The Straw Men smoba-12 Read online

  The Straw Men

  ( Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan - 12 )

  Paul Doherty

  Paul Doherty

  The Straw Men

  PART ONE

  ‘Febris synocha: hectic fever’

  Sir John Cranston, swathed in cloak, muffler and beaver hat, dug in his spurs and coaxed the great destrier, his old war horse Bayonne, closer to the scaffold, which rose like a black shadow against the snowbound countryside around St John’s Priory in Clerkenwell.

  ‘Do you recognize one of your friends, Sir John?’ A member of his escort, similarly garbed against the cold, called out.

  ‘I have no friends,’ Cranston replied over his shoulder. ‘At least, not here,’ he whispered to himself. He pushed Bayonne, who began to snort and paw the ground, nearer to the high-branched gallows. ‘I know, I know,’ Sir John soothed. ‘But at least there is no smell.’ Cranston lifted his considerable bulk up in the stirrups and stared at the frozen, decomposed cadaver, its head slightly awry, the thick, hempen rope strangling the scrawny throat like some malignant necklace. Crows and ravens had done their work, pecking out the eyes and all the other tender bits, nose, ears and lips. The corpse’s face was nothing but an icy-white, frozen mask with black holes; the rest of the shrivelled corpse had merged with the shabby tunic the felon had been hanged in. Cranston glimpsed the scrap of leather pinned just beneath the man’s shoulder. No one had bothered to remove it. Cranston did. He unrolled the stiffened leather scrap even as Bayonne, shaking its head in protest, backed away snorting, the hot breath rising like clouds in the freezing morning air.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Cranston whispered, ‘we have seen worse, old friend. Remember that row of stakes at Poitiers. .?’

  ‘Now, what do we have here?’ Cranston peered down at the execution clerk’s bold but faded script. ‘Edmund Cuttler, felon, nip and foist, caught six times, branded twice, hanged once.’ Cranston smiled at the gallows humour, then stared at the pathetic remains of Edmund Cuttler. ‘Nip, foist, bum-tailor, pickpocket — poor old butterfingers caught at last.’ Cranston squinted down at the scrap of parchment and studied the date. Cuttler had been hanged four days before Christmas.

  ‘Well,’ he murmured, ‘just in time to join the angels, if he didn’t steal their haloes.’ Cranston crossed himself, pattered a prayer for the faithful departed, pinned the execution docket back and turned his horse’s head. Once again Cranston stared along the winding path which snaked north of the old city walls. A cloying river fog had swept in, thickening the dense mist which swirled over Moorfields. A heavy pall of freezing whiteness had descended, smothering sight and sound. Somewhere deep in the fog the bells of Clerkenwell Priory boomed out the summons to divine office, calling the faithful to prayer on this the ninth of January, the Year of our Lord 1381 in the Octave of the Epiphany. Christmas, Yuletide and the Feast of the Kings were long past. No more revelry, Cranston ruefully thought. The green holly with its blood-red berries had withered. No more Christmas feasting on a juice-packed goose or brawn of beef in mustard sauce. The jugs of claret had been filled and emptied. Cranston had danced a merry jig with his lady wife Maude, his twin sons, the poppets, dancing beside him, and Gog and Magog, his two great mastiffs, throwing their heads back to carol their own deep-voiced hymn. No, the feast and the festivities were certainly over. Soon it would be the Feast of St Hilary and the courts would open. Cranston would return to the Guildhall to sit, listen and judge over a long litany of human weakness and mistakes, as well as downright depravity and wickedness. ‘How Master Clumshaw did feloniously beat upon Matilda Luckshim and did cause her death other than by natural means. .’

