House of the Red Slayer

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.

‘So!’ Cranston turned to the alderman. ‘Tell me again what the problem is.’

Venables knew Sir John and stared anxiously at the bewhiskered red face, the icy-blue eyes and furrowed brow under the great, woollen beaver hat. Sir John was a good man, Venables reflected, but when he lost his temper he could be the devil incarnate. Venables pointed to the broken ale-stake jutting out just above the door.

‘The facts are these, Sir John. The householder here is Simon de Wyxford. This is his ale-house. He had no family, only a servant, Roger Droxford. Eight days ago master and servant had a violent quarrel which continued all day. On December the sixth the servant, Roger, opened the alehouse as usual, set out the benches and sold wine, but nothing was seen of Simon. The next day neighbours asked Roger where his master was. He replied that Simon had gone to Westminster to recover some debts.’ Venables blew out his cheeks and turned to one of the shadowed figures beside him.

‘Tell Sir John the rest’

‘Four days ago…’ began the neighbour, a small man swathed in robes.

Cranston could see only a pair of timid eyes and a dripping nose above the muffler.

‘Speak up!’ Cranston roared. ‘Remove the muffler from your mouth.’

‘Four days ago,’ the fellow continued, obeying Sir John with alacrity, ‘Roger was seen leaving here, a bundle of possessions slung across his back. We thought he was fleeing but he went to one of our neighbours, Hammo the cook, telling him he was going to seek out Simon, his master, and gave Hammo the key should de Wyxford suddenly return. Last night,’ he continued, clearing his throat, ‘Francis Boggett, a taverner, came here to recover a debt Master Simon owed him.’

‘Come on! Come on!’ Cranston interrupted.

‘Boggett entered the house,’ the alderman intervened smoothly, ‘to find no trace of Simon or his servant, so he seized three tuns of wine as recompense for his debt.’

‘How did he get in?’ Cranston snapped.

‘Hammo the cook gave him the key.’

Sir John pursed his lips. ‘Boggett is to be fined fivepence for trespass and the cook twopence as his accomplice.’ He glared at the alderman. ‘You have the key on you?’

Venables nodded. Cranston snapped his fingers and the alderman handed it over. The coroner drew himself up to his full height.

‘As coroner of this city,’ he grandly announced, ‘in view of the mysterious events reported to me, I now authorise our entry to this house to search out the truth. Master Alderman, you will accompany me.’

There was further confusion as Venables asked for a tinder from one of his companions. Sir John unlocked the door and entered the cold darkness of the tavern. The place smelt dirty and musty. They crashed against barrels, stools and tables until Venables struck a tinder and lit two cresset torches, one of which he handed to Cranston. They went from room to room and then upstairs where they found the two chambers ransacked, coffers and chests with their lids broken or thrown aside, but no trace of any body.

‘You know what we are looking for?’ Cranston murmured.

Venables nodded. ‘But so far nothing, Sir John.’

‘There is a cellar?’

The alderman led Cranston downstairs. They searched the darkened taproom until they found a trap door which Venables pulled back. Both men descended gingerly by wooden ladders. The cellar was a long, oblong box with a trap door at the far end for the carts to unload their barrels through. Cranston told Venables to stand still and walked carefully through the cellar, his great bulk made grotesque by the dim light of the flickering torches. At the far end he stopped, lowered the torch and looked behind three great wine tuns. The light made the spiders’ webs which clung to the barrels shimmer like cloth of gold. Cranston leaned over and felt the sticky mess he had spotted. He brought his hand up into the light and looked at the blood which coated his fingers like paste. He forced his arm back further behind the barrels, and scrabbled around.

‘Sir John!’ the alderman called out. ‘All is well?’

‘As well as can be expected, Master Venables. I have found the taverner, or at least part of him!’ Cranston picked up the decapitated head from behind the barrels and held it aloft as if he was the Tower headsman. The alderman took one look at the blue-white face, the half-closed eyes, sagging blood-stained mouth and the jagged remains of the neck, and sat down heavily on a stone plinth, retching violently. Cranston put down the head and walked back, wiping his fingers on the mildewed wall. As he passed, he patted Venables gently on the shoulder.

