House of the Red Slayer

CHAPTER 12

Athelstan was furious. He felt the anger burn his innards until his heart pounded and the blood throbbed in his head. For a moment, the friar didn’t give a damn about anything — the teaching of his Order to be gentle or the precepts of the gospels about kindness. All that mattered was the anger raging within him as he stood in the cemetery outside St Erconwald’s church. The snow had now turned into an icy, grey slush which dripped off graves, trees, bushes and the low cemetery wall as the thaw continued under clear skies and a weak wintry sun. Athelstan cursed, using every filthy oath he had learnt from Cranston. He beat the staff he held against the loose brick, furious enough to grind the rock into sand.

Oh, he had found everything in order on his return: Bonaventura, asleep and well, curled up in the church like some fat bishop as Cecily cleaned and swept the nave. Benedicta and Watkin had set up the crib in one of the aisles, using figures carved by Huddle. The painter had also finished a vivid picture of Christ in the manger, just above the baptismal font inside the church door. Even Ursula’s pig had resisted its usual forays into his garden, and Pike the ditcher had cleared the gravel-strewn path in front of the church.

Athelstan had pronounced himself satisfied and chattered about parochial matters as he stabled, watered and fed Philomel. But even then he had sensed the anxiety in the faces of those who had come to welcome him: Benedicta, Pike, Watkin, Cecily, and Tab the tinker. They had followed him around the church, answering his questions whilst exchanging secretive, anxious glances.

At first Athelstan dismissed their concern as some petty matter. Had Cecily been flirting again, or one of Pike the ditcher’s sons peed in the church? Perhaps Ranulf borrowed Bonaventure or Watkin’s children had been drinking from the holy water stoup? The members of his parish council had fussed round him like noisy chickens. At last, just before he locked the church, Athelstan tired of their secrecy.

‘Come on!’ he demanded, confronting them. ‘What has happened?’

They shuffled their feet and looked away. Benedicta suddenly became concerned about an apparent spot on her gown.

‘It’s the cemetery, Father!’ Watkin blurted out. ‘Tosspot’s grave has been disturbed.’

‘When?’

‘The night you left.’

Athelstan had been so angry he’d used language which made even Pike the ditcher’s face blanch.

‘Perhaps Sir John will do something now,’ Benedicta tactfully intervened. ‘Or maybe if we make an appeal to the Alderman of the Ward?’

‘Aye!’ Athelstan rasped. ‘And perhaps pigs will fly and we’ll find pork in the trees tomorrow morning. The people who do this terrible thing are bastards! They are wicked and fear neither God nor man. Even the pagans honour the corpse of a dead man. Not even a dog would do this!’

His parishioners had withdrawn, more frightened of their gentle parish priest’s terrible rage than the dreadful news they had brought. Athelstan had stormed off to his house and drunk a cup of wine with a speed Cranston would have admired. He slept fitfully that night, not even thinking of climbing the tower steps to study the stars. He’d tossed and turned on his pallet bed, fuming with rage at the sinful desecration of his cemetery. The next morning he rose early, opened the church, perfunctorily fed Bonaventura, skipped through the morning office and tried hard to concentrate whilst he celebrated Mass. Bonaventura, like the cunning cat he was, seemed to sense his patron’s change of mood and quietly stole away. At the end of the Mass, before he gave the final benediction, Athelstan spoke in sharp, terse tones.

‘Our cemetery has been violated once again,’ he declared. ‘I, Athelstan, priest of this parish, say this, as God is my witness — no further burials will take place until the ground has been re-consecrated and this problem resolved!’ He glared round at his small congregation. ‘I will go to the highest in the land, be it the young King himself or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Guards will be set and, God forgive me, I shall see these villains hang!’

His parishioners had quietly left and Athelstan, now calming, felt a twinge of guilt as he glared down at Tosspot’s ravaged grave.

‘Your fiery temper, priest’ he muttered to himself, ‘is no more curbed than it was twenty years ago. And your tongue is as sharp as ever.’

