The House of Crows Read online

  ‘Yes, yes, quite.’ The regent lifted his cup but then thought differently. ‘Sir John,’ he declared, ‘you will have to leave all that. You have heard of the Parliament my nephew the king has summoned at Westminster?’

  ‘Yes, you need more taxes, whilst the Commons want reforms.’

  ‘My lord Coroner, I am pleased by your bluntness but, yes, yes that’s true. Now the Commons do not like me. They draw unfair comparisons between myself and my brother, God rest him. The war in France is not going well. Our coastal towns are attacked by French pirates. The harvest was poor and the price of bread is three times what it was this time last year. Now, I am doing what I can. Grain barges are constantly coming up the Thames, and the mayor and aldermen of the city have issued strict regulations fixing the price of bread.’

  Cranston’s eyes slid away. He knew about such regulations, more honoured in the breach than the observance, but he decided to keep his mouth shut.

  The regent leaned forward. ‘Now all was going well,’ he continued. ‘The Commons assembled in the chapter-house of Westminster Abbey. The speaker, Sir Peter de la Mare, is a good man.’ Gaunt paused.

  In other words, you’ve bribed him, Cranston thought, but still kept his mouth shut. The regent ran his tongue round his lips.

  ‘Some of the members are amicable; others, particularly those from Shrewsbury and Stafford, are proving intractable. They are a close-set group comprising, Sir Henry Swynford, Sir Oliver Bouchon, Sir Edmund Malmesbury, Sir Thomas Elontius, Sir Humphrey Aylebore, Sir Maurice Goldingham and Sir Francis Harnett—’

  ‘And?’ Cranston intervened.

  ‘These knights are lodged at a hostelry, the Gargoyle tavern. On Monday evening Sir Oliver left his companions abruptly: next morning his body was found floating face-down near Tothill Fields, no mark on the corpse. We do not know whether he was pushed or suffered an accident. Anyway, the corpse was pulled out and taken back to the Gargoyle, where his fellow knights planned to hire a cart to carry it back to Shrewsbury. Now, to recite prayers during the death-watch, a chantry priest was hired. He entered the tavern late last night and apparently took up his post in the dead man’s chamber. Later on, a servant wench passed the chamber: she saw the door ajar and went in. There was no sign of the priest. Sir Oliver still lay sheeted in his coffin, but beside him on the floor was Sir Henry Swynford, a garrotte string round his throat.’

  Gaunt paused. Stretching out his hand, he played with the silver filigreed ring on one of his fingers. ‘Both deaths might be murders.’ He glanced up. ‘Both men received a warning before they died: a candle, an arrowhead and a scrap of parchment bearing the word “Remember”.’ Gaunt cleared his throat. ‘Each of the corpses had also been slightly mutilated, small red crosses being carved on either cheek as well as on the forehead.’

  ‘And no one knows what all this means?’ Cranston asked.

  ‘No. Oh, there are the usual stories: both knights were loved and admired. Men of stature in their community.’ Gaunt smirked. ‘The truth is both men were bastards born and bred. They served in the wars in France, where they amassed booty and plunder to come back and build their manor houses and decorate the parish church. Apparently they had no enemies at all which,’ he added bitterly, ‘is the biggest lie of all, if anyone ever bothered to talk to their tenants.’

  Gaunt put his goblet down and rose to his feet. ‘Now, I don’t care, Cranston, whether they are dead or alive, in heaven or in hell. But I do care about the whispers and the pointed fingers which claim that both men were murdered because they opposed the regent, as a punishment for them and a warning to the rest.’ He leaned over Sir John, gripping the arms of the other man’s chair, his face only a few inches from Cranston’s. ‘Now, my lord Coroner, get yourself down to Westminster. Take your secretarius, Brother Athelstan, with you. Discover the assassin, stop these murders and, when you are finished, you can come back to Cheapside and find out who is stealing its cats.’

  ‘Is there anything else, my lord?’ Cranston held the regent’s gaze and nonchalantly sipped from his goblet.

  ‘Yes.’ Gaunt straightened up, pushing his thumbs into his swordbelt. ‘Sir Miles Coverdale, captain of my guard, is responsible for the king’s peace in the palace of Westminster. He will assist you.’ Gaunt stepped back and sketched a mocking bow. ‘My thanks to your good lady.’ He walked to the door.

