Murder Most Holy

CHAPTER 8

Cranston and Athelstan pushed their way up a crowded Cheap-side, through a maze of alleyways and into the squalid slums round the Carmelite monastery of Whitefriars. Beggars wailed for charity. Flies swarmed on the many refuse heaps which choked the sewers and, in places, were piled waist-high outside the dirty, fetid tenements. Two boys had seized a small dog and were trying to push a stick up its rectum until Cranston sent them fleeing with a swift kick. Hawkers and pedlars with their trays of gee-gaws or small barrows full of food over which flies swarmed, stood in corners shouting for trade and keeping a wary eye out for the beadles who patrolled the area. A group of market officials had seized two men: one had not paid scutage or tax for trading in the city; the other they were trying to make pronounce ‘Cheese and bread’ on suspicion that he was a Fleming who had no right to bring any goods into the city.

‘If he pronounces that wrong,’ Cranston muttered out of the comer of his mouth as he swaggered by, ‘they’ll bum the palm of his hand with a red hot poker.’

Dark shapes flitted in and out of the doorways of the narrow runnels. The air was thick with black smoke from the glue-makers who melted the bones and offal from the Shambles in huge metal vats at the back of their squalid little houses. Cranston seemed to know his way well. Athelstan, clutching the quarter-staff, walked a little behind him, keeping a wary eye that no one was following them. Children screamed and argued. Dogs fought over the mounds of refuse. Athelstan was sure that in one pile he glimpsed a human hand, its splayed fingers putrid and rotten.

‘God save us!’ Athelstan muttered.

‘The very door to hell,’ Cranston answered. ‘Say your prayers, Brother, and keep your eyes sharp. If anyone lurches towards you, be they drunk, woman or child, give them a rap with that quarter-staff!’

They went down one alleyway. A group of beggars emerged out of the darkness, blocking their path. Cranston drew his sword and dagger.

‘Piss off!’ he shouted.

The figures retreated into the darkness. On the corner stood a woman with three children, their bodies half-covered in a dirty mass of rags, displaying terrible sores and bruises. Athelstan’s hand immediately went to his purse as the woman, bony-faced, her one good eye gleaming, stretched out a birdlike claw. Cranston slapped the hand away and pulled Athelstan on.

‘Keep your money, Brother. Can’t you see she’s a palliard?’

‘A what?’

‘A professional beggar.’

Athelstan looked quickly over his shoulder. ‘But the children, Sir John. Those terrible bruises!’

The coroner chuckled. ‘It’s a wonder, Brother, what people can do with a mixture of salt, paint, potash and pig’s blood.’

‘They are so real.’

‘Brother, look at their bodies. Plump, well-fed — they are not starving children. They probably eat better than I do.’

‘That,’ Athelstan muttered to himself, ‘would be a miracle!’ He shook his head at the sheer guile of the beggars as he followed Sir John down another alleyway. ‘Are we there yet?’

Cranston stopped and pointed up to a dirty sign which swung lazily from the ale-stake thrusting out under the eaves of a tall, three-storeyed tavern. Cranston kicked the door open and they walked into the musty darkness where only a few oil lamps flickered. The few windows were high in the wall and firmly shuttered. The hum of conversation died. Athelstan felt a prickle of fear seeing the raw-faced, mean-eyed, pinched features of the men who sat there; two were asleep, the rest were huddled in small groups, either drinking or playing dice.

‘Hell’s kitchen!’ Cranston muttered.

He drew his sword and dagger as a man rose from the table near the door. Athelstan caught the glint of a knife in the fellow’s hand.

‘How now, me buckos!’ Cranston grandly announced. ‘Some of you may know me. If not, I am sure I will make your acquaintance sooner or later. I am Sir John Cranston, Coroner of the City, law officer of the King. This is my clerk, my secretarius, Brother Athelstan, late of Blackfriars.’ He shot out one podgy hand at the rat-faced man carrying the dagger. ‘You, my lad, will sit down and shut up!’

