The Merchant of Death

by Paul Doherty

  ‘Thomasina,’ she called, going to the kitchen door. ‘Thomasina, be careful!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ her old nurse replied from the garden. ‘It will take more than a fall of snow to frighten me.’

  Kathryn heard a crash as more snow collapsed, followed by a juicy curse from Thomasina.

  ‘Don’t tempt God, Thomasina!’ Kathryn warned and stared out at the wild, white wilderness of what was once her garden: now all the herb banks and flowerbeds, even the stew pond, were blanketed by icy snow. The little benches were almost hidden whilst the two flowered arbours had been turned into white-coated tabernacles.

  ‘Thomasina, what are you doing?’ Kathryn’s voice rose, alarmed as a great pile of snow fell off the eaves.

  ‘The water butt’s frozen solid,’ Thomasina shouted back.

  Kathryn closed her eyes and prayed for patience. Thomasina was taking out her pent-up fury, hammering the ice until it broke and sloshed in the huge, iron-hooped water cask. Kathryn walked back into the kitchen. The floor rushes were turning black and soggy so she hitched up her woollen gown and began to help her maid Agnes collect them, then carry them out into the garden.

  ‘Why don’t I just throw them into the street?’ Agnes’s bright eyes stared at Kathryn. ‘Everyone else does.’

  Kathryn finished tying a bundle of rushes together. She shook her head. ‘No, Agnes, the streets are clogged and the rushes make good compost for the garden. The snow will soak and rot them.’ She smiled. ‘And in the spring the flowers and herbs will be that little bit sweeter and stronger.’

  Thomasina strode into the kitchen, her fat, friendly face red and sweaty after her exertions.

  ‘Bloody snow!’ she muttered. ‘Bloody water!’ She looked at the rushes being piled high. ‘And where’s that bloody Irishman? He should be here helping us clean the house. He lives here, doesn’t he?’

  Kathryn picked up the bundle of rushes and grinned. ‘Colum Murtagh is our guest and our friend, Thomasina,’ she replied. ‘And don’t pretend you’re angry. You are as worried as I am.’

  Thomasina crouched down and began to help Agnes with another pile of rushes.

  ‘He’s a fool,’ Thomasina groused. ‘He should have been back in Kingsmead yesterday. The snow is still falling.’ She looked up, her face now worried. ‘You’ve heard the rumours from Rawnose about the packs of wild dogs roaming the Weald of Kent?’

  ‘Those idle buggers, the King’s verderers!’ Thomasina said.

  ‘Don’t swear, Thomasina,’ Agnes cried reprovingly, echoing her mistress’s usual stricture at Thomasina’s profanity.

  ‘Those idle buggers, the King’s verderers,’ Thomasina repeated meaningfully, ‘should have done their job properly in the autumn and hunted the poor things down. Now they roam as wild as wolves whilst Master Murtagh is out there all by himself.’

  ‘No, Henry Frenland’s with him,’ Kathryn intervened, reassuring herself as well as everybody else.

  Thomasina stood up and wiped her hands on her apron. ‘I have been married three times,’ she declared, beginning her famous and well-worn speech. ‘And I have yet to meet a man with true courage. Master Murtagh’s retainers out at Kingsmead are, like the King’s verderers, idle buggers!’

  Thomasina could have bitten out her tongue. Kathryn’s usual serene look had disappeared. The old nurse studied her mistress carefully. Kathryn looked untidy with no wimple or veil to cover her black hair, which was now pulled tightly back behind her head; dark circles ringed her eyes and her usual creamy complexion was pallid and sallow.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Thomasina said. ‘But yes, Mistress, I am worried for Colum. Why did he go out there?’

  Kathryn picked up the sheaves of rushes and took them out to the garden. When she returned, Thomasina whispered to Agnes to continue with the task and went and took her mistress’s hand. She stared into Kathryn’s grey-green eyes, noting the furrows on her brow and round her mouth.

  ‘When you were small,’ Thomasina whispered, ‘I told you never to frown. Beautiful people always smile.’

  Kathryn forced a grin. ‘I am worried, Thomasina. Colum had to go. The provender at the stables had run dangerously low whilst the merchants of Canterbury are charging too high a price.’

  ‘Another band of thieving buggers!’ Thomasina grumbled. She squeezed Kathryn’s hand. ‘But you know the Irishman! He’s been in greater danger and thrives on it.’ She smiled. ‘Most ragged-arsed Irishmen do! He’ll be back here before noon cursing and swearing, singing some song or, worse, quoting Chaucer to show he isn’t a bog Irishman. Now come on, this place is freezing.’

