at the towering rood screen, and above it the carved, agonised body of Christ nailed to his cross. Shafts of light pierced the windows on either side, some of which were mere lancet slits, but others were oblongs of sheer white light, covered in polished horn which greatly enhanced the sunshine. In Athelstan’s eyes, however, pride of place was given to the two windows above the chantry chapel of St Erconwald’s, a gift from the young king, who had sent his own craftsmen who were already busy working on the chapel of St George at Windsor. Both the windows were filled with painted glass depicting scenes from the life of the saintly bishop, and Athelstan found he could stare at them endlessly, drawn in to the fierce blaze of colour which always soothed him – but not today.
He tore his gaze away and glanced around. Everything seemed orderly. The baptismal font was locked and sealed under its thick oaken lid. The church smelt sweetly of thyme, mint and incense; its paved floor had been carefully scrubbed, the mice- and rat-holes cleverly blocked with small sponges soaked in vinegar and a herbal poison specially distilled by Ranulf the rat-catcher. Athelstan heard a scraping of a stool from the sanctuary. Peter the Penniless was undoubtedly making himself at home. Athelstan was tempted to go down and meet the sanctuary man, but now it struck him that something was wrong. Apparently his parishioners had staged their mystery play earlier in the day, their own unique interpretation of Becket’s martyrdom. Afterwards they had cleaned and tidied the area around the font, the usual place for their masques. However, the door to the tower was off the latch. Time and again, Athelstan had warned his parishioners to keep that door closed and bolted lest the children creep up the steps, which were steep, whilst the top of the tower was not the safest place for an inquisitive child.
The friar repressed a sudden shiver, a feeling of creeping danger, that all was not well. One of the Hangman of Rochester’s vivid wall paintings caught his eye. The fresco depicted the fall of the rebel angels; loathsome, spindle-shanked figures with bat-like faces, eyes glowing like fiery coals. The doomed angels fell against a bloodied sky, hurtling down to be greeted by the shooting fires of Hell. Athelstan walked over to the tower door, pulled it back and froze. Pinned to the inside of the door was a dead magpie, a garrotte cord around its neck. Athelstan snatched the bird down and carefully examined the crude, stiffened parchment tag with its mocking message, ‘Lord Azrael greets you’, scrawled in blood-red ink.
Athelstan tried to quell his temper at this blasphemous intrusion into his life, his priesthood, his church and his community. He took the dead bird out of the church, tossed it onto the nearest midden heap and strode quickly up to the priest’s house. Carefully pushing the door open, he looked around. All was quiet, clean and orderly, from his cotbed in the loft to the sturdy kitchen table which served as his dining place as well as his chancery desk. Benedicta, along with Mauger the bell clerk, had worked hard to keep his little house neat and tidy. Flowers placed in an earthenware jar in the centre of the table perfumed the air, the hearth was swept, the buttery scrubbed clean; the bread, cheese and chicken meat were fresh whilst the milk in its jug under a cloth smelt wholesome and sweet.
Satisfied, Athelstan returned to the church. He stood just within the doorway. He was distracted, his mind swerving, racing like a hare through a cornfield with different thoughts and worries: the planned pilgrimage, the safety of his parishioners, the gruesome scenes in Mephan’s house and the diabolical enjoyment of the assassin in baiting Athelstan and his other intended victims. Azrael had even scurried across the Thames to issue a dire warning to him at the very heart of his community. Athelstan stared down at the rood-screen crucifix and breathed a prayer his mother had taught him, ‘Turn your face to each of us as you did to Veronica …’ The invocation and the memory of his mother soothed him. He felt himself relax and went to sit on one of the wall benches as he finished his prayer. He then wondered, once darkness fell, if he should climb the tower and study the star-strewn sky. The moon would b
e full and Athelstan hoped to see those shooting stars which appeared so clear on a summer’s evening …
‘Brother?’ Athelstan glanced swiftly to his right. Benedicta had slipped like a shadow – and a most beautiful one, Athelstan secretly conceded – into the church. The widow-woman wore a large flesher’s apron over her blue and white smock, and her night-black hair was crowned with a broad-brimmed gardening hat. In one gloved hand she carried a small trowel, a three-pronged digging fork in the other. She held these up.
