The Assassin's Riddle

by Paul Doherty

  ‘He thinks you have worked here long enough. Our house in Oxford requires a Master of the Natural Sciences, a man with your logic and love of study . . .’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Athelstan retorted. ‘It’s the Regent, isn’t it? John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. He doesn’t like me. Ever since that business at Westminster when I investigated deaths amongst the knights of the shires! He knows that I am aware of his subtle schemes and clever plots.’

  ‘His Grace admires you immensely,’ Niall argued, putting his knife down. ‘But I can’t lie, Brother. He fears you. He fears that you know the truth but, above all, he fears the way you are loved and respected here in Southwark. Summer’s dying, autumn is coming and the harvest is due. Outside in the shires, the peasants meet and plot. Gaunt fears an uprising. Armies marching on London. He does not want some friar whipping up the mobs of Southwark!’

  ‘As if I would!’

  ‘I know that, you know, Father Prior knows, but John of Gaunt doesn’t.’ Niall got to his feet, brushing the crumbs from his robe. ‘Father Prior is minded to move you, and that business in the cemetery might prove to be the last straw.’

  Athelstan sighed and got to his feet. ‘Then tell Father Prior,’ he declared, ‘that I am a loyal son of the order. I will do what he says but if I am moved then, for the third time in my life, my heart will break. So plead for me, Niall.’

  They embraced, Niall opened the door and slipped out into the gathering dusk. After he had gone Athelstan sat, face in his hands, and cried quietly. Eventually he wiped his face and breathed in deeply.

  ‘I’m going to have a goblet of wine,’ he declared to Bonaventura but the cat, busily finishing off the remains of Niall’s bread and cheese, just swished his tail. Athelstan filled his goblet and sat: sleep would be impossible. He put the wine goblet down and pushed it away. He knew the dangers of that: too many priests on their own drinking and brooding, unleashing the demons in their souls. He picked up his writing bag, took out a scrap of parchment and placed his inkhorn on the table.

  He forced himself to concentrate on the day’s events. He drew a rough sketch of the door in Drayton’s room and tried to envisage how the old miser had been murdered and the money taken. Perhaps, he reasoned, if he found the Regent’s silver, John of Gaunt might be persuaded to speak to Father Prior. How, he wondered, had the man been killed in a locked and barred chamber? He recalled those iron bolts on the door and the two clerks Flinstead and Stablegate. Were they both guilty? Or just the one? If it was one . . . Athelstan closed his eyes and concentrated: it would be as difficult for one person to carry out such a crime as it would be for two. Athelstan stared at his own door.

  Pretend, he thought, pretend you are Drayton. People can only get into this room if you allow them! And if they leave? I have a crossbow bolt in my chest so how can I possibly have the strength to lock the door behind them? Why spend so much precious energy bolting the stable door when the horse has gone? He stretched over and stroked Bonaventure. ‘Which reminds me, I must pay a visit to our good friend Philomel.’ Athelstan went back to his reasoning. One or two killers? Did it matter? He smiled then clapped his hands, making Bonaventure jump.

  ‘Of course it does!’ he shouted. ‘There had to be two, that’s the only way it could be done!’

  And the house? How could they leave? Athelstan rubbed his face: the oldest trick in the book. They took poor Flaxwith to a locked window. It doesn’t mean that at the moment the bailiffs broke in every other window was locked and barred! Athelstan stretched across to the wine cup and sipped from it. He put his pen down and looked at the goblet. And Chapler’s death? And the murders of those other clerks of the Green Wax? Athelstan was sure that Alcest was somehow involved. Was he the young man with the clinking spurs? It would have been so easy for him to follow Peslep to that tavern. Athelstan chewed his lip. There was something about Peslep’s murder . . . something he had learnt. Something that had been said. What was it?

  Alcest, Athelstan concluded, Alcest could have put that poison in Ollerton’s cup. Alcest knew where Elflain was going. Alcest visited Drayton before he was killed. But Chapler? The night that young man was murdered, Alcest, according to witnesses, was tucked up in bed with a young whore. Or was he? Was Clarice telling the truth? And the Vicar of Hell? Why was he so determined to tell Sir John that the murders amongst the clerks of the Green Wax had nothing to do with him? Why was it so important to send as messenger a ruffian like William the Weasel? Finally, Lesures, the Master of the Rolls. He had been sick with fear. Was he guilty? What was he trying to hide?

