Paul Doherty: The Assassin's riddle

‘There’ll be bodies,’ he murmured. ‘Look hard and long, my lovelies!’

The few barges and wherries which plied the river steered well clear. The Fisher of Men was not liked: he held special terrors for those who worked along the Thames. Rumours were rife in the taverns and alehouses that the Fisher of Men and his companions were not above arranging for their own victims to be found in the Thames. Every boat-man between Southwark and Westminster prayed constantly to their patron saints that their corpse would not be found by the Fisher of Men and taken to his strange chapel where it would lie in a makeshift coffin until identified. Tonight the Fisher was hopeful. Two days ago they’d plucked the body of a drunk and that of a Brabantine sailor who had been killed in a tavern brawl. Sir John Cranston, the portly coroner of the city, had paid them well. Now the Fisher of Men was hunting again.

‘Ah yes, my lovelies!’ he whispered, misquoting from the Office for the Dead. ‘Remember that terrible day when the earth shall give up the dead and the rivers of God their secrets.’

He then rapped out an order and the barge turned to avoid a gong cart which stood off the Fleet dumping the ordure and offal of the city into midstream. The dung-collectors cursed and made a sign to ward off the evil eye as the ghoulish barge of the Fisher of Men swept by.

‘Pole towards the bank,’ the Fisher of Men ordered. He pointed to where the river turned before sweeping down to Westminster.

‘Are you sure, master?’ Icthus, the Fisher of Men’s principal swimmer, spoke up. ‘Shouldn’t we stay in midstream?’

‘No, no,’ the Fisher replied. ‘I knows the river: it runs too fast. Any corpses from Southwark or London Bridge will be swept into the reeds.’

The barge turned, the pitch torches flickering and snapping in the evening breeze. The Fisher picked up his hand-bell and clanged it, the sound ringing ominously across the river, telling others to stay clear. The barge moved in closer to the bank.

‘I see one!’ a lookout cried. ‘Master, I see it! There amongst the reeds!’

The Fisher peered through the gloom. There was enough light. He studied the reeds and he, too, saw it, the glint of a buckle belt and something else.

‘Go in closer!’

The barge did so. Icthus jumped over the side. He swam like the fish after which he was named. He caught the bobbing, water-soaked corpse of Edwin Chapler; he stared at the bloated face, staring eyes and blood-encrusted mouth.

‘A corpse!’ Icthus screeched. ‘Master, we have found a corpse!’

In Ratcat Alley, just off Watling Street under the towering mass of St Paul’s Cathedral, Bartholomew Drayton, a moneylender with a reputation as evil as Satan, was also preparing to meet death. Drayton lay on the floor of his vaulted counting chamber. He moaned in agony at the barbed crossbow quarrel embedded deep in his chest. He turned on his side and looked towards the door; he could not possibly pull back the different bolts or turn the keys in the three great locks. Drayton closed his eyes and groaned. He had always prided himself on that door. Six inches thick, steel-hinged, the outside protected by great brass bolts, it had proved to be his death. He’d always thought himself secure, down here in his counting house; here no thieves could break in nor could one of his greedy clerks help themselves to what he had gathered over the years. No windows, not even an arrow slit. In the end it had proved useless. Drayton, an old soldier from the King’s wars in France, knew he was going to die. So strange, here in this vaulted chamber. He gazed across to the wall at the far end. Perhaps it was only right. Justice had caught up with him. He closed his eyes. His feet and legs were so cold.

Drayton, like Chapler, tried to pray but all he could think of were the words from the Gospel, about the rich man who had filled his barns and looked forward to a life of feasting and merriment. ‘Fool!’ God had thundered back, ‘Dost thou not know that the demand has been made for thy soul?’ Drayton murmured a prayer. He had time to ask God’s forgiveness but what about the other crime? Drayton moved to one side. With all his failing strength he tried to crawl to the far wall, to touch it. Yes, if he could touch it he could ask forgiveness. He had moved only a few paces before the pain became too much. A coldness swept up his body and Bartholomew Drayton gave up his soul.

Sir John Cranston, coroner of the city of London, perched his portly frame on a stool, pushed back his beaver hat and mopped his red, glistening face. He would have loved to draw out the miraculous wineskin from beneath his cloak but he was not too sure about the mood of his secretarius, the Dominican, Brother Athelstan, who sat across the chamber. Athelstan was quiet, even more so than usual. His narrow, olive-skinned face under the black tonsured hair was impassive, his usually smiling eyes were now rather stern. He sat, hands up the sleeves of his white gown, chewing on the corner of his lip.

He doesn’t want to be here, Cranston thought. He wants to be back across the river at St Erconwald’s with his bloody parishioners. He studied his friend’s face carefully. Athelstan had not even had time to shave or break his fast. He’d just finished morning Mass when Cranston had called.

‘You’ve got to come, Brother,’ the coroner had insisted. He pointed to the huge tomcat which followed Athelstan in and out of church. ‘Leave Bonaventure to guard St Erconwald’s. Throw some hay at old Philomel. I want to reveal a mystery which will tax even your brain: it certainly baffles mine.’

Athelstan had followed quick and quiet. They strode across London Bridge up through the crowd to the house of the usurer, Bartholomew Drayton, in Ratcat Lane.

‘Tell us again.’ Cranston gestured at Henry Flaxwith, his principal bailiff.

The fellow breathed out noisily.

‘I know, I know,’ Cranston added sweetly. ‘But Brother Athelstan needs to be told all the facts. We could all be elsewhere. However, Drayton is murdered and a great deal of silver is gone.’

‘It’s like this, Sir John,’ Flaxwith began. ‘This morning, long before the bells for Matins rang, I and Samson…’

‘Bugger him!’ Cranston intervened. ‘I don’t want to hear about your bloody dog!’

‘I and my dog,’ Flaxwith continued remorselessly, ‘were doing my tour of duty. Now Samson,’ he winked at Athelstan, ‘now Samson,’ he intoned, ignoring Cranston’s sigh of exasperation, ‘always walks slowly, he likes to stop, sniff and cock his leg. I’d bought an eel pie because I hadn’t broken my fast Cranston closed his eyes. O God, give me patience, he prayed. Flaxwith was as lugubrious as he looked but he was honest and meticulous, with a sharp eye for detail.

‘I had just finished the pie,’ Flaxwith continued, ‘when we came into Ratcat Lane. Two young men, Drayton’s clerks, Philip Stablegate and James Flinstead, stood pounding on the door of their master’s house.’

‘These are the two lovelies upstairs?’

‘Precisely, Sir John. Anyway, I asked what the matter was.’ Flaxwith lifted his podgy face. ‘I really should see how Samson is doing…’

‘Samson’s fine,’ Cranston cooed. ‘I found a sausage in the scullery, he’s eating it as if there’s no tomorrow.’

‘Anyway, I ask them what the matter be. They told me they had rung the bell and pounded on the door but Master Drayton had not answered. Now, you have seen the front door, Sir John, thick as a Frenchman’s head. So we went round the outside. All the windows were boarded and shuttered up.’

‘Is there a back entrance?’ Athelstan asked.

‘Oh yes, but the door’s like that at the front, hard as oak. We would have needed a siege machine from the Tower to break them both down.’