Paul Doherty - Candle Flame

‘And the Papal Inquisitor, Brother Marcel?’

‘What of him?’

‘He has talked to you?’

‘He knows of us. Of course, he presented his credentials to the bishop’s curia but apart from that little else. You know how it is, Brother: no bishop likes interference in his own diocese, whilst there are deep differences between religious and secular clergy.’ Athelstan nodded in agreement: papal and diocesan, foreign and domestic, religious and secular, the different rivalries between clerics were infamous.

‘You agree?’ Tuddenham asked.

‘I recall that quotation from the Book of Proverbs: “Brothers united are as a fortress.” It’s certainly doesn’t apply to us priests, does it? So you have had little to do with our visitor from the Holy Father?’

‘No. He has left us truly alone.’ Tuddenham stretched out a hand. ‘Athelstan, the day is going and so must I. Farewell.’

Athelstan clasped his hand. ‘What will you do?’

‘Seek a fresh benefice. Who knows?’ Tuddenham smiled. ‘I might even go to Blackfriars and become a Dominican.’

Athelstan laughed and watched Tuddenham stride away.

The friar remained where he was. He glimpsed Cranston leading the sheriff’s men into the tavern, bellowing at the top of his voice about the virtues of Thorne’s ale. Athelstan silently sketched a blessing in the coroner’s direction. Cranston would be deeply disturbed by Sparwell’s horrid death. The coroner had a good heart and he would hide his true feelings behind his usual exuberant bonhomie. Athelstan continued to wait. Now calm and composed he recited the ‘De Profundis’ and other prayers for the dead. Athelstan’s mind drifted back to the execution and the glimpses which had caught his eye and quickened his curiosity. He left the shelter and made his way back over the Palisade. Twilight time, the hour of the bat. The light drizzle had begun again. The execution ground was empty. The crowd had dispersed. All that remained of the burning was a mound of smouldering grey-white ash blown about by the breeze and an occasional spark breaking free to rise and vanish in the air. Athelstan murmured a prayer and stared around; there was no one. Strange, he thought, that despite the clamour and the busyness of so many to see a man burn, once he had people became highly fearful of the very place they had fought so hard to occupy only a short while beforehand. Were they frightened of his vengeful ghost or the powerful spirits such a violent death summoned into the affairs of men?

Athelstan, whispering the words of a psalm, walked towards the Barbican. He’d noticed earlier how the door hung off its latch. The fire had certainly ravaged that thick wedge of oak, blackening the wood, searing it deep with ash-filled gouges. The door hung drunkenly on its remaining heavy hinges. Athelstan found it difficult to push back but eventually he did and stepped into the lower chamber. The inside of the Barbican had been truly devastated by the fire. Nothing more than a stone cell, all the woodwork on both stories had simply disintegrated, with the occasional piece left hanging. ‘I was almost murdered here,’ Athelstan whispered to himself. ‘And God knows what evidence that inferno destroyed.’ Thorne had already begun to clear away the rubbish. Athelstan peered around; the light was murky but he noticed the deep, black stain on the far wall where refuse was still piled. The place, Athelstan reasoned, where the fire had probably started. He carefully made his way across and, taking a stick, began to sift amongst the rubbish. Athelstan paused at the clear stench of oil. He crouched, poked again and caught the same odour. He dropped the stick in surprise, rubbing his hands together to clear the dust. ‘I wonder,’ he declared. ‘I truly do but let us wait and see.’ A sound from outside alerted him. He rose and quietly turned to stand in the shadow of the main doorway. He looked out and, despite the deepening twilight, glimpsed two people, a man and a woman, both cloaked against the cold, digging and scraping around the execution stake. They worked feverishly and, once they were finished, hurried off into the darkness. Athelstan watched them go and followed them, pausing now and again so that he entered the tavern by himself.

Cranston was in the Dark Parlour roistering with the sheriff’s men, regaling them with stories about his military service in France. Athelstan raised a hand in greeting and moved around the tavern, noting where everything was. Servants bustled by, now used to his presence and constant curiosity. Athelstan entered the spacious, cobbled tavern yard with its different buildings: smithy, stables, storerooms and wash house. As he passed the latter, a door was flung open and a woman bustled out with a tub of dirty water, which she tipped on to the cobbles.

