Candle Flame (22 page)

‘Well, Master Tuddenham, you deal with your business and leave me to deal with God’s.’

The cleric spun on his heel and, bony body all twitching, scurried across to gossip in a huddle with the rest of his party.

Athelstan shrugged and took a fresh stoup of water to Sparwell. Once he drank, Athelstan leaned down.

‘The Inquisitor, is this his handiwork?’

‘Brother, as I said, we knew about his arrival in England. We were terrified but so far he has posed no threat to our conventicles, our meetings.’ He spluttered through bloodied lips. ‘I trust you, Brother. True,
cacullus non facit monachum
– the cowl doesn’t make the monk – but in your case it does. You have a good heart, so I will tell you what brought me here. Our conventicles meet beyond the city walls, desolate places such as Moorfields or parts of Southwark where it is easy to escape the bishop’s spies. Our beliefs are well known. Pope and priest mean nothing to us. We will have nothing to do with superstitious geegaws, putrid relics, gaily painted statues or other religious baubles.’

‘But how were you captured?’ Athelstan insisted, his curiosity now roused.

‘I am tailor, a good one. Enemies, rivals must have denounced me. In truth it wouldn’t be hard. I stopped attending Sunday Mass, I did not observe the holy days. I did not pay my tithes.’

‘Do you,’ Athelstan sighed, ‘did you, want to die my friend? You certainly raised the banner which would attract the attention of those who mattered. Tell me, is Sir Robert Paston one of yours?’

‘No, no.’ The answer came so swiftly Athelstan wondered if Sparwell was defending the manor lord. Any further conversation was hampered by shouts and cries. The great prison door had been opened. A cold breeze swept the chamber with all the smells of Southwark. The execution was about to begin. Athelstan had to stand aside as the sledges and hurdle were secured and dragged by the Carnifex and his coven out of the chamber and down the passageway to the yard outside. Athelstan and Cranston followed close behind. The friar opened his chancery satchel and looped the purple-hued stole around his neck. Outside all the midnight folk of Southwark had assembled, a sea of hard-pinched faces: whores in their flame-coloured garb surrounded by their hooded pimps; the capuchoned counterfeits and cranks; the ill-witted and the sharp-eyed; and all the predators from the slums. Athelstan recalled what Cranston often said, that the only person who could safely walk unarmed through the streets of Southwark were friars such as himself. This horde of rifflers shouted and cursed. Mud and other filth rained down on Sparwell as his hurdle was harnessed to a massive dray horse caparisoned in a black-and-white sheet, its mane all hogged and festooned with red ribbons, its thick tail decorated with scraps of scarlet cloth. The hurdle was fastened tight, the Bishop of London’s people assembled at the front and the macabre procession moved off.

Athelstan walked slowly behind the hurdle as Sparwell began his journey along what was known as the ‘path of thorns’, dragged across the cobbles, ruts and sharp-edged potholes of Southwark. Athelstan deliberately kept as close as he could so the filth-pelters might think twice before hurling refuse which might hit a priest they recognized. Cranston’s presence was also a help; curses and threats were hurled at him but his large, swaggering figure and gleaming drawn sword deterred any real mischief. Athelstan tried not to look at Sparwell, jerking and twisting in searing pain, as the hurdle bounced across the ground. The friar recited the Mercy Psalm but found he could not get past the opening line: ‘Have mercy on us O God in thy kindness; in thy infinite compassion blot out our offence.’
What kindness, what compassion?
Athelstan thought bitterly, walking through this charnel house of broken souls, twisted spirits and bruised bodies. Athelstan could only recall a poem he’d learnt as a young soldier in France: ‘The moon is pretty on the wave, the blossoms of the sky bright as lights.’ Athelstan crossed himself. He glanced at the crowd, catching glimpses of those thronging around but held back by the burly sheriff’s men. Two workers from the tanneries at the Tower were offering homemade pomanders as protection against the smell. A beggar-monk stood holding a skull, all white and bony, as if it was some precious vessel. A woman clasped a frightened child close to her face. A painted doxy, drunk and raucous, screamed abuse as the thick paste covering her poxed face began to run in the persistent drizzle which had begun to fall. A fire-eater, dressed in the garish red and green costume of a salamander, held a candle as he intoned a prayer, whilst a pickpocket with clipped ears and a mangled nose tried to open the fire-eater’s purse. The reeking smells of the streets billowed sometimes, hidden by the gusts of incense from the thurible carried by the Bishop of London’s party. Eventually they turned, leaving the crumbling tenements behind them, going down an incline on to the path which ran along the riverbank. The rain stopped falling. Athelstan noticed Cranston had disappeared. The friar curbed his own anxiety and returned to reciting snatches of psalms, trying to keep calm amidst the raucous noise, foul smells and the sheer horror of what was happening.

