manner.
‘You must be. .?’
‘Close to my eighty-eighth winter.’ The old woman laughed softly. ‘I was barely sixteen when I lost the love of my life.’ The bony, black-spotted, vein-streaked hand clutching her companion squeezed hard. ‘And this is Eleanor, our daughter.’ Anselm stood surprised and shocked.
‘Magister?’
‘Not here, Stephen, sisters.’ Anselm grasped both of them by the hand. ‘Stephen, run ahead and tell Master Robert at The Unicorn that he has guests.’
‘But not the royal clerk,’ Eleanor Picard declared firmly. ‘Not him!’
‘Why not?’
‘I trust you, exorcist, we trust you, novice, but not him.’
Anselm glanced at Cutwolf, gently shaking his head. The henchman just lifted his hand in reply, then he and Bolingbrok sauntered back into the cemetery to join their companions. Stephen hurried off. Master Robert and Alice had returned to The Unicorn. Busy in the taproom, hair a little dishevelled, her pretty face tickled with sweat and her eyes rounded in mock grief, Alice confessed, flicking flour from her sleeves, how she’d had to distract herself while her beloved had disappeared without a word.
Stephen recited a list of apologies, which only put Alice into a fit of giggles. She kissed him merrily on the mouth and demanded to know why he was in such haste. When he told her, Alice immediately called her father and, dragging Stephen in to help, they prepared the most private of the window-seats. Anselm eventually arrived with the two ladies and Stephen joined them behind the screen. Now he could tease Alice, shaking his head in mock solemnity at her enquiries. Both women refused to eat, saying they would do so later in the day at their convent, although they gratefully accepted a jug of Rhenish and a dish of marzipan which Joanne merrily declared to be her favourite. Anselm did not need to question them. Eleanor Picard, once she had taken a deep mouthful of the sweet white wine, moved the decorated horn box with its bright tallow candle to the centre of the table. She talked swiftly and pointedly. She declared how her mother had been Puddlicot’s mistress after he had returned to London from Flanders. A carpenter by trade from a reputable Oxford family, Puddlicot had dabbled in the export of wool, which had been severely disrupted by Edward I’s sharp disagreement with the Flemings. Puddlicot arrived in London full of anger at the King and determined to make a fortune at the Crown’s expense by robbing the crypt. Eleanor described how Puddlicot had suborned the leading monks of Westminster and others, enticing them into his outrageous scheme. Finally she explained how both Puddlicot and his gang had been broken by a royal clerk, John Drokensford, later Bishop of Bath and Wells.
‘My father, as you know,’ Eleanor fought back tears, ‘fled for sanctuary at Saint Michael’s, Candlewick.’ She took a deep breath. ‘He sheltered there. The parson at the time, Henry Spigurnel, gave him sanctuary.’
‘Was he part of your father’s coven?’ Anselm asked.
‘I think so. I suspect he helped my father hide most of the looted treasure.’
‘Where?’
‘Richard never told me,’ Joanne Picard whispered. Despite her age, Stephen realized that her wits were sharp, even wary of eavesdroppers in the tavern.
‘What did he tell you?’
‘How the treasure lay under the protection of God’s guardian!’
‘Saint Michael the Archangel?’
‘I suppose so.’ Joanne laughed quietly. ‘I visited him when he was in sanctuary. Puddlicot was a true roaring boy. He didn’t give a fig about life or death. He told me how he’d buried two pieces of treasure, the Cross of Neath and Queen Eleanor’s dagger, in the garden of our house in Hagbut Lane.’
‘The same one occupied by Rishanger?’
‘The same,’ Joanne agreed. ‘Richard told me that and how he had left me a message with those two items about how he’d put the rest of the treasure under the protection of God’s guardian. He said he would give me further details but later that day he was taken by force. During the attack Parson Henry Spigurnel was injured and died shortly afterwards.’
‘Spigurnel resisted?’
