Paul Doherty - House of the Red Slayer

‘Good evening, Father.’

Athelstan flinched at the ale fumes which billowed towards him.

‘Pike! Pike!’ he hissed. ‘You great fool. You should be home in your bed with your wife.’

Pike staggered away from him, tapping his nose drunkenly. ‘I have been seeing people, Father.’

‘I know you have, Pike.’ Athelstan grasped him by the arm. ‘For God’s sake, man, be careful! Do you want to end your life swinging on the end of some gibbet as the crows come to peck your eyes out?’

‘We’ll rule like kings,’ Pike slurred. He struggled free of the friar’s grip and danced a quick jig. ‘When Adam delved and Eve span,’ he chanted, ‘who was then the gentleman?’ Pike smiled drunkenly at Athelstan. ‘But you’ll be safe, Father. You, your cat, and your bloody stars!’ He laughed. ‘You’re a jewel. You charge no tithes. I just wish you’d bloody well laugh sometimes!’

‘I’ll bloody well laugh,’ Athelstan hissed, seizing the drunken man by the arm, ‘when you’re sober!’

And he hustled the ditcher back to his angry wife waiting in their tenement in Crooked Lane.

Athelstan thankfully reached St Erconwald’s, made sure everything was locked up and walked over to his house. It was only when he was lying on his pallet bed trying to pray and not be distracted by Benedicta’s fair face, that Athelstan suddenly remembered what Vincentius had said. What had the good physician been doing at the Tower? Moreover, Vincentius admitted he had been educated in the area around the Middle Sea where Sir Ralph and the others had also served. Was there any connection? Athelstan wondered. He was still pondering on the problem when he drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Cranston, too, was thinking about events in the Tower but was too anxious to concentrate on the problems they posed. The coroner sat forlornly at the desk in his chamber, his little chancery or writing office as he called it, a place he loved, at the back of the house away from noisy Cheapside. He stared around. The floor had been specially tiled with small red and white lozenge-shaped stones and covered with woollen rugs. The windows were glazed and tightly shuttered against piercing draughts. Pine logs crackled and snapped in the small fireplace and warming dishes stood on stands at either end of the great writing desk. Sir John loved to spend time here, concentrating on his great treatise on the governance of the city. Yet tonight he could not relax; he was too distracted, ill-at-ease with the atmosphere in his own household. Oh, he had found Maude a little happier, they had exchanged the usual pleasantries, but Cranston still sensed that she was hiding something. He stirred as below stairs the maid tinkled a bell, the sign for dinner. Sir John groaned as he eased his bulk up and sorrowfully waddled down to the aroma-filled kitchen. Leif, the beggar, was crouched in the inglenook, stuffing his mouth full of richly sauced venison. He grinned at Sir John, then stared in surprise as Cranston mournfully passed by. Leif was astonished. Usually Sir John would greet him with a stream of good-natured abuse.

The beggar shrugged and went back to his meal. He was enjoying himself. Lady Maude had given him a few pennies and tomorrow he planned to see his friend in Crabbe Street. They’d dine in an eating-house and go to Moorfields where foaming bears, huge-tusked hogs and fat bulls were baited by bloody-mouthed mastiffs.

In the linen-panelled dining chamber, the table had been specially laid, covered by a white cloth of lawn with gold embossed candlesticks placed at either end. Cranston looked suspiciously at his wife. She seemed too happy. He noticed the colour high in her cheeks whilst her eyes danced with pleasure. Sir John grew more mournful. Had Lady Maude found someone else? he wondered. A young swain more virile and lusty than he? Oh, he knew such practices were common. The bored wives of old men and burgesses often found happiness in the arms of some court dandy or noble fop.

Sir John eased himself into his great chair at the top of the table and gloomily reflected on the past. Yes, his marriage had been an arranged one. Maude Philpott, daughter of a cutler, solemnly betrothed to the young Cranston. Young? He had been fifteen years her senior when they met at the church door but he had been slimmer then, fleet as a greyhound, a veritable Hector on the battlefield and a Paris in the bedchamber. Sir John looked soulfully at his wife who smiled back. Should he raise the matter? Sir John gulped. He dare not. Cranston was frightened of no one; he had the body of a bullock and the heart of a lion. Yet, secretly, he was wary of his miniature, doll-like wife. Oh, she never shouted or threw things at him. Just the opposite. She would sit and answer back, stripping away his pomposity as she would the layers of an onion, before going into a sulk which could last for days.

‘Sir John, all is well?’

‘Yes, My Lady,’ Cranston mumbled.

The maid served dinner: beef stew pie, the pastry crisp and golden. The meat within was garnished with herbs and cooked in a rich onion sauce. Cranston’s mood receded, aided and abetted by two generous cups of claret.

‘You were at the Tower today, Sir John?’

‘Yes, and all the fault of Sir Ralph Whitton, the constable. Last night he had a throat, tonight both throat and life have gone.’

Lady Maude nodded, remarking how she had heard that Sir Ralph was a hard, cruel man.

‘And you, My Lady?’

‘Oh, this morning I did the accounts, and later went to take the air.’

‘Where?’

‘In Cheapside. Why?’

‘You didn’t go to Southwark?’

‘By the Mass, Sir John, no! Why do you ask?’ Cranston shook his head and looked away. He had caught the tremor in her voice. His heart lurched and he splashed his goblet full to the brim with dark red claret.

In the darkness of the Tower, the hospitaller, Gerard Mowbray, walked along the high parapet which stretched between Broad Arrow Tower and Salt Tower on the inner curtain wall. The night wind whipped his grey cropped hair, bit at his ears and cheeks and clawed at the grey robe wrapped round his body. Sir Gerard ignored the cold. He always came here. This was his favourite walk. He would stand and stare into the darkness trying to see the old ruins of Caesar’s time, but not tonight, the mist was too thick. To the north he could glimpse the beacon light in the Tower of St Mary Grace’s, and to the south the fires and torch flames from the Hospital of St Katherine. Sir Gerard looked up at the sky. The clouds were beginning to break, revealing a storm of stars across the heavens. Strange, he thought. In Outremer the stars seemed closer, the velvet darkness of the heavens so near you felt you could stand on tip-toe and pluck the lights from the sky.

Mowbray leaned against the crenellated wall. Oh, they had been happier times! He remembered the hot burning sands outside Alexandria where he, Sir Brian, Sir Ralph, and the others had been a band of carefree knights only too happy to take the gold of the enemy. Mowbray recalled the climax of their campaign. There had been a revolt in Alexandria and the Caliph’s army, Mowbray’s group amongst them, had massed outside the city: the air thick with the beat of their kettledrums, the wind snapping at the huge green banners, and the silver crescents on the standards dazzling in the scorching sunlight. The city had been besieged for months but at last a breach had been forced in one of the walls. He and Sir Brian had gone in first to stand shoulder to shoulder, their comrades around them, a fighting circle of steel slowly edging into the city. Behind them the massed troops of the Caliph, their battle cries rising and falling like a demoniac chorus. The knights had forced their way through the gap and along the wall to the steps leading to the parapet above the main gate.