‘Sir John sent you this.’ Flaxwith handed over a small cream-coloured scroll tied with a green ribbon. Athelstan undid this, offering his visitors blackjacks of ale. They refused but gratefully ladled out some of the hot soup while Athelstan read the itemized list of information about Humphrey Warde and his family. The details were succinct and clear. According to Sir John, Warde was a very successful spicer who’d mysteriously left his shop in Cheapside. Rumour had it that he’d fallen on hard times. However, Sir John had learnt on good authority from whisperers in the Guildhall that Warde still enjoyed a lucrative trade with the spicery department of Gaunt’s wardrobe as well as those of the royal household.
‘Spices be damned!’ Athelstan whispered, rolling up the scrap of parchment.
‘You sound exactly like Sir John.’ Flaxwith put down the bowl, smacking his lips.
‘Master Flaxwith, come with me. Leave one of your men to guard my house. He may eat and drink whatever, within reason. Bonaventure will tell me if he doesn’t.’ Athelstan grabbed his cloak, put on his stout walking boots and, followed by a surprised Flaxwith and one of his bailiffs, swept from the house. It was a black night, freezing hard, the ground under foot glitteringly treacherous, a trap for the unwary. The friar recalled the attack on him outside St Peter’s. Was that against him or someone else? To kill or to frighten? Athelstan hurried past his church, his mind teeming with problems and questions. God bless both him and them but what if Pike and the others were correct? Humphrey Warde could well be a spy, a cockle planted deep in Athelstan’s wheat field, a collector of intelligence for his sinister masters at the Savoy palace. Athelstan walked on. The snaking lanes and paths were deserted. Chinks of light gleamed at windows and doors. Snow slid from roofs peppered with icicles. A rat scrabbled across the frost. A black shadow pursued; in the corner of a runnel the hunted gave an eerie screech as it was caught. From somewhere a voice chanted a common song and then faded. Athelstan reached Rickett Lane. Down under the leaning, cramped, crooked little houses, much decayed and held up by crutches, Athelstan found Warde’s narrow, two-storey tenement. The front was boarded up but the door hung slightly open, unlatched and unlocked. A cold and unreasoning dread seized Athelstan as he pushed back the door. Inside the stone-flagged passageway was lit by greasy tallow candles in their niches. Somewhere a child whimpered. Athelstan paused. The house was cold but the air fragrant from the smells of crushed spices stored in the small shop immediately to his left. Athelstan was about to walk on when he glimpsed the shadow slumped between the two tables where the spices were prepared and weighed. He grabbed the box lantern off its hook just within the doorway and walked in. Humphrey Warde lay sprawled on his back, the crossbow bolt almost buried in his chest. The blood from the wound had clotted in an icy puddle. Athelstan murmured a prayer and moved on. Katherine Warde lay face down in the small kitchen, killed by a crossbow bolt to the back of her head. In a small cot beside her, baby Odo murmured fretfully.
‘Raise the hue and cry!’ Athelstan whispered to a shocked Flaxwith who had followed him in. ‘Shout “Harrow” and rouse the parish!’ He tapped the small cot. ‘Baby Odo needs attention.’ In the small comfortable solar above, Humphrey’s two children, Laurence and Margaret, had been struck down. Laurence almost blocked the threshold; the barb had sliced his throat, the blood splashing out to stain both lintel and floor. Margaret had been thrown back in the comfortable window seat, the embroidery she had been working on slipping through her fingers as the bolt smashed into her chest, a direct hit to the heart. Her eyes stared in glassy horror, her slack mouth encrusted with blood.
‘These are nightmares,’ Athelstan whispered. ‘The blackest sins have been committed here. The demons gather. God have mercy on us all.’ Flaxwith touched him on the shoulder and pointed to a parchment scrap nailed to a wooded settle nearby. Athelstan plucked it down and read the scrawl.
‘When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?
Now the world is ours and ours alone
To cut the Lords to heart and bone.’
Sir John Cranston gazed down at the four bloody corpses stretched out on a canvas sheet in the spice chamber. Athelstan had swiftly finished the rite for the dead and informed the coroner of what he had found. The lane outside was packed with people. The wardsmen had been alerted by the ringing cries of ‘Harrow! Harrow!’ Bladdersniff, the local beadle and constable, despite his topeish ways, had roused Athelstan’s parishioners. Baby Odo was being looked after by a family. Now the rest of the neighbourhood, armed with staves, clubs, cudgels, daggers and maces, gathered in the freezing cold.
‘Father, we are here.’
‘So you are.’ Athelstan beckoned Watkin and Pike into the small chamber. ‘Just one question.’ Athelstan’s face was drawn in anger, eyes hard, no smile or understanding look. ‘One question.’ Athelstan repeated. ‘On God’s eternal judgement on your souls, the truth!’ he hissed. ‘Are you responsible for this?’
Watkin and Pike gaped in horror at the blood-drenched corpses.
‘Under the ban!’ Watkin exclaimed. ‘They must have all been placed under the ban! Father, I swear, if they were, the order was not known or carried out by us.’ Watkin scratched his face. ‘The Wardes were a nuisance; they actually learnt very little, nothing more than most of the parish know. Well,’ he shuffled mud-caked boots, ‘until that attack on the Roundhoop.’
‘Juravisti iuramentum magnum et non poenitebet vos,’ Athelstan replied, quoting the solemn legal phrase. ‘You have sworn a great oath and you cannot repent of it, yes? You and yours,’ Athelstan pointed at both of them, ‘had nothing to do with this. If you did, I
