Murder Most Holy (14 page)

At last Athelstan and Cranston disembarked at a small wharf overlooked by the priory of St Mary Overy and the crenellated towers and walls of the Bishop of Winchester’s inn. Cranston had finally decided to follow Athelstan’s advice and return to the Lady Maude but was determined that his companion should accompany him.

‘You see, Brother, if you are there the domina’s wrath may be curbed.’

Athelstan nodded wisely. A sight to be seen, he thought. Lady Maude, so small, petite and gentle, was reputed to have a ferocious temper. They walked through a maze of stinking alleyways, past the Abbot of Hyde’s inn, down a small runnel where a yellow, thin-ribbed dog was busy licking the sores on a beggar’s leg, and into the area in front of St Erconwald’s. Athelstan checked that his house was safe and secure, noticed with despair how Ursula’s sow had eaten more of his cabbages, removed a second set of keys from his chest and unlocked the church for the workmen had not yet arrived. The nave was still full of dust but the workmen had been busy for the sanctuary gleamed with white, evenly laid, flagstones. Athelstan clapped his hands and murmured with delight.

‘Beautiful!’ he exclaimed. ‘The rood screen will be replaced, then the altar. You think it will look fine, Sir John?’

Cranston, sitting at the base of a pillar, nodded absent-mindedly. ‘A veritable jewel,’ he muttered. ‘But have you noticed what’s missing?’

Athelstan came back and looked into the transept.

‘The coffin!’ he shouted. ‘The bloody coffin’s gone!’

‘Don’t worry, Father.’ Crim, followed by a high-tailed Bonaventure, slipped into the church. The young urchin danced towards him whilst the cat miaowed with pleasure when he glimpsed his fat friend, the coroner. Whilst Sir John stamped and quietly cursed the cat, Crim explained that his father had moved the coffin and the sacred bones to the small death house in the parish cemetery.

‘You see, Father, the Serjeants sent down by the Lord Coroner frightened everybody off. Anyway, Pike the ditcher said if the church was sealed the death house wasn’t, so the coffin was moved there.’

Athelstan bit back his curses and stalked out of the church, through the over-grown cemetery to where the death house stood by the far wall – a small, square building with a thatched roof and a tiny shuttered window. Pike the ditcher was fast asleep outside the door but Athelstan could see how the stream of pilgrims had beaten a path through the cemetery to the small shed.

‘I am going to enjoy this,’ he muttered.

He reached the sleeping Pike and, drawing one sandalled foot back, kicked the soles of Pike’s heavy boots, waking the ditcher with a start. Athelstan studied Pike’s bleary eyes, unshaven face and the empty wineskin clutched in his hand.

‘Oh, Father, good morning.’

Athelstan crouched down. ‘And what are you doing here?’ he asked sweetly.

Pike rubbed his eyes and drew back warily. ‘Guarding the relic, Father.’

‘And who told you to remove the coffin from the church?’

‘Watkin. It was his idea!’

‘Yes, Father,’ a voice called out from behind a beaten headstone. ‘It was Watkin!’

Cecily the courtesan, her hair tousled and her face crumpled with sleep, a thick cloak wrapped round her stained, scarlet dress, stood up like an apparition.

Athelstan looked at her, then at Pike, and tried to control the rage seething within him.

‘You have been here all night? Together? This is a graveyard! God’s acre!’ He got to his feet. ‘Haven’t you read the good book, Pike? This is the house of God, not some bloody knacker’s yard!’

Athelstan went to the death house door.

‘I’ll open it, Father.’

‘Sod off!’ he shouted, and violently kicked it just under the latch.

‘Oh, Father, don’t!’ Cecily wailed.

Athelstan kicked again and the door flew back even as Cranston, fleeing from an attentive Bonaventura, came hurrying through the cemetery asking what the matter was.

Athelstan gazed round the death house. The coffin lay on a table surrounded by faded flowers. Someone had fashioned a crude cross to hang on the wall and his rage only deepened when he saw that the coffin had been desecrated.

‘They are beginning to sell bits of the wood!’ he hissed.

He stormed out, almost knocking Cranston aside. Cecily was fleeing like some gaudy butterfly towards the lych-gate but Pike still stood his ground. Athelstan gripped the man by his jerkin and pulled him close.

‘Listen, Pike, I am angry at what you have done. Your father lies buried here, his father and his father before him, as do other ancestors of our parish. Good men, holy women, poor but hard-working.’ He nodded vigorously back at the death house. ‘They fashioned that coffin out of their own hands, bought the wood, hired a carpenter. And you, Watkin, and the rest, are turning it into some pathetic mummer’s show!’

