Paul Doherty - By Murder's bright light

‘My Lord, your Holiness! At last you grace us with your presence!’

‘Bugger off!’ Cranston snapped. ‘You are wasting time!’

‘Would I waste the time of the mighty Cranston? No, come with me, my lord coroner, I’ll show you a great mystery.’

Cranston shrugged. He and Athelstan followed the sinister figure and his motley gang out into the alleyway and through a maze of urine-smelling runnels until they stopped before a large, shabby warehouse.

‘Oh Lord!’ Cranston breathed. ‘Mermaid’s paps! He is going to show us his wares!’

The Fisher of Men produced a key, unlocked the door and led them into the darkness. Athelstan immediately gagged at the fishy, stale-water smell mingled with the sickly-sweet stench of corruption. The gargoyles thronged around him. ‘Lights!’ the Fisher of Men shouted. ‘Let there be light, for the darkness cannot comprehend the light.’

Athelstan put his hand out to steady himself and felt something cold, wet and spongy beneath him. He peered down and bit back his cry as he saw it was the grey, puffed face of a corpse. He rubbed his hand on his robe and waited as torches and candles were lit.

‘Oh, for the love of God!’ Cranston breathed. ‘Brother, look around you!’

The warehouse was built like a great barn. Everywhere, in makeshift boxes which the Fisher of Men must have filched from different places, were the corpses of those hauled from the Thames – forty or fifty at least. Athelstan glimpsed a thin-faced young woman, an archer with a bloody wound in his chest, an old woman who lay on a sopping yellow rag, even a small lapdog that must have fallen from someone’s arms.

‘Come this way! Come this way!’

The Fisher of Men led them to the far end of the barn, where an arrow box was propped against the wall. There was a man’s body in it. Athelstan, thinking he was going to be sick, looked away. Cranston, though, studied the corpse carefully. It was that of a tall, well-built man with black hair and thin features; the eyeless face bore the marks of fish bites and the flesh was puffy and white like old wool after it has been dipped in dirty water. The man’s boots were gone – they, along with other possessions, were the perquisites of the Fisher of Men. The thin linen shirt was open and Cranston saw a purple-red bruise on the chest and marks on the neck. The Fisher of Men fairly danced beside the body.

‘See, see, see who it is!’

‘I see a corpse,’ Cranston replied drily. ‘Probably a sailor’s.’

‘Correct! Correct! But which sailor?’

Cranston glowered at the man. ‘One of those killed in the battle?’

‘Oh no! Oh no! This is Bracklebury!’

Athelstan opened his eyes in amazement. Cranston peered closer.

‘It fits your description, my lord coroner, though there was nothing on him to identify him by.’

Cranston swore under his breath. ‘By a fairy’s futtock, so it is! Black-haired, a scar under his left eye, past his thirtieth summer, but-’

‘He’s been in the water for at least, oh, five or six days,’ the Fisher of Men said.

Athelstan shook his head. ‘But Bracklebury was alive two days ago! He murdered Bernicia!’

The gargoyles standing behind them tittered with laughter.

‘Impossible!’ the Fisher of Men shouted, stretching out his hand towards Cranston. ‘How can a man be drowned and be walking about murdering people?’

Athelstan forgot his disdain and walked closer. ‘Is there any wound?’ he asked.

‘None,’ the Fisher of Men replied. ‘Not a scratch. Only these.’ He pointed to the purple bruise on the man’s chest and the slight lacerations on either side of the throat. ‘Something was tied around his neck.’

Cranston stepped back, shaking his head.

‘It can’t be,’ he muttered. ‘Bracklebury’s alive.’

‘I claim my reward,’ the Fisher of Men said.

‘Sir John, let’s get out of here,’ Athelstan murmured.

They walked back to the alleyway, the Fisher of Men and the gargoyles clustered around them.

‘Look!’ Cranston bellowed, ‘I need proof.’ He stamped his feet and stared around. ‘I need proof! Proof that this is Bracklebury.’ He pointed a finger at the Fisher of Men. ‘You’ve got spies all over the city. Bring these people to meet me at the alehouse. He rapped out a list of people he wished to see – the ship’s officers as well as Emma Roffel. ‘I want them at the tavern within the hour. I don’t give a rat’s arse what they are doing!’

The Fisher of Men seemed delighted by the prospect of wielding so much power. It was not often that he was able to order about the ordinary inhabitants of the city in which he lurked. He and the gargoyles swept down the alleyway, Cranston still roaring at them that they were to bring everyone to the tavern. He took Athelstan back there. Cranston slumped on to a stool. He pushed his great back into the corner of the wall and roared for refreshment until all the slatterns in the place were hopping like fleas on a frisky dog.

‘It can’t be Bracklebury,’ he breathed. ‘Yet it must be Bracklebury.’

Athelstan thanked the landlord and pushed the platter of food he had brought and a goblet of claret towards Cranston.

‘If the corpse isn’t Bracklebury’s,’ he said, ‘then he is still our principal suspect. But if it is, then, to quote a famous coroner I know, Hell’s teeth!’

‘Or mermaid’s tits!’ Cranston smiled.

‘Aye and those too, Sir John.’ Athelstan sipped from his tankard of ale. ‘If it is Bracklebury, then who is the murderer of Bernicia? And, more importantly, who killed Bracklebury? Why and how?’

Cranston rubbed his face. ‘You know, I have this awful nightmare, Brother, that we have been concentrating on Bracklebury and forgetting the other two sailors. We don’t even know their names. What if they are the villains of the piece?’

Athelstan’s mind teemed with the possibilities.

‘The war cogs will sail soon,’ Cranston said. ‘The officers on board the God’s Bright Light will go with them. Everything will remain a mystery.’

‘Do you have the silver, Sir John?’

Athelstan whirled around and Cranston looked up at the two scrutineers who had come to stand silently beside them, the false smiles on their plump faces belied by the hardness of their eyes.

‘The exchequer wants its silver back,’ Peter said.

‘And soon!’ the other added.

Uninvited, they pulled stools over but shook their heads when Cranston offered them refreshment.

‘No, Sir John, we have not come for meat and drink. We are here for the king’s silver. Any progress?’

Cranston described what they had discovered on board the God’s Bright Light.

‘So you found the hiding place but not the money,’ Paul summed up.

Cranston nodded.

‘We have the tally men out,’ Peter said. ‘You see, the silver was freshly minted.’ He smiled sourly. ‘When you buy spies and traitors, they always bite the silver first.’

‘But how could it have been freshly minted?’ Cranston asked. ‘Sir Henry sent it to the exchequer!’

The silver bullion he sent was melted down and coins struck from it at the royal mint in the Tower.’

‘And you have searched for these coins?’ Athelstan asked.

‘Yes, we have.’

‘And you’ve found no trace?’

‘I didn’t say that. A goldsmith just off Candlewick Street was visited by one of our tally men. Some of the coins are already in circulation.’

‘How much was your spy carrying when Roffel attacked the ship?’

‘A hundred groats,’ Peter replied.

‘A hundred groats in freshly minted coins on the open market!’ Cranston exclaimed.

Athelstan held up his hand. ‘And, of course, you have questioned this goldsmith?’