Murder Most Holy

by Paul Doherty

  ‘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!’

  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.