House of the Red Slayer (2 page)

Yet even on a balmy summer’s day the Tower would be avoided. Old hags whispered that the place was the devil’s work, and the black ravens, which swooped around its grim turrets, flocks of devils seeking human souls. The crones claimed human blood had been mixed in the mortar of its walls and that beneath its rocky foundations lay the skeletons of human sacrifices murdered by the great Caesar when he first built the fortress. Others, the few who could read, dismissed such stories as nonsense: the Tower and its great White Keep had been built by William the Conqueror to overawe London, and they scoffed at stories told to frighten the children.

Nevertheless the old hags were correct: the Tower had its macabre secrets. Beneath one of its walls ran cold, green-slimed passageways. Torches, old and blackening, hung listlessly from sconces rusting on the walls. No one had been down there for years, a mysterious warren of tunnels even the soldiers never frequented. Three dungeons were there but only two doors and in the central cell, a square black box of a room, sprawled a decaying skeleton. There was no witness to what it had been when the flesh hung plump on the bones and the blood ran like hot wine through heart and brain. The skeleton was yellowing now; a rat scurried through the rib cage and poked fruitlessly at the empty eye-sockets before scampering along the bony arm which rested against one wall, just beneath the crudely drawn figure of a three-master ship.

The assassin hiding in the shadows on the frozen parapet of the great Bell Tower knew nothing of such secret places, though he realized the Tower held great mysteries. He drew deeper into his cloak.

‘“The time has come”,’ he muttered to himself, quoting the Gospels, ‘“when all those things hidden in the dark shall be revealed in the light of day”.’ He squinted up at the sky. ‘Blood can only be avenged,’ he whispered, ‘by blood being spilt!’

Yes, he liked that thought; justice and death walking hand-in-hand. He gazed across at the dark mass of the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. Surely God would understand? Did he not brand Cain for slaying Abel, and why should murderers walk free? The assassin did not mind the biting wind, the steadily falling flakes of snow or the lonely, haunting call of the night birds down near the icy river.

‘There are things colder than the wind,’ he whispered as he turned inwards and meditated on his own bleak soul and the great open sore festering there. Soon it would be Yuletide and Childermass. A time of innocence and warmth, of food roasting slowly on turning spits. Green boughs would decorate rooms; there would be mummers, revelries, games, hot cakes and mulled wine. The assassin smiled. And, like every Christmas, the murderers would gather here in the Tower. He rocked himself gently to and fro. The trial would begin, the warnings were already prepared. He stretched his hands up against the night sky.

‘Let the blood flow,’ he murmured. ‘Let Murder be my weapon!’

The cross of St Peter ad Vincula caught his eye. ‘Let God be my judge,’ he whispered, thrusting his hands beneath his cloak, his eyes staring into the black night. He remembered the past and rocked himself gently, crooning a song only he understood. Now he felt warm. He would bathe his soul’s wounds in the blood of his victims.

CHAPTER 1

Brother Athelstan stood on the tower of St Erconwald’s Church in Southwark and stared up at the sky. He chewed on his lip and quietly cursed. He’d thought the clouds would have broken up by now; they had for a while, and the stars had glittered down like jewels against a velvet cushion. Athelstan had wanted to study the constellations as the longest night of the year approached and see if the writer of the
Equatorie of the Planets
was correct. However, the wind had drawn the snow clouds like a thick veil across the sky.

The friar stamped his sandalled feet and blew on his freezing fingers. He picked up his ink horn, quill, astrolabe and roll of parchment, lifted the trap door and cautiously went down the steps. The church was freezing and dark. He took a tinder and lit the tapers in front of Our Lady’s statue, the sconce torches down the nave and the fat, white beeswax candles on the altar. Athelstan went back down the sanctuary steps and under the newly carved chancel screen, freshly painted by Huddle with a tableau depicting Christ leading souls from Limbo. Athelstan admired the painter’s vigorous brush strokes in green, red, blue and gold colours.

‘The young man has a genius,’ he muttered to himself, standing back to scrutinise the figures delineated there. He just wished Huddle had been a little more delicate in his depiction of a young lady with rounded juicy breasts whom Cecily the courtesan claimed was a fair representation of her.

‘Well, let’s see!’ Tab the tinker had shouted out before Ursula the pig woman jabbed a sharp elbow in his ribs.

