The Assassin's riddle smoba-7

by Paul Doherty

  ‘Go to the Dancing Pig. Ask the landlord there if any of the clerks left during the revelry.’

  ‘Anything else, Sir John?’

  ‘Yes, don’t forget Stablegate and Flinstead.’

  ‘And there’s something else, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, Henry, there is.’ Cranston put an arm round Flaxwith’s shoulder and pulled him closer in order to whisper in his ear. ‘Get your best men. Have this house watched. I wager a jug of wine to a jug of wine that the Vicar of Hell will return!’

  Cranston stepped back as the door of the tavern was flung open. Sir Lionel Havant strode in, hand on his sword. He bowed mockingly.

  ‘Sir John Cranston, I bring a personal invitation from His Grace the Regent. You are to join him in his private chambers at the Savoy Palace.’

  Cranston groaned. ‘Sir Lionel, I am tired, my feet ache, I have been tramping the streets, not to mention falling downstairs.’

  Sir Lionel smiled. ‘Sir John, it’s one of those invitations I would beg you not to refuse. We are to escort you to the Savoy.’ Havant sucked at his lips. ‘Whether you like it or not.’

  Cranston sighed and turned to Flaxwith. ‘Carry out the tasks I have assigned to you. Tell the Lady Maude that I am His Grace’s most honoured guest, so God knows when I’ll crawl into my own bed tonight.’

  Cranston went through the doorway. He heard a bark behind him and the coroner grinned slyly. He really should tell Sir Lionel Havant to keep his ankles well out of the nip of Samson’s jaws. I only wish, the coroner thought, I could take that bloody dog to the Savoy where he could piss and nip ankles to his heart’s content.

  The funeral of Edwin Chapler at St Erconwald’s the following morning was a solemn and dignified affair. The coffin had been carried in and laid at the entrance to the rood screen; purple candles ringed it whilst Athelstan celebrated a solemn Requiem Mass. Mistress Alison, supported by Benedicta, had maintained a dignified silence even as the coffin on which she placed a single white rose was lifted out of the church and taken to the fresh plot dug by Pike the ditcher just before dawn. The coffin had been lowered into it. Athelstan had sprinkled holy water with the asperges rod then incensed it with the thurible, the fragrance spreading throughout the graveyard. The earth had been piled in and a suitable wooden cross laid over the fresh mound of earth until Tab the tinker made a proper one. Athelstan and Alison were discussing this when a parishioner, Simplicatas, came running out of the church screaming that a miracle had occurred.

  ‘The new crucifix!’ she cried. ‘Huddle’s crucifix near the baptistry! It’s bleeding!’

  Athelstan, followed by the rest, rushed up the steps of the church. A crowd had gathered round the small recess where the crucifix hung. At first Athelstan could not believe his eyes. The wounds on the hands, side, feet and head of the crucified Christ were glistening red. Indeed, one small drop of blood, like a small ruby, was ready to drip down. Huddle was kneeling there, hands joined; on either side of him Watkin and Pike the ditcher, reminding Athelstan of the Three Wise Men before the crib.

  ‘Huddle!’ Athelstan bellowed. ‘Is this some trick of yours?’ He nearly added that miracles couldn’t occur in a place like St Erconwald’s but bit back the words.

  The painter just stared at him and swallowed hard.

  ‘Father, how can you say that?’

  Alison went forward and touched the glistening drop. She brought it back on the edge of her finger. She held it to her lips and licked it.

  ‘It’s blood,’ she declared, her face white as snow. ‘Father, it’s not fake blood.’ She paused. ‘The type mummers use.’

  Athelstan went and also took a drop. He raised it to his lips. He had the same sensation as when he had cut his lip the previous week: a salty, tangy taste. He stepped back, trying to hide the tremors in his own body. The news had spread; more parishioners were already crowding into the church.

  ‘Go away!’ Athelstan ordered, hands raised. ‘Go back to your homes! For the love of God!’ His mind raced. This was not the first time a miracle had occurred at St Erconwald’s. He gazed suspiciously at Watkin and Pike but they were engrossed in their devotions.

  Athelstan quickly took off his chasuble and surplice. He almost threw them at Crim and grasping the lavabo cloth, the piece of linen he used to dry his hands after touching the sacred species, he thrust his way through to the cross. He dabbed at the red marks and gazed down at the cloth, they did look like bloodstains.

