House of the Red Slayer (6 page)

Colebrook waited at the bottom of the steps of the great hall and silently led them past the soaring White Tower which shimmered in the thick snow packed around its base, traces of frost and slush on every shelf, cornice and windowsill. Athelstan stopped and looked up.

‘Magnificent!’ he murmured. ‘How great are the works of man!’

‘And how terrible,’ Cranston added.

They both stood for a few seconds admiring the sheer white stone of the great tower. They were about to move on when a door at the foot of the keep, built under a flight of outside steps, was flung open. A fantastical hunchbacked creature with a shock of white hair appeared before them. For a moment, he stood as if frozen. His face was pallid, his body covered in a gaudy mass of dirty rags with oversized boots on his feet. Finally he scampered towards them on all fours like a dog, sending flurries of snow flying up on either side. The lieutenant cursed and turned away.

‘Welcome to the Tower!’ the creature shrieked. ‘Welcome to my kingdom! Welcome to the Valley of the Shadow of Death!’

Athelstan looked down at the twisted white face and milky eyes of the albino crouching before him.

‘Good morrow, sir,’ he replied. ‘And you are?’

‘Red Hand. Red Hand,’ the fellow muttered. He parted his blue-tinged lips, dirty yellow teeth chattering with the cold. ‘My name is Red Hand.’

‘Well, you’re a funny bugger, Red Hand!’ Cranston barked.

The mad eyes slyly studied the coroner.

‘Madness is as madness does!’ Red Hand muttered. ‘Twice as mad as some and half as mad as others.’ He brought his hand from behind his back and shook a stick with a dirty, inflated pig’s bladder tied on the end. ‘So, my darlings, you want to play with Red Hand?’

‘Piss off, Red Hand!’ the lieutenant growled, taking a threatening step towards him.

The albino just glared at Colebrooke.

‘Old Red Hand knows things,’ he said. ‘Old Red Hand is not as stupid as he appears.’ Grimy, claw like fingers stretched out towards Athelstan. ‘Red Hand can be your friend, for a price.’

Athelstan unloosed his purse and put two coins in the madman’s hands. ‘There,’ he said softly. ‘Now you can be both Sir John’s friend and mine.’

‘What do you know?’ Cranston asked.

The albino jumped up and down. ‘Sir Ralph is dead. Executed by God’s finger. The Dark Shadows are here. A man’s past is always with him. Sir Ralph should have heeded that.’ The madman glared at the lieutenant. ‘So should others! So should others!’ he exclaimed. ‘But Red Hand is busy, Red Hand must go.’

‘My Lord Coroner, Brother Athelstan,’ the lieutenant interrupted, ‘Sir Ralph’s corpse awaits us.’

‘Off to see the gore and blood, are we?’ Red Hand cried, jumping up and down. ‘An evil man, Sir Ralph. He deserved what he got!’

The lieutenant lashed out with his boot but Red Hand scampered away, shrieking with laughter.

‘Who is he?’ Athelstan whispered.

‘A former mason here. His wife and child were killed in an accident many years ago.’

‘And Sir Ralph let him stay here?’

‘Sir Ralph hated the sight of him but could do very little about it. Red Hand is a royal beneficiary. He was a master mason to the old king and has a pension and the right to live here in the Tower.’

‘Why Red Hand?’ Athelstan asked.

‘He lives in the dungeons, and scrubs the torture instruments and the killing block after executions.’

Athelstan shivered and wrapped his cloak more firmly about him. Truly, he thought, this was the Valley of Shadows, a place of violence and sudden death. The lieutenant was about to walk on but Cranston caught him by the arm.

‘What did Red Hand mean about Sir Ralph being an evil man who got his just deserts?’

Colebrooke’s bleary eyes looked away. ‘Sir Ralph was a strange man,’ he muttered. ‘Sometimes I think he had demons lurking in his soul.’

CHAPTER 3

Athelstan and Cranston followed Colebrooke around the half-timbered sheds and outbuildings, under the archway of the inner curtain wall and across the frozen yard to a huge tower which bulged out over the moat. He stopped and pointed.

‘There are dungeons beneath ground level, and above them steps leading to the upper tier which has one chamber.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s where Sir Ralph died.’

‘Was murdered!’ Cranston interrupted.

‘Are there other chambers?’ Athelstan asked.

‘There used to be a second tier but the doorway was sealed off.’

Athelstan looked up at the snow-capped crenellations and drew in his breath quickly.

‘A tower of silence,’ he murmured. ‘A bleak place to die.’

