Athelstan caught his breath as a cold sweat broke out.
‘Nothing.’ He breathed in deeply. ‘Nothing for the moment.’
FOUR
‘Jurat: a sworn man.’
On that same Saturday, Sir John Cranston sat in his judgement chamber in the great Guildhall overlooking Cheapside. He eased himself up in his leather-covered throne-like chair and glared around. He’d had tried to make this chamber as comfortable as possible. Triptychs from Genoa celebrating the scenes of the Lord’s Passion rendered in glowing colours hung alongside tapestries displaying the Arms of the city and the livery of the Cranston family. He caught sight of the Cross of San Damiano, a replica of the one St Francis of Assisi had prayed before. Cranston stopped his quiet cursing and blessed himself. He glanced at the claret jug and goblet on the polished dresser beneath the crucifix but shook his head. He would not drink, not now! Sir John opened the thick, leather-bound ledger before him and stared at the litany of human weakness and wickedness drawn up for his inspection by Osbert, his chancery clerk, and Simon the scrivener. One long, cream-coloured sheet listed the weapons seized that week: daggers, blades, cudgels and quarter staves, pike staves, crooked billets, pole-axes and halberds. ‘London’s like a battlefield,’ Cranston whispered.
The next folio contained grimmer entries. The murder of a poor girl by a man and his wife just for the clothes the young woman wore. Elena Hellebore, convicted for smashing a chaplain’s head after he’d called her a ‘tread-foul’, a slang term for a whore. Agnes Houdy, who’d strangled a drunk with his own belt so she could have his boots. Henry Staci, for causing the death of Margaret Privet ‘other than her own natural death’. Next was William Hammond.
‘You’re an interesting one,’ Cranston murmured. According to the entry William’s wife Marisa was burnt to death by a fire caused by the fall of a lighted candle as she and her husband prepared for bed. Both had escaped from the burning tenement but William was so angry at his wife for causing the fire through her own negligence he pushed her back into the flames and tried to flee for sanctuary to St Martin-Le-Grand. Beside each of these entries the scrivener had written ‘susp’ in red ink — ‘ suspenditur— hanged’. The next page listed all the fatal accidents in the city. A robber at St Paul’s wharf who’d been recognized by his victims whom he’d attacked on the Brentwood Road. The outlaw had tried to escape, fallen into the Thames and drowned. Other entries listed victims being killed by a horse, falling timber, scalding water tossed from a window or arrows loosed at Stepney, not to mention the drunk who drowned after jumping into the great sewer near Fleet or the two carpenters who’d tumbled from ladders at the Savoy Palace. The final entry made Cranston groan. He’d returned from St Fulcher’s and presented himself at John of Gaunt’s inner chamber at the Savoy. The Regent had done his best to hide his smouldering temper. Dressed in red, gold and blue velvet boasting the snarling leopards of England, his fingers and chest glittering with gold rings and a jewel-encrusted collar, the Regent had been both magnificent and munificent. He had filled Cranston’s goblet to the rim and personally served the coroner with a dish of sugared fruit and a mazer of sweetmeats. Gaunt had listened attentively, those strange eyes crinkling, full lips pursed, yet his temper was obvious and his message was clear. The Passio Christi had been stolen and he wanted it back. Cranston and Athelstan would achieve that or. .
‘Or what?’ Cranston murmured to himself.
He wondered what Athelstan was doing, as well as the strange secrets that abbey held. The Regent had told him little and Cranston was still bemused by Eleanor Remiet. He was sure he’d done business with her before, but when and why?
‘Sir John, my Lord Coroner?’
Cranston glanced up. Osbert, his plump, cheery-faced clerk stood in the doorway fingering his lank brown hair. Next to him was Simon the scrivener, pasty-faced with ever watery eyes and dripping nose. Both clerks found Cranston a source of many droll stories though in his presence they acted most dutifully.
‘The Deodandum?’ Simon asked. ‘You must decide on the Deodandum.’
Cranston immediately did. He had the case written out on a piece of parchment before him. In brief, Ralph, Megotta Ugele’s husband, had been killed by a runaway horse and cart in Hogweed Lane. Megotta now claimed both horse and cart should not be sold and given to the church, who owned it anyway as a Deodandum, a gift to God, but handed over to her as compensation. Cranston decided with a sweep of his quill pen that the widow’s needs were more pressing than those of Holy Mother Church. Once done he rose to his feet, pushing back his chair.
