‘Oh, just a messenger from across the city.’ Athelstan pulled the platter across. ‘But go on, tell me about this.’
‘I went upstairs and asked Alison if she’d heard anything.’
‘I had,’ Alison intervened. ‘I thought it was my imagination. I told Benedicta not to go out but she said that if I came with her.. ’
‘We went downstairs,’ Benedicta continue. She took a small scroll of parchment from the cuff of her sleeve and handed it to Athelstan.
‘“My last,”’ he read. ‘“The one behind it all; the first and the last will always be discovered at the centre of a maze.”’
‘What does it mean?’ Benedicta asked.
‘We are hunting a murderer,’ Athelstan replied. ‘Someone who kills and always leaves a riddle on the corpse of his victim. But for the first time,’ he smiled thinly as if echoing the words of the riddle, ‘one has been found before any crime has been committed.’ He paused. ‘No, that’s not true. There was no riddle found on Chapler’s corpse. Anyway,’ he continued, ‘we know that the other riddles spell out the first letter of the surname of each of the murdered clerks. However, this appears to be different. You’ll leave it with me?’
Benedicta nodded.
‘And you are going back to your house?’
‘Yes, yes, I am,’ Benedicta agreed. ‘I have had a word with Watkin. He’s going to send Beadle Bladdersniff with two others to watch my door.’
‘Ah yes,’ Athelstan replied. ‘Sir Watkin, knight of the basting spoon.’ He smiled at both women. ‘Are you sure you won’t stay any longer?’
They both made their excuses and left.
Athelstan returned to his study of the scrawled riddle.
‘The last,’ he murmured. ‘What’s discovered at the centre of a maze? Of course, a rood: a crucifix above a rose bower?’ He chewed on his lip. ‘But what does that mean? Another word for maze is labyrinth: R is its central letter.’ Athelstan paused. R the first and the last: he was certain the murderer was exposing his motive: Revenge!
CHAPTER 10
Sir John Cranston sat in the small chancery at the top of his house in Cheapside. He stared through the unshuttered window watching for the first rays of the rising sun. As always, Sir John had woken early. The Lady Maude lay beside him lost in her dreams whilst, in the adjoining chamber, the two poppets, dressed in their linen nightgowns, sprawled on their cot beds. They looked so much alike: thin blond hair, apple-red cheeks, the firm chin and mouth of their father.
‘Lovely lads!’ Sir John had breathed and smiled as he noticed how they even snored in unison. He had tiptoed further down the gallery, quietly praying under his breath that the poppets would not awake. If they did, and knew Sir John was about, they’d rouse the entire house with their shouts. This was going to be a busy day for Sir John; he had gone down to the kitchen where he had washed, shaved and quickly dressed in the fresh apparel the Lady Maude had laid out the night before. A meat pie in the buttery kept savoury in a linen cloth, and a small jug of watered ale, served as breakfast. Sir John had then knelt and, closing his eyes, said his morning prayers before going up to his chancery.
He now sat with the Coroners’ Roll in front of him though his gaze strayed to the thick manuscript lying to his right: Cranston’s famous treatise, ‘On the Governance of London’. Sir John leaned back on the cushioned chair. He had reached a new chapter, ‘On the keeping of the streets, alleyways and runnels free of all filth’. Cranston had recommended the building of public latrines, strict laws against filling the streets with refuse and the contents of chamber pots. The open sewers would be moved beyond the city limits whilst the dung-collectors would be organised into a guild.
Sir John sighed and returned to more mundane matters, the first entry on the Coroners’ Rolclass="underline"
On Thursday, the morrow of the feast of St Joachim and St Anne, Richard Crinkler sat on a latrine high in his tenement in a house owned by Owen Brilchard on the corner of Bore Street. The said latrine did break and the aforementioned Richard fell to his death which was not his proper death.
Sir John scratched his cheek. Why did his clerk use such convoluted phrases? And how could a man fall to his death down a latrine? Cranston closed his eyes and recalled the old, rotting mansions in Bore Street.
‘Ah yes,’ he murmured.
He could visualise what had happened to poor old Richard Crinkler. Those great houses had small cupboards which served as stool rooms built into a shaft which ran the whole length of the house. Grinkler had either been half asleep or drunk. The wooden latrine board had broken and so Crinkler fell to his death.
‘Heaven be praised!’ Cranston whispered. ‘We all have to die but sometimes the Good Lord does call us in rather strange ways.’
He started as he heard the bell of St Mary Le Bow begin to toll, the sign that the night curfew was over. He put his quill back in its box and blew out the candle. Grabbing his war belt and cloak he hurried down into Cheapside. The broad thoroughfare was still deserted. Any beggars, nightwalkers or whores who had been lurking in the mouths of alleyways soon disappeared once they heard the news that the lord coroner was on the streets. Cranston walked down towards St Mary’s. The beacon was still alight in the steeple. Cranston studied the cavernous doorway to the church and smiled as he glimpsed Henry Flaxwith with the ever-vigilant Samson.
‘Good morning, Sir John,’ the bailiff called, grasping the rope holding Samson more tightly.
‘Is everything ready?’ Cranston asked and looked in surprise as a small side door opened and Athelstan came out. ‘Lord, Brother, what are you doing here?’
‘Praying, Sir John, I’ve been praying!’
Athelstan had washed and shaved and wore a new robe but his eyes looked as if he had slept badly or not at all.
‘Is everything well?’
‘Everything, Sir John. I said a very early Mass not long after midnight, when the tumult in the cemetery had died down. I’m too angry with my parishioners to meet them.’ Athelstan breathed in. ‘They can spend a day without their priest.’
‘Don’t judge them too harshly.’ Cranston patted Athelstan on the shoulder. ‘God knows why they are doing it.’
‘Did you get my message?’ Athelstan asked, abruptly changing the subject.
‘Yes,’ Sir John replied. ‘I went to see Master Lesures: timid as a rabbit, crouching in his chamber. According to him, Alcest sometimes acted the fop and insisted on wearing spurs to his boots.’ Cranston whistled through his teeth. ‘And I want to question Alcest further. There’s been another death: Napham.’
‘I thought there might. How did he die?’
‘A caltrop had been hidden among the rushes in his chamber, a huge, jagged affair…’
‘A caltrop, Sir John?’
‘They are used against armoured knights,’ Cranston explained, seeing the puzzlement in Athelstan’s face. ‘Steel man-traps, often placed on roads when planning an ambuscade or used to defend a dry ditch during a siege. Simple but terrible, like a rat-trap. The horse or the man puts his foot in and the trap is sprung.’
‘A terrible death,’ Athelstan remarked.
‘It almost severed Napham’s foot,’ Cranston continued. ‘However, in his agony he must have knocked a candle over. It fired the rushes and bedstead in his chamber. The poor man burnt to death. Another tenant noticed the flames and the fire was put out. The chamber was on the ground floor and the floor was made of stone so the fire did not spread too quickly. I went to view Napham’s corpse.’ Cranston shook his head. ‘Nothing more than burnt meat, the horrible caltrop still buried in his foot.’