Field of Blood

Sir John drew out a small scroll of parchment. He tapped Athelstan on the shoulder with it. The friar felt a shiver of cold run up his back.

'You know what it is, Athelstan. Don't ask stupid questions!'

Athelstan undid the scrolclass="underline" the seals at the bottom were of the chief justices, the mayor and justices sitting in session at the Guildhall. They proclaimed, in the name of the King, that Miles Sholter, 'piteously slain by person or persons unknown in the parish of St Erconwald's Southwark, was a royal messenger carrying the King's insignia and coat-of-arms. An attack upon him was an attack upon the Crown. Accordingly, the parish of St Erconwald's and all its inhabitants must, within forty days, surrender the person, or persons unknown, into the hands of the King's officers or suffer a fine of two hundred pounds sterling.'

'I am sorry,' Sir John said. 'It's the best I could do. I personally went to see John of Gaunt. If Brabazon had his way it would have been six hundred pounds.'

Athelstan found he couldn't stop trembling.

'It's still onerous, Jack. We are a poor parish!'

'There are ways and means. There are ways and means.'

Sir John took a sip from his wineskin. 'We'll catch the killer, Brother, while I know merchants in the city. We'll raise the monies. Meanwhile, that must be nailed to the door of the church, and I mean securely, Brother.'

'It will be.'

Athelstan regained his composure and wrapped the roll up. He stared at the crude wooden crucifix fastened to the wall above the vestry table.

Please, he prayed silently. Please do not let this happen.

The coroner was still looking woebegone.

'And there's something else, isn't there, Sir John?'

Cranston shook his head and sat down on a stool.

'I stride around, Brother, bellowing good mornings, quaffing ale, laughing and joking but, as God knows, I am deeply worried.'

'Kathryn Vestler?'

'It goes from bad to worse. Kathryn is now in Newgate gatehouse. She's stopped weeping, I find her stronger than I thought and she's become hard-eyed, evasive. Last night I questioned her again regarding the enquiries about Margot Haden, and others who visited the Paradise Tree, but she shrugged them off. She can find no explanation. Brabazon is now threatening to dig the whole meadow up.' Sir John clutched his beaver hat in his hands. 'I loved her husband Stephen like a brother. I owed him my life. I know, I know, I talk about Poitiers but there were other occasions. What happens if Stephen and Kathryn were killers? Murdering poor travellers, looting their possessions and burying them in that field of blood?'

'Alice Brokestreet is the key,' Athelstan countered.

'She is a murderess, desperate to save her neck. I've been to see her as well. She's obdurate in her story, hinting at other things, other crimes.'

'Such as?' Athelstan asked.

'What I thought.' Sir John scratched his chin. 'Let us say Kathryn Vestler is a murderess and she does plunder her victims. Now I can accept that she destroyed the goods of a poor chambermaid …'

'I follow your reasoning, Sir John. If Vestler was a robber, as well as a murderess, she killed for gain. What would happen to the goods she stole?'

'Precisely. Now Vestler couldn't very well go into the markets with baskets full of plunder. People would become suspicious. It's my feeling that she would sell them to someone else who would take them to a different part of the city, even to another market beyond the walls, and sell them there.' Sir John's light-blue eyes caught Athelstan's change of expression. 'What is it, Brother?'

The friar told him how the Four Gospels had described dark shapes coming off a barge and slipping, either through Black Meadow or beyond.

'There's only one place they could be going,' Athelstan concluded. 'The Paradise Tree.'

'Oh, Lord save us!' Sir John put a hand to his mouth. 'I can see how this will go. Vestler was hand-in-glove with a band of robbers. She'd kill a traveller and sell the goods to others.' He sighed. 'In which case she's lying. I asked Kathryn if there was anything she knew. Had she been involved in anything against the law? Even when she replied, I suspected she was lying.'

'And there's more!' Athelstan told Sir John about the Wizard Gundulf and the treasure 'which lay under the sun'. 'It's a riddle,' he concluded. 'But what can it mean?'

'Bartholomew was a clerk in the Tower,' Sir John replied. 'Let us say, for sake of argument, and remember Brother, I am writing a treatise on the governance of the city, that Bartholomew was a historian. Now, there are supposed to be treasures buried all over London. Every year the Crown lays claim to treasure trove, either from the river or dug up in some field or cemetery. Bartholomew may have stumbled on such a story. Is it possible he was murdered for that?'

Athelstan closed the small cupboard fixed to the wall which contained the sacred species. He absent-mindedly took the key out and put it into his purse.

'And what if,' he continued Sir John's theory, 'Bartholomew believed the treasure was buried somewhere under the Paradise Tree? He goes to Mistress Vestler and shares the secret with her?'

'So she decides to kill him? I have a friend,' Sir John continued. 'Richard Philibert. He's an old clerk who once worked in the royal treasury. He sat at the Exchequer and audited the sheriff's accounts when they were presented at Westminster.'

'What has he got to do with this?' Athelstan asked.

'Well, Brother, yesterday as I sat sunning myself in the garden, I had a close look at the Paradise Tree. The garden is beautifuclass="underline" the eaves, the roof, the furnishings within, everything is in a pristine state.'

'But Mistress Vestler does a good trade?'

'Aye, but Hengan said something interesting: how Kathryn had gold and silver salted away with the bankers.' Cranston got to his feet and patted his stomach. 'My friend Philibert will look at the accounts of the Paradise Tree. I'd wager a wineskin against a firkin of ale that Kathryn's income is excessive and Brabazon will swoop on that like a hawk. I've seen him before in court. A man for minutiae is Chief Justice Brabazon. He can pick at a prisoner like a raven does a corpse; he'll wonder whether she and Bartholomew found this treasure.'

'Will Hengan defend her?'

'Oh yes, but he's troubled. I called at his house this morning on my way here. He looked as if he hadn't slept. So, what shall we do, Brother?'

'First things first.' The friar rubbed his hands. 'Sir

John, we face an army of troubles, but it's not for the first time. If Mistress Vestler is a killer then there is little we can do to save her from the scaffold. What we must ask is, if she didn't kill Bartholomew or Margot, then who did?'

Sir John stared bleakly back.

'Think of it as a tapestry, Sir John,' Athelstan insisted, 'which tells a story. We have Mistress Vestler. We have the victims. Who else could have killed those people? Be responsible for the grisly remains in Black Meadow? Come on, Sir John, think! Because if you don't answer that question, Chief Justice Brabazon will make sure he hangs your friend on it!'

'We have Alice Brokestreet,' the coroner replied slowly. 'It's possible she could have killed them.'

'Perhaps.'

'I asked the gaoler at Newgate,' Sir John continued, 'if Alice Brokestreet had any visitors. He claimed a friar had visited to give her solace and shrive her. Now the priests come from many of the houses in London. There are more friars in London than there are flies upon …!'

'Thank you, Sir John! Your opinion of friars is well known!'

'Well, Newgate is near Greyfriars House so I went in to see Father Prior. They're Franciscans aren't they, not one of your coven?'

'Thank you, Sir John.'

'According to his records, the friars are responsible for the prisoners in Newgate. They provide comfort and consolation. However, not one of his brothers seemed to have any knowledge of Alice Brokestreet.'