T
he execution cortege moved more swiftly as they approached the Palisade. Athelstan realized that this was the first time he had entered The Candle-Flame from this direction. It was a lonely place, a long line of mudbanks, desolate and windswept, littered with rubbish washed up by the tide: stacks of peeling driftwood, shattered barrels and the crumbling skeletons of former river craft. Gulls swept backwards and forwards, swooping up and down, their constant strident calls buffeted by the wind. Athelstan stared along the river bank. He noticed the clumps of reeds and wild, straggling bushes which sprouted over mud-caked pools.

‘This is where you died, Ronseval,’ Athelstan whispered to himself. ‘You were lured here, but how and by whom?’ Athelstan stared down at Sparwell, who, thankfully, had lapsed into unconsciousness. Athelstan returned to his prayers as the grim cortège, sledges and hurdle rattling and bouncing, made their way up a slight rise on to the Palisade. The crowd thronging here were as dense and noisy as at any summer fair at Smithfield, a restless and unruly mob eager to watch this macabre spectacle unfold. The execution place was on a piece of raised ground opposite the Barbican. Athelstan glanced at that fire-scarred donjon. He recalled battling for his own life against the inferno which had almost engulfed him. The friar grimly promised himself to revisit that dark tower. He would pluck its macabre secrets. For the moment, however, Athelstan decided to concentrate on the present. Sparwell was about to be executed. The clamour of the crowd, the press of sweaty bodies and the smell of such a throng had brought the usually desolate Palisade to gruesome life. All the villains and mountebanks had swarmed here together with the different guilds and fraternities dedicated to offering some consolation to those executed by the Crown. Not that they could, or really wanted to, achieve anything practical. Cranston was correct – heresy was an infection. A mere kindness towards someone like Sparwell might provoke the interest of the Church. Undoubtedly the Bishop of London’s spies would be slinking through the crowd, eyes and ears sharp for any sympathizer.

The Carnifex and his assistants became busy leaping about like imps from Hell. Sparwell, his body one open wound, was unstrapped from the hurdle and dragged to the soaring execution stake driven into a steep hummock of piled earth. Athelstan followed and started with surprise as Cranston strode out of the crowd, his chain of office clear to see, the miraculous wineskin in one hand and a pewter cup in the other. He winked at Athelstan as he planted himself firmly in front of the executioners.

‘A drink?’ Cranston filled the deep bowled cup. One of the bishop’s party rushed forward to object but Cranston bellowed he didn’t give a piece of dried snot what he thought. The coroner was supported by the sheriff’s men, who hadn’t forgotten Cranston’s promise of a free blackjack of ale. Sir John filled the cup to the brim and virtually forced it down Sparwell’s throat. The prisoner drank greedily, coughing and spluttering. Cranston stepped back and the spectacle continued. The executioners had already slipped the barrel over the pole. They now seized Sparwell, bound hand and foot, and lowered him into the barrel. A herald of the bishop’s court read out the
billa mortis
– the bill of death. How Sparwell ‘was a sinner, obdurate and recalcitrant, steeped in his hellish ways and so deserving of death by the secular arm’. Athelstan had followed Sparwell to the execution stake, but had to step back as the Carnifex and his assistants heaped the brushwood and stacked the bundles of faggots. Athelstan studied these. Cranston was correct. A great deal of the wood was green to the point of suppleness.

‘
Homo lupus homini
– man is truly a wolf to man,’ Athelstan whispered to himself. He stared over the crowd, now pressing in against the cordon of soldiery: a mass of faces, a babble of voices. Some cursed and yelled; others chanted songs of mourning or hymns for the departed. Athelstan glimpsed members of his parish clustered around Mauger the bell clerk. What caught his attention, however, was Paston’s daughter Martha standing close to the ever-faithful Foulkes. Both young people were markedly different from the crowd on either side. They stood so quietly, staring at the grisly ritual as if memorizing every detail.

