A Shrine of Murders Read online

  ‘You mark my words,’ he said, squeezing his pert lips together and patting his expansive stomach. ‘Queen Margaret will be victorious: she has sturdy Bretons in her retinue, and Somerset and Wenlock are capable generals. Edward of York will be hard-pressed to keep what he has grasped.’

  Clerkenwell’s blue watery eyes glared round, but the other pilgrims were too tired or too drunk to care. Moreover, their companion the doctor was a tight-fisted man. They’d all hoped that before the evening was ended, he would ask the landlord to broach a new barrel of wine or at least order plates of roast meat or dishes of comfits to share among his still hungry and less fortunate companions. The physician smacked his lips and looked around. He picked up his goblet, ponderously swirled the lees and drained them in one gulp. He sat forward and glared.

  ‘I want more wine! Hell’s bones! Where is that boy?’

  A servitor, his apron stained with particles of food and slops of wine, hurried up, his greasy, uncombed hair masking his face.

  ‘You’re not the fellow who served me last time!’ the doctor bellowed. ‘Hell’s teeth, I want more wine!’

  The servant nodded, took the cup and hurried away. A few minutes later he returned, the goblet brimming and bubbling, and sat it down carefully before the doctor. The other pilgrims glanced at each other and some began to stir restlessly. Obviously the physician was not to be their benefactor. Robert sipped the white wine, relishing its coolness on his tongue and the back of his mouth. He drank again, licking his lips, unaware of the deadly poison now seeping into his stomach, aiming like an arrow for his heart and brain. The doctor stirred; he felt uncomfortable, his belly churned, his heart began to flutter, his breath came in short gasps. He stood up, scrabbling at his collar, his whole body now in pain, as if licked by some invisible flame. The other pilgrims stared in open-mouthed horror as this loquacious physician, eyes popping out, face bright red, gasped, choked and fought for his life before falling dead on the spot.

  As Clerkenwell died in Canterbury, so did his prophecies about the war at Tewkesbury in the West Country. The struggle had lasted all day, leaving Edward of York the victor. The Lancastrians had been broken, and the red-coated soldiers of Queen Margaret and the Duke of Somerset were fleeing from the blood-soaked battlefield. They surged up past Tewkesbury Abbey, across the meadows, desperately seeking a ford or bridge across the river Severn. Behind them the Yorkists howled like wolves and streamed in pursuit beneath the flapping blue banners bearing the Gold Sun of York or the Red Boar Rampant of the King’s brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Cursing and growling, the Lancastrians pressed into the river. Drowned bodies began to choke the shallows, and the living trod upon them in their hope of escape. All around them swept their killers, screaming and shouting, thrusting with spear or hewing with sword, mace and club, sparing no one until the river shallows and the reeds growing there turned crimson-scarlet with bright gushing blood.

  Colum Murtagh stood on the brow of a hill and watched the massacre. He turned his rowan-berry horse, took off his helmet and threw it down, cursing at the sweat which soaked his dark hair and blurred his vision. He kept well away from the fighting. He was lightly armed with leather jerkin, sword and dagger and, Deo gratias, it was not his task to kill. The King had insisted on this. He and the other royal messengers were to stay clear, to carry orders between the different battles and, if the enemy broke, to spy out where their leaders would flee. Murtagh stared at the river glinting in the sunlight and gently patted his horse’s neck.

  ‘The poor die there,’ he muttered, ‘the poor, sodding commoners!’ He studied the melee, trying to seek out banners, colours and liveries of great Lancastrian lords, but he could glimpse none. He turned and stared back towards the great abbey. ‘Where was Somerset and the rest?’ He strained his green, cat-like eyes, trying to distinguish between the different movements along the winding country lanes. Murtagh shifted his gaze as a flash of colour caught his attention. Yes, he saw them: a small party of horsemen carrying no banners, wearing no livery, with helmets and armour tossed aside, were riding across the abbey grounds away from the battle. Any other spy would have dismissed them as a group of common knights seeking refuge in flight, but Murtagh knew horses, and these were the best. He turned his own mount and spurred it quickly down the hill to a group of Yorkist commanders who stood clustered at a small crossroads round their golden-haired King. They turned at the rider dashing wildly towards them. Murtagh jumped off his horse, and falling to one knee before the King, pointed to beyond the hedgerows.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ he gasped, ‘the Lancastrian commanders and their henchmen are fleeing west, away from the river.’

