Murder Most Holy

CHAPTER 7

Athelstan and Cranston walked back to the monastery. Athelstan sought out Father Prior and tersely told him of what they had found and the conclusions they had reached.

Anselm’s face paled. Athelstan could see his superior was on the verge of breaking.

‘Why?’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Why so many deaths?’

‘Tell me, Prior,’ Cranston asked, ‘what would Brother Roger be doing in the orchard?’

‘He often went there. It was his favourite place. He said he liked to talk to the trees.’ Anselm blinked back the tears in his eyes. ‘Roger was a half-wit. He worked in the sacristy; Alcuin was severe but very kind to him. Roger really didn’t do much: a little polishing, sweeping, and picking flowers for the church. He never liked to be in enclosed places. He liked the open air so I never stopped him. When the other brothers gathered in church to sing Lauds, Matins or Evensong, Roger would go into the orchard. The poor fellow said he felt closer to God there than anywhere else.’ The prior banged the top of his desk with his fist. ‘Now the poor soul’s with God and his murderer walks round like a cock without a care. Athelstan, what can you do?’

‘Father Prior, all I can, but I must beg leave. I have to go back to St Erconwald’s.’ His eyes pleaded with the prior. ‘Father, I will return later in the day. I just need to see that all is well.’

‘Ah, yes, the famous relic!’ Prior Anselm answered sourly. ‘God knows why you care, Athelstan! Your parishioners do not heed you.’ He made a face. ‘Yes, I have heard the news. The fame of your mysterious martyr is spreading through the city. If you are not careful the bishop himself will intervene and you know what will happen then.’

Athelstan closed his eyes and breathed a prayer. Oh, yes, I know what will happen, he thought. The bishop’s men will remove the skeleton and transfer it to some wealthy church, or break it up and sell it as relics, whilst the door of St Erconwald’s will be sealed pending an investigation. And that could last months.

‘This first miracle,’ Anselm asked, ‘are you sure it was genuine?’

He made a face. ‘A physician dressed the skin, the man’s a burgess of good repute and claims his arm is now cured.’

Athelstan, his mind distracted, took a half-hearted farewell of Prior Anselm and went back to the guest house, Cranston trailing behind him. The Dominican packed his saddle bag, still thinking about what the Prior had said whilst the coroner fluttered around him like an over-fed chicken.

‘Why are you leaving, Brother? Why go back there?’

‘Because, Sir John, for the time being there’s nothing to be done here and I have business there!’ He looked sharply at Cranston. ‘And I suggest, Sir John, you return home to the Lady Maude. I am sure she will be expecting you.’

Cranston groaned like a mischievous boy who knows he has been caught. ‘By a fairy’s buttocks!’ he breathed. ‘If Domina Maud knows about my wager, she’ll clip my ears!’

Athelstan looked at him squarely. ‘Sooner or later, Sir John, you have to face her wrath. Better sooner than later. Come on!’

They sent for Norbert to lock the guest house and decided not to ride to the city but go by skiff from East Watergate to London Bridge. They found Knight Rider Street and the alleyways which cut off it still deserted. Apprentices, heavy-eyed with sleep, were preparing the stalls while the rest of the city had yet to wake to another day’s business. At East Watergate, however, the sheriffs’ men were busily involved in the execution of four river pirates — grizzled, battered men who were hastily shoved up the ladder to the waiting noose. Athelstan and Cranston looked away as a mounted pursuivant gave the order for the ladders to be turned, leaving the bodies of the pirates to dangle and dance as the nooses tightened, cutting off their breath. Athelstan closed his eyes, muttering a prayer for their souls. The executions brought back bitter memories of that ghastly apparition Athelstan had seen in the Blackfriars orchard. He looked back at the row of black scaffolds, their arms jutting out above the river. He heard a shout as relatives of the river pirates ran forward and jumped on the still jerking corpses, dragging them down roughly until a series of sharp clicks indicated their necks had been broken and at last the corpses hung silent. The sheriffs’ party, although they protested, did nothing to stop this act of mercy. The pursuivants declared that justice had been done and moved off.