Athelstan shook his head and went across to warm his hands over the small charcoal brazier which glowingly offered some heat against the freezing night air. He looked down the nave of the church, noticing the boughs of evergreens, the holly and ivy which Watkin the dung-collector’s wife had wound round the great broad pillars. Athelstan was pleased. The roof was mended, the windows glazed with horn. ‘More like a church now,’ he muttered, ‘than a long, dark tunnel with holes in the walls.’ Soon Advent would be over. The greenery had been placed there to welcome the newborn Christ. ‘Evergreen,’ the friar murmured. ‘For the evergreen Lord.’ A small shadow, deeper than the rest, slunk from the darkened aisle.

‘You always know when to appear, Bonaventura.’

The great tom cat padded across, stopped and stretched in front of Athelstan, then brushed imploringly against the friar’s black robe. Athelstan glanced down.

‘No mice here,’ he whispered. ‘Thank God!’

He’d never forget how Ranulf the rat-catcher had secreted traps in the rushes and Cecily had caught her toe in one of them as she cleaned the church one morning. Athelstan had lived for thirty years and served with soldiers, but never had he heard such a litany of ripe oaths as those which had poured from Cecily’s pretty mouth.

The friar crouched and picked up the cat, studying the great black and white face, the tattered ears. ‘Bonaventura the Great Mouser,’ he murmured. ‘So you have come for your reward.’ Athelstan went into one of the darkened transepts and took a bowl of freezing milk and sliced pilchard from the windowsill. ‘Whose life is more rewarding, Bonaventura,’ he murmured as he crouched to feed the animal, ‘a torn cat’s in Southwark or that of a Dominican monk who likes the stars but has to work in the mud?’

The cat blinked back, squatted down and gobbled the food from a pewter platter, one eye alert on a small flurry where the rushes lay thick against a pillar. Athelstan returned to the bottom of the sanctuary steps, knelt, crossed himself and began the first prayer of Divine Office.

‘Veni, veni, Emmanuel!’
Come, O come, Emmanuel!

When would Christ come again? Athelstan idly wondered. To heal the wounds and enforce justice . . . No. He closed his eyes. He’d sworn an oath he wouldn’t think of Cranston; he wouldn’t dwell on that fat red face and balding head, those mischievous blue eyes, and the great girth which would drain a vineyard dry. He remembered the old story about the devil collecting all the half-hearted prayers of priests, gathering every missing word in a bag for Judgment Day. Athelstan closed his eyes and breathed deeply to calm himself.

He finished his psalms then went into the small, freezing cold sacristy. Washing his hands at the lavarium, he looked round. ‘Not purple vestments today,’ he murmured, and opened the great missal. ‘Today is the Feast of St Lucy.’ He unlocked the battered cupboard door and plucked out the gold-covered chasuble with a scarlet cross embroidered in the centre. Unlike the musty cupboard, the chasuble was new and fragrant-smelling. He marvelled at the handiwork and thought of its maker, the widow Benedicta. ‘As beautiful as she is,’ he murmured. ‘Sorry, sorry!’ He whispered an apology for his own distraction and said the prayers which every priest must recite as he dresses for Mass.

Athelstan had trained himself. He knew the dark shadows in his soul threatened to rise and interrupt his morning routine. He must not think of them. The small window in the sacristy clattered as its shutter banged against it. Athelstan started. It was still black as night outside in the cemetery, God’s Acre, with its broken wooden crosses guarding the mounds of soil where the ancestors of the good people of the parish slept their eternal dream, waiting for Christ to come again. Yet Athelstan knew there was something else out there. Some dark evil thing which committed terrible blasphemies by dragging corpses from the soil.

The friar shook himself free from his morbid reverie. He opened the strong box and took out the chalice and paten. He placed the white communion wafers on a plate and half filled the goblet with altar wine. Afterwards he picked up the jar and gazed suspiciously at the contents.

‘It looks,’ he announced to the empty darkness, ‘as if our sexton, Watkin the dung-collector, is sampling the wine!’ He filled the water bowl for the Lavabo, that part of the Mass when the priest cleanses himself of his sins, and gazed down at the water where thin slivers of ice bobbed. ‘What sins?’ he whispered. The alabaster-skinned face of Benedicta, veiled by her blue-black hair, sprang to mind. Athelstan felt Bonaventure brush against his leg. ‘No sin,’ he whispered to the cat. ‘Surely it is no sin? She’s a friend and I am lonely.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You’re a fool, Athelstan,’ he muttered to himself. ‘You are a priest, what do you expect?’ He continued this line of thought as he finished robing. He had confessed as much to the Father Prior, yet why was he lonely? Despite his moans, Athelstan sought to be loved by the parish and the people he served. But it was his other office, as clerk to Sir John Cranston the coroner, which depressed him. And why? Athelstan absent-mindedly picked up Bonaventura and began to stroke him. He could cope with the violent deaths, the gore and the bloody wounds. It was the others which chilled him – the planned murders, coolly calculated by souls steeped in the black night of mortal sin. Athelstan felt he was on the verge of another such mystery. Something warned him, a sixth sense, as if the evil lurking in the lonely cemetery was waiting to confront him. He stirred himself and kissed Bonaventure on the top of his head.

