‘And you, Master Rolles. Where were you?’
The taverner got to his feet and went to the door. He shouted for Tobias who served as cook and cask-man and returned to his chair. A short while later a young man with spiked red hair, a leather apron wrapped about him, came into the solar.
‘Tobias, tell the gentlemen here where I was after the Great Ratting.’
The man scratched his face with bloodied fingers, then played with the flesher’s knife in the pocket of his apron.
‘The fight broke out,’ he mumbled. ‘Yes, that’s right, the fight broke out, but you were busy in the kitchen. By the time you returned, Toadflax was dead. You had the corpse laid out in the tap room, then you returned to the kitchen.’
‘Yes,’ Rolles declared exasperatedly, ‘and what happened then?’
‘You told me off for letting some of the pork burn, for not removing it from the spit.’
‘And then?’
‘You stayed there. Something had gone wrong with the tourt, the brown bread,’ Tobias explained. ‘It hadn’t risen in the oven.’
‘Thank you, Master Tobias,’ Cranston snapped. ‘You can go!’
For a while, the coroner just sat drumming his fingers on the table, watching Athelstan, head bowed, his quill racing across the parchment held down by weights at each corner. The friar was now chronicling everything that had happened. Cranston was glad, for he could make no sense of this chain of events.
‘Sir John,’ Sir Maurice asserted himself, ‘you have mentioned our failings, but what about Sir Stephen? His corpse lies cold and stiffening in an outhouse.’
‘For all I know, Sir Stephen could be a murderer,’ Cranston retorted. He stopped himself just in time from openly speculating whether Chandler had gone out to the yard last night of his own accord or been sent by his comrades.
‘Talking of who was where,’ Rolles squirmed in his chair, ‘Mother Veritable has been very truthful with you, Sir John. Did she tell you she was here, in the tavern this morning, when Sir Stephen died?’
Athelstan’s head came up, his eyes narrowing. Rolles was obviously losing his temper, quietly seething, alarmed at how much Mother Veritable’s girl Donata had confessed.
‘What are you saying?’ Athelstan asked.
‘Two of her girls were slain here.’ Rolles couldn’t keep the spite out of his voice. ‘It was well known that Chandler had custom with them. He was soliciting both last night, whilst she was in the tavern this morning when he was killed.’
Athelstan returned to his writing.
‘And there’s someone else.’ Rolles licked his lips. ‘The man sheltering in your church, who calls himself the Misericord.’
‘You know him well?’ Cranston asked.
‘He’s a merry rogue,’ Rolles conceded. ‘He was at the Great Ratting last night. He often comes to this tavern.’ He paused, collecting his thoughts. ‘He, too, had words with Beatrice and Clarice – that was before he tricked Toadflax into wearing that sheath.’
Athelstan returned to his writing, making careful note of what he heard. Cranston pushed back his chair, rose to his feet and walked down to the window overlooking the garden. The day was dying, the darkness creeping in, the river mist thickening.
‘Sir John, are you finished?’ Master Rolles called out.
‘Is it true,’ Cranston asked, not turning round, ‘that there were sightings twenty years ago of Richard Culpepper and Guinevere the Golden?’
‘As many as leaves on the tree,’ Sir Maurice replied. ‘A lavish reward was offered. Nothing substantial ever came of it.’
‘On that afternoon,’ Cranston asked, ‘when Culpepper disappeared, did he pack all his belongings?’
‘Yes, everything.’
‘Including the truth,’ Cranston snapped back. ‘Gentlemen, we are finished, but none of you are to leave this tavern or Southwark without my permission. Oh.’ He smiled falsely at Rolles. ‘The dead women’s jewellery is to be handed back to Mother Veritable.’ He waved a hand. ‘As for Chandler’s corpse, do what you want.’
They left the Night in Jerusalem. Cranston wanted to go to a cookshop, loudly proclaiming he wished to eat in good company and not with a coven of hypocrites.
‘Sir John,’ Athelstan pulled up his cowl, ‘I would like to go down to the riverside. I want to see the place where the great robbery took place. Do you know it?’
‘The Oyster Wharf,’ Cranston replied, ‘or so common report had it. I also know where we can eat.’
They set off through the streets, now emptying as night fell and a freezing river mist swirled in. Stalls were being put away; only a few egg-sellers, carrying their baskets, shouted ‘Ten for a penny!’ Cranston led Athelstan through a maze of alleyways and streets, murky and dirty, reeking of all sorts of offal, and back on to the thoroughfare which wound down to the river. They went along Mincing Lane, past a small chantry chapel which, Cranston explained, had been built in memory of the Earl of Pembroke, who had been killed in a tournament on his wedding day. The streets grew noisier as they approached the riverside. The rippers, the gutters of fish, were still trying to sell what produce was left. The weigher of the beam or tron was busy checking the weights and measures for cheese, butter and wax. At last they reached the Oyster Wharf. Further down stood a great windmill; even so, the air reeked with the stench from the nearby tanneries. Fishermen in their hures, shabby caps of sheepswool, were preparing for a night’s fishing. Near the steps, the boatmen had brought in their catches of oysters, whelks and mussels, laying their baskets before the Serjeant of the Whelks and the Assayer of the Oysters, two officials who guaranteed the quality of each catch before they were sold at fourpence a bushel.
The officials stood under a leather awning. Cranston and Athelstan joined them, eating oysters and onions, a hog’s head serving as a table, whilst the coroner shared out his miraculous wine skin. Further down, young boys with baskets ran about offering salmon,