  Under his crowned helmet, Edward of York’s hard face broke into a grin. He flicked his fingers and issued a series of curt orders to a knight banneret of his household before turning to pat Murtagh on the shoulder.

  ‘You’ve done well, Irishman,’ he murmured. ‘The reward is yours.’

  By late afternoon the killing at the river had stopped. The Lancastrian commanders, seeing their escape route cut off by Yorkist forces, had turned, seeking sanctuary in the dark cool nave of Tewkesbury Abbey. But, as the chroniclers wrote, this was a killing time and the Yorkist soldiers followed them in. The serene silence of the abbey was broken by the clash of swords, the shouts of fighters and the groans and shrieks of wounded and dying men. The Lancastrians at last reached the sanctuary and, grasping the corners of the altar, claimed the protection of the Church. The Abbot himself appeared, carrying the golden cross of his office, thundering out excommunication at any who spilled blood on sacred ground.

  The Yorkist soldiers sullenly withdrew, but King Edward gave the Abbot a warning: either the prisoners were handed over, or the abbey would be besieged. At last the Lancastrian commanders emerged, haggard, dishevelled, a mass of wounds from head to toe. They did not beg for the pardon they knew would not be theirs. The King’s own brother, the wire-haired, slightly hunchbacked Richard of Gloucester, was appointed their judge. He set up a summary court just outside the abbey gates. One by one the King’s enemies were taken before him for summary condemnation, and as the evening sun set, the Lancastrian commanders were hustled to the block on a makeshift scaffold in Tewkesbury market-place and their heads lopped off.

  Colum Murtagh watched the first execution from a tavern window and turned away in disgust. He had played his part. There was further work to do, but it would be well away from the carnage of the killing ground. He put his hand into his wallet and felt the two warrants neatly folded there. The first made him custodian of the King’s horses in the meadows outside Canterbury. The second gave him powers to investigate and report on the dreadful poisonings being carried out in the city. Murtagh lay back on the cot-bed, trying to close his ears to the thud of the executioner’s axe. He would go to Canterbury; he’d be free of war, and safe, perhaps, from the Hounds of Ulster and their constant plots against him.

  Chapter 1

  ‘What you need is a man.’

  ‘I have a man. I am married.’ Kathryn Swinbrooke glared at Thomasina’s fat white face.

  The latter wiped the sweat from her brow and mopped her plump cheeks with a cloth. She put down the gutting-knife amongst the giblets of the chicken she had been cutting and smiled knowingly.

  ‘I have known you since you were thumb-high to a buttercup, Mistress. Aye, you are married, but your husband’s gone, fled to the wars, and the ugly bastard won’t be back.’ She sniffed.

  ‘You need a man. A woman is not happy unless she has got a man between her thighs. I should know; I have been married three times.’

  Kathryn looked away and smiled. It was hard to imagine anyone between Thomasina’s tree-trunk thighs.

  ‘Did they wear chain-mail?’ she muttered.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing, Thomasina.’

  Kathryn gathered her black hair, lightly streaked with grey, and edged it under her white linen veil, adjusting the red cord which kept it i
n place. She stared round the stone-flagged kitchen. Thomasina must have been up early, for already the place was scrubbed, the stone floor gleaming white, the table-top soft to the touch after the buckets of hot water poured across it. Even the hooded mantel above the fire glowed white, whilst the bronze skillet and fleshing-hooks hanging above the fire gleamed like burnished gold. Kathryn sighed, rose, slipping her feet into unlatched sandals. She lifted the hem of her green woollen dress, for the floor was still slightly damp after Thomasina’s scrubbing.

  ‘Satan’s balls!’ Thomasina muttered. She remembered the bread baking in the small oven beside the fire and waddled over with a wooden spatula, screaming for Agnes the young maid to come and help her.

