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‘Any messages?’ he barked at a subdued-looking Leif, still sitting in his favourite place in the inglenook of the great fireplace. The one-legged beggar lifted his head from his bowl of vegetables and spiced meat and shook his head.
‘No, Sir John,’ he replied. ‘But I have polished the pewter pots.’
‘Good,’ he growled. ‘At least someone in this city is working.’
Cranston poured himself a generous goblet of wine and seized a small white loaf the cook had left to cool on the kitchen table. The coroner stood snatching mouthfuls of bread and gulping noisily from a goblet whilst he stared angrily at the fire. What should he do? he wondered.
Whitton’s and Fitzormonde’s deaths at the Tower were still as unfathomable as ever. He had also failed to find Horne. Sir John knew it would only be a matter of time before his masters at the Guildhall or, worse still, the Regent at the Savoy Palace, asked for an account of his stewardship. He heard a sharp knock at the door.
‘Go on, Leif,’ he growled. ‘I’m too bloody cold to answer it.’
Leif looked self-pityingly at him.
‘Go on, you idle bugger!’ Cranston roared. ‘There’s more to this house than sitting on your arse and stuffing your mouth with every bit of food you can lay your sticky little fingers on!’
Leif sighed, put down the bowl and hobbled out of the kitchen. Cranston heard the front door open and the man limping slowly back.
‘What is it?’ Cranston asked, winking good-humouredly at the maid who had also hurried down to see who was at the door. The girl smiled anxiously back and Cranston quietly cursed himself. He was frightening everyone with his foul temper. He must take a grip on himself. Perhaps he should ask Athelstan to intervene? ‘Well, man?’ he repeated. ‘Who was there?’
‘No one, Sir John.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, there was no one there.’ Leif steadied himself against the lintel of the door. ‘Only this.’ He held up a battered, leather bag tied at the neck and stained with watery dark marks around the base. ‘I answered the door,’ Leif ponderously repeated, ‘no one was there, only this bag.’
‘Then open it, man!’ Cranston said testily.
The coroner turned away to refill his wine cup. He whirled around at Leif s horrified cry and the bump as the maid fell in a dead faint to the floor. The beggarman just stood there, eyes wide in horror, mouth slack; in his upraised hand he held by the hair the decapitated head of Adam Horne, alderman and merchant.
Now Cranston had seen decapitated heads, be they of murdered taverner or some lord executed on Tower Hill, but this was truly gruesome; it was not so much the half-closed eyes and still blood-dripping neck but the mouth forced open and, thrust inside, the mangled remains of the dead merchant’s genitals.
Cranston grabbed the head from the horror-struck beggar’s hand, thrust it back into the bag, stepped over the still prostrate maid and, roaring for Maude, dashed down the passage-way to the door. He flung it open, rushing like an angry bull down Cheapside, but the snow-covered thoroughfare was still deserted, with no trace or sign of their mysterious, grisly visitor. Cranston stopped and, half crouching, retched violently as the true horror of what he had seen seized his mind and wrung his stomach as if it was a wet rag.
‘Oh, the bastard!’ he whispered. ‘Oh, Lord help us!’
He staggered back inside the house. Maude, white-faced, stood at the foot of the stairs.
‘Sir John, what is it?’
‘Go back to your room, woman!’ Cranston roared. ‘Stay there!’
He turned to the grooms and servants now huddled together near the kitchen door.
‘You,’ Cranston barked at one, ‘go for a physician! You,’ he pointed to the cook and her assistant, ‘take the maid into the solar!’
The poor, half-unconscious girl was hustled to her feet. Cranston walked back into the kitchen. Leif sat on the stool like a man pole-axed. The bag and its gruesome contents still lay where Cranston had dropped it. The coroner busied himself around the house. He shaved, changed his doublet, put on his sword belt and took his heaviest cloak from its hook outside the buttery. He found a heavy flour sack in one of the outhouses and placed the battered leather bag carefully in it.
‘Leif,’ he ordered, ‘tell Lady Maude I am going to the Guildhall, then on to Southwark.’
The beggar, usually so garrulous but still dumbstruck at what he had seen, just stared and nodded, open-mouthed. Cranston swung the sack over his shoulder.
‘Oh, Leif.’ Cranston turned and gri
Leif turned away, retching, whilst Cranston stalked out of his house muttering vengeance against all and sundry.
In St Erconwald’s church, Athelstan had just finished the Mass for the dead and was now blessing the corpse of Tosspot, an old drunkard who’d lived in the cellars of the Piebald Horse tavern. Tosspot had been found dead the previous afternoon. Pike the ditcher and Watkin the dung-collector had, in the absence of any relatives, sewn the body into a canvas sack, placed it on a wooden trellis and brought it to lie in front of the chancel screen. Athelstan had always given strict instructions on this; any poor man or woman found dead in his parish was to be given honourable burial, so this included Tosspot. Athelstan sketched the sign of the cross above the corpse and sprinkled it with the Asperges rod. Around him the usual Mass-goers, Benedicta included, watched fascinated as Athelstan urged the soul to go out to meet his Christ whilst he, Athelstan, priest of that church, summoned God’s army to meet this unfortunate man’s soul; they were to lead it into Paradise and ensure it did not fall into the hands of Satan. Athelstan paused. And what about the body? he thought. Would that be safe? He looked down at his fingers and noted the chalk dust on their tips. Where had that come from? he wondered. It had not been there during Mass.
‘Father,’ Crim the altar boy whispered.
Athelstan, startled, looked up.
‘Father,’ the boy repeated, his face creased in a mischievous grin, ‘you’ve suddenly stopped praying!’
Athelstan shook himself free from his reverie.
‘We beg thee, Michael the Archangel,’ he intoned the final prayer, ‘to take the soul of this our brother.’ He paused. What could he call him? Tosspot? What would the angels think of such a name? ‘Take the soul of this our brother Tosspot,’ he continued defiantly, ‘into the bosom of Abraham.’
The friar glared at the congregation but they all knelt, heads wisely bowed to hide their grins. Athelstan, trying to conceal his embarrassment, signalled at Watkin and Pike to lift the bier and follow him and Crim, bearing a lighted taper, into the cemetery. Outside the cold wind snuffed the taper out. Crim slipped on the ice and fell on his backside, cursing so loudly Athelstan had to bite his lip to keep his face straight. They crossed the lonely, haunted cemetery to the shallow grave Pike had dug in the ground. Athelstan caught a glimpse of the two lepers, shrouded in their hoods near the charnel house. He suddenly remembered the twig he had used to push the Hosts through the leper’s squint for these two unfortunates to swallow. Athelstan smiled to himself. That’s where the chalk had come from. They reached the grave. Pike and Watkin unceremoniously rolled old Tosspot into the shallow hole and, whilst Athelstan muttered some prayers, hastily covered it with icy lumps of clay. Athelstan then blessed the grave and with Watkin darkly hoping the body would stay there, they all trooped back into the church. Athelstan chose to ignore the dung-collector’s dire speculation. The grave robbers, whoever they were, seemed to have disappeared. Perhaps moved on to vex some other unfortunate priest He swept up the nave under the chancel screen and into the small, icy sacristy. Athelstan jumped as a large figure loomed out of the shadows.