Paul Doherty - The House of Crows

‘Well listen, Sir John.’ Athelstan glanced further down the parchment. ‘About three years later, another set of petitions appeared; not from the knights or, indeed, from their peasant leaders, but from widows.’ Athelstan pointed to one petition. ‘Such as this from Isolda Massingham. She maintains that a gang of outlaws, cut-throats, wolfs-heads and felons were waging war on isolated farms. She talks of men masked, hooded and cowled, who burst into her house and dragged her husband Walter out. He was later found hanging from the branch of an oak tree some three miles outside the village.’ He glanced up. ‘They disfigured her husband’s corpse by etching red crosses on his face.’

‘So…’ Cranston drank from his tankard. ‘Two of our corpses were similarly disfigured but — ’

‘Ah!’ Athelstan held his hand up. ‘Now Isolda makes no allegations. She points no finger of accusation, but demands that the king’s justices be sent into the shire to discover the perpetrators of this outrage. Isolda, I suspect, was no base-born peasant villein: her husband was of peasant stock but rather prosperous, hence the petition.’

‘True, true,’ Cranston interjected. ‘After the Great Pestilence, labour was in short supply. Properties were left vacant, and the labourers and peasants, particularly the more prosperous, had more ground to till so could demand higher wages. They were also able to sell their own produce in the markets.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s the same thing as today: the prosperous peasants want more freedom to work their own land and sell their produce, but the great lords are determined to keep them tied to the soil. But, Athelstan, what has this got to do with the murders at Westminster?’

‘As I said,’ Athelstan continued, ‘Isolda was a fairly wealthy widow. She probably went to some clerk who drew up this petition and organised its despatch to the king’s council at Westminster.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Cranston answered testily, ‘I understand all that.’

‘Well, I am going to make a leap in logic,’ Athelstan went on. ‘Massingham’s killers were no band of outlaws.’ The friar paused to choose his words carefully. ‘I don’t know whether widows like Isolda Massingham and others knew who was murdering their menfolk, but I suspect it was Sir Edmund Malmesbury and his knights.’ Athelstan rolled up the parchment. ‘Isolda’s petition is important, and I’d love to know what the Crown did about it.’

At first Cranston would not accept Athelstan’s conclusions.

‘You are saying,’ he repeated, ‘that Malmesbury and his companions, the so-called Knights of the Swan, carried out their own private war against these self-styled peasant leaders?’

‘Yes, I am,’ Athelstan replied. ‘They are arrogant men, Sir John, fully aware of their rights and appurtenances. They grew up in a world where every man knew his place, particularly the peasants, but the Great Pestilence ended all that. Whole villages were wiped out. Labour became scarce and the peasants began to enrich themselves, not only through the acquisition of land, but also by selling their labour to the highest bidder.’ Athelstan ran his finger round the rim of his tankard. ‘And what could the Crown do? It needed those peasants for its wars in France, as well as the payment of its taxes, so the likes of Malmesbury took the law into their own hands.’

Athelstan paused and sipped at his ale, staring through the window of the tavern to ensure no one was eavesdropping. ‘Imagine it, Sir John, these arrogant lords of the soil, cloaked and visaged, armed to the teeth. They would swoop on some poor peasant’s house, drag him from his table, and hurry him off to execution whilst they chanted the sequence from the Mass of the Dead, the “Dies Irae”. ’

‘And the arrowhead, candle and scrap of parchment?’ Cranston asked.

‘Oh, these knights always sent a warning. The candle is a symbol of their victim’s impending funeral. The arrowhead a sign of a violent death, and the word “Remember” a barbed hint to reflect upon the other murders these men had already carried out.’ He sighed. ‘And the red crosses etched on the faces of their dead victims were a grisly warning to others.’

‘Then what happened?’ Cranston asked.

‘I suppose Malmesbury and his gang had their way. After a number of these peasant leaders had been executed, others became more circumspect. But, of course,’ Athelstan screwed his eyes up against the sunlight, ‘the evil we do, Sir John, never dies. It dogs our footsteps and lurks in the corners of our souls. And so we come to the regent.’ Athelstan lowered his voice. ‘Gaunt holds lands along the Welsh march. He would make careful inquiries about these arrogant landowners. I am sure he discovered their secret sin. He organised their election to this Parliament and gave them a brutal warning: either they supported him or he might send the justices back into Shropshire to publicise their secrets.’

‘But Malmesbury and the rest oppose the regent bitterly.’

Athelstan smiled bleakly. ‘Oh, Sir John. How often have you played a game of chess? You watch your opponent’s pieces being moved. Sometimes you believe his judgement is faulty, even foolish, but at the end, when he takes your queen and traps your king, you realise the subtlety of his design.’

‘In other words, the game is not over yet?’

‘No, no, Sir John, it certainly isn’t.’

‘But the murders?’ Cranston asked. ‘Surely Gaunt does not have a hand in these?’

‘My lord Coroner.’ Athelstan played with the tassel of the cord round his waist. ‘He could do. He might even argue that he is carrying out lawful execution. But, concedo , I think there is little likelihood. No, someone else has entered this game. We have three possibilities. First, Sir Miles: we must remember that Coverdale also comes from Shropshire. Did one of his kinsmen die at Malmesbury’s hands? Or, there again, Father Benedict. He seems very attached to the memory of his dead comrade Antony. Is he the sort of man to carry out God’s judgement? Or. .’ Athelstan paused.

‘Or what?’ Cranston asked, intrigued.

‘Well, I keep talking about the knights as a coven under the leadership of Sir Edmund Malmesbury and, Sir John, believe me, whatever is the truth, Malmesbury is their leader. However, there is one other consideration.’ Athelstan leaned across the table. ‘How do we know the others were involved? Aylebore or Elontius, or both, may be totally innocent of any crime, but might see themselves as angels of vengeance.’

‘In other words, Aylebore or Elontius might have suffered because of those judicial murders in Shropshire so many years ago?’

‘Possibly.’ Athelstan stretched and turned his face to the sun. ‘Come, Sir John.’ He smiled at the coroner. ‘St Dominic always said that, after a meal, a man should walk and talk with a friend in a beautiful garden.’

Cranston, his gloom now forgotten, got to his feet and joined Athelstan. They wound their way through the herb plots and flowerbeds. At the bottom of the garden they sat on a stone seat framed by a flower-covered arbour. Athelstan leaned back and listened to the lilting bird-song.

‘It’s at moments like these, Sir John, that I realise why paradise was described as a garden.’ Athelstan lifted his face to catch the sun.

‘Aye,’ Cranston retorted. ‘And, as in Eden, Brother, there’s always a serpent, a canker in the rose.’

Athelstan ran his thumb round his mouth. ‘Let’s summarise what we know so far.’ He nudged the coroner. ‘Come on, law officer, you’ve supped and dined well. Now use your razor-like mind.’

‘Well, first, we know that Sir Edmund Malmesbury, and certainly those men who have been murdered, committed terrible crimes in Shropshire. Secondly, our noble regent is using that knowledge to blackmail them, though for what purpose we still have to discover. Thirdly, we know these good knights formed a fraternity or brotherhood of the Knights of the Swan. This broke up after their famous chalice was stolen, though this has now been returned.’ Cranston paused. His hand fell to the wineskin nestling beneath his cloak, but Athelstan playfully knocked it away.