He led them into a room off the passageway, lit candles and pulled out two stools for his unexpected visitors. Athelstan sat down and stared around. He’d never seen so many keys. They hung in bunches on the wall or lay on benches around the whitewashed room, together with pieces of metal, casting irons, pincers. He glimpsed the small forge on the outside wall. The place smelt of burnt wood and charcoal and everything was covered in a fine grey dust. He looked under one table and saw the apprentice’s bed: a straw mattress, a bolster, a woollen blanket and a rather battered wooden horseman. Perhaps the boy’s favourite toy.
‘Would you like some wine?’ the maid invited, trying to act older than she was.
‘No, no.’ Atheistan smiled. ‘Sir John never touches wine, do you. My Lord Coroner?’
No, no,’ Cranston gruffly replied, narrowing his eyes at Atheistan. He drew himself up. ‘It sets a fine example.’
The boy peered at the large Coroner under lowered eye-lashes, as if only half-convinced.
‘Where did your master go?’ Cranston asked.
‘I don’t know, he just left the shop.’
‘And how was he?’
‘Very excited,’ the apprentice replied.
‘About what?’
‘Oh, making the chest for the great lords, and the keys.’
‘Tell me.’ Cranston leaned forward, trying to keep the wineskin concealed under his cloak. ‘Did you help your master make the chest, its locks and keys?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And how many keys did he make?’
‘Six.’
‘Didn’t he make any more just in case one was lost?’
‘Oh, no, my master said that was forbidden.’
‘And,’ Atheistan intervened, ‘did he have any visitors to the shop? Someone mysterious, cloaked and hooded?’
‘No.’ The boy laughed. ‘Why should he?’
His eyes flickered and he looked away. You are hiding something, Athelstan thought, but nothing to do with this.
‘And which of the great ones came here?’
‘Well, they all came here yesterday,’ Perrot replied.
‘In their cloaks, boots and beaver hats, they nigh filled the house. They had to take the chest and keys to the Guildhall. There were soldiers outside with a cart.’
‘Yes,’ Athelstan continued. ‘But before your master finished the keys and the locks, did any of the great ones come to see him privately?’
‘I don’t think so,’ the boy replied. ‘I live here, and sleep here. Master always brings his visitors here except when he is working in his garden. He likes to go there by himself. Says he likes the change.’
‘But the visitors?’ Athelstan persisted.
‘Two large fat ones,’ the boy replied, ‘the Lord Mayor and the Sheriff. They always came together over the last two weeks to make sure my master was doing his work.’
‘And no one else?’
‘No, Father.’
Athelstan’s eyes turned to the young maid standing next to the boy. ‘And you saw nothing mysterious or untoward?’
They both shook their heads.
‘What happened to the moulds?’ Cranston moved his feet. ‘The ones in which the keys were cast?’
‘They were destroyed,’ the boy replied proudly. ‘When the great ones came for the chest and keys, they stood around and watched me smash them with a hammer.’
Cranston gazed at Athelstan who shook his head.
The Coroner lumbered to his feet, stretched and yawned; fishing in his pocket, he took out two pennies which he handed to the boy and girl.
‘Very good!’ he murmured. ‘But when your master returns, tell him to find Sir John Cranston’s house in Cheapside. I have to speak to him.’
The maid and apprentice nodded. Cranston and Athelstan walked back into Lawrence Lane and down to the corner of the Mercery.
‘You know he’ll never come back, Sir John?’
Cranston blew out his cheeks. ‘Aye, tomorrow I’ll issue an instruction to the officials to search amongst the corpses found throughout the city.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘Brother, you are welcome to share my house tonight.’
Athelstan looked up at the starlit sky. ‘Thank you, Sir John, but I must return.’
He stood and watched as Cranston, shouting farewells, shuffled like some great bear up Cheapside. Suddenly he turned.
‘Brother, I’ll walk you to the bridge!’
‘No, no, I insist, Sir John. I’ll be safe. Who’d attack a poor friar?’
Cranston watched the priest cross the Mercery and go down Budge Row.
‘Aye!’ he whispered to himself. ‘Who’d attack a poor friar? This city is full of bastards who would!’
Cranston waited until Athelstan had disappeared out of sight then followed him along Budge Row, down the Walbrook into the Ropery and along Bridge Street. At the far end in a pool of light, their torches fixed on poles, guards stood at the entrance to the bridge. Cranston heard their indistinct voices as they questioned the friar. One of them laughed and Athelstan was allowed through. The Coroner sighed with relief but strained his ears once more as he heard the slither of footsteps behind him.
‘Listen, you nightbirds,’ he growled over his shoulder, ‘this is old Jack, city Coroner. If you don’t piss off I’ll have your balls round your necks!’ When he turned, the street was empty.
Cranston went to relieve himself above a sewer, finished what he termed his ‘devoir’, fastened the points of his hose and smacked his lips. He made the sign of the cross and took a generous swig from the miraculous wineskin. Then he remembered the two dogs, Gog and Magog, and wondered what Lady Maude would think of them. Cranston groaned and decided another generous swig would not go amiss.
Athelstan sat at his table in the little priest’s house just opposite St Erconwald’s church in Southwark. He had returned to find everything in order. The church doors locked, someone had left a small jar of honey in one of the recesses; obviously a gift from one of his parishioners. His old horse Philomel was lying on his side, breathing heavily through flared nostrils as he dreamed of former glories when he had been a full-blooded destrier in the old King’s wars. Athelstan stood by the stable door, talking to him for a while, but the old horse snored on so the friar continued his survey of his little church plot. His garden was in good order, or the little he could see of it, whilst Bonaventure, the great mouser, the one-eyed prince of the alleyways, was apparently out on a night’s courting or hunting.
Now he stared round the meagre kitchen. The walls had been freshly painted with lime against the flies. He closed his eyes and smelt the fragrant herbs sprinkled on the fresh green rushes and then looked at the cauldron over the fire. He half-raised himself to ensure the porridge he was cooking did not become too thick or congealed. He sighed, went into the buttery and brought back a jug of milk. It still smelt fresh so he poured this into the cauldron, carefully stirring the porridge as Benedicta had instructed him.
‘I wish I could cook,’ he muttered.
He had once entertained Cranston to breakfast and the Coroner had sworn that Athelstan’s porridge, if thrown by catapults, could break down any city wall. He returned the jug, wiped his hands on a towel and went back to stand over the table which was littered with pieces of parchment. Each scrap of parchment contained the details of a murder.
‘What do we have?’ Athelstan mockingly asked himself. ‘How did Rosamund Ingham kill Sir John’s companion, Sir Oliver? No mark of violence. No trace of poison.’ He scratched his cheek. ‘Was the man murdered? Or was Cranston just furious at seeing an old friend made a cuckold?’
And yet, he thought, Cranston despite his bristling, white whiskers, florid face, great balding head and even bigger belly, was as shrewd and cunning as a serpent. Cranston had a nose for mischief; if Sir John thought a foul act had been committed, then he was usually right.
Athelstan picked up another piece of parchment and studied his crude drawing of the garden at the Guildhall where Mountjoy had been murdered. ‘How on earth?’ he muttered to himself. On one side was the high trellis fence against which the Sheriff had been leaning, to his left a sheer brick wall, to his right the garden fence guarded by the dogs and, facing him, the wooden fence of the pentice connecting the Guildhall to its kitchen. How could an assassin enter such an enclosed space and stab the burly Mountjoy to death without any clamour from the Sheriff or his fearsome dogs?