By the time they had left the tower and entered God’s acre, everyone had gone. They walked down the path, through the gate and across the now empty lane. Stephen glanced to the right and left. Householders had hung out lantern horns on the door-posts; these now glowed and glittered through the gathering gloom. A voice shouted. A child cried. Dogs barked but the sounds faded. Anselm was whispering verses from a psalm as they crossed the street and made their way to Higden’s stately mansion. They were ushered up into the luxurious dining hall, a low-rafted chamber comfortable and warm with linen panelling and vividly painted triptychs on the wall. The merchant knight rose as they entered and ushered them both to their stools, shouting at the servants to serve the beef broth soup and slices of soft, buttered manchet loaves. Stephen, still shaken by what had happened on the tower, quietly admired Anselm’s serenity as he swiftly blessed himself and began to question the rest about what they had discovered. Beauchamp remained engrossed, bending over his platter, intent on his dish, lifting the horn spoon as if quietly enjoying every mouthful. Parson Smollat wailed about how the church might have to be closed and purified. Sir William assured him that would not be necessary; he would inform the Bishop of London. After all, it was an accident.
‘How do you know that?’ Anselm asked, stilling the conversation. ‘I mean, did anyone actually see Bardolph fall?’
‘A guild member did.’ Simon spoke up. ‘He saw Bardolph drop like a bird, clear against the sky. He hit the slate roof, bounced, then fell into the cemetery.’
‘And you were tolling the bells?’
‘Yes. By the way, we heard them peal just now. Was it you?’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ Anselm retorted. ‘The bells tolled while we were on top of the tower. We thought. .’
‘Nobody there.’ Amalric spoke up. ‘We were. .’
‘All gathered here.’ Beauchamp finished his broth, pushing away the bowl. ‘We really did think it was you — I mean, the bells.’
‘Sometimes that can happen,’ Simon offered. ‘The ropes which pull the bell wheel, if left hurriedly, slacken and drop. The wheels turn, the bells toll.’
‘Never mind that.’ Anselm tapped the table. ‘What was Bardolph doing there? Why should he go up to the top of the tower?’
‘I don’t know,’ Simon replied. ‘As God is my witness, Brother Anselm, I truly don’t.’
‘Can anyone answer that?’ Beauchamp insisted. He pointed at Anselm. ‘What makes you ask, Brother? What have you found?’
‘I am not too sure. Did anyone see Bardolph enter the church?’
‘Nobody in this room,’ Sir William declared. ‘I have already established that.’
‘Simon?’ Anselm asked. ‘You went in to peal the bells. You said you heard movement in the tower stairwell?’
‘I am sure I did. I began the peal, then a guild member hurried in to tell me what had happened.’
‘Bardolph definitely toppled from the top of the tower,’ Anselm confirmed. ‘A sheer fall?’
‘His corpse is no better than a pulp of flesh,’ Almaric observed mournfully. ‘Not a bone unbroken. I had his corpse taken to the shabby alehouse he and his wife own in Hogled Lane. She’s laid out the corpse and invited her friends to drink themselves sottish. Is he to be buried at Saint Michael’s?’
‘No,’ Sir William retorted. ‘Perhaps at Saint Martin’s. I think it is more appropriate.’
‘Did Bardolph ever climb to the top of the tower?’ Anselm asked.
‘No,’ Parson Smollat replied between mouthfuls of meat.
‘Did he talk about anything untoward before his death?’
‘You heard what we all heard,’ Parson Smollat replied, ‘the night you attempted your exorcism. Bardolph explained how he fiercely resented what was happening at Saint Michael’s: the disturbance to his routine, the lack of fees, not to mention that Sir William had asked Gascelyn to guard the cemetery. Brother Anselm, we knew very little about the man, except. .’ Parson Smollat glanced at Sir William and raised his eyes heavenwards.
‘Except what?’ Anselm pressed.
‘Bardolph liked the ladies. Meet his widow,’ Sir William declared. ‘She will hardly mourn him. Bardolph bewailed his lack of fees but also felt he had been driven from what I can only call his rutting meadow.’
