By Murder's Bright Light (13 page)

‘Let’s see Crawley.’ Cranston drained his tankard. ‘Our dear admiral has been lying through his teeth and I think we should know the reason why. But first, Mistress Roffel. Come on, Brother, sharpen your wits and open your ears. Let’s see what our good widow has to say for herself.’

They left the quayside. The clouds were beginning to break up as the daylight died. The streets were busy with apprentices and traders packing away the stalls. The huge dung-carts were out, trying to clear the swollen sewers. Athelstan saw one of the dung-collectors cheerfully pick up the bloated corpse of a cat and throw it with a thud into the cart. Beggars whined for alms. Mangy dogs strutted, stiff-legged, tails up, fighting and snarling over the piles of refuse. At the corner of an alleyway, Cranston stopped and peered over his shoulder.

‘Our friends are still with us.’

Athelstan turned quickly and glimpsed the two monk-like figures a good thirty paces behind him.

‘Do you recognise them, Sir John?’

‘They are not monks,’ Cranston replied. ‘They are clerks, royal officials from either the chancery or the exchequer. If they are from the latter then God help us!’

Athelstan caught Cranston’s arm. ‘Why, Sir John?’

‘The exchequer,’ Cranston replied, ‘has a group of very secret, sharp-witted officials called scrutineers. They deal with many matters – debts owing to the crown, royal prerogatives, but they also handle foreign matters, particularly the financing of spies and clandestine missions abroad.’

‘Shouldn’t we confront them?’ Athelstan asked.

Sir John smiled bleakly. ‘If we walk back, they’ll retreat. They’ll choose the moment and the place to approach us.’

Athelstan stared up as they approached a large town house, his attention caught by the tilers working there. He stopped and stared.

‘Come on, Athelstan!’ Cranston shouted.

Athelstan watched the men working, smiled and hurried on. Sir John paid a link boy a penny to lead them to Mistress Roffel’s house, a narrow, three-storeyed building pushed between a haberdashery shop and an ironmonger’s. The windows were all shuttered up, the wooden slats covered with black drapes as a sign of mourning. Athelstan lifted the iron knocker, crafted in the shape of a ship’s anchor, and brought it heavily down.

Emma Roffel and her maid Tabitha entertained Sir John and Brother Athelstan in the downstairs parlour. The chamber was nondescript. Fresh rushes covered the floor but the room was devoid of any wall hangings and the table and chairs were old and rather battered. Emma Roffel followed Cranston’s gaze.

‘Not the house of a successful sea voyager, eh, Sir John?’ She laughed bitterly. ‘But Captain Roffel was tight-fisted with his monies. And you’ve met his creature, Bernicia, with her pretty face and tight bum?’

Athelstan stared at this hard-faced woman, who was so cold and distant about her husband’s death. Athelstan admired her honesty. He remembered a maxim he had heard – ‘the opposite of love is not hate but indifference’.

‘Was it always like that?’ he asked.

Tears welled in the woman’s eyes.

‘Mistress, I did not mean to upset you.’

Emma Roffel looked over his head, fighting to keep her face impassive.

‘You do not.’ Her eyes took on a haunted, distant look as her mind conjured up visions, ghosts from the past. ‘Roffel was a priest, you know. A curate in the parish of St Olave’s in Leith just outside Edinburgh. My father owned a fishing smack and Roffel was interested in the sea. Sometimes he would go fishing with my father.’

‘Did you ever accompany him?’

Emma smiled bleakly. ‘Of course not. I fear the sea. It’s taken too many good men.’

‘What happened?’ Athelstan persisted. Like all priests, he was fascinated by those of his brethren who left their calling for the love of a woman.

Emma sighed. ‘William couldn’t keep his hands to himself. Rumours abounded about his relationships with certain widows in the town. Eventually the archdeacon intervened, but by then William and I had met and fallen deeply in love.’ She wiped her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve. The archdeacon was furious and my father threatened violence, so we fled across the border. At first to Hull, then south to London.’ She licked her lips. ‘In the beginning, I thought we were in paradise. William soon proved to be a fine seaman – competent, effective, a firm disciplinarian.’ She laughed sourly. ‘But then he met Henry Ospring. A friendship formed in hell. Ospring gave him money and hired a small ship and William turned to piracy. Sir Henry also introduced him to the fleshpots of the city. I was pregnant when I first found out about his—’ She pulled a face. ‘When I found out that he had a passion for fondling the bottoms of young boys.’ She rocked herself quietly in her chair. ‘I lost my baby. I also lost William and William lost me. We began the descent into our own private hells. We became strangers. William pursued his career. He had the devil’s own luck – second mate, first mate and finally captain.’

