The Field of Blood Read online

  Athelstan rose and crossed himself. He genuflected towards the silver pyx hanging from a gold chain above the altar, put his stole about his neck and walked over to the small cubicle placed in one of the transepts. This was the shriving pew, fashioned out of oak by Crispin the new carpenter.

  Everyone had admired it. It was a simple piece of wood, six foot high and fixed on a wooden platform. There was a lattice grille in the centre covered by a purple cloth. On one side was a small prie-dieu for the penitent, on the other a chair for the priest to hear confessions. Athelstan had announced that, every morning this week, in preparation for the Feast of All Saints, he would be here between the hours of nine and midday to hear confessions, shrive penitents and give absolution. The parishioners had all agreed. Athelstan said a quick prayer as he settled in the shriving chair that Sir John Cranston would not come gusting in from the city with news of a hideous murder, some bloody affray which would require their attention.

  Bonaventure lay at his feet. Athelstan read his psalter, chanting to himself the divine office for the day. The door opened. He quickly peered round the screen. His parishioners were coming to confess, so Athelstan put the psalter down and rang a silver hand bell. The first penitent took his place.

  ‘Brother, I’ve done nothing wrong!’

  ‘Is that true, Crim?’ Athelstan asked his altar boy. ‘Then you are a most fortunate lad. You are good at home?’

  ‘Oh yes, Brother.’

  ‘And do you help your parents?’

  ‘Of course, Brother.’

  ‘And you’ve stopped making obscene gestures at Pike’s wife?’

  ‘Only when her back’s turned, Brother.’

  ‘And you never drink the altar wine?

  Crim coughed. ‘Only when I have a sore throat, Brother.’

  ‘Say a prayer for me,’ Athelstan said as he smiled.

  He gave Crim absolution and other penitents followed. Athelstan felt a deep compassion for the litany of sins they confessed. Men and women struggling against terrible poverty and oppressive laws still strove to be good, anxious when they failed.

  ‘Brother, I think impure thoughts about Cecily the courtesan.’

  ‘Brother, I drink too much.’

  ‘Brother, I curse.’

  ‘Brother, I stole some bread from a stall.’

  Athelstan’s responses were the same. ‘God is merciful: His compassion will surprise us. Try to do good. Now I absolve you . . .’

  The morning wore on. Athelstan was pleased. Quite a number of parishioners had turned up. Some were honest, others fey-witted. Pernell the Flemish woman, who dyed her hair a range of garish colours, confessed how she had slept with this man and that.

  ‘Pernell! Pernell!’ Athelstan broke in. ‘You know that’s not the truth. You dream.’

  ‘I get worried, Brother, just in case I have!’

  At last the church fell silent. Athelstan looked down at Bonaventure, glad that no hideous sin had been confessed: murder, sacrilege, dabbling in the black arts.

  The church door opened. Athelstan could tell from the cough and the quick, light footsteps that a young woman had entered the church. She knelt on the prie-dieu.

  ‘Bless me Brother for I have sinned.’ The voice was low and sweet.

  ‘I bless you.’

  ‘I was last shriven before the Feast of Corpus Christi. I have been unkind, in thought, word and deed.’

  ‘It is difficult to be charitable all the time,’ Athelstan murmured. ‘God knows I confess to the same sin.’

  ‘Do you really, Brother?’

  ‘I am a sinner like you. A child of God. He knows the heart and soul. Do continue.’

  ‘Brother, I wish to commit murder!’

  Athelstan nearly fell off his chair.

  ‘I really do! I want to kill a woman, take a knife and drive it into her heart!’

  ‘That is just anger.’

  ‘No, I will do it! I swear by God I will do it!’

  ‘Hush now!’ Athelstan retorted. ‘This is a sacrament in God’s house. Can I pull back the curtains?’

  ‘There’s no need to, Brother.’

  The young woman came round the screen and knelt before him.

  ‘Why, it’s Eleanor!’

  Athelstan grasped her hands and gazed into the thin but very beautiful face of Basil the blacksmith’s eldest daughter, a pale young woman with hair red as fire and the most magnificent green eyes Athelstan had ever seen. A shy girl but strong-willed, Eleanor always reminded Athelstan of what an angel must be: beautiful, modest with a dry sense of humour.