The fellow did so slowly.

‘What do you fucking want, Cranston?’ someone shouted.

He held up his sword by the hilt. ‘I swear I mean you no ill, though I could return with a few Serjeants and see what this pretty place contains.’

The greasy-faced taverner, wiping his hands on a dirty cloth, scuttled out of the darkness, bobbing and servile.

‘Sir John, you are most welcome.’

Cranston gripped him by the shoulder. ‘No, I’m not, you fat bastard! I want to speak to one person, just speak, and I know he’s here so don’t lie. A man who calls himself Master William Fitzwolfe, late of the parish of St Erconwald’s.’

A deathly silence greeted his words.

‘Ah, well, if you want it that way. .’ Cranston half-turned to the door.

Athelstan heard a few whispers and a man walked out of the darkness.

‘I am Fitzwolfe, Sir John. I have committed no crimes.’

Cranston beckoned him closer. ‘Oh, yes, you have, my lad, but we won’t go into that now. All we need is a few minutes of your time.’

The fellow stepped into the light and Athelstan gazed in revulsion. At first sight the man looked respectable. He had dark shoulder-length hair and was clean-shaven while his hands and face were soft and white. But he had a mocking sneer on his twisted lips, and his eyes were cold, dead and calculating. He was dressed completely in black leather from head to toe. Athelstan glimpsed the dagger pushed into the top of his boot and the large stabbing knife strapped to his side. It had been a long time since Athelstan had met anyone who gave off such a feeling of menacing evil. Fitzwolfe glanced at him, his lips parting in what he considered a smile.

‘You must be Athelstan, the new priest at St Erconwald’s. How are my beloved parishioners? Six years is a long time. Does Watkin the dung-collector try to tell you what to do as he did me?’ He stuck his thumbs into his sword belt. ‘And Cecily the courtesan? Lovely buttocks, but she was so noisy whilst making love.’

Athelstan stepped forward. ‘You are a thief, Fitzwolfe!’

The defrocked priest spread his hands. ‘Where’s your proof? I left St Erconwald’s. The parishioners looted the church.’

Athelstan drew a deep breath trying to calm the rage seething within him.

‘Come on!’ Cranston said abruptly. ‘Master taverner, you have a room at the back? A buttery, a kitchen? I’ll talk to our friend there.’

The taverner took them into a dirty room with a smoky fire: dirty trenchers and platters littered a grease-covered table on which two scullions were trying to wash up, dipping the pots and pans into a vat of scum-covered water.

Cranston clicked his fingers. ‘All of you out, including you, master taverner.’ He pushed the landlord and his servants back through the door, closed it and leaned against it. He nodded across the kitchen. ‘Open that door, Athelstan, just in case we have to leave in a hurry, and stand there lest Master Fitzwolfe has the same idea.’

The ex-priest, however, sat elegantly on a stool, crossing his legs as daintily as a woman, hands clasped round one knee.

The bastard’s mocking me, thought Athelstan.

‘I’m here of my own free will, Sir John, and if I wish to I can leave. There’s no warrant out for my arrest.’ Fitzwolfe sniggered. ‘Well, not one that’s valid. It’s six years since I left St Erconwald’s.’

Cranston smiled and, drawing his sword, brought the flat edge straight down on Fitzwolfe’s shoulder, making the fellow jump and lose some of his poise.

‘I am going to kill you, Fitzwolfe!’

The ex-priest tried to rise. Cranston forced him back with his sword.

‘You see, I am a law officer and I came in here to ask you some questions. You drew a dagger out of your boot so I killed you. Now, tell me, who’s going to mourn you? Or,’ Cranston put the sword away, ‘you can answer a few questions. Now, what’s it going to be?’

‘Your questions?’

‘When you were a priest at St Erconwald’s did you have flagstones laid in the sanctuary?’

‘Oh, come, Sir John,’ sneered Fitzwolfe. ‘I had better things to do than look after that Godforsaken place!’

