House of the Red Slayer (18 page)

Athelstan leaned against the table and ran his finger round the rim of the wine goblet. ‘First, we have found that Sir Ralph was probably murdered by someone who entered the Tower by crossing an ice-bound moat. Secondly, Mowbray was lured to his death by the tocsin sounding. Thirdly, both murders are certainly linked with Sir Ralph’s dreadful betrayal of Bartholomew Burghgesh in Cyprus so many years ago.’ Athelstan smiled at Benedicta’s quizzical face. ‘You are puzzled, My Lady. Well, so are we. First, how can someone enter the Tower, murder Sir Ralph, then leave the fortress without being noticed? Secondly, why did Sir Ralph just lie there and allow his throat to be cut so savagely that his head was almost hacked from his body? You saw the corpse, Sir John, and the chamber? There was no sign of any struggle nor did the guards hear anything. Thirdly, who rang the tocsin bell and, at the same time, so subtly arranged for Mowbray to fall from the parapet?’

The coroner’s face grew longer at Athelstan’s every word.

‘And the list of suspects,’ the friar continued remorselessly, ‘still stands. We may have met the murderer, yet it may equally be someone in the Tower or the city about whom we know nothing.’

‘I do not know the full story,’ Benedicta interrupted, ‘but there is rejoicing in Southwark at Sir Ralph’s death.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Pike the ditcher says it is the work of the Great Community. The secret peasant leaders wish to weaken the city before they organise their great revolt.’

‘Nonsense!’ Cranston slurred, now on his third cup of sack. ‘Pike the ditcher, with all due respect, My Lady Benedicta, should keep his mouth shut and his neck safe! Sir Ralph was not murdered by any peasant.’

Athelstan sipped from his wine cup and made a face at the sourness of the drink. ‘One person we have not met, My Lord Coroner, is the merchant Adam Horne. Benedicta, before we go on to meet Simon in the Fleet prison, there are certain enquiries to make. You will accompany us?’

Benedicta agreed, so they rose and left, Cranston bawling abuse at the hapless taverner. Outside it was growing dark, only a red glow showed where the sun had set. Cranston steadied himself carefully on the icy cobbles and stared at the sky.

‘Why is it always red at night?’

‘Some say,’ Athelstan replied, ‘it’s because the sun slips into hell, but I think that’s an old wives’ tale. Come on, Sir John.’

Athelstan slipped round the coroner, tactfully linked one arm through his and, with Benedicta on the other side, crossed the now deserted Cheapside. The stalls were being packed away, the last iron-rimmed carts crashed along to Newgate or east to Aldgate. Weary apprentices and traders locked their shutters and put out lantern horns. The bell of St Mary Le Bow began to toll the curfew, the sign that all trading should cease, as four urchins pulled a huge yule log up to the door of one of the great merchants’ houses. Cranston stopped to enquire directions of one of the market stewards who sat in his little toll booth on the corner of Wood Street. The fellow pointed down to the corner of the Mercery and Lawrence Street.

‘You will find the Horne house there,’ he said. ‘A fine place, with a huge, black-timbered door and a coat of arms above it.’

They turned, staying in the centre of Cheapside as the melting snow began to slide from the sloping tiled roofs. The Horne house stood deserted, no lantern above the door, only a tired-looking Christmas wreath. Cranston stepped back and looked up at the lead-paned windows.

‘No candlelight,’ he murmured.

Athelstan pulled Benedicta closer into the side of the house to protect her from any snow falling from the small canopied hood of the doorway. He lifted the great brass knocker, cast in the shape of a dragon’s head and brought it crashing down. There was no answer so he knocked again. They heard the patter of footsteps and a whey-faced maid answered the door.

‘Is Alderman Horne here?’ Cranston slurred.

The young girl shook her head wordlessly.

‘Who is it?’ a voice asked from the darkness beyond.

‘Lady Horne?’ Cranston queried. ‘I am Sir John Cranston, Coroner. You sent a message earlier today to the sheriffs at the Guildhall?’

The woman stepped out of the darkness, her drawn face bathed even whiter by the light of the candle she carried. Her cheeks were tear-stained, her eyes dark-shadowed and sad, whilst her steel-grey hair hung in untidy tresses beneath a white veil.

‘Sir John.’ She forced a smile. ‘You had best come in. Girl, light the torches in the solar! Bring candles!’

