‘Can I help you?’ a voice grated. A man stood in the doorway to the chantry chapel, tall and thin, with sparse black locks falling in wisps to his shoulders. The stranger’s face was mere bone, the white skin stretched across tight and transparent. He stepped closer to meet Athelstan, his milky-blue eyes sunk deep in their sockets, his nose hooked like a hawk’s, his thin-lipped mouth all pursed. He was dressed in a stained yellow jerkin and hose of the same colour. From his belt hung a naked dagger and a couple of tooth drawers; around his neck two rosaries fashioned out of human teeth.
‘And who are you?’ Cranston stepped out of the shadows. The stranger glimpsed the coroner’s badge and hastily retreated.
‘Well?’ Athelstan asked.
‘Raoul Malfort, bell clerk of St Mary Le Bow.’
‘Ah yes, recently appointed following the murder of the previous office holder, Edmund Lacy, stabbed to death in a tavern by the villain Reynard now dangling at Tyburn.’
‘Not so, not so.’ The bell clerk shook his head. ‘You’ve not heard the news?’ He sniffed and abruptly changed the conversation. ‘I am also a tooth-drawer. I still practise my trade.’ He gestured with his head. ‘I use the bell tower now Lacy has gone.’
‘You disliked him?’
‘Until he died he was the master,’ Malfort declared. ‘Now he has departed this vale of tears and I have taken over his position.’ He beckoned. ‘Do you want to see my chamber?’
‘No, no,’ Athelstan replied hastily, glimpsing a bloodied tooth on the macabre necklace. The friar smiled to himself. No wonder, he thought, Matthias Camoys believed this church was haunted with strange cries and sounds – it was no more than some poor soul losing a tooth! Nevertheless, Athelstan shivered. This eerie-looking bell clerk only deepened the apprehension he’d felt before entering this so-called hallowed place.
‘You talked about news?’ he demanded.
‘Oh, yes, Reynard.’ Malfort grinned in a show of yellowing, broken teeth. ‘He did not dance in the air at Tyburn. Murdered, he was, in the death closet at Newgate, killed by two felons Hydrus and Wyvern. Now, when they reached Tyburn …’ In brusque sentences, Malfort described the riot around the execution ground. Once he’d finished, Cranston whistled under his breath.
‘Brother,’ he gestured, ‘we should leave and reflect on all that has happened.’
‘True, true.’
Athelstan and Cranston left the chantry chapel accompanied by Malfort and crossed the church to the other transept. Athelstan walked through its shadows, stopped and pointed to a door at the far end.
‘Where does that lead?’
‘Down to the crypt. Nothing there except bones and ancient ruins.’
‘I would like to visit it.’
Malfort shrugged and walked back to take a cresset from its wall niche.
‘Brother?’ Cranston asked. ‘Why the curiosity?’
‘Because I am curious,’ Athelstan smiled, ‘and I am curious because I am uneasy.’ He rubbed his forehead. ‘Perhaps I am growing tired, I just sense something’s amiss. Anyway …’ He paused as Malfort brought back the cresset, its flame dancing merrily in the draught.
The bell clerk led them to the crypt door and, taking out a bunch of keys, opened it and ushered them in. They went down mildewed, decaying steps into a spacious cavern, its floor covered in cracked white bones, scraps of skulls and decaying shards of wood and cloth. A truly ghostly place with its litter of battered bones and all the refuse thrown here when the parish cemetery was cleared of the dead to make room for more corpses. A shadow-filled, shape-dancing chamber where the darkness seemed to lurk in the cobwebbed recesses, ready to spring out. Athelstan took the torch and moved over to inspect a crumbling wall, obviously much more ancient than the crypt which enclosed it.
‘Romans.’ Malfort’s voice echoed. ‘They say they built a temple here, but, Brother, Sir John – it is the Lord High Coroner, with his secretarius Athelstan?’
‘It certainly is,’ Cranston’s voice boomed.
‘Sir, I have other tasks. I must ring the bell for evening prayer, trim the candles …’
‘Yes, yes.’ Athelstan walked back. ‘Do you have many dealings with Matthias Camoys?’
