The Merchant of Death Read online

  ‘And, before you ask, Mistress Kathryn,’ Emma said, ‘I served Master Blunt because he is a good man. He cared for me. I was a foundling and where else could I go? He was also a gifted painter. He should never have married that harlot Alisoun.’ She spat the last words out so venomously that Kathryn knew, whatever Emma Darryl said, that she was deeply in love with Richard Blunt.

  Kathryn straightened in her chair and put the goblet down on the floor beside her.

  ‘Mistress Daryl, before we continue, let me tell you what we know. Master Blunt did not come from Warwickshire. I suspect he was born here in Kent, somewhere near Rochester. A gifted young man, he probably ran wild in his youth, perhaps a little poaching in the forests and along the Weald of Kent. In doing so, he became an outlaw. Moreover, before he either changed his name or accepted the King’s pardon, Blunt was hunted by a verderer called Reginald Erpingham, who was later knighted, becoming the King’s principal tax collector in the shire.’ Kathryn gently raised her hand as Emma opened her mouth. ‘No, Blunt has already confessed to this.’

  The housekeeper leaned back in the chair, rocking herself gently.

  ‘You are correct,’ she sighed. ‘My master’s real name was Ralph Sockler, an outlaw; he killed three of the old king’s deer and led Erpingham a merry dance. Eventually Blunt fled. He took service with the Earl of Warwick and went with him.’ Emma gave a laugh and clenched the young man’s hand even more firmly. ‘No more lies. Blunt was not married to anyone before Alisoun: this boy is mine as well as his.’

  ‘So Blunt refused to marry you?’ Kathryn asked.

  The housekeeper shook her head. ‘No, I refused to marry him. Why hold a man down for a night of passion? And lose everything in a life of recrimination? I suppose Blunt loved me, we certainly saw the days. We were on the last ship out of Calais when the war ended. We settled in Canterbury, thinking the past had forgotten us.’

  ‘And Erpingham?’ Colum asked.

  ‘Last summer he met Blunt by accident in the Buttermarket and immediately challenged him.’ Emma paused and looked at the young man’s face but Peter sat in his chair like a dutiful child, not comprehending what was really going on.

  ‘And Erpingham threatened Master Blunt?’

  ‘I think he did more than that, Mistress Swinbrooke. On a number of occasions he came to the house. The master always saw him by himself; I think Sir Reginald was not above blackmail.’

  ‘Did you or your master approach Erpingham at the Wicker Man?’ Colum asked.

  The housekeeper grimaced. ‘No, but Erpingham summoned us there. He sent Blunt a letter saying when he would arrive; he gave him the date and advised that he could settle his account.’

  ‘In other words, pay blackmail?’

  ‘Of course, but Blunt refused to go.’

  Emma stooped and threw another log on the fire. ‘Isn’t it strange,’ she murmured as if to herself, ‘how matters unfold? There was poor Richard worrying about Erpingham and, all the time, his sweet little wife was playing the weasel with any handsome young man.’

  ‘You knew this?’ Kathryn asked.

  ‘Everyone in Canterbury did, apart from him. She had a fire in her loins, did Alisoun. She married Richard for his money and, until she appeared, he had good silver banked with the goldsmiths.’

  ‘And Master Blunt was totally ignorant of Alisoun’s dalliances?’ Kathryn asked.

  ‘Oh, he might have suspected but he turned a blind eye, becoming engrossed in his beloved paintings.’

  ‘And what happened the night Alisoun died?’

  The old housekeeper glanced at the fire, rubbing the side of her face.

  ‘I don’t really know,’ she murmured. ‘Richard and Peter had been finishing a painting in St. Mildred’s. They arrived home late, having stopped at a tavern. No, not the Wicker Man, though Blunt was still worried about Erpingham’s threats. Now the snow was falling, lying thick and fast, so Blunt hurried home, sending Peter ahead to see if the bakery was still open.’ She looked round, tears welling in her eyes. ‘I knew what was going on. I have my chamber on the top floor, but what could I do? If I told the master, he would just reply that Alisoun was young and perhaps needed the company of people of her own age. If I remonstrated with the harlot . . .’ The housekeeper trailed off and scratched her head. ‘Well, she may have had a pretty face and a sweet mouth, but Alisoun could curse like any soldier.’ Emma stopped to dab at her eyes. ‘She threatened that if I said anything to the master, I’d be dismissed.’

