would have admired. He slept fitfully that night, not even thinking of climbing the tower steps to study the stars. He’d tossed and turned on his pallet bed, fuming with rage at the sinful desecration of his cemetery. The next morning he rose early, opened the church, perfunctorily fed Bonaventura, skipped through the morning office and tried hard to concentrate whilst he celebrated Mass. Bonaventura, like the cunning cat he was, seemed to sense his patron’s change of mood and quietly stole away. At the end of the Mass, before he gave the final benediction, Athelstan spoke in sharp, terse tones.
‘Our cemetery has been violated once again,’ he declared. ‘I, Athelstan, priest of this parish, say this, as God is my witness — no further burials will take place until the ground has been re-consecrated and this problem resolved!’ He glared round at his small congregation. ‘I will go to the highest in the land, be it the young King himself or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Guards will be set and, God forgive me, I shall see these villains hang!’
His parishioners had quietly left and Athelstan, now calming, felt a twinge of guilt as he glared down at Tosspot’s ravaged grave.
‘Your fiery temper, priest’ he muttered to himself, ‘is no more curbed than it was twenty years ago. And your tongue is as sharp as ever.’
He breathed deeply. Yes, he had been too hard, he reflected, far too brusque with Benedicta and the others, but especially with the widow. She had stayed for a few seconds after Mass, not to gossip but simply to say that the chief bailiff of the ward, Master Bladdersniff, had accosted her on her way to church. He wished to see Athelstan on an urgent matter.
‘Oh, yes,’ Athelstan muttered. ‘Master Bladdersniff, as usual, closing the stable door after the horse has bolted!’ Athelstan felt a fresh surge of rage. If St Erconwald’s had been one of the wealthy city churches, guards would have been set immediately and this would never have happened. Even Cranston, that fat-arsed coroner, hadn’t helped, wrapped up like some mewling maid in his own concerns. Athelstan stared once more round the cemetery, it was so cold, so bleak. He remembered Father Peter and envied the Woodforde priest’s quiet domesticity. ‘Bloody Cranston!’ Athelstan muttered. ‘Bloody murder! Bloody Tower! The bloody hearts of men and their evil doings!’ He kicked the icy mud. ‘I am a priest,’ he hissed to himself. ‘Not some sheriff’s man.’
‘Father? Father Athelstan?’
The friar turned and glared at the young pursuivant who stood, cloaked and hooded, behind him. ‘Yes, man, what is it?’
‘I have been sent from the Tower by Sir John Cranston. He wants to see you in the Holy Lamb tavern off Cheapside.’
‘Tell My Lord Coroner,’ Athelstan retorted, ‘that I’ll be there when I’m there, and he’d better be sober!’
The young man looked surprised and hurt. Athelstan grimaced and spread his hands.
‘Lord, man, I’m sorry. Look, tell Sir John I’ll be there when I can.’
He took a step closer and saw the fellow’s white, pinched face and dripping nose. ‘You are freezing,’ the friar muttered. ‘Go across to my house, there’s a jug of wine on the table. Fill a goblet. You’ll find one on a shelf above the fire hearth. Drink some mulled wine, and get some warmth in your belly before you return.’
The pursuivant turned and scurried off like a whippet.
‘Oh, by the way,’ Athelstan yelled after him, ‘I did mean what I said. Sir John is not to drink too much!’
Athelstan walked slowly back to his church, up the steps and into the porch.
‘Father?’
Athelstan jumped as Master Luke Bladdersniff, chief bailiff of the ward, stepped out of the darkness, his lean sallow face and wispy blond hair almost hidden under a tattered beaver hat.
‘Good morrow, Master Bailiff.’
Athelstan studied the ward man: his close-set eyes were dark-rimmed and looked even more like the piss- holes in the snow, as Cranston so aptly described them. Athelstan had always been fascinated by the man’s nose. Broken and slightly twisted, it gave Bladdersniff a rather comical look which sat awkwardly with the fellow’s usual air of bombastic self-importance. Athelstan wearily waved him into the church.
‘Master Bladdersniff, I suppose you have come to discuss why my cemetery is violated and its graves robbed whilst you and the ward council do nothing about it?’
Bladdersniff shook his head, while peering over his shoulder, back into the darkness of the church porch.
‘What is it, man? What’s over there?’
The bailiffs mouth opened and shut like a landed carp. Athelstan stared more closely. The fellow looked as if he was going to vomit. His white face had a greenish tinge and the dark eyes were watery, as if Bladdersniff had been violently retching.
‘For God’s sake, man, what is it?’
Again the bailiff looked back into the darkness.
‘It’s Tosspot!’ he mumbled.
‘What?’
‘Tosspot! Or, at least, part of him,’ Bladdersniff replied, beckoning the priest to follow him.
Athelstan took a taper and went to where the bailiff stood over a dirty piece of canvas in a dark corner of the church porch. Bladdersniff pulled this open and Athelstan turned away in disgust. A man’s leg lay there, or at least part of it, cut above the knee as neatly and as sharply as a piece of cloth by an expert tailor. Athelstan stared at the bloody stump and mottle-hued skin.
‘Good God!’ he breathed, and caught the stench of corruption from the slightly puffed flesh. ‘Cover it up, man! Cover it up!’
Athelstan doused the taper, walked out of the church and stood on the top step, drawing in deep breaths of fresh morning air. He heard Bladdersniff come up behind him.
‘What makes you think it was Tosspot?’
‘Oh, you remember, Father. Tosspot was always regaling his customers at the tavern with tales of his old war wound, an arrow in the leg. He was continually showing his scar as if it was some sacred relic.’
Athelstan nodded.
‘Aye,’ he replied. ‘Old Tosspot would do that whenever he became drunk.’ The friar looked at the bailiff. ‘And that leg bears the same scar?’
‘Yes, Father, just above the shin.’
‘Where was it found?’
‘Do you want to see?’
‘Yes, I do.’
Bladdersniff led him down Bridge Street, across Jerwald and into Longfish Alley which led down to Broken Wharf on the riverside. As he walked, Athelstan never spoke a word and the people who knew him stepped aside at the fierce, determined expression on the usually gentle priest’s face.
Athelstan noticed little except the dirty, filthy slush of the streets they crossed. He ignored greetings and seemed totally unaware of the traders and hucksters behind their battered stalls and booths shouting for custom. Even the felons fastened tightly in the stocks failed to provoke his usual compassion, whilst he treated Bladdersniff as if the bailiff hardly existed. Athelstan felt sick at heart. Who would do that to poor Tosspot’s corpse? he wondered. How would it profit them? They reached Broken Wharf above the riverside. Bladdersniff took the friar by the arm and pointed down to the dirty mudflats where gulls and crows fought over the rubbish left on the riverside. Athelstan looked out across the Thames. The water looked as dirty and dark as his own mood. He noticed the great chunks of ice still floating, crashing together as they swirled down to thunder against the arches of London Bridge.
‘Where did you find it?’
‘Down there, Father,’ Bladdersniff brusquely replied. ‘On the mud, wrapped in that piece of canvas. An urchin looking for sea coal found it and brought it to one of the traders who recognised old Tosspot’s wound.’ The bailiff coughed nervously. ‘I have heard about the raids on your cemetery.’
‘Oh, you have? That’s good.’ Athelstan smiled falsely at him. ‘You think the limb was washed in by the river?’
‘Yes, I do. Now, at any other time, Father, the river would have swept it away, but the heavy ice has interfered with the current and the canvas bag was pushed back to the bank.’
‘So you are saying it must have been thrown in here?’
