House of the Red Slayer

CHAPTER 5

They stayed in the tavern a little longer. Athelstan expected Cranston to mount his horse and ride back to Cheapside but the coroner shook his head.

‘I want to go back to your damned graveyard,’ he snorted. ‘You need a keen brain to plumb the mysteries there.’

‘But Lady Maude will be waiting.’

‘Let her!’

‘Sir John, tell me, is there anything wrong?’

Cranston scowled and looked away.

‘Is it Matthew?’ Athelstan asked gently. ‘Is it the anniversary of his death?’

Cranston stood up and linked his arm through Athelstan’s as they went out to stand at the door whilst the ostler saddled their horses. ‘Tell me. Brother, when you ran away from your order as a novice and took your younger brother to the wars in France, were you happy?’

Athelstan felt his own heart lurch. ‘Of course.’ He smiled thinly. ‘I was young then. The blood boiled in my veins for some great adventure.’

‘And when you found your brother dead, cold as ice in that battlefield, and trailed back to England to confess your deeds to your parents, what then?’

Athelstan looked across the darkening yard. ‘In the gospels, Sir John, Christ says that at the end of the world the very heavens will rock and the planets fall to earth in a fiery blaze.’ Athelstan closed his eyes. He sensed Francis’s ghost very close to him now. ‘When I found my brother dead,’ he continued, ‘my heaven fell to earth.’ He shrugged. ‘I suppose it was the end of my world.’

‘And what did you think of life then?’

Athelstan rubbed his mouth with his thumb and gazed directly at Cranston’s sorrowful face. ‘I felt betrayed by it,’ he whispered.

Cranston tapped him gently on the shoulder. ‘Aye, Brother, always remember the carmined kiss of the traitor is ever the sweetest. You remember that, as I shall.’

Athelstan gazed speechlessly back. He had never seen Cranston like this before. By now the coroner should have been singing some lewd song at the top of his voice, bellowing abuse at the landlord, or urging Athelstan to come back to his house in Cheapside.

They mounted their horses and made their way quietly up snow-packed Billingsgate, turning left into the approaches to London Bridge. A large crowd milled there despite the cold wind which lashed face and hand. Under a sky shrouded by deep snow clouds, some boys threw snowballs at each other, shrieking with laughter as they hit their target. A legless beggar pulled himself along through the slush on wooden slats. A group of tattered watermen muttered abuse at the frozen river and cursed the great frost which had taken their livelihood from them. Others, hooded and cowled, pushed forward into the city or joined Athelstan and Cranston in crossing the narrow frozen bridge to Southwark.

The coroner suddenly reined in his horse, staring back at a group of dark figures who had just slipped by. Were they a group, he wondered, or just individuals travelling together for comfort and security? He was sure he had glimpsed Lady Maude amongst them, her pale face peering out from beneath her hood. But what would she have been doing in Southwark? Apart from Athelstan she knew no one there, and Southwark was a dangerous place to visit on a dark winter’s day.

‘Sir John, is all well?’

Cranston stared once more at the group receding into the darkness. Should he go back? But then a great metal-rimmed cart came crashing by, the people behind Cranston began to mutter and moan, so the coroner nodded at his companion that they should continue on their way. They crossed the bridge, passing the Priory of St Mary Overy at the far end, and took the main highway into Southwark. The two men rode down the narrow alleyways where the great four-storey houses were interspaced with the ramshackle cottages and lean-tos of the workmen and artisans. The coroner caught the acrid tang of dog urine.

‘The snow doesn’t hide the stench!’ he muttered, twitching his nose.

Athelstan agreed, pulling the cowl of his hood closer against the sight of rotting refuse, discarded food and human excrement tossed out in night pots, mixed with the sweepings from the houses as the citizens prepared for a festive season. Southwark, of course, never rested. The artisans and cottagers continually plied their trades: chandlers making tallow from pig fat; skinners, cheesemongers, capmakers, blacksmiths, and at night, when the stalls came down, the raw-boned villains of the underworld who scrounged for easy pickings amongst the brothels and stewsides of the Thames. No one, however, approached Cranston or Athelstan. The friar was well respected whilst Cranston was more feared than the Chief Justice himself.