‘At last,’ moaned Cranston, ‘we will be able to get a skiff.’ The sailors and boatmen who controlled the traffic along the river had assembled in small groups to watch the executions of the men who attacked their trade. Now they drifted back to the steps leading down to the wharf. Cranston hired the fastest, rowed by four oarsmen, and soon they were out in mid-river pulling through the mist towards Southwark Bank. They had to stop and cover their noses and mouths as they passed one of the great gong barges unloading mounds of rubbish, dead animals and human refuse into the middle of the fast-flowing river. Other shapes slipped by them: a barge full of soldiers taking a prisoner down to the Tower, a Gascon wine ship making its way slowly up towards Rotherhifhe. Near Dowgate, a large gilded skiff full of revellers, young courtiers clad in silks with their loud-mouthed whores, was being rowed back to the city after a night’s revelry in the stews of Southwark.

At last Athelstan and Cranston disembarked at a small wharf overlooked by the priory of St Mary Overy and the crenellated towers and walls of the Bishop of Winchester’s inn. Cranston had finally decided to follow Athelstan’s advice and return to the Lady Maude but was determined that his companion should accompany him.

‘You see, Brother, if you are there the domina’s wrath may be curbed.’

Athelstan nodded wisely. A sight to be seen, he thought. Lady Maude, so small, petite and gentle, was reputed to have a ferocious temper. They walked through a maze of stinking alleyways, past the Abbot of Hyde’s inn, down a small runnel where a yellow, thin-ribbed dog was busy licking the sores on a beggar’s leg, and into the area in front of St Erconwald’s. Athelstan checked that his house was safe and secure, noticed with despair how Ursula’s sow had eaten more of his cabbages, removed a second set of keys from his chest and unlocked the church for the workmen had not yet arrived. The nave was still full of dust but the workmen had been busy for the sanctuary gleamed with white, evenly laid, flagstones. Athelstan clapped his hands and murmured with delight.

‘Beautiful!’ he exclaimed. ‘The rood screen will be replaced, then the altar. You think it will look fine, Sir John?’

Cranston, sitting at the base of a pillar, nodded absent-mindedly. ‘A veritable jewel,’ he muttered. ‘But have you noticed what’s missing?’

Athelstan came back and looked into the transept.

‘The coffin!’ he shouted. ‘The bloody coffin’s gone!’

‘Don’t worry, Father.’ Crim, followed by a high-tailed Bonaventure, slipped into the church. The young urchin danced towards him whilst the cat miaowed with pleasure when he glimpsed his fat friend, the coroner. Whilst Sir John stamped and quietly cursed the cat, Crim explained that his father had moved the coffin and the sacred bones to the small death house in the parish cemetery.

‘You see, Father, the Serjeants sent down by the Lord Coroner frightened everybody off. Anyway, Pike the ditcher said if the church was sealed the death house wasn’t, so the coffin was moved there.’

Athelstan bit back his curses and stalked out of the church, through the over-grown cemetery to where the death house stood by the far wall — a small, square building with a thatched roof and a tiny shuttered window. Pike the ditcher was fast asleep outside the door but Athelstan could see how the stream of pilgrims had beaten a path through the cemetery to the small shed.

‘I am going to enjoy this,’ he muttered.

He reached the sleeping Pike and, drawing one sandalled foot back, kicked the soles of Pike’s heavy boots, waking the ditcher with a start. Athelstan studied Pike’s bleary eyes, unshaven face and the empty wineskin clutched in his hand.

‘Oh, Father, good morning.’

Athelstan crouched down. ‘And what are you doing here?’ he asked sweetly.

Pike rubbed his eyes and drew back warily. ‘Guarding the relic, Father.’

‘And who told you to remove the coffin from the church?’

‘Watkin. It was his idea!’

‘Yes, Father,’ a voice called out from behind a beaten headstone. ‘It was Watkin!’

Cecily the courtesan, her hair tousled and her face crumpled with sleep, a thick cloak wrapped round her stained, scarlet dress, stood up like an apparition.

Athelstan looked at her, then at Pike, and tried to control the rage seething within him.

‘You have been here all night? Together? This is a graveyard! God’s acre!’ He got to his feet. ‘Haven’t you read the good book, Pike? This is the house of God, not some bloody knacker’s yard!’

Athelstan went to the death house door.

‘I’ll open it, Father.’

‘Sod off!’ he shouted, and violently kicked it just under the latch.

‘Oh, Father, don’t!’ Cecily wailed.

