The Nightingale Gallery Read online

  Maude came in and Cranston looked at her, hang-dog, for even in bed his tourney of love was failing. He watched his wife carefully out of the corner of his eye as she busied herself, stacking blankets, opening chests, replacing candles in their holders. He studied her comely figure, her small, full breasts, clear face, bright eyes, ready smile, the slight sway when she walked. Cranston got up. Perhaps there was something wrong but it was not that serious. He moved over and embraced his wife, pulling her close to him.

  ‘Oh, Sir John!’ she whispered, nestling against him.

  ‘Bolt the door!’ he murmured thickly. ‘Bolt the door. I wish to show you something!’

  She turned, her eyes round.

  ‘I suspect I have seen it before.’

  Nevertheless, the door was locked, the window casement shut, and Cranston proved to his own satisfaction, as well as his wife’s, that perhaps age had not yet drained the juices of his body. As they lay on the great four poster bed, their bodies entwined, Maude almost lost in Cranston’s great fat folds, Sir John stared up at the ceiling, brushing his wife’s hair with his cheek, listening to her chattering about this and that.

  ‘What was that?’ He pushed her away sharply.

  ‘Sir John, what is the matter?’

  ‘What did you just say?’

  Maude shrugged. ‘I was talking about Agnes, the wife of David the waterman. You often hire him to take us across the river. Well, she says that the boatmen and wharfers are drawing up a petition which they would like you to look at. They wish some of the arches of the bridge to be widened, the starlings to be replaced. The water level is so high, it is dangerous and boats are dashed against the pier or the arches. Sir John, men have drowned. Children as well!’

  Cranston sat up in bed, his fat body quivering with pleasure.

  ‘That’s what was wrong! Now I know what I saw on the bridge!’ He turned and embraced his surprised wife, kissing her passionately on the forehead and cheeks.

  ‘Maude, whatever would I do without you? You and your chatter. Of course! I wonder if Athelstan thought of that?’

  Despite his huge bulk, Cranston leapt out of bed.

  ‘Come, Maude! Come, wife, quickly! Fresh hose, a clean shirt, a cup of claret, a meat pie and a manchet loaf! I must be off! Come on!’

  Lady Maude moved just as quickly, glaring at her husband. One minute he was embracing her, kissing her passionately, and now he was leaping around the bedroom like a young gallant, getting ready to get out. Nevertheless, she scurried around, putting on her dress and smock whilst muttering how, if other people had left her alone, she would have things ready anyway.

  Sir John ignored her, dressing hastily; he now knew that Vechey had been murdered. Had to have been. The level of the river water would prove that. He would drag that bloody friar from his stars and they would go back to the Springall mansion and this time demand answers to their questions.

  CHAPTER 5

  As soon as Athelstan skirted the church, he saw the coroner standing beside Philomel. The old destrier was saddled and ready to depart. Cranston grinned.

  ‘Good morning, Brother!’ he bellowed, loud enough for half the parish to hear. ‘Your horse is ready. Your saddlebags are packed.’ He held them up. ‘Quills, pens, writing tray, parchment, and I have ensured the inkhorn is well sealed, so if it spills don’t blame me.’

  Athelstan, still feeling depressed after his visit to Hob’s wife, ignored the coroner and pushed by him into his small, two-roomed house. Cranston followed like an unwelcome draught, sweeping in, filling the room with his broad girth.

  ‘Really, Brother!’ he boomed, as he looked around. ‘You should live in a little more comfort. Do you have any wine?’

  Athelstan gestured towards an earthenware jug and watched with delight as Cranston took a great gulp then, his face puce as a plum, went to the door to spit it out.

  ‘God’s teeth, man! More water than wine!’ he snapped.

  ‘St Dominic and my Order,’ Athelstan said tartly, ‘have in their wisdom decreed that wine at full strength is not for monks.’ He tapped Cranston’s great girth. ‘Perhaps not even for king’s coroners!’

  Cranston drew himself up to his full height and squinted at Athelstan.

  ‘My orders, little friar, are that you are to accompany me into Cheapside to a tavern called the Bear and Ragged Staff. You have heard of it?’