‘I have been tidying your vegetable patch. Why is it, Brother, that weeds grow faster than flowers or vegetables?’
‘Just like sin,’ he retorted, ‘it grows greater and spreads more swiftly than virtue. Remember, what applies to the spiritual state is true of the physical, so the philosopher Aquinas argues – or I think he does.’
Chastened by the sinister warning pinned to the tower door, Athelstan was delighted to share the kiss of peace with this beautiful woman who, he knew, cared deeply for him and showed it in her lovable eyes and kindly ways. He embraced her warmly and let himself relax, breathing in her perfume, until he recalled the words of his ordination: ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Act like one!’ Athelstan stepped back and bowed. ‘You are lovely of face and lovely of form, Benedicta. It is good to see you. I have, unfortunately, had a day bubbling with evil.’
‘And there’s more.’ Slightly taken back by the sheer warmth of Athelstan’s greeting, Benedicta pointed up the nave. ‘Peter the Penniless,’ she whispered. ‘He’s taken sanctuary against what he calls a horde of demons. He believes they are crowding in to kill him.’
Roger Empson, principal courier to Thibault, Gaunt’s Master of Secrets, also believed he was being haunted by a demon, but one in human flesh. The revolt was crushed but the Reapers were posting billae, bills of indictment against the adherents of John of Gaunt who were caught up in the bloody aftermath. The threat of the Reapers was dangerous enough, but Empson was now terrified, with a deep chilling of the soul, as he had stumbled onto a more horrid truth. The Reapers were one thing, but treachery and treason within Thibault’s own household posed a much more sinister threat. How else could anyone know that he visited the Way of all Flesh? That was a secret known only to a very few, something Roger savoured and kept to himself, what he called ‘his little sinful secret’. Surely everyone had one of these, a dark corner in their lives where no one visited or even knew about? Empson loved the soft, perfumed flesh of young men. He always had. And that mistress of the night, the Way of all Flesh, catered most discreetly for such tastes.
Empson had been busy about his own affairs, eager to relax and refresh himself. A few nights ago he had slipped out of his comfortable lodgings above a draper’s shop in Catskin Lane. Hooded and visored, he had threaded the twisting, ancient streets of Cheapside. The houses on either side were so decadent, they leaned towards each other, held in place only by sturdy oaken struts. As usual, Empson had kept to the shadows thrown by these mouldering mansions, his destination the comfortable cellars beneath the spacious tavern of the Lute Boy. The brothel was a veritable paradise of fleshly lusts under the strict supervision of that queen of whores – be they male or female – the Way of all Flesh, as she proclaimed herself. Here Empson could broach a flask of Rhenish or a jug of Bordeaux. Above all, he could wallow in the tender ministrations of Blondell, Pierrot and other lithe young men with their satiny skin, doe-like eyes and pouting mouths. The Way of all Flesh was extremely discreet, though there again, she had to be. If the Lute Boy was betrayed and raided by city archers, Empson and others would face a grisly death at Smithfield. Others whispered that the brothel was patronised and protected by the great ones of the city. Nevertheless Empson knew how fickle fortune could be, so deeds done in the dark were best kept in the dark.
Very few knew he went there, yet, on that particular evening when he left the Lute Boy, the assassin had sprung his trap and nearly garrotted Empson. The courier, hooded and visored, had slipped out of the tavern and stupidly fallen into the ambuscade. He had reached the corner of Turnspit Street when he heard the clink of a coin. He turned and, in the light of a fiercely burning cresset torch, glimpsed the pure silver coin shimmering in the light. Without even a second thought, Empson had bent down to pick it up and, as he did so, the garrotte string went round his neck, dragging him back. The pain had been intense, his breath choked off. He began to lose consciousness, unable to move either hands or feet. Then, a miracle.