‘It is Saturday.’ He glared at his two minions. ‘I have other business. Has Muckworm appeared?’
‘No, Sir John,’ both men chorused.
‘In which case,’ Cranston buckled on his war belt, grabbed his cloak and beaver hat and stepped down from the dais, ‘if Muckworm rears his ugly head, tell him he’ll find me in my favourite chantry chapel immersed in my devotions.’
‘The Holy Lamb of God, Sir John?’
‘Very perceptive.’ Cranston nodded at both men and swept out of the judgement chamber, down the stairs and into the bailey. Scurriers and messengers, all booted and spurred, were readying restless horses, the breath of both man and beast hanging like a clear mist in the freezing air. Cranston pushed his way past these as well as a swarm of clerks, ostlers and ragged scholars whose Goliard song caught Sir John’s fancy.
‘My desire is to die in a tavern,
Where wine will stain my dying mouth.
All the choirs of angels will chant,
May God be merciful to this man of drink.’
Cranston dropped a coin in their begging bowl and strolled out under the cavernous arch into Cheapside. Evening was due yet business still thrived. The air was thick with a mixture of smells. The sweet fragrances of the herb and perfume-sellers, vegetable and fruit hawkers mingled with the stink from the ordure-strewn cobbles. The fullers’ stench was still strong, whilst the wind wafted in the foul odours from the fleshing yards. Cranston donned both cloak and hat as he surveyed the busy stalls and booths. He hardly noticed the drab but smart smocks, jerkins and gowns of the tradesmen, the glossy elegance of court fops with pomanders pushed under their nostrils or the wealthy in their velvet, wool-lined cloaks and sheepskin mittens.
‘No,’ Cranston whispered, ‘where are you my lovelies, all you creatures of the dark?’
Two worlds existed here: one apparent, the other had to be closely studied. Cranston surveyed the crowd. Oh yes, they were here, the night-walkers and dark-hawks, soil-caked and dirt marked, who slept on straw pallets stretched out over tamped-down mud. The coin-fakers and cross-biters, the cozeners, the mumpers, the scolders and sneaksmen in their motley garish rags, pointed hoods and scuffed boots were on the prowl. All these were of the same genus — Newgate birds, who would milk a pigeon to get a drink. Some were obvious, others more hidden as they threaded through the crowd, looking for prey. Cranston recognized quite a few of his ‘Lovelies’: Mouse-ears with his twitching nose and stuck-out ears, Frost-face, his skin badly gnawed by the pox, Rats-tooth and Spindle-shanks, could all be glimpsed amongst the mad and the bad, the moon-men and the moon-cursers. At the mouth of alleyways clustered even more, the beggars who ate mouldy bread filled with barley straw and drank watered ale and wine so muddy it made them wry-mouthed.
‘Ah, well,’ Cranston breathed. He moved out from beneath the archway and crossed the broad expanse of Cheapside. He was soon recognized by a gibbet lawyer going down to Newgate to meet an accomplice. ‘Cranston is out!’ The whisper spread through the crowds. Sir John, one hand on the hilt of his sword, watched both the slime-strewn cobbles beneath him as well as the crowds around him. He glimpsed Matilda the mistress of the maids hurriedly disappear down a runnel with a bevy of her ladies of the night. Alleyway mouths also mysteriously cleared. Foists and nips darted off like sparrows alarmed by a cat. The rag traders, the whipsters, mountebanks and miserere men stooped, crouched and ran back to hide in what Cranston called ‘Mumpers’ Manor’ or ‘Castle Conning’, the filthy lairs and bolt-holes of these Cheapside cheats. They all feared Cranston. Parson Dumpling, who looked after these malefactors at his Chapel of the Gibbet deep in the slums of Whitefriars, always warned his congregation that Sir John, when the spirit took him, could whistle up his bailiffs and beadles and sweep like the wind through Cheapside, Poultry and the surrounding wards, netting their quarry as a fowler would his birds. Once done, they’d herd all their captives down to the great yard at the Fleet prison. There, as on Judgement Day, they’d begin to separate one flock of goats, those they wanted to question, from the rest, whom they’d leave to graze for a while. Cranston paused — should he do that now? Yet he had enough business awaiting him. Muckworm would soon appear.