‘So it was done before you came?’

‘Yes, that was one of Father Theobald’s bright ideas. Not a very good job, was it?’ Fitzwolfe glanced at Athelstan mockingly. ‘I was forever tripping over the damned things. Mind you, it wasn’t difficult after a skinful of wine.’

Athelstan stared back. This man, he thought, was frightened of neither God nor man. And now he could understand his own unease. He was sure Fitzwolfe was a black magician, one of those lords of the crossroads, masters of the gibbet, who dabbled in the black arts — a common practice for defrocked priests who abused the spiritual power given to them. Fitzwolfe caught his glance and nodded imperceptibly as if he could read Athelstan’s mind. He rose lazily to his feet.

‘Any further questions?’

‘Yes, I have,’ Athelstan declared, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall. ‘I am sure the plate from St Erconwald’s is now melted down and sold but you also took the muniment book containing the church accounts. Now, Fitzwolfe, I suggest you either burnt it or still have it now.’

‘I tore it up.’

‘And the pages?’

‘Some of the parchment I used.’ Fitzwolfe shrugged. ‘It was no use to anyone else. It was full of Father Theobald’s meaningless scribble. Why, what makes you think I should still have it with me?’

‘Because I am sure you regard it as some form of jest, using a church book for your own filthy purposes!’

Fitzwolfe jabbed a finger at the ceiling. ‘You can see what’s left. It’s in my garret at the top of the house.’

Cranston gave a mock bow. ‘What are we waiting for?’

Fitzwolfe shook his head. ‘Not you. I am having no officer of the law poking his nose into matters that do not concern him!’

‘At the same time,’ Cranston replied, ‘I am not having you going up the stairs, disappearing over the roof, and not being seen again this side of Yuletide!’

Fitzwolfe pointed a thumb over his shoulder. ‘The priest can come. You stay outside.’

He led them back into the tap-room. Cranston and Athelstan followed, ignoring the muttered jeers and curses, through a side door and into a dank passageway which smelt of dog urine and was littered with all sorts of dirt. They went up the rickety, slime-covered stairs which wound up through the building.

‘A resting house,’ Cranston whispered.

They passed wooden doors and landings.

‘Bolt holes,’ the coroner continued. ‘Secret passageways, rat tunnels for the human vermin to scuttle along. If I had my way I’d burn such places to the ground.’

‘But you won’t,’ Fitzwolfe sang out ahead of them. ‘Will you, Sir John?’

At last they reached the top. Fitzwolfe produced a key, inserted it into a heavy iron-studded door, unlocked it and pushed it half-open.

‘You stay there, Sir John. Priest!’ Fitzwolfe grinned slyly and beckoned Athelstan forward.

The friar entered, wrinkling his nose at the sweet, sickly smell, straining his eyes to accustom them to the darkness. Fitzwolfe flitted round the room like a shadow. A tinder was struck and long white candles in their brass holders, protected by a metal hood, caught the flame. Athelstan gazed around. A cold shiver prickled at the back of his neck, and for some strange reason he felt out of breath.

‘“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”,’ he whispered, ‘“I will fear no evil.”’

The room was clean but the walls, floor and ceiling were painted a glossy black which shimmered in the candlelight. In one corner under a small window was a truckle bed, beside it a table which could serve as an altar, and above it an inverted cross, the figure headless and upside down. Athelstan shivered. Were those bloodstains on the table? And what was that strange smell? Strong herbs or tar mixed with something else? Fitzwolfe just stood watching him like a cat. Athelstan shook himself as if trying to clear his mind. The ex-priest seemed to have changed; his face was longer, his skin yellowing, whilst the dark eyes glittered with an unholy malice.

‘The pages!’ Athelstan snarled. ‘You promised me the pages!’

