Cranston and Athelstan made their way along the narrow runnels heading towards the stews along the Thames. The coroner was correct. The day was passing and the strengthening sunshine had coaxed all the inhabitants of these grim slums out into the streets to mingle with those making their way up to London and the approaches to the riverside. Cranston was recognized and mocked, but his comitatus or retinue, led by the burly bailiff Flaxwith, his ugly mastiff Samson trotting aggressively beside him, kept the threats to nothing more than hurled curses and obscenities.
They entered what Cranston described as the ‘footpaths of Hell’, mere slits between decaying houses, so rotten and dilapidated they leaned in dizzyingly close to block out both light and air. These derelict shells were only kept from collapsing by struts and crutches shoved under each storey. All windows were blind, shuttered fast, whilst doorways were hidden behind rough sheets of oxhide doused in vinegar as a protection against fire. Rubbish heaps, so slimy they glistened, exuded rotten smells, a haven for the fast, slinking rats almost as big as the long-haired cats which watched from the shadows. Dogs on chains, ribs showing through their mangy hides, howled and threw themselves from their foul kennels. Flies moved in thick black clouds like a horde of demons above the refuse which lay ankle-deep, swilling in the filthy water seeping from cracked rain tubs. Figures moved, flitting shadows through the murk. Voices echoed eerily. Here and there a lanternhorn, lit by candles reeking of tallow fat, glowed through the gloom. Along these footpaths, the dead hour, the witching time for all forms of wickedness, lasted from dawn to dusk. Now and again this sanctuary of sin showed some life: a beggar woman crawled out to plead for her husband, whose wits, she screeched, had been stolen by fairies. Athelstan was appalled at the sheer ugliness of her raw-boned, one-eyed face, her scalp scratched bloodily bare of hair, her fingers thin and crooked like hooks. He hastily threw her a coin and sketched a blessing. Cranston quietly cursed and immediately ordered his bailiffs to ring them as a huge, barred door was speedily flung open. A gang of beggars, swathed in rags, swarmed out to pester this generous friar. Cranston’s bailiffs drove them away as they hurried along the main thoroughfare leading down to the river.
Here the crowd was more busy about their own affairs. Athelstan, face hidden deep in his cowl, caught snatches of the teeming life around him. A wedding party: the groom, festooned with green leaves, a chaplet of roses on his head, led his merry guests in a spritely dance to the music of rebec, viol and harp. A knight, sombre in black and yellow livery, rode a powerful, roan-coloured destrier down to the tilt yards. He sat in the majestic, horned wooden saddle carrying lance and great shield; the caparison of his destrier matched his own colours, whilst before him a squire carried a decorated helmet with a leaping panther crest festooned with yellow and black feathers. Friars of many orders in robes of black, white, cream or muddy brown administered to the needs of funeral corteges, mourning parties or vigil fraternities. Traders and hucksters, their trays strapped round their necks, touted a range of goods, from threads to potions which could cure the plague. Leeches offered to bleed those too full of blood. Wild-eyed relic-sellers, who proclaimed they were fresh from Jerusalem or Rome, offered wares which included Delilah’s hair or bloodsoaked soil from the Garden of Gethsemane.
The noise was constant: curses, yells, shouts of traders offering ‘fresh mince’, ‘clear water’, ‘sweet grilled meals’, or ‘the fattest figs in a sugared sauce’. The night walkers and dark prowlers were also out with a keen eye for the loose purse or dangling wallet. The crowd surged and broke around funeral parties, pilgrim groups and the different fraternities who moved in clouds of incense and a blaze of colour to this church or that. The stink and stench proved too much for Athelstan, and he hastily bought two pomanders from a young girl, who also invited them over to a puppet show on a garishly decorated cart. Athelstan smiled and shook his head. They turned a corner on to a rutted trackway which swept down to a three-storey, lathe and plaster building with a purple-painted door approached by steep steps. Above this hung a sign proclaiming in red and gold-scrolled lettering: ‘The Tavern of Lost Souls’.
‘Undoubtedly the work of Reginald Camoys,’ Cranston declared, taking a swig from the miraculous wineskin. ‘A work of art, eh, Athelstan? Red and gold against a snow-white background. Snow-white!’ Cranston snorted. ‘That certainly wouldn’t be the description of what goes on behind that purple-painted door!’
‘Which is?’
‘Everything under the sun,’ Flaxwith, standing behind them, lugubriously intoned. ‘Buying and selling, cheating and cozening, where the Devil’s pact is sworn over this soul or that and lives are marked down for ending. Whatever you want, Brother, Master Mephistopheles and his minions will arrange.’
‘Mephistopheles? The devil himself?’
‘The devil incarnate!’ Cranston snorted. ‘Come.’
They climbed the steps. Cranston brought the bronze clapper, carved in the shape of a grinning demon’s face, down time and again. The door was flung open, and a man dressed in a grey robe bounded by a red cincture beckoned them into the most extraordinary taproom Athelstan had ever seen. A long hall stretched before them, well lit by catherine wheels lowered on chains. Candles crammed around each rim provided light, along with lanterns hooked on beams or pillars. The floor gleamed with polish, the air fragrant with the smell of beeswax and herb pots placed judiciously along the walls. There was no obvious furniture, but a long row of cubicles was set in the centre, each one carved out of shimmering oak with a door on either end. One of these hung open and Athelstan glimpsed a shiny table with cushioned benches on either side. The bright lighting meant that customers could view the extraordinary paintings which proclaimed the most frightening images of Helclass="underline" minstrels tortured by the very instruments they used to play; vain beauties forced to admire their own reflection in a mirror on the devil’s arse; adulterers impaled by demon birds; gluttons devoured by a huge stomach on legs.
Halfway down the taproom they were told to wait. Athelstan could hear murmurs of conversation from the cubicles, but these were so cunningly contrived and placed, it was nigh impossible to hear what was actually being said. He walked across to study the frescoes more carefully. The entire row of paintings all displayed scenes from Helclass="underline" demons depicted as part animal, part human and part vegetable; devils with gauzy wings and fly faces; sinners who once frolicked in the pond of lust now stood blue-bodied next to a frozen lake where more of the damned floated and froze, their heads just above Hell’s foul waters. The more he studied the paintings, the more Athelstan was convinced they were inspired by the teaching of the mystic Richard Rolle who proclaimed, ‘As a war-like machine strikes the walls of a city, so shall hideously fanged frog-demons strike the bodies and souls of the damned.’
‘You like our paintings, Brother Athelstan?’ The Dominican turned. A man, dressed in the same way as the one who had opened the door, emerged out of the darkness at the far end of the taproom. He walked across the dancing pools of light, hands outstretched in greeting. Athelstan grasped them and the man introduced himself as ‘Mephistopheles, Master of the Minions’.
‘You were not called that over the baptismal font?’ Athelstan enquired, stepping back.
‘You mean when I, or those who sponsored me, rejected the Lord Satan and all his pomp and boasts?’ Mephistopheles grinned in a display of white, shiny teeth. He drew closer and Athelstan caught the very cunning of this man. A shape-shifter, the friar thought, a man who could be all things to all men. Mephistopheles was quiet-voiced, his face cleanly shaven, his red, cropped hair shiny with oil. A pious face with regular features except for the slightly sardonic twist of his full lips and cynical eyes, as if the soul behind them contemplated the world and all who passed through it with the utmost mockery. Mephistopheles gestured at the paintings.