by Paul Doherty
The scrivener stretched over and picked up a greasy roll of parchment. He loved studying the coroner’s moods.
‘Well, Sir John, you are going to enjoy this next one.’
‘Tell me,’ Cranston growled.
‘Well, Rahere the roaster owns a cookshop in an alleyway off Seething Lane. Next door is his rival, Bernard the baker. There’s little love lost between them.’
‘Yes?’ Cranston snapped.
‘Rahere had new latrines dug.’
‘Well?’
‘Bernard maintains that, out of spite and malice, Rahere had them dug so that all the refuse from them drained into the cellar of his bakery.’
‘Oh, fairy’s futtocks!’ Cranston breathed. ‘Always remind me, Osbert, never to eat in either place.’ He smacked his lips and thought of the gold-crusted quail pie that the innkeeper’s wife at the Holy Lamb of God was preparing for him. ‘Must I hear the case now?’
The scrivener mournfully shook his head. ‘I fear so, unless there’s other pressing business.’
Cranston leaned his elbows on the table and rested his fat face in his podgy hands.
‘Ah well!’
He was about to roar at the bailiffs to bring the next litigants in when there was a thunderous knocking on the chamber door. Edward Shawditch, under-sheriff to the city, swept into the room, his lean, pockmarked face red with fury. Cranston noticed that Shawditch hadn’t shaved; his chin was marked by sharp hairs. His small green eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep and his lips twisted so sharply Cranston wondered if he was sucking on vinegar. The under-sheriff removed a gauntlet and combed back his sweat-soaked red hair.
‘A word, Sir John.’
You mean a thousand, Cranston thought bitterly. ‘What is it, Shawditch?’ He respected the under-sheriff as a man of probity, but the fellow was so officious and so churlish in his manner that he put Cranston’s teeth on edge.
Two matters, Sir John.’
‘Let’s take one at a time,’ Cranston barked.
‘Well, there’s been a burglary, another one!’
Cranston’s heart sank.
‘The sixth,’ Shawditch declared flatly.
‘Whose house this time?’
‘Selpot’s,’ Shawditch replied.
‘Oh, God, no!’ Cranston breathed. Selpot was an alderman, a high-ranking member of the Tanners’ Guild. ‘Not his house in Bread Street?’
‘You are correct.’
‘And the same pattern as before?’
‘Yes, exactly the same. Selpot is absent with his wife and children visiting friends in Surrey, or so his steward says. He probably went to cheat a farmer out of a pile of skins. Anyway, Selpot left his house in charge of his steward.’ Shawditch shrugged. ‘You’d best come and see for yourself.’
Cranston pushed his chair back, donned his thick beaver hat and clasped his sword belt around his ponderous belly. He grabbed his heavy military cloak and followed Shawditch out of the chamber. At the door he turned and smiled gleefully at Osbert.
‘The day’s business is adjourned,’ he said. ‘Either that or you can move it to another court.’
The coroner and the under-sheriff went out into the freezing morning air and up Cheapside. The muck and filth coating the cobbles was now frozen hard. The houses on either side of the thoroughfare were half-hidden by a rolling mist which deadened the din and clamour. Everyone was garbed from head to toe, the rich in woollen robes and cloaks, the poor in a motley collection of rags, as protection against the freezing mist.
An old beggar woman, crouched in the corner of an alleyway, had frozen in death in that posture. Now her corpse was being awkwardly lifted on to a cart, pulled by oxen whose heavy breath rose like steam. Behind the cart a group of children, impervious to the tragedy, used sheep bones to skate over the hard-frozen sewers and cesspools. A group of young men, dressed in a strange garb fashioned out of pieces of rags sewn together, sang a carol about Christ being born again in Bethlehem. Further down Cheapside, a bagpiper blew shrilly before the stocks where the petty criminals would stand for a day, hands and heads locked, to receive abuse and thrown refuse as well as suffer the frozen chill of a hard winter’s day. A Franciscan, a leather bucket of warm water in one hand, a soft rag in the other, gently wiped the faces of this day’s prisoners and offered them sips from a large bowl of heated posset. One of the prisoners was crying with the cold. Sir John stopped. He looked at the chapped faces, noticing the blue, high cheeks of one pinch-featured pickpocket and the tears rolling down the face of his rat-faced companion. He started to move on.
