‘Wait a minute,’ Cranston shouted. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Peter the Prophet,’ the man replied in a squeaky voice.
‘Go on,’ Cranston said.
Simon described the case – how Eleanor had accused Mary of stealing a yard of silk, Mary had hired Peter the Prophet, told him secrets about Eleanor and bribed him to get close to her to persuade her that Mary had not stolen the silk. The case went on and on, Eleanor and Mary screaming at each other, Peter the Prophet protesting his innocence. Cranston at last grew tired of it all and beat the table.
‘So, you say you are a prophet?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘So, you know how much I am going to fine you then?’
‘Er…’
‘Tell me,’ Cranston asked sweetly, ‘what’s going to happen here?’
Peter the Prophet decided silence was the best defence.
‘Very well.’ Cranston banged the gavel again. ‘Mary Dodsworth, you are fined five shillings for stealing the silk and hiring the prophet. Peter the Prophet, you are fined the same for being a charlatan. Eleanor Battlewaite, two shillings for being stupid enough to believe him and for wasting my time.’
Cranston promptly dismissed them, and they were followed by another fortune-teller, Richard the baker, who believed he could predict events by cutting up a loaf. He was fined and dismissed, as were two pastry cooks who had tried to sell pies as venison when they contained rancid beef. Flaxwith cleared the room and Cranston sank back in his chair.
‘Satan’s tits! I’ve had enough of this. I am going to pray.’
‘The usual church, Sir John?’
‘Yes,’ Cranston replied. ‘The usual church.’
The coroner went down the stairs and out across the courtyard into Cheapside. It was a fine day. The clouds had broken, the sky was blue, and the clamour in the marketplace was almost drowned by the clear tolling of church bells. For a while Cranston stood at the entrance of the Guildhall courtyard. He loved this scene. The market horn had sounded and another day’s trading had begun. On either side of Cheapside’s great thoroughfare, stalls and shops were open and apprentices were already shouting, eager to catch the eye of citizens who flocked in for the day’s trading. The cookshops were busy and the sweet smell of baked pastry and spiced meat curled everywhere, mixing with the more unpleasant odours of horse dung, wet straw, and the piled midden heaps awaiting the dung carts. A group of knights rode by, sitting arrogantly in their high peaked saddles, a glorious array of colour, gleaming harness and the glint of spur, dagger and the bits of their horses. Alongside them ran huntsmen and dog whippers leading the hounds out to the fields to the north of the City. Troops of prisoners were being escorted by bailiffs of the Corporation eager to deposit their charges at the Fleet, Marshalsea, or the prison barges waiting on the Thames to take them downriver for trial at Westminster.
Cranston walked across Cheapside. Stall owners shouted and boasted; already a quarrel had broken out regarding a barrel of salt from Poitou, whilst further down Cheapside, the Pie-Powder Court, which governed the marketplace, was arbitrating over whether a piece of leather was bazen, sheepskin or, as the trader claimed, from Cordova in Spain. People were being fastened to the stocks or led up to stand in the cage above the Great Conduit. Two ungainly figures hobbled towards Cranston. He groaned and tried to quicken his pace but his pursuers were relentless and blocked his passage.
‘Good morrow, Sir John. And how is the Lady Maud?’
Cranston glared at these two professional beggars, Leif the lame, who had one leg but could move swifter than many a man with two, and Rawbum who, many years previously, drunk as a sot, had sat down in a pan of burning oil and lived never to forget it.
‘Sir John, we have composed a new song.’
Cranston stared unblinkingly, and without further invitation, Leif, one hand on his chest, scarred face staring up at the sky, began the most awful singing, while Rawbum played a tune on a reedy flute.
‘Very good, very good,’ Cranston intervened, thrusting a coin into each of their hands. ‘I’ve heard enough, now bugger off.’
The two beggars, chorusing their thanks, would have pursued Sir John even further, but the coroner turned threateningly, and they took the hint and headed back towards a pastry shop, whilst Sir John, like an arrow from a bow, sped across Cheapside and into the welcoming warmth of his chosen tavern, the Lamb of God. Once ensconced in his favourite window seat overlooking the herb garden, Sir John welcomed the loving ministrations of the ale-wife, who placed in front of him a tankard of frothing ale and strips of bread covered with honey. He drank and ate staring out into the garden, its bright greenery hidden by a sharp frost. The broad carp pond was still covered with a skin of ice and Cranston realised that it would be some time before the sun’s warmth was felt. He chatted about this to the ale-wife as he stared around the