  ‘Eleanor,’ he pleaded. ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘Brother, I am in love.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think it.’

  ‘No, Brother, I truly am. I deeply love . . .’ she smiled.

  ‘This is a secret?’ Athelstan asked.

  ‘Well, we’ve been very . . .’

  ‘Discreet?’

  ‘What does that mean, Brother?’

  ‘Well, secretive, but not sly,’ Athelstan added hastily.

  A dreamy look came into the young woman’s eyes.

  ‘Its Oswald Fitz-Joscelyn.’

  Athelstan recalled the eldest son of the owner of the Piebald tavern, his parishioners’ favourite drinking-place.

  ‘I truly love him, Brother.’

  ‘How old are you, Eleanor?’

  The young woman closed her eyes. ‘This will be my eighteenth yuletide, or so Mother says.’

  ‘And Oswald?’

  ‘He loves me too, Brother, more than anything in the world! He bought me,’ she touched the locket on a bronze chain round her neck, ‘he bought me this on the Feast of the Assumption: Oswald said when he was with me, he felt as if he had been taken up into heaven.’

  Athelstan hid his smile and nodded. Oswald was a personable young man. His father had already made him a partner in a very prosperous business. Joscelyn had plans to buy a tavern elsewhere, even apply for the membership of the Guild of Victuallers.

  ‘If this is so,’ Athelstan asked, ‘why do you plot murder?’

  ‘It’s Imelda!’

  ‘Oh no!’

  Athelstan groaned and closed his eyes: Pike the ditcher’s wife! The self-styled chronicler, herald and fount of all knowledge in the parish.

  ‘What has she got to do with this?’

  ‘She saw,’ Eleanor blinked to hide her tears, ‘Oswald and me in the fields beyond the ditch. She went and told Oswald’s father.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That harridan,’ Eleanor spat the words out, ‘maintains that my great-grandmother and Oswald’s great-grandmother were sisters!’ She glimpsed the look of anguish in the priest’s face.

  ‘And what proof does she have?’

  ‘You know, Brother, what she is hinting at? She’s never liked me and she blames Joscelyn for Pike’s drinking, but the parish has no blood book.’

  Athelstan glanced across the church at Huddle’s paintings on the far wall depicting Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt. He recalled the furious arguments when Huddle had given the woman the same features as Pike the ditcher’s wife.

  ‘This is serious, isn’t it, Brother?’

  ‘It is, Eleanor.’ Athelstan stretched a hand out and gently stroked her hair. ‘We have no proper blood book. The last parish priest.’ Athelstan shrugged. ‘Well, you know what he was like?’

  ‘He dabbled in the black arts, didn’t he?’

  ‘He not only did that,’ Athelstan said. ‘He either burned or stole every document the parish had. We have no records, Eleanor, but the Church strictly forbids marriage within the bounds of consanguinity.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that, Brother. What does it mean?’

  ‘That you and Oswald are related and that your children . . .’

  ‘Now that I do know,’ Eleanor interrupted heatedly. ‘Imelda said the same. How, in isolated villages, such marriages give birth to monsters!’

  ‘Now, now. Such tales of terror
will not help the present situation. The problem, Eleanor, is that we do have a blood book. I instituted one, using what records and evidence I could collect, but it certainly doesn’t go that far back.’ He sighed. ‘And Pike the ditcher’s wife is sure about what she says?’

  ‘Brother, you would think she had come straight from the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

  Athelstan made a sign of the cross above her.

  ‘Eleanor, I absolve you from your sins. I am sure God understands your anger but you must not do anything.’

  ‘I’d love to silence her, Brother! I’d love to shut that clacking tongue! If it wasn’t for her we’d be married at Easter!’ Eleanor put her face in her hands. ‘I do so love him.’ She glanced up. ‘Do you understand that, Brother?’

  ‘No, Eleanor.’ Athelstan smiled. ‘I don’t. Love can never be understood because it can never be measured, neither the length, the breadth, the height nor its depth.’ Again he grasped her hands. ‘In each of us God has breathed; that breath is our soul: without limit, without end. When we love, Eleanor, we are like God, and that includes Imelda.’ He let go of her hands. ‘Now you may do what you want, I cannot stop you. Or you can leave it to me. But, you must decide now.’