They found St Erconwald’s in darkness. Athelstan was pleased that Watkin had doused the lights. He was about to lead Sir John through the wicket gate to the priest’s house when a dark shape jumped from the shadows and grabbed Philomel by the bridle. Athelstan stared down at the long, white face under its tarry black hood.

‘Ranulf, for God’s sake, what’s the matter?’

‘Father, I have been waiting for you all afternoon.’

‘Tell him to bugger off, Athelstan! I’m cold!’

‘Never mind Sir John.’ Athelstan replied soothingly. ‘What do you want, Ranulf?’

The rat-catcher licked bloodless lips.

‘I have an idea, Father. You know how the great guilds across the river have their own churches? St Mary Le Bow for the mercers, St Paul’s for the parchment-makers?’

‘Yes. So?’

The rat-catcher looked up pleadingly.

‘Go on, Ranulf, what do you want?’

‘Well, Father, I and the other rat-catchers wondered whether St Erconwald’s could be the church for our guild fraternity?’

Athelstan hid a smile, glanced at Cranston’s glowering face and bunched the reins in his hands.

‘A guild of rat-catchers, Ranulf? With St Erconwald’s as your chancery church and I your chaplain?’

‘Yes, Father.’

Athelstan dismounted. ‘Of course.’

‘We would pay our tithes.’

‘In what?’ Cranston bellowed. ‘A tenth of the rats you catch!’

Ranulf flashed the coroner a dagger glance but Cranston was already rocking to and fro in the saddle, laughing uproariously at his own joke.

‘I think it an excellent idea,’ Athelstan murmured. ‘And we shall talk about it again. You have my agreement in principle, Ranulf, but for the moment Sir John and I are both busily engaged on other matters. If you could stable our horses, give them some hay?’

The rat-catcher nodded vigorously and, gathering the reins of Sir John’s horse, trotted into the darkness. Philomel followed, moving a little faster as he sensed feeding-time was very close. Athelstan led Cranston round the church, stopped, and told the coroner to wait until he fetched a sconce torch. He hurried back to the priest’s house, plucked one from the wall, lit it with a tinder and ran back before Cranston’s litany of curses became too audible.

They crossed into the cemetery. Even in summer time it was a sombre place. Now, under a carpet of white snow, the branches of the yew trees spread like huge white claws over the forlorn mounds of earth, crude crosses and decaying headstones. Athelstan felt a deep sense of isolation. An eerie stillness hung like a cloud and even the breeze seemed softer. The trees were motionless. No night bird sounded. In places, the shadows seemed oppressively dark, sinister hiding-places where some demon or evil sprite might lurk. Athelstan held up his torch and Cranston looked around this most benighted of God’s acres.

‘By the sod, Athelstan!’ he whispered. ‘Who would come here in the dead of night, never mind pluck corpses from their final resting place? Where are the graves?’

Athelstan showed him the forlorn, shallow holes in the ground, the mud piled high on either side as if some demented creature had clawed the corpses out. Cranston knelt down next to them and whistled softly through his teeth. He looked up, fat face distorted by the torchlight.

‘Brother, you said that only the corpses of beggars and strangers have been stolen?’

‘Yes, Sir John.’

‘And how were they buried?’

‘The corpse, wrapped in canvas, is placed on a piece of wicker-work in the parish coffin. During the funeral ceremony this is covered by a purple canopy and removed when the body is lowered into the soil.’

‘And you found no trace of the grave robbers?’

‘None whatsoever.’

