The Field of Blood (2 page)

In two days’ time she would be taken out of this hell, thrown into a cart and hauled before the justices now sitting in judgement at the Guildhall. But what could she plead? Self-defence? The clerk had been unarmed. She was a woman, so benefit of clergy was denied her.

Alice jumped and screamed as the rats scurried across her bare ankles. She stared pitifully at the grille in the door. The gaoler had offered to stay with her for the night. Alice had refused. She shook her head despairingly. What did it all matter? The jury would find her guilty, the justices condemn her to hang. If only she’d not left the Paradise Tree. Mistress Kathryn Vestler had been kindly enough. The tavern had been clean with spacious gardens and a meadow stretching down to the Thames. From her garret Alice could glimpse the turrets and soaring walls of the Tower.

Oh, she had been happy there! Alice had come from Maidstone in Kent. She had kept herself clean, her appearance good, and been hired as a chambermaid. Mistress Vestler had found her near the Si Quis door of St Paul’s where men and women gathered to be hired. She had worked at the Paradise Tree for three months, cleaning rooms, sometimes helping Mistress Vestler, a widow, in her garden. At night, when the weather was good, she would stroll through Black Meadow, which stretched down to the river, a lonely haunted place. Alice had heard the rumours and gossip; how the tavern was supposedly built on the site of an ancient church, but Alice didn’t know or care about such things. It was only scraps of gossip she had picked up. All had changed when a customer had told Alice how she could earn much more at the Merry Pig. She was comely enough. She could be a chambermaid and even save some coins. She could become a goodwoman. Perhaps a seamstress? In time buy her own alehouse or small tavern? Alice, guiled and tricked, had risen like a fish to the bait. The Merry Pig proved to be nothing more than a whore-shop. Perhaps that was why she had killed the clerk?

Alice closed her eyes as a spurt of anger coursed through her. She had tried to go back to the Paradise Tree but Mistress Vestler had been stony-faced and cold-eyed. Alice sighed. What secrets did she know about Mistress Vestler? Perhaps she could send a message? Ask for some help? The gaoler was uncouth but, in turn for a favour? She started as the key turned in the lock and the heavy door swung open. The gaoler lurched in. Alice’s resolve weakened; he was such a shambling oaf of a man!

‘Go away!’ she hissed.

‘Oh, it’s not me, mistress,’ the gaoler slurred.

He stepped aside. A shadowy, dark-cowled figure stood behind him.

‘This good friar wishes to know if ye want to be shrived?’

In the parish church of St Erconwald’s in Southwark, Brother Athelstan, Dominican, parish priest and secretarius to the noble Sir John Cranston, coroner of the city, knelt on the steps before the high altar. He was praying that the new week would be uneventful. He tried to concentrate but his mind teemed with all the different goings on: the parish council was soon to meet. Athelstan privately regarded that as an occasion of sin, particularly if Pike the ditcher’s wife decided to hold forth on everything and everyone. Huddle the painter wanted to start a new fresco in the sanctuary but Athelstan was cautious. The projected scene was Noah leading the animals into the ark, yet Huddle couldn’t resist poking fun at his enemies in the parish. Athelstan knew it would be civil war if the two apes bore even the slightest resemblance to Pike and his wife. The Dominican gazed up at the brass crucifix standing on the white linen altar cloth.

‘They are good people,’ he prayed. ‘Poor and dirty while the great ones consider them no more than worms in the earth. So, give me patience.’ Athelstan paused. ‘And good humour in dealing with them.’

Athelstan reflected on the good being done. Watkin the dung-collector and Pike had cleaned the cemetery up; a new death house had been built and the old one was now occupied by the beggarman Godbless and his little pet goat Thaddeus. Athelstan remembered to have a word with Godbless. The beggarman got his nickname because he attended the Mass and, at the kiss of peace, used the occasion to pick pockets. Nothing had happened in St Erconwald’s but other parish priests were reporting how their parishioners were losing coins during the
osculum pacis.

‘I am too distracted.’

Athelstan gazed down at his ever-faithful companion, the great, one-eyed tomcat Bonaventure. The cat adored this little friar who provided him with delicious dishes of milk and salted fish. However, if the truth be known, Bonaventure was not sitting so quietly by his master out of any liturgical reverence; Bonaventure, the scourge and terror of the vermin in the alleyways of Southwark, had discovered that a party of church mice had taken up residence. He was now intently watching a far corner of the sanctuary for any sudden movement.

