Paul Doherty - Herald of Hell

Athelstan entered the kitchen, now a hive of activity, and heads turned but little acknowledgement was made. He went down a passageway and had to almost push past Odo Gray and Stretton, who, surly faced and mice-eyed, were making their way along to the refectory. Once he was free of them, Athelstan paused at the foot of the staircase to recall everything he had been told about what had happened the morning Whitfield’s chamber was forced. He imagined Mistress Cheyne, Foxley and the two labourers going up to the gallery, Joycelina quietening the maids and the rest supposedly kept in the refectory under the watchful eye of Griffin. All except for Lebarge, who had apparently slipped away and climbed to the third gallery to listen to the door being forced. Athelstan concentrated on recalling everything Lebarge had told him and felt a tingle of excitement at one fact which did not fit in with the rest.

He climbed the staircase until he reached the third gallery, then stood in the recess as Lebarge must have done and half-cocked his head, as if listening to the sounds from the gallery above. In his mind he listed all he had learnt, comparing and contrasting accounts. He glanced at the sharp-edged, steep set of stairs and imagined Joycelina at the top. Did she trip, was she pushed, or rendered unconscious then thrown down to smash her head and break her neck? He murmured a requiem, crossed himself and made to leave, slipping out of the tavern as quietly as he had arrived.

Athelstan walked quickly down to the riverside, moving into the seedy world of Southwark’s stews and brothels, serving every kind of taste: shabby cook shops and even shabbier alehouses lined the narrow, dark, evil-smelling alleyways. The sun had risen, so the denizens of the mumpers’ castles, the hideaways, secret cellars and dank dungeons were hurrying home, all the night walkers and dark dwellers fleeing from the light. Athelstan glimpsed white, bony faces peering out of tattered cowls or battered hoods. Strumpets of every variety, shaven heads hidden beneath colourful wigs, retreated back into shadow-filled doorways. Traders and hucksters who sold rancid meat, green-tinged bread and rotting vegetables to the very poor, now emptied their slops on to the midden heaps. By nightfall they would have refilled them with whatever scraps they scrounged or stole from the stalls and shops in the city. Funeral processions formed to take their dead to the different requiem masses in this chantry chapel or that. Even in death money mattered. The poor had to club together to send a collection of corpses soaked in pine juice and sheathed in simple canvas or linen sheets on death carts pulled by a couple of old nags with black feathers nodding between their ears. Priests, clothed in purple and gold vestments, moved in clouds of incense whilst altar boys scurried either side ringing handbells as the celebrants intoned the dreadful words from the sequence of the requiem Mass:

‘Oh day of wrath, oh day of mourning,

See fulfilled heaven’s warning …’

This simple plea for heaven’s favour was drowned by the cries and shouts of traders and tinkers, watermen and milkmaids. The screams of whores, the curses of bailiffs, the tramp of booted feet, the neighing of horses and the rattling of carts and barrows all filled the air. Southwark was coming to life. Justice was also making itself felt. The cages for drunkards, rifflers and sleep shatterers were filling rapidly under the strident orders of beadles. The stocks were already full of miscreants fastened tight to receive all the humiliation heaped on them by passers-by. Two hangings had already taken place. House breakers, caught red-handed, now dangled from a twisted tavern sign. Nearby the fraternity of corpse-collectors were busy cleaning up the grisly remains of the river thief, taken and summarily condemned to be decapitated on the corner of a cobbled lane leading down to the quayside.

Athelstan sidestepped the mob gathering around this gruesome sight and strode purposefully on to the wharf. At least here the air was fresher. He eagerly breathed in the salty, fishy tang of the riverside, then found a waiting barge, agreed a price and clambered in. The craft pulled away. Sweaty and still slightly shaken after his confrontation with the mastiffs, Athelstan settled in the hooded stern to recite his rosary. The barge pulled alongside others bobbing on the swell. One drew very close. Athelstan paused in his prayers as a voice intoned: ‘St Dunstan,’ to be answered by a chorus of, ‘Pray for us,’ ‘St Bride,’ ‘Pray for us,’ ‘St Andrew,’ the litany continued. Intrigued, Athelstan stared around the canopy at the barge riding alongside with its small, fluttering banners of St Thomas Becket. He realized the passengers were pilgrims making their way across the river to visit the shrine to Becket’s parents.

‘What are they reciting?’ he asked an oarsman.

‘Why, Brother, the litany of London churches, or rather their patrons.’ He indicated with his grizzled head. ‘They pray for protection from all the churches which line the banks of the Thames, from St Dunstan’s in the west to All Hallows in the east. A common enough practice; the Thames is treacherous, even at the best of times.’

Athelstan sat back, closed his eyes and breathed his own prayer of thanks. He believed that he would never break the cipher but at least he now understood why the saints’ names were listed on that second piece of parchment and the significance of those two triangles. By the time he reached the battlemented gateway leading into the great, cobbled bailey which stretched in front of the black and white timbered Guildhall, Athelstan’s speculations were hardening into a certainty. He disembarked at Queenhithe and strolled like a dream-walker through the streets leading up to Cheapside, so engrossed in his most recent discovery he was only dimly aware of what was happening around him. At first glance it was the usual Cheapside morning: market bailiffs with their white wands of office; scholars, horn-book in hand, making their way to schools in the transepts of different churches. The mixture of fresh, sweet odours from the bakeries mingled with the more pungent ones from the heaped mounds of refuse. This morning, however, was different. The Earthworms had carried out an attack on one of the Barbican houses where weapons were stored, so archers and pikemen still thronged the busy streets, grouped around knights in half-armour on their restless horses. The same was true of the City Council: the mayor and aldermen had whistled up their bully boys, who, dressed in city livery, now thronged the courtyards and buildings of the Guildhall.

Athelstan pushed his way through until he found Cranston’s judgement chamber and chancery office, where Osbert Oswald, his clerk, and Simon Scrivener were busy over an indictment roll. They greeted him warmly enough, offered refreshments which he refused and took him into a small, stark ante-chamber. They assured him that Sir John had received and acted on his messages, but, for the while, the coroner was absent on royal business at the Tower. They both confirmed that certain individuals had been summoned to the Guildhall by mid-afternoon when the market bell signalled the beginning of the final hours of trading.

Athelstan thanked them, content to be left to his own devices. He took out his writing materials and narrow sheets of good vellum, four in all, each with its title, ‘The Herald of Hell’, ‘The Cipher’, ‘The Cross of Lothar’ and one simply titled, ‘Homicide’. He ignored the third: what he had seen, heard and felt at the Golden Oliphant would be left to mature. Instead he turned to the other three but he could make little progress. Athelstan decided he would go and pray. He would sit in the Guildhall chapel and intone the ‘ Veni Creator Spiritus ’ and ask for divine guidance.