  ‘But would he have done that?’ Kathryn asked.

  ‘Alisoun had a sweet, soft and supple body: between the sheets she would have enthralled any man.’

  ‘Continue,’ Kathryn asked; she glimpsed the hurt and pain in the old woman’s eyes. ‘We must know,’ Kathryn whispered. ‘For God’s sake, Mistress Darryl, three people died that night.’

  ‘Will Daddy come home?’ The young man suddenly spoke up in a thin, shrill voice. He looked wide-eyed at Kathryn. ‘We haven’t finished the painting yet. I’m glad Alisoun’s gone. She would laugh at me and nip my arm. Once she even tripped me so I fell downstairs.’ The poor witless lad stared around. ‘Daddy has to come. Soon it will be Yuletide.’

  ‘Shush now, boy!’ Emma stroked his hand gently and smiled apologetically at Kathryn. ‘He’s all a-fey tonight. I think he suspects: usually he is better than this.’ She put one arm protectively round the young man’s shoulders. He now sat rocking, backwards and forwards, his thumb firmly in his mouth.

  ‘It was over so quickly,’ Emma continued in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘Master Blunt came home; he must have come up the stairs quietly, taking his boots off because of the snow. He pushed the door open and . . .’ She chewed the corner of her lip. ‘Richard was a gentle man, but in his youth he had been both hot-tempered and a master bowman. I have seen him shoot six arrows into a target in less than a minute. I doubt if Alisoun or her companions knew what was happening. The first I heard was the clatter of the window shutters and the young man screaming whilst he tried to escape. I put on a robe and hurried down.’ Emma shrugged. ‘The rest you know.’

  Kathryn just stared at her.

  ‘The master looked terrible,’ Emma continued. ‘Just standing in the doorway, the bow in his hand, the quiver at his feet. Alisoun lay before the hearth, her bodice untied, an arrow in her throat. The young man had taken the other straight in the heart. I heard the shouting and screaming from the alley below. Peter came back, then the bailiffs.’ She drew her breath in sharply. ‘I have no more to add.’ She withdrew her arm from Peter and put her face in her hands, sobbing gently.

  Kathryn crouched beside her, clasping her hand.

  ‘What can we do?’ The housekeeper looked up, her face tearstained. ‘What should I do, Mistress?’

  Kathryn shook her head. ‘Do you need anything?’

  ‘No.’ Emma wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Just visit the master. Tell him all is well. See what comfort you can give.’

  They left a few minutes later. Colum was visibly uncomfortable at what he had witnessed; Luberon hid his face in his cowl, though Kathryn glimpsed the clerk dabbing at his eyes. Colum stared up at the starlit sky and moved Kathryn and Luberon gently away from the houses and the icy snow that was threatening to fall from their roofs.

  ‘God have mercy on them all!’ he whispered, looking down at Kathryn. ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘He killed three people. There’s nothing under heaven we can do for Richard Blunt.’

  ‘Alisoun was a bitch,’ Luberon added. ‘God save us, that could be any one of us. But come.’

  He led them round St. Mildred’s Church, through the lychgate and across the deserted frozen cemetery. They stumbled along the winding path between the lopsided crosses and battered headstones. All around them was a frozen stillness; not even a nightjar or hunting owl broke the silence of the graveyard, buried under its carpet of white snow.

  ‘Just follow me!’ Luberon called o
ver his shoulder. ‘I had this path cleared.’

  He stopped and pointed into the darkness. ‘They’ll be buried here. Though the graves will be shallow, the soil’s iron hard. Perhaps in spring we can dig deeper . . .’ Luberon’s voice faltered and he led them on.

  Outside the death house, a small brick building that stood next to the cemetery wall within easy walking distance of the death door in the side of the church, Luberon stopped and took out a tinder. After a great deal of scraping, he lit the two lantern horns hanging over the entrance. He handed one of these to Colum, unlocked the door and took them in. Kathryn had never been in a room so cold and bleak. Luberon also lit the cresset torches but even their light and the incense bowl, which had been lit and placed in a thurible hanging on the wall, did nothing to hide the smell of death and the stench of putrefaction. Three pinewood coffins rested next to one another on a long trestle table. Luberon drew his dagger and loosened the coffin lids. Then he pulled back the black palls and white gauze sheets underneath, gesturing at Colum and Kathryn to come forward. At first Kathryn just stared in horror at these three young people. If it had not been for the greenish-white tinge of their skin, which looked even more ghoulish in the torchlight, and the waxen texture of their flesh, they could have been sleeping. She touched Alisoun’s arm. In life the young woman must have been beautiful; blond hair, like burnished gold, framed a pretty oval face with regular features. The young men were thickset and well built. Kathryn pitied the cruel fate which had shattered their lives as well as that of Richard Blunt.