  Athelstan picked up his pen again. Alcest and Clarice, he wrote, underlining their names. If he could disprove Alcest’s story, everything would fall into place. Athelstan stretched, yawned, then jumped at a knock on the door.

  ‘Go away, Watkin!’ he shouted. ‘I am saying Mass tomorrow and then I’m off to see Sir John.’

  The door opened. A white-faced Benedicta, followed by Alison, equally pale, came into the kitchen.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Athelstan exclaimed. ‘Come, sit down. You want some wine?’

  Both women shook their heads.

  ‘I was at home,’ Benedicta began, unhitching her cloak. ‘As you asked, Brother, I took Alison to my own house. She went upstairs to prepare for bed.’

  ‘Yes.’ Athelstan smiled. ‘I saw you flee before my confrontation with Watkin.’

  ‘I was sitting in my parlour,’ Benedicta continued. She picked up Athelstan’s wine cup and sipped from it. ‘I heard a sound outside, in the small alleyway which runs along the side of my house.’

  ‘What do you mean? What sound?’

  ‘I was working on a piece of embroidery but, I’ll be honest, my mind was busy with Watkin and his miraculous cross. At first I didn’t take any notice but then there was a clink as if someone wearing spurs was walking up and down. I looked out, it was dusk, the alleyway seemed empty. I called out: ‘Who’s there?’ but there was no reply. I closed the shutters and went back to my embroidery. A few minutes later I heard the clink of spurs again. I called up to Alison to ask if she was well. She replied she was.’ Benedicta took a deep breath. ‘I admit I was frightened so I . . .’ She looked down at the table. ‘Oh, Athelstan, have you had a visitor?’

  ‘Oh, just a messenger from across the city.’ Athelstan pulled the platter across. ‘But go on, tell me about this.’

  ‘I went upstairs and asked Alison if she’d heard anything.’

  ‘I had,’ Alison intervened. ‘I thought it was my imagination. I told Benedicta not to go out but she said that if I came with her . . .’

  ‘We went downstairs,’ Benedicta continue. She took a small scroll of parchment from the cuff of her sleeve and handed it to Athelstan.

  ‘“My last,”’ he read. ‘“The one behind it all; the first and the last will always be discovered at the centre of a maze.”’

  ‘What does it mean?’ Benedicta asked.

  ‘We are hunting a murderer,’ Athelstan replied. ‘Someone who kills and always leaves a riddle on the corpse of his victim. But for the first time,’ he smiled thinly as if echoing the words of the riddle, ‘one has been found before any crime has been committed.’ He paused. ‘No, that’s not true. There was no riddle found on Chapler’s corpse. Anyway,’ he continued, ‘we know that the other riddles spell out the first letter of the surname of each of the murdered clerks. However, this appears to be different. You’ll leave it with me?’

  Benedicta nodded.

  ‘And you are going back to your house?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I am,’ Benedicta agreed. ‘I have had a word with Watkin. He’s going to send Beadle Bladdersniff with two others to watch my door.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Athelstan replied. ‘Sir Watkin, knight of the basting spoon.’ He smiled at both women. ‘Are you sure you won’t stay any longer?’

  They both made their excuses and left.

  Athelstan returned to his study of the scrawled riddle.

  ‘The last,
’ he murmured. ‘What’s discovered at the centre of a maze? Of course, a rood: a crucifix above a rose bower?’ He chewed on his lip. ‘But what does that mean? Another word for maze is labyrinth: R is its central letter.’ Athelstan paused. R the first and the last: he was certain the murderer was exposing his motive: Revenge!

  CHAPTER 10

  Sir John Cranston sat in the small chancery at the top of his house in Cheapside. He stared through the unshuttered window watching for the first rays of the rising sun. As always, Sir John had woken early. The Lady Maude lay beside him lost in her dreams whilst, in the adjoining chamber, the two poppets, dressed in their linen nightgowns, sprawled on their cot beds. They looked so much alike: thin blond hair, apple-red cheeks, the firm chin and mouth of their father.

  ‘Lovely lads!’ Sir John had breathed and smiled as he noticed how they even snored in unison. He had tiptoed further down the gallery, quietly praying under his breath that the poppets would not awake. If they did, and knew Sir John was about, they’d rouse the entire house with their shouts. This was going to be a busy day for Sir John; he had gone down to the kitchen where he had washed, shaved and quickly dressed in the fresh apparel the Lady Maude had laid out the night before. A meat pie in the buttery kept savoury in a linen cloth, and a small jug of watered ale, served as breakfast. Sir John had then knelt and, closing his eyes, said his morning prayers before going up to his chancery.

