Athelstan rubbed his nose with the end of the quill.
All of these, or one of them, could be the killer, but why? Are the murders of these two young women linked to the mystery of their mother’s disappearance?
Athelstan suppressed a shiver. ‘Like time repeating itself,’ he whispered. Guinevere the Golden had tried to escape, only to disappear. Athelstan nursed a deep suspicion that the poor woman had been killed. Now the same fate had befallen her daughters.
Item – The death of Sir Stephen Chandler? He was a fat, prosperous knight preparing to bathe himself and enjoy a cup of claret. Who poisoned that wine? Not the jug, but the cup. Which means that the assassin must have entered that chamber and mixed a powerful poison either just before or just after the wine was poured. Master Rolles? No, too obvious. So who?
Athelstan closed his eyes and tried to imagine that chamber. If someone came in, they would have to act very quickly to place powder in a goblet whilst that sharp-eyed knight was preparing for his bath. One mistake, the smallest of errors, and the murderer would have trapped himself.
So how was it done? And what did Sir Stephen feel so guilty about? Did he kill those young women? Had he been out in the yard with his crossbow, which has now gone missing? Did his quarrel with Beatrice and Clarice during the Great Ratting spill over into violence?
Item – The great robbery which took place twenty years ago. Was that just history or did it play a vital role in these grisly occurrences?
Athelstan was beginning to believe there was a connection. He looked up, and from outside came the haunting cry of an owl. The Dominican recalled a lecture given by Prior Anselm on how unforgiven sin, ancient and reeking, never died, but lurked in the undergrowth of life, ready to trap you, to bring you down. Was that happening now? Some twenty years after the Lombard treasure disappeared, along with the boatmen and those two young knights from Kent? Were such ancient sins flocking back like carrion crows to pick over the bones of the present?
Athelstan put his quill down and carefully reread what he had written. One thing did puzzle him about that robbery so many years ago. Why had only two knights been chosen to guard the treasure? And why those two? He rose from the table, stretched and went to kneel beside Bonaventure. The cat hardly stirred. Athelstan crossed himself and, looking up at the Crucifix nailed to the wall, began to recite his evening prayers, concluding with the De Profundis for his brother Francis and his parents. Athelstan tried to ignore the sins of others as he concentrated on his own, and strove to make reparation for them: the meeting with those knights who had fought so many years ago reminded him of how he had lured Francis into the armies of the King and taken him to France only to be killed, coming back to break his parents’ hearts with the news about the death of their beloved younger son. Athelstan leaned back on his heels. Such sins, forgiven or not, never left him.
His mind drifted back to the Oyster Wharf and the night the treasure had been stolen, when so many lives had changed for ever. Athelstan prided himself on his logic, on the way he argued a case based on evidence. He was wary of so-called mystical theories and spurious spiritual feelings. Nevertheless, although he fought the temptation, he could not avoid the conclusion that now, in Southwark, at that tavern the Night in Jerusalem, the sins of the past had lunged back to haunt the living.
Chapter 6
Sir John Cranston, Coroner of the City of London, sat in his court chamber at the Guildhall overlooking Cheapside. He had arrived just before dawn resplendent in his grey hose and quilted jacket of dark murrey lined with silver piping over a cambric shirt laced high under the chin. He sat in his throne-like chair behind the great oaken table on the dais at the far end of his chamber. On his left, a copy of the Statutes and Ordinances of the City; on his right, his broad leather war belt. The writing tray in front of him contained sheets of vellum, sharpened quills, a razor-edged knife, pumice stone and a shaker of fine sand. Just below the dais, sitting on a high stool stooped over his writing desk, sat Simon the scrivener, Cranston’s clerk. The day’s proceedings were about to begin and, beneath his straggling white hair, Simon’s lined, chalky-white face was severe. Nonetheless, he kept his head down to hide his enjoyment. Simon liked nothing better than to regale his wife and large family with the doings and sayings of Sir John Cranston. Today promised to provide fresh amusement, Cranston seemed in fine fettle and some of the cases were set to be highly disputatious.
‘Did you send to the Chancery of Secrets,’ Cranston barked, ‘and tell those lazy buggers I want that document?’
‘I did, Sir John,’ Simon answered mournfully, shaking his head. ‘But you know these Chancery clerks – it’s sign this and sign that and by whose authority?’ Simon waved one ink-stained hand. ‘And so on and so on.’
‘Good, good,’ Cranston murmured. He scratched his head, his hand going under the table for the miraculous wine skin.
The murderous business at the Night in Jerusalem had perplexed him so much he had decided not to stay there but to return home to the loving embrace of the Lady Maud and the welcoming screams of the two poppets.
‘Lovely boys, lovely boys,’ the coroner breathed.
‘Sir John?’
‘Nothing.’
Cranston straightened up in the chair, took a swig from the miraculous wine skin and, as usual, offered it to Simon, who, as usual, politely refused.
‘Right,’ Cranston declared, ‘let’s begin. Tell Flaxwith to bring up the first.’
Simon rang the hand bell. Flaxwith, breathing heavily, and
