Paul Doherty - House of the Red Slayer

‘You wish some refreshment?’ she murmured.

Cranston was about to reply but Athelstan intervened.

‘No, My Lady. This matter is urgent. Where is your husband?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘That terrible message arrived this morning and Sir Adam left immediately afterwards. He said he was going upriver to the warehouses.’ She clenched her hands tightly. ‘I have sent messages there but the boy returned and said my husband had already left. Sir John, what is the matter?’ Her tired eyes pleaded with the coroner. ‘What does this all mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ he lied. ‘But your husband, Lady Horne, is in terrible danger. Does anyone know where he has gone?’

The woman bowed her head, her shoulders shaking with sobs. Benedicta rose and crouched beside her, stroking her hands gently.

‘Lady Horne, please,’ Athelstan persisted. ‘Do you know anything about the message or why your husband was so frightened?’

The woman shook her head. ‘No, but Adam was never at peace.’ She looked up. ‘Oh, he was a man of great wealth but at night he would awake screaming about foul, bloody murder, his body coated in sweat. Sometimes he would tremble for at least an hour, but never once did he confide in me.’

Cranston stared across at Athelstan and made a face. The friar looked at the hour candle which stood on the table behind him.

‘Sir John,’ he whispered, getting up, ‘it’s almost seven o’clock. We must go!’

‘Lady Horne.’ The merchant’s wife was about to rise but Cranston gently touched her on the shoulder. ‘Stay and keep warm, the maid will see us out. If your husband returns, tell him to come to my house. It’s not far. You promise?’

The woman nodded before looking away into the dying embers of the fire.

Outside Cranston stamped his feet, clapping his hands together. ‘That woman,’ he observed, ‘is terrified. I suspect she knows the source of her husband’s wealth, but what can we do? Horne could be anywhere in the city.’

Athelstan shrugged. ‘Sir John, Benedicta and I must go to Fleet prison. We promised the parish we would visit Simon the carpenter.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Cranston replied tartly. ‘The murderer.’

‘You will go home?

Sir John stared into the gathering darkness. He would have loved to but what was the use? All he’d do was sit and drink himself stupid.

‘Sir John,’ Athelstan repeated, ‘the Lady Maude will be waiting for you.’

‘No,’ Cranston answered stubbornly. ‘I’ll go to the Fleet with you. Perhaps I can help.’

Athelstan glanced at Benedicta and raised his eyes heavenwards. The friar wanted Sir John to go; he was tired of the coroner’s constant bad temper and sudden bouts of fury. He loved the fat knight but on this occasion dearly wished to see the back of him. Nevertheless, he agreed. They walked through the blood-stained slush of the Shambles, holding their noses against the sickening putrid smells from the slaughter houses, and turned left into Old Deans Lane, a narrow alleyway ankle-deep in muck which ran between dark, overhanging houses. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked mournfully. At the corner of Bowyers Row they stood aside as a huge, wooden wagon rolled by, pulled by four horses, their manes hogged, eyes blinkered and nostrils flaring at the corrupting smell of death. The horses’ hooves and the wheels of the cart were muffled in straw so that it seemed to glide like a terrible phantasm. On one corner of the cart a torch flared, throwing the driver into ghastly relief as he sat cloaked and hooded, a grim death mask over his face.

‘What is it?’ Benedicta asked.

She brought up the hem of her cloak to cover her nose. Athelstan sketched a sign of the cross in the air and prayed the cart would continue, but it stopped alongside them. The driver tried to quieten the horses as two screeching cats, fighting over some vermin, scurried out of the shadows. Cranston knew what was in the cart. He had recognised the driver as the hangman from Tyburn.

‘Don’t look,’ he whispered.

But Benedicta, her curiosity aroused, leaned on Athelstan’s arm and, standing on tiptoe, peered over the rim of the cart. She stared in horror at the whitened, frozen cadavers which lay there under a tattered, canvas sheet. Their limbs hung all awry but round the neck of each was a thick, purple line, while the purple-red faces were contorted, swollen tongues held fast between ice-cold lips, eyes rolled back in the sockets.

‘Oh, sweet Lord!’ she breathed, and leaned against the wall as the driver cracked his whip and the cart rolled on.

‘What was that?’

‘The hanged from the Elms,’ Cranston answered. ‘At night the corpses are cut down and taken to the great lime pits near Charterhouse.’ He glared at the widow. ‘I told you not to look!’

Benedicta retched before, resting on Athelstan’s arm, following Cranston through Ludgate and up towards the Fleet.

The prison did little to lighten their mood: grey frowning walls with a few sombre buildings peeping above them, and a black gateway with an arch which yawned as if it wished to devour any unfortunate who approached it. Cranston pulled at the bell and they were allowed through a wicket gate built into the ponderous door. A gaoler led them into the porter’s lodge, the fellow bowing and scraping as he recognised Sir John. Athelstan was pleased then that the coroner had accompanied them. They went through a large hall where the debtors were jailed, furnished with side benches of oak and two long tables of the same wood, all covered in greasy filth. The people gathered around them were dirty and foul-smelling, men and women wearing threadbare jerkins and tattered cloaks. They pushed their way through the hall and up a stone-flagged passageway, past grated windows where poor debtors shook their begging bowls through the bars and whined for alms.

At last they went down slimy, cracked steps into the Hall of the Damned, the condemned hold, a massive, vaulted cellar with dungeons in the far wall.

‘Who is it you wish to see?’ the porter snapped.

‘Simon the carpenter.’

The porter hurried across, chose a key and unlocked one of the doors.

‘Come on, Simon!’ he bawled. ‘A rare treat! London’s own coroner, a friar and a fair lady. Who could ask for more?’

Simon crept from the cell. Athelstan hardly recognised him: his face was a mass of sores, his hair long and matted with filth and vermin. The man’s clothing had been reduced to rags and he was loaded with fetters. Simon shuffled awkwardly towards them, lifting his manacled hands to push his hair back. His lips were blue with the cold and his eyes, above sallow sunken cheeks, bright with fever.

‘Father, you have brought a pardon?’ he asked hopefully.

Athelstan shook his head. ‘No, I am sorry. I just came to visit you, Simon. Is there anything I can do?’

The carpenter looked at him, then at Benedicta and, throwing back his head, laughed hysterically until the porter struck him across the face. The condemned man slumped to the floor, crouching like a beaten dog. Athelstan knelt beside him.

‘Simon!’ he murmured. ‘Simon!’

The carpenter raised his head.

‘Do you wish to be shriven? I will hear your confession.’

The man looked up despairingly.

‘There’s nothing left,’ Athelstan whispered. ‘This time tomorrow, Simon, you will be with God.’

The carpenter nodded and began to cry like a child. Athelstan turned.

‘Sir John, Benedicta, please, give me a moment.’

They withdrew. The coroner bawled at the porter to follow them and, for the second time that day, Athelstan heard the confession of a man about to meet Death. At first, Simon spoke slowly and Athelstan had to fight hard to keep his composure as the chill of the dungeons seeped through his robe, turning his legs to blocks of ice, but then Simon allowed his emotions full rein. He talked of everything, a miserable litany of failure culminating in the rape of a child. Athelstan heard him out, pronounced absolution and rose, rubbing his stiff legs to make the warmth return. The porter came back.