He breathed deeply. Yes, he had been too hard, he reflected, far too brusque with Benedicta and the others, but especially with the widow. She had stayed for a few seconds after Mass, not to gossip but simply to say that the chief bailiff of the ward, Master Bladdersniff, had accosted her on her way to church. He wished to see Athelstan on an urgent matter.

‘Oh, yes,’ Athelstan muttered. ‘Master Bladdersniff, as usual, closing the stable door after the horse has bolted!’ Athelstan felt a fresh surge of rage. If St Erconwald’s had been one of the wealthy city churches, guards would have been set immediately and this would never have happened. Even Cranston, that fat-arsed coroner, hadn’t helped, wrapped up like some mewling maid in his own concerns. Athelstan stared once more round the cemetery, it was so cold, so bleak. He remembered Father Peter and envied the Woodforde priest’s quiet domesticity. ‘Bloody Cranston!’ Athelstan muttered. ‘Bloody murder! Bloody Tower! The bloody hearts of men and their evil doings!’ He kicked the icy mud. ‘I am a priest,’ he hissed to himself. ‘Not some sheriff’s man.’

‘Father? Father Athelstan?’

The friar turned and glared at the young pursuivant who stood, cloaked and hooded, behind him. ‘Yes, man, what is it?’

‘I have been sent from the Tower by Sir John Cranston. He wants to see you in the Holy Lamb tavern off Cheapside.’

‘Tell My Lord Coroner,’ Athelstan retorted, ‘that I’ll be there when I’m there, and he’d better be sober!’

The young man looked surprised and hurt. Athelstan grimaced and spread his hands.

‘Lord, man, I’m sorry. Look, tell Sir John I’ll be there when I can.’

He took a step closer and saw the fellow’s white, pinched face and dripping nose. ‘You are freezing,’ the friar muttered. ‘Go across to my house, there’s a jug of wine on the table. Fill a goblet. You’ll find one on a shelf above the fire hearth. Drink some mulled wine, and get some warmth in your belly before you return.’

The pursuivant turned and scurried off like a whippet.

‘Oh, by the way,’ Athelstan yelled after him, ‘I did mean what I said. Sir John is not to drink too much!’

Athelstan walked slowly back to his church, up the steps and into the porch.

‘Father?’

Athelstan jumped as Master Luke Bladdersniff, chief bailiff of the ward, stepped out of the darkness, his lean sallow face and wispy blond hair almost hidden under a tattered beaver hat.

‘Good morrow, Master Bailiff.’

Athelstan studied the ward man: his close-set eyes were dark-rimmed and looked even more like the piss-holes in the snow, as Cranston so aptly described them. Athelstan had always been fascinated by the man’s nose. Broken and slightly twisted, it gave Bladdersniff a rather comical look which sat awkwardly with the fellow’s usual air of bombastic self-importance. Athelstan wearily waved him into the church.

‘Master Bladdersniff, I suppose you have come to discuss why my cemetery is violated and its graves robbed whilst you and the ward council do nothing about it?’

Bladdersniff shook his head, while peering over his shoulder, back into the darkness of the church porch.

‘What is it, man? What’s over there?’

The bailiffs mouth opened and shut like a landed carp. Athelstan stared more closely. The fellow looked as if he was going to vomit. His white face had a greenish tinge and the dark eyes were watery, as if Bladdersniff had been violently retching.

‘For God’s sake, man, what is it?’

Again the bailiff looked back into the darkness.

‘It’s Tosspot!’ he mumbled.

‘What?’

‘Tosspot! Or, at least, part of him,’ Bladdersniff replied, beckoning the priest to follow him.

Athelstan took a taper and went to where the bailiff stood over a dirty piece of canvas in a dark corner of the church porch. Bladdersniff pulled this open and Athelstan turned away in disgust. A man’s leg lay there, or at least part of it, cut above the knee as neatly and as sharply as a piece of cloth by an expert tailor. Athelstan stared at the bloody stump and mottle-hued skin.

