By Murder's bright Light

falling. I went into Sir Henry’s chamber. Only then did Lady Aveline tell me what had been happening.’
    ‘I daren’t say anything before,’ the young woman whispered. ‘Who would believe me? I knew Nicholas Ashby and I loved him but I kept everything a secret. Sir Henry would have killed us both.’
    ‘I just pushed her out of the room,’ Ashby continued. ‘Once she had gone, I tried to pull the knife out, but Marston came, banging on the door.’ Ashby nodded contemptuously down the church. ‘He’s all bluster. He could have stopped me but he just shouted “Murderer! Murderer! ”. I opened the window and fled.’
    Athelstan rose. What Aveline had said did not really shock him. Time and again in confession he had heard the same sin in all its variations — brother and sister, father and daughter. It was the natural result of people living so close together. But who would believe Aveline? Sir Henry had been guilty of what the theologians called ‘the great and secret sin’, incest, much practised but never discussed. In a court of law it would look different. Some might even argue that both Aveline and Ashby were involved in killing Sir Henry for their own private ends. She must have known that Sir Henry would be against any such love match. Ashby had been found red-handed. If he kept quiet he would go to the gallows. If he tried to defend himself Aveline might well join him, pushed there by grasping relatives eager to get their share of Sir Henry’s wealth.
    Athelstan stood at the foot of the sanctuary steps, staring at the two anxious, white-faced lovers.
    ‘Do you have any proof?’ he asked.
    ‘I thought you might ask that,’ Aveline replied.
    Before Athelstan could stop her, she unbuttoned the top of her dress and pulled it down. ‘Only this,’ she said. It came up later.’ And Athelstan glimpsed the purple bruise on her milky-white shoulder.
    That’s where Sir Henry gripped me,’ she said, and, free of any embarrassment, pulled the dress back and re-tied the little thongs. ‘Am I guilty of a great sin, Father?’
    Athelstan stared at her now-covered shoulder. That bruise could never have been self-inflicted. He believed both she and Ashby were telling the truth. He sketched a blessing in the air.
    ‘I absolve you,’ he said. Though God knows what I am going to do now.’
    ‘You could speak for us,’ she said hopefully.
    ‘Who would believe me?’ Athelstan replied. ‘And what you have told me is bound by the seal of confession. No, no. What I must do is ponder carefully and coolly on a solution to all this. Look, let us leave that for the moment. I wish to question you on other matters. Sir Henry provided monies for Captain Roffel and the ship God’s Bright Light?’
    Ashby nodded.
    ‘And you joined the ship in September but left when it docked at Dover ?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘During the voyage did anything happen?’
    ‘I have told you, Roffel was the same. Dour and secretive, except after taking that fishing smack.’
    ‘What else do you know about Roffel?’
    ‘He drank a great deal.’ Ashby smiled bleakly. ‘Not just wine or beer like the rest of us. He drank wine and beer, of course, but he also had a special flask containing a very fiery drink, usquebaugh he called it. Before every voyage he would go ashore and have his flask filled at the Crossed Keys tavern behind a warehouse at Queen’s hithe.’
    ‘He filled it himself?’
    ‘Oh, yes, Father. Where Roffel went so did that flask.’
    Athelstan smiled as he thought of Cranston ’s wineskin. ‘So, no one else was allowed to refill it?’
    ‘That’s what I said, Father. But we knew he drank from it. Well, not all the crew, but I did. His breath used to smell. He’d take it in very small doses. He once told me it was five times as powerful as any wine and kept him warm at night against the sea chill.’
    ‘And Roffel was in good spirits at the beginning of the voyage?’
    ‘Oh, yes. Sir Henry gave me a sealed package to hand to him, but I don’t know what it contained.’
    ‘Do you, Lady Aveline?’ Athelstan asked.
    ‘No, no, though my stepfather seemed very pleased with himself.’
    ‘Then what?’
    She shook her head. ‘I don’t really know.’
    ‘I often took such packages,’ Ashby interrupted. ‘Roffel would read what was in them then toss them into the sea.’
    ‘Wait!’ Aveline leaned forward. ‘Yes, now I remember. When the God’s Bright Light began its voyage my stepfather was very, very