Paul Doherty - The Assassin's riddle

‘If Father Prior hears of this,’ Athelstan murmured, ‘he’ll have my head.’

Cranston stopped. ‘Then you’d better not tell him, had you?’ He tugged at the friar’s sleeve. ‘Come on, Athelstan, Moleskin’s waiting and I’m hungry.’

Athelstan hastened across to his house to get his writing bag, then he and Sir John walked down the narrow alleyway towards the riverside. They paused outside Merrylegs’s cookshop where Sir John bought a pie and bit into it as they walked; he smacked his lips and murmured how Merrylegs should be knighted for his services to the stomach.

‘You are in good spirits, Sir John?’ Athelstan hurried beside him. ‘You slept well?’

‘Like a little pig,’ Cranston replied. ‘But that’s not because of the evening I had, Brother.’ He described Ollerton’s death and his confrontation with the Vicar of Hell.

‘I’ve heard of him,’ Athelstan exclaimed. ‘They say he dresses all in black and that his face is disfigured by scars.’

‘Nonsense!’ Cranston replied. ‘He’s a merry rogue who can out-argue a lawyer, outwit a trickster and outlie the devil. He’s been responsible for more villainy than I’d like to mention. The Guildmasters have a hundred pounds sterling reward posted for his capture, dead or alive. No one has come forward to claim it. He loves the ladies, does our Vicar of Hell, and they love him. Any man who betrayed him to the authorities would not survive for long.’

‘But you say he knew about our clerks of the Green Wax?’

‘And more.’ Cranston finished the pie. ‘Mistress Broadsheet told me that Alcest did business with Drayton.’

‘A rich pottage,’ Athelstan replied.

He paused to stare at a beggar crouching on the corner of the alleyway. The man was humming, rocking himself backwards and forwards. On a sack before him lay a whalebone.

‘Taken from the side of Leviathan!’ the fellow screeched. ‘The great beast who lives in the sea. Touch it for a penny!’

Athelstan walked forward and tossed a coin on to the sack.

‘Thank you, Brother, thank you. I’ve got more whalebones!’ the man shouted.

Athelstan shook his head and turned back to the coroner. ‘So, we have Mistress Broadsheet confessing that Alcest did business with Drayton whilst the Vicar of Hell knows about the deaths amongst the clerks of the Green Wax.’

‘We also know,’ Cranston added, ‘that, according to Dame Broadsheet and her girls, none of the clerks left the Dancing Pig the night Chapler was killed. We also have this apparent wealth. How could Alcest afford such a sumptuous banquet? Finally, there’s Ollerton’s death. The assassin must have been in the chamber when the clerk drank the mead.’

‘And the riddle?’

‘My second is the centre of woe,’ Cranston declared. ‘And the principal mover of horror.’

Athelstan shook his head in disbelief. ‘It makes no sense. Nothing makes sense, Sir John. Why have the clerks been killed? Why the riddles? Who is this mysterious young man, cloaked and spurred, who has been seen round the city?’

They walked down to the quayside.

‘So where are we going, Sir John?’

‘Back to Drayton’s house,’ Cranston declared. ‘Yesterday evening the Regent had me taken to the Savoy Palace.’ Cranston stopped and sucked in the river air. ‘Oh, he wined and he dined me. Clapped me on the shoulder and called me Honest Jack. But he wants his money back, Athelstan: the silver taken from Master Drayton. Gaunt needs it urgently. So it’s back to Drayton’s house.’

They went down the slippery steps to where Moleskin’s boat was waiting. The leather-skinned wherry man welcomed them as graciously as if he was captain of a royal man-of-war. He sat them in the stern, untied the rope and briskly pulled at the oars, taking his wherry across the sun-dappled river. Moleskin knew that Cranston would keep silent, whilst Brother Athelstan never told him about the business they prosecuted. Nevertheless, the friar could tell from the knowing gleam in Moleskin’s eyes that the news of the great miracle at St Erconwald’s had already reached him.

‘Before you ask,’ Athelstan declared, ‘I know about the miracle, Moleskin, or the so-called miracle. Yes, I am angry. I am also puzzled, but it will wait, and that’s all I’m going to say on the matter!’

Moleskin looked at him glumly and heaved his oars, guiding his boat across to Dowgate next to the Steelyard. Cranston and Athelstan disembarked. The friar saw the wisdom of Sir John’s words in not taking his horse because the streets were packed: the traders, costermongers and journeymen, taking advantage of the good summer weather, roared and bellowed whilst the crowds swirled like shoals of fish from stall to stall. They made their way up into Cheapside where a mob jostled round an enterprising cook who had opened a stall in the centre of the market-place to sell toasted cheese and wine. Children ran through the crowds. The beggars, mountebanks, cunning men, foists and pickpockets hovered looking for prey. The mummers and the quacks were waiting sharp-eyed for a ‘coney’, someone to trap and separate from their wealth.

On the steps of St Mary Le Bow, a monk of tatterdemalion appearance was preaching in harsh tones, stabbing the air with his raised fist; he was prophesying the imminent end of the world and the advent of the Anti-Christ. Athelstan and Cranston, because of the crowd, were forced to stand and listen to his speech. How the Anti-Christ had recently been born to a wicked woman in a certain province of Babylon. This child, so the ragged monk asserted, had the teeth of a cat and was abominably hairy; on the occasion of his birth, horrible serpents and other different monsters had rained down from the skies whilst the child had been able to speak when only eight days old.

‘Heavens above!’ Cranston whispered. ‘When you meet rogues like that, Athelstan, the Vicar of Hell becomes an angel of light!’

They crossed Cheapside and made their way up the tangle of narrow alleyways to Drayton’s house. A city beadle on guard outside broke the seals, unlocked the door and let them in. Cranston and Athelstan went along the narrow passageways and down into the counting house; its great iron-studded door still lay against the wall. They made an immediate search of the scrolls and ledgers of the dead moneylender, going through the transactions for the last few days before Drayton’s murder. Cranston ran one stubby finger down the pages, gave a cry of triumph and called Athelstan to come over. Athelstan did so, gingerly stepping over the dark, wine-coloured bloodstain on the floor.

‘Look!’ Cranston cried.

He jabbed a finger and Athelstan read the entry.

‘Alcest came here,’ the friar exclaimed. Two days before his great banquet at the Dancing Pig, but he didn’t ask for a loan, he was changing gold for silver pieces. Now why should Alcest do that, eh?’

Athelstan stared at the door. ‘Sir John, do you think Drayton could have been murdered by our clerks? Could this be the source of their newfound wealth?’

‘It’s possible,’ Cranston replied. ‘But, there again, it wouldn’t explain the deaths amongst them.’

‘But what happened if they were all thieves together,’ Athelstan wondered, ‘and what we are witnessing now is the falling-out?’

Cranston scratched his chin. ‘I’d like to get my hands on the Vicar of Hell,’ he answered. ‘There’s not a mischievous mouse in London which moves without his permission: he could throw some light on this. However, let’s visit our noble clerks and see what Master Alcest has to say.’

Cranston and Athelstan were about to leave the counting house when the friar paused in the doorway. He stared up at the rafters, the whitewashed walls on either side and then the one at the far end.