They walked up the steps. Inside two guards squatted on stools round a brazier. Colebrooke nodded at them. They climbed another steep staircase, pulled back the half-open door, and a dark, musty passageway stretched before them. Quietly cursing to himself, Colebrooke took a tinder from a stone shelf and the sconce torches flared into life. They walked along the cold corridor. Athelstan noticed the pile of fallen masonry, loose bricks and shale which sealed off the former entrance to the upper storey. Colebrooke searched amongst some keys he had brought out from beneath his cloak, opened the door and, with a half-mocking gesture, waved Athelstan and Cranston inside.

The chamber was a stone-vaulted room. The first impression was one of brooding greyness. No hangings or tapestries on the walls, nothing except the gaunt figure of a dying Christ on a black, wooden crucifix. Pride of place was given to a huge four-poster bed, its begrimed, tawny curtains tightly closed. There was a table, stools and three or four wooden pegs driven into the wall next to the bed. A cloak, heavy jerkin and broad leather sword belt still hung there. On the other side of the bed stood a wooden lavarium with a cracked pewter bowl and jug over which a soiled napkin had been placed. A small hooded fireplace would have afforded some warmth but only cold powdery ash lay there. A brazier full of half-burnt charcoal stood forlornly in the centre of the room. Athelstan was sure it was colder in here than outside. Cranston snapped his fingers at the open shutters.

‘By the Devil’s tits, man!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s freezing!’

‘We left things as we found them, my Lord Coroner,’ Colebrooke snapped back.

Athelstan nodded towards the window. ‘Is that where the assassin is supposed to have climbed in?’

He stared at the huge diamond-shaped opening.

‘It could have been the only way,’ Colebrooke muttered, going across and slamming the shutters firmly together. Athelstan stared round the room. He recognized the fetid stench of death and noticed with distaste the soiled rushes on the floor and the cracked chamber pot full of night stools and urine.

‘By the sod!’ Cranston barked, tapping it with his boot. ‘Get that removed or the place will stink like a plague pit!’

The coroner crossed to the bed and pulled the curtains back. Athelstan took one look and stepped away in horror. The corpse sprawled there, white and bloodless against the grimy bolsters and sheets; rigid hands still clutched the blood-soaked bedcovers and the man’s head was thrust back, face contorted in the rictus of death. The heavy-lidded eyes of the corpse were half-open and seemed to be staring down at the terrible slash which ran from one ear to the other. The blood had poured out like wine from a cracked barrel and lay in a thick congealed mess across the dead man’s chest and bedclothes. Athelstan pulled the sheets back and gazed at the half-naked, white body.

‘The cause of death,’ he muttered, ‘is obvious. No other wounds or bruise marks.’ He silently made the sign of the cross over the corpse and stepped back.

Colebrooke wisely stood well away. ‘Sir Ralph feared such a death,’ he murmured.

‘When did this fear begin?’ Athelstan asked.

‘Oh, three to four days ago.’

‘Why?’ Cranston queried. ‘What did Sir Ralph fear?’

Colebrooke shrugged. ‘God knows! Perhaps his daughter or kinsman will tell you that. All I know is that before he died, Sir Ralph believed the Angel of Death stood at his elbow.’

Cranston walked across to the window, pulled back the shutters and leaned out into the chill air.

‘A sheer drop,’ he commented, drawing himself back, much to Athelstan’s relief. He alone realized how much the good coroner had drunk. Cranston slammed the shutters closed.

‘Who would make such a climb at the dead of night and in the depths of winter?’

‘Oh, there are steps cut in the wall,’ Colebrooke answered smugly. ‘Although few people know they are there.’

‘Why?’ Athelstan asked.

‘They’re really just footholds,’ Colebrooke answered. ‘A precaution of the mason who built the tower. If anyone fell in the moat, they could climb out.’

‘So,’ Cranston mumbled, slumping down on to the stool and wiping his forehead, ‘you are saying someone, probably a soldier or paid assassin, used these footholds and climbed to the window.’ He turned and looked at the shutters. ‘According to you,’ the coroner continued, ‘the killer prized a dagger through the crack to lift the catch, got in, and slashed Sir Ralph’s throat.’

Colebrooke nodded slowly. ‘I suppose so, Sir John.’

‘And I suppose,’ Cranston added sarcastically, ‘Sir Ralph just allowed his assassin entry, didn’t even get out of his bed but lay back like a lamb and allowed his throat to be cut?’

Colebrooke went across to the shutters, and, pushing the wooden clasp back into place, locked them shut. He then took out his dagger, slid it into the crack between the shutters and gently levered the clasp open. He drew the shutters wide, turned and smiled at Cranston.

