‘Has that lazy bugger Leif been here?’
‘Yes, he’s doing some gardening, because you, Sir John, are busy elsewhere! In the sewers, by the sound of your language!’
Cranston sank deeper into the chair, his lower lip going down, so he reminded Athelstan more of his baby sons than the King’s Coroner North of the Thames. Lady Maude, her body as stiff as a board, walked across to stand before him, arms folded.
‘Sir John, you have a big mouth, a big belly — and the only thing that redeems you is your big heart. At times you can be the shrewdest of men, and at others,’ Lady Maude sighed, ‘Leif the beggar would have more sense. How could you accept such a wager? A thousand crowns!’
‘Athelstan will help,’ Cranston replied meekly.
Lady Maude sent one withering glance at the friar, who decided to retreat and stay out of the storm in the window seat.
Athelstan sat bemused as Lady Maude gave her husband the rough edge of her tongue, a short biting lecture on the virtues of commonsense and keeping a still tongue in one’s head. Cranston, who was frightened of no one under the sun, just sat and cringed, his eyes half-closed. At last Lady Maude stopped, drew a deep breath, patted her husband on the shoulder and, leaning over, kissed him softly on the cheek.
‘There, Sir John, I have said my piece.’ She clasped her hands and glanced at Athelstan. ‘Welcome, Brother. I always thank God that Sir John has you. I am sure,’ and Athelstan smiled weakly at the steely menace in her voice, ‘I am confident you will help my husband out of this impasse. Now, Sir John, a cup of claret and a plate of doucettes. And you, Brother? Good, there’s nothing like honey to take away the taste of vinegar. Eh, Sir John?’
Cranston, his head half-lowered, nodded vigorously and, as Lady Maude flounced away, blew out his lips in a long sigh and sagged in the chair like a pricked bladder skin.
‘Believe me, Brother,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘nothing, and I repeat, nothing on earth, is more awesome than the Lady Maude in full battle array. Give me a group of roistering bully boys any time of the day!’
Lady Maude returned, bearing a tray with the wine and doucettes. She served Sir John as meekly and dutifully as any squire. The coroner, seeing in which direction the wind was blowing now, drew himself up and reasserted himself. He asked in a gruff voice what had happened whilst he had been away, nodding impatiently at Lady Maude’s chatter about the neighbours, the price of bread and the number of trade fights taking place in the city.
‘Oh, Sir John!’ Lady Maude’s fingers flew to her lips. ‘I had forgotten. Some letters arrived for you.’ She crossed to a small chest and brought out two thin rolls of parchment. Sir John opened them and quickly studied the contents, clicking his tongue.
‘We are in luck, Brother,’ he announced. ‘First, my clerks have established your church is only a hundred and thirty years old. Before that a private dwelling place stood on the site. Secondly, and more importantly, my spies have traced Master William Fitzwolfe, formerly parson of the church of St Erconwald’s, Southwark. He can be found in the Velvet Tabard inn in an alleyway off Whitefriars.’
Athelstan rose and excitedly seized the pieces of parchment.
‘Why can’t your men just arrest Fitzwolfe?’
‘In law,’ Cranston answered pompously, ‘there is a statutory limitation on offences. And, remember, it’s not a crime to flee your church.’
‘It is if you take most of the property with you!’
‘Dear Brother, you know the law. We can’t prove that.’
‘So what can I do?’
Cranston rose and loosened his belt. ‘Bring me my sword and hangar, Lady Maude, and one of my stout quarter-staffs for Athelstan. We are going to terrify Master Fitzwolfe.’
A few minutes later Cranston grandly swept out of his house, tenderly embracing his wife while muttering that all would be well. He kissed his two poppet princes on the brow, sending both back into paroxysms of rage.
‘I wish he’d remember he has a moustache and beard,’ Lady Maude whispered to Athelstan. ‘And that both are as coarse as a privet hedge!’
CHAPTER 8
Cranston and Athelstan pushed their way up a crowded Cheap-side, through a maze of alleyways and into the squalid slums round the Carmelite monastery of Whitefriars. Beggars wailed for charity. Flies swarmed on the many refuse heaps which choked the sewers and, in places, were piled waist-high outside the dirty, fetid tenements. Two boys had seized a small dog and were trying to push a stick up its rectum until Cranston sent them fleeing with a swift kick. Hawkers and pedlars with their trays of gee-gaws or small barrows full of food over which flies swarmed, stood in corners shouting for trade and keeping a wary eye out for the beadles who patrolled the area. A group of market officials had seized two men: one had not paid scutage or tax for trading in the city; the other they were trying to make pronounce ‘Cheese and bread’ on suspicion that he was a Fleming who had no right to bring any goods into the city.
‘If he pronounces that wrong,’ Cranston muttered out of the comer of his mouth as he swaggered by, ‘they’ll bum the palm of his hand with a red hot poker.’
Dark shapes flitted in and out of the doorways of the narrow runnels. The air was thick with black smoke from the glue-makers who melted the bones and offal from the Shambles in huge metal vats at the back of their squalid little houses. Cranston seemed to know his way well. Athelstan, clutching the quarter-staff, walked a little behind him, keeping a wary eye that no one was following them. Children screamed and argued. Dogs fought over the mounds of refuse. Athelstan was sure that in one pile he glimpsed a human hand, its splayed fingers putrid and rotten.
‘God save us!’ Athelstan muttered.
‘The very door to hell,’ Cranston answered. ‘Say your prayers, Brother, and keep your eyes sharp. If anyone lurches towards you, be they drunk, woman or child, give them a rap with that quarter-staff!’
They went down one alleyway. A group of beggars emerged out of the darkness, blocking their path. Cranston drew his sword and dagger.
‘Piss off!’ he shouted.
The figures retreated into the darkness. On the corner stood a woman with three children, their bodies half-covered in a dirty mass of rags, displaying terrible sores and bruises. Athelstan’s hand immediately went to his purse as the woman, bony-faced, her one good eye gleaming, stretched out a birdlike claw. Cranston slapped the hand away and pulled Athelstan on.
‘Keep your money, Brother. Can’t you see she’s a palliard?’
‘A what?’
‘A professional beggar.’
Athelstan looked quickly over his shoulder. ‘But the children, Sir John. Those terrible bruises!’
The coroner chuckled. ‘It’s a wonder, Brother, what people can do with a mixture of salt, paint, potash and pig’s blood.’
‘They are so real.’
‘Brother, look at their bodies. Plump, well-fed — they are not starving children. They probably eat better than I do.’
‘That,’ Athelstan muttered to himself, ‘would be a miracle!’ He shook his head at the sheer guile of the beggars as he followed Sir John down another alleyway. ‘Are we there yet?’
Cranston stopped and pointed up to a dirty sign which swung lazily from the ale-stake thrusting out under the eaves of a tall, three-storeyed tavern. Cranston kicked the door open and they walked into the musty darkness where only a few oil lamps flickered. The few windows were high in the wall and firmly shuttered. The hum of conversation died. Athelstan felt a prickle of fear seeing the raw-faced, mean-eyed, pinched features of the men who sat there; two were asleep, the rest were huddled in small groups, either drinking or playing dice.
‘Hell’s kitchen!’ Cranston muttered.
He drew his sword and dagger as a man rose from the table near the door. Athelstan caught the glint of a knife in the fellow’s hand.