‘Did you know Whitfield?’
‘Oh, yes, Sir John. My father mentioned him and, of course, he often came to our house on his master’s business. I also met him at festivities held in the Royal Chambers both at the Tower and Westminster. I recognized him as a skilled cipher clerk, that’s the real reason I came here.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Athelstan replied.
‘Oh, yes, Brother. I like the wine, the sack, the roast, spice-laced pork and the ladies, but …’ Now all animated, Matthias sprang to his feet and walked over to the mantelpiece and pointed at the carvings, ‘IHSV’ and the Sun in Splendour with its inscription, ‘Soli Invicto’. ‘I have always been fascinated by these.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘When Uncle Reginald was alive, he showed me the Cross of Lothar. Brother, Sir John, believe me, I have never seen anything so beautiful. Beautiful,’ he repeated, returning to the settle. ‘Uncle promised …’ The young man brushed the tears brimming in his eyes.
‘What did he promise?’ Athelstan demanded.
‘He said he would bequeath it to me but I would have to strive and search for it. These riddles are the key, that’s why I come here. I thought Amaury would decipher them. He promised he would, but …’
‘But what?’ Cranston asked.
‘Amaury arrived all frightened and closeted himself against the world. He took part in the revelry but he was distracted. I asked him about the symbols my uncle had left. Amaury claimed he could decipher them but there were more pressing matters …’
‘Did he say what?’
‘He and Lebarge hid behind a cloak of secrecy.’ Matthias thrummed his lips with dirty fingers. ‘He left, I think, to go to the Tavern of Lost Souls.’
Athelstan glanced at Cranston. The Tavern of Lost Souls lay in the dingiest and darkest part of Southwark, close to the treacherous mud flats along the Thames, a place where, according to popular legend, anything could be bought or sold, including human souls.
‘Why should he go there?’
Matthias scratched his head. ‘I don’t know, but what I find most strange is this. I pestered him about “Uncle’s great mystery”, as I called it. I told him about the insignia here where Reginald once lived and in his chantry chapel at St Mary Le Bow. I admit I drove Amaury to distraction. He kept fobbing me off and went to sit in a corner whispering with Lebarge whilst trying to avoid Stretton. He seemed very frightened, cautious. He was desperate to forget his fears immersing himself in the revelry, with bowls of wine and trysts with Joycelina.’
‘Do you know why he should commit suicide?’ Athelstan asked.
‘No. I was very surprised.’
‘Why?’
‘He told me last night, before he supped, that he was leaving the Golden Oliphant today but that he would meet me at the Tavern of Lost Souls, just around vespers.’
‘What?’ Athelstan and Cranston chorused.
‘That’s what he said. He believed he could resolve the mystery of Lothar’s Cross for me.’ Matthias pulled a face. ‘I confess, this morning I was muddled, still deep in my cups after last night.’ He blinked. ‘Nevertheless, Whitfield’s death shocked me. I can’t see why he should commit suicide …’
The execution ground next to Tyburn stream was crammed with all the denizens of the dark, mildewed tenants of the city. Ribaldry, debauchery, lewdness, drunkenness and flaunting vice were both master and mistress of the day. The executions had begun after the great bell of St Sepulchre had tolled ominously across the city, summoning the mob to converge on the muddy fields around Tyburn to watch the gruesome spectacle. The soaring execution platform, black against the sky, had already witnessed the grisly decapitation of a traitor. The yellow-and-red masked executioner, drunk and staggering, had held up the traitor’s head but his hands, slippery with gore, had fumbled. He’d dropped the severed head and was immediately greeted with catcalls of derision and cries of ‘Butterfingers!’