‘Good God!’ he breathed, and caught the stench of corruption from the slightly puffed flesh. ‘Cover it up, man! Cover it up!’

Athelstan doused the taper, walked out of the church and stood on the top step, drawing in deep breaths of fresh morning air. He heard Bladdersniff come up behind him.

‘What makes you think it was Tosspot?’

‘Oh, you remember, Father. Tosspot was always regaling his customers at the tavern with tales of his old war wound, an arrow in the leg. He was continually showing his scar as if it was some sacred relic.’

Athelstan nodded.

‘Aye,’ he replied. ‘Old Tosspot would do that whenever he became drunk.’ The friar looked at the bailiff. ‘And that leg bears the same scar?’

‘Yes, Father, just above the shin.’

‘Where was it found?’

‘Do you want to see?’

‘Yes, I do.’

Bladdersniff led him down Bridge Street, across Jerwald and into Longfish Alley which led down to Broken Wharf on the riverside. As he walked, Athelstan never spoke a word and the people who knew him stepped aside at the fierce, determined expression on the usually gentle priest’s face.

Athelstan noticed little except the dirty, filthy slush of the streets they crossed. He ignored greetings and seemed totally unaware of the traders and hucksters behind their battered stalls and booths shouting for custom. Even the felons fastened tightly in the stocks failed to provoke his usual compassion, whilst he treated Bladdersniff as if the bailiff hardly existed. Athelstan felt sick at heart. Who would do that to poor Tosspot’s corpse? he wondered. How would it profit them? They reached Broken Wharf above the riverside. Bladdersniff took the friar by the arm and pointed down to the dirty mudflats where gulls and crows fought over the rubbish left on the riverside. Athelstan looked out across the Thames. The water looked as dirty and dark as his own mood. He noticed the great chunks of ice still floating, crashing together as they swirled down to thunder against the arches of London Bridge.

‘Where did you find it?’

‘Down there, Father,’ Bladdersniff brusquely replied. ‘On the mud, wrapped in that piece of canvas. An urchin looking for sea coal found it and brought it to one of the traders who recognised old Tosspot’s wound.’ The bailiff coughed nervously. ‘I have heard about the raids on your cemetery.’

‘Oh, you have? That’s good.’ Athelstan smiled falsely at him. ‘You think the limb was washed in by the river?’

‘Yes, I do. Now, at any other time, Father, the river would have swept it away, but the heavy ice has interfered with the current and the canvas bag was pushed back to the bank.’

‘So you are saying it must have been thrown in here?’

‘Yes, Father, either here or some place very close.’

Athelstan looked to his left, along the mud flats and walls which stretched down to London Bridge. Too open, he reflected. No felon would dream of committing such a terrible act in a place where he could be seen. He looked to his right and the long row of great houses whose gardens stretched down to the riverside. A recent memory stirred. ‘I wonder,’ he murmured to himself. ‘I really do wonder…’

‘What, Father?’

‘Nothing, Master Bladdersniff. Go back to my church. Collect what is left of poor Tosspot and bury it as you think fit.’

‘Father, it’s not my…’

‘Do it!’ Athelstan snarled. ‘Do it now or answer to the City Coroner, Sir John Cranston!’

‘He has no jurisdiction here.’

‘Yes, but he can get it!’ Athelstan retorted. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, man, do it for me. Do it for poor Tosspot, please?’

Bladdersniff stared, nodded, and strode away.

Athelstan walked back to St Erconwald’s. He had recognised one of the houses down near the riverside and remembered how cleanly and sharply the limb had been cut. This stirred memories of his own military experience in the makeshift hospitals of the old King’s armies in France. Athelstan thought of the cemetery. Where were the lepers? Why hadn’t they noticed anything? Athelstan remembered the lepers he had seen near St Paul’s the day he and Cranston had visited Geoffrey Parchmeiner. Their begging dishes!