  Kathryn stopped at the half-open door and went to stand under the wooden porch, staring down at the garden. Once upon a time she had loved it – the sweet-smelling grass, the banks of wild-flowers and the carefully tended herb-plots, especially now, on a warm summer’s day. In the white sunlight the garden lost some of its air of menace. She absent-mindedly dabbed at the nape of her neck. She felt warm in her underdress of woollen kirtle and green cord-bound gown.

  ‘You look like a nun,’ Thomasina grumbled. ‘Whatever would your father say?’

  ‘Father’s dead,’ Kathryn replied. ‘Cold, buried under the slabs of Saint Mildred’s Church.’

  She blinked and stared down the garden. She still missed him. Dead six months, his soul gone to Purgatory and his dreadful secret bequeathed to Kathryn, his only child. She still could hardly believe it. She might learn to forget if those damned letters stopped coming. Kathryn felt inside her purse and drew out the yellow piece of parchment, pushed under the door the previous evening, thumb-marked, ragged and dirty. She studied the scrawled message: ‘Where is Alexander Wyville? Where is your husband? Murder is a felony and felons hang!’ Beside the words, a rude scaffold had been drawn. What chilled Kathryn’s blood was the figure, roughly drawn with long hair and the gown of a woman, which dangled from the scaffold. ‘Silence is golden,’ the message continued. ‘And the gold can be left upon Goodman’s tomb in Saint Mildred’s Churchyard.’

  Kathryn screwed the paper up and put it back into her purse. She had received two similar messages since her father’s death and desperately wondered who this sinister writer was and how he had learnt of her father’s secret. So far she had paid no money, but the anonymous letter-writer was becoming more threatening, more insistent. She jumped as Thomasina came up behind her.

  ‘We must go, Mistress.’

  Kathryn became aware of the sounds around her, especially the bells of the cathedral booming under the lighter tone of other church bells. The alderman’s writ had said noon. She stepped back into the kitchen and looked at where the hour-candle stood in its recess just near the buttery door. She screwed her eyes up and stared. Yes, the tenth circle had already been reached. Kathryn looked angrily at the flame eating away at her time, perhaps her freedom, perhaps even her life. She swallowed nervously. What did the alderman want? To ask her questions? The summons, sealed with the common seal of the city of Canterbury, had been quite curt. She was to present herself to the alderman in the Guildhall at twelve o’clock on Wednesday.

  ‘What do they want?’ she murmured to herself.

  ‘God knows, Mistress,’ Thomasina piped up behind her. ‘But you know the council, an idle group of bastards. You’d think they’d have enough on their minds. I mean, the Mayor is an adjudged traitor. They say he is in hiding. The rest of the council must be wearing their brown leggings, for they supported the Lancastrians, and Edward the Golden Boy has dashed their hopes.’

  Kathryn nodded and leaned against the door lintel. Thomasina was right; she couldn’t understand it. The great ones on the Canterbury Council had supported the Lancastrian cause: its mayor, Nicholas Faunte, had even led soldiers off to help Falconberg, the Lancastrian general holding London. Now all was lost. Edward of York had defeated the Lancastrians at Barnet before marching west to capture Margaret, their Queen, at Tewkesbury. The war was over. York had won and Lancaster and Canterbury had lost. Nicholas Faunte, its mayor, had been proclaimed a traitor with a price on his head, and the city was frightened it would lose its liberties. So why was the chief alderman busying himself with her? Surely they had enough on their plates with the end of the war.

  Thomasina came round and faced her squarely, staring into the severe face of her mistress. The maid glowered to hide her surge of compassion. Kathryn was no beauty at the best of times; under her jet-black hair, her face could be too severe, the grey eyes hard, the olive skin invariably pale, the nose too aquiline; and those lips, which used to smile or make sardonic observations on the world, had been all too harsh since her father’s death.

  ‘Mistress,’ Thomasina repeated, ‘we must go!’

  She handed Kathryn her dark blue cloak, her best, with its steep hood lined with miniver.

  ‘We must call into the hospital, and you cannot be late. You might need the council’s protection.’