  He now sat with the Coroners’ Roll in front of him though his gaze strayed to the thick manuscript lying to his right: Cranston’s famous treatise, ‘On the Governance of London’. Sir John leaned back on the cushioned chair. He had reached a new chapter, ‘On the keeping of the streets, alleyways and runnels free of all filth’. Cranston had recommended the building of public latrines, strict laws against filling the streets with refuse and the contents of chamber pots. The open sewers would be moved beyond the city limits whilst the dung-collectors would be organised into a guild.

  Sir John sighed and returned to more mundane matters, the first entry on the Coroners’ Roll:

  On Thursday, the morrow of the feast of St Joachim and St Anne, Richard Crinkler sat on a latrine high in his tenement in a house owned by Owen Brilchard on the corner of Bore Street. The said latrine did break and the aforementioned Richard fell to his death which was not his proper death.

  Sir John scratched his cheek. Why did his clerk use such convoluted phrases? And how could a man fall to his death down a latrine? Cranston closed his eyes and recalled the old, rotting mansions in Bore Street.

  ‘Ah yes,’ he murmured.

  He could visualise what had happened to poor old Richard Crinkler. Those great houses had small cupboards which served as stool rooms built into a shaft which ran the whole length of the house. Grinkler had either been half asleep or drunk. The wooden latrine board had broken and so Crinkler fell to his death.

  ‘Heaven be praised!’ Cranston whispered. ‘We all have to die but sometimes the Good Lord does call us in rather strange ways.’

  He started as he heard the bell of St Mary Le Bow begin to toll, the sign that the night curfew was over. He put his quill back in its box and blew out the candle. Grabbing his war belt and cloak he hurried down into Cheapside. The broad thoroughfare was still deserted. Any beggars, nightwalkers or whores who had been lurking in the mouths of alleyways soon disappeared once they heard the news that the lord coroner was on the streets. Cranston walked down towards St Mary’s. The beacon was still alight in the steeple. Cranston studied the cavernous doorway to the church and smiled as he glimpsed Henry Flaxwith with the ever-vigilant Samson.

  ‘Good morning, Sir John,’ the bailiff called, grasping the rope holding Samson more tightly.

  ‘Is everything ready?’ Cranston asked and looked in surprise as a small side door opened and Athelstan came out. ‘Lord, Brother, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Praying, Sir John, I’ve been praying!’

  Athelstan had washed and shaved and wore a new robe but his eyes looked as if he had slept badly or not at all.

  ‘Is everything well?’

  ‘Everything, Sir John. I said a very early Mass not long after midnight, when the tumult in the cemetery had died down. I’m too angry with my parishioners to meet them.’ Athelstan breathed in. ‘They can spend a day without their priest.’

  ‘Don’t judge them too harshly.’ Cranston patted Athelstan on the shoulder. ‘God knows why they are doing it.’

  ‘Did you get my message?’ Athelstan asked, abruptly changing the subject.

  ‘Yes,’ Sir John replied. ‘I went to see Master Lesures: timid as a rabbit, crouching in his chamber. According to him, Alcest sometimes acted the fop and insisted on wearing spurs to his boots.’ Cranston whistled through his teeth. ‘And I want to question Alcest further. There’s been another death: Napham.’

  ‘I thought there might. How did he die?’

  ‘A caltrop had been hidden among the rushes in his chamber, a huge, jagged affair . . .’

  ‘A caltrop, Sir John?’

  ‘They are used against armoured knights,’ Cranston explained, seeing the puzzlement in Athelstan’s face. ‘Steel man-traps, often placed on roads when planning an ambuscade or used to defend a dry ditch during a siege. Simple but terrible, like a rat-trap. The horse or the man puts his foot in and the trap is sprung.’

  ‘A terrible death,’ Athelstan remarked.

  ‘It almost severed Napham’s foot,’ Cranston continued. ‘However, in his agony he must have knocked a candle over. It fired the rushes and bedstead in his chamber. The poor man burnt to death. Another tenant noticed the flames and the fire was put out. The chamber was on the ground floor and the floor was made of stone so the fire did not spread too quickly. I went to view Napham’s corpse.’ Cranston shook his head. ‘Nothing more than burnt meat, the horrible caltrop still buried in his foot.’

