girl?'
That was too much for the coroner. He reined in his horse and glared at his cheery-faced tormentor.
'If I was pregnant by you,' he shouted back, 'then it would be a bloody great Barbary ape!'
And, amidst the raucous laughter which greeted this repartee, Athelstan and Cranston continued on their way to London Bridge. They crossed over quietly enough, Athelstan smiling as he passed through the gateway at the far end on to Fish Street Hill. He wondered how the little man was coping, remembered the heads and concluded it was an acquaintance he would not wish to renew.
The fine day had brought the crowds pouring into London, varlets, squires, and men-at-arms accompanying knights north to the great horse fair at Smithfield, after which there would be tournaments and tourneys. The streets were packed with men, helmeted and armed, and great destriers caparisoned in all the colours and awesome regalia of war moved majestically along Fish Street Hill. High in the saddle rode the knights, resplendent in coloured surcoats, their slit-eyed helmets swinging from saddle bows, bannered lances carried before them by squires. Hordes of others followed on foot; retainers gaudy in the livery of great lords, and the bright French silks of young gallants who swarmed into the city like butterflies under the warm sun and blue skies. They thronged the taverns, their coloured garments a sharp contrast to the dirty leather aprons of the blacksmiths and the short jerkins and caps of the apprentices.
As Cranston and Athelstan turned into Cheapside they saw the festive spirit had spread. Stalls were out and there were mummers performing miracle plays. Men shouted themselves hoarse proclaiming cock fights, dog battles, and savage contests never seen before between wild hogs and mangy bears. The crowds had impeded the dung carts and the piles of rubbish and refuse were everywhere, the flies rising in thick black swarms.
'God's teeth!' Cranston said. 'Come, Athelstan.'
They had to dismount and force their way through, past the Conduit and the Tun and up a small alleyway which led into the Bear and Ragged Staff. They stabled their horses and did not enter the tavern but passed into a pleasant garden beyond. A private place with a chessboard garden, a square divided into four plots by small gravelled walks and paths. These were fringed by a hedge of varying shrubs and small trees – white-thorn, privet, sweetbriar and the occasional rose – all entwined together. They sat against the wall on turfed seats in the shade, looking out over raised herb banks of hyssop, lavender and other fragrant shrubs. «A slattern brought a small table for Athelstan to rest his writing tray on, and of course a jug of wine and two goblets, though Athelstan shook his head and asked for water. They sat enjoying the fragrant smells and the coolness after their dusty ride through the city.
'I could stay here all day,' Athelstan said, leaning back against the wall. 'So quiet, so peaceful.'
'You would prefer to be back in your monastery?'
Athelstan smiled. 'I didn't say that!'
'But you do not like your work?'
'I did not say that either.' He turned and looked at Cranston, noting how the fat coroner's face was dewed with drops of sweat. 'Do you like yours, Sir John? The murder, the lies, the deceits? Do you remember,' Athelstan asked, 'I once quoted Bartholomew the Englishman?'
Cranston looked expectant.
'He wrote a book entitled The Nature of Things,' Athelstan continued, 'in which he described the planet Saturn as cold as ice, dark as night, and malignant as Satan. He claims that the planet governs the murderous intent of men.' Athelstan squinted, watching the bees hover round a succulent rose. 'I often think it governs mine. You heard Fortescue refer to my own brother?' Cranston nodded. 'My father owned a prosperous farm to the south, in Sussex. I was intended for the religious life. My brother was destined to till the soil. Now there's a road which goes by our farm down to the coast. We used to see the men-at-arms, the crossbow men on their way to the ports for the crossing to France, then we'd watch them return laden with booty. We heard the legends and romantic stories about knights in shining armour, war horses moving majestically across green fields.
'One spring I left my noviciate and came back to the farm. The next party of soldiers which passed, my brother and I joined. We sailed from Dover, landing at Honfleur, joining one of the many bands plundering across France.' Athelstan stared up at the sky. 'We were under the command of the Black Prince with his general Walter de Manny and others. Our dreams soon died. No chivalrous knights, no majestic armies moving according to rules, but horrible deeds, towns gutted and burnt, women and children slain. Then one day my brother and I, serving as archers, were caught outside a town by a group of French horsemen. We took up our positions, driving stakes into the ground in the usual pattern. The French charged sooner than we thought. They were amongst us, hacking and killing.'