  ‘What are you doing, Father?’ Benedicta whispered, coming up behind him.

  ‘Maybe it’s some trick,’ Athelstan replied. ‘The crucifix is new, it might be some pigment…’

  ‘I only used ordinary paint,’ Huddle sang out.

  Athelstan stood staring at the cross. He’d wiped the red glistening liquid away; his heart lurched: more was beginning to form.

  ‘Have the crucifix taken down!’ he ordered Watkin.

  ‘No, Father.’ The dung-collector got to his feet, his great ham fists hanging by his side. ‘The crucifix is ours, Father, it’s in the nave. The nave belongs to the people.’

  Athelstan groaned. Watkin was right. The friar took a secret oath that never again would he expound on Canon Law for his parishioners: by ancient custom, the sanctuary belonged to the priest but the nave, and all it contained, was the property of the people.

  ‘I said take it out!’ Athelstan ordered again.

  ‘The cemetery’s ours.’ Pike spoke up. ‘God’s acre belongs to the people too. You did say that, Father.’

  Athelstan just glared at him. He felt like taking the crucifix and putting it in the sanctuary but Watkin, despite his bulk, moved more speedily. He removed the crucifix from the wall and, lifting it up like a standard, solemnly processed out through the church porch and down the steps, the crowd following him.

  ‘Father, let them have their way,’ Benedicta declared. ‘Don’t act hastily.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I must be going.’ Alison extended her hand, offering a silver coin.

  Athelstan shook his head. ‘I buried your brother as an act of charity,’ he replied.

  The young woman stood on tiptoe and kissed Athelstan on both cheeks. ‘I’ll be staying at the Silver Lute until this business is finished.’ She smiled at Benedicta. ‘I will collect my things.’

  Athelstan watched her go. ‘Shouldn’t you be with her?’ he asked.

  ‘I have a seamstress working at home,’ Benedicta replied. ‘She will let her in. What are you going to do about this, Father?’

  ‘What can I do, Benedicta? You know these people better than I do. The supernatural is as real to them as the sun, wind and rain. Demons stand round their sickbeds; demons slay the newborn child; they grimace in corners and lurk behind every tree.’ Athelstan rubbed his face. At night, if Watkin is to be believed, evil spirits rumble about his house; they bump on the roof and creak in the rafters. Devils howl in the wind, strike cattle down in the meadows, cause river banks to burst.’ He pointed to the parish coffin which stood in the transept. A brother told me how, at Blackfriars, a parishioner pulled a nail from a rotting coffin then drove it secretly into a bench. Whoever was the first to sit on that bench suffered the same disease from which the corpse in the coffin had died.’ He smiled thinly at Benedicta. ‘My point, Oh most faithful of parishioners, is that my people see devils and demons and evil all around them. It’s only natural they also see miracles and God’s intervention: angels swooping from heaven, relics which cure the most dreadful diseases and crucifixes which bleed.’

  The door was suddenly flung open.

  ‘What in the devil’s fart is happening out there?’ Cranston swept into the church. ‘Brother Athelstan, have your noddlepates gone mad? They are setting a shrine up in the cemetery!’ Cranston took off his beaver hat and slapped it against his leg. ‘Those noddlepates,’ he continued ‘believe a crucifix is bleeding. They are building their own altar and are charging a penny for people to pray before it. They have got candles lit, they even tried
to make me pay! I told them a kick up the arse was all they’d get from the King’s coroner!’ Cranston grinned at Benedicta, swept her into his arms and kissed her juicily on each cheek.

  ‘You are well, Sir John?’ she asked breathlessly.

  ‘Bloody awful.’ The coroner stamped his feet. ‘Come on, Athelstan, I need you. Leave your parishioners. They’ve got more maggots in their heads than mice in a hayrick.’

  ‘I should really stay,’ Athelstan replied.

  ‘Nonsense!’ Cranston bellowed. ‘Come on, Brother, let them have their run.’

  ‘Sir John speaks the truth, Brother,’ Benedicta added softly. ‘Go with him. I’ll tidy up the sanctuary and the house, then I’ll camp out in the cemetery.’

  Athelstan closed his eyes to pray for guidance. He knew both Sir John and Benedicta were right. If he stayed, he’d only fret or interfere and Watkin was not only built like an ox, he was as stubborn as one.

  ‘Shall I take Philomel?’ he asked, opening his eyes.

