Cranston walked back. Standing well out of harm’s way, he peered into that blood-soaked arbour. The two great hounds lay at their master’s feet, now and again looking up as if expecting him to waken and call them. They could sense something was wrong and the smell of blood only made them more aggressive; they turned and growled towards the gate.
‘Clifford must be right,’ Athelstan whispered, coming up beside Cranston. ‘The knife couldn’t be thrown. There’s no vantage point for that. And see how deeply it’s embedded, Sir John.’
Cranston agreed. ‘Where is Boscombe now?’ he asked.
‘Protesting his innocence,’ Goodman replied. ‘In the dungeons beneath the Guildhall. Sir John, we are waiting! Are you fearful of the dogs?’
‘Bring me two hunks of red meat!’ Cranston shouted back. He enjoyed keeping these pompous men waiting. ‘And a pannikin of water!’
Goodman went into the Guildhall and they stood waiting, listening to his shouted orders. In a short while a servant appeared, bearing a trencher with two bloody steaks and a pannikin of water. He thrust these into Cranston’s hands, looked fearfully at the arbour and ran back into the Guildhall.
‘Stay where you are!’ the Coroner commanded. ‘John Cranston fears no one. And those dogs are too noble to be killed.’ He walked to the gate and started talking quietly, greeted by the snarling of the dogs. They raised their huge paws and lifted themselves up, their great shaggy heads well above the gate. Cranston stepped back and kept talking softly to them. The dogs continued to bark raucously but then grew silent. They lay down at the gate, looking up at this soft-spoken man holding the delicious-smelling meat and pannikin of water. Athelstan drew closer. Sir John was whispering to the great beasts as if they were old friends.
‘You see, Brother,’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, ‘no being, except a human, can ignore kindness.’
He carefully opened the gate. The two great hounds stood still, tails wagging. Cranston whistled softly through his teeth and, taking the meat and water, led both dogs out into the garden. He put the meat down. Whilst the dogs wolfed it, they let Cranston gently stroke their huge heads and fondle their ears.
‘Good lads!’ he whispered. ‘Be good lads for old Jack!’
One of the dogs even stopped eating to nuzzle him. Cranston walked back into the arbour. The dogs stirred.
‘Sit!’
The two hounds obeyed and Cranston, followed by a smiling Athelstan, walked into the arbour.
‘Close your eyes, Brother.’
Athelstan did so and heard the unmistakable yielding sound as Cranston pulled the dagger out of the dead man’s body. Athelstan opened his eyes and stared around.
The corpse had keeled over, lying face down on the turfed seat. A wine cup nestled under the ivy growing up the Guildhall wall and, as Cranston wiped the dagger on the grass, Athelstan realized how mysterious this murder was. Directly opposite where Mountjoy had been sitting was the lean-to pentice or covered walk; the fencing was wooden planks with gaps between, though certainly not wide enough for anyone to throw a knife with such force. The Guildhall wall was an impenetrable barrier and, if the knife had been thrown from the garden, someone would have had to stand at the gate. Athelstan shook his head. Sir Gerard or his dogs would not have allowed someone to stand wielding a wicked-looking knife, and made no protest or resistance.
Athelstan looked down the pebbled path. How it crunched under his sandalled feet. No soft-footed assassin could have stolen along such a path and stood at the gate without sending the dogs into a barking frenzy. He looked up at the buttress of the Guildhall against which the pentice had been built. The only windows there were mere arrow slits and too high and narrow for anyone to throw a knife through them with any force or accuracy. He looked at Cranston who was studying the blade of the knife carefully.
‘It must have been Boscombe,’ Athelstan muttered. ‘That knife was not thrown. See.’ He pointed to the trellis against which Mountjoy had been leaning. The dagger went right through his chest and scored the fence.’
‘Perhaps someone climbed the fence behind Sir Gerard?’ Clifford approached them to suggest.
Athelstan shook his head.
‘I doubt it, My Lord. Sir Gerard was apparently sitting down when he was killed. Such an assailant would have to climb the fence, swing down with the dagger and take his victim in the chest. Can you imagine the Sheriff or his dogs allowing that?’