  Athelstan shook his head, his heart sinking. Cranston smirked.

  ‘We are going to sit there. I shall remain sober and tell you how Vechey was murdered. He did not commit suicide.’

  ‘And I shall tell you, my Lord Coroner, how Edmund Brampton, steward to Sir Thomas Springall, did not hang himself in the garret of that house in Cheapside!’

  ‘So you have been thinking, Friar?’

  ‘Coroner, I never stop.’

  ‘Well, come on then!’

  ‘Sir John, we could stay here and discuss our concerns.’

  Cranston turned, shaking his head. ‘Here? Where every little snot from Southwark can come knocking at your door, bothering you with their complaints. Oh, no, Brother. Our stop at the Bear and Ragged Staff is only half our journey. We go then to Newgate, and perhaps elsewhere.’

  So saying, he strode out of the house. Athelstan breathed a prayer for patience, made a sign of the cross over himself and followed suit. Cranston, now mounted, watched him.

  ‘Aren’t you going to lock your door?’ he bellowed.

  ‘What’s the use?’ Athelstan replied. ‘If I do, thieves will break it down thinking there is something valuable to steal.’

  Snorting at the friar’s apparent stupidity, Cranston turned his horse and led them out of the main alleyways of Southwark. A group of urchins, recognising Sir John, followed from afar and, despite Athelstan’s pleas, shouted insults about the coroner’s ponderous girth. Garth the woodcutter, who also took the death carts round the streets, was drinking outside the tavern and joined in the noisy abuse.

  ‘Sir John Cranston!’ he bellowed, tapping his own round belly. ‘You must be pregnant. What will it be, boy or girl?’

  That was too much for the coroner. He reined in his horse and glared at his cheery-faced tormentor.

  ‘If I was pregnant by you,’ he shouted back, ‘then it would be a bloody great Barbary ape!’

  And, amidst the raucous laughter which greeted this repartee, Athelstan and Cranston continued on their way to London Bridge. They crossed over quietly enough, Athelstan smiling as he passed through the gateway at the far end on to Fish Street Hill. He wondered how the little man was coping, remembered the heads and concluded it was an acquaintance he would not wish to renew.

  The fine day had brought the crowds pouring into London, varlets, squires, and men-at-arms accompanying knights north to the great horse fair at Smithfield, after which there would be tournaments and tourneys. The streets were packed with men, helmeted and armed, and great destriers caparisoned in all the colours and awesome regalia of war moved majestically along Fish Street Hill. High in the saddle rode the knights, resplendent in coloured surcoats, their slit-eyed helmets swinging from saddle bows, bannered lances carried before them by squires. Hordes of others followed on foot; retainers gaudy in the livery of great lords, and the bright French silks of young gallants who swarmed into the city like butterflies under the warm sun and blue skies. They thronged the taverns, their coloured garments a sharp contrast to the dirty leather aprons of the blacksmiths and the short jerkins and caps of the apprentices.

  As Cranston and Athelstan turned into Cheapside they saw the festive spirit had spread. Stalls were out and there were mummers performing miracle plays. Men shouted themselves hoarse proclaiming cock fights, dog battles, and savage contests never seen before between wild hogs and mangy bears. The crowds had impeded the dung carts and the piles of rubbish and refuse were everywhere, the flies rising in thick black swarms.

  ‘God’s teeth!’ Cranston said. ‘Come, Athelstan.’

  They had to dismount a
nd force their way through, past the Conduit and the Tun and up a small alleyway which led into the Bear and Ragged Staff. They stabled their horses and did not enter the tavern but passed into a pleasant garden beyond. A private place with a chessboard garden, a square divided into four plots by small gravelled walks and paths. These were fringed by a hedge of varying shrubs and small trees - white-thorn, privet, sweetbriar and the occasional rose - all entwined together. They sat against the wall on turfed seats in the shade, looking out over raised herb banks of hyssop, lavender and other fragrant shrubs. A slattern brought a small table for Athelstan to rest his writing tray on, and of course a jug of wine and two goblets, though Athelstan shook his head and asked for water. They sat and enjoyed the fragrant smells and the coolness after their dusty ride through the city.

