sanctuary when he glimpsed Huddle’s new painting on the far wall above the leper squint. Athelstan wandered across. Huddle had been busy sketching out in charcoal the Seven Deadly Sins. Athelstan thought the painter would begin with ‘Lust’, which all the parish council wanted. Instead Huddle, who gambled and was desperate for income, had decided on ‘Avarice’. The painting was graphic enough, bold and vigorous, an eye-catching vision of startling colours and images. A goldsmith of Cheapside was Huddle’s incarnation of the deadly sin: a shrivelled up old man, bow-legged and palsy stricken, with a head as bald as a pigeon’s egg, a beard as bushy as a tangle of brier, skimpy loose cheeks, goggling eyes either side of a nose pointed and as sharp as a hook. The goldsmith was being attacked by two shaggy demons that were dragging him away from his money bags. One of these hellish creatures, all hoofed and horned, had wrapped his goatskin legs around the banker and forced his bald head down so as to clamp his wolf fangs into the back of his victim’s exposed neck. The other demon was clawing the goldsmith’s belly, ripping it open to spill out the man’s black and red innards. Gossips, and that was virtually everyone in the parish, claimed Avarice was no less a person than Sir Robert Kilverby, city goldsmith, former alderman and an acquaintance of no less a person than Sir John Cranston, the King’s coroner in London.
‘Sweet Lord, I hope not,’ Athelstan murmured, ‘or Cranston will have Huddle’s head. I just wish our painter would paint and leave the cogged dice alone.’
Athelstan plucked at his waist cord and fingered the three knots symbolizing his vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Cranston could be genial but, like all law officers in London, watchful and wary of any dissent or mockery of authority. Winter was proving very harsh. The price of bread and other purveyance remained high. Defeat abroad and piracy in the Narrow Seas made matters worse, especially in London where The Upright Men, leaders of the Great Community of the Realm, were plotting bloody revolt to turn the world upside down. Huddle should be careful of whom he mocked. Athelstan went back to the corpse door and picked up his psalter from the stool near the collection of leaning poles. He moved under the rood screen, stood at the bottom of the sanctuary steps and stared up at the Pyx dangling on its chain, shimmering in the glow of the red sanctuary lamp hanging close by. Athelstan genuflected then busied himself, taking out the palliasse from the small alcove where any sanctuary man in flight from the law could settle. Thankfully there was no one. Athelstan unrolled the palliasse at the bottom of the steps just outside the rood screen. He prostrated himself on this, intoned psalm fifty then confessed his sins, a litany of weaknesses: his failure to love, his irritation with Watkin the dung collector, his short temper with Ursula the Pig- woman and her godforsaken sow which followed her everywhere, including into Athelstan’s vegetable patch. The friar caught his temper and smiled. If he was not careful he would be sinning again, yet behind all these petty offences gathered greater shadows: the death of his beloved brother, Francis-Stephen, and his secret love for the widow woman Benedicta, though she was not his only distraction from matters spiritual. Even more so was Athelstan’s fascination for hunting down killers, assassins and murderers who believed they could snuff out another’s life as easily as they might a taper, wipe their lips and, like Pilate, wash their hands of any blood and guilt. Athelstan let his mind drift deeper into the gathering darkness to confront more threatening shapes which questioned his very vocation and basic beliefs.
‘So much evil, Lord.’ He prayed. ‘So deep the wickedness. The rich wax stronger and more powerful whilst the poor, like naked earth worms, are crushed and stamped even deeper into the mud. Why, Lord?’
The friar recalled the words of his own confessor, the venerable Magister Ailred at Blackfriars, the principal Dominican house in London. ‘Evil is not a problem, Athelstan,’ Ailred had advised. ‘If it was a problem, like those we confront in philosophy or logic, it could be resolved. No, Athelstan, evil is a great mystery which can only be confronted. Christ did that during his passion, singing his own hymn of love as he journeyed into the very heart of evil to confront it. He became one of us to experience that same mystery. Look at the crib at Christmas, the Holy Rood on Good Friday. .’ Athelstan sighed, crossed himself and rose to his feet. He wandered down to the main door and stared at the crude but vivid crib set up by Tab the Tinker, Crispin the Carpenter and others. Athelstan smiled. He had imitated the Franciscan idea of the Bethlehem stable and the chanting of the ‘O Antiphons’ instead of the planned mystery play about the Nativity. He’d had a bellyful of that after Watkin, relegated to being one of the shepherds, had furiously assaulted two of the Wise Men. Athelstan sighed noisily and shook his head in admiration of the large gold star Huddle and Crispin had nailed above the crib. He recalled his own secret passion. On a clear night, he’d be up on the church tower observing the stars, but the dire weather froze even birds on the wing whilst threatening clouds blotted out heaven’s gems.