Cranston stood up, wiping the slushy mud from his hands. ‘We have three possibilities, Brother. First, it could be a macabre joke. Some of our idle rich young fops think it funny to place such a corpse in the bed of a friend, but there’s no rumour of such an evil prank recently. Secondly, it could be animals, either four-footed or human. Oh, yes,’ he murmured at Athelstan’s shocked expression. ‘When I served in France I witnessed such abominations outside Poitou. However,’ he stamped his feet and looked up at the darkened mass of the church, ‘no one, not even in Southwark can be that degenerate. Finally, mere are Satanists, the Astrasoi, those born under an evil star.’ He shrugged. ‘You know more about such people than I do, Brother. The corpse may be used as an altar or the blood drained to raise a demon or they may need one of the limbs. You have heard of the hand of glory?’

Athelstan shook his head.

‘The hand of the corpse is hacked off; the name of the person whom the witch or warlock wishes to hurt is placed between its fingers and then it’s buried at the foot of a gibbet on the first stroke of midnight.’

Athelstan rubbed his face. ‘But how can I stop such desecration, Sir John? The ward bailiffs and beadles are not interested. No citizen will guard our cemetery.’

‘I will see what I can do,’ Cranston murmured. He turned quickly. ‘There’s someone here.’ He pointed to two dark shapes over near the charnel house at the far side of the cemetery. ‘Look there!’ He strode across the snow-covered grass like a charging bullock, Athelstan hurrying behind him.

‘Stop!’ Sir John bellowed. ‘In the King’s name, stop!’

Two cloaked figures turned and slowly walked towards them. At the sound of the clatter of wooden sticks and the soft tinkle of a bell, Cranston hurriedly stepped back.

‘Lepers!’ he whispered, and grabbing Athelstan’s torch, held it up before him. ‘By the sod!’ Cranston breathed, and stared pityingly at the white-hooded faces. He looked round at Athelstan. ‘You let them stay here?’

He nodded. ‘During the day. At night it is easier for them to wander unmolested.’

‘Have they seen anything?’

Athelstan shook his head. ‘They are mutes but I doubt if they would become involved. It would be a brave man, Sir John, never mind a healthy one, who would confront grave robbers.’

‘You are sure they are lepers?’ Cranston whispered.

Athelstan grinned in the darkness. ‘They have letters from the bishops. Look at their wrists and hands. However, if you wish to examine them…?’

Cranston cursed and tossed a coin at one of the creatures then strode back to the house, bellowing that he had seen enough. Ranulf the rat-catcher had apparently disappeared, as indeed did any of Athelstan’s parishioners when the coroner appeared.

‘You will stay for a bowl of soup, Sir John? I have some fine claret.’

Cranston, huffing and puffing, checked the saddle girths of his horse. ‘I would like to, Brother,’ he replied over his shoulder, ‘but I must return.’

Cranston did not wish Athelstan to probe his anxieties about the Lady Maude. ‘I need to reflect upon what we saw at the Tower.’ He pointed to the graveyard. ‘I’ll see what I can do to help you there.’ He swung himself on to his horse, and with an airy wave clattered into the darkness.

Athelstan sighed and went round to unlock the church. It was cold inside but the friar was pleased that it had lost its musty smell. He revelled in the fragrance of the green boughs so lovingly placed along the nave and sanctuary steps. He remembered the chapel of St John and wondered what lies he had been told there. Athelstan was sure the murderer was in the Tower and equally certain that some evil deed from the past had finally caught up with Sir Ralph.

He took a tinder from his pouch, lit two sconce torches in the nave and collected his battered prayer book from the sacristy. He knelt on the sanctuary steps and began the Divine Office. He reached the line in the psalm ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ and stopped. He stared into the flickering light of the candle, leaning back on his heels. Had God forsaken him? Why did things such as the desecration of the cemetery happen, Sir Ralph’s murder or Cranston’s sadness? Oh, Athelstan knew about the problem of evil but sometimes he wondered, especially when he stared into the darkness, was there really anyone listening to him? What if there was not? What if Christ had not risen from the dead, and religion was mere hocus-pocus?

