A Pilgrimage to Murder

by Paul Doherty

  ‘Good man!’ Cranston breathed, smiling at Osbert. ‘Of course! Anyway, gentlemen, I have now given vent to my suspicions. It’s a beautiful day. Make sure everything is locked away in my chamber at the Guildhall then go and enjoy this lovely weather with your families.’

  Both clerk and scrivener needed no further encouragement. They packed up their writing equipment, made their farewells and left. Cranston sat for a while brooding to himself. He wondered what Athelstan was doing then reflected on all the preparations for the pilgrimage. Cranston was looking forward to this. Indeed, he had ridden the entire pilgrim route and prepared the way at different hostelries and places, hiring chambers for himself and others whilst arranging warm, dry stables to house the rest. On hearing this, Athelstan had insisted that he too would sleep in an outhouse: ‘It will take me back to my days as a soldier and scholar.’

  Sir John glanced up as mine hostess, pink-cheeked and all a-fluster, hurried over and asked if he wanted more? Cranston just stared at her, his mind still distracted by the pilgrimage. He wished Thibault and his coven were not joining them. Yet he’d been informed, just recently, that they too had arranged lodgings along the way. Just why were they coming? The coroner recalled the recent attack on Gaunt in the Tower, Luke Gaddesden’s strangled corpse …

  ‘Sir John?’ mine hostess repeated. ‘Do you want more ale?’

  ‘Monkshood!’ Cranston exclaimed. ‘I want to speak to Monkshood, and the sooner the better as, according to the bill given to me, he is to hang at Tyburn.’

  ‘Sir John?’

  ‘Monkshood, my dear. A leading Upright Man, a prisoner Gaunt is determined to hang.’ Cranston sprang to his feet, strapping on his broad leather warbelt. ‘Mine hostess, if anyone comes in enquiring, tell them Sir John is visiting that very pit of despair, Newgate prison.’ He scooped the tavern mistress up in his arms and kissed her roundly on both cheeks. Still murmuring ‘Monkshood’ in reply to mine hostess’s good wishes, Cranston swept out of the Lamb of God, up Cheapside, past St Michael’s Church and into the Shambles, London’s great fleshing market.

  Here the butchers, flayers, skinners and slaughterers prepared their stock for sale. The chopping and cutting of cows, calves, sheep, ducks, geese and hens was so constant that the very air was sprayed with blood which stained all passers-by and formed thick, dark puddles across the cobbles. The summer breezes reeked of a variety of foul odours as entrails cascaded out of slit bellies, slopping into the waiting buckets and tubs. Around this reeking mess crouched the apprentices, saturated in gore, who had to fight to keep the offal for themselves, driving away the hordes of beggars, itinerant cooks and traders who viewed such bloody portions as their legitimate booty.

  The great fleshing market and its myriad customers attracted every kind of miscreant under the sun. They swarmed out of their dungeons of perpetual night near Whitefriars, along the River Fleet and elsewhere, creeping out, eyes keen for a mistake by anyone who left their property, be it a purse or a stall, vulnerable to being filched. The salamander men, the pimping princes and their gaggle of garishly painted whores, charlatans, conjurors and counterfeits, all set up camp along that broad thoroughfare. The unexpected appearance of Cranston, however, sent them scampering back into the shadows of runnels and alleyways, hiding under stalls, carts and wheelbarrows. Cranston strode through this mayhem, dodging the dung- and refuse-collectors, shouting warnings when some emboldened rogue hurled abuse or cat-called him. At every step Cranston kept his hands close to the dagger and sword on his warbelt. The coroner was tolerated and respected but, there again, he had to be wary of the madcap, the toper or the man with a grievance who might think they could strike at London’s coroner and escape.

  At last Cranston reached the sprawling concourse which stretched in front of the towering, sombre mass of Newgate prison built into the old city wall. Newgate’s appearance justified the gaol’s description as ‘the Devil’s Domain’, ‘the Mansions of Midnight’, ‘the Halls of Hell’ and other such bleak judgements. Every window overlooking the concourse was heavily barred both within and without. Each door, no bigger or narrower than a serving hatch, was reinforced with iron bars and heavy metal studs. Sheriff’s men, really no better than the rogues they guarded, milled about in their dirt-stained livery, cracking their whips or slashing their canes against those who swarmed around, desperate to get messages or sustenance to friends and relatives within.