‘Cranston, for the love of Christ!’ the pickpocket shouted. ‘Oh, please!’
Cranston stopped and looked at the supervising beadle. Shawditch, impatient, walked back.
‘What’s the matter, Sir John?’
Cranston beckoned the beadle forward. ‘How long have they been here?’
‘Four hours, Sir John.’
‘Release them!’
A chorus of praise broke out along the stocks, benedictions being called down on Sir John and his progeny to the forty-fifth generation.
‘You can’t do that,’ the beadle spluttered.
‘Can’t I?’ Cranston winked at the under-sheriff who, despite his flinty exterior, was a compassionate man. ‘Do you hear that, Master Shawditch. The word "can’t" is used against the city coroner and his under-sheriff.’
Shawditch poked the beadle in the chest, dug into his purse and pushed a coin into the man’s hand.
‘You’ll not only free them, my fat friend,’ he rasped, ‘but, for the love of Christ, you’ll buy them something hot to eat.’ He nodded his head towards the carol singers. ‘Soon it will be Advent, Yuletide, the birth of Christ. For his sake, show some mercy!’
The beadle took his heavy bunch of keys and began to free the prisoners, who rubbed their fingers and faces. The smiling Franciscan waddled up.
‘May Christ bless you, Master Shawditch.’
‘Aye,’ the under-sheriff mumbled. ‘May Christ bless me. Now, Father, you make sure that the beadle spends my money well. Come along, Sir John.’
The under-sheriff walked on, Cranston hurrying behind him.
‘They say you are a bastard,’ Cranston murmured. Though a fair bastard.’
‘Aye, Sir John, and I have heard the same about you.’ Shawditch looked over his shoulder, back at the stocks. ‘I thought as much.’
‘What?’
‘That bloody pickpocket has just filched my coin from the beadle!’
Cranston grinned and held a gloved hand up against an ear which was beginning to ache in the stinging cold.
‘Too bloody cold for anything,’ he murmured as they turned into Bread Street.
‘Not for the burglars,’ Shawditch replied.
He stopped before a tall timber-framed house, well maintained and newly painted. Cranston stared appreciatively at the gaudily painted heraldic shields above the door.
‘Selpot must have sold a lot of skins,’ he commented.
‘Aye,’ Shawditch replied. ‘Including those of many of his customers.’
They knocked on the door. An anxious-faced steward ushered them into a small comfortable parlour and pushed stools in front of the roaring fire.
‘You want some wine?’ He looked at Shawditch.
This is the city coroner, Sir John Cranston,’ the under-sheriff told him. ‘And you, I forget your name?’
‘Latchkey, the steward!’
‘Ah, yes, Master Latchkey.’
‘We’ll have some wine,’ Cranston trumpeted. ‘Thick, red claret.’
He looked around the small room, admiring the gleaming wainscoting, the rich wall-hangings and a small painted triptych above the fireplace. Bronze hearth tools stood in the inglenook and thick woollen rugs covered the stone floor.
‘I am sure Master Selpot has some good burgundy,’ he continued, threateningly.
Latchkey hurried across to a cupboard standing in the window embrasure and brough
t back two brimming cups.
‘Well, tell us what happened.’ Cranston drained the wine in one gulp and held his hand out for a refill. ‘Come on, man, bring the jug over! You don’t happen to have a spare chicken leg?’
The fellow shook his head dolefully, then refilled Sir John’s cup before telling his sorry tale – his master was absent from the city and, on the previous night, some felon had entered the house and stolen cloths, precious cups and trinkets from the upper storeys.
‘And where were you and the servants?’ Cranston asked.
‘Oh, on the lower floor, Sir John.’ The man gnawed at his lip. ‘You see, the servants’ quarters are here, no one sleeps in the garret. Master Selpot is insistent on that. I have a small chamber at the back of the house, the scullions, cooks and spit boys sleep in the kitchen or hall.’
‘And you heard nothing?’
‘No, Sir John. Come, let me show you.’
