By Murder's bright Light

ordered. ‘You lazy, sly bugger! Keep your mouth shut and you can join me for dinner. If you don’t, you will be dinner!’
    Leif grinned at Athelstan and hopped away, crowing with delight. Sir John sipped from his tankard, put it down, clapped his hands and stared at his patient clerk.
    ‘Right, you idle friar, what do we know?’ He stuck up one podgy thumb. ‘Item: on the 27th September, Captain William Roffel and his good ship the God’s Bright Light sailed from the Thames to scour the Narrow Seas . Roffel was highly unpopular, ruthless but a good captain. Young Ashby, now hiding in your church, sailed with him. He gave the captain a sealed package from Ospring.’
    Sir John watched Athelstan’s pen race across the parchment, admiring the clear, precise letters. The friar wrote in a code known only to him, a mixture of abbreviations and signs that would take a cipher clerk months to work out.
    ‘Item:’ Cranston continued, ‘Roffel takes a few ships, including one near the French coast. This may or may not be what those two pretties who have just left were talking about. Item: was Roffel a traitor? Did he take the ship deliberately? Did he know there were Englishmen aboard? Was he paid to kill them? Certainly he was very happy afterwards, actually smiling and singing. Item: Roffel begins to sicken. Item: the ship puts in at Dover and Ashby leaves. What else, monk?’
    ‘Friar, Sir John, friar!’
    ‘Whatever you say, friar!’
    ‘Item:’ Athelstan spoke as he wrote, ‘Captain Roffel’s illness worsens. He gets violent stomach pains which, we now believe, were due to arsenic. But how and why he was poisoned remains a mystery.’ Athelstan paused and looked up at Cranston .
    ‘Yes, yes, you’re right,’ the coroner continued. ‘We thought the poison might have been in the flask but Roffel, the cunning bastard, took that with him everywhere. He filled it himself and drank from it in the alehouse and suffered no ill effects. Moreover, as we saw for ourselves, his wife did the same. So the flask seems untainted.’ Cranston took another gulp from his tankard. ‘Item: my dear friar, the God’s Bright Light returns to dock. Roffel’s body is taken ashore along with his personal possessions, which didn’t amount to much. They included a book of hours, probably Roffel’s secret ledger of ill-gotten gains. There’s a bad atmosphere on board the ship but the crew relax. In the afternoon the whores come aboard. At dusk, they and most of the crew leave. Only the first mate and two others are left as a night watch. Item: the real mystery begins. According to what we know, both the password and the signal light are passed to the watch of the God’s Bright Light from the admiral’s ship, the Holy Trinity, and on to the next ship in line, the Saint Margaret: one on the hour, the other on the half-hour. According to what we are told, the last signal was passed at half-past five. Just before dawn a sailor returns to find that the mate and the watch have disappeared without trace; there is no sign of violence or any disturbance. The God’s Bright Light is like a ghost ship. Everything, aboard is in order. Item:—’ Cranston scratched his head. ‘What else, Brother?’
    ‘According to Crawley no one approached the ship, but the Fisher of Men has now told us that signals were passed to the ship from someone on the quayside. By whom and to whom , however, is a mystery.’
    ‘We also know,’ Cranston added, ‘ that the strange creature Bernicia came down to the quayside at around midnight. He, or she, distinctly remembers the first mate being very much alive and was conscious of someone lurking in the shadows. Item:’ Cranston continued, wiping his mouth, ‘contrary to what we were told, a boat did approach the ship, not from the shore, but from Crawley ’s vessel. We also know the good admiral deeply resented Roffel and had a grudge against him. What else, Brother?’
    ‘Well,’ Athelstan replied, scratching his head, ‘the next morning, the captain’s business partner and backer, Sir Henry Ospring, who had arrived in London to have words with Roffel, is killed by his own daughter in his chamber at the Abbot of Hyde inn. Meanwhile,’ Athelstan concluded, ‘Roffel’s poisoned corpse is plucked from its coffin and left sprawling in the sanctuary chair of St Mary Magdalene.’
    ‘Hell’s tits!’ Cranston leaned his elbows on the table. ‘We have discovered a few lies, Brother, but not a