  Cranston was swiftly admitted through a postern door and entered what he considered to be the very antechamber of Hell. Newgate was a living nightmare; the stench alone made people grievously ill. The stygian darkness, hot and fetid, closed about the coroner like the breath of some unseen, foul-mouthed monster. Cries, groans, screams and curses echoed along the narrow corridors, the walls glistening with a perpetual fetid damp, whilst the ground underfoot was thickly carpeted with cockroaches and a legion of fat-bellied fleas and lice. Every footstep crunched these down, leaving them as fodder for the rats which swarmed through the gloomy bowels of the sombre prison. These rodents grew long and powerful, ravenous and aggressive enough to attack prisoners too weak to defend themselves.

  Cranston murmured a prayer as he followed the balding, waddling, grossly overweight keeper across the press yard, where one prisoner who had refused to plead was being crushed under a heavy iron door with spikes on one side and heavy weights on the other. The man’s screams of agony were piteous in the extreme. They entered what was popularly called ‘the portals of purgatory’ where the ‘pits of despair’, small, narrow cells, housed the felons who were condemned to the gallows. No daylight here, not a chink of a sunbeam, nothing but perpetual dark and eternal night if it were not for the fiercely burning cresset torches and glowing lanternhorns flaring through the gloom.

  The keeper opened a cell door and Cranston entered to stand over the prisoner who sat manacled to the wall on a bed of slimy, black, wet straw. Cranston, aware of the open door behind him and the keeper guarding the gallery outside, crouched down and stared into the face of Monkshood, one of London’s leading rifflers. Few people knew his real name but Monkshood was regarded by the authorities as a leading captain of the dreaded Earthworms. He had been betrayed, tried and found guilty of being involved in the storming of Gaunt’s residence, the Savoy Palace, plundering it and reducing that magnificent mansion to a heap of blackened timber.

  Monkshood, who, according to the bills posted across the city, was to hang the following morning on the Smithfield gibbet, gazed coolly back at the coroner. Now and again he would move his hair, long and greasy, off his face and scratch at the tangled moustache and beard all caked in dirt and riddled with fleas and lice. Cranston recalled scraps of information about the prisoner. Monkshood had a reputation for being quick-witted, of good family, a former scholar of St Paul’s cathedral school. He had obviously decided to take another path through life and was about to suffer the consequences. Cranston pinched his nostrils at the foul stench.

  ‘Not to your liking, Sir John?’ Monkshood grinned.

  ‘Nor to yours either, by the look of it, but you’ll soon be gone, strolling through heaven’s gardens.’

  ‘I am not too sure about that, Sir John. I will certainly die tomorrow. One of the parishioners of your friend Athelstan, the Hangman of Rochester, will bid me adieu. Thank God. I understand he is expert and sober. You have heard what the Carnifex here at Newgate did? He was so drunk he almost hanged one of the guards. Now, Sir John …’ Monkshood scratched his beard and gestured around. ‘Welcome to my solar, my banqueting hall, my chancery chamber. You want something – you must do, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Tell me about the Upright Men.’

  ‘Broken like a potter’s vase. No form, no substance, only fragments, shards of former glory.’

  ‘And the Earthworms?’

  Monkshood spread his hands. ‘Sir John, look at me. As I am, so are most of the rest.’

  ‘Gaunt was attacked yesterday at the very heart of the Tower,’
Cranston said, then graphically described the assault on Tower Green, and how the Salamander King had infiltrated himself between Gaunt and his bodyguard.

  ‘I know him,’ Monkshood confessed. ‘The Salamander King was certainly one of ours. A true zealot but, in the end, his assault was only the last desperate fling of the dice.’ He took a deep breath. ‘And believe me, Sir John, the dice are now cogged, loaded heavily against us.’

  ‘And the murders amongst Gaunt’s clerks, his minions in the Secret Chancery? Oh, you haven’t heard of them?’ Monkshood looked perplexed so Cranston described the slaughter in Milk Street and the mysterious, sudden murders of Empson and Luke Gaddesden. Monkshood listened intently then whistled under his breath.

  ‘The work of the Upright Men, you think? No, not this. The attack on Gaunt at the Tower, yes, I would accept that. But Mephan and the others? That’s the work of a very skilled professional assassin. The Upright Men would have nothing to do with such a killer: they wouldn’t even know how to hire him.’

