‘A message from the Anger of God. You are a friar, a priest of the people. Why do you mingle with the fat lords of the soil?’
‘If you’re his anger,’ Athelstan spat back, ‘then I am his justice!’
Take heed of his anger,’ the voice said clearly.
Athelstan looked down at Bonaventure who seemed to be enjoying this new game.
‘Cranston’s right,’ Athelstan whispered. ‘You are no bloody use!’
‘Take heed,’ the voice repeated.
Athelstan’s fiery temper broke at last.
‘Oh, sod off!’ he shouted and stalked down the church track and into his house, closing the door with a slam.
For a while he just stood with his back to it, trying to calm the trembling in his legs. Who dared taunt him here? What would Cranston do when he heard? Athelstan marched into the buttery and poured himself a cup of wine which he gulped down before going back to sit at the table.
‘God damn it!’ he breathed. He closed the ledger book, cleared up the rest of the manuscripts and took them across to the huge, iron-bound coffer. As he placed them inside and made the lock secure, he thought of the daring robbery at the Guildhall. He only hoped Sturmey was still alive. If Cranston and he found the thief, they would discover the murderer. He jumped at a loud knocking on the door.
‘Father! Father!’
Athelstan went across and opened the door to find Ursula the pig woman, her usually merry, red, warty face now tear-streaked.
‘Oh, Ursula!’ Athelstan said. ‘It’s not your sow? I can’t come and bless it again!’
‘No, no, Father, it’s my mother. She’s dying!’
‘Are you sure?’ Athelstan asked. ‘I have given the last rites to Griselda at least three times.’
‘No, Father, she says she’s going. She can feel she is.’
‘Come on then.’
Athelstan locked the door of the house and hurried across to the church. Inside it was cool and dark, smelling fragrantly of candle grease and incense. The morning light was already beginning to brighten Huddle’s pictures on the wall as Athelstan hurried under the rood screen and into the sanctuary. He genuflected, opening the tabernacle door to remove the Viaticum and phial of holy oils. Then he collected his stole, cloak, tinder and a candle from the sacristy and gave them to Ursula, waiting in the porch of the church. He lit the candle, wrapped the cloak round himself and, with the pig woman shielding the candle’s flame in her great, raw hands, locked the door of his church.
He followed Ursula through the narrow, winding streets of Southwark to the pig woman’s house, a small, two-storied tenement just behind the priory of St Mary Overy. As usual, the great sow, Ursula’s pet and the light of her life, lay basking in front of the fire whilst, behind a curtain in the far corner, Griselda lay on a pallet of straw, head back, her beak-like nose cutting the air, her eyes half-open. Athelstan would have taken her for dead already had it not been for the gentle rise and fall of her skinny chest. As Athelstan crouched beside her, placing the Viaticum and holy oils on a three-legged stool, Ursula stood behind him, still holding the candle. Of course, the sow had to see what was happening and, once she recognized Athelstan, whose cabbage patch she regularly plundered, began to snort and snuffle excitedly.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, go away!’ he breathed. ‘Ursula, for the love of God, give her a cabbage or something!’
‘She doesn’t eat cabbages,’ Ursula curtly replied as she grabbed the sow by the ear and pulled her away.
‘Aye,’ Athelstan whispered to himself. ‘The bloody thing only likes fresh ones!’
‘Is that you, Father?’
Athelstan bent over the old lady, her cheeks hollow, thick bloodless lips parted. But the small button eyes were still bright with life.
‘Yes, Mother Griselda, it’s Athelstan.’
‘You are a good priest,’ the old woman wheezed, ‘to come and see old Griselda. Do you want to hear my confession, Father?’
Athelstan grinned. ‘Why, what have you been up to, Mother, since I heard it last? How many young men this time?’
The old woman’s lips parted in a gumless smile.
‘What lechery and wantonness?’ Athelstan continued, peering down at the old lady. ‘Come, Griselda, you have long made your peace with God.’
Athelstan opened the golden pyx, took out the white host and placed it between the dying woman’s lips. Then he began to anoint her head and eyes, mouth, chest, hands and feet, whilst the old woman’s mouth chewed the thin wafer host. At last he finished. Ursula went to move across to tend the small fire whilst Griselda took Athelstan’s hand.
‘Will I go to Heaven, Father?’
‘Of course.’
‘Will my husband be there?’
‘Why not?’
‘He loved women, Father! In his youth he was as handsome as the sun. He had hair the colour of corn and eyes blue as the sky. But he wasn’t a bad man, Father, and I loved him.’ She coughed, yellow spittle drooling out of the corner of her mouth. Athelstan picked up a rag and dabbed gently at her lips.
‘God will not reject,’ he said slowly, ‘anyone who has loved or been loved.’
The old woman coughed again. Athelstan looked over his shoulder.
‘Ursula, a cup of water.’
But then he felt the grip on his hand loosen. He looked down. Griselda’s head had rolled slightly to the left. He felt for the beat in her neck but there was nothing. He looked up at Ursula, holding the battered cup, tears streaming down her fat cheeks.
‘She’s left us,’ Athelstan murmured. ‘She’s gone now. Gone ahead of us.’
He stayed for a while to comfort Ursula. Despite his protests, she insisted on giving him a huge flitch of bacon then, with his cope and stole under one arm, the flitch of bacon under another, Athelstan walked back to his church.
Southwark was now coming to life. The petty traders and tinkers trundled their hand carts down towards the bridge whilst sweating, cursing carters tried to get produce from the country across the river before the great markets opened. Two lepers covered in black rags begged for alms outside the hospital of St Thomas whilst the local beadles and bailiffs led the night roisterers they had caught, bound hand and foot, down to the stocks. Two drunks who had pissed out of an upper-floor window had already been tied back-to-back, their breeches about their ankles They would be forced to walk the streets and be pelted with rubbish until noonday when a friend could cut them loose. The officials had apparently also raided a brothel and a cart load of whores, their heads completely shaven, sat morosely manacled together as they were taken down to the river to be punished. A yellow, lean-ribbed dog snarled at Athelstan, jumping, lips curled to bite the bacon. Athelstan shooed it off, went up an alleyway and knocked on the door of Tab the tinker’s house.
His wife, grey-haired and worried-looking, answered. Athelstan thrust the flitch of bacon into her hands.
‘Father,’ she murmured, ‘I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can.’ He pointed to the grubby-faced children clinging to her tattered dress. ‘And they certainly will. But you mustn’t tell Ursula.’
He continued his journey and was about to pass the door of his church when he saw the piece of parchment fluttering there. Athelstan read the scrawled words:
The Anger of God will shout out like lightning from the clouds.
He cursed, pulled the parchment down, threw it into the mud and, ignoring Pike’s salutations, angrily strode back to his house.
