Murder Most Holy

by Paul Doherty

  ‘Because Brother Roger saw something in that church,’ Athelstan answered. ‘Hence the phrase: “There should have been twelve”. I wonder what it meant?’

  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 bo
ots, 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 welco
med 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?’