‘He brought his whores into the cemetery,’ Parson Smollat explained. ‘During inclement weather into the old death house or, if the season was warm enough, they would lie amongst the gravestones. Bardolph would stretch out with this drab or that. He seemed to enjoy such lewdry. He ignored my strictures, saying he didn’t give a fig.’
Anselm stared down at his platter. ‘Dusk is falling,’ he murmured. ‘Soon the darkness will shroud us all. I cannot understand why Bardolph fell from that tower. Was he driven up there by some malignant spirit? Was he forced to commit suicide? God save him, because he went to God unshriven. You gave him the last rites?’
Parson Smollat nodded.
‘Yes,’ Anselm murmured. ‘It is a terrible thing for any soul to fall into the hands of the living God.’ The exorcist stared hard at Parson Smollat, who had retreated deeper into the shadows. ‘Did Bardolph ever confide in you, parson?’
‘Why, no. Why should he?’
‘I thought he did.’ Amalric, who’d drunk copiously, declared.
‘No, no,’ the parson became flustered, ‘Bardolph was not the kind.’
‘I thought I saw him in the shriving queue at the beginning of Lent, I am sure.’ Almaric caught the annoyance in Parson Smollat’s face. ‘Anyway,’ the curate shrugged, ‘he has gone to God now.’
Stephen stared around the table. Sir William and Beauchamp sat lost in their own thoughts. Gascelyn murmured he should return to the cemetery but then made a plaintive plea about how long was he supposed to keep up supervision of that hell-haunted place? Sir William cut him short with an abrupt gesture of his hands. Servants came in to clear the platters. Anselm plucked at Stephen’s sleeve, a sign they should leave. They bade farewell, collected their cloaks, panniers and satchels and made their way out. Darkness had fallen. The streets were emptying. This was lamp-lighting time, when shutters and doors were slammed shut. The only glow of gold was the flare between the chinks of wood or from the lanterns slung on door hooks. The rain had turned the dirt underneath to a squelchy mess. Shadows moved. Cries and shouts echoed eerily. They passed houses where doors were abruptly flung open to reveal scenes inside. It was like passing paintings on a church wall. A drunk collapsed inside a hallway; a corpse sheeted in white resting on a wheelbarrow ready to be moved elsewhere; a group of dicers gathered around a pool of light from a shabby table lamp, pinched faces intent on their game. Different smells and odours wafted out. The sickening reek of raw meat being fried in cheap oil, the pungent aroma of rotting vegetables, the faint fragrance from incense pots; all these competed with the offensive odour of the slops being deposited on the streets from jakes’ jars and urine bowls, as well as pails and buckets of filthy water.
‘Magister, where are we going?’
Anselm pulled his cowl forward. ‘Stephen, we shall be busy this eve of Saint Mark’s. First, we shall visit Hogled Lane to pay our respects to Mistress Bardolph. Truth,’ he peered through the dark, ‘will break through eventually.’ With that enigmatic remark the exorcist strode on. They took directions from a woman trimming a doorway lantern, turned up an alleyway and entered Hogled Lane, a mean, shabby runnel with a narrow, evil-smelling sewer channel along its centre. They found the alehouse, the sheaf of decaying greenery pushed into a crack above its doorway hung next to a peeling sign which proclaimed: The Burning Bush. The taproom inside was as bleak and squalid as the exterior, a low-ceilinged room with square open windows on the far wall. Bread, cheese and other perishables hung in nets from the rafters well away from the vermin which scuttled and squeaked between the ale barrels on either side. Under foot the dry rushes had snapped, split and corrupted to a mushy slime by those who had come in to pay their final respects to Master Bardolph. The dead man lay in his shroud, only his face exposed, on the long common table down the centre of the room. Cheap tallow candles ranged either side; these made Bardolph’s face even more gruesome, while the small pots of smoking incense around the swathed feet did little to make the hot, close air any less offensive.