‘A strange story, Sir John. Why does it affect you?’
Cranston told him and Athelstan let out a groan.
‘Oh, Sir John, for the love of God, you are trapped! Don’t you know about these riddles, clever puzzles in logic? Some are hundreds of years old and have never been resolved.’
Cranston shrugged. ‘I think this is a true story.’
‘Sir John, it could cost you a thousand crowns or, if John of Gaunt gets his fingers on to you, your very integrity.’
‘Then help me, Brother.’ Cranston drained the cup and slammed it down on the table.
Athelstan glimpsed the anxiety in the coroner’s usually good-humoured face.
‘I will do my best.’
Cranston made to fill his cup to the brim but thought again. He dared not. He did not wish to return home drunk. So far, he had kept this matter only to himself and Athelstan. He wondered if Lady Maude had heard any rumours.
‘You must tell her, Sir John,’ Athelstan murmured as if reading the coroner’s thoughts. ‘You must tell the Lady Maude.’
‘Aye, there’s the rub. My wife knows I’ll never ask Gaunt for help, but where can I get a thousand crowns? From the bankers? My great-grandchildren will be paying off the interest!’
Athelstan leaned over and squeezed the coroner’s fat fist.
‘Courage, Sir John. Always remember, if a problem exists then logic dictates a solution must also.’
Cranston rose, picking up both his beaver hat and cloak.
‘Aye, Brother, and I will make enquiries about your church and the whereabouts of the sainted Fitzwolfe.’ He shuffled his feet and squinted up at the rafters.
‘There’s something else, isn’t there, My Lord Coroner?’
Cranston sat down with a thump. ‘Yes, there is. I have had a visitor.’
‘Who?’
‘Your Father Prior.’
Athelstan stared up in amazement.
‘Well,’ Cranston licked his lips and looked longingly at his wine cup, ‘as you know, there’s an Inner Chapter meeting to discuss the writings of one of your brethren.’
‘Yes, Brother Henry of Winchester. Why?’ Athelstan’s voice rose higher. ‘How does that affect me?’
‘It doesn’t, but to cut a long story short, Athelstan, something strange is happening at Blackfriars: one monk’s died and another, Alcuin, has disappeared.’
‘Alcuin!’ Athelstan breathed, recalling the ascetic face of his colleague. ‘Disappeared, Sir John? Alcuin was a friar from the moment he was born. I could never picture him leaping the friary wall and off heigh-ho to the shambles to meet some pretty doxy!’
‘Well, he’s disappeared and Father Prior has asked me to investigate.’ Cranston swallowed hard. ‘He’s coming to visit you on Wednesday. Both of us are. I think he’s going to ask for your help.’
Athelstan put his face in his hands. ‘Oh, God!’ he prayed. ‘Not that. Not back to Blackfriars and the politics of the Order!’
And then he swore, muttering every filthy word he’d learned from Cranston. He had been so happy; there were his usual duties as Cranston’s clerk but nothing serious, not since those bloody murders at the Tower the previous Christmas. He had become immersed in his study of the stars, in talking to Bonaventure, helping his parishioners and, above all, renovating his beloved church. Now his hardwon peace and calm were to be shattered: by Sir John with his complex problem; Benedicta and her worries about her husband; the skeleton in the church; and Father Prior wanting his help. He glanced up at Cranston.
‘Murder follows me always,’ he whispered, ‘dragging behind me like some hell-sent beast. I made one mistake, Sir John, and how I have paid for it!’
Cranston rose and stood over him, patting him gently on the shoulder.
‘You did no wrong, Athelstan,’ he said quietly. ‘You were a young man who went to war. You took your younger brother with you. It was God’s will he died. If there was a price to pay, you have done so. Now there’s another Francis — my son, your godson. Life goes on, Brother. I will see you on Wednesday.’
Cranston opened the door and slipped out into the dusk.
Athelstan sat listening to him leave. He went and stood at the window, staring up at the top of the darkening tower of St Erconwald’s. He breathed deeply, trying to cleanse his mind. Father Prior would have to wait and so would that skeleton in the church. He would not study the stars tonight but instead analyse the problem Cranston had brought.
He went back to sit at the table and studied the manuscript Cranston had left. How could men be killed so subtly in that scarlet chamber? ‘No food,’ he whispered to himself. ‘No drink, no trap doors or hidden devices. No silent assassin. So how did those men die?’
Athelstan’s mind raced through every possibility but the deaths were so apparently simple — there was no clue, no hook to hang a suspicion on, not a crack to prise open. Athelstan’s eyes closed. He woke with a start. The candle had burned low. Somehow, he concluded, the key to all the deaths lay in the last two. How had an archer become so terrified he’d shot his companion?
Athelstan’s head sank again and he drifted into a deep dream: he sat in a scarlet chamber where the figure of death with its skeletal face performed a strange dance, whilst some silent force crept slowly and menacingly towards him. .
Athelstan awoke stiff and cold the next morning, still sitting at the table, his head on his arms, Bonaventura brushing urgently against him. Somewhere amongst the squalid huts and tenements of Southwark a cockerel crowed its morning hymn to the sun. The priest rose and stretched, rubbing his face and wishing he had gone to bed. He folded up the piece of parchment Cranston had given him and took it up to the chest in his small bedroom. He then stripped, washing his body with a wet rag, shaved, and tried to concentrate on the mass he was about to celebrate. He must not think about the distractions milling in his mind. He cleaned his teeth with a mixture of salt and vinegar, took out his second robe, broke his fast on some stale bread and absent-mindedly fed Bonaventura who had apparently spent the night touring his small kingdom of alleys around the church.
‘Something tells me, Bonaventura,’ Athelstan said quietly as he crouched to feed the battered torn cat, ‘that this is going to be a strange day.’
He went across and celebrated a private mass on a makeshift altar in the middle of the nave, deliberately not looking at the coffin on his left with its grisly contents. No one else came except Pernel the Fleming and she seemed more interested in the coffin than anything else. Athelstan finished the mass, clearing the altar in preparation for the return of the workmen. He fed Philomel, hobbling his war horse in the small yard to give it some exercise, and returned to his house. He decided to concentrate on drawing up the list of supplies he needed before going back to the crude sketches of how he wished the new sanctuary to look. However, he still felt both hungry and restless so, locking his house, went down to a cookshop in Blowbladder Alley.
He bought a crisp meat pie and a dish of vegetables covered with gravy and sat outside, his back to the wall, enjoying the hot juices and savoury smell. A beggar, his nose slit for some previous crime, came crawling up, whining for alms. Athelstan gave him two pennies. The fellow disappeared into the cookshop to buy pies from the fat dumpling of a baker and rejoined Athelstan. After half an hour the priest got tired of the fellow’s rambling tales about his exploits as a soldier and decided to go for a walk.
He always liked Southwark first thing in the morning, despite the over-full sewers, the putrid mounds of refuse and the denizens of its underworld, now sliding back to their garrets to await the return of night. A whore, her scarlet wig askew, leaned against a wall and shouted friendly abuse at him. A tinker with a hand cart full of battered apples went down to take up position near the bridge to await the morning custom. A journeyman, his pack animals strung out behind him, walked briskly, determined to get out of Southwark before the day’s business began. At the small crossroads between Stinking Alley and Pig Lane a group of lepers, heads hooded, faces masked, crouched in a tight group and watched a mad gipsy woman do a strange, silent dance.