  Bayonne abruptly skidded on a piece of ice. Cranston broke from his brooding. He stared around the bleak-white wilderness then back at his own retinue, an entire conroy of mounted men-at-arms wearing the city livery under heavy serge cloaks. They sat, horses close together, quietly cursing why they had to be here. Cranston gripped the reins of his own horse, his fingers going beneath his cloak to stroke the pommel of his sword. When he first arrived here he’d found it boring, freezing cold, highly uncomfortable. . but now. .? The mist abruptly shifted and parted to reveal ruins which, some claimed, dated back to the days of Caesar. The Lord Coroner blinked, straining both eyes and ears. Had he glimpsed movement? Had he heard the clink of metal? Bayonne also became agitated, as if the old war horse could smell the approach of battle, see the lowered lance, hear the scrape of sword and dagger, the creak of harness and the ominous clatter of war bows being strung and arrows notched. Cranston quietened the destrier, fumbled beneath his cloak and brought out the miraculous wine skin, which never seemed to empty, took a deep gulp of the blood-red claret and sighed in pleasure. He pushed the stopper back even as he wondered what Brother Athelstan, his secretarius and closest friend, would be doing on a morning like this. ‘Probably preaching to his parishioners about the common good,’ Cranston whispered to himself. He breathed out noisily. Athelstan’s parishioners! Were they, or people like them, responsible for bringing him and the rest to wait by a frozen gibbet at a desolate, ice-bound crossroads for a delegation travelling as fast and as furious as they could from Dover? Was an ambush being planned, devised and carried out by the Upright Men?

  ‘My Lord Coroner.’

  Cranston whirled around. The serjeant of the men-at-arms had pushed his horse forward.

  ‘Sir John, with all due respect, we have been here long enough to recite a rosary.’

  ‘And we’ll stay here for ten more,’ Cranston snarled, then shook his head in exasperation at his own cutting reply.

  ‘Come, come,’ Cranston lowered his muffler with his frost-laced gauntlet. ‘We are here,’ he stared at the ruddy-faced serjeant, ‘because His Grace, the self-styled Regent John of Gaunt, uncle of our beloved King, may God bless what hangs both between his ears and between his legs, is arriving with his agents the Meisters Oudernardes and their retinue. They are fresh out of Flanders. As you may know, they will be escorted by Master Thibault, My Lord of Gaunt’s Magister Secretorum, Master of Secrets and his mailed clerk, Lascelles.’

  ‘Sir John, what are they bringing — treasure?’

  ‘I don’t know; all I have been told is to wait for them here and escort them to the Tower of London.’

  ‘But they have enough guards themselves, surely?’

  ‘I thought that,’ Cranston replied, ‘but they apparently need more.’ Cranston stroked his horse’s neck. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Martin, Sir John. Martin Flyford.’

  ‘Well, Martin Flyford, what’s the poison in the boil?’ Cranston gestured in the direction of the city. ‘London seethes with discontent. The Great Community of the Realm plots to root up the past and build a New Jerusalem by the Thames; their leaders, the Upright Men, are devising great mischief.’

  ‘Sir John, they have been doing that for years.’

  ‘This is different. .’ Cranston broke off at a harsh carrying call from some bird sheltering among the ruins. Was that a marauding jay, he wondered, or something else? Bayonne was certainly nervous, while the other horses had become noticeably agitated.

  ‘They could be approaching, Sir John. I just wish I knew why we are really here?’

  ‘Because My Lord of Gaunt wants it that way.’ Cranston turned his horse, flinching at the whipping cold. ‘The Oudernardes are bringing something important, God knows what. Gaunt certainly doesn’t want them to go into London. We are to meet them here and escort them along this lonely track to the Tower.’ Cranston paused at a clink of harness. ‘Let us pray to God and all his saints that they come soon before our backsides freeze to our saddles.’ Cranston felt beneath his cloak and drew out his wine skin. He took a gulp, offere
d it to the serjeant then took it over to the huddle of men-at-arms, who also gratefully accepted. Mufflers were lowered, chain-mail coifs loosened, eyes gleaming in cold, pinched faces. They shared out the wine, laughing and joking.

  ‘Look, a lantern!’ one of them cried. Cranston turned in a creak of saddle. Out of the icy mist loomed a hooded rider with a lantern box attached to the rod he carried. Other figures emerged like a line of ghostly monks, cloaks and cowls, hiding everything except for the occasional glint of steel and chain-mail. Cranston touched the hilt of his sword then relaxed as the outriders approached and he glimpsed the stiffened pennants boasting the golden, snarling leopards of England against their vivid blue and blood-red background. The entire cavalcade now broke free of the mist, fifty riders in all, Cranston quickly calculated. He saw the Flemings’ frozen faces shrouded in ermine-lined hoods; the rest were veteran archers from the Tower, master bowmen, who had signed an indenture to serve the Crown after years of fighting in France. Each man was hand-picked and wore the insignia of a chained white hart emblazoned on his cloak. Cranston knew their captain, Rosselyn, both by name and reputation — a hard-eyed slaughterer who’d amassed a petty fortune from ransoms in France. Cranston spurred his horse forward, pushing back his cowl, calling out Rosselyn’s name. The barest courtesies were exchanged. Cranston grasped Rosselyn’s hand and asked how the journey from Dover had been. Rosselyn’s answer was to turn, hawk and spit.

