Paul Doherty - The Book of Fires

For a brief moment Athelstan saw the anger flare in Rosamund’s eyes, a tightening of the lips and jaw, almost as if she had been struck, then she blinked.

‘Isolda would never use me. I know the truth.’

‘Oh, I am sure you do, but whether you are telling it now is another matter. Vanner? What happened to him?’

‘He disappeared, fled whilst I lay ill.’

‘And your mistress? Did she meet anyone else outside Firecrest Manor? Go into the city on some mysterious errand?’

‘I was her maid,’ Rosamund coolly replied. ‘Where she went I was supposed to follow. Yes, there were occasions when she would not want me to accompany her.’

‘Whom did she meet? The Greeks?’

‘I suspect so. They wanted “The Book of Fires” – my mistress told me so. They promised her gold. But there were other occasions. I think you are correct, Brother – she met someone else apart from the Greeks.’ Rosamund shrugged prettily and glanced away. ‘I don’t know who.’

Athelstan stared down at the ground. This woman was leading him up the devil’s staircase away from the truth. She was telling him a mixture of fable and fact. She would not confess to her true relationship with Isolda nor betray her mistress in any way.

‘Don’t you think it was a coincidence,’ Cranston asked, ‘that you fell so seriously ill on the day Sir Walter was allegedly murdered by his wife?’

‘Sir John, as you say, it was a coincidence. I cannot explain it.’

‘Did lawyer Falke know your mistress before the death of Sir Walter?’

‘No, no, certainly not.’ Rosamund’s relief at the change of direction in the questions was obvious.

‘And Buckholt,’ Athelstan asked, ‘he was sweet on you, yes?’

‘I could not tolerate him. I told him so.’

‘He believes you rejected him because of Isolda?’

‘Nonsense! Buckholt was lewd and greedy for me. I wanted nothing to do with him. He hated my mistress and she despised him.’

‘So Buckholt’s testimony about your mistress and the goblet of posset might have been a lie?’

‘I think it was. The same goes for that little runt of a buttery clerk, Mortice. Lady Isolda truly disliked him. She thought he looked at her lecherously.’

‘And Lady Anne Lesures?’

‘I know very little of her. Kind, considerate, a fairly constant visitor to both the Minoresses and Firecrest Manor. She introduced me there as Lady Isolda’s maid and companion. Lady Anne recognized how close we had been in the nunnery. She believed that after being placed in the Beaumont household I would make a good match.’

‘But not as grand as Sir Walter, you mean, with Steward Buckholt?’

‘Perhaps, but that was Lady Anne, not me. I was devoted to my mistress and made that very clear to Lady Anne. I told Buckholt the same this morning in a Cheapside tavern.’ Athelstan nodded in agreement. He was correct: the only person who mattered to this young woman, whether living or dead, was Lady Isolda.

‘And your origins?’ Cranston asked.

‘I don’t know. I was a foundling and raised as one by the Minoresses.’ Athelstan caught the steel in her reply. Both she and Isolda were of the same spiritual stock. They’d hardly been born when they were given away, whatever the reason, by their own kith and kin, who had rejected them as babies. No one had really cared for them, so why should they care for anyone else? Such an attitude would have bound them closely together. Cranston rose at a rapping at the door. He went, had a few words with someone in the passageway and came back.

‘Parson Garman has returned from the execution ground. He awaits you in the chapel.’ Athelstan turned back to Rosamund. ‘Parson Garman was much smitten with Lady Isolda?’

‘I know nothing of that, Brother.’

‘Did Garman visit Firecrest Manor before the murder?’

‘Yes, he did, but he had business with Sir Walter.’

‘What business?’

‘Ask him yourself, Brother. He’s apparently waiting for you.’

Athelstan stared at the graffiti on the wall and wondered if it hid some secret Isolda kept to herself. He breathed in deeply, there was little prospect of Rosamund telling the full truth. Isolda dead was as influential with this young woman as she was when she was alive. She would say no more. Athelstan got to his feet.

