by Paul Doherty
Cranston pulled aside as a broad-wheeled cart stacked high with sour green apples trundled by.
‘Sir Ralph Whitton, Constable of the Tower. You have heard of him?’
Athelstan nodded. ‘Who hasn’t? He’s a redoubtable soldier, a brave crusader, and a personal friend of the Regent, John of Gaunt.’
‘Was,’ Cranston intervened. ‘Early this morning Whitton was found in his chamber in the North Bastion of the Tower, his throat slit from ear to ear and more blood on his chest than you would get from a gutted pig.’
‘Any sign of the murderer or the weapon?’
Cranston shook his head, blowing on his ice-edged fingers. ‘Nothing,’ he grated. ‘Whitton had a daughter, Philippa. She was betrothed to Geoffrey Parchmeiner. Apparently Sir Ralph liked the young man and trusted him. Early this morning Geoffrey went to wake his prospective father-in-law and found him murdered.’ He took a deep breath. ‘More curious still, before his death Sir Ralph suspected someone had evil designs on his life. Four days prior to his death he received a written warning.’
‘What was this?’
‘I don’t know but apparently the constable became a frightened man. He left his usual chambers in the turret of the White Tower and for security reasons moved to the North Bastion. The stairway to his chamber was guarded by two trusted retainers. The door between the steps and the passageway was locked. Sir Ralph kept a key and so did the guards. The same is true of Sir Ralph’s chamber. He locked it from the inside, whilst the two guards had another key.’
Cranston suddenly leaned over and grabbed the bridle of Athelstan’s horse, pulling him clear as a huge lump of snow slipped from the sloping roofs above and crashed on to the ice.
‘We should move on,’ the friar remarked drily. ‘Otherwise, Sir John, you may have another corpse on your hands and this time you will be the suspect.’
Cranston belched and took a deep swig from his wineskin.
‘Is young Geoffrey one of the suspects?’ Athelstan enquired.
Cranston shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Both doors were still locked; the guards unlocked one, let him through and then locked it again. Apparently Geoffrey went down the passageway, knocked and tried to rouse Sir Ralph. He failed to do this so came back for the guards who opened Sir Ralph’s room. Inside they found the constable sprawled on his bed, his throat cut and the wooden shutters of his window flung wide open.’ Cranston turned and spat, clearing his throat. ‘One other thing – the guards would never allow anyone through without a rigorous body search, and that included young Geoffrey. No dagger was found on him nor any knife in the room.’
‘What was Sir Ralph so fearful of?’
Cranston shook his head. ‘God knows! But there’s a fine array of suspects. His lieutenant, Gilbert Colebrooke, was on bad terms and wanted Sir Ralph’s post for himself. There’s the chaplain, William Hammond, whom Sir Ralph caught selling food stocks from the Tower stores. Two friends of Sir Ralph’s, hospitaller knights, came as they usually did to spend Christmas with him. Finally there’s a pagan, a mute body servant, a Saracen whom Sir Ralph picked up whilst crusading in Outremer.’
Athelstan pulled his hood closer as the cold wind nipped the corners of his ears. ‘Cui bono?’ he asked.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Cicero’s famous question: “Who profits?”’
Cranston pursed his lips. ‘A good question, my dear friar. Which brings us to Sir Ralph’s brother, Sir Fulke Whitton. He stands to inherit some of his brother’s estate.’
Cranston fell silent, half closing his eyes and gently burping after the good breakfast he had eaten. Athelstan, however, prided himself on knowing the fat coroner as well as the palm of his own hand.
‘Well, Sir John,’ he needled, ‘there is more, is there not?’
Cranston opened his eyes. ‘Of course there is. Whitton was not liked by the court, nor by the Londoners, nor by the peasants.’
Athelstan felt his heart sink. They had been down this road on numerous occasions.
‘You think it may be the Great Community?’ he asked.
Cranston nodded. ‘It could be. And, remember, Brother, some of your parishioners may be part of it. If the Great Community acts and revolt spreads, the rebels will try to seize the Tower. Whoever controls it controls the river, the city, Westminster and the crown.’