‘Good evening, Father,’ she called out. ‘So many guests, so much to wash.’ She made to go back. ‘Oh, by the way, Father, are all you monks the same?’

‘I beg your pardon, mistress, but I am a friar.’

‘Just like the other one,’ the woman replied.

‘Brother Marcel?’

‘Yes, that’s him. Ever so clean, he is. Fresh robes every day and of the purest wool.’ She gestured at Athelstan’s dirt-stained robe. ‘Not like yours. But you see, pure wool is difficult to wash. Not that I am complaining …’ And the woman promptly disappeared back into the wash house. Athelstan was about to walk on when he remembered his conversation with the maid at The Golden Oliphant. He hastened back into the Dark Parlour, nodding at Roger and Marcel, who were closeted together in a window seat. At another table, Sir Robert Paston, Martha and Foulkes were deep in conversation. The friar tried to catch Cranston’s eye but failed. Sir John was now lecturing the sheriff’s men on the Black Prince’s campaign in Spain. Athelstan felt a touch on his arm. Eleanor, Thorne’s wife, beckoned at him pleadingly. Athelstan followed her out of the taproom into the small, well-furnished buttery, where her husband sat at the top of the table with Mooncalf beside him. Athelstan took a stool.

‘Master Thorne, mistress, what can I do? Why do you-?’

‘This.’ Thorne undid his wallet and placed six miniature caltrops on the table, very small but cruelly spiked barbs no bigger than polished pebbles. Athelstan picked one up and scrutinized it carefully. Once he had, he sent Mooncalf into the taproom to ask Sir John to join them urgently. He waited until the coroner swaggered in, face all red, lips smacking, in one hand a piece of capon pie, in the other a blackjack of ale. Cranston sat at the far end of the table toasting them all until he glimpsed the caltrops.

‘Satan’s tits,’ he breathed, putting down both food and drink. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve clapped eyes on such vicious instruments. Where did you find them?’

‘Let me explain.’ Eleanor Thorne, despite all her pretty ways, was now cold and determined. ‘On the night of the murders, my husband left our bed.’

‘Why?’ Athelstan asked.

‘I …’

‘Simon.’ Eleanor indicated that she would answer for him. ‘Well, we were both concerned about the goings and comings in our tavern. Earlier in the evening Mooncalf had glimpsed someone slip out of the stables.’

‘A mere shadow,’ the ostler added. Athelstan studied Mooncalf’s pocked and shaven face, his rough voice and leather garb all splattered with mud. The friar had promised himself to have close words with Mooncalf, though not now – that would have to wait.

‘A mere shadow?’ Athelstan repeated.

‘Mooncalf informed me.’ Thorne wiped his hands on a napkin and picked at the minced chicken on the platter before him. ‘I went down to the stableyard but I could not find anything wrong, yet you know how it is, Sir John. Like it was in the fields of Normandy when you can see or hear no enemy but you know they are close by. I was uneasy. I checked the horses but could discover nothing. After I retired, what with Marsen and his coven carousing and others moving about the tavern, I still remained agitated about the stables. I couldn’t rest.’ He waved a hand. ‘I went down again. I was away some time but I truly searched, yet all remained quiet. The horses were having their evening feed, saddles and harnesses were hung drying after the day’s rain. I found this close by.’ Thorne tossed across a pouch. Athelstan examined it, battered and empty, the ragged neck pulled tight by a filthy cord. ‘I wondered why it was lying there and who had dropped it. I continued my search but I eventually gave up. What with the hideous murders, the deaths here, I didn’t give it a second thought until this morning. I was preparing to send back Marsen and Mauclerc’s possessions to Master Thibault. I decided to clean the harnesses of their horses. I brought the saddles down from their rests and discovered these caltrops embedded deep in the woollen underbelly of both Marsen and Mauclerc’s saddles.’