A Shrine of Murders Read online

‘What is the matter, Mistress?’

  Kathryn drew close and saw Thomasina’s look of distaste.

  ‘Alice, are you well?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What is that terrible smell?’

  Alice looked fleetingly at her husband but he was lost in his own circle of pain as the oil of cloves seeped in and began to soothe the rottenness in his tooth. Alice touched her head.

  ‘It hurts me,’ she whispered.

  Without waiting, Kathryn pushed back Alice’s hood and noticed how the woman’s grey hair was thickly coated with grease.

  ‘What have you put on it?’ Kathryn exclaimed.

  ‘The pain started,’ Alice moaned, ‘when his tooth began to hurt. So I rubbed . . .’

  Kathryn pushed her nose closer. ‘Oh, no, Alice, not that!’

  The miller’s wife looked guiltily away.

  ‘Goat’s cheese!’ Kathryn exclaimed. ‘You rubbed goat’s cheese into your head!’ She hid her smile. ‘Alice, come here.’

  The miller’s wife, now rather frightened, stepped closer.

  ‘Have I done wrong?’ she wailed.

  ‘Of course you have,’ Thomasina said, stepping away hurriedly.

  ‘What will happen now?’

  ‘Come,’ Kathryn said gently, and, whilst the miller sat moaning on a stool, Kathryn turned the woman round and gingerly felt the back of her neck and shoulders. The muscles there were tight and rigid. Kathryn began to stroke them gently and Alice let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘Oh, Mistress, that feels good.’

  ‘The humours in your neck,’ Kathryn explained, ‘are tense and taut. You have children?’

  Alice, turning her neck, smiled.

  ‘Four boys and three girls,’ she said proudly.

  ‘And when they fall, what do you do?’ Kathryn asked.

  ‘I rub their knees.’

  ‘We are no different,’ Kathryn murmured. ‘Rub your neck vigorously with your hand. Wash that filthy mess out of your hair. Take a deep cup of claret before you retire for bed. Make sure you rest your head properly against the bolster and the pains will go.’

  Alice nodded and smiled, but the smile promptly faded when she looked at her husband. She grabbed him by the shoulder.

  ‘Now you, good husband, will get that tooth removed before you send all our wits flying!’ And Alice angrily hustled her moaning husband out of the house.

  For the next hour Kathryn and Thomasina dealt with a stream of minor ailments – cuts, bruises and other complaints. Kathryn looked despairingly at the hour-candle on its iron spike outside the buttery. She was busier than she thought and could not possibly visit Father Cuthbert at the Poor Priests’ Hospital. Colum Murtagh appeared again in her mind and she felt a flutter of trepidation in her stomach. Colum had, like some shadow, lingered in her thoughts all morning and she realised how changeable his nature was, a man of violence trying to live at peace. He had brought other dangers with him. One of her patients had already mentioned the killings in Canterbury, so the news was beginning to spread.

  ‘What is it, Mistress?’ Thomasina interrupted.

  Kathryn shook herself from her reverie and realised she was just standing there holding a jar of ointment.

  ‘Thomasina, the Irishman doesn’t worry me, but the business at the Guildhall does.’

  ‘Oh, they are just a group of fat men,’ her maid joked back. ‘The Archbishop, he’s as crafty as a fox. Luberon’s a pompous piece of work, and don’t be taken in by Newington, all meek and mild like some milksop. I disagree with your father’s judgement on him. Newington’s a viper in the grass, with a nasty tongue and a mind to match.’

  ‘No.’ Kathryn shook her head. ‘It’s not that, Thomasina, it’s the killer.’ She sat down on a stool. ‘You heard what Henry the sack-maker said this morning. People know about the deaths.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Don’t you see, Thomasina, sooner or later the killer will get to know about me. Will he add a woman physician and an Irish soldier to his list of unfortunate victims?’

  Thomasina laughed and shrugged, but Kathryn knew she too had perceived the danger.

  ‘We have to go,’ Kathryn murmured. ‘We must be at the Guildhall by eleven o’clock.’

  She took off the wooden pattens, putting on hose and a pair of boots under her dress, for the streets would be messy with offal and dirt. She collected her old woollen cloak and the notes she had made the previous day. She was about to leave when there was a harsh knock at the front door. Thomasina, breathing curses, hurried down and came back accompanied by a young, well-dressed woman. A pure woollen cloak round her shoulders hid a tawny cloth dress braided at the top with fine green embroidery work. Her hair was covered with a white veil of pure lawn, which emphasised precise but very pretty features, clear grey eyes, a small nose, and generous red lips. Kathryn guessed she was no more than seventeen or eighteen summers old.

