By Murder's bright Light

his kitchen in the small priest’s house of St Erconwald’s in Southwark and stared moodily into the fire. He’d celebrated morning Mass. He’d cleaned the church with the help of Cecily the courtesan and talked with Tab the tinker about mending some pots. After that he had said goodbye to the widow Benedicta, who was going to spend a few days helping a relative across the river who was expecting a baby.
    Athelstan got up and went to stir the porridge cooking in a black cauldron above the flames. He looked over his shoulder at Bonaventure, the big one-eyed tomcat, who was sitting patiently on the table, daintily washing himself after a night’s hunting in the alleyways around the church.
    ‘It will soon be ready, Bonaventure. Some hot oatmeal with a little milk, spice and sugar. Benedicta herself prepared it before she left. It will taste delicious. For the next week we will break our fast like kings.’
    The cat yawned and stared arrogantly at this strange Dominican who constantly talked to him. Athelstan wiped the horn spoon, put it back on its hook, stretched and yawned.
    ‘I should have gone to bed myself,’ he murmured. Instead he had climbed the tower of his church to study the stars, watching in awe the fiery fall of a meteor. He walked back to the table, sat down again and sipped his watered ale.
    ‘Why?’ he asked Bonaventure. Tell me this, most cunning of cats. Why do meteors fall from heaven but not stars? Or,’ he continued, seeing he had the cat’s attention, ‘are meteors falling stars? And, if they are, what causes one star to fall and not another?’
    The cat just blinked with its one good eye.
    ‘And the problem becomes even more complicated,’ Athelstan explained. ‘Let me put it this way. Why do some stars move? The constellation called the Great Bear does but the ship’s star, the North Star, never?’
    Bonaventure’s reaction was to miaow loudly and slump down on the table as if desperate at the long wait for his morning dish of oatmeal. Athelstan smiled and gently stroked the cat’s tattered ear.
    ‘Or should we ask questions?’ he whispered. ‘Or just gaze in admiration at God’s great wonder?’
    He sighed and returned to the piece of parchment he had been studying the evening before. On it was a crude drawing of the church. The parish council, in their wisdom, had decided that on their saint’s day they would produce a mystery play in the nave of the church. Athelstan was now drawing up a list of the things they’d need. Thomas Drawsword, a new member of the parish, had agreed to refurbish a large wagon which would act as the stage, but they would need more. Athelstan studied his list:

    Two devils’ coats
    Two devils’ hoods
    One shirt
    Three masks
    Wings for the angels
    Three trumpets
    One hell’s door
    Four small angels
    Nails
    Last, but not least, a large canvas backcloth

    The play was called The Last Judgement and already Athelstan was beginning to regret his enthusiasm for the venture.
    ‘We are going to be short of wings,’ he muttered, ‘and we can’t have one-winged angels.’ He groaned. All this was nothing to the arguments over who would play the different characters. Watkin the dung-collector insisted on being God, but this was bitterly disputed by Pike the ditcher. The civil war had spread to their children, who were quarrelling over who would act the roles of the four good spirits, the four evil spirits and the six devils. Watkin’s large wife, who had the brassy voice of a trumpet, had declared that she would be Our Lady. Tab the tinker was threatening to withdraw from the pageant if he was denied a principal role.
    Huddle the painter, although aloof from these squabbles, presented problems of his own. He was having some difficulty in painting a convincing hell’s mouth. The front of the cart must be raised, Father,’ he insisted, ‘so that when the damned go through the mouth of hell, they disappear downwards.’
    Athelstan threw his quill down on to the table.
    ‘What we need, Bonaventure,’ he declared, ‘is Sir John Cranston. He has agreed that his twin sons, the little poppets, can stagger about as cherubims and Sir John would make a marvellous Satan.’
    Athelstan paused and stared up at the blackened timbered ceiling. Cranston ! Athelstan had visited him only three days ago, had sat in his huge kitchen while the two poppets chased around, shrieking with laughter. They had hung on to the tails of the great Irish wolfhounds Cranston