Athelstan stopped in the middle of Lad Alley. ‘Oh, my God!’ he whispered. ‘Oh, sweet pity’s sake!’ The white chalk he had found on his fingers after Mass when he and young Crim had pushed the sacred host through the leper’s squint… The friar suddenly felt weak and leaned against the urine-stained wall. Other memories flooded back. ‘Of course!’ he whispered to himself. ‘That’s why the cemetery wasn’t disturbed for a while. The thaw! But when the river was frozen they couldn’t get rid of what they’d stolen.’ Athelstan’s face contorted into a sudden snarl. ‘The bastards!’ he hissed. ‘The evil bastards!’

He strode back down Lad Alley into one of the busy thoroughfares which ran parallel to the river bank. A young urchin, running after a ball, bumped into him, slipping and sliding on the icy slush. Athelstan seized him tightly by the shoulder until the boy winced.

‘Father, Father, I didn’t mean to! Honest, I didn’t!’

Athelstan looked at the urchin’s pallid face.

‘I am sorry,’ he replied gently. ‘No hurt was intended. But here, lad. For a penny, take me to Doctor Vincentius’ house. You know the physician?’

The boy didn’t know Vincentius and shook his head, but ran to a local stall-holder who provided clear instructions. The urchin then led Athelstan through an alleyway and into a quiet street of houses, grand, half-timbered affairs, though their paint was now peeling and their unwashed facades gave sad, mute witness to grander, more prosperous days. The boy pointed to the third one down with its windows shuttered, though the huge front door was freshly painted and reinforced with shining bands of steel. Athelstan handed the penny over, went across and pounded on the door until he heard the patter of quick footsteps and the bolts drawn back. A lank-haired young man opened the door, dressed in a blue cote-hardie fringed with squirrel fur. His eyes widened in alarm when he saw the friar.

‘Brother Athelstan!’

‘How do you know my name, you bastard?’ the friar shouted, and pushed him back against the wall. ‘Where is Doctor Vincentius?’

‘He’s in his chamber.’

Athelstan didn’t wait for the fellow to usher him in but strode along the lime-washed stone corridor and threw open the door at the far end. Vincentius was sitting behind a great oaken desk in his warm, dark, panelled chamber. Athelstan was aware of shelves stuffed full of parchments, a zodiac chart on the wall, the smell of herbs and spices, and a small log fire crackling merrily in the hearth. The doctor rose, his dark eyes guarded, tawny face creased into a smile.

‘Brother Athelstan! What is the matter? What can I do…?’

‘This for a start!’ Athelstan punched the doctor as hard as he could, sending Vincentius sprawling against the wall, knocking over a small table and sending a yellowing skull crashing on to the map-strewn floor. The doctor got up and dabbed at the cut at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. His dark eyes now mocked the priest.

‘You seem in a temper, Father?’

Athelstan heard the young man come up behind him. ‘It’s all right, Gidaut,’ Vincentius murmured. ‘But perhaps we’d better start to pack once again.’

Athelstan glared at the doctor as the door closed softly behind him.

‘You are a bastard, Doctor! A heretic! A despoiler of graves! I have just seen what’s left of poor Tosspot’s corpse. If the wardsman had any sense he would be here with the city guard. Only a skilled physician could cut a leg so cleanly.’ He walked closer to the desk. ‘And don’t lie! You and your creature out there — ’ Athelstan indicated the door with a toss of his head. ‘A clever pair. Dressed like lepers, your faces masked by skins covered with white chalk, you lived in my cemetery by day, or at least part of it, finding out what happened. And who would dream of approaching a leper? And, even if they did, you were well prepared. Your face was covered in a cloth mask, the skin of your hands discoloured. Then of course, you would come back at night and take whatever you wanted!’ Athelstan breathed heavily. ‘God forgive me,’ he muttered. ‘I’m no better than other men. Do you know, when a man is declared a leper, he attends his own requiem? We think of him as already dead, and so did I. The lepers in my cemetery were just shadows to me, walking bundles of rags. Only one thing was missing: I never saw them with begging dishes, and didn’t realise that till this morning.’ He glared at the physician. ‘You really should have been more careful, Vincentius. You took those corpses and, when you were finished, ditched what was left into the Thames. But the river was sluggish. This morning the grisly remains of your macabre activities floated back to the riverbank.’