‘Have some claret, my good alderman, it steadies the stomach and fortifies the heart.’ He stopped and took a step back. ‘After that, swear out warrants for the arrest of Roger Droxford. Declare him a wolfshead, and place…’ Cranston screwed up his eyes. ‘Yes, place ten pounds’ reward on his head, dead or alive. Have this house sealed, and in the event of no will or self-proclaimed heir appearing, the city council might find itself a little richer.’

He climbed the ladder and the taproom steps and emerged on to the bitterly cold street.

‘We’ve found the taverner,’ he announced. ‘Murdered. I think the good alderman will need your help to assemble the corpse.’

Then, hand on his long Welsh dagger, Sir John trudged back along the ice-packed runnels and alleyways. He turned into the Mercery and gasped as the icy wind tore away his breath. ‘Oh, for summer!’ he wailed to himself. ‘For weeds in clumps, for grass lovely and lush.’

He slithered on the icy cobbles and leaned against the wooden frame of a house, grinning.

‘Athelstan should be here helping,’ he murmured. ‘If not with headless corpses, then at least by keeping me steady on the ice.’

He walked on up Cheapside. A dark shape slid from the shadows to meet him. Cranston half drew his dagger.

‘Sir John, for the love of Christ!’

Cranston peered closer at the raw-boned face of the one-legged beggar who always sold trinkets from his rickety stall on the corner of Milk Street.

‘Not in bed, Leif? Looking for a lady, are we?’

‘Sir John, I’ve been robbed!’

‘See the sheriff!’

‘Sir John, I have no money and no food.’

‘Then stay in bed!’

Leif steadied himself against the wall. ‘I paid no rent so I lost my garret,’ he wailed.

‘Well, go and beg at St Bartholomew’s!’ Cranston barked back, and trudged on. He heard Leif hopping behind him.

‘Sir John, help me.’

‘Bugger off, Leif.’

‘Thank you, Sir John,’ the beggar answered as coins tinkled to the ground. Leif knew enough about the fat coroner to understand Sir John hated to be seen giving charity.

Cranston stopped before his own house and looked up at the candlelit windows. Leif nearly crashed into him and Cranston shrugged him off. What is the matter with Maude? he wondered. He had always considered marriage similar to dipping one’s hand into a bag of eels — it depended on luck what you drew out. Yet he had been so fortunate. He adored Maude from the mousey hair of her head to the soles of her tiny feet.

As he mused a figure suddenly emerged from the alleyway which ran alongside Cranston’s house.

‘By the sod!’ he exclaimed. ‘Doesn’t anyone in this benighted city sleep?’

The fellow approached and Cranston recognised the livery of the Lord Mayor.

‘By the sod,’ he repeated, ‘more trouble!’

The young pursuivant, teeth chattering, hoarsely delivered his message.

‘Sir John, the Lord Mayor and his sheriffs wish to see you now at the Guildhall.’

‘Go to hell!’

‘Thank you, Sir John. The Lord Mayor said your reply would be something like that. Shall I wait for you?’ The young man clapped his hands together. ‘Sir John, I am cold.’

Still bellowing ‘By the sod!’ Cranston banged on the door of his house. A thin-faced maid opened it. Behind her stood Maude, now fully dressed, her sweet face tear-stained. Sir John grinned at her to hide his own disquiet.

‘Lady wife, I am off to the Guildhall — but not before I break fast.’ He dragged the young pursuivant in with him. ‘He’ll eat too. He looks as if he needs it.’

