By Murder's Bright Light (12 page)

‘First,’ Athelstan whispered, leaning across the table, ‘Aveline Ospring murdered her father. She told me under the seal of confession but has asked for our help.’

Cranston stared, his mouth wide open, as Athelstan described what he had learnt earlier in the day. The coroner threw the capon leg down.

‘She’ll hang,’ Sir John muttered. ‘Either she’ll hang or he’ll hang or they’ll both hang. She can’t prove what she said. What else, Brother?’

‘Somebody boarded that ship,’ Athelstan declared, ‘and somehow killed those three men. But how and why I don’t know. However, you heard what Crawley said? No one from the neighbouring ship, the
Holy Trinity,
saw or heard anything amiss and that includes Bernicia’s shouting.’ Athelstan angrily shook his head. ‘Someone is lying, Sir John, and we must discover who. How do we know every sailor left the ship? There could have been someone hiding on board.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Cranston said sarcastically. ‘And he killed those three sailors with no fuss or trace, continued passing the signals and then disappeared into thin air, just like the felon robbing the merchants’ houses?’

Athelstan smiled. ‘No one disappears into thin air, Sir John, and that goes for the house we have just visited. I have a suspicion. No, no.’ He held a finger up as expectation flared in Sir John’s eyes. ‘Not now. Let’s deal with Roffel’s widow. But, before that, do you know a tavern called the Crossed Keys near Queen’s hithe?’

‘Yes, the landlord’s a relative of Admiral Crawley. An old seafarer. Why, what’s the matter, Brother?’

Athelstan leaned his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands. ‘Roffel used to buy usquebaugh, a Scottish drink, there. He kept it in a flask that he always carried with him. By the way, Sir John, have you noticed how Crawley’s name keeps recurring? He disliked Roffel. We have only his word that no one approached the
God’s Bright Light.
He must have heard Bracklebury shouting to Bernicia. And now his cousin owns a tavern where Roffel bought the usquebaugh that, I suspect, contained the arsenic that killed him.’

Cranston drained his cup and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

‘Let’s visit the tavern.’ He tapped the side of his fleshy nose. Then we’ll go to see someone else – a man who knows about what happens along the river because he earns his living from it.’

Cranston left some coins on the table and they strode out of the alehouse. It was beginning to rain. The streets were empty so they kept to the shadow of the houses to avoid the filthy puddles as well as to shelter from the rain.

‘We should have brought the horses,’ Athelstan grumbled.

‘Shut up and say your prayers!’ Cranston quipped back.

They found the Crossed Keys tavern nestling behind the warehouses. It was a sailors’ haunt, filled with a babble of voices. Customers from every nationality thronged the taproom: Portuguese clad in gaudy clothes, their faces bearded and swarthy, silver earrings dangling from their ear lobes; Gascons, proud and argumentative; and Hanseatics, solemn-faced, sweating under their fur caps and cloaks. A salty, fishy odour mingled with strange cooking smells. Cranston licked his lips as a servitor pushed by him with a bowl of diced steak under a thick onion sauce. Athelstan wisely moved the coroner on through the noisy throng towards the landlord, squat and round as a barrel, who stood in front of a great fishing net pinned to the wall. The fellow kept surveying the taproom, shouting out orders to his sweat-soaked servitors. Athelstan could see he had spent his life at sea from his rolling gait and eyes creased after years of straining against the sun and biting wind. A merry-looking man, with his rubicund cheeks and balding head, he was mouthing a string of colourful oaths which made even Cranston smile.

‘You are the owner?’ Cranston asked, coming up in front of him.

‘No, I am a peeping mermaid!’ the fellow replied out of the corner of his mouth as he turned to shout orders into the kitchen.

‘Jack Cranston’s the name and this is my secretarius, Brother Athelstan.’

The coroner extended a podgy hand. The landlord grasped it and smiled.

‘I have heard of you. I am Richard Crawley, one-time ship’s master, now lord of all I survey. I know why you are here or can I guess? Roffel’s death. God damn him!’

‘You didn’t like him?’

‘Like my cousin, Sir Jacob, I hated Roffel’s guts. He was a bad bastard and I hope he gets what he richly deserves, rotting in hell—’ He broke off suddenly and shouted at a scullion. ‘By a mermaid’s paps! Hold that platter straight! You’re listing like a scuppered ship!’

‘Why did you hate him?’

