apprentices and merchants had been silenced by winter’s vice-like grip. They stopped at a pie shop. Athelstan bought and bit deeply into a hot mince pie, savouring the juices which swirled there and the delightful fragrance of freshly baked pastry and highly spiced meat. Cranston watched him eat.
‘You are enjoying that, Brother?’
Yes, My Lord. Why don’t you join me?’
Cranston smiled wickedly. ‘I would love to,’ he replied. ‘But have you not forgotten, friar? It’s Advent. You are supposed to abstain from meat!’
Athelstan looked longingly at the half-eaten pie, then smiled, finished his meal and licked his fingers. Cranston shook his head.
‘What are we to do?’ he wailed mockingly. ‘When friars ignore Canon Law’.
Athelstan licked his lips and leaned closer.
‘You’re wrong, Sir John. Today is the thirteenth of December, a holy day, the feast of St Lucy, virgin and martyr. So I am allowed to eat meat.’ He sketched a sign of the cross in the air. ‘And you can drink twice as much claret as you usually do!’ The friar gathered the reins of the horse in his hands. ‘So, Sir John, what takes us to the Tower?’
Cranston pulled aside as a broad-wheeled cart stacked high with sour green apples trundled by.
‘Sir Ralph Whitton, Constable of the Tower. You have heard of him?’
Athelstan nodded. ‘Who hasn’t? He’s a redoubtable soldier, a brave crusader, and a personal friend of the Regent, John of Gaunt.’
‘Was,’ Cranston intervened. ‘Early this morning Whitton was found in his chamber in the North Bastion of the Tower, his throat slit from ear to ear and more blood on his chest than you would get from a gutted pig.’
‘Any sign of the murderer or the weapon?’
Cranston shook his head, blowing on his ice-edged fingers. ‘Nothing,’ he grated. ‘Whitton had a daughter, Philippa. She was betrothed to Geoffrey Parchmeiner. Apparently Sir Ralph liked the young man and trusted him. Early this morning Geoffrey went to wake his prospective father-in-law and found him murdered.’ He took a deep breath. ‘More curious still, before his death Sir Ralph suspected someone had evil designs on his life. Four days prior to his death he received a written warning.’
‘What was this?’
‘I don’t know but apparently the constable became a frightened man. He left his usual chambers in the turret of the White Tower and for security reasons moved to the North Bastion. The stairway to his chamber was guarded by two trusted retainers. The door between the steps and the passageway was locked. Sir Ralph kept a key and so did the guards. The same is true of Sir Ralph’s chamber. He locked it from the inside, whilst the two guards had another key.’
Cranston suddenly leaned over and grabbed the bridle of Athelstan’s horse, pulling him clear as a huge lump of snow slipped from the sloping roofs above and crashed on to the ice.
‘We should move on,’ the friar remarked drily. ‘Otherwise, Sir John, you may have another corpse on your hands and this time you will be the suspect.’
Cranston belched and took a deep swig from his wineskin.
‘Is young Geoffrey one of the suspects?’ Athelstan enquired.
Cranston shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Both doors were still locked; the guards unlocked one, let him through and then locked it again. Apparently Geoffrey went down the passageway, knocked and tried to rouse Sir Ralph. He failed to do this so came back for the guards who opened Sir Ralph’s room. Inside they found the constable sprawled on his bed, his throat cut and the wooden shutters of his window flung wide open.’ Cranston turned and spat, clearing his throat. ‘One other thing — the guards would never allow anyone through without a rigorous body search, and that included young Geoffrey. No dagger was found on him nor any knife in the room.’
‘What was Sir Ralph so fearful of?’
Cranston shook his head. ‘God knows! But there’s a fine array of suspects. His lieutenant, Gilbert Colebrooke, was on bad terms and wanted Sir Ralph’s post for himself. There’s the chaplain, William Hammond, whom Sir Ralph caught selling food stocks from the Tower stores. Two friends of Sir Ralph’s, hospitaller knights, came as they usually did to spend Christmas with him. Finally there’s a pagan, a mute body servant, a Saracen whom Sir Ralph picked up whilst crusading in Outremer.’