  ‘Until the Feast of All Saints,’ Eleanor replied tersely.

  ‘Very well.’ Athelstan sighed. ‘Until the Feast of All Saints.’

  Eleanor got to her feet. ‘Thank you, Brother.’

  ‘Smile!’ Athelstan urged. ‘I am sure, Eleanor, this can be resolved.’ He pointed to the church door. ‘And I’ll meet you and Oswald there to witness your vows.’

  He watched the young woman leave then put his face in his hands.

  ‘Oh, Lord, what have I promised?’

  He felt pressure on his leg and looked down. Bonaventure had lifted himself up, two forepaws on his knee; the cat’s little pink tongue came out with a fine display of sharp white teeth.

  ‘And how shall I forgive you, oh great killer of the alleyways?’ Athelstan asked. ‘Slaughterer on the midden-heap! Scourge of rats! Come on now!’

  Bonaventure leapt into the friar’s lap. Athelstan sat there stroking him, half-listening to the tomcat’s deep purr as he reflected on Eleanor’s problems. The new parish blood book didn’t go back far so he would have to depend on verbal testimony. However, if Pike the ditcher’s wife was bent on mischief, she might already have jogged memories in the direction she wanted. On the one hand Athelstan felt angry at such meddling but, on the other, if the ditcher’s wife was correct, he would not sanctify Eleanor’s and Oswald’s marriage. So where could he start? What could he do?

  The church door opened with a crash. Athelstan thought it was Sir John Cranston but Luke Bladdersniff the beadle, his bulbous red nose glowing like a piece of fiery charcoal, stumbled into the church.

  ‘Murder!’ he screamed. ‘Oh horrors! Murder most terrible!’

  ‘In God’s name Bladdersniff, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Murder!’ the beadle shrieked. ‘Come, Brother!’

  Athelstan followed him out on to the porch. The day was fine, the sun shone strong. He could see nothing except Bladdersniff’s large handcart in the mouth of the alleyway. Pike and Watkin were guarding it as if it held the royal treasure. Then Athelstan went cold as he glimpsed a bare foot, a hand sticking out from beneath the dirty sheet.

  ‘In God’s name!’ he breathed. ‘How many?’

  ‘Three, Brother.’

  Athelstan knew what Bladdersniff would say next.

  ‘I brought them here because they were found in the parish. I do not recognise them, they are the corpses of strangers. According to the law, such relicts must be displayed outside the parish church for a day and a night.’

  Athelstan inhaled deeply. ‘Bring them forward, Bladdersniff!’

  The beadle gestured. Watkin and Pike trundled the handcart across, Bladdersniff dramatically removed the canvas sheet and the friar flinched. He was used to death in all its forms, to gruesome murder, to stiff, ice-cold cadavers, hanged, hacked, stabbed, drowned, burned, crushed and mangled. These three corpses, however, had a pathos all of their own. The young girl looked as if she was asleep, except her face was blue-white and a terrible wound gaped in her throat. The dark-skinned, black-haired stranger looked like a sailor, his eyes still popping at the horror he must have experienced as the crossbow bolt took him deep in the heart. Athelstan inspected the feathers of the stout quarrel.

  ‘This must have been loosed at close range,’ he observed. ‘No more than two yards.’

  The third man was young, no older than his twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth summer, with close-cropped hair over a thin face rendered awful by death. Athelstan murmured a prayer and stepped back. The cart moved and the corpse of the young man rolled slightly so that his head fell back, showing the gaping wound in his throat, blue-black, ragged skin, half-closed red-rimmed eyes, his lips and nose laced with blood. Athelstan made a sign of the cross as he whispered the words of absolution. He felt his stomach pitch in disgust at such terrible deaths and the shock they caused. He had been in his church then murder, in all its hideous forms, had been thrust upon him. He sat down on the steps.

  ‘God have mercy on them!’ Athelstan prayed.

  He tried to calm his racing mind. If only Sir Jack were here! He would know what to do. Athelstan prayed quietly for strength and glanced at his three companions. Only then did he notice that Bladdersniff must have vomited; his chin and jerkin were still stained. Watkin and Pike were burly fellows but their faces were pallid, and they were already distancing themselves from the cart’s gruesome burdens.

