Herald of Hell

by Paul Doherty

  ‘Like a castle preparing for a siege,’ Cranston murmured. He ordered the tower to be stripped of all such armaments before kicking Malfort to his feet.

  They left the church, the hapless bell clerk pinioned in the centre of a phalanx of men-at-arms, halberds and spears bristling. Only when the reinforced, towering gates of the Guildhall swung closed behind them did the phalanx break up. Along that short journey back, Athelstan sensed the deepening tension over Cheapside and, bearing in mind what he’d seen in St Mary’s tower, believed the revolt must be imminent. Once back in the Guildhall, he urged Sir John that Malfort be immediately questioned. The coroner agreed.

  Flaxwith hustled the cowed bell clerk down the dank, dark steps leading to the dungeons beneath the main hall. The passageway below was mildewed and crusted with dirt; pools of light flared from the sconce torches pushed into brackets on the walls. Rats scurried across shimmering puddles of slime. They made their way past the different cells into a circular space where braziers glowed, making the shadows dance against the wall festooned with clasps and chains. Cranston, winking at Athelstan, ordered Malfort to be stripped to his loincloth and stretched out on the flagstone floor, wrists and ankles secured in heavy gyves.

  Athelstan stood chilled by this macabre, sombre sight. The torture room of the Guildhall bore witness to its gruesome history, a gloomy, menacing place lit by dancing flames which shimmered in the chains and fitfully illuminated the dark bloodstains on the plastered walls. The floor was covered with slime, the air a thick fug of stale smoke and foul odours. The oppressive silence was broken only by the drip, drip of water splashing into puddles and the constant moaning and cries trailing along the gloomy galleries which branched off from this chamber of terror. Athelstan gazed pitifully at Malfort, now spread out, his thin, ugly face framed by matted, sweaty hair, his bony body all a-tremble. Cranston placed two stools either side of the chained prisoner, gesturing that Athelstan should take one whilst he squatted on the other. He took a generous gulp from the miraculous wineskin and poured a little between Malfort’s dried lips before leaning down.

  ‘Come, sir. Tell me everything.’

  ‘They will kill me, execute me horribly,’ Malfort pleaded.

  ‘I will do the same.’ Cranston indicated that Athelstan should remain seated as he rose and beckoned his chief bailiff. ‘Remember France, Flaxwith? That mercenary company, the Flayers? We will do the same.’

  The chief bailiff walked away and talked to the turnkeys. A short while later Flaxwith returned, stepping into the pool of light around Malfort to hand over a leather funnel with straps. Cranston took this and held it above the prisoner.

  ‘Master Malfort, I could fasten this over your mouth and keep pouring water until you choke or,’ the coroner crouched down beside Malfort, ‘I could lash the funnel to your side.’ The coroner did so deftly, fixing the funnel firmly to the prisoner’s flank. ‘Then,’ Cranston continued conversationally, snapping his fingers, ‘I could do this.’ He stretched out and took from Flaxwith the long, wire-mesh cage containing a huge rat, ears back against its knobbly head, eyes gleaming, its hairy snout pushing against the mesh, jaws gaping to expose sharpened teeth. ‘The rat is starving.’ Cranston stared down at Malfort who was now blinking furiously, his sweat-soaked face all aghast, mouth gaping, opening and shutting as if desperate for air. ‘We place the rat in the funnel,’ Cranston continued, ‘and light a fire at the open end. Rats hate fire. It will try and escape. The leather is as thick and sturdy as armour but your flesh, Master Malfort, is soft; it’s also food, as well as the only way out.’

  Athelstan steeled himself against the sheer terror in Malfort’s eyes. The bell clerk, he reminded himself, was dangerous. He had plotted treason, rebellion and murder.

  ‘Now,’ Cranston patted the side of Malfort’s face, ‘you can tell me all you know and I might consider letting you get dressed, be given a coin and a parcel of food and be put on the next cog heading for foreign parts on the strict understanding that you never return to this kingdom under pain of being arrested for treason and torn apart at Tyburn. Do you understand?’

  Malfort, eyes crazed with fear, nodded, banging his head against the floor. Cranston began his questions, and Malfort replied as both the coroner and Athelstan expected. He had been suborned by the Upright Men and given the task of preparing the bell tower of St Mary’s as a fortress. Edmund Lacy had proved to be an obstacle, so the Upright Men had despatched Reynard to remove him. Malfort confessed to this but added that he did not know the names or the identities of the Upright Men concerned, as they remained shadowy, midnight visitors who hid under the names of birds, animals or exotic beasts. Cranston nodded in agreement; he had discovered the same in other investigations he’d carried out. Malfort, however, terrified by the sound of the rat scrabbling and squeaking in the cage, hastened on.