  ‘Very eloquent,’ Cranston murmured. ‘There was no trouble?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Rosselyn stared up through the mist. ‘But then His Grace still believes we might be attacked close to London and within bowshot of the Tower. Treason and treachery press in from every side.’

  ‘What are you guarding?’ Cranston asked. Rosselyn’s light blue, popping eyes never blinked. He just gestured with his head to behind him, where the escort of archers had parted as they relaxed. Cranston glimpsed a woman, he was sure of that, from her lithe form and the way she sat slumped in the saddle, holding her reins. Her head was covered by a deep hood, her face completely masked with only slits for the eyes, nose and mouth. The sumpter pony behind her had an escort of four archers; she herself was flanked either side by three master bowmen. Leather straps had been tied around her waist and wrists; the ends of them were held by her escort.

  ‘No questions,’ Rosselyn whispered.

  ‘Therefore no lies,’ Cranston retorted. The coroner pulled up his muffler, lifted his hand and turned his horse into the flurry of snowflakes now beginning to fall. Cranston and Rosselyn rode knee to knee in silence. Cranston kept peering to the right and left; the silence around them was increasingly unsettling.

  ‘Reminds me of Aix in France,’ Rosselyn murmured. ‘Remember Philip Turbot — Gentleman Jakes as we called him, leader of a gang of freebooters? Well,’ Rosselyn continued, not waiting for a reply, ‘the Jacquerie did for his coven, impaled them all on stakes. Turbot was reduced to robbing a church. He was caught in a snow storm and, so thick did it lie, the Jacquerie couldn’t take him out of the gates to the town gallows.’ Rosselyn indicated with his head to the one they’d just left. ‘So they hanged him from a tavern window bar and buried him in the city ditch.’

  ‘I remember Turbot,’ Cranston broke in. ‘He claimed to be a warlock. He boasted how he’d climbed to the top of Saint Paul’s steeple, even though it is crammed with holy relics. Turbot said he held a burning glass — this caught the power of the sun and cast its light with such force on a monk walking below that it struck him dead, a bolt more violent than lightening.’

  ‘Yes, that’s the same Turbot.’ Rosselyn was enjoying himself. ‘Anyway, they thrust his corpse into the city ditch. During the night, however, a company of wolves came, tore him out of his grave and ate him up.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘His was the only corpse they devoured to fill their bellies.’

  ‘Well, no wolves prowl here.’ Cranston made to grasp his wine skin when hunting horns brayed loudly to his left and right. The coroner gazed in surprise as the snowy wasteland all around them seemed to erupt into life. Figures garbed in white rose out of the earth. The first ranks, armed with arbalests and war bows, loosed a volley of hissing shafts while others, armed with pikes, swords and daggers, streamed into the horsemen, deepening and widening the confusion as archers struck by shafts slumped in their saddles or horses, similarly hurt, plunged and reared, striking out with flailing hooves. Cranston drew his own sword, the freezing cold now forgotten as a figure, masked and garbed in white, came at him with a pike. Cranston urged Bayonne forward; his enemy faltered, lowering the pike, and the war horse crashed into him. Cranston turned swiftly, striking with his sword, cleaving his opponent’s head with such force the blood shot up in a fountain. Cranston stared around. The entire cavalcade was now under attack — white-clothed assailants swarmed everywhere. Cranston recognized the tactics. More pikemen were massing to hem the horsemen in while others turned and twisted, striking at leg and fetlock to maim and cripple. The archers’ bows were useless here — they didn’t have the time or space to notch and loose. The main brunt of the attack was against the Flemings in the centre, as if the enemy wished to seize the mysterious prisoner and her pack pony. Cranston urged his horse alongside that of Rosselyn; the captain was busy hacking furiously at an attacker already soaked in blood.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Cranston shouted, ‘break off! We are mounted. We cannot be trapped here!’