Athelstan pulled the reins closer to him and reflected on what Cranston had said. Matters were not going well in London. The king was a child; John of Gaunt, his uncle, a highly unpopular Regent. The court was dissolute, whilst the peasants were taxed to the hilt and tied to the soil by cruel laws. For some time there had been whispers, rumours carried like leaves on a strong breeze, of how peasants in Kent, Middlesex and Essex had formed a secret society called the Great Community. How its leaders were plotting rebellion and a march on London. Athelstan even vaguely knew one of these leaders – John Ball, a wandering priest; the man was so eloquent he could turn the most placid of peasants into an outright rebel by mouthing phrases such as: ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’ Was Whitton’s death a preamble to all this? Athelstan wondered. Were any of his parishioners involved? He knew they met in the ale-houses and taverns and, God knew, had legitimate grievances. Harsh taxes and savage laws were cruel enough to provoke a saint to rebellion. And if the revolt came, what should he do? Side with the authorities or, like many priests, join the rebels? He looked sidelong at Cranston. The coroner seemed lost in his own thoughts and once again the friar detected an air of sadness about him.
‘Sir John, is there anything wrong?’
‘No, no,’ the coroner mumbled.
Athelstan left him alone. Perhaps, he concluded, Sir John had drunk too deeply the night before.
They moved down a snow-covered Tower street past the church where a poor beadsman knelt making atonement for some sin; the hands clutching his rosary beads were frost-hardened and Athelstan winced at some of the penances his fellow priests imposed on their parishioners. Sir John blew his breath out so it hung like incense in the cold air.
‘By the sod!’ he muttered. ‘When will the sun come again?’
They had turned into Petty Wales when suddenly a woman’s voice, clear and lilting, broke into one of Athelstan’s favourite carols. They stopped for a moment to listen then crossed the ice-glazed square. Above them soared the Tower’s sheer snow-capped walls, turrets, bastions, bulwarks and crenellations. A mass of carved stone, the huge fortress seemed shaped not to defend London but to overawe it.
‘A very narrow place,’ Cranston muttered. ‘The House of the Red Slayer’. He looked quizzically at Athelstan. ‘Our old friends Death and Murder lurk here.’
Athelstan shivered and not just from the cold. They crossed the drawbridge. Beneath them the moat; its water and the dirty green slime which always covered it, were frozen hard. They went through the black arch of Middle Tower. The huge gateway stood like an open mouth, its teeth the half-lowered iron portcullis. Above them the severed heads of two pirates taken in the Channel grinned down. Athelstan breathed a prayer.
‘God defend us,’ he muttered, ‘from all devils, demons, scorpions, and those malignant spirits who dwell here!’
‘God defend me against the living!’ Cranston quipped back. ‘I suspect Satan himself weeps at the evil we get up to!’
The gateway was guarded by sentries who stood under the narrow vaulted archway, wrapped in brown serge cloaks.
‘Sir John Cranston, Coroner!’ he bellowed. ‘I hold the King’s writ. And this is my clerk, Brother Athelstan, who for his manifest sins is also parish priest of St Erconwald’s in Southwark. A place,’ the coroner grinned at the outrage in Athelstan’s face, ‘where virtue and vice rub shoulders and shake hands.’
The sentries nodded, reluctant to move because of the intense cold. Athelstan and Cranston continued past By-ward Tower and up a cobbled causeway where their horses slithered and slipped on the icy stones. They turned left at Wakefield
Tower, going through another of the concentric circles of defences, on to Tower Green. This was now carpeted by a thick white layer of snow which also covered the great machines of war lying there – catapults, battering rams, mangonels and huge iron-ringed carts. On their right stood a massive half-timbered great hall with other rooms built on to it. A sentry half dozed on the steps and didn’t even bother to look up as Cranston roared for assistance. A snivelling, red-nosed groom hurried down to take their horses whilst another led them up the steps and into the great hall. Two rough-haired hunting dogs snuffled amongst the mucky rushes. One of them almost cocked a leg against Sir John and growled as the coroner lashed out with his boot.
