‘What do you see, friar?’ Thibault still stood at the window.
‘Master,’ Mistress Cheyne broke in, ‘I have other business to …’
‘Get out!’ Thibault screamed over his shoulder. ‘Leave us, you painted bitches, you false-faced whores!’
Mistress Cheyne and Joycelina scurried off, their footsteps echoing down the stairs. Thibault was breathing noisily and Athelstan recalled stories of how this lord of intrigue loathed prostitutes with a passion beyond understanding. How once he had left here, Thibault would strip and cleanse himself, an act of purification more suitable to an ascetic than Gaunt’s master of mischief.
‘Why are you really here, Master Thibault?’ Athelstan asked softly. ‘Why have you graced this place?’
Thibault half turned and thrust a piece of parchment at Athelstan. In colour and texture this was very similar to that in the dead man’s chancery satchel. Athelstan held it up to the light and read the elegant, courtly hand. Its message was stark and brutal. ‘All is lost. The Herald of Hell has called my name, better to die in peace than live in terror. Pray for my soul on its journey, God have mercy on me and all of us.’ It was signed, ‘Magister Amaury Whitfield, clericus – clerk.’
‘Did Master Amaury Whitfield kill himself,’ Athelstan asked, ‘because of this Herald of Hell? I have heard rumours about him.’
‘A mysterious figure,’ Albinus said, his voice hardly above a whisper, ‘an envoy of the traitorous Upright Men. He appears at all hours of night outside the lodgings of loyal servants to the crown. He threatens them with doggerel verse and leaves a pot brimming with blood and stalks, onions on their tips, like heads spiked above London Bridge.’
‘And he visited Whitfield?’
‘About a week ago,’ Albinus confirmed. ‘Whitfield reported it the following morning in the chancery chambers at the Tower.’
‘Was he frightened?’ Cranston asked, sipping swiftly from the miraculous wineskin he deftly hid beneath his cloak.
Athelstan studied his great friend’s usually jovial face. Cranston looked thinner, the icy blue eyes no longer crinkled in merriment. The friar also glimpsed the light coat of Milanese mail beneath the coroner’s bottle-green cloak. Athelstan glanced at Thibault and Albinus; he suspected both wore the same. The terrors were closing in. The Upright Men and their soldiers the Earthworms openly roamed the city, waiting for the day of the Great Slaughter to begin, for the strongholds to fall, for the blood to stream along Cheapside like wine pumped through a conduit. Citizens were fleeing the city. Cranston’s wife, Lady Maude, together with their two sons, the Poppets, their steward, dogs and other members of the coroner’s household had joined the great exodus, disappearing into the green fastness of the countryside against the violence about to engulf the city.
‘He was terrified!’ Thibault declared.
‘So did he commit suicide?’ Athelstan wondered aloud.
‘Why, Brother,’ Albinus exclaimed, ‘do you suspect murder?’
Athelstan shook his head and turned back to the corpse to scrutinize it more carefully. He then felt the pockets in the cloak and jerkin, which were slightly twisted. He found a few coins and the same in the unbuttoned belt wallet. Athelstan suspected someone had already searched the corpse.
‘Master Thibault, where did you find Amaury’s last letter?’
‘On the bed.’
‘Though you didn’t come here just to mourn your clerk?’ Athelstan retorted. ‘You have already searched his corpse, haven’t you? You sent someone up from the yard, that’s when you really found his last letter.’ Athelstan pointed at Thibault. ‘You crossed into Southwark to visit a brothel, a place you deeply detest. You took a risk. You are a marked man, my friend,’ Athelstan added gently. ‘The Upright Men must know you are here and,’ the friar pointed at the window covered with oiled pigskin, ‘I would not stand so close to that. Now, what are you really here for? What were you hoping to find?’
‘A document,’ Albinus answered. ‘A manuscript holding a great secret which Master Amaury was striving to decipher. We have not found it.’
Athelstan gestured at the corpse. ‘Cut it down.’
Albinus hurried to obey, helped by the Captain of Archers who held the swaying corpse. Albinus severed the rope and they both lowered Whitfield’s mortal remains to the floor. Athelstan knelt down and, taking the phial of holy oils from his own satchel, swiftly anointed the corpse. He scrutinized it again for any mark of violence but, apart from the purplish mark around the throat caused by the noose as tight as any snare, he could detect nothing untoward.
‘A manuscript?’ Athelstan glanced at Thibault, who now sat on a stool well away from the window.
‘A manuscript,’ Thibault mockingly replied.
Athelstan searched the dead man’s clothing for any secret pocket. He was about to give up when he recalled how his own order, the Dominicans, conveyed important messages. He drew off the dead man’s boots and smiled as he searched the inside of the left and felt the secret pocket sewn into the woollen lining. He deftly opened this and drew out two scrolls of parchment. The first was greasy, worn and slightly tattered, the second the costliest any chancery could buy. Athelstan, ignoring Thibault’s exclamations, insisted on studying both. The first was simply an array of signs and symbols, numbers and letters. Some of these were from the Greek alphabet, a common device used in secret ciphers. The second was a triangle with a broad base, alongside it a litany of saints with a second triangle inverted so the apex of each met. Athelstan studied the litany of names. He could not recall seeing the likes before: St Alphege, St Giles, St Andrew and others. He curbed his temper as Thibault greedily plucked the parchments from his hand.
‘It makes no sense!’ the Master of Secrets whispered hoarsely. ‘I will …’ Thibault whirled around as a crossbow bolt shattered the pigskin-covered window and slammed into the opposite wall.
Athelstan leapt forward, dragging Thibault to the floor as a second bolt thudded against the window frame, followed by a third which whirled through to sink deep into the broken chamber door. Athelstan crawled across as if to open the window and peer out. Cranston roared at him to lie still. The coroner, despite his bulk, crept swiftly towards the door, bellowing at the Cheshires, now alarmed by Thibault’s cries, to remain outside. One of the archers opened the door to the adjoining chamber. Athelstan heard the coroner shout, yells echoed from the garden below followed by the clatter of armour and the braying of horns as the alarm was raised to shouts of, ‘Harrow! Harrow!’
Athelstan lay face down next to the corpse, staring at Whitfield’s swollen, mottled features all hideous in death. Did the dead speak to the living? Athelstan suppressed a shiver at the half-open, sightless, glassy eyes. Had Amaury Whitfield written that despairing letter and, his wits turned by fear and wine, taken his own life here in this chamber? Athelstan turned and stared across at the far corner where the fire rope lay half coiled. Whitfield must have cut some of this off to fashion a noose. He’d then stood on the stool and lashed the other end over a beam hook before stepping off into judgement. Or so it seemed. Nevertheless, Athelstan nursed a growing suspicion that Whitfield’s suicide was not so simple or so clear. Had fear of the coming revolt truly turned his wits? Certainly the Master of Secrets was marked down for destruction by the Upright Men, yet Whitfield had lived with that fear for months, even years, so why now? And why had Master Whitfield apparently brought all his possessions to this brothel – baggage, chancery satchel and other objects – only to commit suicide?
‘They are gone.’ Cranston strolled back into the room. ‘I suspect the Upright Men. They entered the garden and must have escaped the same way.’