Paul Doherty - Murder Most Holy

Cranston stamped his feet and looked away, blinking furiously so Athelstan couldn’t see the tears which pricked his eyes. At last he turned, crouched, picked up his cloak and looked Athelstan straight in the face.

‘You’re a funny bugger, monk!’

‘I know, Sir John, it’s the company I keep!’

Cranston threw his cloak over his shoulder and swaggered down the aisle.

‘I’ll be in the Piebald,’ he called out over his shoulder. ‘Don’t keep me waiting. I know you stingy priests. You always like others to buy your ale!’ He walked out of the church, the door crashing to behind him.

Athelstan smiled, kissed Bonaventure between the ears and stared round the sanctuary. He suddenly caught sight of Huddle’s painting on the sanctuary wall, etched out in broad vigorous strokes of charcoal. Athelstan peered closer. ‘What the. .?’ He put Bonaventure down, took a tinder, lit a candle and walked over to the wall to study the painting more closely.

Huddle had roughed out the scene where Mary and the baby Jesus meet her cousin Elizabeth and the infant John the Baptist. Athelstan looked at the figures and began to chuckle. Benedicta was the Virgin Mary; he was Saint Joseph; Watkin the dung-collector’s wife was Elizabeth; Pike the ditcher an onlooker; Tab the tinker a soldier. Herod the Great was none other than a fat-faced, bewhiskered Sir John Cranston. He even had a miraculous wineskin peeping out from beneath his cloak. Philomel was there, Cecily the courtesan, Crim, Ursula the pig woman, and even her sow. However, what really caught Athelstan’s attention were the infant Jesus and John the Baptist: Huddle’s genius had depicted them with bald heads, staring eyes, fat cheeks, podgy arms and legs — in fact, as Cranston’s two beloved poppets.

Athelstan, shaking with laughter, blew out the candle and walked from the church to join Sir John in the Piebald tavern.