Painfully, Athelstan drew back from the precipice of doubt and depression. He finished his prayers, made the sign of the cross, and crouched with his back against the chancel screen. He took deep breaths, trying to calm his mind and soul so he could concentrate on the recent events in the Tower.

‘What happens,’ he asked the darkness, ‘if Sir Ralph has been killed by secret peasant leaders? And if the revolt comes…?’

He dozed for an hour until a warm, furry body slid under his hand, ‘Good evening, Bonaventura!’ he whispered.

‘A cold day for a gentleman of leisure.’

He sat up and stroked the cat gently, scratching between the backs of its ears, making Bonaventura purr with pleasure. ‘So, you have been visiting all your ladies in the neighbourhood?’ Athelstan knew about Bonaventure’s sexual prowess. Sometimes the cat even brought his ‘ladies’ back to the church steps to sing their own eerie vespers to a cold silver moon. ‘What will happen, Bonaventura, when the rebellion comes? Will we side with Pike the ditcher and the other dispossessed?’

Bonaventura grinned in a fine display of pink gums and sharp ivory teeth. Pike the ditcher! Strange, Athelstan thought, but there it was. He had no proof but he was certain the ditcher was a member of the Great Community and carried secret messages to its leaders. Athelstan tensed as the church door opened.

‘Brother Athelstan? Brother Athelstan?’

The friar smiled. Benedicta. Perhaps she would share his supper? They could exchange gossip about the parish; anything to distract his mind. He put Bonaventura down, stood, and broadened his smile, to hide his disappointment. Beside Benedicta stood a tall man, his features quite clear in the torchlight. His face was burnt dark by the sun, his raven-black hair tied in a knot at the back of his head. He was dressed in a long blue robe which reached down to snow-flecked boots. Athelstan went along the nave to meet him. The man was strikingly good-looking, he thought, with the sharp features of a hunting peregrine, vivid cherry-brown eyes, a hooked nose and neatly clipped moustache and beard. Athelstan saw the pearl pendant which hung on a gold chain from one ear lobe.

‘This is Doctor Vincentius,’ Benedicta exclaimed.

Athelstan clasped a strong, brown hand. ‘Good evening, sir. I have heard of you.’

And who hadn’t? Athelstan wondered. The physician lived in Duckets Lane off Windmill Street, on the other side of the Tabard Inn. He had recently bought a huge house there with a garden which bordered on the river, directly opposite Botolph’s Wharf. Vincentius had won himself a name as a reputable physician. His fees were petty and he didn’t bleed his patients with leeches or use strange zodiac charts and stupid incantations. Instead he preferred to emphasise cleanliness, the importance of a sensible diet, the efficacy of boiled water, and the need to keep wounds clean. Cecily the courtesan had even intimated that he used an ointment which was most effective in curing certain sores on the most delicate parts of the body. Athelstan studied the extraordinarily handsome face and the beaming smile on Benedicta’s. The friar felt a twinge of jealousy.

‘I have heard of you, Father,’ the doctor smiled.

Athelstan shrugged. ‘I am a priest, a friar, one among thousands.’

The doctor spread his hands and the rings on his fingers sparkled. ‘But there again, it is written on many tombstones… “I was a healthy man until I met a physician”.’

Athelstan laughed, immediately liking the man. ‘I don’t see you in church,’ he teased.

‘Perhaps one day, Father.’

‘Doctor Vincentius so wanted to meet you.’ Benedicta spoke as coyly as a young girl. ‘I wonder, Father, if you could join us for supper?’

Athelstan felt like refusing, but that would have been churlish. He clapped his hands briskly. ‘I would love to.’ He doused the lights in the church and locked the door, leaving Bonaventure to hunt in the darkness. He went across to the house whilst Benedicta and her strange visitor waited on the church steps. Philomel was still munching noisily on his oats. Athelstan patted him gently, took his cloak from the house and rejoined Benedicta and Vincentius.