Athelstan kicked again and the door flew back even as Cranston, fleeing from an attentive Bonaventura, came hurrying through the cemetery asking what the matter was.

Athelstan gazed round the death house. The coffin lay on a table surrounded by faded flowers. Someone had fashioned a crude cross to hang on the wall and his rage only deepened when he saw that the coffin had been desecrated.

‘They are beginning to sell bits of the wood!’ he hissed.

He stormed out, almost knocking Cranston aside. Cecily was fleeing like some gaudy butterfly towards the lych-gate but Pike still stood his ground. Athelstan gripped the man by his jerkin and pulled him close.

‘Listen, Pike, I am angry at what you have done. Your father lies buried here, his father and his father before him, as do other ancestors of our parish. Good men, holy women, poor but hard-working.’ He nodded vigorously back at the death house. ‘They fashioned that coffin out of their own hands, bought the wood, hired a carpenter. And you, Watkin, and the rest, are turning it into some pathetic mummer’s show!’

Pike, alarmed at the priest’s unaccustomed rage, just stared back open-mouthed. Athelstan let him go.

‘Now listen, Pike, in a few days I will return. I want the coffin removed back to the church, the death house door locked, and an end to this stupidity!’ He looked round the overgrown graveyard. ‘And you can tell Watkin from me that I want to see this place cleaned, the grass cut, the graves tended — or I will personally do something to him that he will remember all his Godgiven days! Do you understand?’

Pike, nodding fearfully, stepped back and stumped out of the graveyard.

Cranston slapped Athelstan on the shoulder. ‘Well done, Brother. You should have kicked the bugger’s backside for him!’

Athelstan sat down wearily amongst the fallen headstones. ‘They mean well, Sir John. They are just poor, simple people who see the possibility of a quick profit. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.’

Cranston just belched in reply.

‘Crim!’ Athelstan shouted. ‘I know you’re hiding there!’

The young urchin stood like a hunting dog, body quivering, eyes fixed on Athelstan.

‘Don’t worry.’ The friar smiled. ‘You are a good lad, Crim. Quickly, now, before the streets become too busy. Go tell the Lady Benedicta to meet Sir John and I at the Piebald tavern.’

The young boy ran off, loping like a greyhound through the long grass. Cranston grabbed Athelstan’s arm and raised him gently up, swinging one bear-like arm round the friar’s shoulders. Athelstan sniffed the wine-drenched breath and knew that Sir John, somewhere under that voluminous cloak, had been using his miraculous wineskin.

‘For a priest, you’re a good fellow, Athelstan. You have fire in your balls, steel in your heart and a tongue like a razor!’ He grinned wickedly, giving Athelstan a vice-like hug. ‘If you weren’t a monk, you’d be a very good coroner’s apprentice.’

‘You’re in good spirits, Sir John.’

‘I feel better already,’ the coroner declared. ‘A blackjack of ale and the presence of the fair Benedicta. Who could ask for more?’

‘The Lady Maude?’ Athelstan queried.

Cranston’s face dropped. ‘By Satan’s balls, friar! Don’t frighten me!’

They reached the tavern and sat ensconced behind a table. Cranston was on his second blackjack of ale whilst his thick fingers tore at the white, succulent flesh of a small quail, when Benedicta joined them. The coroner roared for a cup of hippocrass, invited her to sit on his knee and bellowed with laughter at the woman’s barbed reply, whilst grinning wickedly out of the corner of his eye at Athelstan. He knew the priest was a good man, saintly, but with a weakness for this woman which fascinated Cranston. It was the only time Athelstan ever became nervous, those first few minutes whenever he met Benedicta, and this time was no different. The friar fussed around the woman like a lovelorn squire, making sure she was comfortable, whilst Benedicta, shy at such attention, murmured that she was well. Athelstan privately concluded that she was: Benedicta had lost her strained anxious look, her black glossy hair under its white gauze veil smelt fragrant, and he admired her close-cut gown of pink satin, tied at the throat by a heart-shaped brooch. Benedicta winked at Cranston and glanced sidelong at Athelstan.

‘You have been to the church, Father?’

‘Yes, and have given Pike a piece of my mind. Cecily fled before I could tell her a few home truths. Benedicta, I left you in charge!’