‘Yes, yes, he did. He received a blow to the back of his head which staved his crown in. He never regained either his sense or wits but died in his sleep. I never saw my beloved again.’ The old woman wiped her tear- streaked face. ‘They took Richard to the Tower. They confined him close. Once they had finished — and I know they did not break him — they bound him in a wheelbarrow and paraded him through the city before hanging him on the gallows outside the main gate of the abbey. The King let his corpse dangle for a day then ordered Richard’s body to be flayed and the skin fixed to a door close to the abbey crypt.’ The old woman swallowed hard. ‘They hired a skinner from the Shambles to do it. He peeled Richard’s skin as you would an apple, hanging it like a costume next to Richard’s blood-red corpse.’ She paused, crossing herself. ‘They later cut his corpse down and carted it like a hunk of meat to the Chapel of the Damned. I believe you saw us there.’
‘And so it ended.’ Eleanor spoke up. ‘My mother was pregnant with me. She searched the garden of her house but could find nothing.’
‘I had to be careful,’ the ancient one intervened. ‘The King’s surveyors were watching. I had no choice but to return to my family in Somerset. My father was kindly; he supported me. Eleanor was born. I eventually received my inheritance and moved back to London to work at what I am gifted — a seamstress. The old King was dead; his son then ruled. I lived comfortably enough.’ She paused. ‘I truly loved Puddlicot.’ Only then did her voice break. ‘I truly did. I visited our old haunts. Of course, all those involved in his great escapade were either dead or witless. I heard his skin had been left to rot on the abbey door.’
Joanne caught her breath and greedily slurped from the goblet. ‘I also heard the stories. How both the monks’ cemetery as well as that at Saint Michael’s, Candlewick were haunted. By then my lover’s name had entered legend and folklore. According to the common tongue Puddlicot’s ghost could not, would not, rest.’ She paused, head down, her thin, bony shoulders shaking.
‘The harrowing of hell has begun,’ a voice lisped close to Stephen, ‘sharper than the eagle’s talon is the vengeance which ploughs the infernal meadows. The trumpet sounds, a clarion call. Stephen, the dead gather. The fires burn!’
The novice glanced in the direction of the window and saw faces pressed there, eyes beseeching, lips curled in supplication.
‘I tried to make peace,’ Eleanor’s voice rasped, drawing Stephen from his reverie. ‘I wanted to live a normal life. I became betrothed but that was not to be. As I grew older I became more and more aware of my father, his spirit, the evil he had done. I visited the Franciscans at their house in Greyfriars and confessed all. The good brothers gave me wise counsel. I decided on a life of reparation. I sold all my possessions. I joined the Minoresses and entered their house at Aldgate on one condition: that my mother was given a corrody there, a pension. The good sisters agreed.’ She paused. Stephen ignored the tapping on the window, like that of a sharp-beaked bird or the fingers of someone desperate to get in.
‘We settled down. We loved the horarium of the house. Brother Anselm, we found peace until the present troubles began. We heard of Rishanger, his murder in the abbey, the two treasures found and the stories about the hauntings at Saint Michael’s.’
Stephen tried to shake off the keen cold; he peered around the screen in the hope of catching a glimpse of Alice. Cutwolf stood there, deep in conversation with Master Robert. The henchman glanced up. Stephen withdrew behind the screen.
‘We watched you,’ Eleanor continued, ‘we heard of you, Brother Anselm. We needed to trust you.’
‘But not Sir Miles Beauchamp?’
‘Oh no, not the royal clerk. Drokensford was a royal clerk. He dragged Puddlicot from the sanctuary, loaded him with chains and sent him to the Tower. After he had been condemned, Drokensford put him in a wheelbarrow — an object of derision — and had him carted through the streets to a gruesome death.’ Eleanor sipped at her wine. ‘Drokensford never allowed my mother to visit her beloved. Afterwards, I understand, he harassed her constantly.’
‘Just for a while.’ Joanne spoke up. ‘He thought I had information.’ The ancient one grinned, pert as a sparrow. ‘I did,’ she sighed, ‘but what was the use?’ She blinked, staring up above their heads as if searching for something. ‘Richard organized that robbery. He brought the treasure to our house and then moved it to Saint