Athelstan pulled his hood closer as the cold wind nipped the corners of his ears. ‘Cui bono?’ he asked.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Cicero’s famous question: “Who profits?”’
Cranston pursed his lips. ‘A good question, my dear friar. Which brings us to Sir Ralph’s brother, Sir Fulke Whitton. He stands to inherit some of his brother’s estate.’
Cranston fell silent, half closing his eyes and gently burping after the good breakfast he had eaten. Athelstan, however, prided himself on knowing the fat coroner as well as the palm of his own hand.
‘Well, Sir John,’ he needled, ‘there is more, is there not?’
Cranston opened his eyes. ‘Of course there is. Whitton was not liked by the court, nor by the Londoners, nor by the peasants.’
Athelstan felt his heart sink. They had been down this road on numerous occasions.
‘You think it may be the Great Community?’ he asked.
Cranston nodded. ‘It could be. And, remember, Brother, some of your parishioners may be part of it. If the Great Community acts and revolt spreads, the rebels will try to seize the Tower. Whoever controls it controls the river, the city, Westminster and the crown.’
Athelstan pulled the reins closer to him and reflected on what Cranston had said. Matters were not going well in London. The king was a child; John of Gaunt, his uncle, a highly unpopular Regent. The court was dissolute, whilst the peasants were taxed to the hilt and tied to the soil by cruel laws. For some time there had been whispers, rumours carried like leaves on a strong breeze, of how peasants in Kent, Middlesex and Essex had formed a secret society called the Great Community. How its leaders were plotting rebellion and a march on London. Athelstan even vaguely knew one of these leaders — John Ball, a wandering priest; the man was so eloquent he could turn the most placid of peasants into an outright rebel by mouthing phrases such as: ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’ Was Whitton’s death a preamble to all this? Athelstan wondered. Were any of his parishioners involved? He knew they met in the ale-houses and taverns and, God knew, had legitimate grievances. Harsh taxes and savage laws were cruel enough to provoke a saint to rebellion. And if the revolt came, what should he do? Side with the authorities or, like many priests, join the rebels? He looked sidelong at Cranston. The coroner seemed lost in his own thoughts and once again the friar detected an air of sadness about him.
‘Sir John, is there anything wrong?’
‘No, no,’ the coroner mumbled.
Athelstan left him alone. Perhaps, he concluded, Sir John had drunk too deeply the night before.
They moved down a snow-covered Tower street past the church where a poor beadsman knelt making atonement for some sin; the hands clutching his rosary beads were frost-hardened and Athelstan winced at some of the penances his fellow priests imposed on their parishioners. Sir John blew his breath out so it hung like incense in the cold air.
‘By the sod!’ he muttered. ‘When will the sun come again?’
They had turned into Petty Wales when suddenly a woman’s voice, clear and lilting, broke into one of Athelstan’s favourite carols. They stopped for a moment to listen then crossed the ice-glazed square. Above them soared the Tower’s sheer snow-capped walls, turrets, bastions, bulwarks and crenellations. A mass of carved stone, the huge fortress seemed shaped not to defend London but to overawe it.
‘A very narrow place,’ Cranston muttered. ‘The House of the Red Slayer’. He looked quizzically at Athelstan. ‘Our old friends Death and Murder lurk here.’
Athelstan shivered and not just from the cold. They crossed the drawbridge. Beneath them the moat; its water and the dirty green slime which always covered it, were frozen hard. They went through the black arch of Middle Tower. The huge gateway stood like an open mouth, its teeth the half-lowered iron portcullis. Above them the severed heads of two pirates taken in the Channel grinned down. Athelstan breathed a prayer.
‘God defend us,’ he muttered, ‘from all devils, demons, scorpions, and those malignant spirits who dwell here!’