A door abruptly swung open across the street. A group of revellers burst out crying, ‘Wassail to all!’ The door was a concealed one, and the building it belonged to was cloaked in darkness, probably a secret drinking den, yet its customers saved Empson’s life. The assassin’s cord abruptly loosened. Empson fell to his knees sobbing and gasping, the burn mark around his throat causing hideous shooting pains. His assailant had disappeared like smoke in the air, and the revellers had hastened to help him. Empson had staggered into a nearby tavern where the servitors, paid generously by the courier, tended to his injuries, poured a goblet of Bordeaux down his throat and allowed him to sleep under a table in the taproom.
Since then he had not returned to his chambers or to his workplace, the royal stables at Westminster and the Tower. Empson was terrified. How many people knew he visited the Lute Boy? Its customers tended to avoid each other but, on reflection, Empson believed that Luke Gaddesden, one of the evangelists, also frequented that place. Empson had glimpsed him and Luke had done likewise. Had he betrayed Empson to the Reapers? But was it the Reapers? Why should someone want to kill him now? Yet that assassin had been waiting for him; he was no ordinary footpad or felon. Empson was as sure of that as he was that the assassin would strike again, so he must hide well away from his usual haunts. He knew the city, its twisting dark lanes, shadow-filled coffin paths, the lonely nooks and crannies, all the places where a man could hide. In the end Empson believed he had chosen wisely and carefully. He was being hunted, probably by the Reapers, who must have a spy in the chancery offices at Westminster. The courier had decided to keep away from there and Cheapside, especially the Lute Boy. Instead he would hide out in a derelict charnel house close to the ancient church of All Hallows-on-the-Wall near Hounds’ Ditch, not far from the hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem.
During the time of the Great Pestilence which manifested itself in black buboes followed by an agonising death, St Mary of Bethlehem had used the much decayed building for the raddled corpses of plague victims. Since then the charnel house had stood sealed and protected in the middle of a blighted, overgrown garden. Few dared go there. People were terrified by stories of ghosts and, of course, the Plague might still lurk within, only too eager to break out again. Empson took refuge in the charnel house even though the place reeked of corruption, decay and death. The building comprised a long, dark hall, where ghosts and spectres could throng, constantly cold and shadow-filled, threatening in its silence. Empson had managed to light old lamps and these burned dimly, glimmering in corners. The floor was strewn with decaying rosemary, withered hyacinth, scraps of cypress and yew mingling with yellow, crumbling bones, ribs, whole skulls and other grisly shards of human remains. There was also a stack of forgotten corpses, some standing bolt upright in their decaying, knotted winding sheets, others mouldering in rotting coffins. Now and again some of these, disturbed by Empson moving about, would smash to the ground, spilling out more bones, dust and obnoxious odours.
At night the courier would venture out into the blighted, derelict garden but this offered little relief: a place where toads croaked around an overgrown pond and screech owls protested mournfully against the darkness. Nevertheless, the charnel house was Empson’s best defence. He may slumber in corners where cobwebs stretched like nets, vermin might squeak and scurry about and bats, once darkness crept in, flit like large, black flakes through the air, yet Empson considered himself safe there. Now and again he slipped out to buy provisions and, on more than one occa
sion, he had been compelled to visit a goldsmith in Cheapside where he had lodged his silver. He had no choice. The courier hoped to collect all he owned and flee. He was determined to put as much distance between himself and London as possible.
Empson’s thoughts returned to the question of who was hunting him. Would the Upright Men show such vindictiveness? According to what he’d learnt in the Secret Chancery and the messages he’d taken here and there, the leaders amongst the Upright Men were now terrified out of their wits. The captains amongst the Earthworms were eager to abjure the kingdom and seek safety in foreign parts. Would these men show such dedication to this murderous task? Moreover, the Earthworms were dagger men; they would attack their enemy in the marketplace, a swift knife between the ribs or an arrow loosed in the dark.