All the mummers and grotesques of the city flocked busily around; conjurers and cross-biters rubbed shoulders with Friars of the Sack and members of the Guild of the Hanged, who ministered to felons condemned to die. The air was rancid with the sweat of unwashed bodies and the different odours from the mobile stoves where meats of doubtful origin were grilled, stewed or roasted before being sold along with hard bread, beakers of wine and stale ale. Smoke billowed up from makeshift fires to mingle with the fragrance of incense streaming out of the censers belonging to the pious groups who attended execution day to offer spiritual comfort to anyone who needed it. Itinerant story tellers stood on makeshift platforms ready to pontificate on all matters, be it a horde of yellow-skinned warriors massing in the east under lurid dragon banners; the signs and portents seen recently in the sky over Rome; or that troop of devils prowling the lanes north of London. Friars of every order moved amongst the crowds chanting psalms, hymns and songs of mourning. Leeches and hedge-physicians offered the most miraculous cures, while relic sellers, hawkers, pedlars and costermongers pushed their barrows of tawdry items through the crowd. Puppet masters, stone-swallowers and fire-eaters had set up stalls. Prostitutes of every kind, garbed in their tawdry finery and heaped, dyed wigs, shoved and pushed their way through, fingers fluttering out, carmined lips mouthing the most solicitous offers.
This tumultuous assembly had already been entertained with stories about the execution of the traitor who, whilst the gore-stained, butter-fingered executioner was trying to disembowel him, had struggled up to strike his tormentor. Such gruesome detail only whetted the appetites of those who flocked here to witness and indulge in every form of mischief. This execution day, however, turned different.
The death carts came and went, delivering their condemned human cargo, men and women, roped and manacled, to be pushed up the narrow siege ladder to the waiting noose. The Hangman of Rochester from St Erconwald’s parish had despatched at least eight felons. Now he was waiting for his last two final victims: Wyvern and Hydrus, condemned felons who’d murdered a fellow inmate just before they had been seized and dragged from Newgate. The hangman watched the cart, drawn by two great dray horses, black plumes nodding between their ears, trundle ominously through the smoky clouds. Others, however, had also entered the execution ground: the Upright Men had arrived! Their foot soldiers, the Earthworms, were snaking through the mob, long lines of men, faces daubed black and red, greasy hair twisted up into demon horns. They were dressed in tawdry armour; ox hide shields in one hand, lances in the other. They were moving like stains through water towards the execution platform.
The hangman glanced at John Scarisbrick, Captain of the Tower archers, his bearded, sweaty face framed by a coif and almost hidden behind the broad nose guard of his conical helmet. Scarisbrick plucked nervously at his chainmail jacket as he stared out over the crowd, nose wrinkling at the disgusting stench and gruesome sights on the execution platform.
‘They are intent on mischief!’ the hangman shouted.
‘But when?’ Scarisbrick yelled. He walked towards the edge of the platform. The execution cart was drawing closer.
‘They won’t attack the cart,’ he bellowed at his men. ‘It is too high-sided and moving. Here!’ Scarisbrick pointed to the steps and bellowed orders at his archers to fall back and gather there. The columns of Earthworms were moving faster through the throng. Scarisbrick sensed the trap: his archers dared not loose; innocents would be killed and the rifflers and the roaring boys would whip the crowd into a murderous riot. Scarisbrick screamed at his men to unstring their staves, push them under the execution platform and draw sword and dagger. They did so. The death cart arrived at the foot of the steps, its tailgate slammed down. The Newgate turnkeys almost threw Hydrus and Wyvern, ragged, dirty and bruised, out on to the ground. Once they were out, the tailgate was lifted, the gaolers eager to be gone. Archers pinioned the condemned men, now struggling in a rattle of chains. The Earthworms were closing in, the crowd breaking up like shoals of fish before them. Yells, catcalls and curses dinned the ear. Daggers and swords were drawn in a clatter of steel. Women screamed and clutched their children, desperate to escape the coming conflict. The breeze thickened. A billow of thick black smoke gusted from the braziers on the execution platform and swept the killing ground. The Earthworms attacked, throwing themselves at the screed of archers. Scarisbrick glanced at the hangman who had now come up behind him.