‘Why not? The same reason as Sir Jacob. I had a half-brother,’ the landlord continued, lowering his voice, ‘a good sailor, plying the cloth trade between the Cinque Ports and Dordrecht. His ship went down with all hands. Roffel was cruising in the vicinity at the time. He blamed the French. I blamed him.’

‘But you did business with him?’

‘Of course I bloody well did – and charged him highly for it. A Scotsman, he liked his drink, usquebaugh. I bought it in cask from Leith in Scotland and sold it at treble the price to that evil bastard. He always filled his flask before he left for any voyage. Roffel knew, to the last drop, how much he had left.’

‘Do you have any of it now?’

‘Yes,’ Richard replied, ‘and I’ll finish it myself one day and toast his black soul with every drop.’

‘May we see it?’ Athelstan asked.

The landlord shrugged and, going back into the scullery, returned with a cask about a foot wide and a foot across with a small tap in the bottom. He took a battered pewter cup from the shelf, ran a few drops into it and handed it to Cranston.

‘Taste that!’

Sir John did, drinking it down in one gulp while the landlord grinned evilly.

‘Shitting ships!’ Cranston exclaimed. His face turned puce and he coughed. ‘Satan’s balls! What in hell is that?’

‘Usquebaugh, Sir John. Do you like it?’

Sir John smacked his lips. ‘Hot,’ he said. ‘Strong at first, but it certainly warms the belly. How many barrels do you have of this?’

‘Just the one cask.’

‘And before he sailed on his last voyage Roffel filled his flask from it himself?’

‘Oh, of course, he did. And then he drank some, a small cup.’

Athelstan, who was half-watching a Portuguese sailor feed his pet monkey, which was climbing all over his shoulders, looked at the landlord in surprise.

‘He drank some here?’

‘Oh, yes.’ The landlord turned and glared towards the clamour from the kitchen. ‘Sir John, if you have no more questions, I have a trade to follow.’

Cranston muttered his thanks and they left the tavern. Thankfully, the rain had stopped. The coroner gripped Athelstan’s shoulder.

‘It can’t have been the usquebaugh can it, Brother? Or the flask?’

Athelstan shook his head. ‘No, not if Roffel drank some here and suffered no ill effects.’ He shook his head as he and the coroner trudged up the rain-soaked street.

‘Aren’t we going in the wrong direction, Sir John? Shouldn’t we be going to Roffel’s house?’

‘Ah, no, there’s someone else.’ Cranston stopped and took a generous swig from his wineskin. ‘As I said, Brother, someone who knows and watches what goes on along the river.’

At the corner of the alleyway the coroner suddenly stopped and turned quickly. The two figures at the other end of the alleyway didn’t bother to hide. Athelstan followed the coroner’s gaze.

‘Who are they, Sir John?’ He strained his eyes. Dressed in brown robes, the figures looked like Benedictine monks. ‘Are they following us?’

‘They have been with us most of the time,’ Cranston whispered. ‘Let’s leave them for a while.’

They walked on, across Thames Street, down towards Vintry, then turned right past the warehouses and along Queen’s hithe towards Dowgate. A thick, cloying mist boiled over the river, hiding the ships that rode at anchor there.

‘Where are we going?’ Athelstan demanded.

‘Patience, my dear friar. Patience!’

They walked along the quayside. Cranston peered into the dark corners then suddenly stopped.

‘Come out!’

A ragged, hooded figure shuffled forward. As the man came closer, Athelstan saw the rags swathed across his face and around his hands and tried to hide his revulsion. The man moved in an ungainly shuffle and, as he did so, he rang a small bell.

‘Unclean!’ the ghastly figure croaked. ‘Unclean!’

‘Oh, bugger that!’ Cranston retorted. ‘I doubt if I’ll catch leprosy!’

The man stopped a few paces from them. To Athelstan he seemed like some apparition from hell, with the rags covering his face and hands, the dark cowl pulled well forward. Now and again tendrils of mist would drift between them.

‘These are the gargoyles,’ Cranston whispered. ‘Cripples, beggars and lepers. They work for the Fisher of Men. They take corpses from the Thames, murder victims, suicides, those who have suffered accidents as well as drunks. If the man’s alive, they earn tuppence, for murder victims three pence. Suicides and accidents only a penny.’

‘You wish to meet the Fisher of Men?’ the leper croaked.

‘That’s right, my jolly lad!’ Cranston called back. And, taking a penny from his pocket, he flicked it at the man who, despite his disability, neatly caught it in one hand.

