Field of Blood

'Terrible man,' Athelstan answered. 'But what else, Benedicta? What do you check?'

'That my key and any monies I carry are safe.' She laughed deep in her throat. 'The St Christopher medal!'

'Oh mulier foitis et audax, brave and bold woman,' Athelstan replied, quoting from the scriptures. 'You have said it, Benedicta! Here is a messenger leaving his young wife. He will stop at a tavern on Saturday evening and continue his journey on Sunday. He's riding through open countryside. He's well armed and protected: however, he's a young man who has a deep devotion to St Christopher and knows such journeys can be dangerous. Isn't it strange, Benedicta, that he never feels his neck for the chain, never realises it's missing until he reaches the Silken Thomas?' Athelstan held a finger to his lips. 'What he does next is both reasonable and logical. He hurries back but, surely, he wouldn't have forgotten it in the first place? And, even if he had, he must have noticed it was missing long before he reached the tavern?'

'There's only one flaw in your logic'

'I am sure there is. And it would take a woman to find it.'

'What if Eccleshall is telling the truth? What happens if Sholter deliberately left the medal behind to provide a pretext for returning home?'

Athelstan raised his eyebrows. 'Prior Anselm would like you. It's possible! Sholter, for some reason unknown to us, distrusts his pretty young wife so he goes to the tavern and decides to return. He rides through the night, reaches Mincham Lane where his wife is entertaining someone else. A quarrel breaks out. Sholter is killed.' He glanced at Benedicta. 'And what next, mistress of logic?'

'The corpse is put into a cart, covered or hidden, and taken out to that derelict house.'

'Now, that is possible. But a cart would be seen, it would leave marks. It has to be trundled through busy streets and why go there? Why not take it out through Aldgate, hide it in the wild countryside north of the Tower?' He tapped Benedicta on the nose. 'But I accept your reasoning. Yet I am certain either one, or both, of that precious pair are implicated in Sholter's murder.' He fought back his anger. 'For which this parish is going to pay.'

'There are other difficulties,' Benedicta pointed out. 'What if we can prove that Mistress Sholter stayed in her house on Saturday evening and Master Eccleshall never left that tavern?'

Athelstan got to his feet and clapped his hands at Bonaventure.

'That, my dear Heloise, would pose a problem!'

'Who's she?'

'A beautiful woman who fell in love with a priest called Abelard.'

'I've never heard of him,' she replied tartly.

'Come.' Athelstan walked to the door, Bonaventure trotting behind him. 'Let's feed the inner man.'

They left the church. Outside the day was dying. Athelstan expected to see some of his parishioners but, apart from Ursula the pig woman disappearing down the alleyway, her great sow trotting after her, ears flapping, the church forecourt was empty. Philomel was leaning against his stall busily munching.

Athelstan found his small house swept and cleaned, a fire ready to be lit. On the scrubbed table stood two pies covered with linen cloths and an earthenware jug of ale. Bonaventure went and lay down in front of the empty grate. Athelstan brought traunchers and goblets from the kitchen, horn spoons from his small coffer. He was about to say grace when there was a knock on the door and Godbless, followed by his little goat, bustled into the house. The beggarman was small, his hair dishevelled, eyes gleaming in his whiskered weatherbeaten face. Athelstan noticed the horn spoon clutched in his hand. Thaddeus went across to sniff at Bonaventure but that great lord of the alleyways didn't even deign to life his head.

'I am hungry, Brother.'

'Godbless, you always are. When you die we'll say you were a saint.'

Godbless looked puzzled.

'You can read minds,' Athelstan explained.

'I've been in the death house.' Godbless rubbed his stomach and looked at the pies. 'I've had some cheese and bread but I knew about these pies, Brother.'

'It's not the death house,' Athelstan reminded him. 'Pike and Watkin have built a new one and, from now on, you are to call your little house the "porter's lodge". You are the guardian of God's acre. I don't want Pike and Watkin getting drunk there or Cecily the courtesan meeting her sweethearts in the long grass. If I've told that girl once, I've told her a thousand times: only the dead are supposed to lie there.'

Godbless solemnly nodded.

'And I'm going to offer you a reward.' Athelstan gestured at him to sit. 'I have this dream,' the friar continued, pushing a trauncher towards the little beggarman. 'To actually plant vegetables which I, not Ursula's sow, will eat.'

'I've driven that beast off before, Brother.'

'Beast is well named,' Athelstan quipped. 'That pig fears neither God nor man.'

'I'm glad I'm here.'

Godbless watched as Benedicta cut the pie and held his trauncher out. Athelstan filled the earthenware cups with ale.

'That young woman in the cemetery, she is such doleful company!'

The friar nearly dropped the jug. 'What young woman?'

'You know, Eleanor, Basil the blacksmith's daughter. She's just sitting under a yew tree muttering to herself.'

Athelstan was already striding towards the door. Godbless happily helped himself to another piece of pie and began to eat as fast as he could. The friar, followed by Benedicta, hurried through the enclosure along the side of the church and into the cemetery where Athelstan climbed on to an old stone plinth tomb. It supposedly contained the bones of a robber baron who had been hanged and gibbetted outside St Erconwald's many years ago.

'What's the matter?' Benedicta asked.

'Eleanor!' Athelstan shouted. 'Eleanor! You are to come here!'

He glimpsed a flash of colour. Eleanor rose from where she was hiding behind a tomb, head down, hands hanging by her sides. She came along the trackway. Athelstan climbed down.

'Eleanor, what are you doing here?'

'I feel as if I want to die, Brother. I just miss Oswald but our parents will not allow us to see each other and it's all due to that wicked vixen's tongue.'

'You'll die soon enough. And then you'll go to heaven. In the meantime you've got to live your life. God has put you here for a purpose and that purpose must be fulfilled.'

'I feel like hanging myself.'

Benedicta put her arm round the young girl's shoulder and stared in puzzlement at the friar.

'She loves Oswald deeply,' Athelstan explained. 'But, according to the blood book, a copy of which we haven't got, they are related.'

'Ah!' Benedicta hugged the young woman close.

'Come back with me,' Athelstan suggested. 'Have some pie and ale. A trouble shared is a trouble halved.'

They returned to the kitchen. Godbless sat, his chin smeared with the meat and gravy, a beatific smile on his face.

'You are worse than the locusts of Egypt,' Athelstan complained. 'But, come, sit down.' He sketched a hasty blessing. 'Lord, thank You for the lovely meal and let's eat it before Godbless does!' Athelstan raised his cup and toasted Eleanor. 'Now, let me tell you what happened today because it will be common knowledge soon enough in the city.'

Athelstan half closed his eyes, his mind going back to Black Meadow: the Four Gospels, those shadowy shapes slipping in from the river at night and, above all, that dreadful pit and the skeletons and corpses it housed. 'Brother?'

Athelstan glanced at Benedicta. 'It's a tale of murder,' he replied. 'And, I'm afraid, before God's will is known, more blood will be shed!'

Chapter 6

Athelstan was up early the next morning. He celebrated a dawn Mass with Bonaventure as his only congregation. He tidied the kitchen, checked on Philomel, Godbless and Thaddeus while trying to make sense of what had happened the day before.