Cranston stared at him in disbelief and once more wished Athelstan was here.
‘Was it some demon, some evil spirit?’
‘Ah!’ Galeazzo, Lord of Cremona, addressed the hall. ‘My Lord Coroner asks if the room was possessed of some demon. My aunt thought so and sent for a holy priest from the nearby church to come bless and exorcise the room. This venerable father arrived late in the day. He blessed, he exorcised, every corner but with no visible result. So we left him there. He said he would pray, and locked the door behind us.’
Galeazzo turned and smiled at Cranston’s expression. ‘My Lord Coroner, I am sure you suspect what happened next. It was late in the evening before my lady aunt realised the venerable father had not reappeared so servants forced the door and found the priest lying dead upon the floor — on his face the same look of horror as on the young man’s who had died earlier.’ Galeazzo stopped to bask in the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ of his audience.
Gaunt fingered his lower lip; the young king had now forgotten his hated uncle and watched the Italian nobleman attentively.
‘My Lord,’ the king cried in a shrill voice, ‘what happened then?’
Galeazzo smiled. ‘My lady aunt would not be satisfied. She called for two of her retainers, hardened warriors, one of them a good swordsman, the other a Genoese expert with the crossbow. They were bribed with gold to spend one night in the room. The men accepted and took up their posts that same evening. The door was unlocked as we’d had to force it to discover the body of the priest. The swordsman slept on a chair, the Genoese on the bed. In the middle of the night we were all wakened by a terrible scream.
‘This time I was barred from going but my aunt later told me that when she entered the scarlet chamber, she found the swordsman on the floor, a crossbow bolt embedded deep in his chest, whilst the Genoese, still clutching his arbalest, lay sprawled near him. He had died the same way as the rest, but something evil in that room, some demonic force, my aunt concluded, had forced this soldier to kill his own companion before he too perished.’
Galeazzo suddenly clapped his hands. ‘My aunt had done all she could. The corpses were removed, masses sung, and the scarlet chamber once again locked and barred. The years passed. I became a young man. Then, one day, an archivist from a local monastery heard of the terrible story. He demanded an audience with my aunt and said he could resolve the mystery of the scarlet chamber.’ Galeazzo shrugged. ‘Your Grace, fellow guests, I can proceed no further.’ He shook his head at the angry grumblings from the guests who felt cheated of a good story. ‘I leave that to the subtle wit of My Lord Coroner.’ He looked squarely at Cranston. ‘Sir John, do you have further questions?’
Cranston shook his head disbelievingly. ‘Four people died in that room and no one entered? No food or drink were given? And when there were two, one killed the other?’
Galeazzo smiled and nodded.
‘Unbelievable!’
‘My Lord Coroner,’ Cremona announced for all to hear, ‘what I tell you is the truth!’
Suddenly the young king rose to his feet. “The challenge has been given and accepted!’ he piped. ‘But, sweet Uncle, and My Lord of Cremona, there must be justice. How long has Sir John to solve this mystery?’
‘Two weeks,’ Galeazzo replied. ‘Two weeks from tonight I shall return to this hall and Sir John must present his solution.’
Cranston smiled at the young king for publicly supporting him. ‘How will I know the solution I offer is the correct one? My Lord, I mean no offence but there may be six solutions, all correct?’
Galeazzo stroked his silky, black moustache. ‘No, Sir John,’ he murmured, and snapped his fingers at a retainer standing behind him. ‘The documents!’
The squire handed them over. One was a roll of parchment which Galeazzo handed to Cranston.
‘This relates the mystery. You will find it as I have described it.’ He picked up a square piece of vellum, sealed with four purple blobs of wax. ‘This is the solution.’ Cremona handed it to the king. ‘Your Grace, I entrust it to your care so no foul play can be suspected.’
A hum of approval rose from the hall. The young king clapped his hands in glee whilst Gaunt grinned at Cranston.
‘Two weeks, My Lord Coroner,’ murmured Gaunt, and gripped Cranston by the arm. ‘Don’t worry, Sir John. If you lose the wager, I will pay the debt.’
Cranston’s jaw dropped at the terrible trap he had blundered into. It was not merely the loss of the gold or the disgrace of losing the wager, which he surely would; Gaunt had used this as a subtle device to please his Italian guest and, more importantly, to get the coroner into his debt. Cranston had the ear of the mayor, sheriffs and leading burgesses of London. The coroner was a man respected for his integrity and blunt criticism of the court. If he accepted Gaunt’s money he would be in the Regent’s debt and, within a year, would be regarded by everyone as Gaunt’s creature. Cranston’s rage boiled within him. He had to bite back a scathing reply and instead clenched the edge of the table until his fingers hurt, deaf to the conversations going on around him. He caught and held the Regent’s gaze. Cranston drew a deep breath.
‘My Lord of Lancaster, I thank you for your generosity, but I will not need your money. I will solve the mystery.’
Gaunt smiled and patted him on the arm.
‘Of course, Sir John. And I am going to enjoy hearing your solution.’
Gaunt turned to converse with his young nephew. Cranston could only sit, seething with anger at both himself and the subtlety of princes.
The banquet ended an hour later. Cranston collected his beaver hat and wool-lined cloak from a page boy and stamped through the narrow streets to the nearest tavern. He ordered a separate table, two good candles and the biggest jug of ale the tavern could furnish. For an hour he re-read the mystery posed by Cremona and, the more he read, the deeper his depression grew. At last, full of ale and self-pity, he left the tavern and made his lugubrious way home. Not even the prospect of seeing Maude’s cheerful face or his little poppets, Francis and Stephen, could penetrate the coroner’s deepening gloom.
Brother Athelstan rose early. The previous night had been clear and he had enjoyed studying the heavens with Bonaventure, the ever-growing church cat, squatting beside him watching him curiously. Afterwards Athelstan had taken his telescope and charts back to the only lockable chest in the priest’s small house, gone across to St Erconwald’s to chant Vespers with Bonaventure still beside him, then back for some light ale, a piece of bread smeared with honey, milk for Bonaventure, and so to bed.
Brother Athelstan felt pleased with himself and softly sang a song from boyhood as he washed, shaved and donned his black and white robe. Beside him faithful Bonaventure stretched and yawned, licking his whiskers with his small pink tongue in hopeful expectation of a dish of fish and a bowl of milk. Athelstan re-arranged the small towel, looping it over the wooden lavarium, and crouched to stroke the cat, scratching it softly between its ears until Bonaventure purred with pleasure.
‘You are getting fat, master cat. The more I see of you the more I think of Cranston.’
Bonaventure seemed to smile and snuggled closer.
‘You are getting fat, Bonaventure,’ Athelstan repeated. ‘And I am not feeding you this morning. You will have to hunt for your breakfast.’
Athelstan gazed round his small, sparsely furnished bedchamber. He tidied the horsehair blanket on his trestle bed, emptied the water he had used out of the window and jumped as he heard an angry grunt from below. He looked down and found Ursula the pig woman’s fat sow staring up at him. Athelstan quietly swore and slammed the shutters closed. He hated that bloody pig: it seemed to have an almost demonic intelligence. As soon as the cabbages and other vegetables Athelstan had carefully planted began to sprout, that damned animal would come lurching along to help itself.