  ‘The embalmers have been busy,’ Luberon whispered. He coughed apologetically. ‘I was wrong – they are not to be buried tomorrow but first given to the care of their relatives, though I think the men will be buried here, at least until spring when the roads are more passable.’

  ‘What is it?’ Colum hissed at Kathryn, busy with the corpses.

  Despite his military service, Colum was afraid. These unlidded caskets, the ghoulish corpses in the flickering torchlight, the deathly silence of this cold shed and, outside, nothing but the white stillness. The Irishman recalled the stories of his youth and the great wakes he had attended in the villages outside Dublin. He remembered how the old ones used to whisper that the dead never journey direct to God but lurk in the shadows to make their sad farewells to the land of the living. Colum stared into one darkened corner. Did the ghost of the beautiful Alisoun stand there? He jumped and cursed as a rat scurried under the table and disappeared out of the door.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ he snapped. ‘What is the matter?’

  Kathryn was now feeling the skin of each corpse. She lifted the grave clothes Alisoun lay in and ran her hand gently across the dead woman’s stomach. She ignored Colum’s question.

  ‘Master Luberon, can I see the wounds?’

  Luberon stepped back, his face deathly pale as he clutched his stomach.

  ‘Do what you want,’ he replied thickly. ‘I think the night air may be best for me.’

  Colum would have joined him, but Kathryn seized him by the wrist.

  ‘Come, Irishman,’ Kathryn murmured. ‘There’s no ghost or banshee here. Help me to turn them over.’

  Colum gritted his teeth, half closed his eyes and obeyed. He just thanked God he was wearing gloves and didn’t have to feel the corpses against his skin. Kathryn, however, remained impassive.

  ‘Undoubtedly arrow wounds,’ she commented and pointed to the purple-ringed gash in the chest of one of the young men. ‘But such great force!’

  ‘I’ve seen an arrow go straight through a man,’ Colum said. ‘Why, Kathryn, is there anything wrong?’

  Kathryn pointed to the ragged hole in Alisoun’s throat.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Colum, look!’

  Colum stared down. The wound was large, the flesh scarcely torn.

  ‘Blunt caught her straight,’ he observed. ‘Perhaps she was coming towards him?’

  Kathryn rearranged the corpses and, with Colum’s help, drew back the veils and black woollen cloths, then resealed the coffin.

  ‘I have seen enough,’ she whispered. ‘Time will tell, time will tell!’

  And, remaining enigmatic, she went outside where she picked up a lump of snow and carefully washed her hands with it.

  ‘You can douse the lights, Simon,’ she called, her voice ringing like a bell across the bleak white cemetery.

  Luberon hastened to obey.

  ‘Well.’ Kathryn came between the clerk and Colum, linking her hands through their arms. ‘You, Colum, the King’s coroner, can record that all are indeed dead and undoubtedly murdered. Master Luberon, you can complete the necessary documents.’ She looked across at the yew trees which, standing stark and black in the silvery moonlight, took on a horrid, almost lifelike stance as if they were some dreadful creatures from hell, frozen by the winter cold.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I have had enough of graves and graveyards for one night.’

  ‘Was there anything wrong?’ Colum asked as they left by the wicket gate.

  ‘Time will tell,’ Kathryn said again. ‘But now, do we retire to our beds or visit Sir Reginald Erpingham’s secret house in St. Alphage’s Lane?’

  ‘Lord, what o’clock is it?’ Luberon asked, stamping his feet against the cold.

  ‘God knows!’ Colum replied. ‘All the bells are silent.’ He looked up at the stars. ‘But it has been dark for some hours. I would reckon between nine and ten o’clock.’

  ‘Let’s go to St. Alphage’s Lane,’ Kathryn insisted. ‘I am intrigued by what Erpingham may have kept there.’

  ‘What are the possibilities?’ Luberon asked as they walked back up to Ottemelle Lane. ‘I mean, about Erpingham’s death?’

  Kathryn blew her breath out. She watched it hang in the cold night air: like steam, she thought, from a boiling pot. Why did it do that? She recalled her father’s fierce debate with his colleagues about whether the human breath could carry contagion. If it did, Kathryn thought absent-mindedly, would the cold night air kill it or make it stronger?