They walked through the silent, icy streets into Flete Lane, near Holyrood Walk, where the widow lived. This was the first time Athelstan had been to Benedicta’s house, a two-storied building which stood alone, an alleyway on either side and a garden beyond. On the ground floor was a huge kitchen, parlour and store room. The kitchen had no rushes on the floor but the flagstones were scrubbed and wiped clean. Two box-chairs were pushed near the roaring log fire. Above the hearth ran a broad oaken shelf containing silver and pewter cups which shimmered by the light of two multi-branched candelabra; woollen rugs of dark murrey hung against the white-washed walls. A warm, homely place, Athelstan thought. Indeed, very much as he had imagined it. They both helped Benedicta prepare and serve the meal. First jussell, composed of eggs and spiced bread. Then succulent hare cooked in wine, a jelly moulded in the form of a castle, and a jug of chilled white wine and claret which Cranston would have downed in a trice.

Vincentius quietly dominated the conversation. Athelstan found his courtly manners and soft, well-modulated voice fascinating. Perhaps Vincentius realised he talked too much and, changing the conversation, asked about the friar’s day. Athelstan described his journey to the Tower and Sir Ralph Whitton’s death.

‘He will not be missed,’ Vincentius observed. ‘A dour, war-like man.’

‘You met him?’

The physician smiled. ‘I know of him, though it’s the Tower I find more interesting. I went there yesterday. A wonderful testimony to the subtlety of the human mind, especially when it comes to engines and places of war.’ Vincentius sipped from his goblet. ‘You say Sir Ralph’s throat was slashed?’

‘Yes,’ Athelstan replied. ‘Why?’

‘How was the body when it was found?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Was it cold? Was the blood congealed?’

‘Yes, it was,’ Athelstan replied, though he remembered he had not asked that question himself at the time. ‘Where are you from, Doctor?’ he deftly turned the conversation. The physician carefully put his wine cup back on the table.

‘I was born in Greece, of Frankish parents. They later returned to England. I studied at Cambridge, then Santiago and Salerno.’ He grinned. ‘At Salerno,’ he continued, ‘I spent most of my time trying to forget what I had learnt at Cambridge. The Arabs have a more thorough grasp of medicine than we. They know more about the human body and have proper Greek translations of Galen’s Art of Medicine and Hippocrates’ Book of Symptoms.’

‘What brought you back to Southwark?’ Benedicta asked.

The physician smiled as if relishing some private jest.

‘Why not?’ he joked. ‘Wealth? I have enough. And as you know, Brother, the poor need any help they can get.’ He leaned across the table and studied Athelstan’s face carefully.

‘What are you going to recommend, Physician?’ Athelstan teased. ‘The eagle’s remedy for bad eyesight?’

‘What’s that?’ Benedicta asked.

‘Brother Athelstan jokes,’ Vincentius replied. ‘The charlatans say the eagle gets its keen eyesight by eating raw lettuce. So they claim rubbing the eyes with the juice of the lettuce will clear up any eye infection.’

‘And will it?’

‘A bag of nonsense!’ Vincentius snapped. ‘Warm water and a clean cloth will do more! No, Brother,’ he tapped Athelstan lightly on the fingers, ‘what you need is more sleep. And if you have any lettuce, eat it. It will do you good.’

Athelstan laughed. ‘If I can find it! The frost has killed everything in my garden, and Ursula’s pig scoffs the rest.’

Whilst Benedicta described Ursula and her malevolent sow, Athelstan felt tempted to talk to Vincentius about the desecration of the cemetery but concluded it was not a topic suitable for the table. He looked across at the hour candle and saw it was growing late. He rose and made his farewells, politely refusing Benedicta’s invitation to stay longer. He had enjoyed the meal but was glad to be gone, reminding himself that he was a priest and Benedicta was the mistress of her own life. He left her house and trudged wearily through the snow. The night was cold and black but when he stopped and looked up between the black overhanging gables of the houses, he was pleased to see the clouds beginning to break up. He would have gone straight home but made a short diversion when he found Pike the ditcher drunk as a bishop on the corner of the trackway leading down to the church. Athelstan helped his errant parishioner to his feet

‘Good evening, Father.’

