by Paul Doherty
‘These men?’
‘They were shriven this morning, Friar,’ the soldier interrupted. ‘Before we turned them off the ladder.’
‘How long will they hang?’ he asked.
The fellow shrugged and Athelstan tried not to concentrate on the great yellowing ulcer on the right side of his face, the pus now suppurating, bubbling out, staining his cheek. The soldier, his eyes dead and full of drink, shrugged and grinned at his two companions, sallow, pimply youths already much the worse for wine.
‘They will hang, Father, till sunset. Why do you ask?’
‘I want to look at them.’
‘They are to hang until sunset,’ the serjeant repeated.
‘Their clothes and belongings are ours. There is a canvas sheet for each of them, a swift prayer, and then into some forsaken grave to meet their maker.’ He tapped one of the swaying bodies. ‘Don’t feel sorry for any of them, Father. They murdered a woman, cut her throat, after they brutally sliced her breasts, raped and burnt her over a fire!’
‘Sweet Jesus have mercy on them!’ Athelstan whispered. ‘But I am here on the orders of Sir John Cranston, coroner of the city. I want to see them.’
He felt in his purse and threw down a couple of copper coins. The serjeant rubbed his chin and looked at them and then at the friar, sucking in air noisily through his blackened teeth. At last he rose and barked an order at one of the young men who placed the ladder lying on the ground against the scaffold, then gestured dramatically at Athelstan.
‘Brother, the ladder awaits. Do what you want!’
Athelstan climbed the ladder slowly. He studied each of the corpses, noting how the rope had been tied firmly behind one ear. He moved around, inspecting each body carefully, holding his breath against the sour smell of corruption. At last he came down. Another coin was thrown on the ground. The serjeant looked up.
‘What now, Brother?’
‘Who hanged these men?’
‘Well, we all did.’
‘No, I mean who tied the ropes around their necks?’
‘I did!’ One of the pimply youths got up. ‘I did, Brother. I do it expertly.’
‘Would you say,’ Athelstan asked, trying to hide his distaste at the glee in the young man’s face, ‘that each hangman arranges the knot in his own way?’
‘Of, of course!’
‘And from the noose you could tell which man you’d hanged and which you had not?’
‘Naturally. A goldsmith has his mark, leaves his insignia on a plate. An artist who sketches a painting can recognise his own work. The same with the hangman. My knots are unique. I place them carefully.’ The young man beamed expansively. ‘I am skilled in my trade, Brother. I always make sure they take a long time to die.’
‘Why?’
The fellow shrugged.
‘Why not?’
‘Do you enjoy it?’
‘Well, the bastards deserve to suffer long.’
‘And how do they suffer?’
‘Oh, they kick a lot. They always kick.’
Athelstan pointed to the feet of the corpses.
‘So, you always hang them without their boots on?’
‘Yes, of course. Otherwise they would kick them off and we’d lose them. Some thief from the crowd might steal them and we’d be all the poorer. Why do you ask, Brother?’
The friar smiled and sketched a sign of the cross in the air.
‘Nothing, my son, nothing at all.’
Athelstan turned and left the grisly bodies and walked back up Cheapside towards the Holy Lamb of God. He was convinced that Brampton and Vechey had been brutally murdered, though by whom he could not say.
He found Cranston dozing, comfortably ensconced in the inglenook of the tavern, a number of large empty pewter tankards arranged on the table before him. The ale wife walked over. Athelstan tossed her a coin and asked her to bring a fresh tankard and some wine whilst he roused Sir John. The coroner woke like a child, mumbling to himself, wondering where he was. Athelstan told him of the visits to the death house and the gibbet. The coroner nodded off to sleep again so, crossing to a barrel of dirty water, Athelstan filled the ladle and splashed it over Cranston’s face. This time Sir John woke, shaking himself like a dog, mouthing the most terrible curses. He was only placated by the ale wife placing a frothing tankard in front of him and throwing him the most longing and sly of glances, as if he was Paris and she Helen of Troy. In the presence of such flattery and with the taste of ale once more on his lips, Sir John regained his good temper and this time listened attentively as Athelstan spoke. He belched loudly when the account was finished and picked at his teeth with a sliver of wood. Athelstan thought he was going off to sleep again but the coroner took one further gulp from his tankard.