‘He often comes here asking questions and studying those tombs, even coming down here to stare and search. That young man likes to haunt solitary places, his sleep broken by garish dreams as he pines to discover the whereabouts of the Cross of Lothar. But, gentlemen, if you have finished …’
Cranston and Athelstan left the church. They had reached the bottom step when there was a flurry of movement in the church porch behind them. Alarmed by the sudden patter of footsteps, Cranston turned nimble as a greyhound, pushing Athelstan behind him as he drew both sword and dagger. Their attackers paused, giving Cranston more time to ready himself into a half-crouch, sword and dagger out, moving to the left and right. The three hooded and masked assailants swirled in, then one of them screamed and staggered back, clutching his arm, at Cranston’s sudden parry. His two companions immediately retreated, grabbed their wounded comrade and promptly disappeared, running across the steps, jumping down and vanishing into the alleyway running alongside the church.
‘Well I never! Satan’s tits!’ Cranston murmured, gesturing away the curious bystanders who were now drifting over to view the effects of the brief but furious encounter. ‘Well I never!’ The coroner resheathed both sword and dagger.
Athelstan just stood clutching his chancery satchel, staring up at the tympanum of Christ in glory carved above the entrance to the church with its inscription sculptured around its edges: Hic est locus terribilis, Domus Dei et Porta Caeli – ‘This is a terrifying place,’ Athelstan translated, ‘the House of God and the Gate of Heaven.’ He patted Cranston’s arm. ‘Well, it certainly is! Why did they attack like that, Sir John? They came out of the church behind us; they let us pass and then they struck. I truly believe they did not mean to harm us. I suspect,’ Athelstan stared up again at the tympanum, ‘they wished to seize me.’ He grinned. ‘It would have taken more than three to hold you.’
‘And?’
‘I suggest they wanted this.’ Athelstan held up his chancery satchel. ‘I have no real proof for what I say, yet I am sure of it. Why else should they attack and then, as soon as you became Sir Galahad, flee like the wind?’
‘And what does that chancery satchel hold? Of course,’ Cranston answered his own question, ‘the scraps of parchment Thibault gave us at the Golden Oliphant. But why not wait until you are in your lonely priest’s house at the dead of night?’
‘I am protected there,’ Athelstan grinned, ‘and that’s the paradox. The very people who keep an eye on me at St Erconwald’s want this.’
‘The Upright Men?’ Cranston rehitched his warbelt. ‘I would agree. They wanted those pieces of parchment before you had time to copy and memorize them.’
‘Precisely, Sir John, which is what I suggest we do now.’ Athelstan poked the coroner’s generous stomach. ‘My stalwart knight, you have done well. It’s time to feed the inner man.’
Cranston needed no extra urging and led Athelstan at what the friar considered to be a charge through a maze of alleyways and into Sir John’s favourite retreat, the Lamb of God in Cheapside. Mine Hostess, as always, came bustling across holding napkins and a jug of the finest Bordeaux with two deep-bowled goblets. Pleasantries were exchanged, kisses bestowed and compliments passed, before Cranston decided on chicken in white wine, a meat porridge, roast pork slices in caraway sauce and fresh white bread softened with herbal butter. Athelstan murmured he would eat what Sir John left.
No sooner had Mine Hostess hastened back to the kitchen, the odours of which were making the coroner’s mouth water like a fountain, than Leif the one-eyed beggar and Rawbum, his constant companion, made their way into the tavern having ‘espied’, as both screeched like choirboys, the King’s Lord High Coroner. Cranston groaned but patiently sat as he always did to listen to their half-mad gossip. Leif rested on a stool but Rawbum, ever since he’d sat on a pot of bubbling oil, stood nodding wisely as Leif ranted about various different signs and portents. How red rain as bitter as vinegar had fallen over Cripplegate, a sign, Leif assured Cranston, that the sun was about to turn black, the moon disappear and the stars fall from heaven, a sure prophecy that they were now living in the End of Times. Cranston politely thanked them. The coroner parted with two coins and both self-proclaimed prophets of doom merrily jigged out of the taproom.