  ‘Where were they found?’ Athelstan asked.

  ‘In Simon the miser’s house. I wager they had been there since at least last night.’

  Athelstan studied the corpses.

  ‘Where in the house? Who discovered them?’

  ‘In the parlour downstairs,’ Bladdersniff replied. ‘Two children in the field nearby, chasing their dog. They went in and ran out screaming; their mother sent for me’.

  ‘Do you recognise the corpses?’

  Bladdersniff shook his head but Athelstan glimpsed the look of guilt which flitted across Pike’s pallid face.

  ‘Pike!’ he shouted. ‘Do you know anything?’

  The ditcher shuffled his mud-caked boots, wiping the sweat from his hands on his shabby jerkin.

  ‘I want to see you about a number of things, Pike, but, first, do you know anything about this young woman?’

  ‘She may have been a whore, Brother. I am not too sure. I’ll have to rack my memory.’

  ‘Rack it!’ Athelstan snapped.

  He felt stronger and got to his feet. He studied the corpses more closely. The black-haired, sunburned man looked like a sailor with his shaggy, matted hair and beard but he was dressed in a gown and cloak rather than tunic and leggings. On his feet were stout walking boots though the brown leather was scuffed and scratched. The young woman was definitely comely. She wore a linen smock with petticoats beneath, pattens of good leather on her bare feet. A cheap bracelet still dangled round her left wrist. Athelstan went and pulled back the cloak of the dark-skinned man and tapped the wallet. It was empty, as was the purse on the cheap brocaded belt the young woman wore. He held out his hand.

  ‘The money, Bladdersniff?’

  The beadle coloured.

  ‘Bladdersniff, you are my friend as well as my parishioner. I do not know the hearts and souls of murderers but I believe these people were killed, not for gain but for some other, more subtle, evil.’ He paused. ‘To rob the dead is a grievous sin.’

  ‘I didn’t rob them, Brother, I was just holding it.’

  Bladdersniff dug deep into his own purse. He took out a handful of bronze and silver coins and thrust these into Athelstan’s hand.

  ‘Anything else?’ the friar demanded.

  The beadle was about to refuse but three more coins appeared from his purse.

  ‘If I march you up the church, master beadle, and
put your hands on the sanctuary stone, would you say, “That’s all”?’

  ‘I’ll take the oath now, Brother.’

  ‘Good!’

  Athelstan sifted the coins of gold, silver and copper. He picked up a rather shabby medal on the side of which was a cross, on the reverse what looked like an angel with outstretched wings.

  ‘Who had this?’

  Bladdersniff pointed to the black-haired corpse.

  The Dominican slipped the coins into his own wallet.

  ‘If I remember the law, the goods and chattels of such murdered victims belong to the parish until they are claimed. These will go into the common fund.’

  Athelstan studied the corpse of the younger man. He was dressed only in chemise and leggings.

  ‘The shirt is of good linen,’ Athelstan remarked. ‘Leggings of blue kersey but where’s his jerkin, his cloak, his boots and belt?’

  ‘Brother, I assure you,’ Bladdersniff protested, ‘and Pike and Watkin are my witnesses, that’s how we found him.’

  Athelstan sat down on the steps and brought his hands together in prayer.

  ‘Oh my Lord!’

  He looked sharply to the left. Benedicta had come out of the cemetery and now stopped, mouth gaping, hands half-raised at this terrible sight. She walked forward like a dream wanderer, her dark hair peeping out from beneath the blue veil, her olive-skinned face pale. The beautiful dark eyes of the widow woman studied the three corpses.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here, Benedicta,’ Athelstan said.

  ‘No, no.’

  Benedicta came over and sat beside him on the steps. She pulled her brown cloak more firmly about her as if the sight of these corpses chilled her blood, blotted out the light and warmth of the sun. Athelstan caught a faint whiff of the perfume she wore, distilled herbs, sweet and light, a welcome contrast to the horrors before him. He felt her close beside him and drew strength from her warmth, her quiet support. He smiled to himself. For a moment he felt like a man being joined by his loving wife.