  ‘No, forget your horse,’ Cranston replied. ‘I came by river. Moleskin’s waiting for us at the steps near Pissing Alley’

  Athelstan followed Sir John out on to the porch and stared in disbelief across the cemetery. Watkin had moved quickly: in the far corner a calvary had been formed, a mound of earth and rocks. On the top was the crucifix with candles glowing beneath it. The word had also spread: people were thronging into the cemetery, paying their coins to Pike and Tab whilst Watkin and the ditcher’s wives strode up and down. They were both armed with ash cudgels and glared ferociously at anyone who dared approach their shrine without proper payment.

  ‘If Father Prior hears of this,’ Athelstan murmured, ‘he’ll have my head.’

  Cranston stopped. ‘Then you’d better not tell him, had you?’ He tugged at the friar’s sleeve. ‘Come on, Athelstan, Moleskin’s waiting and I’m hungry.’

  Athelstan hastened across to his house to get his writing bag, then he and Sir John walked down the narrow alleyway towards the riverside. They paused outside Merrylegs’s cookshop where Sir John bought a pie and bit into it as they walked; he smacked his lips and murmured how Merrylegs should be knighted for his services to the stomach.

  ‘You are in good spirits, Sir John?’ Athelstan hurried beside him. ‘You slept well?’

  ‘Like a little pig,’ Cranston replied. ‘But that’s not because of the evening I had, Brother.’ He described Ollerton’s death and his confrontation with the Vicar of Hell.

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ Athelstan exclaimed. ‘They say he dresses all in black and that his face is disfigured by scars.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Cranston replied. ‘He’s a merry rogue who can out-argue a lawyer, outwit a trickster and outlie the devil. He’s been responsible for more villainy than I’d like to mention. The Guildmasters have a hundred pounds sterling reward posted for his capture, dead or alive. No one has come forward to claim it. He loves the ladies, does our Vicar of Hell, and they love him. Any man who betrayed him to the authorities would not survive for long.’

  ‘But you say he knew about our clerks of the Green Wax?’

  ‘And more.’ Cranston finished the pie. ‘Mistress Broadsheet told me that Alcest did business with Drayton.’

  ‘A rich pottage,’ Athelstan replied.

  He paused to stare at a beggar crouching on the corner of the alleyway. The man was humming, rocking himself backwards and forwards. On a sack before him lay a whalebone.

  ‘Taken from the side of Leviathan!’ the fellow screeched. ‘The great beast who lives in the sea. Touch it for a penny!’

  Athelstan walked forward and tossed a coin on to the sack.

  ‘Thank you, Brother, thank you. I’ve got more whalebones!’ the man shouted.

  Athelstan shook his head and turned back to the coroner. ‘So, we have Mistress Broadsheet confessing that Alcest did business with Drayton whilst the Vicar of Hell knows about the deaths amongst the clerks of the Green Wax.’

  ‘We also know,’ Cranston added, ‘that, according to Dame Broadsheet and her girls, none of the clerks left the Dancing Pig the night Chapler was killed. We also have this apparent wealth. How could Alcest afford such a sumptuous banquet? Finally, there’s Ollerton’s death. The assassin must have been in the chamber when the clerk drank the mead.’

  ‘And the riddle?’

  ‘My second is the centre of woe,’ Cranston declared. ‘And the principal mover of horror.’

  Athelstan shook his head in disbelief. ‘It makes no sense. Nothing makes sense, Sir John. Why have the clerks been killed? Why the riddles? Who is this mysterious young man, cloaked and spurred, who has been seen round the city?’

  They walked down to the quayside.

  ‘So where are we going, Sir John?’

  ‘Back to Drayton’s house,’ Cranston declared. ‘Yesterday evening the Regent had me taken to the Savoy Palace.’ Cranston stopped and sucked in the river air. ‘Oh, he wined and he dined me. Clapped me on the shoulder and called me Honest Jack. But he wants his money back, Athelstan: the silver taken from Master Drayton. Gaunt needs it urgently. So it’s back to Drayton’s house.’

  They went down the slippery steps to where Moleskin’s boat was waiting. The leather-skinned wherry man welcomed them as graciously as if he was captain of a royal man-of-war. He sat them in the stern, untied the rope and briskly pulled at the oars, taking his wherry across the sun-dappled river. Moleskin knew that Cranston would keep silent, whilst Brother Athelstan never told him about the business they prosecuted. Nevertheless, the friar could tell from the knowing gleam in Moleskin’s eyes that the news of the great miracle at St Erconwald’s had already reached him.

