‘Well?’ Athelstan insisted. ‘I am correct? You do not contradict me …’
‘I will not speak, Brother, until I receive a full pardon.’
‘For what?’
‘Then I will tell you a secret, a great secret.’
Athelstan stared up at the window. Darkness was thickening; night would soon fall. He felt tired. It was time to sleep. But first he must have some answers to his questions.
‘Then at least tell me,’ he spread his hands, ‘why you also – and I wager you do – believe Whitfield was murdered?’ He paused. ‘What happened yesterday evening?’
Lebarge pulled a face and stared across the sanctuary. ‘Whitfield drank his wine and retired to bed.’
‘Joycelina went with him?’
‘Yes, but she came down shortly afterwards saying Whitfield had drunk enough. I finished mine and went upstairs. Amaury’s door was locked and bolted. I called goodnight and he answered, said he was ready for bed. I was desperate for rest. I fell asleep. I heard or saw nothing untoward. I was roused just after dawn. I remembered that Mistress Cheyne was to prepare my favourite spicy simnel cakes, best served hot. I was very hungry. I heard Master Griffin trying to raise Whitfield but I thought nothing of it.’ Lebarge was talking in a monotone as if he had carefully prepared what he was saying. ‘I went down to the refectory, my simnel cakes were ready.’ He paused at the squealing from the far side of the sanctuary and flinched as a dark shape shot past, claws scrabbling at the floor. ‘Rats!’ he exclaimed. ‘I hate them.’
‘As does Bonaventure,’ Athelstan retorted. ‘Now, this morning,’ he insisted, ‘what happened in the refectory?’
‘Joycelina announced Whitfield could not be raised. I became alarmed but Mistress Elizabeth said she did not want people charging through her tavern. She despatched Foxley to fetch the labourers and the battering ram. She also sent Joycelina out to keep the maids quiet once the hammering began. I knew what was going to happen. I stayed for a while. I heard people clattering on the stairs but the tension proved too much. I ignored Master Griffin and stole up to the third storey, hiding in a recess near the steps leading to the top gallery.’
‘Why did Whitfield rent a narrow chamber at the top of the house?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lebarge mumbled.
‘In other words, you do, but you won’t tell me?’
‘I stayed there,’ Lebarge replied. ‘I heard the battering against the chamber door. Foxley was directing them, Mistress Cheyne shouting for Joycelina. I was all a-tremble. I heard the door crash open and the exclamations. I went back downstairs to the refectory – by then everyone was alarmed. The labourers came down to announce what had happened. I stole back up to Whitfield’s chamber. I could not believe what I saw – Whitfield just hanging there. I panicked. I hurried back to my room, collected certain items and fled.’
‘But you came here with virtually nothing.’
‘True, Brother. Empty-handed except for the clothes I stand in.’
‘Did you hide the rest with Hawisa?’
‘Oh, that little mouse,’ Lebarge scoffed, ‘good to romp with on a bed but nothing else. They’re all whores; they’ll sell you for a penny. I hid certain items – I don’t trust anyone. I will say nothing more until I receive a full pardon.’
‘For what offences?’ Athelstan demanded. Lebarge just stared dully back.
‘I am safe here.’ He gestured airily. ‘I’m glad Radegund the Relic Seller has left.’
‘Why?’
‘Full of questions, he was. Anyway,’ Lebarge shrugged, ‘I know about Thibault’s men arriving. I thought they had come for me but it was one of your parishioners, Pike, and the nun he met over there in the sacristy.’ He sniffed noisily. ‘I am sorry, Brother, I will not say anything else. I am tired, I should sleep …’
Lebarge’s voice trailed away. Athelstan realized he would learn nothing further from the scrivener, so he blessed him and left.
The friar walked down the nave, lost in thought. Lebarge was virtually conceding he had done something highly illegal as well as being the keeper of great secrets. Whitfield must have been in the same situation. Yet what did Lebarge mean? Athelstan stood still and stared around. People were still drifting in and out of the church, pausing to light candles before this statue or that, moving shadows in the poor light.
