Paul Harding - Field of Blood

'It's the grimoire,' she explained, taking a seat at the top. 'Now, when William Fitzwolfe, the former priest, had this bound he used parts of the old blood book and different parish records to stiffen the binding.'

Athelstan sat down at the table. Benedicta had undone the red binding which held the grimoire together, loosened the pages and pulled these apart.

'It was when I looked at the cover I noticed how thick it was.'

Athelstan picked it up. It was nothing more than a strip of leather laid out flat and strongly reinforced with a thick wadge of parchment glued together at the edges and then placed against the leather to strengthen it. He leafed through the pages. He saw entries: 'Fulke, son of Thurston the labourer and Hawisia his wife …' Athelstan smiled: that was Watkin's father. Page after page was filled with these faded, scrawled ink entries made by successive priests over the years.

'Now, look at this!' Benedicta took the pages from him and pointed to one entry already marked with a piece of ash from the fireplace. 'If you check again, Brother, you will find that these two women are the great-grandmothers, respectively, of Joscelyn the tavern-keeper and Basil the blacksmith. They were apparently married on the same day.'

Athelstan read the entry on Agnes Fitz-Joscelyn and Ann, daughter of William the warrener.

'They definitely had different fathers,' Athelstan said. 'But they are described as "sorores", sisters, in the marriage entry.'

'Ah yes.'

Benedicta took the parchment from him. She leafed through and showed another entry. This time the page had a title, written neatly by a learned clerk: 'The Confraternity of St Erconwald'. The first column listed 'brothers of the Confraternity', the second a similar list of 'sisters'. Agnes Fitz-Joscelyn and Ann, daughter of William the warrener, were grouped together as 'sisters'.

Sir John, who had been looking over his shoulder, chuckled.

'You've told me about this problem, Brother.' He tapped the parchment. 'And there's your answer. In my treatise "On the Governance of this City", I have come across many such confraternities. At one time they were very strong in different parishes. The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, the Confraternity of the Angels, the Confraternity of St Luke.'

Athelstan gazed wistfully at the piece of parchment.

'It's a very good idea,' he said. 'And there must have been one here: the Confraternity of St Erconwald's. What I suspect happened is this. Agnes and Ann were bosom friends: that's apparent from the fact that they married on the same day. They were also members, perhaps leading ones, of the parish confraternity. They called each other sister. When the blood book dis­appeared there was no explanation for why they did this. The Venerable Veronica was speaking the truth. These two women lived and died many years ago. All Veronica could remember is that they called each other sister, hence the mistake.'

'Benedicta!'

The widow woman backed away from Sir John who came, arms stretched out, towards her.

'You should have been a coroner. I mean, after all, you can't be a friar.'

'Benedicta,' Athelstan echoed. 'Your sharp eyes and keen wit have made two young lovers very, very happy'

'Will that mean there's going to be more feasting?' Crim spoke up from where he stood just within the doorway.

'Oh, yes,' Athelstan replied. 'Feasting and dancing, Crim. Now, haste away. Don't tell them what we've found but bring Eleanor and Oswald here!'

Chapter 12

Alice Brokestreet was unaware that she was only minutes away from the death she thought she had so cleverly cheated. She sat in her cell of the gatehouse at Newgate and contemplated the table bearing a pewter jug, cup and a trauncher covered with a linen cloth: gifts, the gaoler had said, from a benefactor. Deciding these could wait, she got up and went to the window to look down into the yard. Fowls and pigs roamed freely about; fierce-looking dogs preyed on the garbage heaps, competing with marauding crows. These scattered as huge vats of water, used for washing, were emptied out to cleanse the yard.

Alice was about to turn away when she noticed two bailiffs drag a cunning man out from the dun­geons on the far side. The man was to be branded as a forger, the letter 'F' burned into his cheek. The executioners trailed out after him, their branding-irons already red-hot. One of the bailiffs hastily read out how 'Richard Bracklett, forger, perjurer, had sold false relics, including a piece of Elijah's mantle, two legs of one of the Holy Innocents, a skull of one of the Eleven Thousand Virgins from Cologne.'

'Yet,' the bailiff bawled across the yard, 'the said Richard knew that these were nothing but items of rubbish and the certificates he bore were forged.'

Alice turned away as the executioner advanced on the pinioned man, closing her ears to the terrible screams which rang up from the yard. She sat down on the bed. She was nervous. Tomorrow morning she would be taken into court and the case against Kathryn Vestler would be presented.

'All I have to do,' she murmured, 'is tell the truth.' She smiled to herself. 'Well, as I see it!'

She would repeat her story. How Kathryn Vestler, full of frustrated passion, poisoned the clerk Bartholomew Menster and the tavern wench, Margot Haden, and forced her, Alice, to help her bury them out in Black Meadow.

She breathed in. She felt safe with Master Whittock, that hawk-eyed man with his searching eyes and harsh, guttural voice. He had learned a surprising amount about the Paradise Tree and its owner: stories of hidden treasure, of visitors at night. Time and again he'd refer to other evidence. Time and again he would make her repeat her story. Alice chewed her lip. She had been promised a pardon but was there something else? Whittock had been deeply interested in the stories about the hidden treasure of Gundulf. She had seen Whittock wet his lips and noticed the gleam in his eyes. If Mistress Vestler hanged, she wondered, would the serjeant-at-law buy the tavern and continue the search?

Alice felt her stomach rumble. She went and took the linen cloth from the trauncher revealing a pastry. Then she removed the piece of parchment over the jug and filled the tin cup. Taking that and the pastry, she sat on a stool and began to eat. She also drank rather quickly so the poison in the wine soon made its presence felt with searing pains in her belly which ran up into her chest, sealing off her throat. Alice dropped the cup, spilling the dregs out on to her gown. She staggered towards the door but the pain was dagger-sharp, she couldn't breathe and collapsed on the floor. She stretched out her hand, opened her mouth to scream but no sound came. All she could think of, strangely enough, was Black Meadow, that great oak tree and those graves beneath it.

In St Erconwald's the celebrations were well under way. Athelstan had informed the happy couple that he could now see no impediment to their marriage: at Mass, the following Sunday, he would proclaim their forthcoming nuptials for all to hear. Eleanor and Oswald fairly danced with joy and the news had quickly spread. The Piebald tavern was closed. Basil the blacksmith did the same with his forge. Watkin and Pike, only too eager to hurry from their work, also spread the good news and the parishioners thronged in front of the church steps. Athelstan, Sir John smiling beatifically beside him, announced that they would not pay the fine. The assassins responsi­ble for the murder of Miles Sholter had been unmasked and were now already lodged in the King's prison of Newgate.

'We'll have a celebration!' Pike shouted.