‘Mistress, the keeper will arrange for an escort to take you back to Firecrest Manor. We are finished, at least for the time being.’ Athelstan swept out of the cell, Cranston followed. A guard, waiting in the dank mildewed gallery, led them up a flight of steps into the prison chapel; a barn-like room with a hammer-beam roof, a paved floor and whitewashed plaster walls stretching down to a stark stone altar in the bare sanctuary. Athelstan’s gaze was caught by the myriad small black crosses etched into the plaster walls.

‘Each of those,’ Parson Garman’s voice echoed eerily, ‘represents a human being condemned to death.’ The chaplain emerged from the shadows further down the church. Behind him taper-light danced before a statue of the Virgin. The friar walked over to the white plaster wall. A flaring sconce torch illuminated the hundreds of small hastily etched crosses, a silent but ominous testimony to the legion of condemned who had been brought here before being loaded on to the execution carts. Athelstan blessed the crosses even as Garman beckoned them further down the small narrow nave to a bench against the wall. Cranston and Athelstan sat down, the prison chaplain on a stool opposite them.

‘I am sorry, but I’ve been very busy.’ The chaplain’s dark, close face was drawn, his eyes were red-rimmed and dark stubble darkened his upper lip and square jaw.

‘How many?’ Cranston asked.

‘Five at Tyburn, four at Smithfield and two river pirates on the gallows near Dowgate. Some screamed and begged. Others cursed. A few prayed. All now gone to God.’ He gestured at the wall. ‘All carved crosses, their last memorial on earth. Now,’ he forced a smile, ‘you want to question me. Yet,’ he spread his hands, ‘I have little to say.’

‘How many years have you been chaplain here?’

‘About ten this Pentecost.’

‘You volunteered for this post?’

‘Of course, Brother. Few want it as they would your parish of St Erconwald’s. I understand there’s been a great miracle there?’

‘I do not want to discuss that.’

The chaplain sat back, eyes guarded at the friar’s sharp response.

‘What I want to discuss, Father,’ Athelstan continued, ‘is you. Where were you born?’

‘At Boroughbridge, on the River Ure in North Yorkshire.’

‘I know that place.’ Cranston intervened to ease the tension. ‘My father fought there against Thomas of Lancaster during the reign of the king’s great-grandfather. Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, was speared up the arse as he defended the bridge.’

‘I have heard of such stories,’ Garman responded, ‘though I was born of peasant stock.’

‘And later?’

‘Brother, I journeyed abroad.’

‘No, no,’ Athelstan retorted. ‘I will not accept bland words.’ The friar leaned forward, holding the chaplain’s gaze whilst half-listening to the dire sounds drifting in from the prison. ‘Innocents have been killed, horribly burnt. Royal officials barbarously executed for doing their duty. I will be blunt. You tended to Isolda before she died?’

Garman nodded.

‘But you visited Firecrest Manor long before Sir Walter’s untimely death. I know you did. Why? You are youngish looking, my friend. How old are you?’

‘Fifty-five summers last year past.’

‘Old enough to have served with Sir Walter Beaumont abroad – Black Beaumont, captain of the free company of the Luciferi, men skilled in the use of culverins and other ordnance. You were with him in Constantinople, yes? For God knows what reason, you left his service. You entered the Hospitallers as a lay brother then returned to London, where you were ordained as a priest. You eventually volunteered to serve here as a chaplain, where,’ Athelstan gestured at Cranston, ‘we know you have won a reputation for being partial to the Great Community of the Realm, the Upright Men and their minions, the Earthworms. You give them solace, both spiritual and physical. You also, I suspect, have aided in the escape of a few of these from the fastness of Newgate. No, no, no,’ Athelstan held up a hand, ‘you are not alone, Master Chaplain. I too see the suffering of the poor and the dispossessed. Sometimes, secretly, I also support the cause of the Upright Men. What little else can they do in the face of such stifling oppression? Now that does not concern me, but your travels with Black Beaumont certainly do.’ Athelstan pressed his sandal against Cranston’s boot at the coroner’s surprise at Athelstan’s words. The friar had calculated and gambled. He had voiced his suspicions though he had little hard evidence. ‘So, Master Chaplain, the truth,’ Athelstan smiled, ‘or at least part of it?’