stable. Afterwards, you may finish the oatmeal in the kitchen.’
Ranulf quickly agreed and sped out of the sacristy.
‘A Guild of Rat-Catchers?’ Sir Maurice asked.
Athelstan smiled. ‘It’s a wonderful life, Brother Norbert. Yes, it’s time you changed. Put on the garb I gave you but wrap your cloak firmly around you.’
The knight hastened out and Athelstan walked back into the church. He knelt on the sanctuary steps to say a short prayer of thanksgiving followed by an invocation to the Holy Spirit asking for his help and guidance that day.
Sir Maurice had spent most of the night reading the tracts by St Bonaventure; Athelstan had woken to the young knight seated before the hearth, reciting to an owl-eyed Godbless and a rather feisty Thaddeus certain love poems he had learned. Athelstan, eager to begin his Mass, had simply cautioned the young knight on not being too impetuous.
He finished his prayer, crossed himself and walked down the nave. Huddle the painter was in the porch, a piece of charcoal in his hand. The artist was smiling at a bare expanse of freshly washed white plaster.
‘I could do a lovely painting, Brother.’ Huddle turned, his long, horse-like face wreathed in a smile. ‘What about Christ in Judgement?’
Athelstan stepped back. The wall of one transept was now covered in Huddle’s paintings, crude and vivid, full of colour, a constant source of wonderment to the parishioners. Athelstan often used them in his sermons, leaving the sanctuary to go down and stand before Huddle’s depiction of scenes from the Gospel.
‘It will cost you money, Brother. We’ll need red and gold, vermilion, some black of course, and a nice scarlet.’
Athelstan was about to refuse when he remembered the silver John of Gaunt had given him.
‘Do a sketch with the charcoal,’ Athelstan agreed. ‘One of your line drawings and then make an estimate for the paints.’
Huddle’s smile disappeared. ‘Oh, not the parish council, Brother! You know Watkin!’
‘Watkin really admires your work,’ Athelstan replied. ‘But it must be agreed by the council.’
‘But you’ll support it? You’ll see Christ in Judgement, the sheep to the right, the goats to the left. I remember your sermon from last Advent.’
‘Very well, Huddle, but none of your jokes!’
Athelstan’s eyes wandered up the transept. The artist had depicted the scene of Christ’s birth, a brilliant lifelike scene just near the Lady Altar. Everyone had admired it except Watkin: Huddle, out of revenge, had painted the ox with Watkin’s face.
‘I’ll support it.’ Athelstan patted the artist’s bony shoulder.
Huddle fairly skipped with joy. The Dominican left him and went out on to the porch. Godbless sat with his arm around Thaddeus.. ‘I’ll clear the cemetery today, Brother. Weed some of the graves.’
‘Good man, Godbless.’
‘But they were back last night.’
Athelstan turned. ‘The ghosts?’
‘Yes, Brother, I saw them in the air, dark shapes against the night sky. I took Thaddeus into the death house and locked the door. I’ve never seen anything like that. Except when I was in Venice with a free company there. I saw a man who should have died but didn’t.’
‘You are sure you saw shapes?’ Athelstan asked.
‘Certain, Brother. They were hanging between heaven and earth.’
‘Brother Athelstan!’
Sir Maurice came out of the priest’s house, his military cloak around him. Athelstan would have loved to question Godbless but the day was drawing on, and the sooner he crossed the Thames and visited the nunnery at Syon the better.
They walked down the alleyway, stopping to buy a meat pastry at Merrylegs’ pie shop. The stalls and booths had already been laid out for another day’s trading. The Piebald Tavern was open for custom. Several of Athelstan’s parishioners gathered in the doorway, tankards in their hands. Watkin and Pike were resting on their shovels and mattocks. Hig the pigman glowered out as if the world were against him. They shouted greetings and Athelstan sketched a blessing in the air.
Down near the riverside the bailiffs were also busy. Bladdersniff was there, his nose glowing red, watery- eyed, supervising the incarceration in the stocks of two drunks found sottish in an alleyway.
‘ Caeci ducunt caecos: the blind leading the blind,’ Athelstan translated. ‘Bladdersniff drinks as if there is no tomorrow.’
They reached the watery quay steps. Moleskin was there, his nut-brown face wrinkled into a smile. He bowed precariously in his wherry, gesturing at Athelstan to come quickly down.
‘It will soon be busy, Brother.’
He helped Athelstan into his rocking boat and gazed curiously at Sir Maurice. He shrugged, bent over his oars and turned his wherry out across the Thames.
A morning mist still hung over the water but the river was busy with bum-boats, cogs of war, skiffs, the great gong barges bringing out the ordure and filth from the city streets and dumping it midstream. Some barges had bells and rang these as a warning to others on the river. Now and again Moleskin stopped to greet an acquaintance and once he pulled in his oars as a royal barge full of courtiers, officials and clerks made its way down the Thames to the Tower. Great blue and scarlet banners flapped vigorously from its poop and stern. A long, low, black skiff came through the mist, the bell on its prow tolling its funeral knell.
‘In God’s name!’ Sir Maurice breathed.
Athelstan turned, pulling back his cowl. The skiff was long and low in the water. In the centre lay a wet, bedraggled corpse stretched out on a wooden platter. Around it crouched cowled, hooded men. The leader stood in the stern like the figure of Death himself, his hood pulled back to reveal his strange bony face and bald head. He glanced towards Athelstan as they passed.
‘Good morning, Brother.’
Athelstan recognised the fisher of men whose task was to comb the Thames and pull out corpses for which the City Council would pay him a fee. Athelstan sketched a blessing in the direction of the corpse.
‘A suicide?’ he asked.
The fisher rapped out an order for the rowers to stop; his craft rose and fell beside Moleskin’s skiff. The boatman glanced away, hawked and spat.
‘No suicide, Brother, death by misadventure. This poor man was bitten by a rabid dog just near Dowgate. They threw him into the water thinking that would cure him. The poor man drowned so his soul’s gone to God and his corpse to the City Corporation. Row on, my lovelies!’ He raised his hand in salutation and his ghoulish barge disappeared into the morning mist.
‘I hate passing him,’ Moleskin observed. ‘Combing the river for the dead.’
‘A work of mercy,’ Athelstan countered. And God knows, Moleskin, God eventually calls each of us to Himself.
In Fennel Alley just off Catte Street, Sir John Cranston, coroner of the city, would have agreed with Athelstan’s conclusions. He pushed back his beaver hat, scratched his head and stared in disbelief at the chaos before him. The corpse of an old man, his hose pushed round his ankles, lay in the ruins of the stool-house which had collapsed bringing the poor unfortunate and the latrine he was sitting on crashing to the ground.
‘Tell me again.’ He looked up at the houses on either side.
‘Very good, Sir John. The house on your left belongs to the victim, Elias Ethmol, once a trader in skins but now retired. The house on the right belongs to Humphrey Withrington, a dyer by trade. Now, as you can see, Sir John,’ the beadle continued mournfully, ‘the two houses are very close together, or at least their top stories are. Now Elias and Humphrey were old men.’
‘Where’s Humphrey now?’
An old, rheumy-eyed man came out of the small crowd which had gathered and raised his ash cane.
‘That be me, Sir Jack.’
‘My lord coroner to you!’ He stared up; the upper stories were at least twenty feet above the ground.
‘What they did,’ the beadle continued, ‘was to build a house of ease…’