Latchkey promptly led them on a tour of the sumptuous house, demonstrating how the windows were secured by shutters that were padlocked from the inside.
‘And you are sure no window was left open?’
‘Certain, Sir John.’
‘And the doors below were locked?’
‘Yes, Sir John. We also have dogs but they heard nothing.’
‘And there’s no secret entrance?’
‘None whatsoever, Sir John.’
‘And the roof?’
Latchkey shrugged and led them up into the cold garret, which served as a storeroom. Cranston gazed up but he could see no chink in the roof.
‘How much has gone?’ he asked as they went back downstairs.
‘Five silver cups, two of them jewelled. Six knives, two of them gold, three silver, one copper. A statuette of the Virgin Mary carved in marble. Two soup spoons, also of gold. Five silver plates, one jewel-rimmed.’
Shawditch groaned at the long list.
Downstairs Cranston donned his beaver hat and cloak.
‘Could the servants have done it?’ he asked.
Latchkey’s lugubrious face became even more sombre.
‘Sir John, it was I who discovered the thefts. I immediately searched everyone. Nothing was found.’
Cranston raised his eyes heavenwards, thanked the steward and, followed by an equally mystified under-sheriff, walked back into the freezing street.
‘How many did you say,’ Cranston asked. ‘Six since Michaelmas?’
Shawditch glumly nodded.
‘And where’s Trumpington?’
Shawditch pointed along the street. ‘Where he always is at this hour, in the Merry Pig.’
Stepping gingerly round the piles of refuse, they made their way down the street: they turned up an alleyway where a gaudy yellow sign, depicting a red pig playing the bagpipes, creaked and groaned on its iron chains. Inside the taproom they found Trumpington, the ward beadle, stuffing his face with a fish pie, not stopping to clear his mouth before draining a blackjack of frothy ale. He hardly stirred when Cranston and Shawditch announced themselves; he just gave a loud belch and began busily to clean his teeth with his thumbnail. Cranston tried to hide his dislike of the man. He secretly considered Trumpington a pig, with his squat body, red, obese face, quivering jowls, hairy nostrils and quick darting eyes under a low forehead, always fringed with dirty yellow hair.
‘There’s been a robbery!’ Trumpington announced.
‘Yes, the sixth in this ward!’ Cranston snapped.
Trumpington cleaned his mouth with his tongue and Sir John, for the first time in weeks, refused an offer of a drink or a morsel to eat.
‘It’s not my fault!’ Trumpington brayed. ‘I walk the streets every night. Well, when it’s my tour of duty. I see nothing amiss and the robberies are as much a mystery to me as they are to you, my fine fellows.’
Cranston smiled sweetly and, placing his hands over Trumpington’s, pressed firmly until he saw the man wince.
‘You never see anything amiss?’
‘Nothing,’ the fellow wheezed, his face turning slightly purple at the pressure on his hand.
‘Well.’ Cranston pushed back his stool and lifted his hand. ‘Keep your eyes open.’ He tugged at Shawditch’s sleeve and they both left the taproom.
‘A veritable mystery,’ Shawditch commented. He glanced warily at Cranston. ‘You know there will be the devil to pay over this.’
Cranston waited until a group of apprentices, noisily kicking an inflated pig’s bladder down the street, rushed by whooping and yelling. Then he thought aloud. ‘Six houses. All in this ward. All belonging to powerful merchants but, with their owners away, occupied only by servants. No sign of forced entry, either by door or through a window. Robbery from within?’ He shook his head. ‘It is impossible to accept collusion between footpads and the servants of six different households.’ He blew out his cheeks, stamping his feet against the cold. ‘First there will be murmurs of protest from the city council. Then these will grow to roars of disapproval and someone’s head will roll. Eh, Shawditch?’
‘Aye, Sir John, and it could be mine. Or yours,’ he added flatly. ‘When there’s a breakdown in law and order, God knows why, they always think that punishing some city official will make matters better.’
Cranston clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You have met Brother Athelstan?’
‘Your clerk? The parish priest of St Erconwald’s in Southwark?’ Shawditch nodded. ‘Of course. He is most memorable, Sir John, being as different from you as chalk from cheese.’
