Paul Doherty - By Murder's bright light

‘You’d best come in.’ Athelstan led them into the kitchen and sat them down. He offered some bread and wine but they declined. He sat at the head of the table, gently stroking a purring Bonaventure, who had jumped into his lap.

‘Why are you here?’ he asked Emma. ‘I thought your husband was to be buried this morning?’

‘He is to be, within the hour,’ Emma replied. ‘I’m here because of what happened at St Mary Magdalene church last night.’ Her eyes widened. ‘I had to ask you, Father. Have you found the culprit? Why should anyone do so disgusting a thing?’

‘You have come across the river to ask me that?’ Athelstan asked. ‘Sir John and I did intend to visit you today.’

‘I went to Sir John’s house,’ Emma said, ‘but he was not there. He had been summoned to the Guildhall. I just want to know who did it.’

‘Madam, we don’t know who or why but your husband had few friends and many enemies.’

Emma sighed heavily.

‘He was a hard man, Father.’

Athelstan peered at her. That’s not really why you came,’ he said. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’

‘I will speak for her.’ Tabitha Velour leaned forward. ‘When we went to St Mary Magdalene church this morning, Father Stephen was still very upset. He overheard you tell Sir John that Captain Roffel may have been poisoned. Is this true?’

‘I think so,’ Athelstan replied. ‘Probably white arsenic. It’s cheap and easy to obtain.’

‘But how?’ Emma Roffel asked. ‘My husband was very careful on board ship, only eating and drinking what the crew did.’

‘That’s not quite true,’ Athelstan said. ‘Your husband was Scottish. He had a special flask which he filled at a tavern near Queen’s hithe with a fiery Scottish drink called usquebaugh.’

Emma Roffel put her finger to her lips. ‘Of course,’ she whispered. ‘Where he went, so did that flask.’ She stared at Athelstan. ‘But he always filled it at that tavern! He took it there himself, because he paid the landlord to import a special cask from the port of Leith in Scotland.’

‘Did he always carry the flask around with him?’ Athelstan asked.

‘He never drank from it on land,’ Emma answered. ‘But at sea, always. He would never leave it in his cabin but carried it on his person.’

‘And at sea, of course, he could not refill it,’ Athelstan mused.

Emma suddenly stood up. ‘Father, you must excuse us. The funeral Mass is at ten o’clock. There will only be the two of us there. We must go.’

‘We may visit you afterwards?’ Athelstan asked.

‘Yes, yes,’ she said impatiently and, followed by her maid, hurried out of the house.

Athelstan banked the fire. He collected the leather bag containing his writing materials, filled Bonaventure’s bowl with milk and went out to saddle the protesting Philomel.

‘Come on, old man,’ he whispered as he gingerly heaved himself into the saddle. ‘Let’s go and see old Jack Cranston, eh?’

Philomel snickered in pleasure. The old destrier liked nothing better than butting the fat coroner’s protuberant stomach or expansive backside. As they passed the church door, Athelstan glimpsed Marston and two other of Sir Henry’s retainers lurking in the alley opposite. Athelstan did not stop. His parishioners had now spilled out on to the steps. Neatly divided into two groups, one led by Watkin and the other by Pike, they were fiercely debating whether God the Father was, in fact, superior to God the Holy Ghost.

Lord help us, Athelstan thought, perhaps I should be Three Persons in One and Watkin and Pike could be two of the archangels. He turned Philomel out of the church grounds and into the alleyway, smilingly sketching a blessing towards where Marston and his accomplices lurked. Then he forced his way through the smelly, noisy throngs in Southwark’s narrow alleyways. Outside the Piebald tavern, two of his parishioners, Tab the tinker and Roisia his wife, were engaged in a bitter verbal battle, much to the delight of a growing crowd of onlookers. Athelstan stopped to watch and listen.

‘We’ve been happily married for twenty years till this!’ Roisia, red in the face, shouted at her husband.

‘Yes,’ Tab retorted. ‘You’ve been happy and I’ve been married!’

This was too much for Roisia, who swung her tankard at Tab’s head. He ducked and she went sprawling in the mud.

‘Tab!’ Athelstan shouted. ‘Stop this nonsense! Pick Roisia up and go into the church! The cart for our pageant’s arrived.’

Roisia, kneeling in the mud, caught her husband’s arm.

‘You’re supposed to be St Peter!’ she shouted. ‘But Watkin will distribute the parts as he thinks fit.’

Husband and wife, now firm allies, headed off in the direction of St Erconwald’s. Athelstan continued on his way, past the priory of St Mary Overy to the approaches of London Bridge. At the roadside the beadles were busy meting out punishments. Two dyers, who had used dog turds to make a brown dye that washed out in the first shower, were standing, bare-arsed, with only a scrap of cloth covering their privy parts, tied hand and foot to each other. They would stand there until sunset. The stocks and pillories were also full with the usual malefactors – footpads and other petty villains who regarded capture and a day’s confinement as an occupational hazard. However, the death-cart had arrived and stood now beneath the high-beamed scaffold. A felon, the noose already around his neck, was proclaiming, to the utter indifference of the crowd, that he was an innocent man. The condemned man’s face, almost hidden by his ragged hair and beard, was sunburnt. When he saw Athelstan, he jumped up and down in the cart.

‘There’s a priest!’ he shouted. There’s a priest! I want to be shriven! I don’t want to go to hell!’

Athelstan groaned as Bladdersniff the bailiff came towards him, his vinegarish face looking even more sour than usual.

‘We haven’t been able to find a priest to hear his confession,’ Bladdersniff said. ‘He killed a whore in a tavern brawl, was caught red-handed and spent the night in the compter drunk as a pig.’ Bladdersniff clutched Philomel’s reins and swayed dangerously.

You’re none too sober yourself, Athelstan thought. He dismounted, threw the reins at Bladdersniff and climbed up into the death-cart. The condemned felon was pleased, whether at the postponement of his execution or at the appearance of spiritual comfort Athelstan could not decide. The black-masked hangman, Simon, who also worked as a scullion in Merrylegs’s pie shop, pulled the noose from the man’s neck, smiled through his executioner’s mask at Athelstan, jumped off the cart and walked out of earshot.

‘Sit down,’ Athelstan said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Robard.’

‘And where do you come from?’

‘I was born in Norwich.’

‘And how have you lived? What have you done?’

‘Oh, I was a sailor, Father.’ He pulled back the rags of his jerkin to reveal a shrivelled arm. ‘That’s until someone poured boiling oil over me.’

‘Did you know Captain Roffel?’ Athelstan asked.

‘Captain Roffel!’ Robard replied, his whiskered face breaking into a gap-toothed grin. ‘Yes, I knew him, Father – the biggest pirate this side of Dover. A real killer, Father.’ Robard belched a gust of stale-ale fumes into Athelstan’s face. ‘He was also a bugger.’ Robard looked apologetic. ‘I mean in the real sense, Father. He liked little boys and pretty young men. Always touching them on the buttocks, he was. But he never touched mine, more’s the pity. If he liked you, good rations always came your way.’

‘Your confession,’ Athelstan reminded him.

‘Oh yes, Father.’ The felon sketched the sign of the cross. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s thirty years since I was shriven. I confess all.’