Pike, alarmed at the priest’s unaccustomed rage, just stared back open-mouthed. Athelstan let him go.

‘Now listen, Pike, in a few days I will return. I want the coffin removed back to the church, the death house door locked, and an end to this stupidity!’ He looked round the overgrown graveyard. ‘And you can tell Watkin from me that I want to see this place cleaned, the grass cut, the graves tended – or I will personally do something to him that he will remember all his Godgiven days! Do you understand?’

Pike, nodding fearfully, stepped back and stumped out of the graveyard.

Cranston slapped Athelstan on the shoulder. ‘Well done, Brother. You should have kicked the bugger’s backside for him!’

Athelstan sat down wearily amongst the fallen headstones. ‘They mean well, Sir John. They are just poor, simple people who see the possibility of a quick profit. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.’

Cranston just belched in reply.

‘Crim!’ Athelstan shouted. ‘I know you’re hiding there!’

The young urchin stood like a hunting dog, body quivering, eyes fixed on Athelstan.

‘Don’t worry.’ The friar smiled. ‘You are a good lad, Crim. Quickly, now, before the streets become too busy. Go tell the Lady Benedicta to meet Sir John and I at the Piebald tavern.’

The young boy ran off, loping like a greyhound through the long grass. Cranston grabbed Athelstan’s arm and raised him gently up, swinging one bear-like arm round the friar’s shoulders. Athelstan sniffed the wine-drenched breath and knew that Sir John, somewhere under that voluminous cloak, had been using his miraculous wineskin.

‘For a priest, you’re a good fellow, Athelstan. You have fire in your balls, steel in your heart and a tongue like a razor!’ He grinned wickedly, giving Athelstan a vice-like hug. ‘If you weren’t a monk, you’d be a very good coroner’s apprentice.’

‘You’re in good spirits, Sir John.’

‘I feel better already,’ the coroner declared. ‘A blackjack of ale and the presence of the fair Benedicta. Who could ask for more?’

‘The Lady Maude?’ Athelstan queried.

Cranston’s face dropped. ‘By Satan’s balls, friar! Don’t frighten me!’

They reached the tavern and sat ensconced behind a table. Cranston was on his second blackjack of ale whilst his thick fingers tore at the white, succulent flesh of a small quail, when Benedicta joined them. The coroner roared for a cup of hippocrass, invited her to sit on his knee and bellowed with laughter at the woman’s barbed reply, whilst grinning wickedly out of the corner of his eye at Athelstan. He knew the priest was a good man, saintly, but with a weakness for this woman which fascinated Cranston. It was the only time Athelstan ever became nervous, those first few minutes whenever he met Benedicta, and this time was no different. The friar fussed around the woman like a lovelorn squire, making sure she was comfortable, whilst Benedicta, shy at such attention, murmured that she was well. Athelstan privately concluded that she was: Benedicta had lost her strained anxious look, her black glossy hair under its white gauze veil smelt fragrant, and he admired her close-cut gown of pink satin, tied at the throat by a heart-shaped brooch. Benedicta winked at Cranston and glanced sidelong at Athelstan.

‘You have been to the church, Father?’

‘Yes, and have given Pike a piece of my mind. Cecily fled before I could tell her a few home truths. Benedicta, I left you in charge!’

The woman shrugged daintily. ‘You know Watkin, Father. He has a mouth like a trumpet. At least I kept them out of the church. What would you have me do?’ she asked innocently, her eyes twinkling. ‘Lie down in the graveyard with Cecily?’

Cranston snorted with laughter. Athelstan smiled.

‘Any reply to the letter?’ she asked hopefully.

Cranston covered her delicate hand with his huge paw.

‘Don’t worry,’ he confided between gentle burps. ‘I sent the swiftest messenger. He was to go from Dover to Boulogne and is under orders to await a reply.’

Benedicta gripped one of his fingers and squeezed it tightly.

‘Sir John, you are a gentleman.’

Cranston grabbed his blackjack and pushed his face deep into it to hide his embarrassment.

‘The business at Blackfriars?’ she asked.

‘Murder, my lady,’ Cranston answered darkly. ‘Bloody murder! Silent death! But I have a few theories as my clerk will tell you later.’ He glanced suspiciously at Benedicta as she bit her lower lip whilst Athelstan suddenly became interested in his own wine cup.

