‘What price did your brother ask for all this?’ Athelstan demanded.
‘To strike at Gaunt, to protect our comrades, to prepare for the great revolt and, when it came, to ensure that Firecrest Manor was burnt to the ground. Not one stone was to be left upon another, its soil sown with salt and its masters executed as traitors to the common good. And before you ask, Brother Athelstan, yes, we have sympathizers in the Beaumont household, though we do not yet fully trust them. They knew nothing about this. So, Brother, what do you want?’
‘The truth.’
‘You have had that.’
‘About the Ignifer, the assassin?’
‘We know nothing,’ Garman retorted. ‘I – we – can tell you no more.’
‘Oh, yes, you can. How you obtained Greek fire, its deadliest variety. You, Parson Garman, must have it. You must have met the leaders of the Upright Men to demonstrate its true power?’
‘No,’ John of Richmond intervened, ‘I did that. Oh, for the love of God, Garman, tell him! What does it matter now?’
‘We were given the formula,’ the prison chaplain admitted. ‘Brother, I swear to this. Every day I stand outside Newgate jail just before the vespers bell. I do that deliberately to receive petitions from the families of prisoners, scraps of parchment with a scrawled message for their loved ones confined inside. About a week ago I was standing there when a beggar pushed a small leather pouch into my hand. He was making signs to someone I could not see. I thought he was moonstruck. However, when I opened the message in the prison chapel, I found the writing was clerkly. The letter greeted me in the name of the Great Community of the Realm. Beneath this salutation was a formula, very precise and exact, giving the different constituents and elements of Greek fire. Anyone who had served as an officer in the Luciferi would recognize it for what it was.’
‘You mixed these?’
‘No, I did,’ John of Richmond retorted. ‘I am an apothecary, skilled in measurement.’
‘Yes, yes, you are,’ Athelstan agreed, slightly distracted. He would certainly remember that when he came to analysing all he had learnt here.
‘The Upright Men of Essex and Southwark wanted my assurances,’ John of Richmond continued, ‘that this truly was Greek fire. They trusted in my skill as an apothecary. They also believed Fulchard must have also instructed me. To a certain extent he did before he died. He could remember, albeit not precisely, the different combustibles Beaumont had bought and mixed on Patmos. I took a clay bowl out to meet them. They were soon convinced.’
‘Parson Garman,’ Athelstan asked, ‘do you know the source of the message delivered to you?’
‘The beggar came and went. He was constantly gesturing, as if there was someone with him.’
Athelstan held the prison chaplain’s gaze, wondering if the zealot was lying. Whatever the truth, the friar sensed he’d obtained all that he could, so it was time to be gone. He rose abruptly to his feet, surprising them all.
‘Father!’ Pike exclaimed.
‘What I learnt here, Pike, I swear, remains with me. Now,’ Athelstan gestured around, ‘all of you who are not members of my parish must be gone from St Erconwald’s by curfew time tomorrow night. John of Richmond, before you leave, sometime around the angelus bell, I insist that you go on to the top step of my church. Pike and Watkin will create a makeshift pulpit for you and other members of the parish will help. You will proclaim to all and sundry that tonight you had a vision of St Erconwald. How our great saint instructed you that the proper place for pilgrims’ devotion is not St Erconwald’s but the saintly bishop’s own tomb in St Paul’s. Let us be honest, let us be frank,’ Athelstan added wryly, ‘that’s the truth. Gentlemen,’ the friar raised his hand in blessing, ‘to those of my flock, I bid goodnight. To those who are not, may God bless you all on the strict understanding that I do not look on your faces ever again …’
Athelstan woke with a start. The pounding on the door brought him tumbling down from his bed-loft. Tiptoft stood outside with the four Tower archers.
‘What is it?’ the friar demanded. ‘What the time?’
‘Dawn is about an hour away,’ Tiptoft cheerily replied, ‘but the devil never sleeps, or so Sir John says. He needs you now in Poultry at Lady Anne Lesures’ house. Another assault, a hideous burning, Turgot her manservant lies foully slain.’
Athelstan hastily dressed. He snatched his chancery satchel and followed his escort out down towards the quayside, where a barge displaying the city pennant waited. They clambered in, took their seats and the barge pushed away. A swift, turbulent crossing with the clouds breaking and an icy breeze whispering like a ghost across the water. They disembarked at Queenhithe and moved through the tangle of streets towards Poultry. Athelstan didn’t know if he was dreaming or awake; his abrupt arousing and frenetic journey were unsteadying, his mind tumbled with the sights, sounds and smells that closed in around him. A beggar, garbed in black but with the white outlines of a skeleton painted on his gown, danced like a mad man in front of them before disappearing into the shadows. Beggars crept out of the mouths of alleyways, their clacking dishes rattling in the frosty air. Mounted archers rode by in a hot gust of sweat, leather and horse dung. A funeral procession preparing for the morning suffered an accident at the crossroads and the lily-white corpse of the deceased tumbled out from beneath its scarlet mort cloth to lie sprawled over the cobbles. Windows and doors opened and shut. Different voices trailed: a snatch of a song, the cries of lovers, a baby wailing, whilst a choir which had taken refuge in a tavern chorused the psalm: ‘I lift my eyes to the hills from which my Saviour comes’. A self-proclaimed exorcist, a placard hanging around his neck, swinging a battered thurible, billowing incense into the morning air, crying out that he was defending the living from the ghosts of the malignant dead. Outlaw-hunters from the wastes of Moorfields, admitted through the city gates before the market horn, led their pack ponies down to the Guildhall, the corpses of those they’d killed slung across the ponies’ backs. A macabre sight. The cadavers, stripped to the skin, displayed gruesome death wounds to the throat, belly or chest. Behind this sinister procession trailed a woman loudly lamenting, ‘Those slain on the plains of Megiddo’, whatever that meant. A group of moon-watchers huddled together, so close they seem to have one massive body and many heads. They gazed fiercely, their painted white faces straining madly as they watched the winter moon slide from cloud to cloud. Prisoners clamped in the cage on the Tun or the nearby stocks wailed against the bitter cold. A moveable gibbet on its clattering wheels moved backwards and forwards, the corpse hanging in its sheet of hardened canvas loudly creaking.
‘This is truly a land of deep shadow,’ Athelstan murmured as they turned up the street towards Lady Anne’s house. Lanterns glowed. Dark figures stood holding flaring sconce torches. Cranston was waiting for him in the entrance parlour. Even from there Athelstan could hear the wailing of Lady Anne, a soul keening like the wind for its loss. The friar glanced around at the opulent surroundings. The paintings and triptychs all proclaimed the same message – St Anne with her Holy Child the Virgin Mary. Cranston sat on a cushioned stool, head in his hands. He glanced up as Athelstan entered.
‘He’s struck again, Brother. Lady Anne, as you can hear, is deeply distressed. Let me show you.’ Cranston led Athelstan out along the hollow stone-paved passageway, through the kitchen, buttery and scullery into the great rear garden. Flaxwith and his bailiffs were busy there. The air was thick with smoke billowing out of a stone-built building which reminded Athelstan of the nave of a primitive church. It stood in the centre of the garden. In its prime it must have been pleasing to the eye but now its shutters, blackened and tattered, hung from their scorched leather hinges, whilst the door had buckled and crumbled under the heat.