Cranston spun on his heel, went back outside and re-entered, dragging in Leif by the scruff of his neck. ‘This idle bugger will also be joining us. After which, find him a job. He will be spending Yuletide here.’ He tapped his broad girth. ‘For all of us, hot oatmeal and spiced cakes!’ The coroner sniffed the air. ‘And some of that white manchet, freshly baked.’ He looked slyly at his wife. ‘And claret, hot and spiced. Then tell the groom I need a horse!’ He grinned broadly, but despite his bluster Cranston noticed how pale and ill his wife looked. He glanced away. Oh God! he thought. Am I to lose Maude? He tossed off his cloak and strode past his wife, touching her gently on the shoulder as he passed.

Athelstan was distributing communion, placing the thin white wafers on the tongues of his parishioners. Crim held the silver plate under their chins to catch any crumbs which might fall. Most of the parish council had turned up, some wandering in when Mass was half over.

The friar was about to return to the altar when he heard a tapping on the outside wall of the far aisle. Of course! He had forgotten the lepers, two unfortunates whom he’d allowed to shelter in the musty charnel house in the cemetery. Athelstan provided them with food and drink and a bowl of water infused with mulberry to wash in, but never once had he glimpsed their scabrous white faces, though from his clothes one was definitely a male. He wished he could do more for them but Canon Law was most insistent — a leper was not allowed to take communion with the rest of the congregation but could only receive it through the leper squint, a small hole in the wall of the church.

Crim remembered his duties and, picking up a thin twig of ash, handed it to the friar who placed a host on the end and pushed it through the leper squint. He repeated the action, whispered a prayer, and went back to finish the Mass.

Afterwards Athelstan disrobed in the sacristy, closing his ears to the crashing sounds from the nave as Watkin the dung-collector rearranged the benches for the meeting of the parish council. Athelstan knelt on his prie dieu, asked for guidance, and hoped to God his parishioners would overlook the dreadful events happening outside.

As soon as he stepped into the nave, he knew his prayers had been fruitless. Watkin was sitting in pride of place, the other members on benches on either side of him. Crim had placed Athelstan’s chair out of the sanctuary ready for him and, as he took it, Athelstan caught Watkin’s self-important look, the ominous flickering of the eyes and the mouth pursed as if on the brink of announcing something very important.

Ursula the pig woman had joined them, bringing her large fat sow into church with her in spite of the protests of the rest. The creature waddled around grunting with pleasure. Athelstan was sure the annoying beast was grinning at him. He did not object to its presence. Better here than outside. Ursula was a garrulous but a kindly old woman. Nevertheless the friar hid a blind hatred for her large, fat-bellied sow which periodically plundered his garden of any vegetables he tried to plant there.

Athelstan said a prayer to the Holy Ghost and leaned back in his chair.

‘Brothers and sisters,’ he began, ‘welcome to this meeting on our holiday feast of St Lucy.’ He ignored Watkin’s eye. ‘We have certain matters to discuss.’ He smiled at Benedicta then noticed with alarm how Watkin’s wife was glaring at Cecily the courtesan. A mutual antipathy existed between these two women, Watkin’s wife in the past loudly wondering why it was necessary for her husband to confer so often with Cecily on the cleaning of the church. Huddle the painter stared vacantly at a blank wall, probably dreaming of the mural he would like to put there if Athelstan gave him the monies.

Most of the parish business was a long litany of mundane items. Pike the ditcher’s daughter wished to marry Amisias the fuller’s eldest boy. The great Blood Book was consulted to ensure there were no lines of consanguinity. Athelstan was pleased to announce there were not and matters turned to the approaching Yuletide: the Ceremony of the Star which would take place in the church, the timing of the three Masses for Christmas Day, the non-payment of burial dues, and the children using the holy water stoup as a drinking fountain. Tab the tinker offered to fashion new candlesticks, two large ones, fronted with lions. Gamelyn the clerk volunteered to sing a pleasant carol at the end of each Mass at Yuletide. Athelstan agreed to a mummers’ play in the nave on St Stephen’s Day, and some discussion was held about who would play the role of the boy bishop at Childermass, the feast of the Holy Innocents, on the twenty-eighth of December.

