CHAPTER 13
Brother Norbert roused them late in the afternoon asking if everything was all right. Athelstan, sleepy-eyed, mumbled his thanks and told Norbert the books could be returned to the library.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
Athelstan rubbed his eyes and yawned. ‘Yes and no, Brother.’ He smiled at Norbert’s puzzled expression. ‘All I can say is we have to wait for a while, Sir John and I.’ He looked at the coroner who sat on the edge of his bed, yawning like a cat. ‘My Lord Coroner and I now have other business to attend to.’
Cranston and he then washed themselves and helped Brother Norbert and other lay brothers take the rest of the volumes back to the library. Afterwards they both went for a walk in the orchard. They closed their minds to what they had seen during their last visit and enjoyed the sweet, fragrant smells of the ripening fruit.
‘We can proceed no further in the business here,’ Cranston observed, ‘until our messenger returns from Oxford. I have left instructions with Lady Maude that she is to send him to wherever we are.’ He stopped and looked squarely at Athelstan, his face drained of its usual bombast and cheeky arrogance. ‘Brother, tomorrow, at seven in the evening, I am to return to my Lord of Gaunt’s hall with the solution to the puzzle set by the Italian.’ He grasped Athelstan by the shoulder. ‘I trust you, Brother. I think you have a solution. I know you have a solution. Please trust me with it.’ Cranston held up one huge, podgy hand. ‘I swear on the lives of my poppets that I shall keep a closed mouth and not divulge what you tell me to anyone.’
‘You are certain, Sir John?’
‘As certain as I am that my belly is both big and empty.’
‘Then, My Lord Coroner, perhaps I should test my hypothesis.’
After supper that evening Athelstan took Cranston back to their bedchamber.
‘Now, Sir John, let us begin again. We have a chamber containing no secret passageways or trap doors, yet four murders are committed there: of a young man, a chaplain, and two soldiers. None of the victims ate or drank anything and it is part of the mystery that no one entered that room so no foul play by a third party is suspected.’ Athelstan shrugged. ‘Now, in logic we are taught to search for the common denominator. One factor common to all things. So, this is my solution.’ He undid his saddle bags and laid out certain items on his bed. Cranston watched intently as Athelstan, using their bedchamber as the murder room, played out the manner in which each man died whilst giving the astonished coroner a lucid description of why the deaths had occurred.
‘It can’t be!’ Cranston breathed. ‘It’s impossible!’
‘Sir John, it’s the only explanation. And this time, using you as a possible victim, I shall prove it to you.’
An hour later Cranston had grudgingly to agree that Athelstan’s conclusion was the only acceptable one.
‘I hope it is,’ he remarked cheerily. ‘For before God, Sir John, it’s the only answer I can think of.’
‘What happens if you are wrong?’ Cranston muttered. ‘What happens if there is something we have forgotten? What then, eh? Where do I get the money to pay My Lord of Cremona?’
Athelstan put his face in his hands. He loved Cranston as a brother but sometimes the coroner reminded him of a petulant child. Nevertheless, Sir John was right. This was no simple mind game, one of those riddles loved by the philosophers of Oxford or Cambridge. Cranston’s reputation, his standing as a principal law officer, was at stake. The friar got up.
‘I can’t answer that, Sir John. I need to see Father Prior. I must tell him that we intend to leave tomorrow and will not return till Sunday.’ He patted Sir John on the shoulder. ‘Get some sleep. You will need your wits about you tomorrow.’
Of course, when Athelstan returned two hours later, Cranston was still up, cradling the miraculous wineskin in his arms as if it was one of the poppets.
‘You were a long time,’ he slurred.
‘I had to speak to Father Prior about some other business.’ ‘What’s that in your hand?’ Cranston pointed to the small roll of parchment Athelstan was pushing into his saddle bag.
‘Nothing, Sir John.’
Cranston let out a sigh. ‘You’re a secretive bugger, Athelstan, but I am too tired.’
Cranston shook off his clothes and fell with such a crash on to the bed, Athelstan considered it a miracle that both he and it did not go straight through the floor. The good coroner was snoring within minutes. Athelstan said his prayers, not so much the Divine Office of the church as a plea that the solution he proposed to Cranston’s puzzle was the correct one.
They spent the next day rehearsing the conclusion they had reached. Cranston sent Brother Norbert to his house in Cheapside to see if the messenger had returned from Oxford as well as to convey his felicitations to the Lady Maude and the two poppets. Norbert returned full of praise for the gracious Lady Maude and admiration for Cranston’s bouncing, baby boys. But, no, he declared, no messenger had arrived.
Cranston and Athelstan left the monastery of Blackfriars early in the evening. The coroner wished to refresh himself in one of the riverside taverns, then they hired a wherry to take them upriver to John of Gaunt’s palace. Even as the barge pulled in from mid-stream, they could see Gaunt’s household was waiting for them. The news of Cranston’s wager had apparently spread throughout the court. Silk-garbed barges were already pulling into the private quayside where retainers, wearing the livery of Gaunt, stood waiting with lighted torches. Above them the banners bearing the royal arms of England, France, Castile and Leon snapped in the breeze from the river.
As Cranston and Athelstan arrived, a chamberlain bearing a white, gold-tipped wand of office and dressed resplendently in cloth-of-gold, greeted them and led them through the throng along lighted passageways into the Great Hall, splendidly prepared for the occasion. On the black and white marble floor benches had been arranged, covered in soft testers for spectators to sit on; the walls were hung with vivid, resplendent tapestries. Just in front of these, men-at-arms dressed in silver half-armour stood discreetly, their swords drawn. On the dais the huge oaken table glowed in the light of hundreds of beeswax candles so that the far end of the room was almost as bright as it would be on a glorious summer’s day.
The chamberlain took them on to the dais and ushered them to chairs grouped behind the table in a broad semicircle.
‘You are to wait here,’ he announced. ‘His Grace the Duke of Lancaster and other members of the court are dining alone.’
Cranston caught the snub implicit in the man’s words.
‘What’s your name, fellow?’
‘Simon, Sir John. Simon de Bellamonte.’
‘Then, Simon,’ Cranston answered sweetly, ‘while we wait we are not here to be stared at. You will keep the hall door closed and serve my clerk and myself two large goblets of my Lord of Gaunt’s famous Rhenish wine which he keeps chilled in the cellars below!’
The chamberlain pulled his lips into a vinegarish smile.
‘The door must remain open,’ he squeaked in protest.
‘Oh, piss off!’ Cranston hissed. ‘Bring us some wine at least or I’ll tell my Lord of Gaunt that his guests were ill-treated.’
‘Master Bellamonte,’ Athelstan murmured, ‘Sir John has a terrible thirst so your kindness in this matter would be deeply appreciated.’
The chamberlain drew himself up to his full height and stalked away with all the grace of an ambling duck. The courtiers remained in the hall but at least Sir John got his wine, a large pewter cup, winking and bubbling at the rim. Sir John downed the wine in one gulp, smacked his lips and held out the cup.