  Under Thomasina’s coaxing, Kathryn threw herself into a frenzy of activity. The rushes were collected, bound and placed outside, the floor was swept and scrubbed. A blazing fire soon roared in the hearth; the charcoal braziers, standing in every corner, winked and crackled whilst Thomasina placed burning coals in chafing dishes round the house, carefully capped to prevent fire. Soon the kitchen, the small solarium beyond and Kathryn’s writing chancery glowed with warmth, sweet-smelling as summer as Kathryn placed small bags of herbs on hooks above the fire. Little Wuf, the blond-haired foundling whom Kathryn had taken into her home, came roaring downstairs pretending to be a knight; he screamed at Agnes that she be the princess and Thomasina the dragon. He was soon sent packing back to his own room. Agnes began to bake oatmeal cakes and a hot stew so they could break their fast, as Thomasina declared, in a truly Christian way.

  Once they had eaten, Kathryn went up to her own chamber to change. She closed the bedroom door behind her and flopped down on the great four-poster bed, pulling the woollen coverlet around her. She propped herself up on her elbow and looked across at the hour candle. She wasn’t too sure of the time: the candle had gone out and the grey lowering skies seemed to have shortened the time between night and day whilst the heavy snowfalls had silenced the bells of the cathedral and city churches which marked the hours of the day. Was it noon, she wondered?

  ‘Oh, Irishman,’ she whispered. ‘Where are you?’

  She lay back on her pillow, closed her eyes and thought of the vast wildness of Kent: its great open fields and winding trackways. For a short while she dozed, tossing and turning, plagued by a wild nightmare of Colum freezing to death in his cart or being attacked and savaged by some rabid, red-eyed hound. She woke an hour later. From the kitchen she could hear the chatter of Agnes and Thomasina. She threw back the coverlet and went to the door, half opened it and listened. Still no sign or sound of Colum. She slipped along the gallery and opened the door to his chamber. Inside it was dark and cold with the window shuttered. Kathryn took a candle, lit it from a brazier and put it back on its iron spigot. She stared round the room. ‘A soldier’s chamber’ she always called it and, despite her offers, that’s the way Colum wanted it kept: woollen rugs on the floor, a simple cot bed and an iron-bound coffer, which Colum always kept locked, the keys slung round his neck. On the wall, next to leather saddlebags, hung Colum’s great war belt. Kathryn glimpsed this and her stomach lurched.

  ‘You should have taken that,’ she whispered.

  But then she remembered the crossbow Colum carried and tried to calm her anxieties. She walked across the room which smelt of horse and leather and stared down at the table beside Colum’s bed. She picked up the battered wooden statue of the Virgin and Child. Despite its age, the wear and tear of the years, the Virgin’s smile was still serene as she stared down at the babe in her arms. Feeling slightly guilty, Kathryn put this back and stared at the colourful Celtic cross hanging from a nail above the bed.

  ‘They are the only things my mother gave me,’ Colum had once told her, ‘Because they were the only things she had. They have been with me everywhere, Kathryn; in camp or in my chamber when I was the King’s marshal.’

  Kathryn leaned across, touched the crucifix and closed her eyes.

  ‘Come back safe,’ she prayed. ‘You stupid Irishman, just come back!’

  She walked to the foot
of the bed and crouched down beside the coffer. What did Colum keep in there? Kathryn wondered, then smiled as she remembered one of Thomasina’s many proverbs: ‘Curiosity killed the cat!’

  ‘Aye,’ Kathryn murmured. ‘And satisfaction made it fat!’

  She went back to blow the candle out and glimpsed the roll of parchment next to the leather-covered book on the shelf at the side of the door. Kathryn took the roll of vellum down, undid the red cord and read the cramped writing: Colum’s collection of stories of ancient Eire, about Cuculhain, Maeve and the fairy land of Tirnaog. She put it back next to the copy of Chaucer’s works which she had bought for Colum as a Midsummer present. Kathryn blew the candle out.

  ‘You’re becoming maudlin, Swinbrooke,’ she mocked herself. ‘The Irishman will come back. He’ll start teasing and I’ll wish he was away again.’

