‘Father, let them have their way,’ Benedicta declared. ‘Don’t act hastily.’
‘I’m sorry, I must be going.’ Alison extended her hand, offering a silver coin.
Athelstan shook his head. ‘I buried your brother as an act of charity,’ he replied.
The young woman stood on tiptoe and kissed Athelstan on both cheeks. ‘I’ll be staying at the Silver Lute until this business is finished.’ She smiled at Benedicta. ‘I will collect my things.’
Athelstan watched her go. ‘Shouldn’t you be with her?’ he asked.
‘I have a seamstress working at home,’ Benedicta replied. ‘She will let her in. What are you going to do about this, Father?’
‘What can I do, Benedicta? You know these people better than I do. The supernatural is as real to them as the sun, wind and rain. Demons stand round their sickbeds; demons slay the newborn child; they grimace in corners and lurk behind every tree.’ Athelstan rubbed his face. At night, if Watkin is to be believed, evil spirits rumble about his house; they bump on the roof and creak in the rafters. Devils howl in the wind, strike cattle down in the meadows, cause river banks to burst.’ He pointed to the parish coffin which stood in the transept. A brother told me how, at Blackfriars, a parishioner pulled a nail from a rotting coffin then drove it secretly into a bench. Whoever was the first to sit on that bench suffered the same disease from which the corpse in the coffin had died.’ He smiled thinly at Benedicta. ‘My point, Oh most faithful of parishioners, is that my people see devils and demons and evil all around them. It’s only natural they also see miracles and God’s intervention: angels swooping from heaven, relics which cure the most dreadful diseases and crucifixes which bleed.’
The door was suddenly flung open.
‘What in the devil’s fart is happening out there?’ Cranston swept into the church. ‘Brother Athelstan, have your noddlepates gone mad? They are setting a shrine up in the cemetery!’ Cranston took off his beaver hat and slapped it against his leg. ‘Those noddlepates,’ he continued ‘believe a crucifix is bleeding. They are building their own altar and are charging a penny for people to pray before it. They have got candles lit, they even tried to make me pay! I told them a kick up the arse was all they’d get from the King’s coroner!’ Cranston grinned at Benedicta, swept her into his arms and kissed her juicily on each cheek.
‘You are well, Sir John?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Bloody awful.’ The coroner stamped his feet. ‘Come on, Athelstan, I need you. Leave your parishioners. They’ve got more maggots in their heads than mice in a hayrick.’
‘I should really stay,’ Athelstan replied.
‘Nonsense!’ Cranston bellowed. ‘Come on, Brother, let them have their run.’
‘Sir John speaks the truth, Brother,’ Benedicta added softly. ‘Go with him. I’ll tidy up the sanctuary and the house, then I’ll camp out in the cemetery.’
Athelstan closed his eyes to pray for guidance. He knew both Sir John and Benedicta were right. If he stayed, he’d only fret or interfere and Watkin was not only built like an ox, he was as stubborn as one.
‘Shall I take Philomel?’ he asked, opening his eyes.
‘No, forget your horse,’ Cranston replied. ‘I came by river. Moleskin’s waiting for us at the steps near Pissing Alley’
Athelstan followed Sir John out on to the porch and stared in disbelief across the cemetery. Watkin had moved quickly: in the far corner a calvary had been formed, a mound of earth and rocks. On the top was the crucifix with candles glowing beneath it. The word had also spread: people were thronging into the cemetery, paying their coins to Pike and Tab whilst Watkin and the ditcher’s wives strode up and down. They were both armed with ash cudgels and glared ferociously at anyone who dared approach their shrine without proper payment.
‘If Father Prior hears of this,’ Athelstan murmured, ‘he’ll have my head.’
Cranston stopped. ‘Then you’d better not tell him, had you?’ He tugged at the friar’s sleeve. ‘Come on, Athelstan, Moleskin’s waiting and I’m hungry.’
Athelstan hastened across to his house to get his writing bag, then he and Sir John walked down the narrow alleyway towards the riverside. They paused outside Merrylegs’s cookshop where Sir John bought a pie and bit into it as they walked; he smacked his lips and murmured how Merrylegs should be knighted for his services to the stomach.
‘You are in good spirits, Sir John?’ Athelstan hurried beside him. ‘You slept well?’
‘Like a little pig,’ Cranston replied. ‘But that’s not because of the evening I had, Brother.’ He described Ollerton’s death and his confrontation with the Vicar of Hell.
‘I’ve heard of him,’ Athelstan exclaimed. ‘They say he dresses all in black and that his face is disfigured by scars.’
‘Nonsense!’ Cranston replied. ‘He’s a merry rogue who can out-argue a lawyer, outwit a trickster and outlie the devil. He’s been responsible for more villainy than I’d like to mention. The Guildmasters have a hundred pounds sterling reward posted for his capture, dead or alive. No one has come forward to claim it. He loves the ladies, does our Vicar of Hell, and they love him. Any man who betrayed him to the authorities would not survive for long.’
‘But you say he knew about our clerks of the Green Wax?’
‘And more.’ Cranston finished the pie. ‘Mistress Broadsheet told me that Alcest did business with Drayton.’
‘A rich pottage,’ Athelstan replied.
He paused to stare at a beggar crouching on the corner of the alleyway. The man was humming, rocking himself backwards and forwards. On a sack before him lay a whalebone.
‘Taken from the side of Leviathan!’ the fellow screeched. ‘The great beast who lives in the sea. Touch it for a penny!’
Athelstan walked forward and tossed a coin on to the sack.
‘Thank you, Brother, thank you. I’ve got more whalebones!’ the man shouted.
Athelstan shook his head and turned back to the coroner. ‘So, we have Mistress Broadsheet confessing that Alcest did business with Drayton whilst the Vicar of Hell knows about the deaths amongst the clerks of the Green Wax.’
‘We also know,’ Cranston added, ‘that, according to Dame Broadsheet and her girls, none of the clerks left the Dancing Pig the night Chapler was killed. We also have this apparent wealth. How could Alcest afford such a sumptuous banquet? Finally, there’s Ollerton’s death. The assassin must have been in the chamber when the clerk drank the mead.’
‘And the riddle?’
‘My second is the centre of woe,’ Cranston declared. ‘And the principal mover of horror.’
Athelstan shook his head in disbelief. ‘It makes no sense. Nothing makes sense, Sir John. Why have the clerks been killed? Why the riddles? Who is this mysterious young man, cloaked and spurred, who has been seen round the city?’
They walked down to the quayside.
‘So where are we going, Sir John?’
‘Back to Drayton’s house,’ Cranston declared. ‘Yesterday evening the Regent had me taken to the Savoy Palace.’ Cranston stopped and sucked in the river air. ‘Oh, he wined and he dined me. Clapped me on the shoulder and called me Honest Jack. But he wants his money back, Athelstan: the silver taken from Master Drayton. Gaunt needs it urgently. So it’s back to Drayton’s house.’
They went down the slippery steps to where Moleskin’s boat was waiting. The leather-skinned wherry man welcomed them as graciously as if he was captain of a royal man-of-war. He sat them in the stern, untied the rope and briskly pulled at the oars, taking his wherry across the sun-dappled river. Moleskin knew that Cranston would keep silent, whilst Brother Athelstan never told him about the business they prosecuted. Nevertheless, the friar could tell from the knowing gleam in Moleskin’s eyes that the news of the great miracle at St Erconwald’s had already reached him.
‘Before you ask,’ Athelstan declared, ‘I know about the miracle, Moleskin, or the so-called miracle. Yes, I am angry. I am also puzzled, but it will wait, and that’s all I’m going to say on the matter!’