Athelstan flinched at the ale fumes which billowed towards him.

‘Pike! Pike!’ he hissed. ‘You great fool. You should be home in your bed with your wife.’

Pike staggered away from him, tapping his nose drunkenly. ‘I have been seeing people, Father.’

‘I know you have, Pike.’ Athelstan grasped him by the arm. ‘For God’s sake, man, be careful! Do you want to end your life swinging on the end of some gibbet as the crows come to peck your eyes out?’

‘We’ll rule like kings,’ Pike slurred. He struggled free of the friar’s grip and danced a quick jig. ‘When Adam delved and Eve span,’ he chanted, ‘who was then the gentleman?’ Pike smiled drunkenly at Athelstan. ‘But you’ll be safe, Father. You, your cat, and your bloody stars!’ He laughed. ‘You’re a jewel. You charge no tithes. I just wish you’d bloody well laugh sometimes!’

‘I’ll bloody well laugh,’ Athelstan hissed, seizing the drunken man by the arm, ‘when you’re sober!’

And he hustled the ditcher back to his angry wife waiting in their tenement in Crooked Lane.

Athelstan thankfully reached St Erconwald’s, made sure everything was locked up and walked over to his house. It was only when he was lying on his pallet bed trying to pray and not be distracted by Benedicta’s fair face, that Athelstan suddenly remembered what Vincentius had said. What had the good physician been doing at the Tower? Moreover, Vincentius admitted he had been educated in the area around the Middle Sea where Sir Ralph and the others had also served. Was there any connection? Athelstan wondered. He was still pondering on the problem when he drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Cranston, too, was thinking about events in the Tower but was too anxious to concentrate on the problems they posed. The coroner sat forlornly at the desk in his chamber, his little chancery or writing office as he called it, a place he loved, at the back of the house away from noisy Cheapside. He stared around. The floor had been specially tiled with small red and white lozenge-shaped stones and covered with woollen rugs. The windows were glazed and tightly shuttered against piercing draughts. Pine logs crackled and snapped in the small fireplace and warming dishes stood on stands at either end of the great writing desk. Sir John loved to spend time here, concentrating on his great treatise on the governance of the city. Yet tonight he could not relax; he was too distracted, ill-at-ease with the atmosphere in his own household. Oh, he had found Maude a little happier, they had exchanged the usual pleasantries, but Cranston still sensed that she was hiding something. He stirred as below stairs the maid tinkled a bell, the sign for dinner. Sir John groaned as he eased his bulk up and sorrowfully waddled down to the aroma-filled kitchen. Leif, the beggar, was crouched in the inglenook, stuffing his mouth full of richly sauced venison. He grinned at Sir John, then stared in surprise as Cranston mournfully passed by. Leif was astonished. Usually Sir John would greet him with a stream of good-natured abuse.

The beggar shrugged and went back to his meal. He was enjoying himself. Lady Maude had given him a few pennies and tomorrow he planned to see his friend in Crabbe Street. They’d dine in an eating-house and go to Moorfields where foaming bears, huge-tusked hogs and fat bulls were baited by bloody-mouthed mastiffs.

In the linen-panelled dining chamber, the table had been specially laid, covered by a white cloth of lawn with gold embossed candlesticks placed at either end. Cranston looked suspiciously at his wife. She seemed too happy. He noticed the colour high in her cheeks whilst her eyes danced with pleasure. Sir John grew more mournful. Had Lady Maude found someone else? he wondered. A young swain more virile and lusty than he? Oh, he knew such practices were common. The bored wives of old men and burgesses often found happiness in the arms of some court dandy or noble fop.