Athelstan doused some of the torches and returned to lie before the rood screen. He intended to recite a psalm but, as usual, he drifted into sleep until roused by a hammering on the locked main door. He struggled awake, pulled himself up, quickly rolled up the palliasse and returned it to the recess. He glanced up at one of the windows and groaned as he noticed the grey dawn light. He had slept too long! The door rattled again. Athelstan hurried down, turned the great key, slipped back the bolts and swung it open. Benedicta, hooded and muffled, and Crim the altar boy almost threw themselves into the church.
‘Sorry, Father, sorry, Father,’ the boy yelped, jumping up and down. ‘It was so cold, we thought we’d die. We wondered what had happened. .’
Athelstan peered behind them at the freezing mist boiling over the great cobbled expanse in front of the church. Night was over and a chilly day had dawned.
‘Day has come,’ Athelstan murmured, ‘and so we must continue our journey.’
‘Father?’
Athelstan smiled over his shoulder at Benedicta. She looked truly beautiful: a simple grey wimple under a cowl framed her olive-skinned face. Benedicta’s lustrous dark eyes, full of life, reminded Athelstan of the frescoes celebrating beauty in the great cathedrals of northern Italy, but now was not the time for reflection on such matters.
‘Never was and never should be,’ Athelstan murmured to himself.
‘What?’ Crim was still jumping up and down, as agitated as a box of frogs.
‘It’s never the time for certain things,’ Athelstan smiled. ‘So come.’
There was, in fact, little time for further conversation or greeting. All three hastened under the rood screen, up the sanctuary steps and into the whitewashed sacristy to the left of the high altar. Athelstan unlocked the vestment chest and the coffer holding the sacred vessels, cloths and bread and wine. Candles were brought out and lit. The sanctuary glowed into light. Manyer the bell clerk, all cowled and visored against the cold, hurried in to sound the bell for the Jesus Mass. The clanging echoed out. At short while later Athelstan’s parishioners, bustling and chattering, coughing and spluttering, filed into the church: Watkin the dung collector; Pike the ditcher with his narrow-eyed wife Imelda constantly on the search for insult; Godbless accompanied by his goat; Ranulf the rat catcher who always brought his two prize ferrets, Ferox and Audax; and Ursula and her sow, the great pig’s flanks and ears all flapping. The sight of so much luscious pork on the hoof, and so vulnerable, made people pause, stare and wet their lips. Basil the blacksmith always sat next to the sow so, as he put it, he could savour its warmth, though many noticed how the blacksmith’s fingers never wandered far from the stabbing dagger in his belt. Moleskin the boatman came along with other members of his coven: Merrylegs the pie-maker, Joscelyn the one- armed former pirate and keeper of ‘The Piebald’ tavern, Mauger the hangman and Pernel the mad Fleming woman who, in anticipation of Christ’s nativity, had dyed her wild tangle of hair red and green.
‘Green for the eternal Christ,’ she had screeched down the nave. ‘Red for his blood.’
They all congregated within the rood screen. Some squatted on the floor; others used the leaning poles. Athelstan, dressed in the purple and gold vestments of Advent, left the sacristy, approached the high altar and made the sign of the cross.
‘I will go unto the altar of God,’ he intoned, and so the Mass began sweeping towards its climax, the consecration and elevation of Christ’s body and blood under the appearance of bread and wine. The singing bread was distributed, the
‘The Mass is finished,’ he declared. ‘Go in peace, but not just yet.’
Athelstan ushered his parishioners out into the nave. He dramatically pointed to the small, self-standing cubicle of oak which stood near the small Galilee porch on the far side of the church.
‘Remember,’ he declared, ‘on one side is a pew for the penitent. On the other, separated by a partition with that lattice grille in the centre, is the seat for the priest.’ He paused. ‘Crispin and Tab built that; it’s our new shriving pew. We must use it. We must all go to confession.’ He smiled at the red, chapped faces of his parishioners, mittened fingers scratching their hair or tugging at ragged cloaks against the cold. ‘I shall be hearing confessions every evening during the last week of Advent to shrive you of your sins.’ His smile widened. ‘I hope to