Athelstan rose and crossed himself. He genuflected towards the silver pyx hanging from a gold chain above the altar, put his stole about his neck and walked over to the small cubicle placed in one of the transepts. This was the shriving pew, fashioned out of oak by Crispin the new carpenter.

Everyone had admired it. It was a simple piece of wood, six foot high and fixed on a wooden platform. There was a lattice grille in the centre covered by a purple cloth. On one side was a small prie-dieu for the penitent, on the other a chair for the priest to hear confessions. Athelstan had announced that, every morning this week, in preparation for the Feast of All Saints, he would be here between the hours of nine and midday to hear confessions, shrive penitents and give absolution. The parishioners had all agreed. Athelstan said a quick prayer as he settled in the shriving chair that Sir John Cranston would not come gusting in from the city with news of a hideous murder, some bloody affray which would require their attention.

Bonaventure lay at his feet. Athelstan read his psalter, chanting to himself the divine office for the day. The door opened. He quickly peered round the screen. His parishioners were coming to confess, so Athelstan put the psalter down and rang a silver hand bell. The first penitent took his place.

‘Brother, I’ve done nothing wrong!’

‘Is that true, Crim?’ Athelstan asked his altar boy. ‘Then you are a most fortunate lad. You are good at home?’

‘Oh yes, Brother.’

‘And do you help your parents?’

‘Of course, Brother.’

‘And you’ve stopped making obscene gestures at Pike’s wife?’

‘Only when her back’s turned, Brother.’

‘And you never drink the altar wine?

Crim coughed. ‘Only when I have a sore throat, Brother.’

‘Say a prayer for me,’ Athelstan said as he smiled.

He gave Crim absolution and other penitents followed. Athelstan felt a deep compassion for the litany of sins they confessed. Men and women struggling against terrible poverty and oppressive laws still strove to be good, anxious when they failed.

‘Brother, I think impure thoughts about Cecily the courtesan.’

‘Brother, I drink too much.’

‘Brother, I curse.’

‘Brother, I stole some bread from a stall.’

Athelstan’s responses were the same. ‘God is merciful: His compassion will surprise us. Try to do good. Now I absolve you . . .’

The morning wore on. Athelstan was pleased. Quite a number of parishioners had turned up. Some were honest, others fey-witted. Pernell the Flemish woman, who dyed her hair a range of garish colours, confessed how she had slept with this man and that.

‘Pernell! Pernell!’ Athelstan broke in. ‘You know that’s not the truth. You dream.’

‘I get worried, Brother, just in case I have!’

At last the church fell silent. Athelstan looked down at Bonaventure, glad that no hideous sin had been confessed: murder, sacrilege, dabbling in the black arts.

The church door opened. Athelstan could tell from the cough and the quick, light footsteps that a young woman had entered the church. She knelt on the prie-dieu.

‘Bless me Brother for I have sinned.’ The voice was low and sweet.

‘I bless you.’

‘I was last shriven before the Feast of Corpus Christi. I have been unkind, in thought, word and deed.’

‘It is difficult to be charitable all the time,’ Athelstan murmured. ‘God knows I confess to the same sin.’

‘Do you really, Brother?’

‘I am a sinner like you. A child of God. He knows the heart and soul. Do continue.’

‘Brother, I wish to commit murder!’

Athelstan nearly fell off his chair.

‘I really do! I want to kill a woman, take a knife and drive it into her heart!’

‘That is just anger.’

‘No, I will do it! I swear by God I will do it!’

‘Hush now!’ Athelstan retorted. ‘This is a sacrament in God’s house. Can I pull back the curtains?’

‘There’s no need to, Brother.’

The young woman came round the screen and knelt before him.

‘Why, it’s Eleanor!’

Athelstan grasped her hands and gazed into the thin but very beautiful face of Basil the blacksmith’s eldest daughter, a pale young woman with hair red as fire and the most magnificent green eyes Athelstan had ever seen. A shy girl but strong-willed, Eleanor always reminded Athelstan of what an angel must be: beautiful, modest with a dry sense of humour.

‘Eleanor,’ he pleaded. ‘What is the matter?’

‘Brother, I am in love.’

‘You wouldn’t think it.’

‘No, Brother, I truly am. I deeply love . . .’ she smiled.

‘This is a secret?’ Athelstan asked.

‘Well, we’ve been very . . .’

‘Discreet?’

‘What does that mean, Brother?’

‘Well, secretive, but not sly,’ Athelstan added hastily.