‘Sir John,’ Athelstan said testily, ‘we must discuss matters!’
‘Yes, yes,’ the coroner bellowed. ‘Buy me another one of these and I will listen to you again!’
Athelstan did so. Sir John, now fully awake but still in his cups, belched and gazed around the tavern, murmuring what an excellent place it was. Athelstan remembered the hen roosting over the beer barrel and kept his own counsel. He sipped slowly at a cup of watered wine and decided to return to his church. The roof might not have been repaired. Cecily the courtesan might still be plying her trade. And what would happen to Godric? Fleetingly, he wondered once again if Benedicta had missed him. He looked through the narrow tavern window. The sun was beginning to set, it was time he was gone. The Springall business was hidden by a tissue of lies. He was too tired to probe and Cranston too drunk.
Athelstan rose to his feet. ‘Sir John, look!’
The coroner glanced up blearily.
‘Sir John, I can do nothing with you. I must go back to my church. Tomorrow or the day after, when you are in a better frame of mind, join me there.’
Athelstan picked up his leather bag, marched out of the tavern, collected Philomel and made his way slowly through the empty streets to London Bridge.
Cranston watched him go, then leaned back against the wall.
‘Christ!’ he murmured. ‘I wish you’d stay, Athelstan, just for once!’
He groaned and pushed the tankard away. He had drunk enough and wished he hadn’t. But the friar was not the only one with secrets and Sir John drank to drown his. No one remembered, except Maude who kept her thoughts to herself, that seven years ago this week his little child, Matthew, died suddenly, the victim of the plague which stalked the alleyways and streets of London. Cranston tightened his lips, blinking his eyes furiously as he always did when the tears threatened to return. Every day he thought of Matthew, the small angelic face, the blue eyes shimmering with innocence. Christ could not blame him for drinking. He’d drink and drink until the memory was gone. And why not? Yet drink clouded his mind, and in his heart Cranston knew that Athelstan was right to disapprove. His maudlin drunkenness was not helping matters. There had been murder, deliberate and malicious, perpetrated in the Springall household. But where was the proof? He vaguely tried to remember what the friar had told him. Something about neither Brampton nor Vechey killing themselves. But where was the proof? Cranston tried to clear his thoughts. He, too, knew there was something wrong. Something was bothering him, something he had seen this morning at the bridge . . . He looked at the half-empty tankard.
‘Christ, Matthew, I miss you!’ he murmured. ‘Oh, let the world hang itself!’
He was about to order another when he thought of Maude and his promise to her. At least tonight he would return halfway sober. Cranston pushed the tankard away and waddled out of the tavern to collect his horse and return to his house in Poultry.
Two days after he returned from the city, Athelstan rose early and went to examine his small garden. Outside he glared angrily about. Someone’s pig had been rooting amongst the cabbage patch. Athelstan cursed in some of the language Cranston used on such occasions. He felt angry, agitated. He had come back to find his church safe but Godric gone.
‘You see, Father,’ Watkin the dung-collector explained, ‘the silly bastard thought he could slip out, so he did, through the sacristy door. Of course, they were waiting for him, the sheriffs men. They beat him up in the alleyway, tied his hands and led him off to the Marshalsea. He’ll probably hang!’
‘Yes, Watkin,’ Athelstan replied, ‘he’ll probably hang.’
Apart from that, everything had been in order except for Bonaventure, who had slipped away and had not been seen since. Athelstan hoped he was safe and would come padding back when he was hungry, tail in the air, miaowing for food and comfort.
The friar looked up. The sky was still blue; the sun, growing in strength, promised a hot sweltering day. He sighed. He’d said his prayers and celebrated Mass, Benedicta just slipping in at the door and kneeling next to the baptismal font instead of coming further up the nave. Athelstan wondered if there was anything wrong. He moved down the side of his church to see if Crim was waiting on the steps but they were empty. He went back, took a hoe from inside the door of his house and stabbed furiously at the cabbage patch, trying to rearrange the furrows in neat order. Once Crim had arrived he would go and see Hob the grave-digger, dying they said after he had slipped and fallen under a cartwheel which had crushed his ribs.
