‘Can I help you?’ Rolles, wiping bloodied fingers on his apron, stood in the doorway.
‘Yes, sir. Have you had sight of the Judas Man?’
‘Not a glimpse, but his horse and harness remain in the stables.’
‘I would like to see his chamber.’
Rolles shrugged and ordered a tap boy to take Athelstan up. Cranston decided he would stay and sample the tavern ale. The boy, armed with a bunch of keys, took him on to the second gallery and unlocked the door to the Judas Man’s chamber. The friar closed this and leaned against it, staring around. There was nothing much: a truckle bed, a few sticks of furniture, a lavarium; the chest at the foot of the bed was empty, as was a small coffer on the table. Athelstan noticed the fresh ink stains on the table and wondered what the Judas Man had been writing. He was about to leave when he changed his mind and began to search the room more thoroughly, lifting stools, moving the bench, pulling the bed away from the wall. He exclaimed in pleasure at a small screwed-up piece of parchment lying on the floor. He unrolled it and took it over to the small window to obtain a better view. On one side was a list of supplies, but on the other the Judas Man had written, time and again, ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4 not 5, 4 not 5. .’ He had underscored these columns. What on earth did that mean? 4 not 5?
Athelstan heard voices from the yard below and, standing on tiptoe, stared out of the window. Henry Flaxwith, his two hounds of hell beside him, was arguing with an ostler. Athelstan folded the piece of paper up, slipped it into his wallet and went downstairs. Cranston was sitting in the tap room, Flaxwith whispering in his ear. The coroner beckoned the friar over.
‘I do not want to drink, Sir John.’
‘What a pity,’ Cranston smiled. ‘I think you are going to need one.’ He patted Flaxwith’s burly hand. ‘Henry’s been a good hound. He has been out along the river and visited the Fisher of Men.’ He lowered his voice and leaned closer. ‘He’s found the Judas Man, naked as he was born.’ Cranston tapped his chest. ‘Dead as a stone. A terrible wound to his chest. The Fisher of Men found his corpse trapped amongst weeds under London Bridge.’
‘You are sure?’ Athelstan asked. ‘Henry, how did you know?’
‘I have just come from there. I asked the Fisher of Men to view his corpses. I would recognise that man anyway, drenched with river water, his skin slimed green. Brother, it was the Judas Man, and he is dead. .’
Cranston and Athelstan stood at the entrance to the Barque of St Peter which stood set back from the quayside near La Reole. The air reeked of tar from the nets and cordage drying in the weak sun; a sombre place, especially now in the early afternoon as the sun began to wane and the mist to boil in from the Thames. Even on a sunny day this was not a place frequented by many. People called it ‘the House of the Drowned Man’, or ‘the Mortuary of the Sea’. The Barque of St Peter was a single-storey building fashioned out of grey stone, with a steep red-tiled roof, built by the fathers of the city as a death house for corpses dragged from the Thames: a primitive chapel where the bodies of the drowned could be laid out for inspection and either collected by grieving relatives or, if not, buried at very little cost to the Corporation in one of the poor man’s plots in the City cemeteries.
The main door of this macabre chapel fronted the quayside, all about it clustered the wattle-and-daub cottages of those who served there under the careful guidance of the Fisher of Men. Above the wooden porch was a roughly carved tympanum showing the dead rising from choppy waves to be greeted by the Angels of God or the Demons of Hell. Beneath it were scrawled the words ‘And the sea shall give up its dead’. On the right side of the door, near the net slung on a hook which the Fisher of Men’s company used to bring in bodies, were inscribed the words ‘The Deep shall be harvested’. On the left side of the door a garish notice proclaimed the prices for recovering a corpse: ‘The mad and insane, 6d.; Suicides, 10d.; Accidents, 8d.; Those Fleeing from the Law, 14d.; Animals, 2d.; Goods to the value of 5 pounds, 10 shillings; Goods over the value of 5 pounds, one-third of their market value.’
‘It’s good to see you, Sir John, Brother Athelstan.’
The Fisher of Men never seemed to age. He always looked the same, with his cadaverous face, his bald head protected from the cold by a shroud-like cowl made out of leather, and lined with costly ermine. Athelstan could never discover the true antecedents of this enigmatic individual. Stories abounded of how he had once been a soldier, but others claimed he a scholar who had contracted leprosy, been cured and so dedicated his life to harvesting the river. He was definitely cultured and educated, with more than a passing knowledge of scripture, as well as being able to talk in both Norman French and Latin. Beside the Fisher of Men stood his chief swimmer, the young man known as Icthus the Fish. He certainly looked like one, with his pointed face, protuberant eyes and mouth; he was bald as an egg and totally devoid of eyebrows, his long bony body hidden beneath a simple but costly woollen tunic, good leather sandals on his long feet. Nearby, sitting on a bench, were the rest of what the Londoners called the Grotesques, all shrouded in robes to hide their disabilities.
‘May we go in?’ Athelstan asked. The Fisher of Men always demanded that courtesy and etiquette be observed.
‘Well,’ the Fisher of Men smiled, blood-filled lips parted to show perfect teeth, ‘Brother, you may claim what you wish from our chapel. Sir John, there is no fee for you. However, now you are here, Brother, would you first shrive us, hear our confessions?’
Athelstan looked at him in surprise, whilst Sir John stamped his foot in annoyance.
‘While you wait, my Lord Coroner,’ the Fisher of Men added tactfully, ‘perhaps you would like to savour a generous cup of Bordeaux from a new cask, a personal gift from a vintner. .’
Cranston was immediately converted. He sat on a bench outside, cradling a deep-bowled cup, whilst Athelstan, a little bemused, agreed to the request. He was escorted like a prince to the Fisher of Men’s chancery, a small, opulently furnished chamber built at the rear of the barque. The friar sat on a throne-like chair whilst the Fisher of Men and his company trooped in one after the other to confess their sins and be absolved. Athelstan’s exasperation gave way to compassion as he listened to these men, outcasts of society, with their disfigured faces. He was touched by their striking humility as they listed sins such as drunkenness, frequenting Mother Harrowtooth’s house on the bridge, cursing and swearing, not attending Sunday Mass. He tried to reassure each one, asking what good they had done, before imposing a small penance of one Paternoster and three Ave Marias.
After an hour, he was finished, and with Cranston standing next to him, still sipping at the claret, Athelstan led the assembled company in prayer. Standing on that shabby quayside, he intoned the lovely hymn to the Virgin Mary, ‘Ave Maris Stella’ — ‘Hail Star of the Sea’ — accompanied by Icthus on pipe and drum. Once this was done, the Fisher of Men and Icthus escorted Cranston and Athelstan into the Sanctuary of Souls, a long chamber with a makeshift altar at the far end under a stark Crucifix fashioned out of wood from a royal boat, so the Fisher of Men informed Cranston, which had sunk in the Thames, drowning a party of revelling courtiers. On wooden planks before the altar was a line of corpses laid out on trestle boards, each covered a death cloth, a pot of incense glowing beside it to drive off the dreadful stench of the river in which all these corpses, at varying degrees of putrefaction, had been found.