The woman shrugged daintily. ‘You know Watkin, Father. He has a mouth like a trumpet. At least I kept them out of the church. What would you have me do?’ she asked innocently, her eyes twinkling. ‘Lie down in the graveyard with Cecily?’

Cranston snorted with laughter. Athelstan smiled.

‘Any reply to the letter?’ she asked hopefully.

Cranston covered her delicate hand with his huge paw.

‘Don’t worry,’ he confided between gentle burps. ‘I sent the swiftest messenger. He was to go from Dover to Boulogne and is under orders to await a reply.’

Benedicta gripped one of his fingers and squeezed it tightly.

‘Sir John, you are a gentleman.’

Cranston grabbed his blackjack and pushed his face deep into it to hide his embarrassment.

‘The business at Blackfriars?’ she asked.

‘Murder, my lady,’ Cranston answered darkly. ‘Bloody murder! Silent death! But I have a few theories as my clerk will tell you later.’ He glanced suspiciously at Benedicta as she bit her lower lip whilst Athelstan suddenly became interested in his own wine cup.

‘I want to meet you, Benedicta,’ Athelstan intervened smoothly, ‘before going back to Blackfriars. The coffin is to be returned to the church and left there. Today is Thursday. I will return next Tuesday to hear confessions before Corpus Christi. Tell Watkin I want to find nothing amiss.’

‘And what else?’

Athelstan leaned back against the wall. ‘I have been thinking about what Father Prior said to me just before I left Blackfriars. He talked about the first miracle. You know, I think it’s time we visited Raymond D’Arques. Come on.’ He rose as Cranston grabbed his tankard and drained it to the dregs. Athelstan nodded towards the door. ‘Perhaps the mist is beginning to lift in more ways than one.’

D’Arques’s house was a two-storied, narrow building on the corner of a lane. It was half-timbered with a red-tiled roof, small windows on both storeys and a passageway down the side. Athelstan walked along this and looked over the small gate at the bottom. He glimpsed a huge yard, empty except for a few beggars crouched there. Surprised, he returned to the front of the house and knocked on the door, Cranston and Benedicta standing behind him. D’Arques’s pleasant-faced wife answered and welcomed them in with a smile.

‘Father Athelstan.’ She glanced quickly at Cranston and Benedicta.

‘Two friends,’ he replied. ‘Sir John Cranston, Coroner of the City, and Benedicta, a member of my parish council.’

The woman turned and walked back into the shadows of the house.

‘Come in,’ she said softly. ‘My husband is working. You have come to see him about the miracle worked at St Erconwald’s?’

‘Yes,’ the friar replied. ‘The news has spread throughout Southwark, even across the river.’

D’Arques was sitting in the cool, stone-flagged kitchen: the coins scattered across the table, the strips of parchment, ink horn and quill, and the small, black-beaded abacus, showed he was in the middle of doing his accounts. He pushed back his stool as they entered, and rose, inviting them to sit at either side of the table.

‘Brother Athelstan, you are welcome.’

The introductions were made; he clasped Cranston’s hand and nodded politely at Benedicta. Athelstan sat down and looked around. The kitchen was neat and tidy. A huge cauldron above a small log fire gave off a delicious odour. D’Arques caught his glance.

‘Beef stew,’ he commented, ‘but it’s not my wife’s cooking you’re interested in.’ He rolled back the loose sleeve of his gown to reveal a healthy arm. ‘You see, Father, the infection has not returned.’

Cranston and Benedicta stared at the wholesome skin, searching for any mark, but they were unable to find any. D’Arques’s wife sat at the other end of the table watching them intently.

‘Master D’Arques.’ Athelstan shifted uneasily as he felt he was now intruding on this happy household. ‘You’ve lived in Southwark all your life?’

‘I am Southwark born and bred.’

‘And you’ve been a carpenter?’

‘I’ve had various trades, Father. Why do you ask?’

‘Have you ever been married before?’

D’Arques threw back his head and laughed, then winked at his wife. ‘Once bitten, twice shy, Father! Margot Twyford,’ he nodded at his wife, ‘is my first and only wife. My first and only love,’ he added softly.

The woman looked away in embarrassment.

‘Twyford?’ Cranston interrupted. ‘Are you a member of that family?’

‘Oh, yes, Sir John. The famous Twyfords, the merchant princes. I am one of their kin. My father was most reluctant for me to marry outside the family circle and the great trade guilds which the Twyfords dominate.’

