‘Father Prior has already left a barrel, Sir John, for your use. There are jugs of wine and a small tun of beer in the buttery.’
‘Excellent! Excellent!’ Cranston murmured.
Athelstan watched the young servitor leave then slumped down at the kitchen table.
‘Sir John, what have we here?’ He laid out his parchment and pens on the table. ‘First, we have an Inner Chapter convoked to discuss theological matters. Brother Henry is debating these issues with Brothers Peter and Niall. The Inquisitors are present to sniff out heresy. Two other Dominicans, Alcuin and Callixtus, make cryptic remarks about the Inner Chapter being a waste of time. Callixtus falls from a ladder in the library, Alcuin disappears. There is a rumour that, although Brother Bruno had nothing to do with the Inner Chapter, he fell down the steps of the crypt at the very time Alcuin was supposed to be there. Brother Roger, a half-wit, claims there is something wrong in the church and talks about the number twelve or thirteen. Well, Sir John, what do you think?’
A loud snore greeted his declaration. Athelstan turned Cranston sat in the room’s one and only high-backed chair in front of the small fire, fast asleep, smiling and smacking his lips. Athelstan sighed and went across to make him more comfortable, stoking up the fire and going back to his notes He sat for an hour trying to make sense of what he had been told, whilst Cranston snored and, in the distance, Athelstan half-heard the tolling of the monastery bell calling the brothers to Divine service. The sun began to set. Cranston woke with a start and, patting his stomach, first visited the garde-robe, then went into the buttery to pour himself a jug of mead.
‘Not now, Sir John.’ Athelstan followed him in. ‘We have work to do.’
Cranston’s face was a study in self-pity. ‘Friar, I am thirsty.’
‘Sir John, we have work to do.’
‘Such as?’
‘Sir John, you are the coroner. You visit the scene of these crimes and the sooner we resolve the mysteries,’ Athelstan added hopefully, ‘the sooner we can resolve the secrets of the scarlet room.’
Cranston put down the tankard and smiled. ‘Brother Athelstan, you have my full attention.’
They went back to the cloisters. Athelstan vaguely remembered that the crypt was in a small passageway just off the north side of the church. The cloister garth was silent except for the buzzing of bees fluttering around the flowers growing near the tinkling water fountain. The small desks the brothers used for copying and writing had been pushed away. Athelstan recalled the long hours he used to spend here, taking advantage of the good daylight to copy out some learned tract. He paused. Brother Callixtus had been his mentor and Alcuin always had a penchant for theological writings. Had they seen something or studied some tract connected with the Inner Chapter? Athelstan stared at the small fountain. Blackfriars’ library was famous, containing manuscripts from all over western Europe, not just the writings of his order, but those of ancient philosophers as well as other theologians.
‘Come on, Athelstan!’ Cranston urged, nodding towards the great, iron-barred door. ‘The secrets of the crypt await us!’
Athelstan nodded and pushed the door open.
‘Steep steps,’ he muttered. ‘They fall away into the darkness. I used to think it was the entrance to hell.’ He pointed to a sconce torch just inside the door. ‘You have a tinder, Sir John, light that!’
The coroner obeyed and the resin-drenched torch spluttered into life.
‘Do that again, Sir John,’ Athelstan asked, closing the crypt door behind them.
He looked bemused. ‘For God’s sake, Brother, the torch is lit!’
‘No, do it again! Repeat the action!’
Cranston reluctantly obeyed. ‘What’s the matter, Brother?’
‘Well, let us try and visualise what Brother Bruno must have done. Look, Sir John, the top step is broad and safe. The torch is in the wall as you close the door behind you. Brother Bruno would turn, as you did, to light that torch. Now the top step, as I have said, is broad; there’s enough space for someone to be waiting behind the door. Bruno comes in, and turns. Like you he would be half-off balance as he stretches to light the torch.’
‘So,’ Cranston interrupted, ‘you are saying someone was lurking here in the darkness and gave the old man a violent push, thinking he was Alcuin?’
‘Yes, I am.’
Athelstan carefully took the torch out of its iron bracket and held it out against the blackness, making the shadows dance on the steep steps falling away beneath them. Athelstan pointed to the iron hand-rail.
‘When I was a novice here, everyone was frightened of these steep, sharp-edged steps. That’s why the hand-rail was put in No man, especially an old one, even someone like Alcuin, could survive such a fall.’
‘But Alcuin was not pushed,’ Cranston observed. ‘Poor Bruno was. Admittedly the wrong man, but the question still remains — why was someone waiting for Alcuin? And why would Alcuin come here? You studied at Blackfriars Athelstan?’
Athelstan smiled as he replaced the torch in its iron bracket and re-opened the door. ‘A very good point, Sir John: the crypt was often used for secret meetings. You know, the petty squabbles and factions in any community, not to mention the illicit relationships which can grow up between men committed to celibacy.’
‘That went on here?’ Cranston muttered, closing the crypt door behind him.
Athelstan took him gently by the elbow, guiding him back into the fading sunlight of the cloister garden.
‘Stranger things than that, Sir John, but now we are looking for a murderer.’
‘It could still have been an accident,’ Cranston observed.
‘That would depend on two things. First, can we find any connection between Alcuin and the crypt? Whom was he going to meet there? Second, when Bruno’s body was found was that sconce torch lit? If it wasn’t, that means he was pushed just as he struck the tinder; the murderer had to act quickly or he would have been discovered. All he would see was one shadowy figure. How easy to give one violent push and then disappear.’
Cranston eased the cramp from his neck and shivered. So quiet, so peaceful, he thought; Blackfriars was so different from the city with its whitewashed walls, clean passageways, flower-filled gardens, tinkling fountains, and the sound of melodious voices chanting God’s praises. Yet the same emotions ran as strong here as in the alleyways off Cheapside. Lust, envy, jealousy, greed, and even murder. They both stood aside as the door of the church opened and the monks, hands concealed in the voluminous sleeves of their gowns, cowls pulled well over their heads, filed out in anonymous silence back to the refectory. Cranston raised his head like a hunting dog and sniffed the breeze. He patted his stomach and licked his lips.
‘Food!’ he murmured. ‘Venison, Brother. Fresh, tender, and spiced with rosemary.’
‘In a while, Sir John.’
Athelstan clutched him by the wrist and waited until the monks filed by before leading Cranston into the incense-filled church. Sunlight still played on the coloured glass windows, filling the darkness with faint streaks of light. The incense clouds from the sanctuary seeped down the nave like fragrant perfume. Athelstan felt the holy stillness as if the very air had been consecrated by the brothers’ singing.
They went up the nave and under the elaborately carved rood screen into the sanctuary. Athelstan stared round, marvelling at the sheer beauty of the multi-coloured marble floor, alabaster steps and the huge, high altar hewn out of the costliest marble supported by pillars whose cornices were covered in thick gold leaf. Candlesticks of massed silver stood on the white silk altar cloth. High in the wall an exquisite rose window sill shone in the dying sun’s light. Athelstan looked at the heavily carved stalls on either side of the sanctuary where the brothers assembled to sing Divine Office. He remembered his own days there, standing half-asleep, chanting the psalms at Matins. Above the altar hung a heavy black cross suspended from the beams by chains of pure gold. In the apse to the back of the altar, beneath the rose window, were carved niches, some of them filled by life-sized statues of the apostles.