  ‘My lord Regent.’ Cranston didn’t even bother to turn in the chair.

  ‘Yes, my lord Coroner.’

  ‘I was thinking of cats, my lord. Do you have any?’

  Gaunt shrugged. ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘Nothing much.’ Cranston replied over his shoulder. ‘Our king is young, his father’s dead. I was thinking of the proverb, “When the cat’s away, the mice will play”.’ Sir John sipped from his cup and smiled as he heard the door slam behind him.

  In the parish church of St Erconwald’s of Southwark, Brother Athelstan, much against his will, was holding a full parish council near the baptismal font just inside the main door. He sat, as usual, in the high-backed sanctuary chair brought down especially for the occasion: across from him were the members of his parish council who sat on stools in a semi-circle waiting for his judgement. On the wooden lid of the baptismal font sprawled the huge, tattered tom-cat, Bonaventure, which Athelstan secretly considered his only true parishioner. Now and again Bonaventure’s one good amber eye flickered open, and the cat would stare at Ranulf the rat-catcher as if he knew Ranulfs secret desire to buy him. After all, Bonaventure’s prowess as a mouser and a ratter was known throughout the parish. Today, however, when Athelstan should be doing the parish accounts and letting Bonaventure hunt, he had to hold this special meeting: Watkin, Pike and the bailiff Bladdersniff had all taken the sacrament at Mass this morning then solemnly sworn how they had seen a demon crouching in the death-house.

  ‘It was black,’ Watkin trumpeted so loudly that even the hairs in his great flared nostrils seemed to bristle with anger. ‘It was huge with bright eyes, hideous face, blue and red round the mouth and it moved like lightning.’

  ‘You were drunk,’ Mugwort the bell-ringer snorted. ‘Pernell the Fleming woman saw the three of you: you had not one good leg amongst the six.’

  ‘More like nine,’ Crispin the carpenter added, but no one seemed to understand this salacious reference.

  ‘Drunk or not,’ Pike screeched, tilting his face and pointing to the great red weals across his cheeks. ‘Who did that, eh?’

  Athelstan pushed his hands further up the sleeves of his gown and rocked gently to and fro. He stole a look at Benedicta: he expected to find her eyes dancing with merriment and those lovely lips fighting hard not to smile, but the widow-woman looked concerned.

  ‘What do you think, Benedicta?’ Athelstan asked before Watkin’s bellicose wife could intervene to take up the cudgels on her husband’s behalf.

  ‘I believe they saw something, Father.’ Benedicta played with the tassel of the belt round her slim waist. ‘I dressed Pike’s wound: savage claw marks. Any higher,’ she added, ‘and he could have lost an eye.’

  ‘You are always telling us . . .’ Tab the tinker spoke up. ‘You are always telling us, Father,’ he repeated, ‘how Satan prowls, seeking those whom he may devour.’

  ‘Yes, Tab, but I was speaking in a spiritual sense, about that unseen world of which we are only a part.’

  ‘But that’s not true,’ Watkin’s wife intervened. ‘In St Olave’s parish, Merry Legs claimed a devil was dancing round the steeple as I would a maypole.’

  ‘And I have heard imps whispering in the corner,’ Pernell the Fleming intervened. ‘Small, Father, no bigger than your fingers. I heard them scrabbling at the woodwork.’

  Athelstan closed his eyes and prayed for patience.

  ‘What did it look like?’ Huddle the painter asked, and pointed to the far wall of the church where he was busily sketching out, in charcoal, a marvellous vision of Christ’s harrowing of hell.

  ‘Ne
ver mind,’ Athelstan intervened. He glanced quickly at Simplicatas, a young woman from Stinking Alley who had whispered after Mass how she wanted to talk to him about her missing husband. ‘We have other matters to discuss.’

  ‘But this is important.’ Bladdersniff drew himself up on his stool, wrinkling his fiery red nose and blinking drink-sodden eyes. ‘If you don’t believe us, Father, let’s go to the death-house. Let’s see for ourselves.’

  His colleagues did not seem quite as enthusiastic, but Athelstan saw it as a way of pacifying them all.

  ‘Come on.’ He got to his feet.

  ‘Father, I’m frightened,’ Pernell wailed.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Athelstan fingered the wooden crucifix hanging round his neck. He shooed Bonaventure off the baptismal font, unlocked and lifted the wooden lid then, taking the small enamel bowl held by Mugwort, scooped some of the holy water out.