‘You hated him?’ Cranston asked.

Her eyes darted at him. ‘Hate, Sir John? Hate? I felt cold, empty, like watching someone in a dream. He left me alone and I reciprocated.’

‘Before that last voyage,’ Athelstan said, ‘did he speak of anything unusual that was about to happen?’

‘Not a word!’

‘You know he was murdered?’ Athelstan continued.

‘Yes, I think he was, Brother. If you want to accuse me, then do so, but remember I was here at home. I really couldn’t have cared if he lived or died.’ She shrugged. ‘It was only a matter of time before someone took a knife to him.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You are sure he was murdered?’

‘Poisoned, Mistress.’

She leaned forward in surprise. ‘But how? He always boasted that he ate and drank what his crew did.’

‘What about the usquebaugh?’ Cranston asked. ‘And the flask he always filled at the Crossed Keys tavern?’

Emma Roffel pulled a face in surprise. She turned and whispered to Tabitha, who scurried off quiet as a mouse. Emma sat staring into the fire until her maid returned, carrying a pewter flask. Emma took it and thrust it at Cranston.

‘This is the famous flask, Sir John. When they brought my husband’s body ashore, they brought his possessions with him.’

She unstoppered the flask and sniffed its contents, then poured a little liquid from it into a goblet she took from a small table behind her. Smiling she offered the goblet in turn to Cranston and Athelstan. They shook their heads.

‘You should drink usquebaugh,’ she said. ‘It warms the heart and fortifies the body against old age. Ah well.’ And, before either could stop her, she poured the contents down her throat. She coughed, winced and smiled. ‘If this flask was poisoned then I will soon join my husband.’

‘You seem most confident, Mistress.’

Emma Roffel grinned, put down the goblet and re-stopped the flask. She winked at Athelstan. Her good humour made her face look younger. Years earlier, Athelstan reflected, Emma Roffel had been beautiful enough for a priest to break his vows because of her.

‘That was reckless,’ he murmured.

She shook her head. ‘I apologise. I tease you. I sipped from the flask when it was first returned.’ She pulled a face. ‘I admit that
that
was stupid – risking a husband and wife poisoned by the same drink.’

‘So, you think the murder was committed on board the
God’s Bright Light?
’ Cranston asked.

‘Of course,’ Emma replied. ‘He was hated by the crew.’

‘And by his admiral?’

Emma shrugged. ‘Crawley considered my husband a pirate. He once threatened to hang him because of his depredations at sea.’

‘Mistress Roffel,’ Athelstan asked, ‘do you know what could have happened on board your late husband’s ship the night it docked to cause the disappearance of the mate and two sailors?’

She shook her head.

‘As Father Stephen will testify, on that particular evening I was with my husband’s corpse in St Mary Magdalene church. However, if you ask me to guess, I would say all three men, somehow or other, abandoned ship.’

‘You met Bracklebury, the first mate?’

‘Yes, he brought my husband’s corpse to shore as well as a bag containing his few pathetic belongings, including the flask.’ She watched the priest’s dark eyes carefully. ‘Do you want to look at these?’

Athelstan nodded.

‘But don’t put yourself out,’ he added anxiously. ‘Perhaps, if your maid Tabitha would be good enough to take me upstairs?’

The mousey, grey-haired woman smiled at her mistress who agreed. Athelstan, leaving the coroner jovially accepting Mistress Roffel’s offer of wine, followed Tabitha upstairs. The rest of the house proved equally dismal, dark and rather dank. The furniture and hangings were tawdry – clean and sweet-smelling but battered and dingy. He passed the main bedchamber, where the door was ajar, and glimpsed a four-poster bed with clothing slung across the coffer at its foot. Tabitha took him into a small, dusty chamber with coffers stacked along the walls. The maid stood for a while looking around.

‘How long have you served your mistress?’ Athelstan asked quietly.

The maid looked at him, crinkling up her eyes. ‘Oh, ever since the miscarriage sixteen or seventeen years ago.’

‘And she is good to you?’

Tabitha’s face became hard. ‘Mistress Roffel is as harsh as her husband ever was. They richly deserved each other. She intends to return to Leith. I will be pleased to see the back of her!’

