Paul Doherty - House of the Red Slayer

Cranston shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Both doors were still locked; the guards unlocked one, let him through and then locked it again. Apparently Geoffrey went down the passageway, knocked and tried to rouse Sir Ralph. He failed to do this so came back for the guards who opened Sir Ralph’s room. Inside they found the constable sprawled on his bed, his throat cut and the wooden shutters of his window flung wide open.’ Cranston turned and spat, clearing his throat. ‘One other thing — the guards would never allow anyone through without a rigorous body search, and that included young Geoffrey. No dagger was found on him nor any knife in the room.’

‘What was Sir Ralph so fearful of?’

Cranston shook his head. ‘God knows! But there’s a fine array of suspects. His lieutenant, Gilbert Colebrooke, was on bad terms and wanted Sir Ralph’s post for himself. There’s the chaplain, William Hammond, whom Sir Ralph caught selling food stocks from the Tower stores. Two friends of Sir Ralph’s, hospitaller knights, came as they usually did to spend Christmas with him. Finally there’s a pagan, a mute body servant, a Saracen whom Sir Ralph picked up whilst crusading in Outremer.’

Athelstan pulled his hood closer as the cold wind nipped the corners of his ears. ‘Cui bono?’ he asked.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Cicero’s famous question: “Who profits?”’

Cranston pursed his lips. ‘A good question, my dear friar. Which brings us to Sir Ralph’s brother, Sir Fulke Whitton. He stands to inherit some of his brother’s estate.’

Cranston fell silent, half closing his eyes and gently burping after the good breakfast he had eaten. Athelstan, however, prided himself on knowing the fat coroner as well as the palm of his own hand.

‘Well, Sir John,’ he needled, ‘there is more, is there not?’

Cranston opened his eyes. ‘Of course there is. Whitton was not liked by the court, nor by the Londoners, nor by the peasants.’

Athelstan felt his heart sink. They had been down this road on numerous occasions.

‘You think it may be the Great Community?’ he asked.

Cranston nodded. ‘It could be. And, remember, Brother, some of your parishioners may be part of it. If the Great Community acts and revolt spreads, the rebels will try to seize the Tower. Whoever controls it controls the river, the city, Westminster and the crown.’

Athelstan pulled the reins closer to him and reflected on what Cranston had said. Matters were not going well in London. The king was a child; John of Gaunt, his uncle, a highly unpopular Regent. The court was dissolute, whilst the peasants were taxed to the hilt and tied to the soil by cruel laws. For some time there had been whispers, rumours carried like leaves on a strong breeze, of how peasants in Kent, Middlesex and Essex had formed a secret society called the Great Community. How its leaders were plotting rebellion and a march on London. Athelstan even vaguely knew one of these leaders — John Ball, a wandering priest; the man was so eloquent he could turn the most placid of peasants into an outright rebel by mouthing phrases such as: ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’ Was Whitton’s death a preamble to all this? Athelstan wondered. Were any of his parishioners involved? He knew they met in the ale-houses and taverns and, God knew, had legitimate grievances. Harsh taxes and savage laws were cruel enough to provoke a saint to rebellion. And if the revolt came, what should he do? Side with the authorities or, like many priests, join the rebels? He looked sidelong at Cranston. The coroner seemed lost in his own thoughts and once again the friar detected an air of sadness about him.

‘Sir John, is there anything wrong?’

‘No, no,’ the coroner mumbled.

Athelstan left him alone. Perhaps, he concluded, Sir John had drunk too deeply the night before.

They moved down a snow-covered Tower street past the church where a poor beadsman knelt making atonement for some sin; the hands clutching his rosary beads were frost-hardened and Athelstan winced at some of the penances his fellow priests imposed on their parishioners. Sir John blew his breath out so it hung like incense in the cold air.

‘By the sod!’ he muttered. ‘When will the sun come again?’

They had turned into Petty Wales when suddenly a woman’s voice, clear and lilting, broke into one of Athelstan’s favourite carols. They stopped for a moment to listen then crossed the ice-glazed square. Above them soared the Tower’s sheer snow-capped walls, turrets, bastions, bulwarks and crenellations. A mass of carved stone, the huge fortress seemed shaped not to defend London but to overawe it.

‘A very narrow place,’ Cranston muttered. ‘The House of the Red Slayer’. He looked quizzically at Athelstan. ‘Our old friends Death and Murder lurk here.’

Athelstan shivered and not just from the cold. They crossed the drawbridge. Beneath them the moat; its water and the dirty green slime which always covered it, were frozen hard. They went through the black arch of Middle Tower. The huge gateway stood like an open mouth, its teeth the half-lowered iron portcullis. Above them the severed heads of two pirates taken in the Channel grinned down. Athelstan breathed a prayer.

‘God defend us,’ he muttered, ‘from all devils, demons, scorpions, and those malignant spirits who dwell here!’

‘God defend me against the living!’ Cranston quipped back. ‘I suspect Satan himself weeps at the evil we get up to!’

The gateway was guarded by sentries who stood under the narrow vaulted archway, wrapped in brown serge cloaks.

‘Sir John Cranston, Coroner!’ he bellowed. ‘I hold the King’s writ. And this is my clerk, Brother Athelstan, who for his manifest sins is also parish priest of St Erconwald’s in Southwark. A place,’ the coroner grinned at the outrage in Athelstan’s face, ‘where virtue and vice rub shoulders and shake hands.’

The sentries nodded, reluctant to move because of the intense cold. Athelstan and Cranston continued past By-ward Tower and up a cobbled causeway where their horses slithered and slipped on the icy stones. They turned left at Wakefield Tower, going through another of the concentric circles of defences, on to Tower Green. This was now carpeted by a thick white layer of snow which also covered the great machines of war lying there — catapults, battering rams, mangonels and huge iron-ringed carts. On their right stood a massive half-timbered great hall with other rooms built on to it. A sentry half dozed on the steps and didn’t even bother to look up as Cranston roared for assistance. A snivelling, red-nosed groom hurried down to take their horses whilst another led them up the steps and into the great hall. Two rough-haired hunting dogs snuffled amongst the mucky rushes. One of them almost cocked a leg against Sir John and growled as the coroner lashed out with his boot.

The hall itself was a large sombre room with a dirty stone floor and brooding, heavy beams. Against the far wall was a fireplace wide enough to roast an ox. The grate was piled high with logs but the chimney must have needed cleaning for some of the smoke had escaped back into the hall to swirl beneath the rafters like a mist. The early morning meal had just been finished; scullions were clearing the table of pewter and wooden platters. In one corner, two men were idly baiting a badger with a dog and other groups were huddled round the fire. Athelstan gazed around. The heavy pall of death hung over the room. He recognised its stench, the suspicion and unspoken terrors which always followed a violent, mysterious slaying. One of the figures near the fire rose and hurried across as Cranston bellowed his title once again. The fellow was tall and lanky, red-haired, with eyes pink-lidded and devoid of lashes. An aquiline nose dominated his half-shaven, lantern-shaped face.