Athelstan tired of his task. He threw the hoe to the ground, hoped that at least the pig had had a good meal, and went back inside his church. He looked around and felt happier. Simon the tiler had done a good job. The roof was secure against the coming winter rains. Huddle the painter had scraped the wall and begun a new fresco, his first church painting. Athelstan had requested that Huddle should first draw charcoal sketches, from these giving the gifted young man scriptural advice to the effect that there was no evidence whatsoever that Herod had eventually stabbed Pilate in the back! So the charcoaled drawings had been wiped out and Huddle had begun again, a lovely vigorous painting of the Annunciation and birth of Christ. The church floor was swept and washed clean, thanks to Cecily the courtesan who had earned her pennies honestly by scrubbing every inch.
‘Honestly, Father,’ she confessed, leaning on her broom of brittle twigs, ‘I’ve changed. I intend to change.’
Athelstan stared into her child-like eyes and wondered if the woman was a little simple. The friar was sure he had seen her lying in the graveyard amongst the tombs with Simon the tiler, and he a married man with three children.
‘So, Father,’ she had whispered, moving closer and swinging her hips suggestively, ‘can I play the part of the Virgin Mary in the parish masque for Corpus Christi?’
Athelstan had hidden his smile beneath a stern look and said he would discuss it with the church council.
‘Watkin the dung-collector,’ he advised, ‘takes his duties as church warden most seriously. He has his own thoughts in the matter.’
‘I don’t give a fig for what Watkin says!’ Cecily had snapped. I could tell you a lot about Watkin, Father!’
‘Thank you, Cecily,’ Athelstan had said. ‘Soon the church will look nicer.’
Cecily got on with her cleaning. Athelstan felt sorry. Perhaps he had been a little too harsh with her. Cecily was a good girl who meant to do well. He could see no objection to her playing the part of the Virgin. The only obstacle was Watkin the dung-collector whose own ample wife also had her eye on the role.
On balance, decided Athelstan, he was pleased. All was well, apart from Godric, Bonaventure, and of course the pardoner. Huddle had told him about the rogue, turning up in his garish garments and standing on the church steps, offering to sell pardons to those who could afford them. Athelstan swore that if he got his hands on the fellow, Cranston would have another murder to investigate.
He leaned against the rood screen and stared up at his newly repaired roof. He wondered where Cranston was. Why had he allowed two days to go by? Was he sulking or just ill with drinking? Athelstan couldn’t leave his parish and go into the city, but he wished he could speak to the coroner, apologise for leaving him so abruptly the night before last. He hadn’t meant to, it was just that he had become so tired, so exhausted with the Springalls, the murders, the deceit and the lies. He felt Vechey and Brampton had not committed suicide. He also suspected that Sir Thomas Springall had not been murdered by Brampton. The real murderers now hid in the shadows, mocking both him and Cranston, believing they would never search out the truth. Athelstan smiled thinly. Cranston, when he gathered his wits, would soon prove the bastards wrong.
Athelstan heard a sound and looked round. The church door opened and Crim, the young urchin, scampered in. His mother had taken special care to remove the dirt from his face and hands at least.
‘Good morning, Crim,’ Athelstan called. ‘Come!’
He took a taper and lit it from the large wax candle burning in front of the statue of the Madonna.
‘Now hold that and, as I walk through the street, you go before me carrying the light. And here,’ he went behind the altar and took a small bell, ‘you ring this. Now, if the candle goes out, don’t be afraid. Just keep on walking and ringing the bell. You know where we are going?’
The little boy, round-eyed, shook his head.
‘To Hob the grave-digger.’
‘Oh. He’s dying, Father!’
‘Yes, Crim, I know. And he must die with Christ, so it’s important we get there. Do you understand?’
The little fellow nodded solemnly. Athelstan, taking the keys from his belt, went up beneath the winking red sanctuary lamp and opened the tabernacle door. He took out the Viaticum, placing it in a small leather pouch which he slung round his neck, then went into the sacristy to collect the church’s one and only cope. A faded, red and gold garment, showing the Holy Spirit as a dove with one wing, sending faded rays down on an even more faded Christ. Athelstan wrapped the cope around him and, telling Crim to go forward, they left the church, processing down the steps and into the maze of Southwark streets. Athelstan was always surprised at the effect he caused; here he was in a place where men died for the price of a few coins, but at the sight of the lighted wax candle, the sound of the small tinkling bell and him swathed in a cope, the coarsest men and women stood aside as if they acknowledged the great mysteries he carried.