  ‘You are Kathryn Swinbrooke?’

  The question was abrupt but Kathryn saw the girl was nervous, so she smiled and nodded. The woman peeled off leather gloves, displaying a silver wedding band on the ring finger of her left hand.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ the girl stammered. ‘My name is Mathilda, wife of Sir John Buckler.’

  ‘Well, we’re just leaving,’ Thomasina interrupted.

  The girl stared pleadingly at Kathryn, her clear eyes now brimming with tears. ‘I need to see you,’ she repeated. ‘I need your help.’

  Kathryn walked over and caught Mathilda by the hand, warm and smooth like the sheen of silk. She would have stayed, for the Bucklers were powerful in Canterbury and Kathryn intuitively knew the matter was something deeply intimate. Had the girl been foolish and become pregnant by another man? Hence the cloak swathed tightly around her body? Or was it something else?

  ‘Mistress Buckler, I cannot see you now.’

  The girl looked as if she was going to burst into tears.

  ‘But if you could come back’ – Kathryn stopped as she considered what the routine of a great household must be – ‘sometime this evening? Shall we say before the bells chime for Vespers? I can see you then.’

  The young woman looked away, wetting her lips with the pink tip of her tongue. ‘I can . . .’ She nodded her head. ‘Yes, yes, I will come then.’ She turned and Thomasina escorted her from the house.

  Kathryn shrugged and breathed a prayer. She did not like such visitors, secretive and sly. She was a physician, a herbalist, not some night-hag with her hot needles and potions ready to clean a woman’s womb.

  ‘Trouble there,’ Thomasina observed, coming back.

  ‘Let’s wait and see,’ Kathryn murmured.

  Thomasina called Agnes, left her instructions and she and Kathryn departed for the Guildhall. Kathryn ignored Thomasina’s apparent disappointment about not going to the Poor Priests’ Hospital and led her through winding alley-ways towards Hethenman Lane. She did not want to be stopped or greeted, so when she saw Goldere strutting towards her like a pompous duck, she slipped down a side street, breathing a sigh of relief that he did not pursue her. The alley-way led into a small enclosure filled with battered market-stalls and thronged with pedlars, hucksters and all the mountebanks who flocked to Canterbury to fleece the pilgrims. A small stage had been set up and a young man, some tattered scholar, was trying to earn a penny or crust of bread by loud declamations of poetry which everyone ignored. He looked so pale and waif-like, Kathryn felt sorry and stopped to listen before dropping a penny into the man’s dirt-grimed hand. The student stopped and grinned.

  ‘Thank you, Mistress. Not everyone appreciates poor Chaucer and his tales.’

  Kathryn smiled, walked on, then abruptly stopped.

  ‘Oh, sweet Lord!’ she murmured.

  ‘Mistress?’ Thomasina pushed her angry face towards Kathryn. ‘Mistress, what’s wrong?’

  ‘The murderer,’ Kathryn whispered. ‘I now know . . .’

  ‘What is it, Mistress?’

  Kathryn s
tared up at the spires of Canterbury Cathedral. Of course, she thought, Chaucer and his tales, or, more appropriately, the Prologue of his great poem, which her father had loved and helped her memorise: Chaucer had written about pilgrims, the murderer struck at pilgrims; Chaucer had listed their professions, the assassin picked his victims by profession. The doggerel verses parodied Chaucer and the quotation ‘Radix malorum . . .’ wasn’t that from one of Chaucer’s tales?

  ‘Mistress!’

  ‘Nothing,’ Kathryn murmured and she walked on, leaving a baffled Thomasina to trail behind her.

  Kathryn, finding it hard to contain her excitement, moved down the High Street, where the crowds milled round the stalls and booths. At last she knew how the murderer selected his victims, and she felt a small glow of triumph. Suddenly there were cries of horror from the crowd and Thomasina was scrabbling on her arm. The clamour on the High Street had stilled and the people stood aside for a huge cart pulled by two great black horses with shabby scarlet plumes nodding between their ears. The driver was hooded and masked, the black cowl fitting snugly round his head, the red mask crudely cut with slits for mouth and eyes. Animal bones, strung on a piece of string, hung round the driver’s neck. Beside him, a young boy, similarly garbed, beat out the death-march on a small tambour.

