The Straw Men

dead. A house of blood, Athelstan brooded, and he wished to be rid of it.

They reached the entrance to the Salt Tower. Cranston gestured at Samuel, who led them up the freezing spiral staircase. Athelstan gripped the guide rope fastened to the wall. Torches flared and danced in the brisk draughts which came whipping through the narrow windows and murder slits. They reached the first storey. Another set of worn steps led up to an iron-studded door, black with age, its great iron ring flaked with rust. Samuel knocked then kicked with his booted foot, shouting Eli’s name. There was no reply. Again, knocking and kicking brought no response. Samuel scrabbled at the broad eye slit, yet even his dagger was unable to pull back the wooden slat.

‘Stuck with the dirt of ages,’ Samuel muttered, stepping back. Cranston tried but could gain no response. Others were gathering in the entrance below. Rossleyn came up the stairs, shaking the snow from his cloak. The door was examined.

Rossleyn peered through the keyhole before banging with the pommel of his dagger at the top and bottom of the door. ‘Locked and bolted,’ he announced. ‘The key’s there. I’m sure the bolts are in their clasps.’

The stairwell was becoming thronged. Athelstan went and looked in a narrow recess close by; there was nothing but dust. He whispered to Cranston then pushed himself by the others, going down out into the mist-hung morning. He walked around the Tower, trying to ignore the rank odours from a nearby midden heap. He paused and stared up at the window to Eli’s chamber, its heavy wooden shutters sealing what must be a simple box-shaped opening.

‘Probably shuttered both inside and out,’ Athelstan muttered. He studied the sheer face of the Tower wall. ‘And that would be very difficult,’ he whispered, ‘to scale, especially during a snow storm at the dead of night.’

‘Are you praying, Brother?’ Cranston, his face almost hidden by the low-pulled beaver hat and the high muffler on his cloak, stood grinning at him.

‘No, Sir John, just preparing to meet another child of Cain. That door is locked and bolted from the inside. If Eli is in there, he must be either dead or senseless — probably the former. A young man, the victim of a knife or club rather than any falling sickness. I hope for the best but plan for the worst. You have delivered my instruction. .?’

‘The door will be forced but no one will enter before we do,’ Cranston agreed. ‘Rosselyn is acting all officious but this tower falls within my jurisdiction. .’ Cranston broke off, grabbing Athelstan by the arm and leading him back as the sound of shouts and a dull thudding trailed from the Tower. Someone had piled rubbish into a makeshift brazier. Cranston and Athelstan stood with the gathering crowd warming their hands. The friar let his mind drift back to the very start of all this — that attack near Aldgate, or was it something before that? Athelstan suspected it did. The malignant root to all this still laid hidden, murky and tangled, richly nourished by treachery. Who was the traitor in Gaunt’s entourage who had informed the Upright Men about that cavalcade, the Flemings and their mysterious prisoner? In turn, who was the Judas among the Upright Men, the one who revealed to Thibault that fateful meeting at the Roundhoop? Were the Warde family really spies sent into the parish of St Erconwald’s to ferret out such mischief? A shout followed by a crack from the Tower startled Athelstan from his meditation. Rosselyn appeared in the doorway.

‘Sir John, Brother Athelstan, the door is forced. You’d best come. .’

Athelstan and Cranston squeezed by the broken door into the Tower chamber. The room was poorly lit. All torches and rush lights had long burnt out, while the braziers were simply mounds of dead grey ash. Athelstan walked carefully across the squelching rushes. Eli’s corpse lay almost in the centre of the chamber; the gore from the hideous wound to his face had congealed into a fearsome, dark red mask. Athelstan crouched, his stomach heaving. Eli’s face had been shattered by the crossbow bolt embedded deep between his eyes. The barb had ploughed a furiously bloody furrow; the face had almost collapsed, the bolt thrust so deep the small, stiffened feathers of its flight had merged with the ruptured skin. Eli was fully dressed, his dagger still in its belt scabbard, boots on his feet. A wine cup lay nearby where it had apparently rolled from his fingers. Athelstan picked this up and sniffed it but caught only the slightly bitter smell of dried claret. He murmured a prayer, blessed the corpse and stared round that bleak chamber. Others tried to come in but, at Athelstan’s hushed request, Cranston ordered them to stay outside in the stairwell. Both coroner and friar rigorously scrutinized that shabby room — its flaking walls, the mush of reeds on the floor, the untidy cot bed with its grey linen bolster. Eli’s saddlebag and purse contained paltry items: a paternoster ring, some coins, a Santiago medal and a greasy, tattered manuscript, its pages bound by twine containing extracts of some mystery play clumsily copied from an original. Athelstan picked up the small wine jug and platter; he sniffed at these but detected nothing untoward. Athelstan then joined Cranston by the door, now leaning against the wall to the left of the entrance. Ancient and sturdy, the door was at least five inches thick; its stiffened leather hinges had cracked, as had the bolts at both top and bottom. The lock, too, was wrenched, the heavy key, still inserted, twisted by the pounding when the door was forced.

