Paul Doherty - By Murder's bright light

Sir John nodded and motioned for the priest to stand back.

‘This is my verdict. First, you, Mistress Alice Frogmore, are guilty of contempt of court. You are to be fined four pennies. Secondly, you, Mistress Alice Frogmore, have wasted the time of this court, so you are to be fined another four pennies. Furthermore’ – he glared at the hate-filled face of the fat woman – ‘you are bound over to keep the peace between yourselves and Mistress Eleanor Raggleweed, your neighbour. What do you say?’

‘But that toad came on our property!’ she whined.

‘Ah, yes.’ Cranston turned to Eleanor Raggleweed. ‘Eleanor Raggleweed, your toad who is called Thomas’ – Cranston fought to keep his face straight – ‘is guilty of trespass. You are fined the smallest coin of the realm, one farthing.’

Eleanor smiled. Cranston glared at the toad, which now croaked merrily back.

‘You, Thomas the toad, are made a ward of this court.’ He glared at the Frogmores. ‘So, if anything happens to it, you will have to answer!’

This is not fair!’ Frogmore whined. ‘I will appeal.’

‘Piss off!’ Cranston roared. ‘Bailiffs, clear the room!’

Eleanor Raggleweed picked up the toad and joined the priest, who gently murmured his congratulations. The Frogmores, with crestfallen expressions, dug into their purses and reluctantly handed over their fine to Osbert. Cranston rested his head against the high-backed chair and rewarded himself with another generous swig from the wineskin.

‘Devil’s bollocks and Satan’s tits!’ he breathed. He looked at the hour candle on its iron spigot. ‘It’s not yet ten in the morning and I’m already tired of this nonsense.’ He glanced swiftly at Osbert. ‘Have you ever heard such rubbish?’

Osbert licked his thin lips and shook his head wordlessly. He always liked to be scrivener in Sir John’s court; the fat, wine-loving coroner was known for his bluntness and lack of tolerance of fools as well as for his scrupulous honesty.

‘Never once-’ Osbert told his chubby-faced wife and brood of children, ‘never once have I seen Sir John swayed by fear or favour. He’s as true as an arrow shot from a bow.’

The scrivener stretched over and picked up a greasy roll of parchment. He loved studying the coroner’s moods.

‘Well, Sir John, you are going to enjoy this next one.’

‘Tell me,’ Cranston growled.

‘Well, Rahere the roaster owns a cookshop in an alleyway off Seething Lane. Next door is his rival, Bernard the baker. There’s little love lost between them.’

‘Yes?’ Cranston snapped.

‘Rahere had new latrines dug.’

‘Well?’

‘Bernard maintains that, out of spite and malice, Rahere had them dug so that all the refuse from them drained into the cellar of his bakery.’

‘Oh, fairy’s futtocks!’ Cranston breathed. ‘Always remind me, Osbert, never to eat in either place.’ He smacked his lips and thought of the gold-crusted quail pie that the innkeeper’s wife at the Holy Lamb of God was preparing for him. ‘Must I hear the case now?’

The scrivener mournfully shook his head. ‘I fear so, unless there’s other pressing business.’

Cranston leaned his elbows on the table and rested his fat face in his podgy hands.

‘Ah well!’

He was about to roar at the bailiffs to bring the next litigants in when there was a thunderous knocking on the chamber door. Edward Shawditch, under-sheriff to the city, swept into the room, his lean, pockmarked face red with fury. Cranston noticed that Shawditch hadn’t shaved; his chin was marked by sharp hairs. His small green eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep and his lips twisted so sharply Cranston wondered if he was sucking on vinegar. The under-sheriff removed a gauntlet and combed back his sweat-soaked red hair.

‘A word, Sir John.’

You mean a thousand, Cranston thought bitterly. ‘What is it, Shawditch?’ He respected the under-sheriff as a man of probity, but the fellow was so officious and so churlish in his manner that he put Cranston’s teeth on edge.

Two matters, Sir John.’

‘Let’s take one at a time,’ Cranston barked.

‘Well, there’s been a burglary, another one!’

Cranston’s heart sank.

‘The sixth,’ Shawditch declared flatly.

‘Whose house this time?’

‘Selpot’s,’ Shawditch replied.

‘Oh, God, no!’ Cranston breathed. Selpot was an alderman, a high-ranking member of the Tanners’ Guild. ‘Not his house in Bread Street?’

‘You are correct.’

‘And the same pattern as before?’

‘Yes, exactly the same. Selpot is absent with his wife and children visiting friends in Surrey, or so his steward says. He probably went to cheat a farmer out of a pile of skins. Anyway, Selpot left his house in charge of his steward.’ Shawditch shrugged. ‘You’d best come and see for yourself.’

Cranston pushed his chair back, donned his thick beaver hat and clasped his sword belt around his ponderous belly. He grabbed his heavy military cloak and followed Shawditch out of the chamber. At the door he turned and smiled gleefully at Osbert.

‘The day’s business is adjourned,’ he said. ‘Either that or you can move it to another court.’

The coroner and the under-sheriff went out into the freezing morning air and up Cheapside. The muck and filth coating the cobbles was now frozen hard. The houses on either side of the thoroughfare were half-hidden by a rolling mist which deadened the din and clamour. Everyone was garbed from head to toe, the rich in woollen robes and cloaks, the poor in a motley collection of rags, as protection against the freezing mist.

An old beggar woman, crouched in the corner of an alleyway, had frozen in death in that posture. Now her corpse was being awkwardly lifted on to a cart, pulled by oxen whose heavy breath rose like steam. Behind the cart a group of children, impervious to the tragedy, used sheep bones to skate over the hard-frozen sewers and cesspools. A group of young men, dressed in a strange garb fashioned out of pieces of rags sewn together, sang a carol about Christ being born again in Bethlehem. Further down Cheapside, a bagpiper blew shrilly before the stocks where the petty criminals would stand for a day, hands and heads locked, to receive abuse and thrown refuse as well as suffer the frozen chill of a hard winter’s day. A Franciscan, a leather bucket of warm water in one hand, a soft rag in the other, gently wiped the faces of this day’s prisoners and offered them sips from a large bowl of heated posset. One of the prisoners was crying with the cold. Sir John stopped. He looked at the chapped faces, noticing the blue, high cheeks of one pinch-featured pickpocket and the tears rolling down the face of his rat-faced companion. He started to move on.

‘Cranston, for the love of Christ!’ the pickpocket shouted. ‘Oh, please!’

Cranston stopped and looked at the supervising beadle. Shawditch, impatient, walked back.

‘What’s the matter, Sir John?’

Cranston beckoned the beadle forward. ‘How long have they been here?’

‘Four hours, Sir John.’

‘Release them!’

A chorus of praise broke out along the stocks, benedictions being called down on Sir John and his progeny to the forty-fifth generation.

‘You can’t do that,’ the beadle spluttered.

‘Can’t I?’ Cranston winked at the under-sheriff who, despite his flinty exterior, was a compassionate man. ‘Do you hear that, Master Shawditch. The word "can’t" is used against the city coroner and his under-sheriff.’

Shawditch poked the beadle in the chest, dug into his purse and pushed a coin into the man’s hand.

‘You’ll not only free them, my fat friend,’ he rasped, ‘but, for the love of Christ, you’ll buy them something hot to eat.’ He nodded his head towards the carol singers. ‘Soon it will be Advent, Yuletide, the birth of Christ. For his sake, show some mercy!’