  ‘And the assassin?’

  ‘Probably got in through a downstairs window,’ Cranston replied, ‘to place the caltrop, which can be bought at any ironmongers or armourers.’

  ‘And the riddle?’

  ‘Oh yes, Napham didn’t see this when he went into his chamber: it was pinned on the wall above the door. My next,’ Cranston closed his eyes to recall the riddle, ‘my next is like the flesh on the tail of a stag.’ He opened his eyes. ‘N, of course, is the last letter of venison.’

  Flaxwith broke in. ‘Sir John, we must be going. The scrimperers will be waiting.’

  ‘The what?’ Athelstan exclaimed.

  ‘The scrimperers.’ Cranston grinned. ‘My lovely little boys from Rat’s Castle. I’m going to catch the Vicar of Hell.’

  ‘In which case,’ Athelstan said, ‘we can talk as we walk.’

  And the coroner, striding across Cheapside, listened attentively as Athelstan told him, not only about William the Weasel’s message, but also of the strange occurrence outside Benedicta’s house the previous evening.

  ‘Devil’s futtocks!’ Cranston stopped. ‘Devil’s futtocks!’ he repeated.

  ‘My sentiments exactly, my Lord Coroner,’ Athelstan replied. ‘But perhaps I wouldn’t use your words. I’ve been wondering, Sir John, why the Vicar of hell should be so keen to distance himself from the murders amongst the clerks. I also wonder where Master Alcest was last night and why he’s now so interested in Mistress Alison.’

  ‘Devil’s futtocks!’ Cranston repeated.

  ‘Sir John?’

  ‘I forgot my miraculous wineskin.’ Cranston flailed his hands. ‘I knew there was something . . .’

  ‘Sir John!’ Athelstan felt like roaring in exasperation. ‘Have you heard what I said?’

  ‘Of course, dear monk.’

  ‘Friar, Sir John.’

  ‘Precisely. The Vicar of Hell has sent me a message. You think Alcest is the murderer and he now has an interest in Mistress Alison. I, however, have forgotten my bloody wineskin! Anyway, do you think Alcest is the murderer?’ Cranston asked, hurrying on.

  ‘I
do. I also know how Stablegate and Flinstead killed their master!’

  Cranston stopped again; this time Flaxwith and Samson almost crashed into him. The coroner grasped Athelstan by the shoulders and kissed him on each cheek.

  ‘Marvellous monk!’ he bellowed, then hurriedly stepped aside as a window opened and the contents of a chamber pot came spluttering down. The filthy contents narrowly missed them. Cranston shook his fists. ‘I’ll have you arrested!’ he roared.

  He hurriedly grabbed Athelstan and pushed him forward as the shutters opened again and another chamber pot was emptied, this time spattering poor Samson who stared up and growled his defiance.

  ‘The scrimperers?’ Athelstan asked.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Sir John stood aside as a huge dung cart piled high with the previous day’s rubbish made its way down the alleyway.

  ‘The scrimperers,’ Cranston explained, ‘are a group of very small men. Really, they are dwarves. They live in a house in that mean tangle of alleyways near Whitefriars. I call them the “Lords of Rat’s Castle”. Now, they’re the most godforsaken of people. No one trusts them, no one likes them. Now and again they are hired by some lord or a travelling mummers’ troupe as acrobats or jugglers.’

  ‘Like Master Burdon on London Bridge?’

  ‘Oh no.’ Cranston shook his head. ‘These are even smaller. They have the bodies of children and the faces of very old men.’

  He jingled his purse. ‘They are not averse to a little housebreaking, stealing through gaps where others cannot get. For some strange reason they like old Jack Cranston and he likes them.’

  ‘Of course,’ Athelstan conceded as they finally stopped on the corner of the alleyway leading up to Dame Broadsheet’s.

  ‘Now you remember.’ Cranston grinned. ‘Every year, on the feast of St Rahere, Lady Maude and I entertain them to a small banquet in our garden . . .’

  ‘And you’re going to use them to catch the Vicar of Hell?’ Athelstan asked.

  ‘Oh yes.’ Cranston jabbed a finger towards Flaxwith. ‘Faithful Henry here has had Broadsheet’s house watched day and night. Clarice, the love of our villain’s life, never leaves, yet the Vicar of Hell never comes.’