  ‘If there’s a devil in the death-house,’ he declared, ‘the cross and holy water will soon make him flee.’

  Led by their priest, Bonaventure stalking solemnly beside him, the parish council left the church. They crossed the cemetery, following the beaten path around the headstones and crosses to the great black-painted shed in the far corner. The door was still flung back on its hinges, a sure sign of the three men’s flight the previous night. Athelstan turned and winked at Benedicta.

  ‘Now, stay here. All of you.’

  Holding the crucifix in one hand, the cup of holy water in the other, Athelstan strode across and stopped outside the death-house. He looked at the earth, scuffed where Pike and his two companions had fought to get out.

  I never asked them what they were doing, he thought. Probably drunk: I just hope they didn’t have Cecily the courtesan with them. The only people who are supposed to lie in this graveyard are the dead. Athelstan went into the death-house and, as soon as he did, caught a fetid, pungent smell.

  ‘For God’s sake, man!’ he whispered to himself.

  He put the cup of holy water on the long, stained table and stared around. The smell caught the back of his throat and made him cough. Athelstan took a tinder out of his pocket and, trying to keep his hands from trembling, lit the tallow candle and held it up, filling the dark, cavernous place with dancing shadows.

  ‘“Arise, O Lord,’” he whispered, quoting the psalms, ‘“and defend me from my enemies!”’

  He walked carefully round the death-house. He always kept this place clean. He scrubbed the table and swept the floor every week. There was a small window high in the wall, and when a corpse lay in the room he always burnt incense, as he had only two days ago when Mathilda the seamstress had lain here awaiting burial. So what was the source of that horrible smell? Athelstan put the candle down and picked up the cup of holy water, blessing the place. ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ but, even as he did so, his mind teemed with possibilities. He recalled a recent letter from the master general of his Order about the signs of demonic activity: violence, unexplained phenomena.

  ‘Aye,’ Athelstan whispered to himself, ‘and a terrible smell which curdles the mind and frightens the soul. Nonsense!’ he added.

  ‘Father?’

  Athelstan spun round. Benedicta was standing in the doorway. The widow-woman stepped into the death-house and then, covering her nose and mouth with her hand, abruptly backed out. Athelstan followed her.

  ‘Benedicta, what is the matter?’

  The widow-woman’s face was pale. ‘Last night, Father. I didn’t want to mention this, but I was in my garden just after dusk, and under the apple tree I saw a dark, hideous shape.’

  Athelstan stared into Benedicta’s frightened eyes. ‘Surely, woman, you don’t believe all this?’

  ‘Athelstan!’

  The friar looked round. Sir John Cranston was standing at the far end of the graveyard, legs apart.

  ‘Oh Lord save us!’ Athelstan breathed. ‘Having the Lord Satan in Southwark is bad enough, but Cranston as well . . .!’

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘So, you think there’s a devil in Southwark?’ Moleskin the boatman asked as Athelstan and Cranston stepped into his wherry, ready for the journey downriver to Westminster.

  ‘There are a lot of bloody imps in Southwark!’ Cranston retorted, taking a sip from his ‘miraculous’ wineskin, always full and ever present, hidden beneath his cloak. ‘What’s more,’ Cranston smacked his lips and put the stopper back in, ‘most of them are members of Brother Athelstan’s parish.’

  Moleskin glowered angrily from under his brows as he strained at the oars, pulling his boat across the choppy Thames. He glanced at his parish priest for comfort. Athelstan, however, had his cowl well over his head and sat staring into the bank of mist now lifting under the morning sun. Cranston nudged him playfully.

  ‘Come on, Brother. You’ve hardly said a word since we left the church. Don’t be downcast. Benedicta will see all is well. And, if the devil reappears, she might catch it with her pretty face and beguiling ways.’

  ‘It’s not a joking matter, Sir John.’ Athelstan replied. ‘Benedicta saw a shape in her garden; Pike was definitely attacked. Some terrible creature was lurking in our death-house last night.’

  ‘But a devil, a demon?’ Cranston exclaimed. ‘Walk through the city, Brother. You’ll see plenty of demons dressed in the finest silks, supping the best wines and smelling ever so fragrantly.’

