House of the Red Slayer

‘Father? Father Athelstan?’

The friar turned and glared at the young pursuivant who stood, cloaked and hooded, behind him. ‘Yes, man, what is it?’

‘I have been sent from the Tower by Sir John Cranston. He wants to see you in the Holy Lamb tavern off Cheapside.’

‘Tell My Lord Coroner,’ Athelstan retorted, ‘that I’ll be there when I’m there, and he’d better be sober!’

The young man looked surprised and hurt. Athelstan grimaced and spread his hands.

‘Lord, man, I’m sorry. Look, tell Sir John I’ll be there when I can.’

He took a step closer and saw the fellow’s white, pinched face and dripping nose. ‘You are freezing,’ the friar muttered. ‘Go across to my house, there’s a jug of wine on the table. Fill a goblet. You’ll find one on a shelf above the fire hearth. Drink some mulled wine, and get some warmth in your belly before you return.’

The pursuivant turned and scurried off like a whippet.

‘Oh, by the way,’ Athelstan yelled after him, ‘I did mean what I said. Sir John is not to drink too much!’

Athelstan walked slowly back to his church, up the steps and into the porch.

‘Father?’

Athelstan jumped as Master Luke Bladdersniff, chief bailiff of the ward, stepped out of the darkness, his lean sallow face and wispy blond hair almost hidden under a tattered beaver hat.

‘Good morrow, Master Bailiff.’

Athelstan studied the ward man: his close-set eyes were dark-rimmed and looked even more like the piss-holes in the snow, as Cranston so aptly described them. Athelstan had always been fascinated by the man’s nose. Broken and slightly twisted, it gave Bladdersniff a rather comical look which sat awkwardly with the fellow’s usual air of bombastic self-importance. Athelstan wearily waved him into the church.

‘Master Bladdersniff, I suppose you have come to discuss why my cemetery is violated and its graves robbed whilst you and the ward council do nothing about it?’

Bladdersniff shook his head, while peering over his shoulder, back into the darkness of the church porch.

‘What is it, man? What’s over there?’

The bailiffs mouth opened and shut like a landed carp. Athelstan stared more closely. The fellow looked as if he was going to vomit. His white face had a greenish tinge and the dark eyes were watery, as if Bladdersniff had been violently retching.

‘For God’s sake, man, what is it?’

Again the bailiff looked back into the darkness.

‘It’s Tosspot!’ he mumbled.

‘What?’

‘Tosspot! Or, at least, part of him,’ Bladdersniff replied, beckoning the priest to follow him.

Athelstan took a taper and went to where the bailiff stood over a dirty piece of canvas in a dark corner of the church porch. Bladdersniff pulled this open and Athelstan turned away in disgust. A man’s leg lay there, or at least part of it, cut above the knee as neatly and as sharply as a piece of cloth by an expert tailor. Athelstan stared at the bloody stump and mottle-hued skin.

‘Good God!’ he breathed, and caught the stench of corruption from the slightly puffed flesh. ‘Cover it up, man! Cover it up!’

Athelstan doused the taper, walked out of the church and stood on the top step, drawing in deep breaths of fresh morning air. He heard Bladdersniff come up behind him.

‘What makes you think it was Tosspot?’

‘Oh, you remember, Father. Tosspot was always regaling his customers at the tavern with tales of his old war wound, an arrow in the leg. He was continually showing his scar as if it was some sacred relic.’

Athelstan nodded.

‘Aye,’ he replied. ‘Old Tosspot would do that whenever he became drunk.’ The friar looked at the bailiff. ‘And that leg bears the same scar?’

‘Yes, Father, just above the shin.’

‘Where was it found?’

‘Do you want to see?’

‘Yes, I do.’

Bladdersniff led him down Bridge Street, across Jerwald and into Longfish Alley which led down to Broken Wharf on the riverside. As he walked, Athelstan never spoke a word and the people who knew him stepped aside at the fierce, determined expression on the usually gentle priest’s face.

Athelstan noticed little except the dirty, filthy slush of the streets they crossed. He ignored greetings and seemed totally unaware of the traders and hucksters behind their battered stalls and booths shouting for custom. Even the felons fastened tightly in the stocks failed to provoke his usual compassion, whilst he treated Bladdersniff as if the bailiff hardly existed. Athelstan felt sick at heart. Who would do that to poor Tosspot’s corpse? he wondered. How would it profit them? They reached Broken Wharf above the riverside. Bladdersniff took the friar by the arm and pointed down to the dirty mudflats where gulls and crows fought over the rubbish left on the riverside. Athelstan looked out across the Thames. The water looked as dirty and dark as his own mood. He noticed the great chunks of ice still floating, crashing together as they swirled down to thunder against the arches of London Bridge.

‘Where did you find it?’

‘Down there, Father,’ Bladdersniff brusquely replied. ‘On the mud, wrapped in that piece of canvas. An urchin looking for sea coal found it and brought it to one of the traders who recognised old Tosspot’s wound.’ The bailiff coughed nervously. ‘I have heard about the raids on your cemetery.’

‘Oh, you have? That’s good.’ Athelstan smiled falsely at him. ‘You think the limb was washed in by the river?’

‘Yes, I do. Now, at any other time, Father, the river would have swept it away, but the heavy ice has interfered with the current and the canvas bag was pushed back to the bank.’

‘So you are saying it must have been thrown in here?’

‘Yes, Father, either here or some place very close.’

Athelstan looked to his left, along the mud flats and walls which stretched down to London Bridge. Too open, he reflected. No felon would dream of committing such a terrible act in a place where he could be seen. He looked to his right and the long row of great houses whose gardens stretched down to the riverside. A recent memory stirred. ‘I wonder,’ he murmured to himself. ‘I really do wonder…’

‘What, Father?’

‘Nothing, Master Bladdersniff. Go back to my church. Collect what is left of poor Tosspot and bury it as you think fit.’

‘Father, it’s not my…’

‘Do it!’ Athelstan snarled. ‘Do it now or answer to the City Coroner, Sir John Cranston!’

‘He has no jurisdiction here.’

‘Yes, but he can get it!’ Athelstan retorted. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, man, do it for me. Do it for poor Tosspot, please?’

Bladdersniff stared, nodded, and strode away.

Athelstan walked back to St Erconwald’s. He had recognised one of the houses down near the riverside and remembered how cleanly and sharply the limb had been cut. This stirred memories of his own military experience in the makeshift hospitals of the old King’s armies in France. Athelstan thought of the cemetery. Where were the lepers? Why hadn’t they noticed anything? Athelstan remembered the lepers he had seen near St Paul’s the day he and Cranston had visited Geoffrey Parchmeiner. Their begging dishes!

Athelstan stopped in the middle of Lad Alley. ‘Oh, my God!’ he whispered. ‘Oh, sweet pity’s sake!’ The white chalk he had found on his fingers after Mass when he and young Crim had pushed the sacred host through the leper’s squint… The friar suddenly felt weak and leaned against the urine-stained wall. Other memories flooded back. ‘Of course!’ he whispered to himself. ‘That’s why the cemetery wasn’t disturbed for a while. The thaw! But when the river was frozen they couldn’t get rid of what they’d stolen.’ Athelstan’s face contorted into a sudden snarl. ‘The bastards!’ he hissed. ‘The evil bastards!’

He strode back down Lad Alley into one of the busy thoroughfares which ran parallel to the river bank. A young urchin, ru