The hall itself was a large sombre room with a dirty stone floor and brooding, heavy beams. Against the far wall was a fireplace wide enough to roast an ox. The grate was piled high with logs but the chimney must have needed cleaning for some of the smoke had escaped back into the hall to swirl beneath the rafters like a mist. The early morning meal had just been finished; scullions were clearing the table of pewter and wooden platters. In one corner, two men were idly baiting a badger with a dog and other groups were huddled round the fire. Athelstan gazed around. The heavy pall of death hung over the room. He recognised its stench, the suspicion and unspoken terrors which always followed a violent, mysterious slaying. One of the figures near the fire rose and hurried across as Cranston bellowed his title once again. The fellow was tall and lanky, red-haired, with eyes pink-lidded and devoid of lashes. An aquiline nose dominated his half-shaven, lantern-shaped face.
‘I am Gilbert Colebrooke, the lieutenant. Sir John, you are most welcome.’ His bleary eyes swung to Athelstan.
‘My clerk,’ Cranston blandly announced. The coroner nodded to the group round the fire. ‘The constable’s household, I suspect?’
‘Yes,’ Colebrooke snapped.
‘Well, man, introduce us!’
As they moved across, the people crouching on stools near the fire rose to greet them. Introductions were made, and inevitably Cranston immediately dominated the proceedings. As usual Athelstan hung back, studying the people he would soon interrogate. He would dig out their secrets, perhaps even reveal scandals best left hidden. First the chaplain, Master William Hammond, thin and sombre in his dark black robes. He moved with a birdlike stoop, his face sallow with an unhealthy colour, balding head covered with greasy grey wisps of hair. A bitter man, Athelstan concluded, with a nose as sharp as a dagger point, small black eyes and lips thin as a miser’s purse.
On the chaplain’s right stood Sir Fulke Whitton, the dead man’s brother, sleek and fat, with a pleasant face and corn-coloured hair. His handshake was firm and he man curved his considerable girth with the grace and speed of an athlete.
Beside him was the dead constable’s daughter, Philippa. No great beauty, she was broad-featured, with pleasant brown eyes and neat auburn hair. She was rather plump and reminded Athelstan of an over-fed capon. Next to her stood, or rather swayed, her betrothed, Geoffrey Parchmeiner, hair black as night though oiled and dressed like that of a woman. He seemed a pleasant enough fellow, strong-featured though his smooth-shaven face was slightly flushed with the blood-red claret he slopped around in a deep-bowled goblet A merry fellow, Athelstan thought, and gazed with amusement at Geoffrey’s tight hose and protuberant codpiece: the shin beneath the tawny cloak dripped with frills under the sarcenet doublet, and the toes of the shoes were so long and pointed they were tied up by a scarlet cord wound around the knees. God knows how he walks on ice, Athelstan thought. He recognized the type – a young man who aped the dandies of the court. A parchment seller with a shop in some London street, Geoffrey would have the money to act like a courtier.
The two hospitaller knights whom Cranston had mentioned, Sir Gerard Mowbray and Sir Brian Fitzormonde, could have been brothers, each dressed in the grey garb of their Order, cloaks emblazoned with broad white pointed crosses. Athelstan knew the fearsome reputation of these knight monks and had on occasion even acted as confessor at their stronghold in Clerkenwell. Both Gerard and Brian were middle-aged, and every inch soldiers with their neat clipped beards, sharp eyes and close-cropped hair. They moved like cats, men conscious of their own prowess. Warriors, Athelstan mused, men who would kill if they thought the cause just.
Between them stood a lithe-figured dark man, his hair and beard liberally oiled. He was dressed in blue loose-fitting trousers and a heavy military cloak over his doublet. His eyes moved constantly and he watched Cranston and Athelstan as if they were enemies. The coroner barked a question at him but the fellow just looked dumbly back, opened his mouth and pointed with his finger. Athelstan looked away in pity from the black space where the man’s tongue should have been.
‘Rastani is a mute.’ The girl, Philippa, spoke up, her voice surprisingly deep and husky. ‘He was a Muslim, though now converted to our faith. He is . . .’ She bit her lip. ‘He was my father’s servant.’ Her eyes filled with tears and she clutched the arm of her betrothed, though the young man was more unsteady on his feet than she.
Once the introductions were made Colebrook shouted for more stools and, catching the greedy gaze of Sir John directed towards the young man’s wine cup, goblets of hot posset. Cranston and Athelstan sat in the middle of the group. Sir John had no inhibitions but threw back his cloak, stretched out his log-like legs and travelled in the warmth from the fire. The posset he drained in one gulp, held out his cup to be refilled and slurped noisily from it, smacking his lips and staring around as if all his companions were close bosom friends. Athelstan muttered a silent prayer, as he rearranged the writing tray on his lap, that the good Lord would keep Cranston both sober and awake. Geoffrey sniggered whilst the two knights stared in utter disbelief.