Sir John eased himself into his great chair at the top of the table and gloomily reflected on the past. Yes, his marriage had been an arranged one. Maude Philpott, daughter of a cutler, solemnly betrothed to the young Cranston. Young? He had been fifteen years her senior when they met at the church door but he had been slimmer then, fleet as a greyhound, a veritable Hector on the battlefield and a Paris in the bedchamber. Sir John looked soulfully at his wife who smiled back. Should he raise the matter? Sir John gulped. He dare not. Cranston was frightened of no one; he had the body of a bullock and the heart of a lion. Yet, secretly, he was wary of his miniature, doll-like wife. Oh, she never shouted or threw things at him. Just the opposite. She would sit and answer back, stripping away his pomposity as she would the layers of an onion, before going into a sulk which could last for days.

‘Sir John, all is well?’

‘Yes, My Lady,’ Cranston mumbled.

The maid served dinner: beef stew pie, the pastry crisp and golden. The meat within was garnished with herbs and cooked in a rich onion sauce. Cranston’s mood receded, aided and abetted by two generous cups of claret.

‘You were at the Tower today, Sir John?’

‘Yes, and all the fault of Sir Ralph Whitton, the constable. Last night he had a throat, tonight both throat and life have gone.’

Lady Maude nodded, remarking how she had heard that Sir Ralph was a hard, cruel man.

‘And you, My Lady?’

‘Oh, this morning I did the accounts, and later went to take the air.’

‘Where?’

‘In Cheapside. Why?’

‘You didn’t go to Southwark?’

‘By the Mass, Sir John, no! Why do you ask?’ Cranston shook his head and looked away. He had caught the tremor in her voice. His heart lurched and he splashed his goblet full to the brim with dark red claret.

In the darkness of the Tower, the hospitaller, Gerard Mowbray, walked along the high parapet which stretched between Broad Arrow Tower and Salt Tower on the inner curtain wall. The night wind whipped his grey cropped hair, bit at his ears and cheeks and clawed at the grey robe wrapped round his body. Sir Gerard ignored the cold. He always came here. This was his favourite walk. He would stand and stare into the darkness trying to see the old ruins of Caesar’s time, but not tonight, the mist was too thick. To the north he could glimpse the beacon light in the Tower of St Mary Grace’s, and to the south the fires and torch flames from the Hospital of St Katherine. Sir Gerard looked up at the sky. The clouds were beginning to break, revealing a storm of stars across the heavens. Strange, he thought. In Outremer the stars seemed closer, the velvet darkness of the heavens so near you felt you could stand on tip-toe and pluck the lights from the sky.

Mowbray leaned against the crenellated wall. Oh, they had been happier times! He remembered the hot burning sands outside Alexandria where he, Sir Brian, Sir Ralph, and the others had been a band of carefree knights only too happy to take the gold of the enemy. Mowbray recalled the climax of their campaign. There had been a revolt in Alexandria and the Caliph’s army, Mowbray’s group amongst them, had massed outside the city: the air thick with the beat of their kettledrums, the wind snapping at the huge green banners, and the silver crescents on the standards dazzling in the scorching sunlight. The city had been besieged for months but at last a breach had been forced in one of the walls. He and Sir Brian had gone in first to stand shoulder to shoulder, their comrades around them, a fighting circle of steel slowly edging into the city. Behind them the massed troops of the Caliph, their battle cries rising and falling like a demoniac chorus. The knights had forced their way through the gap and along the wall to the steps leading to the parapet above the main gate.

Sir Gerard’s mind slipped eagerly back into the past. He remembered the intense heat, the sunlight dancing off sword and dagger points, the roar of battle, the blood which pumped like a thousand fountains as men fell screaming from horrible wounds in head, body or thigh. Slowly he and his companions had edged up the steps, hacking their way through flesh until they reached a point above the main gate. Now who had it been? Of course! As always, Bartholomew. He’d jumped down, engaging in combat with a huge Mameluke. Bartholomew had moved with the grace of a dancer, his sword a silver hissing snake. One false feint to the groin, then up and round in a semi-arc to slice the enemy between helmet and hauberk. Ralph had followed. He had been an honourable knight then.