‘Tell the Fisher of Men old Jack Cranston wants a word.’ He pointed down the alleyway. ‘I’ll meet him in the alehouse there.’

‘And what business shall I say?’

‘The
God’s Bright Light.
He’ll know,’ Cranston added to Athelstan. ‘Nothing happens along the riverside without the knowledge of the Fisher of Men.’

The leper disappeared. Cranston led Athelstan down the alleyway into a small, smelly alehouse with only one window high in the wall. It was dark and dank, lit by smoky tallow candles and smelly oil lamps, but the ale was rich and frothy, the blackjacks clean and the tables and stools neatly wiped.

‘You have met the Fisher of Men?’ Cranston asked.

‘Yes, you introduced us some months ago,’ Athelstan replied.

Cranston stuck his nose into his tankard but his eyes never left the doorway.

‘Here he comes.’

The doorway became black with huddled figures, cowled and hooded like the one they had met on the quayside. The tapster nervously waved them back but they crouched at the threshold, staring into the tavern like a huddle of ghosts peering into the land of the living. Their leader, the Fisher of Men, came from amongst them, walked soundlessly towards the coroner and Athelstan and, without invitation, sat down on the stool between them. He pulled back his hood revealing a face as sombre as any death mask – alabaster white, thick-lipped and snub-nosed, with black button eyes. Red, greasy hair fell to his shoulders. He pointed a lanky finger at Cranston.

‘You are Sir John Cranston, coroner of the city.’ The finger moved. ‘And you are Athelstan, his secretarius or clerk, parish priest of St Erconwald’s in Southwark. Sir John, Lady Maude went shopping today. Brother Athelstan, your sanctuary man is safe. He is helping your parishioners prepare the stage for their mystery play.’

Athelstan smiled at the Fisher of Men’s implicit boast at how much he knew.

‘But we are not here to exchange gossip,’ the Fisher of Men continued. Again the finger pointed. ‘Three days ago the ship so inappropriately called
God’s Bright Light
dropped anchor opposite Queen’s hithe. The captain’s corpse was taken ashore. His soul has gone to God’s judgement . . .’ The voice trailed away.

‘And what else do you know?’ Cranston asked.

The man spread his hands and indicated with a nod of his head the group in the doorway.

‘Sir John, of your mercy I have my brethren to feed.’

Cranston pushed a silver coin across the table. The Fisher of Men plucked it up.

‘You do me great honour, Sir John. The ship was berthed and that night the crew and their doxies went ashore. I know because I had one of them. Fresh and clean she was. Black curly hair, merry eyes, active and vigorous as a puppy in my bed.’

Athelstan fought to control his face at the image of this strange figure making love to a young whore.

‘Very good,’ Sir John interrupted hastily. ‘And?’

‘Three men were left on board, one in the bows, one at the stern, the mate in the middle. Or rather, he kept to the cabin.’

‘And?’ Cranston insisted.

‘Oh, a whore, a male whore’ – the Fisher of Men grimaced – ‘came down about midnight to the quayside. However, she, or he, depending on your viewpoint, was driven off by a stream of curses from the ship.’ The Fisher of Men played with his lank hair. ‘The sailor on board sounded drunk, but the signals and passwords continued to be perfect!’

‘And nothing happened?’ Athelstan asked.

‘Oh yes, about two hours after midnight a small craft approached the ship.’

‘From the river bank?’

‘Oh no, from the admiral’s cog, the
Holy Trinity.
Two men were in it.’

‘And then what?’

‘The small boat was there for just over an hour, but then it returned.’ The Fisher of Men smiled. ‘And, before you ask, Sir John, the password and the signals still continued.’

‘Did anything else happen?’ Cranston asked.

‘A sailor returned just before dawn and the confusion began.’

‘But the watch?’ Athelstan intervened. ‘What happened to the watch?’

The Fisher of Men licked his lips, reminding Athelstan of a frog which could see something savoury. ‘If the river has them,’ the fellow replied, ‘It will caress and kiss them and put them ashore.’ His face became solemn. ‘I and my brethren have already looked, but we have found nothing. We did not see them go in. Perhaps we shall not see them come out.’

‘But if you find them you will tell us?’

The man looked down at the silver coin in his hand. Cranston pushed another piece towards him. The Fisher of Men picked it up, got to his feet and gave them a solemn bow.

‘You are my friends,’ he declared. ‘And the Fisher of Men never forgets. In the name of my brethren, I thank you.’

He slipped out of the alehouse and the gargoyles, chattering and clattering, followed him down the alleyway.