Bloodstone (16 page)

‘Both gentlemen have graced my judgement chamber, not to mention every stock and pillory post in London.’

‘Sir John, they have turned lawful. Do you remember how swift they are?’

‘Like rats down a hole.’

‘Well, they now serve many of the London taverns as messengers including “The Pride of Purgatory”. They said that Mahant and Wenlock were waiting for Geoffrey Portsoken.’

‘Don’t know him.’

‘Oh yes, you do, Sir John, in the bills posted at St Paul’s Cross and elsewhere, he is Vox Populi  . . .’

‘Vox Populi, Vox Dei.’ Cranston smiled in astonishment. ‘He’s a ditch crawler, a hedge creeper, a man who slinks through London and the surrounding shires preaching rebellion and tradition. He calls himself the “Voice of the People and the Voice of God”. He was attainted, proclaimed
ultegatum
– beyond the law, a wolfshead.’ Cranston sipped from his own tankard.

‘What does he have in common with the Wyverns?’

‘He used to be one of them. Something happened and he was cut off from their company. Anyway, Sir John, Vox Populi is about to be strangled. He’s already appeared before the Justices in Eyre so he’ll dance at Smithfield.’

‘And now?’

‘Lodged in Newgate Hole where the blackness salutes the darkness.’ Muckworm drained his tankard and stared around. ‘Now, my Lord Coroner, other duties call?’

Cranston dug into his purse and pushed a silver piece into Muckworm’s extended hand. ‘God go with you.’

‘And you too, Sir John.’ Then Muckworm was gone.

Cranston sat for a while, staring into the fire. He’d kept an eye on who came into the tap room and was growing suspicious about the two costermongers in the corner. They had, he remembered, entered just after he had, ordered ale and fallen asleep. Cranston entertained a nagging suspicion that they were ‘
faux et semblant
– false and deceiving’, just by their position, lying in a way so they could furtively watch him. The tap room’s warm comfort seemed to fade. Cranston rose, buckled on his war belt, donned both cloak and beaver hat then left. Outside he immediately drew his stabbing dirk and, keeping that at the ready, made his way along Cheapside. It was candlelight time. The cold had grown more intense: already the apprentices were busy clearing stalls and booths. He went down Stoat-back Lane, a narrow runnel stretching on to the broad thoroughfare leading to the shambles and the forbidding mass of Newgate.

‘The hour of the bat and the screech owl,’ Cranston muttered. He just wished Athelstan was with him, not for bodily protection but that strange little friar was always balm for the soul with his shrewd observations and humorous asides. A man in the world but not of it, Cranston reflected, Athelstan was a priest as cunning as a serpent with the innocence of a dove. Cranston made the resolution to seek out the friar as soon as possible and walked on. Lanterns glowed on door posts. Candles flamed behind latticed windows or between the chinks of shutters; these threw some light on the filth-strewn cobbles as well as the narrow doorways and alley enclaves where the destitute sheltered. The coroner made his way around the slime-drenched mounds of refuse where dogs, cats and rats all foraged for morsels. Ahead of him trundled the dung cart and the evening breeze wafted back a smell so putrid Cranston had to cover both nose and mouth behind the folds of his cloak. Despite the poor light he was soon recognized and strident calls echoed like a ball bouncing up the runnel before him.

‘Cranston, here! Wary! Wary! Coroner, here!’

He walked on gripping his dagger, shadows slunk away. He was almost at the top of the alley when a beggar woman pushed her ragged boy towards him, his little arms outstretched for alms. Something in the boy’s eyes pricked Cranston’s suspicions. He dug into his belt wallet and thrust a coin into the boy’s scabby hand. The child stepped back and Cranston heard the whispered warning from the shadows.

‘Watch your back, Lord Coroner.’

He walked up to the mouth of the alleyway then swiftly turned. Shapes further down just as abruptly stepped back into the creeping shadows.

‘St Michael and all his angels.’ Cranston murmured a prayer for protection and walked on. He was determined to meet Vox Populi before the day was through. He turned right into the Shambles, the great fleshing market of London. The butchers and carvers were now unhooking the chunks of beef, chicken, poultry, duck, rabbit, venison and ham. The air reeked of salt, blood and messy entrails; even the cobbles glowed red in the dancing light of torches whilst the butchers and their boys seemed like demons in their gore-splattered leather aprons and hats. Beadles and bailiffs thronged to secure their blood-soaked linen packages of free meat. The poor and the needy also clustered, going down on hands and knees beneath the stalls searching for fresh gobbets of flesh, fighting off the curs and cats which also massed to feast in this place of slaughter. Traders and tinkers, selling the rejected to the rejected, shouted for business. Prostitutes, faces all painted, hair dyed and festooned with gaudy ribbons, sheltered together ready to entice customers into what Cranston called their ‘Temples of Mercenary Love’. Pimps touted for courtesans, even mixing with a small crowd who’d gathered round a Friar of the Sack. The Franciscan stood on a plinth intoning the office of the dead for the Guild of the Hanged, a pious group of men and women who assembled outside Newgate to pray for those inside condemned to death.

