‘You made this, Master D’Arques?’
‘Of course, it carries my mark.’ D’Arques joined Athelstan and pointed to the small emblem just above one of the hinges, an elaborate cross with two finely etched crowns on either side.
‘Father,’ he murmured, ‘why are you here?’
Athelstan smiled. ‘Miracles are rare occurrences. I came to make sure yours had had lasting effects.’ Athelstan beckoned to his companions. ‘Sir John, Benedicta, we have wasted enough of Master D’Arques’s time. Sir, my regards to your lady wife.’
The carpenter ushered them out and Cranston at least waited until they turned the corner before giving vent to his feelings.
‘Athelstan, in the name of God, what on earth were we doing there?’
‘A wild guess, Sir John. D’Arques started the great mystery at St Erconwald’s. I thought, an unworthy suspicion, that Master Watkin had put him up to it.’
‘Do you believe that?’ Benedicta asked.
‘Of Watkin, and his ally and one-time enemy Pike the ditcher, I believe anything!’ Athelstan snapped. ‘But, come, one last call.’
They visited physician Culpepper in his musty, shabby house in Pig Pen Lane, but the old doctor could give little help.
‘Master D’Arques,’ he confirmed, ‘is a worthy member of the parish; an honest trader, who had a hideous infection on the skin of his arm. No,’ Culpepper announced, ushering them to the door, ‘you do not get the likes of Master D’Arques having anything to do with the shady dealings of Watkin the dung-collector and Pike the ditcher.’
All three walked slowly back to St Erconwald’s. Athelstan bade farewell to Benedicta and, taking a now reluctant Sir John by the arm, walked briskly down towards London Bridge.
‘Home is where the heart is,’ Athelstan quipped, trying to hide his own disappointment at his fruitless visits. ‘Now it is time to confront the Lady Maude.’
By the time they reached Sir John’s house just off Cheap-side both men were exhausted. The day proved hot, the streets were dusty and packed with traders. In Cheapside the crowd had been so dense, they almost had to fight their way through traders, apprentices, officious market beadles, beggars whining for alms and a line of malefactors being taken up to stand in a cage near the Great Conduit. Matters were not helped by a mummer’s group near the great market cross who had erected a makeshift platform and were busy enacting a miracle play about the fall of Jezebel. Unfortunately Cranston and Athelstan arrived at the play’s climax when the painted whore queen was being condemned by the prophet Elijah to be eaten alive by dogs. The crowd, drawn into the drama, ‘oohed’ and ‘ahed’ and decided to ‘help’ the prophet by throwing every bit of refuse they could on to the stage. Cranston had to send a pickpocket, whom he had glimpsed in the crowd, crashing to the ground with a blow to the ear.
‘Bugger off, you little foist!’ the coroner roared.
Unfortunately his trumpet-like voice carried to the stage where the man playing the role of the prophet thought Sir John was talking to him. If it hadn’t been for Athelstan’s intervention, an even greater drama would have been enacted as Cranston drew himself up to his full height and began to roar insults at the stage, dismissing the mummers as fiends from hell, claiming that they had no licence to perform. Others joined in and Athelstan was grateful when he managed to push Sir John through the crowd, past the coroner’s favourite drinking place, the Holy Lamb of God tavern, and up against the coroner’s front door.
‘Sir John,’ Athelstan breathed, ‘walking with you through London is an experience never to be forgotten — and certainly never to be repeated!’
Cranston glared furiously at the crowd.
‘In my treatise on the government of this city,’ he intoned, ‘mummers will be told to perform their tricks in certain places and will have to seek a licence. Moreover. .’
Athelstan had heard enough. He turned and rapped furiously at the front door.
‘Please yourself,’ Cranston mumbled. ‘If I had more time and patience, I’d settle those buggers!’
A thin, pinch-faced maid answered the door. Sir John, grinning wickedly, pushed by her.
‘Sir John!’ she gasped. ‘We did not expect you!’
‘I come like a thief in the night!’ Cranston boomed. ‘Now, please tell the Lady Maude her lord and master has returned!’
‘The Lady Maude is in the flesh markets at the Shambles, master. She will be home shortly.’
‘And my little poppet princes?’
‘They’re upstairs, Sir John, in the solar with the wet nurse.’
Cranston lurched up the stairs, Athelstan following swiftly behind as Sir John imperiously beckoned him on. In the solar, a pleasant, sun-lit room with tapestries on the wall and carpets on the floor, the wet nurse sat on one of the cushioned window seats, gently rocking the huge, wooden cradle beside her. She rose and curtseyed as Cranston entered.
‘Leave us,’ the coroner said airily.
‘Lady Maude said,’ the comely wench answered pleadingly, ‘not to leave the poppets alone!’
Cranston drew his brows together. ‘I am the poppets’ father,’ he proclaimed. ‘They will be all right with me.’
The wet nurse, throwing anxious glances over her shoulder, left the room as Sir John gestured Athelstan forward.
‘Look!’ the coroner whispered. He bent over the huge wooden cradle and drew back the pure woollen blanket under which his two little poppets, as he described them, lay fast asleep. Sir John pushed his head deeper under the high linen canopy, breathing wine fumes down on his beloved sons. ‘Fine boys!’ he growled. ‘Fine boys!’
Athelstan peered round the coroner’s white grizzled head and once again vowed to keep his face straight. The two ‘fine boys’ and ‘poppet princes’ were indeed sturdy babies. Fat, bald heads, dimples in their cheeks, red-faced, without any hair, they looked so like Sir John that, if Athelstan had found them in Cheapside, he would have known to which family they belonged. Cranston pushed Athelstan away.
‘Fine contented lads,’ he muttered. ‘Even when they are asleep, they smile. Watch this!’ He bent to stroke one of them, Athelstan thought it was Francis, on the corner of the mouth. The coroner was ungainly on his feet and pressed so hard the little fellow woke: two liquid blue eyes stared up at them. ‘Shush, my boy!’ Cranston whispered. ‘Back to sleep with you now.’
He rose, staggered, and gave the cot a powerful push. The other baby woke up and the two brothers looked at Sir John.
‘See, they are smiling,’ Cranston said. ‘They are so pleased to see Daddy.’
Almost at a given signal the two babies’ lower lips went down, their eyes widened and the Cranston boys gave full vent to their fury at such an abrupt and unexpected wakening. The coroner shoved the blanket back and rocked the cradle vigorously. Athelstan couldn’t help laughing, for the more the coroner rocked, the worse the din became. Cranston glared furiously at him.
‘Don’t bloody well laugh, you stupid monk! Give them a blessing, sing a hymn!’
‘Sir John! What are you doing?’
Cranston turned slowly, like a fat-bellied ship shifting in the wind. Lady Maude stood in the entrance to the solar. She was only five foot two, her hair mousey, her face and figure petite, but Athelstan could sense the fury raging in her. All the more terrible for the false, sweet smile on Lady Maude’s usually serene, pretty face.
‘Sir John, what are you doing?’ she repeated, walking slowly across the room. ‘You thunder into this house like a great boar, revoke my instructions, frighten the children! Isn’t it enough that you accepted a wager which,’ Lady Maude pointed dramatically at the ceiling, ‘has threatened even the roof over their heads!’
She turned, calling for the wet nurse. At last the girl, each arm full of a struggling and still furious, red-faced baby, disappeared down the stairs, the boys’ howls fading in the distance. Cranston raised his eyes heavenwards and crept across to sit in his favourite chair next to the hearth. He saw an empty bowl shoved in the corner of the inglenook.