‘There’s Mass to be said.’

Athelstan went back into the church, glanced up and saw the first light of dawn through the horn-glazed window. He shivered. Despite the braziers, the church was deathly cold. He reached the altar and stared towards the Pyx holding the Blessed Sacrament, Christ under the appearance of bread, swinging under its golden canopy with only a lonely taper on the altar beneath as a sign that God was present. Behind him the door crashed open and Mugwort the bell cleric waddled in, his bald head and quivering red cheeks concealed beneath woollen rags.

‘Good morrow, Father!’ he bellowed in a voice Athelstan believed could be heard the length and breadth of the parish.

The friar closed his eyes and prayed for patience as Mugwort began to pull on the bell – more like a tocsin than a summons to prayer. At last the clatter stopped. Benedicta, shrouded in a brown cloak, slipped into the church. She smiled sheepishly at the friar who stood waiting patiently at the foot of the steps. Cecily the courtesan followed. Athelstan knew it was she by the gale of cheap perfume which always preceded her. He closed his eyes and prayed that the only tasks Cecily performed now were to work as a seamstress for Benedicta and to clean the church. He remembered the parish joke: how Cecily had lain down in the cemetery more often than the parish coffin. Pernel, the old Flemish lady, came next; her hair dyed red, her face painted white, a woman of indeterminate background and even more uncertain morals. Athelstan quietly vowed to watch her. He’d heard a story that Pernel did not swallow the host but took it home and placed it in her beehive to keep the bees healthy. If he caught her, he would not offer the Eucharist or accept her silly answer that the honeycombs from her hives were always in the shape of a church! At last Watkin the dung-collector, sexton, warden of St Erconwald’s and leader of the parish council, arrived. His ever growing brood of children clattered down the aisle in their wooden clogs; one of them, Crim, with at least his hands washed, slipped next to Athelstan to serve as altar boy. The friar felt slightly ridiculous, a duty-faced Crim on one side and Bonaventura the cat on the other. Manyer the hangman came last and slammed the door shut.

Athelstan took a deep breath and made the sign of the cross, vowing he would concentrate on the mysteries of the Mass and not on the evils in the cemetery outside.

Sir John Cranston, Coroner of the City of London, was standing in Blind Basket Alley off Poor Jewry. The runnel cut like a sliver of ice between the backs of the overhanging houses. The good coroner stamped his feet and blew on his mittened fingers in a futile attempt to warm them.

‘Hold that torch higher!’ he snapped at the alderman’s clerk. Cranston stared at the men around him, dark shapes in the poor light, and then up at the shuttered window of the sombre, desolate house. He saved his most venomous glance for Luke Venables, alderman of the ward, who had roused him from a warm bed. Sir John liked his sleep at the best of times, particularly after a strenuous week’s work. Two days ago he had gone to the church of St Stephen in Walbrook to examine the corpse of William Clarke who had climbed the belfry to look for a pigeon’s nest. As the idiot crawled from beam to beam he’d slipped and fallen, being killed instantly. Cranston had adjudged that the beam was to blame and imposed a fine of fourpence on the angry vicar. Yesterday Cranston had been to West Chepe to examine the corpse of William Pannar, a skinner, found lying near the Conduit. Pannar had been stupid enough to go to a physician with some ailment or other. Of course he had been leeched of blood, so much so that the poor bastard had collapsed on the way home and died on the spot.

Cranston chewed his lip as he banged on the door again. Yet it was not just his work which bothered him, there was something else: his beloved wife Maude was not being honest with him and Cranston suspected she was hiding a dreadful secret. Sir John was infatuated with his wife and could not resist the pleasures of the bed chamber, yet recently, last night included, he had snuggled up next to her only to have his advances rejected. She had whimpered her protests softly in the darkness, would not tell him the reason and refused to be comforted. Now, in the early hours, this idiot Venables had brought him out into the cold in order to force entry into this mysterious house. Cranston hammered on the door again but there was no reply, only the muttered oaths and shuffling feet of his companions.