Cranston pushed himself through these and the horde of nighthawks, dark-walkers, gibbet lawyers and mountebanks; all assembled before the great iron prison gates hoping to visit friends within, coins at the ready to bribe janitors and turnkeys. Cranston recognized many familiar faces amongst these Pages of the Pit and Squires of the Sewer, who swiftly drew away as he marched up to the postern door and vigorously pulled at the bell. The door flew open. The bullnecked, grey-faced turnkey took one look and hurriedly stepped aside. Cranston entered that antechamber of hell. He met the keeper in the great yard, showed him his seal and demanded to see the Vox Populi. The keeper, dressed in black like a parson with the sanctimonious face to match, swiftly agreed. Cranston had little time for him. The keeper was a born rogue who, Cranston had often confided to Athelstan, was twice as fit for hell as those he guarded. They entered the murky, main gallery of the gloomy prison. Cranston took the proferred rags soaked in vinegar to cover his nose. The air was fetid, damp and reeking of putrefaction. The walls seemed to sweat slime which gathered like sludge over the flagstone floor. The light was poor. Torches flared, giving off trails of pitch and tar. Tallow candles, cheap and nasty smelling, flickered in niches and crevices. A thriving place for rats, cockroaches and other vermin, Cranston tried to ignore the lice crackling under his boots. They passed chambers and cells where prisoners laden with irons stood with hands outstretched, their pleading for alms almost drowned by the horrid howling and screaming which rang out constantly. They reached the condemned cell – nothing more than a filthy box guarded by a heavy oaken door. Inside it reeked like a midden heap, black as pitch with no light or vent for air. The prisoner was crouched in the corner on a palliasse of rotting straw. Cranston breathed in deeply on the rag as he shouted for lights, two stools and a jug of claret.

‘Bordeaux,’ he yelled. ‘I’ve had enough of your bloody vinegar.’

The keeper hurried to obey. Once he’d brought everything, Cranston ordered him out, leaving the door open. He sat on one stool, the prisoner on the other, drinking greedily from the goblet of claret. He raised his head, pushing back his filth-strewn hair to reveal the brand mark on his cheek close to where his left ear had been. Cranston studied the dirty face, the tangled moustache and beard; the eyes, however, were bright, not yet bereft of hope or courage.

‘Geoffrey Portsoken, known as a Vox Populi.’ Cranston lifted his goblet. ‘I salute thee.’

‘Sir Jack Cranston, I toast thee too, you and yours.’ The prisoner took another gulp. ‘I’m for the elms at Smithfield, Jack, condemned I was, beaten up by Gaunt’s henchmen. Anyway, why are you here? Not to gloat! No, that’s not for our Jack, so why?’

‘To offer you life.’

Vox Populi mockingly raised the goblet but his eyes brightened. ‘Gaunt will not let me skip away from this.’

‘Not skip, my friend, walk to the nearest port. Queenshithe will do, ship abroad never to return under pain of hanging, drawing and quartering. I mean that.’ Cranston clinked his pewter cup against the prisoner’s. ‘Out, never to return!’

‘I’ll need money.’

‘The city will pay for you to be shaved, clothed, booted with a water pannikin and a linen parcel of bread and dried bacon. You’ll also receive a thin purse.’

‘For what – information?’

‘The truth, so shut up and listen!”

Cranston spoke swiftly and succinctly about Kilverby’s murder, the disappearance of the Passio Christi and the slayings out at St Fulcher’s.

‘So,’ Vox Populi murmured. ‘Chalk has gone to his maker, followed by Hanep and Hyde. Chalk will have much to answer.’

‘Why?’

‘He was a defrocked priest, Sir Jack, a curate from the church of St Peter’s-in-the-wood in Leighton Manor in Essex where we all hailed from an eternity ago. It must be,’ Vox Populi paused to cough phlegm, ‘some thirty years ago now. All of us golden boys, archers swinging off down the tree-lined lanes bound for the glory of France.’

‘Very touching.’

‘No, Jack, very true. You know how it was. We were roaring boys. About twenty of us at first who answered the King’s writ from the commissioners of array; few of us are left now, only me and those hard-hearted bastards out at St Fulcher’s.’ He stared at Cranston. ‘I fought with them. In the year of our Lord 1353, we sealed an indenture with the Black Prince to serve him and him only as the Company of the Wyvern.’

‘A small cohort?’

‘By then, Jack, we were all skilled archers, master bowmen; we could bring down any bird on the wing or put a shaft through the narrowest window. Experts in the use of yew, ash, the hempen string, the goose-quill arrow.’ He wagged a finger in mock anger. ‘Some took an oath never to use a crossbow; I still can’t. I’m not too sure whether this is true of my former comrades.’

‘Your duties?’

‘To attend upon the Prince day or night, in peace and war, to be his sworn men and so we were, mounted archers who moved around the battlefield. You’ve seen the likes of us, Jack. Imagine loosing an arrow with every breath. In battle the Prince assigned us a special duty. We were to seek out the enemy commanders, having first learnt their heraldry and livery. A knight, especially the French, is invariably helmeted and visored.’