‘I want to meet you, Benedicta,’ Athelstan intervened smoothly, ‘before going back to Blackfriars. The coffin is to be returned to the church and left there. Today is Thursday. I will return next Tuesday to hear confessions before Corpus Christi. Tell Watkin I want to find nothing amiss.’

‘And what else?’

Athelstan leaned back against the wall. ‘I have been thinking about what Father Prior said to me just before I left Blackfriars. He talked about the first miracle. You know, I think it’s time we visited Raymond D’Arques. Come on.’ He rose as Cranston grabbed his tankard and drained it to the dregs. Athelstan nodded towards the door. ‘Perhaps the mist is beginning to lift in more ways than one.’

D’Arques’s house was a two-storied, narrow building on the corner of a lane. It was half-timbered with a red-tiled roof, small windows on both storeys and a passageway down the side. Athelstan walked along this and looked over the small gate at the bottom. He glimpsed a huge yard, empty except for a few beggars crouched there. Surprised, he returned to the front of the house and knocked on the door, Cranston and Benedicta standing behind him. D’Arques’s pleasant-faced wife answered and welcomed them in with a smile.

‘Father Athelstan.’ She glanced quickly at Cranston and Benedicta.

‘Two friends,’ he replied. ‘Sir John Cranston, Coroner of the City, and Benedicta, a member of my parish council.’

The woman turned and walked back into the shadows of the house.

‘Come in,’ she said softly. ‘My husband is working. You have come to see him about the miracle worked at St Erconwald’s?’

‘Yes,’ the friar replied. ‘The news has spread throughout Southwark, even across the river.’

D’Arques was sitting in the cool, stone-flagged kitchen: the coins scattered across the table, the strips of parchment, ink horn and quill, and the small, black-beaded abacus, showed he was in the middle of doing his accounts. He pushed back his stool as they entered, and rose, inviting them to sit at either side of the table.

‘Brother Athelstan, you are welcome.’

The introductions were made; he clasped Cranston’s hand and nodded politely at Benedicta. Athelstan sat down and looked around. The kitchen was neat and tidy. A huge cauldron above a small log fire gave off a delicious odour. D’Arques caught his glance.

‘Beef stew,’ he commented, ‘but it’s not my wife’s cooking you’re interested in.’ He rolled back the loose sleeve of his gown to reveal a healthy arm. ‘You see, Father, the infection has not returned.’

Cranston and Benedicta stared at the wholesome skin, searching for any mark, but they were unable to find any. D’Arques’s wife sat at the other end of the table watching them intently.

‘Master D’Arques.’ Athelstan shifted uneasily as he felt he was now intruding on this happy household. ‘You’ve lived in Southwark all your life?’

‘I am Southwark born and bred.’

‘And you’ve been a carpenter?’

‘I’ve had various trades, Father. Why do you ask?’

‘Have you ever been married before?’

D’Arques threw back his head and laughed, then winked at his wife. ‘Once bitten, twice shy, Father! Margot Twyford,’ he nodded at his wife, ‘is my first and only wife. My first and only love,’ he added softly.

The woman looked away in embarrassment.

‘Twyford?’ Cranston interrupted. ‘Are you a member of that family?’

‘Oh, yes, Sir John. The famous Twyfords, the merchant princes. I am one of their kin. My father was most reluctant for me to marry outside the family circle and the great trade guilds which the Twyfords dominate.’

Athelstan felt he had gone as far as he dared. He was about to turn the conversation to more mundane matters when there was a sudden knock at the back door.

‘I am sorry,’ D’Arques muttered. ‘We have other tasks to attend to.’

His wife rose. Collecting a huge tray from a side table, she went and knelt before the fire, ladling the stew into small earthenware bowls.

‘Do you wish to eat?’ she asked over her shoulder. ‘Something to drink?’

‘No, thank you,’ Athelstan answered quickly, glancing at Cranston. ‘You have children, Master D’Arques?’

Again the man laughed. He rose and went to open the door. Athelstan glimpsed the beggars he had seen before now staring expectantly into the kitchen.

‘Go and sit down,’ D’Arques said quietly to them. ‘Sit against the wall and my wife will bring out the food.’

The beggars quietly obeyed as Mistress D’Arques rearranged the bowls so as to lay a huge platter of cut bread between them. She smiled at her visitors and disappeared through the door, to be welcomed by cries of thanks and appreciation.

‘You feed the poor?’ Benedicta asked, her eyes shining with admiration.

‘St Swithin’s is our parish, Mistress Benedicta. We all have our tasks. At noontime every day we feed the poor within the parish boundaries. It’s the least we can do.’