Fitzwolfe shrugged, went to the foot of the bed, unlocked a chest and rummaged amongst its contents. Athelstan looked to his left. There was a leatherbound book chained to a lectern He glanced at it quickly and looked away in revulsion for it was a grimoire of spells and black magic. On the wall behind the lectern were pages like those he had seen in a Book of Hours or Lives of the Saints, delicately edged and brilliantly coloured One depicted a group of people listening to a preacher, but the figure dressed in the robes of a priest had a slavering goat’s head and a huge erect penis jutting out between the folds of his robes. In another, a pig wearing the cope and mitre of a bishop chewed the miniature bodies of people, whilst the third showed the nave of a church. The pillars along the transept reminded Athelstan of St Erconwald’s though the artist had carefully used perspective so it seemed the onlooker was gazing down into a deep pit. At the far end, where the rood screen should have been, glowed a face painted in silver with the red glowing eyes and golden lips of a demon. Athelstan pulled his eyes away. He felt that the air in the room was thick, cloying, oppressive. He looked in the comers and was sure there were shadows deeper than the rest, as if someone or something was lurking there.

‘Come on, Fitzwolfe!’ he snapped. ‘The pages!’

‘Here they are, Brother.’ Fitzwolfe walked slowly back, a piece of tattered yellow vellum in his hand, loosely held together by crude stitching. ‘What’s the matter, Athelstan? Don’t you like my chamber? My unholy of unholies?’

As Fitzwolfe handed the parchment over, a hand cold as ice brushed the friar’s. ‘You are a priest, Athelstan. What do you fear here?’

He jumped at a shuffling sound from the corner.

‘What’s that?’ he queried.

‘Look, Athelstan,’ Fitzwolfe murmured. ‘Look for yourself. Stare into the corner and what do you see?’

The friar did as he was told, turning to confront a real menace, something quite horrifying. Was it a shape? he wondered. Or a shadow? He glimpsed an ivory, rounded shoulder, a perfectly formed breast, hair like spun gold, then heard a low soft chuckle. Athelstan gripped the parchment.

‘These are mine!’ he stuttered. ‘They are mine!’

He almost ran to the door, pulling hard at the handle, but it was locked. Behind him he could feel Fitzwolfe and something else shuffling towards him. He scrabbled at the lock, found the key, opened the door and flung himself out into the passageway even as the door slammed firmly shut behind him. He was sure he heard not only Fitzwolfe sniggering but someone else as well.

‘What’s the matter, Athelstan?’ Cranston grabbed his companion, alarmed at how marble-white and sweat-soaked the priest’s face had become. Cranston shook him again. ‘Brother, what’s the matter?’

Athelstan broke free from his reverie and grabbed the quarter-staff he had left by the wall.

‘Come on, Sir John! This is no place for us. No place for any of God’s creatures!’

Cranston took a step towards the door of Fitzwolfe’s chamber.

‘Leave it, Sir John! I mean that. Just leave it alone!’

He crashed down the stairs, Cranston lumbering after him. Without waiting for the coroner, Athelstan strode back into the alleyway. Cranston, huffing and puffing, came up beside him, rattling out questions which Athelstan ignored. The priest walked as quickly as he could. He was determined to put as much distance as he could between himself and the tavern; he concentrated all his energies and intelligence on remembering the route Sir John had taken. At last they were free of Whitefriars and entering a small street leading up to the Fleet. Athelstan suddenly stopped and leaned against the wall. He was drained and tired, as if body, mind and soul had been buffeted. The coroner peered at him.

‘Only one thing for you, my lad,’ he murmured, ‘Sir John Cranston’s usual remedy for the ills of mind and body.’

He pushed the friar into the dark, welcoming warmth of a corner tavern. Sir John, using his powerful lungs and authority as King’s Justice, soon cleared a space for them near the high-stacked wine barrels, and the prompt delivery of two great cups of claret and a dish of spiced duck. Cranston said they could share this but Athelstan shook his head, sipping the wine greedily, relishing its sweet warmth. He drained the cup so Cranston ordered another, gently removing the pieces of parchment Athelstan still clutched in his hand. The coroner studied them carefully, roaring for a candle so he could see them better.