‘The heat must have been suffocating,’ Cranston added quietly. ‘Especially with the sun strong in the full fury of battle. They’d open their visors to breathe, to catch some coolness.’

‘Aye, Jack,’ Vox Populi leaned forward, eyes gleaming, ‘and we’d be waiting. We would have an arrow notched, two of us, ringed and protected by men-at-arms. One shaft,’ he held a hand up, ‘to the commander’s face, down he’d fall. You know what happened next: his banner carrier, the standard bearer, would raise his visor in alarm  . . .’

‘And he would receive the second shaft?’ Cranston nodded. ‘Both commander and standard bearer brought down in a few heart beats. Disarray amongst the enemy would be intense?’

‘And because of that, the Prince loved us, we could do no wrong.’

‘Including ransacking an abbey and the theft of the sacred bloodstone the Passio Christi?’

‘Oh yes, I know about the Passio Christi being held by Kilverby. You do realize he financed the Wyvern Company with loans to the Black Prince? Oh, yes! Kilverby made a handsome profit. The loans carried no interest but Kilverby took a share in the plunder. Little wonder,’ the prisoner scoffed, ‘in his final years Kilverby turned to God.’

‘The Passio Christi?’

‘I was not there, Cranston, when it happened.’ The Vox Populi moved, manacles clinking. ‘I swear that! After Poitiers, noble prisoners were being taken for ransom. The poor French men-at-arms fled to Poitiers town for protection but they closed the gates against them. They were all massacred. I took part in that, God forgive me. My companions, the seven who found lodgings at St Fulcher’s, went on their own campaign of pillage and looting. We later heard the story how they supposedly found a cart full of treasure close to St Calliste Abbey and seized it as the spoils of war.’ He shook his head. ‘What a find! A beautiful bloodstone, precious items, manuscripts, plates, cups and ewers. Of course I don’t believe that. Those seven pillagers probably scaled the abbey walls whilst the shaven pates, who’d learnt about the slaughter at Poitiers, were hiding in their wine cellars. The Wyverns roamed that abbey like Renard would a hen coop. I am sure they quietly pillaged the abbey church, found a cart, loaded their plunder on it and the rest you know. Who could contradict master bowmen, patronized by no less a person than the King’s son?’ Vox Populi paused to finish his wine. Cranston emptied his own goblet into the prisoner’s, who thanked him with his eyes. ‘Naturally the French objected. The Abbot of St Calliste rode out with bell, book and candle to protest but the Prince was not moved. The abbot cursed the perpetrators but that was war Jack, who cares?’ He paused. ‘You’ve met Richer? His uncle was the abbot.’

Cranston cradled his empty goblet, very pleased he had come here.

‘And afterwards, what happened to you?’

‘I tell you Jack, from the moment the Passio Christi was taken, those seven became inseparable comrades, a lock within a lock. I remained an outsider, a stranger. A year later whilst on campaign, we surprised a French camp. I was eager for plunder. I cried, “Havoc, havoc!”.’ He raised a hand to touch where his ear had been. ‘You know the rules of war, Cranston. To cry havoc is to proclaim the enemy is defeated so we can turn to plunder. I shouldn’t have done it. The fight was not yet over. The Black Prince said that any other man would have been hanged; instead I lost my left ear, was branded and turned out of the company.’ The prisoner’s voice turned bitter. ‘My comrades gave me little help or comfort. I was in France, wounded, a beggar bereft of everything, and then a miracle occurred. French peasants found me cowering in a ditch. I expected to be hanged or have my throat cut. In fact, they proved to be true Christians, good Samaritans. They tended, fed and clothed me. They healed my wounds in more ways than one, those earthworms, the poorest of the poor! I began to reflect on the kindness of such people to an enemy. I cursed the Black Prince and all his coven. I journeyed back to England. I took refuge in Glastonbury before moving to St Peter’s at Gloucester where I dwelt as a hermit. I forsook the path of war; instead I railed against the rich and the powerful.’ He paused. ‘I became a preacher as powerful as Jack Straw or John Ball. I moved from village to village preaching that our day would come. I moved into London. The Upright Men, the leaders of the Great Community of the Realm, invited me into their company. By all the angels don’t ask me about All Hallows, the Community or the Upright Men. We always met disguised in deserted copses, clearings or ruins as old as the Romans. We’d sit hooded and visored and never named.’ He breathed in deeply. ‘I heard of my old comrades lodging like lords at St Fulcher’s. I sheltered secretly in some rat’s lair near Dowgate. I sent those two rogues Mulligrub and Snapskull out to St Fulcher’s with a plea for help but my old comrades never replied.’ He coughed. ‘Then one night, around All Souls, I was taken by the sheriff’s men during an affray in Poultry.’ He rattled his chains. ‘So, am I free, Jack, or will you play the Judas? Have you come to cry all hail when you really mean all harm?’