  ‘I could stay here all day,’ Athelstan said, leaning back against the wall. ‘So quiet, so peaceful.’

  ‘You would prefer to be back in your monastery?’

  Athelstan smiled. 'I didn’t say that!’

  ‘But you do not like your work?’

  ‘I did not say that either.’ He turned and looked at Cranston, noting how the fat coroner’s face was dewed with drops of sweat. ‘Do you like yours, Sir John? The murder, the lies, the deceits? Do you remember,’ Athelstan asked, ‘I once quoted Bartholomew the Englishman?’

  Cranston looked expectant.

  ‘He wrote a book entitled The Nature of Things,’ Athelstan continued, ‘in which he described the planet Saturn as cold as ice, dark as night, and malignant as Satan. He claims that the planet governs the murderous intent of men.’ Athelstan squinted, watching the bees hover round a succulent rose. ‘I often think it governs mine. You heard Fortescue refer to my own brother?’ Cranston nodded. ‘My father owned a prosperous farm to the south, in Sussex. I was intended for the religious life. My brother was destined to till the soil. Now there’s a road which goes by our farm down to the coast. We used to see the men-at-arms, the crossbow men on their way to the ports for the crossing to France, then we’d watch them return laden with booty. We heard the legends and romantic stories about knights in shining armour, war horses moving majestically across green fields.

  ‘One spring I left my noviciate and came back to the farm. The next party of soldiers which passed, my brother and I joined. We sailed from Dover, landing at Honfleur, joining one of the many bands plundering across France.’ Athelstan stared up at the sky. ‘We were under the command of the Black Prince with his general Walter de Manny and others. Our dreams soon died. No chivalrous knights, no majestic armies moving according to rules, but horrible deeds, towns gutted and burnt, women and children slain. Then one day my brother and I, serving as archers, were caught outside a town by a group of French horsemen. We took up our positions, driving stakes into the ground in the usual pattern. The French charged sooner than we thought. They were amongst us, hacking and killing.’

  Athelstan stopped to compose himself before continuing: When it was over, my brother was dead and I had aged a hundred years. I might as well tell you, Cranston. I returned home. I’ll never forget my father’s face. I’d never seen him like that. He just stared at me. My mother? All she could do was crouch in a corner and sob. I think she cried till the day she died. My father soon followed her to the grave. I went back to my Order. Oh, they accepted me but life was harsh. I had to do private and public penance, take a solemn vow that, after I was ordained, I would accept whatever duties my superiors gave me.’

  Athelstan snorted with laughter and leaned forward, his arms crossed, as if he was talking to himself and had forgotten the coroner sitting beside him. ‘Whatever duties! Hard study and the most menial work the house could provide; cleaning sewers, digging ditches and, after ordination, I must go here, I must go there! Eventually I protested so Father Prior took me for a walk in the meadows and said I was to prove my worth with one final task.’

  He leaned back against the wall. ‘My final task was St Erconwald’s in Southwark.’ Athelstan stared across at Cranston. ‘My father prior chose well. My parents accused me of the murder of my brother. Every day in Southwark someone dies. Men and women drenched with drink, quarrelling and violently fighting each other. In some alleyway or runnel a man hacked to death for stealing ale. A woman slashed from jaw to groin found floating in a ditch. And then you, Sir John! Just in case I should forget, or withdraw, or hide behind my church walls, you are here, ready to lead me along the streets, remind me that there is no escape from murder, from witnessing the greatest sin of all - a man slaying his brother!’