‘By a fairy’s buttocks, Athelstan! What’s so frightening about these? Greasy, yellow pages from a church muniment book!’

‘It wasn’t that, Sir John.’ Athelstan leaned back and blinked. He had drunk the wine too quickly and now felt a little unsteady.

‘Did Fitzwolfe threaten you?’

‘In a way, yes.’

Athelstan briefly described what he had seen and felt in the room. When he had finished, Cranston gave a large belch and smacked his lips.

‘Funny people, priests!’ the coroner announced, glancing sideways at Athelstan. ‘They get to know secrets. They twist the good to get power for themselves. Not all of them, but a few. Some become avaricious and amass wealth; others like to slip between the sheets of other men’s beds. And a small number search for something greater — magical power.’

‘Sir John,’ Athelstan interrupted, ‘I know what I saw, what I felt, in that room.’

‘Perhaps. But I have met the best magicians, Athelstan. I know what they can do with herbs, and candles fashioned out of strange substances. As Ecclesiastes says, “There is no new thing under the sun”.’ He patted Athelstan’s hand. ‘True, Fitzwolfe might be a Satanist but I suspect he is a conjuror.’

Athelstan sighed and rubbed his face in his hands.

‘There’s nothing like old Cranston,’ he muttered, ‘to bring one’s feet firmly back to earth.’ He pushed his wine cup away. ‘You must finish that. We still have business at Black-friars and I do not want the Master Inquisitor to dismiss me as a toper.’

‘By the devil’s bollocks, who cares? He already thinks I’m one!’ Cranston answered.

Athelstan stretched across and picked up the sheaves of parchment, studying them, trying to decipher the close, cramped hand and usual abbreviations used in any such book. He looked carefully at the date in the top left-hand column of each page. There must have been fifty or sixty pieces sewn together with fine hemp, covering the years 1353 to 1368, the year the old priest Theobald had died.

‘I’d like to study them now,’ he murmured, but glanced at the hour candle burning high on a shelf next to the wine tuns. ‘Sir John, we should return to Blackfriars. I told Father Prior I wished to see him and the others, and it’s already too late. We should return, at least to present our most grovelling apologies.’

Cranston twisted his neck and peered through the window.

‘Bollocks!’ he muttered. ‘The sun’s beginning to set. Listen, Brother!’

Athelstan strained his ears and heard the great bell of St Mary Le Bow tolling as a sign that the day’s business had finished. He felt tired, exhausted, and the wine he had gulped was already beginning to curdle in his empty stomach. He waited for Cranston to drain his wine cup then folded the pages, collected his quarter-staff and left the tavern.

Athelstan need not have worried about being late for his meeting at Blackfriars. The news of Brother Roger’s death had spread through the enclosed community, causing the prior both confusion and endless questioning. When Athelstan met him in the chamber, Father Anselm looked distinctly harassed.

‘Yes, yes,’ he announced. ‘We waited for you, Brother. But I knew some other matter must have delayed you. You have had further thoughts?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Father Prior, this problem is as muddy as any stagnant pond. Have you discovered when Brother Roger was last seen?’

Anselm sat down wearily. He gestured to Cranston and Athelstan to do the same.

‘He was seen outside the church just after Vespers.’ He rubbed his forehead. ‘You were the next to see him, hanging from that tree in the orchard.’ He held up a hand. ‘And, before you ask, nobody admits speaking to him or meeting him or anything else. It’s as if he was spirited away.’

‘And you searched the cells of both Brother Alcuin and Callixtus?’

‘Nothing,’ the prior replied. He started sifting amongst the parchment on his desk. ‘Nothing, except two pieces of parchment. One in Alcuin’s cell, the other in Callixtus’s. Each bore the same name.’

The Prior handed the pieces of parchment over. Athelstan studied them curiously. Written in different hands, both bore the same name repeated a number of times: Hildegarde.

‘Who is she?’ Athelstan asked.