  ‘Reynard was supposed to leave the cipher and its key in a crevice in St Stephen’s chantry chapel, the one housing Camoys’ corpse. He carried them separate on his person. One without the other was useless; only a trained cipher clerk like Whitfield might be skilled enough to break it.’

  ‘The cipher,’ Athelstan urged, ‘contained instructions about the seizing of church towers, belfries and steeples, did it not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how do you know that?’ Athelstan persisted. ‘If both cipher and key were taken? Master Malfort,’ the friar leaned closer, ‘you are in gravi periculo mortis – in grave danger of death. Tell the truth. Let me help you. The Upright Men were furious at Reynard, weren’t they? I suspect they only recently retrieved the key to the cipher, but they sent you another message through an envoy who gave you strict verbal instructions on what to do, isn’t that right? Answer me!’

  Malfort nodded. ‘I was informed of the plot to seize the Tower,’ he gasped, ‘and ordered to wait for a sign.’

  ‘What sign?’

  ‘A tile, yes, a tile emblazoned with an all-seeing eye. Once I had received that, I was to fire the beacon light in St Mary’s steeple, a veritable bonfire just as dawn broke: it would be seen all over the city. The Earthworms would move in immediately to seize the designated towers.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was still waiting for a further message, though I sense that the time is very close,’ Malfort chatted on. ‘In the meantime, I was ordered to pass on what I had been told to the leaders of the Earthworms.’

  ‘So you know who these are,’ Cranston demanded. ‘Give me their names.’

  ‘I can’t. Every so often one would appear and I’d deliver the message, which he would pass on. Who and how, I don’t know. Sir John, Brother Athelstan, I beg you to believe me. I was only told what was necessary; that is how the Upright Men work – constantly in the shadows, ever vigilant against spies and traitors.’ Malfort drew a deep breath. ‘I was given further instruction, something only I could do.’

  ‘What? Who was this messenger?’

  ‘He sheltered in the gloom of the church porch. I was told to stand well away. I …’ Malfort coughed and spluttered. Cranston ordered the gyves to be unlocked and the bell clerk sat up, rubbing his wrists and arms.

  ‘Continue,’ Cranston ordered.

  ‘You know,’ Malfort gabbled, ‘how one of the duties of the bell clerk at St Mary’s is to collect rents from certain tenements the parish owns along Cheapside up to Newgate and Smithfield.’

  ‘Bequests,’ Cranston agreed. ‘Property left to the church by wealthy parishioners in return for chantry masses being sung for their souls.’

  ‘I collect them,’ Malfort declared. ‘Some chambers are occupied, others, particularly with the coming troubles, lie empty. I was given money and ordered to place, in certain of these rooms, the finest warbows fashioned out of yew along with well-stocked quivers of arrows. When the revolt began and the Earthworms fortified the tower of St Mary le Bow, I was ordered to leave and go to the taproom of the Lamb of God …’

  Cranston whistled under his brea
th. ‘Is nothing sacred?’ he murmured.

  Athelstan held a hand up. Sir John’s favourite hostelry commanded the sweep of Cheapside.

  ‘St Mary’s,’ Malfort continued, ‘owns tenements there, in the gallery above the taproom. But I was ordered to wait for a stranger. He would show me a tile, glazed white with the word “Actaeon” emblazoned on it. I was to provide him with a list of the tenements. The doors to such rooms would be left open; inside each I was to hide a warbow and quiver of arrows.’ Malfort rubbed dried, cracked lips. Cranston made him take a generous gulp from the wineskin. ‘I was also to warn the ward bailiffs of Cheapside not to interfere with any man at night carrying a small, white tile emblazoned with the word, “Actaeon”.’

  ‘Of course you would,’ Athelstan agreed. ‘You are the Herald of Hell, aren’t you?’

  Malfort nodded. ‘I, with an escort of Earthworms, would meet the bailiffs on their nightly tours and give them instructions on what to do. The same applied to this.’

  Troubled, Athelstan rose to his feet. He gestured at Cranston to join him in the murky entrance to the torture chamber.

