‘You are Burghgesh?’ Horne hissed.
The apparition moved closer. Only the crunch of mailed feet on the hard ice broke the silence.
‘Adam! Adam!’ The voice was Burghgesh’s though it sounded sombre and hollow. ‘Adam!’ the voice repeated. ‘I have returned! I come for vengeance! You, my comrade in arms, my friend for whom I would have given my life.’ One mailed hand shot out. ‘You betrayed me! You, Whitton and the rest!’
Horne moved suddenly, his hand going to the small arbalest which swung from his belt
‘You’re no phantasm,’ the merchant snarled. ‘And, if you are, go back to Hell where you belong!’
He brought up the arbalest but, even as he did, the great two-edged sword scythed the air, neatly slicing the merchant’s head from his shoulders. The decapitated head spun like a ball in the air, lips still moving; his trunk stood for a few seconds in its own fountain of hot red gore before crashing on to the blood-stained ice. Horne’s mailed executioner carefully cleaned the sword, drew his knife and knelt beside the blood-gushing torso of his victim.
Some hours later Sir John Cranston, muttering and cursing to himself, made his way from Blind Basket Alley up Mincing Lane into Fenchurch Street. Dawn had just broken and Sir John, unable to sleep, had risen early to confer with Alderman Venables about the continued disappearance of Roger Droxford, still wanted for the murder of his master whose decapitated corpse Cranston had found. Sir John had spent a restless night, tossing from side to side in his great double bed. He had tried to remain calm but still seethed with fury at Maude’s continued intransigence in the face of his pleadings and questions: her only answer would be to bite her lip, shake her head and turn away in floods of tears. At last Cranston had risen and gone to his personal chancery but, finding himself unable to concentrate, had finished dressing and gone to rouse Venables. Cranston grinned wickedly. He’d enjoyed that, letting the good alderman know what it was like to be awoken just before dawn. The sleepy-eyed alderman however, could give him no further information on Droxford.
‘He can’t have fled far. Sir John,’ Venables murmured sleepily. ‘God knows, in this weather only a fool would try to flee the city limits, and both the description and the reward have been circulated.’ Venables had grinned. ‘After all, Sir John, he’s a man you would remember.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he had two fingers missing from one hand and his face was covered in hairy warts.’ The alderman pulled his fur-lined bed robe around him, moving restlessly on the stone-flagged corridor and making it obvious the coroner should leave. ‘What’s so special about Droxford, anyway, Sir John?’
‘He’s special, Master Venables, because he’s a murderer, a felon who has stolen over two hundred pounds of his master’s monies, and it looks as if he has got away Scot free!’
Venables took one look at Cranston’s angry face and agreed. Sir John had then stamped off, muttering curses about public officials who didn’t seem to care. Yet, in his heart, Cranston knew he was a hypocrite. The business at the Tower was still shrouded in mystery. The fugitive Droxford, not to mention the easy-going alderman, were the nearest butts for Sir John’s foul temper.
He turned into the still-deserted Lombard Street and up to the great stocks just before the Poultry. A group of beadles were standing around a beggar who sat imprisoned there, feet and hands tightly clamped, face frozen, eyes open.
‘What’s the matter?’ Cranston bellowed.
The beadles shuffled their feet
‘Someone forgot to release him last night,’ one of them shouted. ‘The poor bastard’s frozen to death!’
‘Then some bastard will pay!’ Sir John bellowed back, and continued up the wide thoroughfare, past a group of nightbirds, whores and petty felons now manacled together and being led down to the great iron cage on top of the Conduit. A frightened-looking maid let him in. Sir John suddenly stopped, eyes narrowing. Hadn’t he glimpsed a shadow in the alleyway beside the house? He went back. Nothing. Cranston shook his head and, vowing he would drink less sack, brushed past the anxious-looking maid, down the passageway and into the stone-flagged kitchen. He thanked God Maude wasn’t there, he was tired of their encounters.
‘Any messages?’ he barked at a subdued-looking Leif, still sitting in his favourite place in the inglenook of the great fireplace. The one-legged beggar lifted his head from his bowl of vegetables and spiced meat and shook his head.
‘No, Sir John,’ he replied. ‘But I have polished the pewter pots.’
‘Good,’ he growled. ‘At least someone in this city is working.’
Cranston poured himself a generous goblet of wine and seized a small white loaf the cook had left to cool on the kitchen table. The coroner stood snatching mouthfuls of bread and gulping noisily from a goblet whilst he stared angrily at the fire. What should he do? he wondered.
Whitton’s and Fitzormonde’s deaths at the Tower were still as unfathomable as ever. He had also failed to find Horne. Sir John knew it would only be a matter of time before his masters at the Guildhall or, worse still, the Regent at the Savoy Palace, asked for an account of his stewardship. He heard a sharp knock at the door.
‘Go on, Leif,’ he growled. ‘I’m too bloody cold to answer it.’
Leif looked self-pityingly at him.
‘Go on, you idle bugger!’ Cranston roared. ‘There’s more to this house than sitting on your arse and stuffing your mouth with every bit of food you can lay your sticky little fingers on!’
Leif sighed, put down the bowl and hobbled out of the kitchen. Cranston heard the front door open and the man limping slowly back.
‘What is it?’ Cranston asked, winking good-humouredly at the maid who had also hurried down to see who was at the door. The girl smiled anxiously back and Cranston quietly cursed himself. He was frightening everyone with his foul temper. He must take a grip on himself. Perhaps he should ask Athelstan to intervene? ‘Well, man?’ he repeated. ‘Who was there?’
‘No one, Sir John.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, there was no one there.’ Leif steadied himself against the lintel of the door. ‘Only this.’ He held up a battered, leather bag tied at the neck and stained with watery dark marks around the base. ‘I answered the door,’ Leif ponderously repeated, ‘no one was there, only this bag.’
‘Then open it, man!’ Cranston said testily.
The coroner turned away to refill his wine cup. He whirled around at Leif s horrified cry and the bump as the maid fell in a dead faint to the floor. The beggarman just stood there, eyes wide in horror, mouth slack; in his upraised hand he held by the hair the decapitated head of Adam Horne, alderman and merchant.
Now Cranston had seen decapitated heads, be they of murdered taverner or some lord executed on Tower Hill, but this was truly gruesome; it was not so much the half-closed eyes and still blood-dripping neck but the mouth forced open and, thrust inside, the mangled remains of the dead merchant’s genitals.
Cranston grabbed the head from the horror-struck beggar’s hand, thrust it back into the bag, stepped over the still prostrate maid and, roaring for Maude, dashed down the passage-way to the door. He flung it open, rushing like an angry bull down Cheapside, but the snow-covered thoroughfare was still deserted, with no trace or sign of their mysterious, grisly visitor. Cranston stopped and, half crouching, retched violently as the true horror of what he had seen seized his mind and wrung his stomach as if it was a wet rag.
‘Oh, the bastard!’ he whispered. ‘Oh, Lord help us!’
He staggered back inside the house. Maude, white-faced, stood at the foot of the stairs.