  Kathryn nodded absent-mindedly, put the cloak over the table and went down the passageway to her own chamber. She had to make sure everything was secure; the coffers containing the herbs and potions chained and padlocked. She could not afford to have someone breaking in and stealing a potion, only to die like Hawisa the pilgrim’s wife who, to make herself more beautiful, had been stupid enough to drink a concoction distilled from laurel leaves and had died before anyone could do anything to help her. Kathryn stared round the chamber. Here, she most missed her father, amongst his horoscope charts, bowls, the tripod, cutting board, knife, needles and bottles of potions.

  ‘You were a good physician,’ she murmured, but the empty chamber mocked her with its silence. ‘Everything is in order,’ she snapped, as if angry with the room itself. Kathryn put the potions she’d prepared into a straw wicker basket and closed the door, turning the key and slipping it into her purse. She jumped as she heard a rap on the front door. Thomasina was at the far end of the scullery.

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ Kathryn called.

  She walked down the stone-flagged passageway, past the hall and the large open shop where her husband, Alexander, had once sold his spices, herbs and simples. She sighed at the dusty shelves, the cobwebs between the pots, jars and bottles, the counter an inch thick in dust. She would love to reorganise this, open the shop and continue her husband’s trade. But she felt there was a bar, besides the lack of money, an iron chain across that path; for if she did, she would become her father’s accomplice and be somehow responsible for his dreadful secret. The knocking on the door continued, chorused by childish yells.

  ‘Mistress Swinbrooke! Mistress Swinbrooke!’

  Peering through the squint-hole, Kathryn glimpsed the grimy faces of Edith and Eadwig, the twin children of Fulke the tanner, who lived in a tenement farther up Ottemelle Lane. Kathryn was tempted not to answer the knocking, but she took another glimpse at the children’s pallid faces and slid the bolts back. The twins dashed in without invitation.

  ‘Mistress Swinbrooke! Mistress Swinbrooke!’

  Kathryn knelt and grabbed each by an arm, her heart lurching in compassion as she felt how thin the children were.

  ‘What is the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s Father. He was treating some skins and he has burnt his arm.’

  ‘Wait there!’ Kathryn rose. ‘No, on second thought, follow me.’

  She went back into the kitchen, where Thomasina was pulling the bread-cage up into the rafters to keep the newly baked loaves away from foraging mice. Kathryn sat the children at the table.

  ‘Keep your hands to yourselves!’ Thomasina bellowed, glaring at the twins.

  She tied the cord around the pulley to a hook on the wall and wiped her hands on the front of her apron. Then she came and stood over the children, winking secretly at Kathryn.

  ‘I suppose you’re hungry?’ she shouted.

  The two waifs looked at her, their mouths watering at the sweet smell of the
new bread.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with their father,’ Thomasina muttered, turning to go into the larder to pour the children two tankards of buttermilk and a dish of marchpane. Kathryn left her to it and returned to her own chamber. She took down from the shelf her father’s copy of Apuleius’s Herbarium and the Leech-Book of Bald. She had to unlock the chains, for her father had always kept the precious books padlocked to the shelf. She knew the treatment for burns, but she always had to make sure. Kathryn satisfied herself before scooping two spoonfuls of paste into a piece of parchment and taking a thin roll of bandage from a small wicker hamper. She put everything back in its place, carefully screwed up the parchment with the paste in it and returned to the kitchen, where Edith and Eadwig were busy eating. She sat opposite them.

  ‘Edith.’

  The little girl looked up.

  Kathryn pushed across the small package of ointment. ‘Tell your father to keep the burn dry until a blister forms. The bandage must be put on when the blister breaks. Once it has, cover it with paste and let the wound heal.’

  ‘What’s in it?’ Edith piped up.

  ‘Some crushed moss, a little wine, salt and vinegar.’

  ‘How does it cure the burn?’ Eadwig queried.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Kathryn replied. ‘All we know is that it will. If the wound is kept clean and allowed to dry, a nice scab appears.’

  Edith pulled a face.

  ‘Come on!’ Thomasina urged. ‘Children, you have to go!’