  ‘Actaeon,’ he whispered. ‘The hunter from Greek mythology, an archer, a master bowman. Something jogs my memory, Sir John, but I can’t place it.’

  Cranston stood deep in thought, staring down at the brackish pools of water coagulating on the paving stones.

  ‘Sir John?’

  ‘Tyler,’ the coroner whispered. ‘We have reports, Brother, of a leading captain of the Upright Men, Kentish in origin, called Wat Tyler, a former soldier, a true agitator …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The records are being searched. Tax lists, muster rolls, court proceedings, Commissions of Array, all the sheriff returns every quarter to the Exchequer. However, no trace can be found of a Wat Tyler. He mysteriously appeared about six months ago, very active amongst the Upright Men in Kent …’

  ‘But no one knows who he is?’

  ‘Very much so, Brother. But I have my suspicions.’ Cranston spun on his heels and shouted at Flaxwith, ‘Get him!’ The coroner pointed to Malfort crouched crying on the ground. ‘Get him dressed. He is going to take us to all the properties owned by St Mary Le Bow which stand along Cheapside.’

  A short while later Cranston and Athelstan left the dungeons. Two of Flaxwith’s bailiffs pushing the bent, bedraggled Malfort out across the great bailey. The bell clerk flinched at the bright sunlight, raising his bound wrists to protect his eyes. Athelstan was aware of shouts and cries, the neigh of horses from nearby stables, the pungent smell of dung, urine and sweat. Men-at-arms milled around. Cranston was shouting at a retainer to fetch his court clerk. Athelstan stared around; his feeling of unease had sharpened. Malfort’s confession had stirred a memory of something he had glimpsed here at the Guildhall. The friar glanced up at the whirring sound like the fast beating wings of a hawk. The sound was repeated. Athelstan spun around. Malfort was choking, screaming. One shaft had struck him high in the shoulder; the second was embedded deep in the bell clerk’s chest. Malfort’s face was twisted in shock, blood already seeping between his gaping lips. A third shaft caught the clerk in the throat, flinging him back on to the cobbles. The brief, abrupt silence of the courtyard erupted into shouts and yells. Men fled for the protection of doorways and walls, as far as possible from that blood-soaked prisoner thrashing in his death throes on the cobbles. Cranston pulled at Athelstan’s sleeve.

  ‘Brother, come away!’

  Athelstan tried to shake off the coroner’s grip as he stared up at the Guildhall. He glimpsed a half-open casement window and remembered what he had seen.

  ‘The chapel, Sir John. Quickly!’

  The friar, followed by a bemused coroner, hastened across the bailey, pushing aside retainers, men-at-arms and servants, now milling frenetically about. Cranston bellowed at them all to stand aside as he followed the friar up the staircase along the narrow gallery leading to the chapel. Athelstan tentatively pushed open the door. Cranston drew his sword and ordered the two archers he had summoned to string their bows. The friar cautiously entered. The chapel was empty; the door-window in the far wall hung open. No sign of the tiler and his sharp-eyed, stave-holding apprentice. The floor tiles had been fitted. Athelstan crossed to the window and picked up the small white square emblazoned with a crudely scrawled ‘Actaeon’. Athelstan sat down on a wall bench. Cranston dismissed the archers and joined him.

  ‘I saw him,’ Athelstan whispered, ‘and his so-called apprentice. In truth, our bowman and his protector, Wat Tyler. They were here. They must have been alerted by your arrest of Malfort and hastened here, just two more master craftsmen hired by the Guildhall.’

  Cranston rose and made to go out.

  ‘Forget it, Sir John, they will be long gone.’

  ‘And that,’ Cranston crossed, closed the door and returned, ‘truly disturbs me.’

  ‘Sir John?’

  Cranston made himself comfortable and took a generous slurp from the miraculous wineskin, then offered it to Athelstan, who drank a mouthful of the rich Bordeaux. ‘Little friar, to copy you. Item. We have Malfort the Herald of Hell in more ways than one. He not only suborned ward bailiffs, he was also the herald of chaos. He was to give the signal for certain church towers in the city to be seized and fortified once the revolt had begun. We now know the reasons why.’ Cranston hastened on. ‘Item. Malfort had other secret instructions. As bell clerk he had access to certain properties; I will get a list of these and search them. In these tenements Malfort was ordered to hide a warbow and quivers of yard shafts; we have just witnessed how skilfully they can be used! Item, my dear friar: we know from Grindcobbe that one of the principal captains of the Upright Men plots the sudden murder of our young king and we suspect, with good reason, that this particular captain is an accomplice of Gaunt. The revolt will occur, the church towers be seized and so on. Our king will shelter in the Tower but eventually he will leave, either to meet the rebels, be it with their envoys at Westminster, or to process through the city with banners unfurled.’