Athelstan stopped to compose himself before continuing: 'When it was over, my brother was dead and I had aged a hundred years. I might as well tell you, Cranston. I returned home. I'll never forget my father's face. I'd never seen him like that. He just stared at me. My mother? All she could do was crouch in a corner and sob. I think she cried till the day she died. My father soon followed her to the grave. I went back to my Order. Oh, they accepted me but life was harsh. I had to do private and public penance, take a solemn vow that, after I was ordained, I would accept whatever duties my superiors gave me.'
Athelstan snorted with laughter and leaned forward, his arms crossed, as if he was talking to himself and had forgotten the coroner sitting beside him. 'Whatever duties! Hard study and the most menial work the house could provide; cleaning sewers, digging ditches and, after ordination, I must go here, I must go there! Eventually I protested so Father Prior took me for a walk in the meadows and said I was to prove my worth with one final task.'
He leaned back against the wall. 'My final task was St Erconwald's in Southwark.' Athelstan stared across at Cranston. 'My father prior chose well. My parents accused me of the murder of my brother. Every day in Southwark someone dies. Men and women drenched with drink, quarrelling and violently fighting each other. In some alleyway or runnel a man hacked to death for stealing ale. A woman slashed from jaw to groin found floating in a ditch. And then you, Sir John! Just in case I should forget, or withdraw, or hide behind my church walls, you are here, ready to lead me along the streets, remind me that there is no escape from murder, from witnessing the greatest sin of all – a man slaying his brother!'
Cranston drained his cup of wine and said, 'Perhaps your father prior is wiser than you think.'
'What do you mean?'
'I am writing a treatise, have been for years, on the maintenance of the king's peace in London. The most terrible crime is murder. The belief that a man can kill someone, walk away, and say, 'I am not responsible'. I am no theologian, Athelstan, nor a scripture scholar, but the first crime committed after Eden was one of murder: Cain plotting to slay his brother Abel and afterwards claiming he knew nothing about it.' Cranston grinned. 'The first great mystery – I mean murder. But nothing like what happened to your brother.' He turned and spat. 'That wasn't murder. That was young dreams and hot blood, minds crammed with stupid stories about Troy and Knights of the Round Table. No, murder is different. And why do men commit murder, Athelstan? For profit? And what will stop men murdering? Hanging, torture?' He shrugged. 'Go down to Newgate, as we will do later. The prison is packed with murderers, the gibbets are heavy like apple trees in the autumn, the branches bend with their rotten fruit.'
Cranston moved closer, his face more serious than Athelstan had ever seen it. 'What will prevent murder, robbery, arson, is when the perpetrator knows, believes, accepts in his heart, that he will be caught and he will be punished. The more vigilant we are, the fewer murders, the fewer deaths. The fewer women slashed from jaw to groin, the fewer men with their throats cut, hanging in a garret or swinging from some beam under a bridge. Your prior knows, Athelstan, that with your guilt and deep sense of justice, you are well suited to such a task.'
He laughed abruptly and went back to this wine cup. 'If your order produced more men like you, Athelstan, and fewer preachers and theologians, London would be a safer place. That's the reason I have brought you to this quiet garden, not to some tavern where I would drink myself senseless. No, I want to plot and catch an evil murderer. A man who has slain Thomas Springall and blamed it on poor Brampton, afterwards making his death look like suicide. I believe the same villain executed Vechey and strung his corpse up like carrion under London Bridge.'
Athelstan drank greedily from the water cup, refusing to look at Cranston. He had talked about his brother's death, and for the first time ever someone had not laid the blame at his door. Athelstan knew it would make no immediate difference but a seed had been planted in his soul. The possibility that he had committed a sin but no murder. That he would atone for it and so the slate would be wiped clean. He put down the cup.
'You say Springall was murdered by someone else, not Brampton?' he asked abruptly.
'I do,' said Cranston. 'And so do you. And how can we prove that? The loose thread in this rotten tapestry is