Athelstan, however, noticed despairingly how Watkin just slumped on his bench, glaring impatiently as he clawed his codpiece and shuffled his muddy boots. Benedicta caught Athelstan’s concern and gazed anxiously at this man she loved but could not attain because he was an ordained priest. At last Athelstan ran out of things to say.

‘Well, Watkin,’ he commented drily. ‘You have a matter of great urgency?’

Watkin drew himself up to his full height. His greasy brow was furrowed under a shock of bright red hair, receding fast to leave a bushy fringe. His pale blue eyes, which seemed to fight each other for space next to a bulbous nose, glared around at his colleagues.

‘The cemetery has been looted!’ he blurted out.

Athelstan groaned and lowered his head.

‘What do you mean?’ shouted Ranulf the rat-catcher, his face sharp and pointed under a black, tarry hood.

‘In the last few days,’ Watkin announced, ‘corpses have been exhumed!’

Consternation broke out. Athelstan rose and clapped his hands for silence, and kept doing so until the clamour ceased. ‘You know,’ he began, ‘how our cemetery of St Erconwald’s is often used for the burial of corpses of strangers — beggars on whom no claim is made. No grave of any parishioner’s relative has been disturbed.’ He breathed deeply. ‘Nevertheless, Watkin is correct. Three graves have been robbed of their bodies. Each had been freshly interred. A young beggar woman, a Brabantine mercenary found dead after a tavern brawl, and an old man seen begging outside the hospital of St Thomas, who was found in the courtyard of the Tabard Inn, frozen dead.’ Athelstan licked his lips. ‘The ground is hard,’ he continued. ‘Watkin knows how difficult it is to dig with mattock and hoe to furnish a grave deep enough, so the very shallowness of the graves has assisted these blasphemous robbers.’

‘A guard should be placed,’ Pike the ditcher called out.

‘Will you do it?’ Benedicta asked softly. ‘Will you spend all night in the cemetery, Pike, and wait for the grave robbers?’ Her dark eyes took in the rest of the council. ‘Who will stand guard? And who knows,’ she continued, ‘if the robberies are committed at night? Perhaps they take place in the afternoon or eventide.’

Athelstan glanced at her gratefully. ‘I could watch,’ he interrupted. ‘Indeed, I have done so when I — er…’ he faltered.

‘When you study the stars, Brother,’ Ursula the pigwoman broke in, provoking a soft chorus of laughter for all the parishioners knew of their priest’s strange occupation.

Huddle the painter stirred himself. ‘You could ask Sir John Cranston to help us. Perhaps he could send soldiers to guard the graves?’

Athelstan shook his head. ‘My Lord Coroner,’ he replied, ‘has no authority to order the King’s soldiers hither and thither.’

‘What about the beadles?’ Watkin’s wife bellowed. ‘What about the ward watch?’

Yes, what about them? Athelstan bleakly thought. The alderman and officials of the ward scarcely bothered about St Erconwald’s, still less about its cemetery, and wouldn’t give a fig for the graves of the three unknowns being pillaged.

‘Who are they?’ Benedicta asked softly. ‘Why do they do it? What do they want?’

Her words created a pool of silence. All faces turned to their priest for an answer. This was the moment Athelstan feared. The cemetery was God’s Acre. When he had first come to the parish nine months ago he had been very strict about those who tried to set up market there or with the young boys who played games with the bones dug up by marauding dogs or pigs. ‘The cemetery,’ he had announced, ‘is God’s own land where the faithful wait for Christ to come again.’ Even then Athelstan had not given the full reason for his strictures; secretly he shared the Church’s fears of those who worshipped Satan, the Lord of the Crossroads and Master of the Gibbet, and often practised their black arts in cemeteries. Indeed, he had heard of a case in the parish of St Peter Cornhill where a black magician had used the blood drained from such corpses to raise demons and scorpions.

Athelstan coughed. How could he answer? Then the door was flung open and Cranston, his saviour, swept grandly into the church.