‘Please,’ Fleschner pleaded, ‘for the love of God.’
‘Too late,’ hissed a voice. ‘Too little, too late. Vengeance has come, Master Fleschner, tribulation time!’
His captor gripped him by the back of his cloak, and he was dragged further down the runnel and forced up on to a barrel against the wall, where a noose was looped around his neck. He realised with horror that the other end was slung over an iron bracket high on the wall. He screamed as the barrel was kicked from beneath him, and jerked and struggled frantically, but the noose tightened swiftly around his throat.
When at last Fleschner’s body stopped twitching and trembling, his murderer, who had watched fascinated, pinned a scrap of parchment to the dead man’s cloak and disappeared into the night.
Hugh Corbett knelt beside Fleschner’s corpse, drew his dagger and sawed at the noose still tight around the dead man’s throat. The coarse rope had squeezed tight, scoring the skin. The mottled face was hideously covered with a light frost, which caught the sheer horror of violent death. Corbett closed his eyes, crossed himself and murmured the requiem. He felt sorry for this poor, fussy man, seized in the dead of night and executed like some common felon. He gazed up at the iron bracket from which a length of rough oiled cordage still dangled.
‘What a place to die,’ he murmured. He stared along the filthy alleyway running down to the river-soaked quayside of Queenshithe. It was still early in the morning; a mist curled, the light remained a dull grey. A short distance away a group of women huddled around Fleschner’s widow, who was sobbing uncontrollably. Corbett could hear their words of comfort. He glanced up at the bailiff, face almost hidden by the cowl of his heavy cloak.
‘This is all you found?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir, doing my morning watch. Usually very quiet, nothing but cats, rats and the occasional drunken sailor with his whore. At first I thought my eyes were deceiving me. I just saw him, cloak fluttering, body swaying in the river breeze, so I came over.’
Corbett tried to ignore Fleschner’s horrid face. He unpinned the scrap of parchment and stared at those words scrawled in blue-green ink: Mysterium Rei — the Mystery of the Thing. He put this into his wallet, then rose and walked across to the group of women. They were a desolate sight, wrapped in heavy cloaks, hoods protecting their pallid faces against the biting river wind. They were all comforting Mistress Fleschner, a plain-faced woman, her red-rimmed eyes still full of shock at her husband’s sudden, brutal death. Corbett grasped her gloved hand. When he introduced himself and offered his condolences, Mistress Fleschner abruptly withdrew her hand.
‘Sir, royal clerks have never brought me or mine good fortune.’
‘Mistress, I am sorry to hear that. What do you mean?’
‘Evesham.’ She spat the word out. ‘Master Miles has never been the same since he visited our home.’
‘When was this?’
Mistress Fleschner swallowed hard, dabbing her eyes. ‘Years ago, when Evesham’s villainy was green and fresh. He visited us often. No, sir, I don’t know why. Master Miles never said. I tried to discover but he remained tight-lipped, so why should I worry? Soon afterwards he resigned his office as coroner. I was pleased; no more sitting over corpses dragged from the river or horribly murdered. He could spend more time with me. He was happy to be parish clerk at St Botulph’s. I thought that was where he was last night. I know he was with Parson John. He must have comforted and looked after him. I thought he would come straight home afterwards or send me a message, but oh no, and now. .’ She burst into tears and crept back amongst the other women.
Corbett bowed and walked over to where the bailiff, now joined by his companions, was organising the removal of the corpse. He stared at the pitiful remains of Miles Fleschner being bundled on to a makeshift stretcher and covered with a piece of rough sacking. The chatter amongst the bailiffs was that Fleschner had been murdered by footpads who’d decided to mock their victim by hanging him from the iron bracket. Corbett knew different, but why? What had Fleschner to do with the other deaths? He glanced back to where Mistress Fleschner was still being fussed by the other women. They would accompany her husband’s remains to the corpse house of the nearest church. He glanced beyond them at the mist boiling over the river. Queenshithe was coming to life. Figures trailed here and there, the odd shout, the rattle of a wheelbarrow, the clatter of a cart.The city would soon be wakening. He heard a sob and glanced pitifully at Mistress Fleschner as she knelt and placed her hands on the covered corpse of her husband. He recalled her words. Had Fleschner been killed not because of any connection with St Botulph’s but because he was once coroner in Cripplegate? Was that the reason? Had the assassin made a mistake at last?
Corbett studied the bailiffs and chose the youngest, a bright lad. He drew him away from the rest and handed over a seal cast and a coin, then gripped the young man by his shoulder.
‘Your name?’
‘John, sir, John-atte-Somerhill.’
‘Well, John-atte-Somerhill,’ Corbett smiled, ‘I want you to memorise this.’ He pressed the bailiff’s hand. ‘Take a wherry to Westminster. Show this seal to any guard or bailiff who tries to stop you. Ask for Ranulf-atte-Newgate, Clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax.’ He made the bailiff repeat the name and title. ‘You’ll find him busy already. Show him the seal and ask him to go to the archives at the Guildhall. He is to ask for all the coroner rolls from when Master Miles Fleschner was coroner in Cripplegate. Do you understand that?’ He made the young man repeat it, and once he was satisfied, let him go.
Corbett made his farewells of the rest and walked back up the lane towards Cheapside. The previous evening Ranulf had scoured the chancery records and discovered that the widow of the merchant arrested with Boniface in Southwark still lived in a splendid mansion in Milk Street off Cheapside. She must know something. Although hungry and unshaven, Corbett felt almost elated. Fleschner’s murder, he reasoned, was another move forward across this murderous chessboard, for it opened the door to other paths. Corbett was determined to follow these.
He glanced around. The city was stirring. Whores and pimps, topers and cunning men, all the creatures of the night were scuttling back into the dark. Doors were being opened, lanterns doused, buckets emptied into the sewer channels running down the centre of the streets. Apprentices and slatterns, faces heavy with sleep, were busy fetching water, buying milk from the carriers or hurrying through the murky lanes to the bakers and cookshops where the ovens and spits had been fired. A multitude of odours seeped through the misty morning air. Bells rang. Carts and barrows were on the move. Horses and donkeys brayed. People called out greetings. Sheriff’s men were roughly organising the night-walkers, drunks and whores caught breaking the curfew, herding them up to the stocks. The bells of St Paul’s boomed out their summons to the Jesus Mass. Corbett decided to attend. He went through the great gates, past the noisy Sanctuary, where wolfsheads were scrambling across the high wall one step ahead of the greedy clutches of bailiffs and bounty-hunters. At the Great Cross in the centre of the cemetery, a city herald was proclaiming how a certain corner in Lothbury, where a Scottish traitor had been executed on a movable gallows, was not a holy site, a martyr’s shrine. The gibbet, the herald bellowed, had been burnt, whilst gong carts would deposit a load of filth on the spot. Any citizen who insisted on regarding that place as sacred would be viewed as outside the protection of both the Crown and Holy Mother Church.