  ‘Victory or defeat?’ Athelstan murmured. ‘The young king, if he is still alive, must leave the Tower, and the broadest, swiftest route through the city is along Cheapside.’

  ‘Where,’ Cranston declared, ‘one soul amongst many lurks. Imagine our bowman, Brother, standing at a casement window, bow notched, waiting for the King, one shaft, two, perhaps, then the warbow is dropped and the assassin flees, just another panic-struck man amongst many others.’

  Athelstan rubbed his face. ‘I cannot believe this is true. Gaunt is leaving for Scotland, his son Henry of Lancaster with him. The revolt will engulf the city and Gaunt’s creature, who calls himself Wat Tyler, will do all within his power to kill our king, Gaunt’s own blood?’

  ‘Brother, Edward II was deposed and killed by his wife Isabella, betrayed by his own half-brother Edmund Earl of Kent, father of our present king’s mother. The power of the Crown is price enough for someone’s soul, and Gaunt is prepared to pay it. Tyler, along with Actaeon, is proof enough – they were here. Accordingly, Tyler must have some special pass which allows him entry not only to the Guildhall but, God save us, to Westminster or even to the Tower, and that is something to truly fear.’ Cranston patted his jerkin. ‘I must be busy.’

  ‘Sir John, I want to stay here.’

  ‘Of course, little friar of deep cunning! There is a bedchamber above my judgement room: it is stark enough for an anchorite but it does have a cotbed, table, writing stool and a crucifix …’

  ‘Luxury indeed whilst I can celebrate mass here in the Guildhall chapel.’

  ‘So you intend to stay for more than a day?’

  ‘Oh yes, my Lord Coroner, for more than a day.’

  PART FIVE

  ‘Omnium Finis: the end of all things.’

  Athelstan made his home in the little chamber beneath the Guildhall loft. The only things he asked for were clean sheets and a prie-dieu to be placed beneath the stark black crucifix
nailed to the lime-washed wall. He sent Tiptoft, Cranston’s messenger, to St Erconwald’s to deliver certain messages and collect other items he needed. Athelstan celebrated his morning mass in the small, timber-beamed chapel and broke his fast in the refectory used by the Guildhall servants. Despite his absorption in drafting and redrafting all he had learnt about the deaths of Whitfield, Joycelina and Lebarge, Athelstan sensed how frightened people were becoming, especially the Crown officials, men whom the rebels had publicly marked down for judgement. Already news was seeping in that the clerks, scriveners and other officials at the centre of royal government at Westminster were beginning to flee. Officials of the Exchequer, Chancery and the different courts sitting in the great hall, be it King’s Bench or the Court of Common Pleas, were sending in their excuses and refusing to attend. At the same time the Guildhall was being turned into a fortress; heavy shutters were fastened over windows; doors fortified against a siege; the well checked and cleaned; the barbican or weapon store placed under the command of city serjeants; the narrow postern doors closely guarded.

  Cranston, however, refused to be cowed. Accompanied by troops from the Tower, the coroner swept the city streets, moving from church to church. Some of these, already alerted by the summary arrest of Malfort, were found deserted of both men and arms. At others Cranston found the same as they had at St Mary Le Bow. In many cases the priests had no knowledge of what was happening in their bell towers, though, as Cranston wryly observed, he had never come across so many church towers in the process of being repaired or refurbished. The plot to seize and fortify certain steeples became public knowledge. Many of the Upright Men fled, taking their weapons with them. A few were caught and faced summary justice. Thibault was very pleased and sent a letter of congratulation to both Athelstan and Cranston along with a pipe of the very best wine from Bordeaux, freshly slaughtered meat and other delicacies for the Guildhall kitchen. Cranston kept Athelstan informed, though he could not draw the friar into any meaningful discussion. Athelstan would beg for the coroner to be patient and return to the drafting and redrafting of his memoranda under each of their headings. Secretly, Athelstan believed he had trapped the assassin, though how he was to seal that trap was a different matter.