Anselm pulled a face. ‘God knows! That was the only thing untoward that I noticed. The only thing which links the death of one of our brothers to the disappearance of another.’

Cranston, half-dozing beside Athelstan, shook himself awake.

‘Always a woman!’ he announced, smacking his lips. ‘Where there’s trouble, always a woman!’

‘Sir John, you are not implying. .’ Anselm gazed angrily at the coroner. ‘Both Brother Callixtus and Alcuin were good men, faithful priests, hard-working members of our brethren. There was never a hint of scandal, even the merest tittle-tattle of gossip about them! They were senior members of this order, and sound theologians.’ His glance fell away. ‘They deserved a better death.’

Cranston apologised profusely as his secretarius just stared at the two pieces of parchment.

‘You look tired, Athelstan,’ Anselm commented, now becoming embarrassed by Cranston’s repeated apologies. ‘Leave this matter. Brother Norbert will serve you from the refectory. I suggest you have an early night, a good sleep.’

Athelstan agreed. ‘But tomorrow, Father Prior, after Nones, I need to meet you and the other members of the Inner Chapter.’ He tapped the pieces of parchment in his hand, a faint idea beginning to form in his mind, a loose line of thought which he would follow when he was more refreshed. ‘Tell no one of this, Father, for the moment. Keep it quiet.’

Athelstan and Cranston returned to the guest house, where they both washed and sat for a while in the kitchen, Cranston smacking his lips over a jug of mead whilst his companion stared at the flickering flames of the fire Brother Norbert had built up for them. The young lay brother brought across their meal from the refectory kitchen: rich veal cooked in a pepper sauce under a thin golden layer of pastry, and a dish of lightly cooked vegetables from the monastery garden. Cranston fell to with gusto. Athelstan, tired, his stomach still uneasy after the wine, ate more sparingly. Only when he was on the point of finishing did he notice the small, neatly rolled scroll tied with green silk set on a stool in the far corner of the kitchen. He went across and picked it up.

‘What is it?’ Cranston barked between mouthfuls of veal.

‘A copy of Brother Henry of Winchester’s treatise: “Cur Deus Home — Why God became man”.’

‘I’ll let you read that,’ Cranston said. ‘If God had meant us to know his ways, he wouldn’t spend most of his time keeping as much distance between himself and us as possible!’

Athelstan smiled, sat down, and in spite of his tiredness, began to study the treatise. He was still reading when Cranston, who had finished both his own supper and the rest of Athelstan’s, lumbered off into the buttery for more refreshment.

The treatise was written on pieces of parchment neatly sewn together. The clerkly hand, the fresh ink and lucid presentation made Athelstan shake his head in wonderment. Brother Henry’s treatise was a jewel of theological analysis as he carefully overturned the accepted dogma of the church. He argued Christ’s Incarnation to have sprung from God’s desire to share the divine beauty with man rather than the usual tired line of ‘redemption from sin’ or ‘atoning for man’s evil’. In Brother Henry’s treatise, God was presented as a loving mother or father and Christ as a physical expression of that love, rather than God as some angry judge grudgingly accepting Christ’s death as atonement for man’s sins.

Cranston returned, mumbled something and slowly clambered the stairs to the bedchamber. Athelstan read on, relishing the neat terminology and clarity of thought. He finished the treatise and tapped the parchment with his fingers. ‘Brilliant!’ he murmured. ‘The Inquisitors are wasting their time. Brother Henry is original but no heretic!’

He put the scroll down, stretched, then followed Sir John up to the bedchamber. The coroner was already fast asleep. For a while Athelstan knelt by his own bed, trying to clear his mind of different scenes, messages, fragments, all the events of the day. He wanted to pray, yet at the same time knew that today had been important. He had seen and heard things which were significant, but couldn’t interpret them. He closed his eyes and felt himself drift. An hour later he woke to find himself slumped over the bed. Wearily he climbed in, falling back into a dreamless sleep.