The House of Shadows (29 page)

‘Oh yes, Brother, but I’d failed to check it. What with all these troubles, and so early in the day . . . When I did look I found the small roll of parchment. Sir Thomas was very eager. I asked if he wanted Rosamund to come after dark. He replied no. When the wench arrived, that’s how we found him, dead.’

Athelstan asked Cranston to clear the room. The coroner politely told Rolles and the two knights to wait downstairs. Athelstan went to the high wooden settle. He sat, arms crossed, staring down at the corpse and the blood pools all about it.

‘Sir John,’ he whispered, ‘in God’s good name, what is happening here? Here is a man hale and hearty, more interested in his claret and his wench than anything else, but he is found stabbed to death in a locked chamber.’

‘He had drunk heavily, Brother. Perhaps more deeply than we thought, which would make him weak and vulnerable.’

‘To whom?’ Athelstan lifted his head. ‘There’s only one explanation, Sir John; the only logical explanation is that the assassin crept in here, stabbed Sir Thomas, and hid until the door was broken down, but even then . . .’ He got to his feet. ‘I must see this fair Rosamund.’

They went down the stairs. Athelstan told Sir Maurice he could see to the corpse of his comrade. Rolles took him out into the garden, where Rosamund, wrapped in her cloak, was sitting in a flower arbour, cradling a cup of posset and chewing rather noisily from a bowl of grapes.

Athelstan introduced himself and Cranston and sat down beside the young woman. Despite her fiery red hair, laughing mouth and merry eyes, Rosamund reminded Athelstan of Cecily the courtesan. For a while, he just sat staring out across the garden, admiring the small lawns, the raised herbers, the vegetable plots, separated from the herb garden by a small trellised walk over which rose bushes now grew. To his right, screening off the high-bricked curtain wall, broken by a small postern gate, was a line of trees. In the centre of the garden, with coloured stone edging, glittered a broad carp pond.

‘I always love gardens,’ he began, ‘especially ones like this, laid out to catch the sun.’

‘Mother Veritable has a garden.’

Rosamund smiled at Sir John, who stood outside the arbour, glancing admiringly down at her. She crossed her legs, swinging a foot backwards and forwards, plucking at a red tendril of hair, turning her face, only too eager to flirt with this powerful Lord Coroner.

‘The ostler brought me out here. I am sitting in the very place Sir Thomas did before he went up to his chamber. Oh, Brother Athelstan, what a hideous sight. I’m only too pleased to be sitting here. Master Rolles’ garden is famous. They say, when he bought the tavern, he laid it out himself.’

‘You saw Davenport’s corpse?’ Cranston asked.

‘Oh yes, like a lump of meat on a flesher’s stall, blood everywhere, and that pricket, sticking out like a demon’s knife.’

‘And there was no one in the room?’ Athelstan asked. ‘I mean, besides the corpse.’

‘Of course not.’

Rosamund chatted on and, without being invited, smiling flirtatiously at Cranston, recited everything which had happened that day, from the moment she had been summoned by Mother Veritable, to finding the corpse of Sir Thomas. She then finished the bowl of grapes, drained the cup of posset and jumped to her feet.

‘I must go now,’ she said softly, her eyes never leaving Cranston. ‘I’ve been a good girl.’

Cranston opened his purse and thrust a silver piece into her hand. Standing on tiptoe, Rosamund kissed him on each cheek and, hips swaying, walked up the path back into the tavern. Cranston sat down next to Athelstan.

‘Beautiful garden,’ he agreed. ‘I wish I could have the same, but the dogs would eat the carp and the poppets would fall in the pond. What do you make of all this, Athelstan? Who could have killed Sir Thomas?’

‘Shifting mists. Shifting mists,’ Athelstan repeated. ‘Sometimes, Sir John, I get a glimpse of the truth. These murders, are they in a logical line – I’ve talked about this before – or are there two lines? Different assassins, working on their own evil affairs? I’m sure that those good knights, and Master Rolles, and everyone else in the tavern, can account for their movements. Brother Malachi was apparently back in St Erconwald’s. It’s the Judas Man who concerns me.’

He rose to his feet, followed by Cranston, and walked over to the carp pond, watching the great golden fish swimming lazily amongst the reeds. Athelstan tried to hide the flutter of excitement in his stomach. He had seen something today, small items glimpsed and then dismissed. He wished he could go back to St Erconwald’s, sit down and reflect on what he had learned. Lost in his thoughts, he re-entered the tavern. Rolles was in the tap room, supervising the slatterns and the cooks. Athelstan, uninvited, walked into the kitchen. Through the clouds of steam billowing across from the ovens and the two great blandreths hung above the fire, he studied the open windows and the side door.

‘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.

‘We try to keep things neat and wholesome,’ the Fisher of Men informed Athelstan. ‘Death may be stinking, but life is fragrant.’

The Fisher of Men led them down the line of the dead, describing the various corpses. ‘This was a maid who committed suicide near Queenhithe. Oh, and this one,’ he pointed to one bundle where a clawed hand hung from beneath its cover, ‘this is Sigbert, who thought he was a swan and tried to fly from the bridge. But this,’ he added triumphantly, ‘is what you are looking for.’ He pulled back the cover to expose the Judas Man, naked except for a cloth over his groin, still drenched in river water and covered in green slime. Despite the liverish skin, the changes brought by death and the river, Athelstan immediately recognised the hunter of men. He lay, eyes half closed as if asleep, lower lip jutting out, the pallid white flesh slightly swollen.

‘That’s caused by the river,’ Icthus explained in his high-pitched voice. ‘The body always swells.’

Athelstan was more concerned by the dreadful black-red wound high in the man’s chest, and the feathered crossbow bolt embedded deep.

‘Do you want me to remove that?’ the Fisher of Men said.

‘No, no.’ Athelstan lifted a hand.

For a while, his companions remained silent as he quickly performed the rites for the dead.

‘He was a soldier,’ Cranston observed. ‘You can tell that from the wounds on his body – look at the cuts.’

‘A fighting man,’ Icthus agreed. ‘The muscles on his arms and shoulders are strong.’

‘If he was a fighting man,’ Cranston declared, ‘how was he killed like that? Whoever held that crossbow must have been very close. Where did you find him?’