Athelstan felt he had gone as far as he dared. He was about to turn the conversation to more mundane matters when there was a sudden knock at the back door.

‘I am sorry,’ D’Arques muttered. ‘We have other tasks to attend to.’

His wife rose. Collecting a huge tray from a side table, she went and knelt before the fire, ladling the stew into small earthenware bowls.

‘Do you wish to eat?’ she asked over her shoulder. ‘Something to drink?’

‘No, thank you,’ Athelstan answered quickly, glancing at Cranston. ‘You have children, Master D’Arques?’

Again the man laughed. He rose and went to open the door. Athelstan glimpsed the beggars he had seen before now staring expectantly into the kitchen.

‘Go and sit down,’ D’Arques said quietly to them. ‘Sit against the wall and my wife will bring out the food.’

The beggars quietly obeyed as Mistress D’Arques rearranged the bowls so as to lay a huge platter of cut bread between them. She smiled at her visitors and disappeared through the door, to be welcomed by cries of thanks and appreciation.

‘You feed the poor?’ Benedicta asked, her eyes shining with admiration.

‘St Swithin’s is our parish, Mistress Benedicta. We all have our tasks. At noontime every day we feed the poor within the parish boundaries. It’s the least we can do.’

Athelstan nodded, rose, and went across to the door. He glanced quickly round and caught sight of a small, beautifully carved cupboard.

‘You made this, Master D’Arques?’

‘Of course, it carries my mark.’ D’Arques joined Athelstan and pointed to the small emblem just above one of the hinges, an elaborate cross with two finely etched crowns on either side.

‘Father,’ he murmured, ‘why are you here?’

Athelstan smiled. ‘Miracles are rare occurrences. I came to make sure yours had had lasting effects.’ Athelstan beckoned to his companions. ‘Sir John, Benedicta, we have wasted enough of Master D’Arques’s time. Sir, my regards to your lady wife.’

The carpenter ushered them out and Cranston at least waited until they turned the corner before giving vent to his feelings.

‘Athelstan, in the name of God, what on earth were we doing there?’

‘A wild guess, Sir John. D’Arques started the great mystery at St Erconwald’s. I thought, an unworthy suspicion, that Master Watkin had put him up to it.’

‘Do you believe that?’ Benedicta asked.

‘Of Watkin, and his ally and one-time enemy Pike the ditcher, I believe anything!’ Athelstan snapped. ‘But, come, one last call.’

They visited physician Culpepper in his musty, shabby house in Pig Pen Lane, but the old doctor could give little help.

‘Master D’Arques,’ he confirmed, ‘is a worthy member of the parish; an honest trader, who had a hideous infection on the skin of his arm. No,’ Culpepper announced, ushering them to the door, ‘you do not get the likes of Master D’Arques having anything to do with the shady dealings of Watkin the dung-collector and Pike the ditcher.’

All three walked slowly back to St Erconwald’s. Athelstan bade farewell to Benedicta and, taking a now reluctant Sir John by the arm, walked briskly down towards London Bridge.

‘Home is where the heart is,’ Athelstan quipped, trying to hide his own disappointment at his fruitless visits. ‘Now it is time to confront the Lady Maude.’

By the time they reached Sir John’s house just off Cheap-side both men were exhausted. The day proved hot, the streets were dusty and packed with traders. In Cheapside the crowd had been so dense, they almost had to fight their way through traders, apprentices, officious market beadles, beggars whining for alms and a line of malefactors being taken up to stand in a cage near the Great Conduit. Matters were not helped by a mummer’s group near the great market cross who had erected a makeshift platform and were busy enacting a miracle play about the fall of Jezebel. Unfortunately Cranston and Athelstan arrived at the play’s climax when the painted whore queen was being condemned by the prophet Elijah to be eaten alive by dogs. The crowd, drawn into the drama, ‘oohed’ and ‘ahed’ and decided to ‘help’ the prophet by throwing every bit of refuse they could on to the stage. Cranston had to send a pickpocket, whom he had glimpsed in the crowd, crashing to the ground with a blow to the ear.

‘Bugger off, you little foist!’ the coroner roared.