Athelstan flinched at the venom in the woman’s voice. He watched, then helped, as she pulled a pair of leather, sea-stained panniers from behind a chest.

‘I slung it there after removing the flask. Shall we take it downstairs?’

Athelstan put it over his shoulder and they returned to the parlour. Cranston, now on his second cup of claret, was describing to a bored but polite Mistress Roffel his own exploits at sea many years before.

‘You found what you wanted, Brother?’ she asked, stopping Cranston in mid-sentence.

Athelstan put the leather bag on the floor, undid the buckles and emptied the contents out. They were not much: a pair of knee-high, woollen stockings; a needle and some thread; a quill; an inkhorn; some unused scraps of parchment; a shirt; two rings, scratched and rather battered; a St Christopher medal; a small compass; and a calfskin-bound book of hours. Athelstan picked the book up, undid the catch and leafed through the yellowing pages.

‘His only legacy from his priesthood days,’ Emma explained. ‘Wherever he went, he always took that with him.’

‘Yet,’ Athelstan observed, ‘he was not a man of prayer and neither are you. Father Stephen at St Mary Magdalene regarded you as strangers.’

Mistress Roffel was about to reply when Cranston burped and emitted a loud snore. Athelstan looked at his fat friend, who slouched in the chair, nodding, his eyes closed.

‘Is Sir John well?’ Emma asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ Athelstan replied sourly. ‘He’ll sleep like a babe and wake shouting for refreshment.’

The friar turned over the pages of the book, noticing how the blank pages at the end carried strange entries which could perhaps be accounts – sums of money, sometimes followed by the note ‘in S.L.’.

‘What are these?’ Athelstan asked.

‘God knows, Brother. My husband was a secretive man. I am still visiting the goldsmiths along Cheapside to discover where he banked his monies.’

Athelstan leafed over the pages and stopped to look at one fresh drawing; a squiggly line running across one page, small crosses carefully drawn alongside. The drawing looked fresh: the friar showed it to Mistress Roffel but she replied it made no sense to her. Athelstan sighed and placed the book back among the other possessions.

‘Your maid tells me that you are leaving the city,’ he said.

‘My maid knows too much for her own good,’ Emma retorted. ‘But, yes, once these matters are finished, I intend to collect my possessions, whatever monies my husband has left me, and return to Scotland.’

‘You hate London so much?’

They all turned, surprised to see Cranston awake, blinking and smacking his lips.

‘Do you hate London, mistress?’ the coroner repeated.

‘It holds bitter memories: it’s best if I forget the past.’

‘And you know nothing to resolve these mysteries?’ Cranston asked.

She shook her head.

‘And you, Sir John, do you know who murdered my husband and desecrated his corpse?’

Cranston lumbered to his feet, shaking his head.

‘No, mistress,’ he breathed. ‘However, if I do find out, believe me, you’ll be the first to know.’

They made their farewells and left the house. Both jumped as the Fisher of Men, with two of his gargoyles trailing behind him, slunk out of the shadows.

‘Satan’s futtocks!’ Cranston swore. ‘What the bloody hell are you doing, creeping up on good Christians like that?’

‘Sir John, you gave me and mine some money, so me and mine will earn it!’

‘What have you found?’

‘We saw the light gleaming.’ The Fisher of Men turned and patted one of his creatures.

‘Yes, I know about the lights!’ Cranston growled. ‘The ships pass signals between each other.’

‘Oh, no, not those. Something else. A lamp winked from the ship
God’s Bright Light
every hour until just before dawn and someone on the quayside answered it with a lamp.’

‘Do you know who it was?’

‘No, it was someone in the shadows. When we find out, Sir John, we’ll let you know.’ The Fisher of Men stepped back and disappeared as silently as he had arrived.

Athelstan, aware of the drizzle beginning to fall, pulled his cowl well over his head. ‘Bernicia said that,’ he remarked.

‘Said what?’ Cranston asked testily.

That there was someone in the shadows of the warehouses watching the ship.’

‘Satan’s balls! I have had enough of this!’ Cranston grumbled. ‘I’m hungry, I’m cold and wet!’

He stamped down the alleyway, Athelstan hurrying behind him. The coroner sped, direct as an arrow, past the door of his own house, across a deserted Cheapside and into the Holy Lamb of God. He stopped abruptly, Athelstan almost colliding with him. Cranston glared angrily at the two men dressed in brown robes who sat at his favourite table.