  Rosselyn drew a mailed foot from his stirrup and kicked his assailant away while pulling down his muffler, his face now flecked with bloody frost and sweat.

  ‘Sweet tits,’ he agreed, staring breathlessly over his shoulder. ‘Sir John, you are right, they will hem us in.’ The fighting was now furious around the centre, a swirling mass of men lunging, stabbing and cutting, churning the ground into a bloody, slushy mess. Rosselyn grabbed his hunting horn and blew three piercing blasts. At first the signal had no effect. Rosselyn repeated it and the cavalcade slowly began to push its way forward out of the throng away from the flailing sword, the jabbing pike and thrusting dagger. City men-at-arms and royal archers massed closer together, using both horse and weapon to break free of their oppressors. Bodies still tumbled out of saddles yet Cranston, who had been virtually ignored as the attack seethed around the centre, breathed a sigh of relief. The cavalcade broke through, horsemen spurred their mounts into a gallop across the frozen waste, arrows and bolts whipped the air, but at last they were completely free. The horde of horsemen thundered forward past the church of All Hallows in the London Wall, on to the main thoroughfare, glistening with ice, which stretched past Aldgate and down to the Tower.

  Athelstan, parish priest of St Erconwald’s in Southwark, stared despairingly at his congregation gathered before the rood screen in the sanctuary of their parish church. They were all grouped together, cloistered like angry sparrows, he thought, on this the feast of St Hilary, the thirteenth of January in the year of our Lord 1381. The parish church was freezing cold despite Athelstan’s best efforts. He had brought in braziers crammed with charcoal fiery as the embers of Hell, or so Moleskin the boatman had described them. Nevertheless, the early morning mist had seeped like some wraith under the door, through any gaps in the horn-filled windows and across the ancient paving stones to freeze them all. Athelstan had decided to wait. He would not continue the Mass. He had recited the consecration, offered the Kiss of Peace then the trouble had surfaced — one incident among many. The source of conflict lay with a separate group to Athelstan’s right, close to the sacristy door: Humphrey Warde, his wife Katherine, their big, strapping son Laurence, Margaret, their daughter and little Odo, a mere babe swaddled in thick cloths now held so protectively by his mother. The Wardes were spicers who had moved into a shop in Rickett Lane, a short walk from the parish church. They had, according to Humphrey, withdrawn from the fierce competition in Cheapside to do more prosperous trade in Southwark, raise sufficient revenue then return to Cheapside, or even move out to
a city such as Lincoln or Norwich. A simple humdrum tale, until Watkin the dung collector, Pike the ditcher and Ranulf the rat catcher, together with other luminaries of his parish council, had intervened. They only had to level one accusation against the Wardes — traitors! Athelstan took a deep breath; perhaps that issue would have to wait, along with the other business which had surfaced during the Mass. Despite his involvement in the ritual, Athelstan had seen the narrow-faced rat catcher, as slippery as one of the ferrets he carried in his box, dart under the rood screen to whisper heatedly with Watkin and Pike. Some mischief was afoot! Athelstan glanced expectantly at the lovely face of Benedicta the widow woman, but she could only stare pitiably back. Athelstan searched for another ally, a newcomer to the parish — Giles of Sempringham, the anchorite, otherwise called the Hangman of Rochester, a strange, eerie figure garbed completely in black, his straw-coloured hair framing a ghostly white cadaver’s face. The anchorite, who also worked as an itinerant painter, had recently moved from his cell at the Benedictine abbey of St Fulcher-on-Thames to St Erconwald’s. Athelstan had secured the appropriate licences from both his superiors at Blackfriars as well as the Bishop of London. The anchorite, who had monies from his grisly task as the dispenser of royal justice as well as revenue from painting church walls, had financed the construction of a cell here at St Erconwald’s, turning the disused chantry chapel of St Alphege into an anker hold. The anchorite now sat next to Benedicta, one hand clawing his hair, the other sifting Ave beads through his fingers. Athelstan glanced quickly at Pike and Watkin; they had lost some of their stubborn obduracy, openly agitated by Ranulf’s news.

  ‘Father,’ Crim the altar boy, kneeling on the steps beside him hissed. ‘Father, we should continue the Mass.’

  ‘Aye, we should!’ Athelstan’s strong declaration rang like a challenge across the sanctuary. He left the altar and strode over to Katherine Warde, holding his hands out for the baby.