Lady Home led them up a stone-vaulted passageway into a comfortable but cold solar. A weak fire flickered in the hearth. Lady Horne told them to sit whilst behind them the girl lit candles. Athelstan gazed round. The room was positively luxurious with bright-hued tapestries on the walls, and exquisitely embroidered linen cloths placed on tables, chests and over the backs of chairs. Nevertheless, he could almost smell the stench of fear the house was too quiet. He looked at Lady Horne who sat on me other side of the fireplace, an ivory and pearl rosary entwined around her fingers.

‘You wish some refreshment?’ she murmured.

Cranston was about to reply but Athelstan intervened.

‘No, My Lady. This matter is urgent. Where is your husband?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘That terrible message arrived this morning and Sir Adam left immediately afterwards. He said he was going upriver to the warehouses.’ She clenched her hands tightly. ‘I have sent messages there but the boy returned and said my husband had already left. Sir John, what is the matter?’ Her tired eyes pleaded with the coroner. ‘What does this all mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ he lied. ‘But your husband, Lady Horne, is in terrible danger. Does anyone know where he has gone?’

The woman bowed her head, her shoulders shaking with sobs. Benedicta rose and crouched beside her, stroking her hands gently.

‘Lady Horne, please,’ Athelstan persisted. ‘Do you know anything about the message or why your husband was so frightened?’

The woman shook her head. ‘No, but Adam was never at peace.’ She looked up. ‘Oh, he was a man of great wealth but at night he would awake screaming about foul, bloody murder, his body coated in sweat. Sometimes he would tremble for at least an hour, but never once did he confide in me.’

Cranston stared across at Athelstan and made a face. The friar looked at the hour candle which stood on the table behind him.

‘Sir John,’ he whispered, getting up, ‘it’s almost seven o’clock. We must go!’

‘Lady Horne.’ The merchant’s wife was about to rise but Cranston gently touched her on the shoulder. ‘Stay and keep warm, the maid will see us out. If your husband returns, tell him to come to my house. It’s not far. You promise?’

The woman nodded before looking away into the dying embers of the fire.

Outside Cranston stamped his feet, clapping his hands together. ‘That woman,’ he observed, ‘is terrified. I suspect she knows the source of her husband’s wealth, but what can we do? Horne could be anywhere in the city.’

Athelstan shrugged. ‘Sir John, Benedicta and I must go to Fleet prison. We promised the parish we would visit Simon the carpenter.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Cranston replied tartly. ‘The murderer.’

‘You will go home?

Sir John stared into the gathering darkness. He would have loved to but what was the use? All he’d do was sit and drink himself stupid.

‘Sir John,’ Athelstan repeated, ‘the Lady Maude will be waiting for you.’

‘No,’ Cranston answered stubbornly. ‘I’ll go to the Fleet with you. Perhaps I can help.’

Athelstan glanced at Benedicta and raised his eyes heavenwards. The friar wanted Sir John to go; he was tired of the coroner’s constant bad temper and sudden bouts of fury. He loved the fat knight but on this occasion dearly wished to see the back of him. Nevertheless, he agreed. They walked through the blood-stained slush of the Shambles, holding their noses against the sickening putrid smells from the slaughter houses, and turned left into Old Deans Lane, a narrow alleyway ankle-deep in muck which ran between dark, overhanging houses. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked mournfully. At the corner of Bowyers Row they stood aside as a huge, wooden wagon rolled by, pulled by four horses, their manes hogged, eyes blinkered and nostrils flaring at the corrupting smell of death. The horses’ hooves and the wheels of the cart were muffled in straw so that it seemed to glide like a terrible phantasm. On one corner of the cart a torch flared, throwing the driver into ghastly relief as he sat cloaked and hooded, a grim death mask over his face.

‘What is it?’ Benedicta asked.

She brought up the hem of her cloak to cover her nose. Athelstan sketched a sign of the cross in the air and prayed the cart would continue, but it stopped alongside them. The driver tried to quieten the horses as two screeching cats, fighting over some vermin, scurried out of the shadows. Cranston knew what was in the cart. He had recognised the driver as the hangman from Tyburn.

‘Don’t look,’ he whispered.

But Benedicta, her curiosity aroused, leaned on Athelstan’s arm and, standing on tiptoe, peered over the rim of the cart. She stared in horror at the whitened, frozen cadavers which lay there under a tattered, canvas sheet. Their limbs hung all awry but round the neck of each was a thick, purple line, while the purple-red faces were contorted, swollen tongues held fast between ice-cold lips, eyes rolled back in the sockets.