The doctor still kept his back to the wall and watched the priest guardedly. ‘You are most observant, friar, Benedicta told me that.’

Athelstan flinched at the look in the doctor’s eyes. ‘Aye,’ the friar replied, slumping down on a stool. ‘But I should have been more observant I found chalk on my fingers after I had passed the Host through the leper’s squint’ He glared at the doctor. ‘That’s sacrilege, you know? To take the Eucharist as a cover for your blasphemous doings.’ Athelstan glared around him. ‘Yes,’ he rasped, ‘I should have been more observant I never saw you with a begging bowl, nor could I remember you in the streets around the church.’ He rose. ‘You broke God’s law as well as the King’s. I am leaving now but I will be back with the city guard. Tonight you will be in Newgate getting ready to stand trial before King’s Bench at Westminster!’

‘Benedicta also said you were a tolerant priest. Aren’t you going to ask me why, Father?’ Vincentius replied softly.

The physician suddenly had a wary, frightened look in his eyes. ‘I did wrong,’ he muttered, slumping into his chair. ‘But what real harm did I do? No, no!’ He waved his hand at Athelstan. ‘Listen to me! I have studied medicine in Bologna, with the Arabs in Spain and North Africa, and at the great school of physic in Salerno. But we doctors know nothing, Father, except how to apply leeches and bleed a man dry.’ Vincentius laced his fingers together and rested his elbows on the desk. ‘The only way we can learn about the human body is to open it up. Dissect each part; study the position of the heart, or the coursing of the blood, or the composition of the stomach. But the church forbids that.’ He held up a beringed hand. ‘I swear I meant no disrespect, but my hunger for medical knowledge, Father, is as great as yours for saving souls. And where could I go? To the execution yards or battlefields where the corpses are so mauled they are beyond recognition? So I came to Southwark, outside the jurisdiction of the city. Yes, yes.’ He saw the look of annoyance in Athelstan’s eyes. ‘To a poor parish where no one cared, just as they don’t for the famished children who roam the streets near your church.’ Vincentius played with a small knife. ‘I took to imitating a leper to spy on the graveyard, taking only those corpses over whom no one had a claim.’

‘I claimed them!’ Athelstan yelled. ‘God claimed them! The church claimed them!’

‘Yes, I took the corpses,’ Vincentius continued, ‘and dissected them. Gidaut and I buried them at night in the river, but then we stopped because of the great frost.’ He shook his head. ‘I did wrong but are you going to hound me for that? I did good work here, priest. Go out into the streets of Southwark, talk to the mother with the lanced cyst in her groin. To the urchin whose eyes are clean. To the labourer whose leg I set properly. And if I hang, what then, Brother? Who will give a damn? The poor will still die, and the physicians in Cheapside who milk their patients of both money and health will clap their hands to see me dance at the end of a rope.’

Athelstan sat down wearily on the stool.

‘I don’t want your death,’ he replied. ‘I want the dead in my cemetery to lie as God expects them to. I want you to go, doctor.’ Athelstan rose and dusted down his robe. ‘I am sorry I struck you.’ He stared at Vincentius. ‘But you must be gone from here. I don’t know where to, and don’t really care, but in a week I want you out of the city!’ Athelstan suddenly felt tired and weak, and realised he hadn’t eaten for some time. ‘I am sorry I struck you,’ he repeated, ‘but I was angry.’ He suddenly remembered Cranston was waiting for him and looked back at the doctor. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you owe me one favour.’

Vincentius sat back in his chair. ‘What is that, Father?’

‘Well, two to be exact. First, you had a visitor here — Lady Maude Cranston. Why did she come?’