  ‘Sweet Jesu, help us!’ Thomasina breathed.

  The executioner’s cart pushed its way through, down to Westgate. As the cart passed Kathryn, its dirty canvas covering slipped aside and Kathryn felt her gorge rise at the decapitated heads, blood-spattered and gory, and the human quarters, pickled in brine salt, which lay there.

  ‘Good Jesu, have mercy on them!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘They are taking them to the city gates,’ someone near her murmured.

  ‘Who were they?’ Thomasina asked.

  ‘Rebels,’ Kathryn replied. ‘Men who supported Lancaster in the recent war. Sheriffs, lords, officials.’

  ‘They haven’t caught Nicholas Faunte yet!’ a stall owner shouted.

  ‘What does it matter?’ Thomasina snapped. ‘The war is over, the victors always have their blood-letting, then it’s life back to normal.’

  The crowd’s enthusiasm and the warm summer weather had been blighted by the executioner’s passage. Even the wealthy in their costly gowns, with large fat purses swinging from embroidered belts, put their heads down and muttered nervously to each other. Kathryn pushed her way past them to the steps of the Guildhall. Soldiers wearing the livery of York stood there. She saw Colum waiting, talking earnestly to a serjeant dressed in the royal livery, a short, thick-set, balding man, who looked every inch the professional soldier. Colum turned, glimpsed Kathryn and waved her over.

  ‘You are well, Mistress Swinbrooke?’

  ‘As fine as the day,’ Kathryn replied. She looked over her shoulder. ‘That cart and its driver! It was like being passed by Death itself!’

  ‘They were executed yesterday,’ the soldier standing next to Colum said, ‘in the market-place at Maidstone. But once Faunte is captured – and we know he’s hiding in the weald of Kent . . .’ The fellow turned and spat. ‘Then it’s all over for us soldiers. Apart from royal favourites, like the Irishman here.’

  Colum grinned, his tense face relaxed. ‘Mistress Swinbrooke, physician, may I introduce Master Holbech: a serjeant by training, of indeterminate parentage, by birth a Yorkshireman.’

  The hard blue eyes of the soldier caught Kathryn’s and he nodded slightly. ‘Mistress, your servant.’

  Kathryn half-smiled whilst behind her Thomasina coughed and muttered loudly, ‘Another guest for the hangman!’

  Holbech swayed slightly to one side, winked at Thomasina and ran his tongue round his lips.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ Thomasina muttered.

  ‘Master Holbech,’ Colum continued hurriedly, as if he sensed their animosity, ‘is no longer in the royal service. I have hired him to help me at Kingsmead. He and a few other rogues whose war-waging days are over. Kingsmead is nothing more than a derelict building. We need carpenters, farriers, smiths and craftsmen, and Holbech is the man to pluck a rose from the Queen without her knowing it.’

  Holbech shuffled his big boots at such praise just as a woman, thick red hair straggling behind her, ran across the street from St Helen’s Church and caught Holbech by his arm. Amber, cat-like eyes stared from a pointed white face. The woman smiled at Colum, then coolly studied Kathryn, who just stared back. The woman’s brown smock was ill-fitting, but it still emphasised the voluptuous curves of hip and breast whilst her red hair, massed round her white face, seemed like a fiery halo.

  ‘This is Megan, Holbech’s woman,’ Colum said flatly. Colum clasped the Serjeant’s hand. ‘Well, Holbech, you have your orders and I have mine.’ He tapped the thick heavy wallet which swung from the soldier’s sword-belt. ‘You have silver and warrants enough. Buy what you have to, hire whom you need. The work has to be done within a month. The King will soon disband his army and the horses will be sent south.’

  Holbech nodded at Kathryn and moved away. Megan still clung to his arm, chattering like a child whilst looking provocatively over her shoulder at Colum.

  The Irishman watched them go.

  ‘A good man,’ he murmured. ‘A bit of a bastard.’ He ignored the sharp hiss of disapproval from Thomasina. ‘But she’s trouble.’ He turned and walked up the Guild-hall steps, hardly waiting for Kathryn to join him.

  ‘How do you know?’ Thomasina impishly asked.

  Colum stopped and turned. ‘How do I know what?’

  ‘That Megan’s trouble?’