‘Let it begin!’ the herald shouted. Athelstan blinked and stared around. The hurdle, sledges and great dray horse were being pulled away. The execution pyre was ready. Oil-drenched branches were fired from a bowl of glowing coals. The air grew thick with the stench of grey-black smoke. The flames on the fire-fed torches leapt up, almost exuding the horror they were about to inflict on this freezing February afternoon under a lowering winter sky. Athelstan glanced at the stake. Sparwell had fallen very silent. In fact, he just lolled against the barrel as if deeply asleep.

‘Fire the wood!’ the herald shouted. The executioners raced forward, torches held out, thrusting them into the kindling. Smoke and flame erupted, though the fire seemed to find the faggots stacked closer to the condemned man more difficult to burn. The smoke plumed up and billowed out, almost hiding that pathetic, lolling figure. The crowd strained to watch. The smoke grew thicker, forcing the sheriff’s men and the executioners further back, leaving the execution ground to that great, fearsome cloud lit by darting flames, which seemed to just thrust itself up from the earth. The crowd had now fallen silent as if straining to listen to the cries and shrieks of the condemned man. There was nothing.

‘He’s gone,’ Cranston whispered, coming up beside Athelstan. ‘When I left you, Brother, I visited an apothecary and bought the strongest juice of the poppy.’

‘The wine?’ Athelstan asked.

‘Oh yes, Brother. It was in the wine or rather the cup. Sparwell was already exhausted. Such a potion would have put him into a sleep very close to death.’

‘Sleep is the brother of death,’ Athelstan retorted. He forced a smile. ‘Or so a Greek poet wrote. Sir John, I cannot stay here.’ Athelstan raised his hand and blessed the air in the direction of the execution pyre. The smell of smoke was now tinged with something else: a foul odour like fat being left to burn. The flames had reached Sparwell! Athelstan took off his stole and walked away. One of the bishop’s men tried to catch him by the sleeve but Athelstan ignored it and, pushing through the crowd, walked quickly towards The Candle-Flame.

‘Brother Athelstan?’ He turned. Master Tuddenham, face as white as a ghost, strode towards him. The man was deeply agitated, all a tremble.

‘What is it?’ Athelstan walked back to meet him. Tuddenham stopped, crossed himself and went down on one knee.

‘Bless me, Father,’ he intoned, ‘for I have sinned.’

‘I bless you indeed,’ Athelstan declared, ‘even though I am very surprised. Get to your feet, man. What is the matter?’

Tuddenham glanced over his shoulder at that great pillar of smoke rising against the sky. The reek was now truly offensive, and the crowd, disgusted at the stench, was already breaking up. ‘That was my first burning of a heretic, Brother, and, by God’s good favour, it will be my last. You see,’ Tuddenham tweaked the sleeve of the friar’s robe, indicating that they walk on, ‘I am a canon lawyer, a notary. For me, heresy is a blot on the soul of the Church.’ He blessed himself again. ‘Today I found out different. I was shocked by what you did but,’ he stopped to stare straight at Athelstan, ‘I admired it. Sparwell was pathetic. A poor tailor who had certain ideas and could not give them up. Stupid but …’

‘If stupidity was a burning offence?’ Athelstan retorted. ‘We’d all be living torches, yes, my friend?’ Athelstan stared at this confused cleric. A good man, the friar reflected, who had just realized that heresy was not just a matter of belief but the arbiter of a very gruesome death.

‘I never realized what it would entail.’ Tuddenham shrugged. ‘The Bocardo, the sheriff’s men, Blanchard, who really should decorate a gibbet, the crowd baying for poor Sparwell’s blood …’ Tuddenham’s voice faltered, tears in his eyes. ‘Sir John?’ he asked.

‘The Lord High Coroner gave Sparwell wine laced with a strong potion which dulled the prisoner, a true act of compassion. I assure you, Master Tuddenham, for doing less a mercy many a soul will surely enter Heaven. But tell me,’ Athelstan indicated they walk on. ‘Sparwell was denounced?’

‘No.’ Tuddenham’s voice was harsh. ‘That is the other reason I have approached you, Brother. Sparwell was not denounced, he was betrayed. There is a traitor in his conventicle, as the Lollards call it.’

‘Who?’

‘We don’t know but, Brother Athelstan, it makes me fearful. Sparwell’s execution might be the first of many such horrors.’

‘Did Sparwell know of this traitor?’

‘Of course not. It was kept hidden lest, somehow, Sparwell communicated to other members of his conventicle. He was simply informed that he had been denounced.’ Tuddenham pulled a face. ‘Of course, he then convicted himself out of his own mouth. In the end we had no need for witnesses or proof.’