  ‘Before you ask,’ Athelstan declared, ‘I know about the miracle, Moleskin, or the so-called miracle. Yes, I am angry. I am also puzzled, but it will wait, and that’s all I’m going to say on the matter!’

  Moleskin looked at him glumly and heaved his oars, guiding his boat across to Dowgate next to the Steelyard. Cranston and Athelstan disembarked. The friar saw the wisdom of Sir John’s words in not taking his horse because the streets were packed: the traders, costermongers and journeymen, taking advantage of the good summer weather, roared and bellowed whilst the crowds swirled like shoals of fish from stall to stall. They made their way up into Cheapside where a mob jostled round an enterprising cook who had opened a stall in the centre of the market-place to sell toasted cheese and wine. Children ran through the crowds. The beggars, mountebanks, cunning men, foists and pickpockets hovered looking for prey. The mummers and the quacks were waiting sharp-eyed for a ‘coney’, someone to trap and separate from their wealth.

  On the steps of St Mary Le Bow, a monk of tatterdemalion appearance was preaching in harsh tones, stabbing the air with his raised fist; he was prophesying the imminent end of the world and the advent of the Anti-Christ. Athelstan and Cranston, because of the crowd, were forced to stand and listen to his speech. How the Anti-Christ had recently been born to a wicked woman in a certain province of Babylon. This child, so the ragged monk asserted, had the teeth of a cat and was abominably hairy; on the occasion of his birth, horrible serpents and other different monsters had rained down from the skies whilst the child had been able to speak when only eight days old.

  ‘Heavens above!’ Cranston whispered. ‘When you meet rogues like that, Athelstan, the Vicar of Hell becomes an angel of light!’

  They crossed Cheapside and made their way up the tangle of narrow alleyways to Drayton’s house. A city beadle on guard outside broke the seals, unlocked the door and let them in. Cranston and Athelstan went along the narrow passageways and down into the counting house; its great iron-studded door still lay against the wall. They made an immediate search of the scrolls and ledgers of the dead moneylender, going through the transactions for the last few days before Drayton’s murder. Cranston ran one stubby finger down the pages, gave a cry of triumph and called Athelstan to come over. Athelstan did so, gingerly stepping over the dark, wine-coloured
bloodstain on the floor.

  ‘Look!’ Cranston cried.

  He jabbed a finger and Athelstan read the entry.

  ‘Alcest came here,’ the friar exclaimed. Two days before his great banquet at the Dancing Pig, but he didn’t ask for a loan, he was changing gold for silver pieces. Now why should Alcest do that, eh?’

  Athelstan stared at the door. ‘Sir John, do you think Drayton could have been murdered by our clerks? Could this be the source of their newfound wealth?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Cranston replied. ‘But, there again, it wouldn’t explain the deaths amongst them.’

  ‘But what happened if they were all thieves together,’ Athelstan wondered, ‘and what we are witnessing now is the falling-out?’

  Cranston scratched his chin. ‘I’d like to get my hands on the Vicar of Hell,’ he answered. ‘There’s not a mischievous mouse in London which moves without his permission: he could throw some light on this. However, let’s visit our noble clerks and see what Master Alcest has to say.’

  CHAPTER 7

  Cranston and Athelstan were about to leave the counting house when the friar paused in the doorway. He stared up at the rafters, the whitewashed walls on either side and then the one at the far end.

  ‘What’s the matter, Brother?’

  ‘It concerns me, Sir John. I have been in rooms and houses all over the city, so have you. Have you ever seen a room like this, a perfect square? The walls stand at right angles, as if the chamber was designed by some mathematician.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, if you go through the rest of the house it’s shabby, dirty; the rooms are long and narrow, the ceilings sag, the floorboards rise. Here it’s all different, stone-floored, perfectly shaped. Have you noticed something else, Sir John? The walls have been freshly whitewashed.’

  Cranston, mystified, followed Athelstan back into the counting house. Sir John gazed around: a bleak chamber, chests, a desk, chairs, a stool and a bench, but no hangings on the wall. Nothing to offset the sharp whiteness.

  ‘Would Drayton have kept his monies here?’ Athelstan asked.