  ‘Holbech and I have fought the length and breadth of the kingdom. Megan’s a camp follower, a good woman, she looks after her man. The problem is that she moves from one to another like a butterfly flits from flower to flower. She stirs up trouble, as Holbech will soon find out.’

  Colum strode into the Guildhall. Kathryn pulled a face at Thomasina behind his back and followed suit. The entrance-way was thronged with royal messengers and officials both from the court and city. The atmosphere was a mixture of dread and excitement as these soldiers and officials, Colum included, searched records, hunted down traitors and brought the city of Canterbury back under royal rule. An officious tipstaff approached them. Colum mentioned Newington and Luberon and the fellow led them off down a passageway past chambers, their doors half-open, where clerks sat on high stools transcribing letters or documents.

  Newington and Luberon were waiting for them in the main hall. They were sitting behind a table, whilst in front of them, seated on stools, were five individuals, their backs to the door. As soon as he glimpsed Kathryn and Colum, Newington rose, his thin pallid face breaking into a false smile. He appeared more calm and collected than the previous day. His hair was coiffured, his thin beard and moustache neatly clipped, and he wore a scarlet gown trimmed with squirrel fur, with the gold chain of office round his neck. Luberon looked pompous and ink-stained as ever, but he scurried forward to meet them, bobbing like a leaf in a water butt.

  ‘Master Murtagh, Mistress Swinbrooke, you are most welcome.’

  He ushered them towards a desk as the others rose and turned to meet them. Kathryn kept her eyes down as Luberon brought up chairs for her and Colum.

  The introductions were made. Kathryn was described as Mistress Swinbrooke, physician. She heard a snort of laughter and looked up, fighting back the rush of anger. The five men were all strangers, except for Geoffrey Cotterell. The latter stood there, oil-soaked strands of hair carefully combed across his balding head, his protuberant fish-like eyes and slobbery lips sneering at her, his thumbs poked in the expansive girdle round his barrel-like waist. He flicked dust from his fur-trimmed gown and grinned maliciously at Kathryn. Cotterell had hated Kathryn’s father and had little patience for his daughter with her so-called airs, graces and titles. Kathryn ignored his sneer and sat down. Colum, next to her, eased his long legs out, crossing his ankles. He looked warningly at Cotterell and wiped the sneer from the phys
ician’s face. Newington continued the introductions. Kathryn did not recognise any of the rest, though she had heard of their names and reputations as leading physicians in Canterbury. James Brantam, young and nervous, with reddish hair and protuberant front teeth, crouched like a nervous rabbit, wetting his lips and looking sideways at Cotterell. Kathryn knew that Brantam owned a shop and practice near Westgate. Matthew Darryl, dark, with deep-set eyes, was a smooth-shaven, pleasant-faced young man. Newington coughed when he introduced him and explained that Darryl was his son-in-law. Next to him, tall and angular, sharp-featured, with a rather wispy moustache and a beak-like nose, was Edmund Straunge. And finally there was Roger Chaddedon. Tall, dark and graceful, with smooth olive skin and clear eyes, he wore his costly physician’s gown above the cream cambric shirt with a grace and poise denied to the others. Chaddedon caught Kathryn’s eye and smiled. She looked away in embarrassment. Chaddedon was handsome and she recalled his reputation as a good doctor who charged fair fees and treated the poor free. Kathryn’s father had often praised him and she felt a pang of sadness that they had not known him when her father was alive. He would have liked Chaddedon. Indeed, his calm manner and friendly approach reminded Kathryn of her father.

  Nevertheless, all the doctors seemed a little uneasy at why they had been summoned, and Newington’s introduction of Colum as the King’s Special Commissioner affected even Chaddedon’s cool demeanour.

  ‘So why are we here?’ Cotterell asked sharply.

  ‘You are all doctors, physicians,’ Luberon piped up.

  ‘So?’ Straunge snapped. ‘That is no crime!’

  ‘You all own,’ Luberon continued officiously, ‘houses and shops in Canterbury and have access to potions and poisons denied to others.’

  The group caught the drift of his words and shifted nervously on their stools. Luberon jabbed an ink-stained finger at Cotterell and Brantam.

  ‘You two practise your skills independently. Cotterell near the Buttermarket, Brantam in Westgate. Whilst you three’ – he waved a hand airily at Darryl, Straunge and Chaddedon – ‘have set up some sort of commune.’

  Straunge quietly intervened. ‘A collegium.’