  ‘And how do you hire a professional of that sort?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sir John. Such people do exist, they sell their services like any mercenary. Each has their own speciality – one is skilled in poisons, another the garrotte, the third a dagger. They reach an understanding with their employer. They make a contract. They seal an indenture with one great difference. There is no document, no parchment, nothing in writing. It is, as we used to say in the schools, ‘per verbum’, by word of mouth, nothing more and nothing less.’ Monkshood turned away to sneeze and sneeze again in a rattle of chains. He wiped his face on the back of his manacled hands. ‘Sir John, in my youth I was a roaring boy. I hunted with the cruellest in the pack. You know what they say? If you lie down with wolves, when you wake up, if you wake up, you will do so howling. I remember one such assassin. He was called Ragusa, a Sicilian, skilled in the garrotte and the stiletto. But it’s some years since he was in London. I never met him. Just chatter and gossip amongst the rifflers and roaring boys of the city.’

  ‘How do I hire such a professional?’ Cranston asked.

  ‘You don’t. They approach you and ask if you need their help. Oh, it’s all done in parables, masked and hooded at the dead of night in a place of shifting shadows. So, Sir John, if you were my Lord Arundel who, as we all know, hates Gaunt to the very heart of his being, such a lord might be approached and asked if there is anything that can be done.’ Monkshood laughed drily. ‘Like any tinker or trader, they display their wares, yet their business is human life. They offer murder; the sale is arranged and carried through for gold and silver deposited at a certain time in a certain place.’

  ‘Of course.’ Cranston edged a little closer, keeping his voice down. ‘And once the sale has begun and the deed is done, both the hirer and the hired are sealed in a murderous compact.’

  ‘Or they’d be joining me on the scaffold.’ Monkshood shuffled closer in a rattle of chains. ‘Sir John,’ he begged in a whisper, ‘is there any chance …’

  The coroner leaned over, grabbed Monkshood by the front of his filthy gown and pulled him close so their faces were almost touching. ‘Do you think,’ the coroner roared, ‘I am here to save your filthy arse and unwashed neck? You are going to hang tomorrow.’ He shook the prisoner. ‘Do you understand?’ Monkshood swallowed nervously, then relaxed as Cranston winked and pulled him even closer so the prisoner’s flea-bitten ear was almost touching the coroner’s lips. ‘Tomorrow,’ Cranston breathed, ‘be ready, be vigilant and be swift. You will be given one opportunity, seize it.’ He shook the prisoner again and pushed him away.

  ‘Go rot!’ he bawled. ‘Make your peace with God before you meet him personally, just after the Angelus bell tomorrow.’

  Sir John left Newgate in finer fettle than when he entered. His good humour deepened a little further when he found Flaxwith and a cohort of bailiffs waiting for him on the great concourse in front of the prison. The coroner even tolerated Samson sniffing at his boots, desperately trying to climb Cranston’s thick, muscular leg.

  ‘We have been to the keeper of corpses,’ Flaxwith declared. ‘Neither he nor his retainers have found the corpse of any man who might be considered Iberian or, indeed, from foreign parts. So, Sir John, the Spaniard found floating off St Paul’s must be the one who visited the Mitre. It explains his total disappearance.’

  ‘Very well,’ Cranston replied. ‘Now to a task you will surely enjoy. Off to the Lute Boy fast as you can. Tell the Way of all Flesh that I want to meet her now in my confessional,’ Cranston grinned, ‘at the Lamb of God.’

  ‘Why not go yourself, Sir John? They say those cellars are fascinating with their mirrors and manacles – the sights you’d see and the sounds you’d hear …’

  ‘I do not wish even to be seen going in there,’ Cranston replied, all prim and proper, trying to kick Samson off his leg. ‘The Lady Maude will soon be back in London: she will certainly make enquiries about the company I have kept.’

  ‘And if the Way of all Flesh refuses to come, Sir John? She rarely leaves the Lute Boy.’