The Guildmasters, led by Clifford and Gaunt, gingerly entered the small arbour, looking apprehensively over their shoulders at the two great wolf hounds who now lay, sad-eyed, on the grass.
‘Are those dogs safe?’ Gaunt muttered.
‘Oh, yes,’ Cranston replied absentmindedly. ‘They know something’s wrong but they do not see us as hostile.’ He snorted with laughter. ‘Though perhaps we are. One person here definitely is.’ Cranston stared around. ‘I am Sir John Cranston, King’s Coroner in the city,’ he declared. ‘This is my verdict: I find Sir Gerard Mountjoy murdered by person or persons unknown.’
‘What about Boscombe?’ Gaunt intervened.
‘It may well be he. But have you seen this dagger, My Lord?’ Cranston held it up.
At first Athelstan thought it an ordinary Welsh stabbing dirk with its thin, long, evil blade and small grip and hilt. But beneath the smeared marks of Cranston’s cleaning, he saw something etched on the blade. Athelstan took it from Cranston’s hand and peered down.
‘Ira Dei,’ he murmured, reading aloud the rudely scrawled letters.
Gaunt kicked angrily at the grass and beat his fists against his side. ‘By the Mass.’ He glared at the others. ‘These peasant bastards threaten us here in our own city, in our own palaces!’
‘Ira Dei?’ Hussey the royal tutor shoved his way forward. ‘The Anger of God. My Lord of Gaunt, what does this mean? The King must be informed!’
‘My nephew,’ Gaunt replied testily, ‘will be told in due course.’
Athelstan caught the deep dislike in the Regent’s voice and recalled the whispers about the growing rivalry between the Regent and the royal tutor.
‘Ira Dei,’ Gaunt replied slowly, ‘is a self-styled leader, cloaked in mystery.’
‘Leader of what?’
‘The Great Community!’ Gaunt snarled. ‘The name the peasants give to their secret council of leaders who are plotting treason and rebellion, both in and around London. Sir, you should be better informed!’
‘My Lord,’ Hussey silkily replied, ‘like His Grace the King, I only know what I have been told.’
Gaunt looked away in annoyance. ‘Mountjoy’s dead,’ he whispered. ‘Stabbed by his servant who must be in the pay or service of these rebels. Sir John, Brother Athelstan, do you agree?’
Cranston was peering at the dagger whilst Athelstan was attempting to lay the bulky corpse of the dead Sheriff out along the turf seat. The man’s gown was thickly clotted with blood. Athelstan whispered the requiem and at the same time inspected the wound in the man’s chest, the nick on the fence against which he had been leaning, as well as the blood on the hands of the corpse.
‘My Lords,’ the friar declared, breathing heavily as he crossed the dead Sheriff’s hands over each other, ‘I am sure Sir John will agree with me that Sir Roger was murdered by a thrust from that dagger. It cannot have been thrown, the arbour is virtually sealed, and if the assassin stood at the gate, Sir Gerard, not to mention his dogs, would have seen him.’
‘All three of them could have been asleep,’ Fitzroy boomed stupidly. ‘Sir Gerard liked his wine.’
‘The dogs didn’t,’ Denny smirked.
‘I doubt it,’ Athelstan continued calmly. ‘Such hounds would have protected their master from any approach and Sir Gerard knew, at least for a few seconds, that he was dying. See his hands? They are blood-stained.’
‘My clerk,’ Cranston interrupted grandly, ‘is following my train of thought.’ He winked at Athelstan and walked back to the gate. ‘The dagger was not thrown. The assassin walked through the gate, perhaps with the dagger concealed. After all, it’s long and thin with no real hilt. Sir Gerard is sitting drinking his wine. He looks up and the assassin strikes, driving the dagger deep into the Sheriff’s heart, piercing his body. In his death throes Sir Gerard scrabbles at the dagger, his hands fall away, he dies.’ Cranston beamed round, I think the next step, My Lords, is that my clerk and I should interrogate the prisoner.’
Gaunt agreed, an archer was summoned, and both Cranston and Athelstan went back into the Guildhall and down into the dank, musty-smelling cellars. The passageways were torch-lit; two archers stood on guard outside a