Hob’s cottage was a dour, earth-floored building divided into three rooms; one a bedroom for Hob and his wife, the second for his four children, the third a scullery and eating-place. It was poor but swept clean, a few pewter pots and pans, scrubbed in boiling water, hanging from nails in the wall. Inside, at the far end of the hut, Hob lay on a bed, his face white, the red blood frothing at his lips. Athelstan blessed the man, holding his hand, reassuring his good wife that all would be well whilst trying not to look at the blood. He gave the man the Viaticum and blessed him, anointing him on the head, chest, hands and feet. Afterwards he had a few words with Hob’s wife, the children cowering around her. Athelstan promised he would do something to help her and left quietly, the cope still round his shoulders, Crim jumping up and down in front of him all the way back to the church.
Ranulf the rat-catcher was waiting for him just outside the door, a sleek, well-fed Bonaventure in his hands. He waited until Athelstan had put the black pouch back into the tabernacle and Crim had taken his penny and fled like the wind, before putting the cat down and approaching Athelstan.
‘I found him waiting, Father, but if you want to sell him?’
Athelstan smiled.
‘If you want him, Ranulf, he’s yours. But I doubt if he will leave.’
The friar knelt down and tickled the cat between his ears. He looked up at the lined, seamed face of the rat-catcher, framed by his black, tarry leather hood.
‘He’s a mercenary. If you took him away, he’d be back tonight!’
Bonaventure agreed, stretched, and walked back to his favourite place at the base of the pillar.
Once Ranulf had gone, Athelstan sat on the altar steps, his mind going back to the corpses he had seen: Vechey’s lying cold amongst those dreadful head
s on the tower gate of London Bridge; Brampton’s sheathed in dirty canvas in the death house of St Mary Le Bow; Springalls lying alone under its leather covering in the great four poster bed in his mansion. What eluded him still? He thought of Hob dying in his hovel, his wife frightened of the future. Surely he could get some money for her from somewhere? He lifted his hands to his face and smelt the chrism he had used on Hob’s head, hands, chest and feet. The feet!
Athelstan jumped up. Of course, that was it, Brampton’s feet! The manservant hadn’t committed suicide. He couldn’t have done. He had been murdered!
Athelstan looked around the church. He wished Cranston were here. The sun streamed through the horn-glazed windows and Bonaventure stretched out, relaxing after a good night’s hunting. Athelstan turned from the familiar, domestic sight and knelt before the altar, his eyes fixed on the red light.
‘Oh, God,’ he prayed, ‘help me now. Please!’
In his own private chamber at his house in Poultry Sir John also was thinking as he leant over his writing desk, quill in hand. He was engaged in the great love of his life: writing a treatise on the maintenance of law in the city of London. Cranston had a love of the law and, ever since his appointment as coroner, had been engaged in drawing up his own proposals for law reform. He would put them forward in a specially written book, bound in the finest calf, to some powerful patron who, in Cranston’s dreams, would see them as the solution to all of London’s problems.
Sir John loved the city, knew every stone, every church, every highway, every alleyway. Immersed in London’s history, he was constantly begging the monks of Westminster Abbey, or the clerks of the chancery in the Tower, to let him have access to manuscripts and documents. Some he would take home, copying them out most carefully before returning them in their leather cases to their proper places. In a sense Cranston never wished to finish his labour. He believed that his survey would be of use, but privately thought of it as his escape. No one else knew. No one except Maude, of course.
Cranston put down the pen, a wave of self-pity suffusing his huge body. He looked out of the window and heard the cries from Cheapside, the clatter of carts, the rattle against the cobbles of iron-shod horses going towards Smithfield and the horse market. He drank too much, Cranston knew that. He must give it up. He must reform his life. Virtuously, he patted his great stomach. But not today. Perhaps tomorrow. He wondered what Athelstan was doing. He speculated whether he should speak to the friar, open his heart, tell him his secrets, get rid of the sea of misery he felt bathing his body, drowning his mind.