Shawditch smiled as he recalled the slim, olive-skinned Dominican monk, with his jet-black hair and the smiling eyes that belied a sharp intelligence and ready wit. At first Shawditch had considered Athelstan to be secretive, but he had realised that the Dominican was only shy and rather in awe of the mountainous Sir John with his voracious appetite and constant yearning for refreshment.
‘What are you smiling at?’ Cranston asked crossly.
‘Oh nothing, Sir John, I just . . .’ Shawditch’s words trailed away.
‘Anyway,’ Cranston boomed, turning to walk down the street, ‘Athelstan is always saying if there’s a problem there must be a solution, it’s just a matter of observation, speculation and deduction.’
Cranston hopped aside, with an agility even Thomas the toad would have admired, as an upper window opened and a night jar of slops was thrown into the street. Shawditch was not so lucky and his cloak was slightly spattered. He stopped to shake his fist up at the window, then moved as quickly as Cranston as it opened again and another nightjar appeared.
‘There should be a law against that,’ he grumbled. ‘But you were saying, Sir John?’
‘Well.’ The coroner tugged his beaver hat firmly over his large head. ‘Question, how does the footpad get into the houses? Secondly, how does he know they are empty?’
‘As to the second question, I don’t know. And the first? Well, it’s a mystery.’
‘Have you checked the roofs?’ Sir John asked.
‘Yes, Trumpington summoned a tiler, the fellow inspected the roofs and found nothing amiss.’
They reached the corner of Bread Street. Cranston was about to go when Shawditch plucked at his sleeve.
‘I said I had two problems for you, Sir John. The second is more serious.’
Cranston sighed. ‘Well, not here.’
He led the under-sheriff up Cheapside and into the welcoming warmth of the Holy Lamb of God. He roared at the landlord’s wife for his capon pie and bowls of claret for himself and his friend. Once he had taken his first bite, he nodded at the under-sheriff.
‘Right, tell me.’
‘You know the king’s ships have been at sea against the French?’
‘Aye, who doesn’t?’ Cranston munched at his pie.
John of Gaunt, pestered into action by parliament, had at last assembled a flotilla of fifteen armed ships to carry out reprisals against French privateers in the Channel as well as surprise attacks on towns and villages along the Normandy coast.
‘Well,’ Shawditch continued, ‘some of the flotilla are berthed in the Thames opposite Queen’s hithe, among them the cog God’s Bright Light.’ Shawditch sipped at his wine. ‘The ship was commanded by William Roffel. It returned to port two days ago, after capturing and sinking a number of French vessels. Roffel, however, on the return voyage, caught a sudden sickness and died. His corpse was taken ashore. The crew were paid their wages and given seven days’ shore leave. Now, last night, the only watch left on the ship was the first mate and two other sailors. One in the bows and one at the stern.’ Shawditch gnawed at his lip. ‘A lantern was left on the mast and the ship was in earshot of others riding at anchor.’
‘What happened?’ Cranston interrupted him impatiently.
‘Just before dawn a sailor came back with his doxy. They climbed on board and found the ship deserted – no first mate, no watch.’
‘So?’
‘Well, no one had seen anyone leave or approach the ship, although it’s true there was a thick river mist that night. But that’s only half the mystery, Sir John. You see, an hour before the sailor returned, in accordance with the admiral’s instructions, the watch on board the neighbouring ship, the Holy Trinity, asked if all was well? A voice from the God’s Bright Light replied, using the established password.’
‘Which was?’
‘The glory of St George.’
Cranston sat back. ‘So, what you are saying is that nothing apparently untoward happened on board this ship? The watch even responded with the correct password to the neighbouring vessel?’
‘Aye, and then passed it on to another ship, the Saint Margaret,’ Shawditch answered.
‘And yet,’ Cranston continued, ‘a short while later the ship is found deserted. No trace whatsoever of the first mate or the rest of his watch, two able-bodied sailors?’
‘Exactly, Sir John.’
‘Could they have deserted?’
Shawditch pulled a face.
‘And there was no sign of violence?’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘Anything stolen?’
Shawditch shook his head.
