Murder most holy

had come loose and the greyish arm of the corpse dangled out, flopping up and down as if the dead person was really waving goodbye to all around him.
    Athelstan and Cranston dismounted and led their horses past the carts crashing across the cobbles to the docks. They turned into Beck Street but were forced under the eaves of a house to make way for a strange procession: a group of men, hooded and masked but naked from the neck down to the waist, were making their way slowly down the street. They chanted the ‘Miserere’ psalm in a sing-song fashion whilst others whipped their backs until the skin turned blue-red and burst.
    ‘Flagellantes!’ Athelstan whispered. ‘They are seen in Paris , Cologne , Madrid , now London . They walk from city to city, chanting their psalms and beating each other in expiation for sin.’
    Cranston just belched loudly.
    ‘How in God’s name,’ he muttered, ‘can that please the good Christ?’
    Athelstan just shook his head.
    The flagellantes turned the corner and the sound of the lashing rods and religious chant faded into the distance.
    Athelstan and Cranston now approached Blackfriars and could glimpse the monastery spires and turrets above the red-tiled houses. They found one side-street barred by soldiers dressed in the city livery, fully armed, who held sponges over their mouths and faces. Athelstan looked down the street and shivered. It was deserted. Every house had its doors barred and bolted and the shutters across its windows firmly locked. The gaudy sign of a tavern clinked eerily as if sighing over its empty taproom.
    ‘The plague!’ Cranston said, mounting his horse. ‘God save us, Brother, if that comes back!’
    Athelstan sketched the sign of the cross at the mouth of the street and followed Cranston into the great open space around Blackfriars. Before them rose the huge gate and high boundary wall which circled the great monastery. A lay brother answered Cranston’s urgent tugging of the bell-rope and took them across the cobbled yard where an ostler, bleary-eyed, toothless, and with the nastiest face ulcer Athelstan had ever seen, muttered some nonsense at them and led their horses away. As the lay brother then took them into the cool open passageways, Athelstan smiled to himself. It felt strange to be back. Here he’d served his novitiate. He looked down one paved stone corridor and stopped as if he could see the ghost of himself as a young man slipping down the corridors at night, through an open window across moonlit gardens and over the wall where his younger brother was waiting to go with him to the King’s wars. Poor Francis, buried on some French battlefield!
    ‘I am sorry,’ Athelstan whispered to the sun motes dancing in the brilliant light pouring through the window. ‘I am so
    sorry!’
    The lay brother looked at Athelstan curiously.
    ‘Are you well?’ the fellow asked.
    Cranston narrowed his eyes and shook his head as if he could read Athelstan’s mind.
    ‘It’s nothing,’ he murmured. ‘My good friend has seen a ghost.’
    The mystified lay brother led them on, across the sun-dappled cloister garden where Prior Anselm was waiting for them in his large, blue-painted chamber.
    ‘You have come earlier than I thought,’ he said. He clicked his fingers at the lay brother and whispered instructions in his ear. ‘Do sit,’ Anselm murmured. He picked up and rang a small bell. ‘You must be thirsty?’
    Cranston beamed. Athelstan, who always felt uneasy in this chamber where he had been confronted with his sins, nodded absentmindedly.
    A servitor appeared carrying a large jug of mead and three cups. He’d hardly filled Anselm’s and Athelstan’s before Cranston had drained his and was nudging him for more.
    ‘Don’t be shy,’ the knight whispered, smacking his lips. ‘Marvellous! Absolutely marvellous! Fill it to the brim and leave it on the floor beside me.’
    The hapless servitor obeyed and backed, round-eyed, out of the room.
    ‘You like our mead, Sir John? Our hives are most fruitful and produce the softest and sweetest honey. I must give you ajar of that and a small tun of mead for Lady Maude.’
    ‘Excellent!’ Cranston murmured. He stared, bleary-eyed, at Athelstan and swayed dangerously on his stool. ‘A fine place,’ he mumbled. ‘I can’t see why you left it!’
    Athelstan glared back. Any minute now Sir John would nod off for his afternoon nap. He just hoped he would not fall straight off the stool for Cranston