  ‘If she refuses,’ Cranston snapped, ‘if she keeps me waiting, if I am not helped with my legitimate enquiries into the murder of my Lord of Gaunt’s servants, then, rest assured, I shall personally visit the Lute Boy. I shall be accompanied by you, Master Flaxwith, with every bully boy you can whistle up, along with forty Cheshire archers from the Tower. And, as you know, Flaxwith, those who sport the White Hart, the King’s personal livery, are not known for their gentleness or their love of whores …’

  Cranston was halfway through his blackjack of ale, lounging in the window seat and staring out over the Lamb of God’s exquisitely arranged herb garden, when Flaxwith ushered the Way of all Flesh, together with two of her burly bodyguards, into the tavern solar. Cranston flicked Flaxwith a coin and told him to take the two oafs to the taproom whilst he entertained their mistress. He then waved the Way of all Flesh to the comfortable quilted seat opposite him. Once settled and sitting ever so elegantly, a silver goblet brimming with the best chilled wine of the Rhineland in her right hand, the Way of all Flesh simpered at Cranston, toasting him with her cup. The coroner stared back, carefully scrutinising his guest. She was dressed as simply as a Franciscan nun: a brown woollen habit with an ermine-trimmed hood pulled up over an old-fashioned white starched veil and wimple. These framed a face which could only be described as bland: doe-eyes under arching brows, cream-coloured skin with a sharp, thin nose, slightly bloodless lips and dimpled chin. The Way of all Flesh looked as fresh-faced and innocent as any novice, but Cranston knew this woman to be the most successful whore-mistress in London.

  ‘Alianora Devereux.’ Cranston toasted her with his blackjack. ‘Alianora Devereux,’ he repeated, ‘once a novice, a Benedictine who fled her convent at the dead of night …’

  ‘Before I took solemn vows.’

  ‘Before taking solemn vows,’ Cranston agreed. ‘You left your order and fled the nunnery to marry one Reginald Tacaster, owner of the Lute Boy, built over the cellars of a once great mansion. Tacaster was at least thirty years older than you. Some say he died out of sheer pleasure. Now a widow, you have established beneath the Lute Boy a warren of passageways and a range of comfortable chambers which cater for every lust known under the sun and a few which might be viewed as fairly original. You have, before you threaten me with them, very powerful friends both in the Church and at court.’ Cranston leaned across the table. ‘If I know you, Alianora Devereux, you must surely know me. I couldn’t give a fig if you drink beer with the Holy Father in Rome. I am here to ask questions. You are here to answer them truthfully or else. To me you are not the Way of all Flesh but Mistress Devereux, that is your proper title. So, Mistress Devereux, tell me about Brother Gregorio, the Spanish friar.’

  ‘Like so many of his kind,’ Devereux smirked, ‘frisky as a March hare. He liked Felicia, and she liked him so much the little whore decided to sell her favours to him at a different time and in another pl
ace. I was not pleased but,’ again the smirk, ‘who am I to lecture anybody?’

  ‘Who indeed,’ Cranston answered. ‘What else do you know about Gregorio?’

  ‘Nothing, he was very secretive.’ She shrugged. ‘In the circumstances, that is understandable.’

  ‘Was there another visitor, also Iberian, possibly Castilian, youngish in bearing, who looked like a former soldier?’

  ‘Yes, there was. He arrived a few weeks ago.’ She smiled. ‘He paid good Spanish silver but never gave a name. He was also keen on Felicia. He must have come two or three times, and on each occasion asked for her. I tried to discover his personal preferences but I was unable to.’

  ‘Did Felicia ever talk about Gregorio or this other mysterious Spanish stranger?’

  ‘Never. You see, Sir John, that’s part of the code. Even whores have honour. You never discuss a customer with someone else.’

  ‘And Luke Gaddesden?’

  ‘He was harmless enough. He never went with any of, how can I put it, my household. Luke liked to peer through squint-holes and watch others at play. But more than that, I cannot say. Oh, and of course, Empson the courier. He was very fond of young men.’

  ‘And Felicia and Luke Gaddesden were both cruelly strangled. Do you know any reason why?’

  ‘Should I?’ she retorted. ‘No, I do not.’ She caught Sir John’s glint of anger and continued placatingly, ‘I am a whore mistress, nothing more. The murders of Luke Gaddesden, Roger Empson or those hideous slayings in Milk Street mean little to me.

  Cranston tapped the table. ‘Empson and Gaddesden, did they give any hint that something was wrong? Did Felicia intimate anything about Master Mephan?’

  ‘She once let slip that they might be travelling, that Simon Mephan was being offered great advancement by the regent, and he and his clerks might be sent on a diplomatic mission to Castile. Apparently Gaunt had promised to lavish them with money and honours, but more than that,’ she pulled a face, ‘just tittle-tattle, gossip.’