Vincentius grinned. ‘The Lady Maude, despite being in her thirtieth year, is now enceinte.’

Athelstan stared back in disbelief. ‘She’s with child!’

‘Yes, priest. About two months gone. Both she and the child are healthy but she is frightened of Sir John not believing her. She doesn’t want to disappoint him. I believe they lost a child some years ago?’

Athelstan nodded and the doctor enjoyed the look of stupefaction on the priest’s face.

‘She told me about Sir John. I advised her most carefully against the pleasures of the flesh. I believe her husband is a mountain of a man?’

‘Aye,’ Athelstan answered, still dumbstruck at what he had discovered. ‘Sir John is certainly that.’

‘And the second favour, Father?’

‘You served in Outremer?’

‘Yes, I did. For a time I practised in hospitals in both Tyre and Sidon.’

‘If you met someone there, how would you greet them?’

Now the physician looked surprised.

‘Shalom,’ he answered. ‘The usual Semitic phrase for “Peace be with you”.’

Athelstan lifted his hand. ‘Doctor Vincentius, I bid you farewell. I do not expect we will meet again.’

‘Priest?’

‘Yes, physician?’

‘Are you pleased that I am going because of what I have done, or pleased that I am leaving and will not see the widow Benedicta again? You love her, don’t you, priest? You, with your sharp accusations against others!’

‘No, I don’t love her!’ Athelstan snapped. But even as he closed the door behind him, he knew that, like St Peter, he was denying the truth.

Sir John Cranston, Coroner of the City, squatted bleary-eyed in a corner of the Holy Lamb tavern and stared self-pityingly across Cheapside. He had drunk a good quart of ale. Athelstan had not arrived so he’d decided to return home. He would deal with his wife like a man should, with abrupt accusations and sharp questions, but he wished the friar had come. He would have liked his advice on so many things.

Cranston leaned back against the wall and squinted across the tavern. The latest business at the Tower was dreadful. He had gone to see Fitzormonde’s badly mauled corpse: half the face had been torn away and the man’s body savaged almost beyond recognition. Cranston rubbed the side of his own face with his hand. At first Colebrooke had believed the death was an accident.

‘It was just after dusk,’ the lieutenant had informed him. ‘Fitzormonde, as was customary with him, had gone to watch the bear. One second everything was peaceful, the next Satan himself seemed to sweep out of hell. The bear broke loose and mauled the hapless hospitaller. I ordered archers down and the bear was killed.’ Colebrooke shrugged. ‘Sir John, we had no choice.’

‘Was it an accident?’ Cranston asked. ‘The bear breaking loose?’

‘At first we thought so, but when we examined the beast we found this in one of his hindquarters.’ The lieutenant handed Cranston a small bolt from the type of crossbow a lady would use for hunting.

‘Who was in the Tower at the time?’

‘Everyone,’ Colebrooke replied. ‘Myself, Mistress Philippa, Rastani, Sir Fulke, Hammond the chaplain — everyone except Master Geoffrey who had returned to his shop in the city.’

Cranston had thanked the lieutenant and gone over to the shabby, dank death-house near St Peter ad Vincula where Fitzormonde’s mangled remains lay, waiting to be sewn into their canvas shroud. The corpse was hideous, nothing more than a scarred, bloody pile of flesh. Cranston had left as quickly as he could, questioned those he found, and concluded that the crossbow bolt had been loosed by some secret archer: this had goaded the bear to fury and, snapping its chain, it had attacked Fitzormonde.

Cranston gazed one more time round the tavern, sighed and closed his eyes. Was there no way of resolving this problem? he thought. And where the bloody hell was Athelstan?

‘My Lord Coroner?’

Cranston opened his eyes. ‘Where have you been, monk? And why are you grinning?’

Athelstan smiled and called over to the taverner ‘Two cups of your best Bordeaux. And I mean your finest.’ He sat down, still beaming at Sir John. ‘My Lord Coroner, I have some news for you.’