Unfortunately his trumpet-like voice carried to the stage where the man playing the role of the prophet thought Sir John was talking to him. If it hadn’t been for Athelstan’s intervention, an even greater drama would have been enacted as Cranston drew himself up to his full height and began to roar insults at the stage, dismissing the mummers as fiends from hell, claiming that they had no licence to perform. Others joined in and Athelstan was grateful when he managed to push Sir John through the crowd, past the coroner’s favourite drinking place, the Holy Lamb of God tavern, and up against the coroner’s front door.

‘Sir John,’ Athelstan breathed, ‘walking with you through London is an experience never to be forgotten — and certainly never to be repeated!’

Cranston glared furiously at the crowd.

‘In my treatise on the government of this city,’ he intoned, ‘mummers will be told to perform their tricks in certain places and will have to seek a licence. Moreover. .’

Athelstan had heard enough. He turned and rapped furiously at the front door.

‘Please yourself,’ Cranston mumbled. ‘If I had more time and patience, I’d settle those buggers!’

A thin, pinch-faced maid answered the door. Sir John, grinning wickedly, pushed by her.

‘Sir John!’ she gasped. ‘We did not expect you!’

‘I come like a thief in the night!’ Cranston boomed. ‘Now, please tell the Lady Maude her lord and master has returned!’

‘The Lady Maude is in the flesh markets at the Shambles, master. She will be home shortly.’

‘And my little poppet princes?’

‘They’re upstairs, Sir John, in the solar with the wet nurse.’

Cranston lurched up the stairs, Athelstan following swiftly behind as Sir John imperiously beckoned him on. In the solar, a pleasant, sun-lit room with tapestries on the wall and carpets on the floor, the wet nurse sat on one of the cushioned window seats, gently rocking the huge, wooden cradle beside her. She rose and curtseyed as Cranston entered.

‘Leave us,’ the coroner said airily.

‘Lady Maude said,’ the comely wench answered pleadingly, ‘not to leave the poppets alone!’

Cranston drew his brows together. ‘I am the poppets’ father,’ he proclaimed. ‘They will be all right with me.’

The wet nurse, throwing anxious glances over her shoulder, left the room as Sir John gestured Athelstan forward.

‘Look!’ the coroner whispered. He bent over the huge wooden cradle and drew back the pure woollen blanket under which his two little poppets, as he described them, lay fast asleep. Sir John pushed his head deeper under the high linen canopy, breathing wine fumes down on his beloved sons. ‘Fine boys!’ he growled. ‘Fine boys!’

Athelstan peered round the coroner’s white grizzled head and once again vowed to keep his face straight. The two ‘fine boys’ and ‘poppet princes’ were indeed sturdy babies. Fat, bald heads, dimples in their cheeks, red-faced, without any hair, they looked so like Sir John that, if Athelstan had found them in Cheapside, he would have known to which family they belonged. Cranston pushed Athelstan away.

‘Fine contented lads,’ he muttered. ‘Even when they are asleep, they smile. Watch this!’ He bent to stroke one of them, Athelstan thought it was Francis, on the corner of the mouth. The coroner was ungainly on his feet and pressed so hard the little fellow woke: two liquid blue eyes stared up at them. ‘Shush, my boy!’ Cranston whispered. ‘Back to sleep with you now.’

He rose, staggered, and gave the cot a powerful push. The other baby woke up and the two brothers looked at Sir John.

‘See, they are smiling,’ Cranston said. ‘They are so pleased to see Daddy.’

Almost at a given signal the two babies’ lower lips went down, their eyes widened and the Cranston boys gave full vent to their fury at such an abrupt and unexpected wakening. The coroner shoved the blanket back and rocked the cradle vigorously. Athelstan couldn’t help laughing, for the more the coroner rocked, the worse the din became. Cranston glared furiously at him.

‘Don’t bloody well laugh, you stupid monk! Give them a blessing, sing a hymn!’

‘Sir John! What are you doing?’

Cranston turned slowly, like a fat-bellied ship shifting in the wind. Lady Maude stood in the entrance to the solar. She was only five foot two, her hair mousey, her face and figure petite, but Athelstan could sense the fury raging in her. All the more terrible for the false, sweet smile on Lady Maude’s usually serene, pretty face.

‘Sir John, what are you doing?’ she repeated, walking slowly across the room. ‘You thunder into this house like a great boar, revoke my instructions, frighten the children! Isn’t it enough that you accepted a wager which,’ Lady Maude pointed dramatically at the ceiling, ‘has threatened even the roof over their heads!’