  Colum suddenly slipped on a piece of ice and all three of them steadied themselves, laughing and joking but lapsing into silence as they passed Kathryn’s house. Once they’d entered St. Margaret’s Street, however, Luberon returned to his questioning about Erpingham.

  ‘I’m still puzzled,’ Kathryn admitted flatly. ‘Here we have a tax collector who eats and drinks the same as everyone else. He goes upstairs to his chamber, carrying a goblet of untainted wine. The only person to follow him is old Gervase. The rest also disperse, and Standon takes up guard at the foot of the stairs. The next morning Erpingham is dead. No trace of any poison, no sign of any murderer visiting him, the window and door of his chamber both locked and bolted. We know everyone hated him. Some are quite candid – they wished him dead, but there’s no evidence of their involvement in his murder.’

  ‘The chamber was haunted,’ Colum added, his mood still affected by his recent visit to the macabre death house.

  ‘Oh, yes, I can see that,’ Kathryn replied, staring up at the houses on either side. ‘Erpingham was a godless man, fascinated by anything sinister or macabre. He may have well been proud that an ancestor died in that chamber. However, according to the old knight, when Erpingham had his nightmare he was truly terrified.’

  Kathryn and her two companions paused as a group of hooded, ragged figures slipped out of Hawk Lane and shuffled towards them. Kathryn quickly counted five or six figures. They moved slowly, carrying staves, their leader holding up a paltry lantern.

  ‘Have pity!’ his voice whined. ‘Oh, good Christians, have pity!’

  Colum’s hand fell to his sword hilt. The group drew nearer. Kathryn caught a strange, sour smell, but as the leader approached, one of the group beat two hollow sticks together, followed by the tinkle of a bell and the cry ‘Unclean! Unclean!’

  ‘By Maeve’s teats!’ Colum grasped his sword. ‘Lepers!’

  Luberon scuttled into the entrance of a doorway.


  The leper leader stopped before Kathryn and raised his head. Kathryn’s heart lurched in both fear and compassion. The man’s face was completely eaten away: a bloody stain marked his nose; one eye was closed by a growth high on his right cheek and the terrible disease had begun to eat into his lower jaw. The man stretched out one maimed hand.

  ‘We are so cold,’ he rasped. ‘Oh, for sweet Christ’s sake!’

  Kathryn dipped into her purse; she thought again and emptied its contents into the man’s hands.

  ‘Go back down Hawk Lane,’ she said. ‘At the far end, across the street, you will see a large building like a church.’ She paused, staring at the man’s one good eye. ‘Knock on the door, speak to the priest, Father Cuthbert. There’s a shelter behind the hospital. Say Mistress Swinbrooke sent you.’

  ‘Aye, and Colum Murtagh, the King’s Commissioner.’ The Irishman, now embarrassed by his fear, came back.

  The leper raised one hand and, turning slowly, led his disfigured companions back into the darkness.

  Luberon waddled out of his hiding place.

  ‘I am sorry. Mistress, truly I am, but they terrify me.’

  Kathryn squeezed him by the arm. ‘Simon, I would be just as terrified, but my father told me that leprosy is not infectious, not unless you bathe, eat, drink and sleep with them.’

  She stood at the corner of Hawk Lane and watched the dark shapes disappear down the alleyway between the overhanging houses. The clatter of their rattle and the chime of the silver bell sounded eerie in the frozen stillness. Kathryn did not move. For some strange reason she thought of her absent husband, Alexander Wyville. What if he was sick or ill like this? Or even travelling in disguise?

  ‘Come on, Kathryn!’ Colum urged.

  They continued up the deserted street past St. Margaret’s Church and across the Mercery. Canterbury seemed like some ghost city; even the great tavern, the Chequer of Hope, had its lights dimmed and windows boarded. Nothing moved on the street except scavenging cats, though now and again Kathryn glimpsed dark shadows in doorways and, on the corners of alleyways, beggars or highwaymen desperate for any business. They passed the bull-stake that marked the end of the Buttermarket. Some travellers congregated there, seeking shelter at the Sun Inn, a large tavern near Christchurch Gate. Above this loomed the soaring, crenellated, foursquare towers of the cathedral, stretching up as if to touch the starlit sky. The stocks and whipping posts outside Christchurch Gate were empty.