‘It can be done, my Lord Coroner,’ he observed daily.

‘The assassin, quiet-footed, crossed the chamber. It only takes seconds to cut a man’s throat, especially someone who has drunk deeply.’

Athelstan reflected on what the lieutenant had said. It did make sense. Both he and Cranston knew about the Nightshades, robbers who could enter a house under cover of darkness and plunder it beneath the sleeping noses of burgesses, wives, children, and even dogs. Why should this be any different? Athelstan studied the chamber carefully; the heavy granite walls, the stone-vaulted ceiling and cold rag stone floor beneath the rushes.

‘No, Brother!’ Colebrooke called out as if reading the friar’s thoughts. ‘No secret passageways exist. There are two ways to enter this chamber – by the window or by the door. However, there were guards in the lower chamber, we passed them as we came up, and the upper storey is blocked off by a fall of masonry.’

‘Were any traces of blood found?’ Athelstan asked. He saw the lieutenant smirk and glance sideways at the gory corpse sprawled on the bed. ‘No,’ Athelstan continued crossly, ‘I mean elsewhere. Near the window or the door. When the assassin walked away, his knife or sword must have been coated with blood.’

Colebrooke shook his head. ‘Look for yourself, Brother. I found no trace.’

Athelstan glanced despairingly at Cranston who now sat like a sagging sack on the stool, eyes half-closed after his morning’s heavy drinking and vigorous exertions in the cold. The friar conducted his search thoroughly: the bedclothes and corpse were soaked in dried blood but he found no traces near the window, in the rushes or around the door.

‘Did you find anything else disturbed?’

Colebrooke shook his head. Cranston suddenly stirred himself.

‘Why did Sir Ralph come here?’ he asked abruptly. ‘These were not his usual chambers.’

‘He thought he would be safe. The North Bastion is one of the most inaccessible in the fortress. The constable’s usual lodgings are in the royal apartments in the White Tower.’

‘And he was safe,’ Athelstan concluded, ‘until the moat froze over.’

‘Yes,’ Colebrooke replied. ‘Neither I nor anyone else thought of that.’

‘Wouldn’t an assassin be seen?’ Cranston interrupted.

‘I doubt it, Sir John. At the dead of night, the Tower is shrouded in darkness. There were no guards on the North Bastion, whilst those on the curtain wall would spend most of their time trying to keep warm.’

‘So,’ Cranston narrowed his eyes, ‘before we meet the others, let’s establish the sequence of events.’

‘Sir Ralph dined in the great hall and drank deeply. Geoffrey Parchmeiner and the two guards escorted him over here. The latter searched this chamber, the passageway and the room below. All was in good order.’

‘Then what?’

‘Sir Ralph secured the door behind him. The guards outside heard that. They escorted Geoffrey out of the passageway, locked the door at the far end and began their vigil. They were at their posts all night and noticed nothing untoward. Neither did I on my usual nightly rounds.’

Athelstan held up his hand. ‘This business of the keys?’

‘Sir Ralph had a key to his own chamber, as did the guards, on a key ring below.’

‘And the door at the end of that passage?’

‘Again, both Sir Ralph and the guard had a key. You will see them when you go below, hanging from pegs driven into the wall.’

‘Go on, Lieutenant, what happened then?’

‘Just after Prime this morning, Geoffrey Parchmeiner . . .’

The lieutenant looked slyly at Athelstan. ‘You have met him? The beloved prospective son-in-law? Well, he came across to waken Sir Ralph.’

‘Why Geoffrey?’

‘Sir Ralph trusted him.’

‘Did he bring food or drink?’

‘No. He wanted to, but because of the cold weather Sir Ralph said he wished to be aroused with Geoffrey in attendance. They would plan the day, and breakfast with the rest of the company in the hall.’

‘Continue,’ Cranston blurted crossly, stamping his feet against the cold.

‘Well, the guards led Geoffrey up the stairs, let him through the passageway door and locked it behind him. They heard him go down the corridor, knock on the door and shout, but Sir Ralph could not be roused. After a while Geoffrey came back. “Sir Ralph cannot be woken,” he proclaimed.’ Colebrooke stopped, scratched his head and closed his eyes in an attempt to recall events. ‘Geoffrey took the key to Sir Ralph’s chamber from the peg but changed his mind and came for me. I was in the great hall. I hurried here, collected the keys and unlocked the door.’ The lieutenant gestured towards the bed. ‘We found Sir Ralph as you did.’