The great bar to the gate was lifted and the Caliph’s men had poured into the city. What a bloodletting! No quarter was asked and none was given. The narrow, hot streets dinned with the silver bray of trumpets and the shrieks of dying men and women. At least the knights had not been party to the massacre; they had achieved their task and now looked for suitable reward. They eventually found themselves in a huge square where a white marble fountain played in the centre. Nearby stood the banker’s empty house. Oh, the treasure they had found there! Adam had run knee-deep in silver ducats and jewelled goblets full of pearls!

Mowbray suddenly shook himself free from his memories. He thought he’d heard a sound, there towards the end of the parapet at the top of the steps. No, he concluded, it was only the wind. He went back to his memories. Strange, Mowbray pondered, that Adam had not come to see them this Christmas. Perhaps he was too frightened. Had the dead Sir Ralph and the now wealthy burgess Adam known something he did not? What had happened three years ago to frighten the Constable so much?

‘We are all frightened,’ Mowbray whispered to himself. This fear had changed them all. That’s what evil did to you, he thought, it corroded the will, rotted the soul, and fouled the chambers and passageways of the mind. What had been done in Outremer so many years ago had been evil! Bartholomew had been their leader. Half the treasure was rightfully his, and he had trusted them — a terrible mistake. Betrayal! Treachery! The words shrieked like tormented ghosts in the dark recesses of Mowbray’s soul. Ralph had planned it but they had all been party to his evil. Mowbray stirred against the cold. Oh, he had confessed his sins, walked barefoot to the shrine of St James at Compostela and both he and Fitzormonde had become hospitallers to make reparation. He stared out into the darkness.

‘Oh, sweet Christ!’ he murmured. ‘Wasn’t that enough?’ The hospitaller felt the black demons of Hell closing in around him. What terrors did the pit hold for traitors? To be basted with pitch in a dark pen full of brimstone where adders would suck at his eyes and snakes curl round his lying tongue! What could he do to break free of such phantasms? Tell Cranston? No! Perhaps Brother Athelstan? Mowbray remembered the dark eyes and closed face of the Dominican monk. Mowbray had met such men before; some of his commanders in the knights hospitaller had the same gift as Athelstan of sensing every thought. The friar knew there was something wrong, something evil and rotten, behind Sir Ralph’s death.

Mowbray jumped as a night bird shrieked beyond the Tower walls. A dog howled in protest. Was it a dog? he wondered. Or one of Satan’s scouts calling up the legions of the damned from the abyss of Hell? A bell clanged. Mowbray moaned in fear, caught now in his own fancies. The bell boomed as though it came from the bowels of the earth. He cursed and calmed himself.

The bell was the tocsin in the Tower! Mowbray’s hand fell to his sword hilt as he realised that great brass tongue only tolled when the Tower was under attack. He gripped the hilt of his sword tightly. Perhaps he had been wrong? Perhaps Sir Ralph’s death had been the work of rebels and now they were back? He ran along the gravel-strewn parapet. He wanted to fight. He wanted to kill, give vent to the fury boiling within him. Suddenly he stumbled. His arms flailed out like the wings of a bird, black against the sky, then he tipped and fell, his mind still gripped by delirium. He was a boy again, leaping from a rock into one of the sweet rivers of Yorkshire. He was the brave young knight storming the parapet of Alexandria, crying out for the rest to join him. Then, darkness.

Mowbray’s body crashed against the earth, his brains spattering as the sharp, icy cobbles crushed his skull. His body twitched then lay still, even as the dying hand edged towards the wallet containing a yellow piece of parchment depicting a crudely etched ship with dark crosses drawn in each corner.