Field of Blood

sacristy.
    'Mistress Vestler is committed at Newgate. What is today, Tuesday? On Thursday she is to appear before Justice Brabazon in the Guildhall.'
    Athelstan studied his friend. Sir John's bonhomie was forced, the coroner looked deeply worried.
    'What is it, Jack?'
    Sir John drew out a small scroll of parchment. He tapped Athelstan on the shoulder with it. The friar felt a shiver of cold run up his back.
    'You know what it is, Athelstan. Don't ask stupid questions!'
    Athelstan undid the scroll: the seals at the bottom were of the chief justices, the mayor and justices sitting in session at the Guildhall. They proclaimed, in the name of the King, that Miles Sholter, 'piteously slain by person or persons unknown in the parish of St Erconwald's Southwark, was a royal messenger carrying the King's insignia and coat-of-arms. An attack upon him was an attack upon the Crown. Accordingly, the parish of St Erconwald's and all its inhabitants must, within forty days, surrender the person, or persons unknown, into the hands of the King's officers or suffer a fine of two hundred pounds sterling.'
    'I am sorry,' Sir John said. 'It's the best I could do. I personally went to see John of Gaunt. If Brabazon had his way it would have been six hundred pounds.'
    Athelstan found he couldn't stop trembling.
    'It's still onerous, Jack. We are a poor parish!'
    'There are ways and means. There are ways and means.'
    Sir John took a sip from his wineskin. 'We'll catch the killer, Brother, while I know merchants in the city. We'll raise the monies. Meanwhile, that must be nailed to the door of the church, and I mean securely, Brother.'
    'It will be.'
    Athelstan regained his composure and wrapped the roll up. He stared at the crude wooden crucifix fastened to the wall above the vestry table.
    Please, he prayed silently. Please do not let this happen.
    The coroner was still looking woebegone.
    'And there's something else, isn't there, Sir John?'
    Cranston shook his head and sat down on a stool.
    'I stride around, Brother, bellowing good mornings, quaffing ale, laughing and joking but, as God knows, I am deeply worried.'
    'Kathryn Vestler?'
    'It goes from bad to worse. Kathryn is now in Newgate gatehouse. She's stopped weeping, I find her stronger than I thought and she's become hard-eyed, evasive. Last night I questioned her again regarding the enquiries about Margot Haden, and others who visited the Paradise Tree, but she shrugged them off. She can find no explanation. Brabazon is now threatening to dig the whole meadow up.' Sir John clutched his beaver hat in his hands. 'I loved her husband Stephen like a brother. I owed him my life. I know, I know, I talk about Poitiers but there were other occasions. What happens if Stephen and Kathryn were killers? Murdering poor travellers, looting their possessions and burying them in that field of blood?'
    'Alice Brokestreet is the key,' Athelstan countered.
    'She is a murderess, desperate to save her neck. I've been to see her as well. She's obdurate in her story, hinting at other things, other crimes.'
    'Such as?' Athelstan asked.
    'What I thought.' Sir John scratched his chin. 'Let us say Kathryn Vestler is a murderess and she does plunder her victims. Now I can accept that she destroyed the goods of a poor chambermaid…'
    'I follow your reasoning, Sir John. If Vestler was a robber, as well as a murderess, she killed for gain. What would happen to the goods she stole?'
    'Precisely. Now Vestler couldn't very well go into the markets with baskets full of plunder. People would become suspicious. It's my feeling that she would sell them to someone else who would take them to a different part of the city, even to another market beyond the walls, and sell them there.' Sir John's light-blue eyes caught Athelstan's change of expression. 'What is it, Brother?'
    The friar told him how the Four Gospels had described dark shapes coming off a barge and slipping, either through Black Meadow or beyond.
    'There's only one place they could be going,' Athelstan concluded. 'The Paradise Tree.'
    'Oh, Lord save us!' Sir John put a hand to his mouth. 'I can see how this will go. Vestler was hand-in-glove with a band of robbers. She'd kill a traveller and sell the goods to others.' He sighed. 'In which case she's lying. I asked Kathryn if there was anything she knew. Had she been involved in anything against the law? Even when she replied, I suspected she was lying.'
    'And there's more!' Athelstan told Sir John about