‘Oh, sweet Lord!’ she breathed, and leaned against the wall as the driver cracked his whip and the cart rolled on.

‘What was that?’

‘The hanged from the Elms,’ Cranston answered. ‘At night the corpses are cut down and taken to the great lime pits near Charterhouse.’ He glared at the widow. ‘I told you not to look!’

Benedicta retched before, resting on Athelstan’s arm, following Cranston through Ludgate and up towards the Fleet.

The prison did little to lighten their mood: grey frowning walls with a few sombre buildings peeping above them, and a black gateway with an arch which yawned as if it wished to devour any unfortunate who approached it. Cranston pulled at the bell and they were allowed through a wicket gate built into the ponderous door. A gaoler led them into the porter’s lodge, the fellow bowing and scraping as he recognised Sir John. Athelstan was pleased then that the coroner had accompanied them. They went through a large hall where the debtors were jailed, furnished with side benches of oak and two long tables of the same wood, all covered in greasy filth. The people gathered around them were dirty and foul-smelling, men and women wearing threadbare jerkins and tattered cloaks. They pushed their way through the hall and up a stone-flagged passageway, past grated windows where poor debtors shook their begging bowls through the bars and whined for alms.

At last they went down slimy, cracked steps into the Hall of the Damned, the condemned hold, a massive, vaulted cellar with dungeons in the far wall.

‘Who is it you wish to see?’ the porter snapped.

‘Simon the carpenter.’

The porter hurried across, chose a key and unlocked one of the doors.

‘Come on, Simon!’ he bawled. ‘A rare treat! London’s own coroner, a friar and a fair lady. Who could ask for more?’

Simon crept from the cell. Athelstan hardly recognised him: his face was a mass of sores, his hair long and matted with filth and vermin. The man’s clothing had been reduced to rags and he was loaded with fetters. Simon shuffled awkwardly towards them, lifting his manacled hands to push his hair back. His lips were blue with the cold and his eyes, above sallow sunken cheeks, bright with fever.

‘Father, you have brought a pardon?’ he asked hopefully.

Athelstan shook his head. ‘No, I am sorry. I just came to visit you, Simon. Is there anything I can do?’

The carpenter looked at him, then at Benedicta and, throwing back his head, laughed hysterically until the porter struck him across the face. The condemned man slumped to the floor, crouching like a beaten dog. Athelstan knelt beside him.

‘Simon!’ he murmured. ‘Simon!’

The carpenter raised his head.

‘Do you wish to be shriven? I will hear your confession.’

The man looked up despairingly.

‘There’s nothing left,’ Athelstan whispered. ‘This time tomorrow, Simon, you will be with God.’

The carpenter nodded and began to cry like a child. Athelstan turned.

‘Sir John, Benedicta, please, give me a moment.’

They withdrew. The coroner bawled at the porter to follow them and, for the second time that day, Athelstan heard the confession of a man about to meet Death. At first, Simon spoke slowly and Athelstan had to fight hard to keep his composure as the chill of the dungeons seeped through his robe, turning his legs to blocks of ice, but then Simon allowed his emotions full rein. He talked of everything, a miserable litany of failure culminating in the rape of a child. Athelstan heard him out, pronounced absolution and rose, rubbing his stiff legs to make the warmth return. The porter came back.

‘Tomorrow, Simon,’ Athelstan whispered, ‘I shall remember you. And, Simon?’

The condemned man looked up.

‘You remember me before the throne of God.’

The carpenter nodded. ‘I didn’t mean to do it, Father. I was lonely, I’d drunk too much.’

‘I know,’ Athelstan murmured. ‘God help you and her!’ Athelstan turned to the porter and tossed him a silver coin. ‘One good meal, sir.’

The porter caught the coin and nodded.

‘One good meal,’ Athelstan warned. ‘I shall check on that.’

He was about to leave when Simon called out: ‘Father!’

‘Yes, Simon?’

‘Ranulf the rat-catcher came to see me earlier today. He had been hired by a butcher in the Shambles. He said you were at the Tower because of Sir Ralph Whitton’s death.’ The carpenter grinned. ‘Even though I have been shriven, it is good to know that bastard went before me. A strange place the Tower, Father.’

Athelstan nodded. He felt Simon was only trying to prolong the visit ‘I worked there once,’ the carpenter called out. ‘A strange place, worse than this!’

‘Why is that, Simon?’

‘Well, at least here the cells have doors. In the Tower there are rooms, dungeons, where you go in, the doors are removed, and you remain until death behind a bricked wall.’