  ‘This is different,’ Athelstan retorted. He smiled at the boatman. ‘Moleskin, keep rowing. What you hear is not for discussion in the Piebald tavern. Holy Mother Church teaches.’ Athelstan stirred, and pointed to the choppy waters of the Thames. ‘You see, Sir John, two worlds co-exist in this river. What is on the surface and what is underneath. Both affect each other. Both are linked, yet we only see what is on the surface; beneath the Thames there is another world: wreckage, fish, plants, all forms of living things. Now, God made a visible and invisible world. When we pray we enter the invisible world.’ He paused to admire a long line of swans, their slender necks arched, their wings up, swim serenely by. ‘What happens, Sir John, if those intelligences and powers hostile to God and Man manifest themselves in our world? Oh, I am not talking about the hobgoblins and the warlocks, but something else.’

  ‘But you’re not just worried about that, are you?’ Cranston asked.

  ‘No.’ Athelstan shook his head. ‘I am worried about Pike. Joscelyn, the landlord at the Piebald, tells me about his secret meetings with men who call themselves after animals: the Weasel, the Fox . . .’

  ‘The Great Community of the Realm?’ Cranston asked.

  ‘Aye, Sir John, the peasant community busily plotting rebellion.’ He shook his head. ‘It will all end in blood and Pike will hang.’

  Cranston stared across the river. He could see the gleaming spire of St Paul’s and the great cross surmounting the steeple, packed with famous relics as a protection against lightning.

  ‘Pike’s right,’ Cranston muttered. ‘Oh, he’s not right to plot, but there is a vengeance coming.’ He pointed to a long line of barges heading towards Queenshithe.

  ‘Grain barges,’ Moleskin volunteered.

  ‘I know they are,’ Cranston snapped, but Moleskin continued, unperturbed. ‘Without them there’d be no bread in the bakeries. The Corporation is buying from across the seas.’

  ‘Where do they go?’ Athelstan asked.

  ‘To the warehouses at East Watergate,’ Moleskin replied. ‘You should take Bonaventure across there, Brother. The barges are full of rats and mice.’

  ‘When do you think it will come?’ Athelstan asked. ‘This planned revolt?’

  ‘This summer, next summer,’ Cranston replied.

  ‘And what will you do, Sir John?’

  ‘I’ll put on my helmet and armour, ride down to the Tower and put myself under the king’s banner. I am his coroner.’ Cranston paused. ‘I just pray I don’t see Pike or any of your parishioners at the end of my sword.’ He leaned closer. ‘And what will you d
o, Brother? The rebels say that those who don’t join them will die, and they have no love of priests.’

  ‘I shall rise every morning, God willing,’ Athelstan replied. ‘I shall give Bonaventure his bowl of milk. I shall lock my church, kneel beneath the rood-screen, offer Mass and go about my own business.’

  Cranston snapped his fingers in annoyance. ‘And you think you’ll be safe?’ he snarled.

  Athelstan grabbed him by his plump hand. ‘Sir John,’ he replied, ‘I can only do what I can. Father Prior has already raised the matter. He wants members of our Order to leave the capital until the crisis has passed.’

  Cranston’s blue eyes blinked furiously.

  ‘And, talking about the Tower,’ Athelstan hurriedly added, eager to change the subject, ‘that, too, is concerning me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s Perline,’ Moleskin interrupted.

  The boatman’s old face was now wrinkled in concern. Athelstan secretly admired the way he could deftly eavesdrop and yet row so expertly at the same time.

  ‘Perline Brasenose,’ Athelstan explained. ‘A rattle-brained young man: his mother was a whore who raised him in the stews. He spent a year in the Earl of Warwick’s retinue, then left and married a girl, Simplicatas, a member of the parish. A young man, a good fellow,’ Athelstan declared, ‘but a bit of a madcap, attracted to mischief as a bee to honey.’

  ‘And?’ Cranston asked.

  ‘He has gone missing,’ Athelstan declared.

  ‘I always said he would,’ Moleskin volunteered.

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ Athelstan replied. ‘For God’s sake, have some charity! Perline entered the royal guard at the Tower. I thought he was settling down but now he has gone missing.’ Athelstan fingered the girdle round his waist. ‘And, before you say it, Sir John, some men may desert their wives, but not Perline. For all his faults he loved Simplicatas, yet no one’s seen hide nor hair of him. Could you just keep an eye open, and if you hear anything . . .?’