A dreamy look came into the young woman’s eyes.

‘Its Oswald Fitz-Joscelyn.’

Athelstan recalled the eldest son of the owner of the Piebald tavern, his parishioners’ favourite drinking-place.

‘I truly love him, Brother.’

‘How old are you, Eleanor?’

The young woman closed her eyes. ‘This will be my eighteenth yuletide, or so Mother says.’

‘And Oswald?’

‘He loves me too, Brother, more than anything in the world! He bought me,’ she touched the locket on a bronze chain round her neck, ‘he bought me this on the Feast of the Assumption: Oswald said when he was with me, he felt as if he had been taken up into heaven.’

Athelstan hid his smile and nodded. Oswald was a personable young man. His father had already made him a partner in a very prosperous business. Joscelyn had plans to buy a tavern elsewhere, even apply for the membership of the Guild of Victuallers.

‘If this is so,’ Athelstan asked, ‘why do you plot murder?’

‘It’s Imelda!’

‘Oh no!’

Athelstan groaned and closed his eyes: Pike the ditcher’s wife! The self-styled chronicler, herald and fount of all knowledge in the parish.

‘What has she got to do with this?’

‘She saw,’ Eleanor blinked to hide her tears, ‘Oswald and me in the fields beyond the ditch. She went and told Oswald’s father.’

‘And?’

‘That harridan,’ Eleanor spat the words out, ‘maintains that my great-grandmother and Oswald’s great-grandmother were sisters!’ She glimpsed the look of anguish in the priest’s face.

‘And what proof does she have?’

‘You know, Brother, what she is hinting at? She’s never liked me and she blames Joscelyn for Pike’s drinking, but the parish has no blood book.’

Athelstan glanced across the church at Huddle’s paintings on the far wall depicting Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt. He recalled the furious arguments when Huddle had given the woman the same features as Pike the ditcher’s wife.

‘This is serious, isn’t it, Brother?’

‘It is, Eleanor.’ Athelstan stretched a hand out and gently stroked her hair. ‘We have no proper blood book. The last parish priest.’ Athelstan shrugged. ‘Well, you know what he was like?’

‘He dabbled in the black arts, didn’t he?’

‘He not only did that,’ Athelstan said. ‘He either burned or stole every document the parish had. We have no records, Eleanor, but the Church strictly forbids marriage within the bounds of consanguinity.’

‘I’ve heard of that, Brother. What does it mean?’

‘That you and Oswald are related and that your children . . .’

‘Now that I do know,’ Eleanor interrupted heatedly. ‘Imelda said the same. How, in isolated villages, such marriages give birth to monsters!’

‘Now, now. Such tales of terror will not help the present situation. The problem, Eleanor, is that we do have a blood book. I instituted one, using what records and evidence I could collect, but it certainly doesn’t go that far back.’ He sighed. ‘And Pike the ditcher’s wife is sure about what she says?’

‘Brother, you would think she had come straight from the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

Athelstan made a sign of the cross above her.

‘Eleanor, I absolve you from your sins. I am sure God understands your anger but you must not do anything.’

‘I’d love to silence her, Brother! I’d love to shut that clacking tongue! If it wasn’t for her we’d be married at Easter!’ Eleanor put her face in her hands. ‘I do so love him.’ She glanced up. ‘Do you understand that, Brother?’

‘No, Eleanor.’ Athelstan smiled. ‘I don’t. Love can never be understood because it can never be measured, neither the length, the breadth, the height nor its depth.’ Again he grasped her hands. ‘In each of us God has breathed; that breath is our soul: without limit, without end. When we love, Eleanor, we are like God, and that includes Imelda.’ He let go of her hands. ‘Now you may do what you want, I cannot stop you. Or you can leave it to me. But, you must decide now.’

‘Until the Feast of All Saints,’ Eleanor replied tersely.

‘Very well.’ Athelstan sighed. ‘Until the Feast of All Saints.’

Eleanor got to her feet. ‘Thank you, Brother.’

‘Smile!’ Athelstan urged. ‘I am sure, Eleanor, this can be resolved.’ He pointed to the church door. ‘And I’ll meet you and Oswald there to witness your vows.’

He watched the young woman leave then put his face in his hands.

‘Oh, Lord, what have I promised?’

He felt pressure on his leg and looked down. Bonaventure had lifted himself up, two forepaws on his knee; the cat’s little pink tongue came out with a fine display of sharp white teeth.