She turned, calling for the wet nurse. At last the girl, each arm full of a struggling and still furious, red-faced baby, disappeared down the stairs, the boys’ howls fading in the distance. Cranston raised his eyes heavenwards and crept across to sit in his favourite chair next to the hearth. He saw an empty bowl shoved in the corner of the inglenook.

‘Has that lazy bugger Leif been here?’

‘Yes, he’s doing some gardening, because you, Sir John, are busy elsewhere! In the sewers, by the sound of your language!’

Cranston sank deeper into the chair, his lower lip going down, so he reminded Athelstan more of his baby sons than the King’s Coroner North of the Thames. Lady Maude, her body as stiff as a board, walked across to stand before him, arms folded.

‘Sir John, you have a big mouth, a big belly — and the only thing that redeems you is your big heart. At times you can be the shrewdest of men, and at others,’ Lady Maude sighed, ‘Leif the beggar would have more sense. How could you accept such a wager? A thousand crowns!’

‘Athelstan will help,’ Cranston replied meekly.

Lady Maude sent one withering glance at the friar, who decided to retreat and stay out of the storm in the window seat.

Athelstan sat bemused as Lady Maude gave her husband the rough edge of her tongue, a short biting lecture on the virtues of commonsense and keeping a still tongue in one’s head. Cranston, who was frightened of no one under the sun, just sat and cringed, his eyes half-closed. At last Lady Maude stopped, drew a deep breath, patted her husband on the shoulder and, leaning over, kissed him softly on the cheek.

‘There, Sir John, I have said my piece.’ She clasped her hands and glanced at Athelstan. ‘Welcome, Brother. I always thank God that Sir John has you. I am sure,’ and Athelstan smiled weakly at the steely menace in her voice, ‘I am confident you will help my husband out of this impasse. Now, Sir John, a cup of claret and a plate of doucettes. And you, Brother? Good, there’s nothing like honey to take away the taste of vinegar. Eh, Sir John?’

Cranston, his head half-lowered, nodded vigorously and, as Lady Maude flounced away, blew out his lips in a long sigh and sagged in the chair like a pricked bladder skin.

‘Believe me, Brother,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘nothing, and I repeat, nothing on earth, is more awesome than the Lady Maude in full battle array. Give me a group of roistering bully boys any time of the day!’

Lady Maude returned, bearing a tray with the wine and doucettes. She served Sir John as meekly and dutifully as any squire. The coroner, seeing in which direction the wind was blowing now, drew himself up and reasserted himself. He asked in a gruff voice what had happened whilst he had been away, nodding impatiently at Lady Maude’s chatter about the neighbours, the price of bread and the number of trade fights taking place in the city.

‘Oh, Sir John!’ Lady Maude’s fingers flew to her lips. ‘I had forgotten. Some letters arrived for you.’ She crossed to a small chest and brought out two thin rolls of parchment. Sir John opened them and quickly studied the contents, clicking his tongue.

‘We are in luck, Brother,’ he announced. ‘First, my clerks have established your church is only a hundred and thirty years old. Before that a private dwelling place stood on the site. Secondly, and more importantly, my spies have traced Master William Fitzwolfe, formerly parson of the church of St Erconwald’s, Southwark. He can be found in the Velvet Tabard inn in an alleyway off Whitefriars.’

Athelstan rose and excitedly seized the pieces of parchment.

‘Why can’t your men just arrest Fitzwolfe?’

‘In law,’ Cranston answered pompously, ‘there is a statutory limitation on offences. And, remember, it’s not a crime to flee your church.’

‘It is if you take most of the property with you!’

‘Dear Brother, you know the law. We can’t prove that.’

‘So what can I do?’

Cranston rose and loosened his belt. ‘Bring me my sword and hangar, Lady Maude, and one of my stout quarter-staffs for Athelstan. We are going to terrify Master Fitzwolfe.’

A few minutes later Cranston grandly swept out of his house, tenderly embracing his wife while muttering that all would be well. He kissed his two poppet princes on the brow, sending both back into paroxysms of rage.

‘I wish he’d remember he has a moustache and beard,’ Lady Maude whispered to Athelstan. ‘And that both are as coarse as a privet hedge!’