‘Ah, well,’ Athelstan murmured. ‘Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof; time for bed and board. Tomorrow will come soon enough.’
He made himself comfortable in the priest’s house. A small fire, banked with the coal still crackling red, heated the pottage in a fat-bellied cauldron hanging from its hook above the fire. Recently baked bread lay stacked in the small, iron-gated oven beside the hearth whilst fresh ale, butter and cheese had been left in the narrow buttery. The flagstone kitchen, which served as Athelstan’s solar, hall, dining chamber and chancery office, had been scrubbed, the table too with its leather-backed chair and cushioned stools. Bonaventure came scratching at the door. Athelstan admitted him and served the tomcat some pottage then broke his own fast with a steaming bowl, all the time being scrutinized by the unblinking stare of his one-eyed, constant dining companion.
Once finished, Athelstan cleared the dining table. He took out his writing tray, a sheet of scrubbed vellum and began to form columns under different headings: the customers of the Golden Oliphant, Whitfield’s plans, Lebarge’s flight, the death scene. Under each heading Athelstan tried to list everything he and Cranston had learnt, all the scraps of information, although they could not be formed into any logical coherence. He also listed his suspicions, the words he had heard and the scenes he had glimpsed. He finished his ale and had just begun to nod off to sleep when a pounding on the door roused him.
‘Who is it?’ he called.
Mauger the bell clerk cried that it was he. He had gone to lock the church for the night and found the sanctuary man, Oliver Lebarge, dead on the floor, foully slain …
Cornelius the corpse collector tugged at Pegasus, his huge dray horse which pulled the high-sided death cart around the filth-strewn lanes of Southwark. The curfew bells had tolled and the beacons been lit in different steeples. Cornelius, eyes down, trudged on. Hood pulled over his face, he was a shambling figure, yet he was keen-eyed for any corpse pushed under a mound of refuse, a midden heap, some filthy laystall or even in the crevices hollowed out of the walls of the ancient, leaning houses which towered above the tangle of alleyways running through Southwark. Nobody bothered Cornelius, the black-garbed figure of death who trundled his cart searching for cadavers. He would collect the mortal remains of some hapless unfortunate and take them to the Keeper of the Dead who presided over Heaven’s Gate, a makeshift mortuary kept on a lonely, moon-washed coffin path leading out of Southwark. If there was anything suspicious about the corpse, the keeper would expose the cadaver for public view on the steps of Heaven’s Gate where, if it was recognized, the relatives of the dead could redeem their kin for proper burial. The others, who the keeper called the ‘Perditi – the lost’, would be soaked in a bath of lavender and stitched into a linen shroud by the Harpies, the Keeper’s nickname for the gaggle of old women he hired for that work. Once ready, the corpse would be given swift burial in the great pit, the common grave which stretched behind Heaven’s Gate …
Cornelius turned a corner and paused, pulling at Pegasus’ halter as he stared down the narrow lane. He was now close to St Erconwald’s, which over the last few days had been a hubbub of excitement. Cornelius always stayed well away from that particular parish. Watkin the dung collector claimed St Erconwald’s as his domain: he was the one who would collect refuse and anything else hidden beneath it. Cornelius was highly wary of Watkin, an Upright Man, a captain of the dreaded Earthworms. The dung collector could, if he wished, whistle up his legions of the dark, and Cornelius wanted no trouble with him. Indeed, the Keeper of the Dead believed the Earthworms would soon rise and the likes of Cornelius would be busy enough harvesting the corpses, but until then … This, however, was different. Cornelius stared down the alleyway. He could make out a figure lying on the ground and another above it pounding the prostrate person with a club or some other weapon. Time and again the blows fell, a sickening thud which prickled Cornelius’ sweaty body with shivers of cold. Pegasus, also alarmed, whinnied and blew noisily, head shaking as the great dray horse caught his master’s fear. Cornelius calmed Pegasus and stared back down the alleyway. All he could see now was the dim outline of the prostrate body. The attacker had disappeared.