  Kathryn returned briskly to her own chamber where she washed and changed. She heard a rap on the door and quickly slipped on a pair of soft buskins, wondering who would brave the elements to call so early. She quietly prayed it was not some emergency. Then a man’s voice rang out.

  ‘Colum!’ She hurried out of the room to the top of the stairs only to recognise the mellow tones of Simon Luberon, the pompous but kindly clerk of the city council. She hastily ran down the stairs. Luberon was sitting in front of the fire, his cowl and hood thrown back, his fat fingers stretched out to the flames. He rose as Kathryn entered, his merry, fat face alive with pleasure. Luberon would never admit it, but he had a secret liking, even passion, for this serene, dark-haired physician.

  ‘Kathryn.’ He held his hands out, then self-consciously slipped them up the voluminous sleeves of his cloak. ‘I had better not touch you,’ he laughed, coming forward. ‘My hands are freezing.’

  Kathryn grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him lightly on each ice-covered cheek.

  ‘Simon, don’t you have any gloves?’

  The little clerk shifted from one foot to another.

  ‘I did,’ he stammered. ‘But I lost them.’

  Kathryn went across to the linen cupboard, built into the wall of the kitchen next to the hearth. She returned with a pair of dark blue gloves.

  ‘Simon, take these as a gift. Your hands are about the same size as mine.’

  Luberon’s face flushed with embarrassment but he quickly accepted, slipping them on, spreading his fingers in admiration.

  ‘Marvellous!’ he breathed. ‘So warm!’

  ‘A man should always be warm,’ Thomasina piped up. ‘In house and out of house, if you know what I mean, Master clerk?’

  Luberon looked quickly at her. The old nurse stared back in round-eyed innocence.

  ‘Come on, Simon, sit down!’ Kathryn waved him back to a chair near the inglenook. Agnes pushed another chair alongside. ‘Now,’ Kathryn said, ‘Thomasina will give you some posset. So, why are you here?’

  ‘Murder,’ Luberon replied nonchalantly, loosening the clasps of his cloak. He took this off and threw it over the back of the chair. ‘You’d think a freezing winter would cool the rage in men’s hearts but it’s not the case.’

  He paused as Thomasina brought him a pewter cup of wine mixed with herbs. She wrapped this in cloths, took a red-hot poker from the fire and placed it in the cup, not withdrawing it until the sizzling ceased.

  ‘There,’ Thomasina murmured, placing the wine carefully in the little clerk’s hands. ‘Drink that, Master Simon, and you’ll feel like dancing round the maypole.’

  Luberon sipped it carefully. Kathryn crossed her arms, clenching and unclenching her fingers.

  ‘What is it?’ she blurted out. ‘What murder, Simon?’

  Luberon sniffed appreciatively at the rosemary and thyme that floated on the top of his wine cup.

  ‘Do you know Richard Blunt?’

  ‘Yes, he lives in Reeking Alley behind St. Mildred’s Church.’ Kathryn recalled the old painter’s kindly, sun-burnt face, straggling grey hair, sharp blue eyes and, above all, his skill at bringing scenes to life on the grey walls of the parish church. ‘He’s not dead, surely?’

  Luberon shook his head. ‘No, he murdered his wife.’

  Kathryn went cold and stared into the fire. ‘He married last spring, a trader’s daughter, Alisoun.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Luberon confirmed. ‘People called it a May and December marriage. He was thirty years her elder.’

  Kathryn rubbed her face as Thomasina and Agnes edged closer to listen avidly to the conversation.

  ‘Alisoun was tall and slender as a willow, pretty-faced and blond,’ Kathryn recalled, not adding that Colum had once called her hot-eyed and slack-mouthed. She had known and liked Richard Blunt since childhood but she considered Alisoun spoilt and petulant. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, Richard came home late last night. He was, as you know, finishing a painting in St. Mildred’s Church.’ Luberon placed the cup on the hearthstone. ‘Now, in Blunt’s house, the solarium is not on the ground floor but on the one above. Richard and his son Peter, you know the lad? He’s a little simple. He often cleans the plaster before his father executes the painting.’

  ‘Go on!’ Thomasina interrupted sharply. ‘For God’s sake, what happened?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ Luberon snapped back. ‘Old Blunt came home to find two young men dallying with his wife: a scholar called Nicholas from the Halls of Cambridge and his friend, the clerk Absolon, employed by a corn merchant.’ Luberon blinked. ‘You know the sort, Mistress Kathryn; to them, every woman is suitable prey and they like nothing better than to place a pair of cuckold’s horns on a man’s head. Anyway, both young men were in a state of undress and so was Alisoun. At least, that’s how we found their corpses.’

