Paul Doherty: The Nightingale Gallery

'The crowd is too great,' Sir John commented. 'It would be quicker on foot.'

He paid for ostlers to take the horses away and, with Athelstan striding beside him, they made their way up Fish Hill past St Magnus the Martyr church and into Cheapside. The good weather had brought the crowds out. Apprentices and merchants, their stalls now laid ready for trade, scurried backwards with bales of cloth, leather pelts, purses, panniers, jerkins. They piled their stalls high, eager for a day's business. The ground underfoot was a mixture of mud, human dung and animal decay, still damp from the storm. They slipped and slid, each holding on to the other, Cranston mouthing a mixture of curses and warnings, Athelstan wondering whether to protest or smile at Sir John's purple countenance and violent imprecations. The dung carts were out picking up the refuse left the day before. The burly, red-faced carters, swathed in a collection of garish rags, shouted and swore, their oaths hanging heavy in the thick, warm air. As Cranston and Athelstan passed they heard one of the dung-collectors give a cry for them to stop working as a corpse was rolled out from behind the buttress of an old house. Athelstan stopped. He glimpsed straggly, white hair, a face sunken in death, the, skeletal fingers of an elderly lady. Cranston looked at him and shrugged.

'She is dead, Brother,' he said. 'What can we do?'

Athelstan sketched a sign of the cross in the air and said a prayer that Christ, wherever he was, would receive the old woman's soul.

They went down past the Standard and the Conduit gaol with its open bars where courtesans and bawds caught plying their trade at night, stood for a day whilst being pelted with dirt and cursed by any passing citizen. Cranston asked him a question and Athelstan was about to reply when the stench from the poultry stalls suddenly made him gag: that terrible odour of stale flesh, rotting giblets and dried blood. Athelstan let Cranston chatter on as he held his breath, head down as he passed Scalding Alley where the gutted bodies of game birds were being cleaned and washed in great wooden vats of boiling hot water. At the Rose tavern on a corner of an alleyway they stopped to let a ward constable push by, leading a group of night felons, hands tied behind their backs, halters round their necks. These unfortunates were bound for the Poultry Compter, most of them still drunk, half asleep after their late night revels and roistering. The prisoners slipped and shoved each other. One young man was shouting how the Constables had taken his boots and his feet were already gashed and scarred. Athelstan pitied them.

'The gaol's so hot,' the friar murmured, 'it will either waken or kill them before Evensong.'

Cranston shrugged and pushed his way through like a great, fat-bellied ship. They walked on past Old Jewry into Mercery where the streets became more thronged. The women there moved gingerly, skirts brushing the mud, their hands on the arms of gallants who walked the streets looking for such custom, in their high hats, taffeta cloaks, coloured hose and dirty-edged lace shirts.

The paths became softer underfoot as the sewer running down the middle had begun to spill over, choked to the top with the refuse dumped there by householders cleaning the night soil from their chambers. The road narrowed as they passed Soper Lane. The heavy, tiered houses closed in. Dogs barked and frenetically chased the cats hunting amongst the piles of refuse heaped outside each doorway. The crowd now thronged into an array of colour; the blues, golds, yellows and scarlets of the rich contrasting sharply with the brown frocks, russet smocks and black, greasy hats of the farmers who made their way from city market to city market, pulling their small carts behind them. The noise grew to a resounding din. Apprentices were busy yelling and screaming as they searched for custom. The taverns and cook shops were open, the smell of dark ale, fresh bread and spiced food enticing the customers inside. Cranston stopped and Athelstan groaned softly.

'Oh, Sir John,' he pleaded, 'surely not refreshments so early in the day? You know what will happen. Once inside, it will take the devil himself to get you out!'

Athelstan sighed with relief as the coroner shook his head regretfully and they moved on. A party of sheriffs men appeared, dressed in their bands of office, carrying long white canes which they used to clear a way through the crowds. They circled a man in a black leather jerkin and hose. His hands were bound, the ends of the cord being tied around the wrists of two of his captors. The prisoner's jerkin was torn aside to reveal a tattered shirt. His unshaven face was a mass of bruises from brow to chin. Someone whispered, 'Warlock! Wizard!' An apprentice picked up handfuls of mud and threw them, only to receive whacks across his shoulders from the white canes.

'Make way! Make way!'

Cranston and Athelstan walked on, past the stocks already full with miscreants: a pedlar; a manservant caught in lechery; a foister; and two other pickpockets. At last they turned off the Holborn thoroughfare into Castle Yard. A pleasant place, the houses being fewer, better spaced, each ringed by sweet-smelling rose gardens and tree-filled orchards. Fortescue's house was the grandest, standing in its own grounds, a massive framework of black timber, thick and broad as oaks, gilded and embossed with intricate devices. Between the black beams the white plaster gleamed like pure snow. Each of the four storeys jutted out slightly over the one on which it rested and each had windows of mullioned glass, reinforced with strips of lead. Cranston lifted the great brass knocker shaped in the form of a knight's gauntlet and brought it down hard. A servant answered and, when Cranston boomed out who they were, ushered them through the open door into a dark panelled hall with woollen carpets on the floor and gold-tinged drapes on the wall.

Athelstan noticed how cool the place was as they were led up an oak staircase and into a long gallery, so dark the wax candles in their silver holders had already been lit.

The servant tapped on one of the doors.

'Come in!' The voice was soft and cultured.

The chamber inside was rectangular in shape, walls painted red with silver stars and the polished tile floor covered with rugs; candles also glowed here because the light was poor and the mullioned window high above the desk was small. The candles bathed the area round the great oak desk in a pool of light. Chief Justice Fortescue, enthroned behind it, barely moved as they entered. One beringed hand continued silently to drum the top of the desk while the other shuffled documents about. Like all his kind, Fortescue was a tall, severe man, completely bald, with features as sharp as a knife and eyes as hard as flint. He greeted Sir John Cranston with forced warmth but, when Athelstan introduced himself and described his office, the Chief Justice smiled chillingly, dismissing him with a flicker of his eyes.

'Most uncommon,' he murmured, 'for a friar to be out of his order even, and serving in such a lowly office!'

Cranston snorted rudely and would have intervened if Athelstan had not.

'Chief Justice Fortescue,' he answered, 'my business is my own. You summoned me here, I requested no audience.'

Cranston belched loudly in agreement.

'True! True!' Fortescue murmured. 'But this meeting was arranged by someone more powerful than I.' He smiled mirthlessly and picked up a knife he used for cutting parchment, balancing it delicately between his hands. 'We live in strange times, Brother. The old king is dead and for the first time in fifty years we have a new king, and he a child. These are dangerous times. Enemies within and enemies without!' He lowered his voice. 'Some people say that a strong man is needed to manage the realm.'