‘At last,’ moaned Cranston, ‘we will be able to get a skiff.’ The sailors and boatmen who controlled the traffic along the river had assembled in small groups to watch the executions of the men who attacked their trade. Now they drifted back to the steps leading down to the wharf. Cranston hired the fastest, rowed by four oarsmen, and soon they were out in mid-river pulling through the mist towards Southwark Bank. They had to stop and cover their noses and mouths as they passed one of the great gong barges unloading mounds of rubbish, dead animals and human refuse into the middle of the fast-flowing river. Other shapes slipped by them: a barge full of soldiers taking a prisoner down to the Tower, a Gascon wine ship making its way slowly up towards Rotherhifhe. Near Dowgate, a large gilded skiff full of revellers, young courtiers clad in silks with their loud-mouthed whores, was being rowed back to the city after a night’s revelry in the stews of Southwark.
At last Athelstan and Cranston disembarked at a small wharf overlooked by the priory of St Mary Overy and the crenellated towers and walls of the Bishop of Winchester’s inn. Cranston had finally decided to follow Athelstan’s advice and return to the Lady Maude but was determined that his companion should accompany him.
‘You see, Brother, if you are there the domina’s wrath may be curbed.’
Athelstan nodded wisely. A sight to be seen, he thought. Lady Maude, so small, petite and gentle, was reputed to have a ferocious temper. They walked through a maze of stinking alleyways, past the Abbot of Hyde’s inn, down a small runnel where a yellow, thin-ribbed dog was busy licking the sores on a beggar’s leg, and into the area in front of St Erconwald’s. Athelstan checked that his house was safe and secure, noticed with despair how Ursula’s sow had eaten more of his cabbages, removed a second set of keys from his chest and unlocked the church for the workmen had not yet arrived. The nave was still full of dust but the workmen had been busy for the sanctuary gleamed with white, evenly laid, flagstones. Athelstan clapped his hands and murmured with delight.
‘Beautiful!’ he exclaimed. ‘The rood screen will be replaced, then the altar. You think it will look fine, Sir John?’
Cranston, sitting at the base of a pillar, nodded absent-mindedly. ‘A veritable jewel,’ he muttered. ‘But have you noticed what’s missing?’
Athelstan came back and looked into the transept.
‘The coffin!’ he shouted. ‘The bloody coffin’s gone!’
‘Don’t worry, Father.’ Crim, followed by a high-tailed Bonaventure, slipped into the church. The young urchin danced towards him whilst the cat miaowed with pleasure when he glimpsed his fat friend, the coroner. Whilst Sir John stamped and quietly cursed the cat, Crim explained that his father had moved the coffin and the sacred bones to the small death house in the parish cemetery.
‘You see, Father, the Serjeants sent down by the Lord Coroner frightened everybody off. Anyway, Pike the ditcher said if the church was sealed the death house wasn’t, so the coffin was moved there.’
Athelstan bit back his curses and stalked out of the church, through the over-grown cemetery to where the death house stood by the far wall — a small, square building with a thatched roof and a tiny shuttered window. Pike the ditcher was fast asleep outside the door but Athelstan could see how the stream of pilgrims had beaten a path through the cemetery to the small shed.
‘I am going to enjoy this,’ he muttered.
He reached the sleeping Pike and, drawing one sandalled foot back, kicked the soles of Pike’s heavy boots, waking the ditcher with a start. Athelstan studied Pike’s bleary eyes, unshaven face and the empty wineskin clutched in his hand.
‘Oh, Father, good morning.’
Athelstan crouched down. ‘And what are you doing here?’ he asked sweetly.
Pike rubbed his eyes and drew back warily. ‘Guarding the relic, Father.’
‘And who told you to remove the coffin from the church?’
‘Watkin. It was his idea!’
‘Yes, Father,’ a voice called out from behind a beaten headstone. ‘It was Watkin!’
Cecily the courtesan, her hair tousled and her face crumpled with sleep, a thick cloak wrapped round her stained, scarlet dress, stood up like an apparition.
Athelstan looked at her, then at Pike, and tried to control the rage seething within him.
‘You have been here all night? Together? This is a graveyard! God’s acre!’ He got to his feet. ‘Haven’t you read the good book, Pike? This is the house of God, not some bloody knacker’s yard!’
Athelstan went to the death house door.
‘I’ll open it, Father.’
‘Sod off!’ he shouted, and violently kicked it just under the latch.
‘Oh, Father, don’t!’ Cecily wailed.
Athelstan kicked again and the door flew back even as Cranston, fleeing from an attentive Bonaventura, came hurrying through the cemetery asking what the matter was.
Athelstan gazed round the death house. The coffin lay on a table surrounded by faded flowers. Someone had fashioned a crude cross to hang on the wall and his rage only deepened when he saw that the coffin had been desecrated.
‘They are beginning to sell bits of the wood!’ he hissed.
He stormed out, almost knocking Cranston aside. Cecily was fleeing like some gaudy butterfly towards the lych-gate but Pike still stood his ground. Athelstan gripped the man by his jerkin and pulled him close.
‘Listen, Pike, I am angry at what you have done. Your father lies buried here, his father and his father before him, as do other ancestors of our parish. Good men, holy women, poor but hard-working.’ He nodded vigorously back at the death house. ‘They fashioned that coffin out of their own hands, bought the wood, hired a carpenter. And you, Watkin, and the rest, are turning it into some pathetic mummer’s show!’
Pike, alarmed at the priest’s unaccustomed rage, just stared back open-mouthed. Athelstan let him go.
‘Now listen, Pike, in a few days I will return. I want the coffin removed back to the church, the death house door locked, and an end to this stupidity!’ He looked round the overgrown graveyard. ‘And you can tell Watkin from me that I want to see this place cleaned, the grass cut, the graves tended — or I will personally do something to him that he will remember all his Godgiven days! Do you understand?’
Pike, nodding fearfully, stepped back and stumped out of the graveyard.
Cranston slapped Athelstan on the shoulder. ‘Well done, Brother. You should have kicked the bugger’s backside for him!’
Athelstan sat down wearily amongst the fallen headstones. ‘They mean well, Sir John. They are just poor, simple people who see the possibility of a quick profit. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.’
Cranston just belched in reply.
‘Crim!’ Athelstan shouted. ‘I know you’re hiding there!’
The young urchin stood like a hunting dog, body quivering, eyes fixed on Athelstan.
‘Don’t worry.’ The friar smiled. ‘You are a good lad, Crim. Quickly, now, before the streets become too busy. Go tell the Lady Benedicta to meet Sir John and I at the Piebald tavern.’
The young boy ran off, loping like a greyhound through the long grass. Cranston grabbed Athelstan’s arm and raised him gently up, swinging one bear-like arm round the friar’s shoulders. Athelstan sniffed the wine-drenched breath and knew that Sir John, somewhere under that voluminous cloak, had been using his miraculous wineskin.