  ‘All three of them?’ Kathryn exclaimed.

  ‘Aye, God knows what happened. But when Blunt opened the door, he’d already collected his bow and quiver of arrows.’ Luberon shrugged. ‘It was over in seconds. Nicholas took an arrow full in the throat. Alisoun the same. Absolon tried to open a window and jump out, but Richard’s third arrow took him in the back.’

  Kathryn forgot all about her own anxieties and put her face in her hands. She could imagine the scene; the comfortable solarium, the flickering flames of the fire, the wine cups and soft laughter. Blunt was a master bowman – and what had Colum once told her? Such an archer could loose at least six arrows in a minute and all of them would find their mark.

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Well, Absolon’s body fell into the street, almost at the feet of Widow Gumple. She called the watch who arrived to find the other two corpses and Richard sitting quietly in his chair staring into the fire. He made no attempt to deny the crime. Peter, who’d returned late from some errand, was standing beside him, just gazing vacuously around.’

  ‘And where are they now?’

  ‘Well, Peter’s still at the house but Richard’s in the cells at the guildhall. He’ll go before the King’s Justices and certainly hang.’ Luberon ticked the points off on his stubby fingers. ‘The murders were cold-blooded. We have the bodies and we have their killer.’

  ‘How is Richard?’ Kathryn asked.

  ‘Oh, he’s calm and serene. He has openly confessed and is quite resigned to whatever the law ordains.’

  Kathryn thought of Blunt’s only son by his first marriage: a tall, slack-jawed, gangling young man.

  ‘And they didn’t arrest Peter as an accomplice?’

  ‘Oh no. Widow Gumple distinctly remembers Peter coming along the street after Absolon’s body tumbled from the window.’

  Thomasina came in and took a stool by the fire. ‘If Widow Gumple is involved,’ she declared darkly, ‘then all of Canterbury will know by noon and all of Kent by tomorrow. She has a clacking tongue, old Gumple!’

  Kathryn stared at her nurse curiously. Widow Gumple was a leading member of the parish council, a spiteful chatterbox, pompous and haughty, rather ridiculous in her ornate headdresses and flouncy gowns. Kathryn often wondered whethe
r there was some secret source for Thomasina’s dislike, even hatred, for that foolish old gossip. She glanced at Luberon.

  ‘Simon, this is dreadful news. But what can I do?’

  ‘Ah.’ Luberon played with his new gloves. ‘The corpses are to be examined and you, Mistress Swinbrooke, are the city physician. I would also be grateful if you’d visit the house. Peter may need some assistance. Finally, Richard Blunt himself has asked to speak to you.’

  ‘Me!’ Kathryn exclaimed. ‘He has not been to see me for at least fourteen months!’

  ‘He still wishes to see you,’ Luberon said. He stared round. ‘However, that is not the real reason I’m here. Has Master Murtagh returned?’

  ‘No,’ Kathryn sighed. ‘And we are all beginning to worry about his whereabouts.’

  ‘In which case, Mistress, you must come by yourself. There’s been another death.’

  Kathryn groaned.

  ‘This one’s more official,’ Luberon explained. ‘You know the tavern, the Wicker Man, just past the castle near Worthingate?’

  Kathryn nodded.

  ‘Well, last night that spacious, comfortable place had all its rooms taken up by travellers trapped by the inclement weather. Amongst these was a royal tax collector, Sir Reginald Erpingham.’ Luberon sighed, picked up the cup, drained it and got to his feet. ‘To cut a long story short, Mistress, this morning Erpingham was found dead in bed.’

  ‘And the cause?’

  Luberon shrugged into his cloak. ‘Dead as a nail, the mean-hearted bastard.’ He smiled apologetically at Kathryn. ‘I am sorry, Mistress, but he was. Erpingham won’t be missed, but the hundreds of pounds sterling in royal taxes he was carrying will be.’

  ‘Stolen?’ Kathryn exclaimed.

  ‘Gone as if it had never existed. I’ve just come from there. You’d best see for yourself. Mistress, you have to come!’

  Kathryn could see she had no choice. Colum was royal coroner in the city and she had an indenture with the city council as his official physician, with a duty to investigate any mysterious death, particularly the likes of Erpingham.