  Cranston drained his cup of wine and said, ‘Perhaps your father prior is wiser than you think.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I am writing a treatise, have been for years, on the maintenance of the king’s peace in London. The most terrible crime is murder. The belief that a man can kill someone, walk away, and say, “I am not responsible”. I am no theologian, Athelstan, nor a scripture scholar, but the first crime committed after Eden was one of murder: Cain plotting to slay his brother Abel and afterwards claiming he knew nothing about it.’ Cranston grinned. ‘The first great mystery - I mean murder. But nothing like what happened to your brother.’ He turned and spat. ‘That wasn’t murder. That was young dreams and hot blood, minds crammed with stupid stories about Troy and Knights of the Round Table. No, murder is different. And why do men commit murder, Athelstan? For profit? And what will stop men murdering? Hanging, torture?’ He shrugged. ‘Go down to Newgate, as we will do later. The prison is packed with murderers, the gibbets are heavy like apple trees in the autumn, the branches bend with their rotten fruit.’

  Cranston moved closer, his face more serious than Athelstan had ever seen it. ‘What will prevent murder, robbery, arson, is when the perpetrator knows, believes, accepts in his heart, that he will be caught and he will be punished. The more vigilant we are, the fewer murders, the fewer deaths. The fewer women slashed from jaw to groin, the fewer men with their throats cut, hanging in a garret or swinging from some beam under a bridge. Your prior knows, Athelstan, that with your guilt and deep sense of justice, you are well suited to such a task.’

  He laughed abruptly and went back to this wine cup. ‘If your order produced more men like you, Athelstan, and fewer preachers and theologians, London would be a safer place. That’s the reason I have brought you to this quiet garden, not to some tavern where I would drink myself senseless. No, I want to plot and catch an evil murderer. A man who has slain Thomas Springall and blamed it on poor Brampton, afterwards making his death look like suicide. I believe the same villain executed Vechey and strung his corpse up like carrion under London Bridge.’

  Athelstan drank greedily from the water cup, refusing to look at Cranston. He had talked about his brother’s death, and for the first time ever someone had not laid the blame at his door. Athelstan knew it would make no immediate difference but a seed had been planted in his soul. The possibility that he had committed a sin but no murder. That he would atone for it and so the slate would be wiped clean. He put down the cup.

  ‘You say Springall was murdered by someone else, not Brampton?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘I do,’ said Cranston. ‘And so do you. And how can we prove that? The loose thread in this rotten tapestry is Vechey. Now, you may remember when we inspected his corpse, we noticed the water had soaked him up to his knees?’

  ‘Yes,’ Athelstan nodded.

  ‘We also know that if Vechey committed suicide he must have done it in the early hours, just before dawn. Correct?’ Again Athelstan nodded.

  ‘But that is impossible,’ Cranston continued with a self-satisfied smirk. ‘You see, after midnight the Thames runs fast and full. The water rises and it would almost cover the arch. There would be, at the very most, a foot between the surface of the water and the beam Vechey used to hang himself.’ He held up his stubby fingers. ‘First, are we to accept that a man waded through water up to his neck to tie a noose to hang himself? Or that he hanged h
imself virtually under water? Yet when Vechey’s corpse was found, somehow or other it had dried out except beneath the knees.’

  Athelstan grinned. ‘Mirabile dictu, Sir John! Of course the river would be full. Vechey would have had to swim out to hang himself and that is a logical contradiction. So what do you think happened?’

  ‘Vechey was drugged or knocked on the head, the corpse being strung up for others to find.’

  ‘But why such contrivance?’

  ‘I have been wondering about that,’ Cranston replied. ‘Remember, we know very little about the man. Vechey was promiscuous, he liked soft and perfumed flesh but, being a respectable citizen, he would hunt well away from his home in Cheapside. So I think he went down to the stews and bawdy houses along the river. Somehow or other he was trapped, knocked on the head or drugged, and his body taken down to London Bridge. The noose was tied around his neck and strung over the beam. The murderer was very clever, the river bank was deserted. The bridge, as the mannikin told us, was a favourite place for people to commit suicide. The murderer made one mistake. He probably inspected the area when the water had fallen well below the starlings. He forgot that when he came to hang up Vechey’s corpse the river would have risen, covering any suitable platform for a suicide to stand on.’

  ‘Yet he still went ahead. Why?’

  ‘Because Vechey was probably dead, strangled before he ever reached that bridge, and what else could the murderer do with the corpse? Throw it in the river still bearing the noose-mark, or cart it round London and risk capture looking for a new gibbet!’