‘You are the King’s Coroner?’ Sir Fulke loudly asked.
‘Yes, he is,’ Athelstan intervened. ‘And Sir John is not always as he appears.’
Cranston smacked his lips again.
‘No, no, I am not,’ he murmured. ‘And I suspect the same is true of everyone here. Always remember a useful dictum: every man born of woman is three persons; what he appears to be, what he claims to be and,’ he beamed round, ‘what he really is.’ He grinned lecherously at Philippa. ‘The same is true of the fairer sex.’ He suddenly remembered Maude and the thought sobered him quicker than a douche of cold water. ‘The same,’ he continued crossly, ‘is true of the murderer of Sir Ralph Whitton, Constable of this Tower.’
‘You suspect someone here?’ Sir Fulke said, his face now drained of good humour.
‘Yes, I do!’ Cranston snapped.
‘That’s an insult!’ the chaplain blurted out. ‘My Lord Coroner, you are in your cups! You swagger in here, you know us not . . .’
Athelstan placed his hand on the coroner’s arm. He sensed Sir John was in a dangerous mood and noticed how the hospital had both opened their cloaks to display the daggers hooked in their belts. Cranston heeded the warning.
‘I make no accusations,’ he replied softly. ‘But it usually transpires that murder, like charity, begins at home.’
‘We face three problems,’ Athelstan diplomatically intervened. ‘Who killed Sir Ralph, why, and how?’
The lieutenant made a rude sound with his tongue. Cranston leaned forward.
‘You wish to say something, sir?’
‘Yes, I do. Sir Ralph could have been killed by any rebel from London, by a peasant from the hundreds of villages around us, or by some secret assassin sent in to perform the ghastly deed.’
Cranston nodded and smiled at him.
‘Perhaps,’ he replied sweetly, ‘but I shall return to your theory later. In the meantime, none of you will leave the Tower.’ He looked around the sombre hall. ‘After I have viewed the corpse, I wish to see all of you, though in more suitable surroundings.’
The lieutenant agreed. ‘St John’s Chapel in the White Tower,’ he announced. ‘It is warm, secure, and affords some privacy.’
‘Good! Good!’ C
ranston replied. He smiled falsely at the group. ‘In a while, I shall see you all there. Now I wish to inspect Sir Ralph’s body.’
‘In the North Bastion,’ Colebrooke retorted and, rising abruptly, led them out of the hall.
Sir John swayed like a galleon behind him whilst Athelstan hastily packed pen, inkhorn and parchment. The friar was pleased; he had names, first impressions, and Cranston had played his usual favourite trick of alienating everyone. The coroner was as crafty as a fox.
‘If you handle suspects roughly,’ he had once proclaimed, ‘they are less likely to waste time on lies. And, as you know, Brother, most murderers are liars.’
Colebrook waited at the bottom of the steps of the great hall and silently led them past the soaring White Tower which shimmered in the thick snow packed around its base, traces of frost and slush on every shelf, cornice and windowsill. Athelstan stopped and looked up.
‘Magnificent!’ he murmured. ‘How great are the works of man!’
‘And how terrible,’ Cranston added.
They both stood for a few seconds admiring the sheer white stone of the great tower. They were about to move on when a door at the foot of the keep, built under a flight of outside steps, was flung open. A fantastical hunchbacked creature with a shock of white hair appeared before them. For a moment, he stood as if frozen. His face was pallid, his body covered in a gaudy mass of dirty rags with oversized boots on his feet. Finally he scampered towards them on all fours like a dog, sending flurries of snow flying up on either side. The lieutenant cursed and turned away.
‘Welcome to the Tower!’ the creature shrieked. ‘Welcome to my kingdom! Welcome to the Valley of the Shadow of Death!’
Athelstan looked down at the twisted white face and milky eyes of the albino crouching before him.
‘Good morrow, sir,’ he replied. ‘And you are?’
‘Red Hand. Red Hand,’ the fellow muttered. He parted his blue-tinged lips, dirty yellow teeth chattering with the cold. ‘My name is Red Hand.’