‘Jesu Miserere,’ Athelstan whispered. ‘How could this happen?’ He studied the eyelet; the slit was about six inches wide and the same length. The moveable slat itself had a heavy stud screwed into one end so the person inside could pull it backwards and forwards. Athelstan grasped this. He pulled with all his might but he couldn’t move it; nor could Cranston.

‘Stiffened with age,’ Rossleyn stepped into the chamber, ‘the wood’s become wedged tight, a common problem in the Tower.’ He tapped the door. ‘The cold, the damp.’ His voice trailed off.

Athelstan, shaking his head, walked back and crouched by Eli’s corpse. From the stairwell he heard the moans and cries of Eli’s companions as the news of the murder spread. The shouting drew closer. The Straw Men gathered in the doorway. Rossleyn ordered them to stay back but Samuel and the rest spilled into the chamber. Rachael, her red hair all loose, knelt beside Athelstan, sharply rocking backwards and forwards. Judith staggered towards the bed and simply lay down, thumb to her mouth, staring at the corpse. Samuel took one look at the shattered face and turned away, one hand over his mouth as he stumbled to the jake’s pot to be sick. Samson and Gideon crouched by Rachael, comforting her, whispering that Judith needed her. Athelstan swiftly intoned the De Profundis and the requiem. He blessed the corpse and got up. ‘Sir John,’ he declared, ‘we are finished here.’ He helped Rachael to her feet, beckoning at the others to gather around.

‘Eli, last night did any of you visit him?’

‘No,’ they chorused.

‘And nothing strange,’ Cranston insisted, ‘nothing untoward occurred?’

‘Nothing, Sir John.’ Samuel wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Eli retired. He left the refectory just as the bells were tolling for Compline.’ He shook his head, ‘I do not know, I cannot explain. .’

Athelstan let them go and called over Rosselyn. The captain of archers sauntered across.

‘Brother?’

‘The fire last night?’

‘From what I know, a simple accident. A candle fell out of a lantern box on to some dry straw. The fire was fierce but soon doused. Why?’ Rosselyn indicated with his head. ‘Do you think this was somehow connected?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Anything else, Brother?’

‘No, no thank you.’ Athelstan paused and watched him walk away. ‘Pardon my lies, Sir John, but I think it was,’ Athelstan whispered, ‘and I’m not too sure how. As for Eli’s murder, I wonder. Was he slain because he saw something when hiding under that table? He was the nearest to the rood screen and Hell’s mouth.’

‘Possible,’ Cranston conceded.

‘And the greater mystery,’ Athelstan declared. ‘How was a young man in a locked, secured chamber, its door firmly sealed, the windows,’ he pointed, ‘shuttered within and without — how could such a young man be murdered by a crossbow bolt?’

Athelstan repeated the same question sometime later in Thibault’s chancery chamber, a comfortable, elegant room draped in heavy ornate tapestries with the richest Turkey cloths across the floor. Oaken furniture gleamed in the light of pink-coloured candles and the glare of flames roaring in the stone hearth. The Master of Secrets, half man, half shadow, Athelstan thought, sat enthroned behind a polished walnut table. He was swathed in a fur-lined cloak. On either side sat Oudernarde and Cornelius. Behind him stood Lascelles with Rosselyn guarding the door. Athelstan repeated the question about Eli’s death. Cranston slurped noisily from his goblet of hot posset, drawing a look of distaste from the prim-faced Cornelius. Thibault threw down his quill pen and leaned over the table, his soft face lit by the flaring candles. Despite the opulence, the heavily scented warm air, the crackling fire and the hot posset warming his belly, the Dominican sensed the ice-cold harshness of Thibault’s soul.