Paul Doherty - The House of Shadows

He pointed across the sanctuary to the sacristy door.

‘Go through there; outside is a makeshift latrine near a butt of water. You can relieve yourself there, but make sure you leave it clean. Oh, by the way,’ Athelstan stretched out his hands, ‘I’ll take your weapons, which, as you know, must be kept near the Lady Altar.’

He pointed to his left. The Misericord cleaned his teeth with his tongue whilst he swept the sweat from his face.

‘Stay there.’ Athelstan left the church by the corpse door. Benedicta was still in the kitchen, busy brushing the floor. Bonaventure had sipped his milk and was staring at the steaming cauldron where the freshly cooked oatmeal still bubbled hot. Athelstan explained he was in a hurry. He filled a maplewood bowl full of oatmeal, added some honey, took a pewter spoon from the buttery and drew a tankard of ale. He put these on a wooden board and took them back to the church.

The Misericord ate and drank, gulping the food down, using his fingers to clean the bowl whilst draining the tankard in one swig. Athelstan collected the fugitive’s weapons, including the misericord dagger, and placed them behind the Lady Altar.

‘Very good, very good.’ The Misericord wiped his fingers on his jerkin.

‘I’ll have the bowl back and the spoon. The tankard you can keep, for a while.’

‘Did you brew it yourself?’

‘No, Benedicta did.’

‘Ah yes, the widow woman, with hair as black as night and the face of an angel. Do you love her, Father? I thought you were a priest and friar?’ The Misericord’s green eyes glinted with mischief.

‘Benedicta is an honourable widow, her husband was lost at sea. She brews ale, cooks me some bread and, not at my bidding, keeps my house clean.’

‘But not your bed warm?’

Athelstan half rose threateningly. The Misericord held up both hands in a sign of peace, his pale, mischievous face all solemn.

‘ Pax et bonum, peace and goodwill, Father. I was only joking.’

The Misericord scrutinised the priest. Whenever he moved into an area, be it a village or one of the wards of London, he always discovered which was the quickest way out, where he could hide, who was to be trusted and which men or women exercised power. He had learnt a great deal about this slim, dark-faced friar with his soulful eyes and wary manner. He had also laid a great wager on Ranulf the rat-catcher, though now he regretted coming to Southwark.

‘What is your real name?’ Athelstan asked.

‘John Travisa, former clerk from the halls of Oxford, a troubadour, a poet, a chanteur, a lady’s squire. .’

‘And a thief and a boaster,’ Athelstan finished for him.

The Misericord shrugged.

‘Hard times, Father. Outside in the shires, the harvests fail and what’s left is pecked up by the tax collectors. There’s no work for an honest man.’ He pulled a face. ‘I apologise: even for a dishonest man.’

‘What have you done?’ Athelstan asked.

‘Well,’ the Misericord crossed his arms and leaned back against the altar, ‘I have been a relic-seller. Do you want to buy a piece of the True Cross, a portion of the baby Jesus’ nappy, some hairs from Joseph’s beard, one of the Virgin Mary’s shoes?’ He cleaned his teeth with his fingers. ‘I can supply it. I even took a severed head from one of the pikes on London Bridge. I cleaned it up, dried it in spices and sold it to a merchant in Norwich as the head of St John the Baptist.’

Athelstan kept his face straight.

‘And why does the Judas Man pursue you?’

‘There’s a reward of twenty-five pounds on my head. He has been dogging my footsteps through Essex, Middlesex, across the river and into Southwark. I don’t know why he is so persistent. I tried to leave Southwark this morning but he had his spies on both the bridge and the quayside.’

The Misericord pulled a loose thread on his jerkin. ‘I had no choice but to flee.’

‘But why?’ Athelstan became intrigued.

‘I don’t know,’ the Misericord sighed. ‘I expect he has been hired by a private citizen. Someone who seeks vengeance.’

‘For what?’ Athelstan demanded.

‘I don’t know! I have played so many games. There is one, perhaps that’s it. I took the name Dr Mirabilis and offered to sell a powder which would. .’ The Misericord clicked his tongue. ‘Let me put it this way, Father, I said it would make a man perform like a stallion in bed, so I wouldn’t have offered it to someone like you.’

‘And of course,’ Athelstan replied, ‘it did nothing. What did you claim it was?’

‘The ground horn of a unicorn.’

‘And the truth?’

The Misericord pressed his lips together. ‘A mixture of camomile and valerian.’

‘But that would have the opposite effect, Athelstan said. ‘Such a mixture would slow the mind, make the body relax; it’s nothing better than a sleeping potion.’

‘I know, Father.’

‘How did you sell it?’

The Misericord was about to reply when the door of the church crashed open.

‘Sir Jack Cranston,’ Athelstan whispered.

The Misericord crept back into the shadows. Athelstan sat listening to those hard, heavy boots ring out across the paving stones of the nave.

Sir John Cranston, former soldier, Coroner of the City of London, father of the poppets, as he called his twin baby sons, and devoted husband of the Lady Maud, swept into the sanctuary like the north wind. He had a beaverskin hat pressed down on his unruly grey hair, his great body and heavy paunch were masked by the military cloak pulled halfway up to his face, yet there was no mistaking that bristling white moustache, the vein-flecked cheeks and the piercing blue eyes.

‘Good morning, Brother Athelstan.’ He peered through the gloom. ‘Aye, and morning to you, Master Misericord.’

Cranston undid his cloak, clasped Athelstan’s hand and advanced threateningly towards the fugitive now crouching beside the altar. He rested one foot on the second step and leaned forward.

‘The Misericord! Also known as John Travisa, also known as Walter Simple, also known as Edward Bowman, also known as God knows what. Wanted dead or alive in the shires of Suffolk, Norfolk, Hertfordshire, Essex and Kent. Oh, this time you’ll hang, my boy.’ Cranston gestured down the nave. ‘I know that Judas Man. You placed your wager on Ranulf’s ferrets? Well, he’s a ferret in human form. He’ll hunt you down, though I’ll be the first to deal with you. You killed a man last night.’

‘No I didn’t,’ the Misericord yelped.

‘Yes you did!’

Cranston suddenly remembered where he was and snatched off his beaverskin hat. He hurriedly made a sign of the Cross, one of the fastest Athelstan had ever seen, then fished beneath his cloak and unhooked the miraculous wine skin which never seemed to empty, unstoppered it and took a mouthful. He offered it to Athelstan, who refused, though the Misericord grabbed it greedily and took a generous swig. Cranston snatched it out of his hands.

‘Now, my lovely boy,’ Cranston breathed. ‘You killed a man last night, or had him killed. You went to Master Rolles’ for the Great Ratting, and I will see mine host about that. You knew you were being hunted, so you paid some unfortunate who had a passing resemblance to you to wear that misericord dagger around his neck, a man with red hair and pale face. The Judas Man went to arrest him, and Toadflax-’

‘Toadflax?’ Athelstan queried.

‘Toadflax,’ Cranston explained, ‘was a dog collector. He took the corpses of dead animals from the streets; now and again he became involved in petty thievery.’

Cranston jabbed a finger in the fugitive’s face.

‘He was the one you bribed. What did you give him for his life? A penny? A groat? Some numbskull who wouldn’t know his right hand from his left; now his corpse is stiffening in an outhouse.’