Murder most holy

at Lady Maude’s chatter about the neighbours, the price of bread and the number of trade fights taking place in the city.
    ‘Oh, Sir John!’ Lady Maude’s fingers flew to her lips. ‘I had forgotten. Some letters arrived for you.’ She crossed to a small chest and brought out two thin rolls of parchment. Sir John opened them and quickly studied the contents, clicking his tongue.
    ‘We are in luck, Brother,’ he announced. ‘First, my clerks have established your church is only a hundred and thirty years old. Before that a private dwelling place stood on the site. Secondly, and more importantly, my spies have traced Master William Fitzwolfe, formerly parson of the church of St Erconwald ’s, Southwark. He can be found in the Velvet Tabard inn in an alleyway off Whitefriars.’
    Athelstan rose and excitedly seized the pieces of parchment. ‘Why can’t your men just arrest Fitzwolfe?’
    ‘In law,’ Cranston answered pompously, ‘there is a statutory limitation on offences. And, remember, it’s not a crime to flee your church.’
    ‘It is if you take most of the property with you!’
    ‘Dear Brother, you know the law. We can’t prove that.’
    ‘So what can I do?’
    Cranston rose and loosened his belt. ‘Bring me my sword and hangar, Lady Maude, and one of my stout quarter-staffs for Athelstan. We are going to terrify Master Fitzwolfe.’
    A few minutes later Cranston grandly swept out of his house, tenderly embracing his wife while muttering that all would be well. He kissed his two poppet princes on the brow, sending both back into paroxysms of rage.
    ‘I wish he’d remember he has a moustache and beard,’ Lady Maude whispered to Athelstan. ‘And that both are as coarse as a privet hedge!’

CHAPTER 8

    Cranston and Athelstan pushed their way up a crowded Cheap-side, through a maze of alleyways and into the squalid slums round the Carmelite monastery of Whitefriars. Beggars wailed for charity. Flies swarmed on the many refuse heaps which choked the sewers and, in places, were piled waist-high outside the dirty, fetid tenements. Two boys had seized a small dog and were trying to push a stick up its rectum until Cranston sent them fleeing with a swift kick. Hawkers and pedlars with their trays of gee-gaws or small barrows full of food over which flies swarmed, stood in corners shouting for trade and keeping a wary eye out for the beadles who patrolled the area. A group of market officials had seized two men: one had not paid scutage or tax for trading in the city; the other they were trying to make pronounce ‘Cheese and bread’ on suspicion that he was a Fleming who had no right to bring any goods into the city.
    ‘If he pronounces that wrong,’ Cranston muttered out of the corner of his mouth as he swaggered by, ‘they’ll burn the palm of his hand with a red hot poker.’
    Dark shapes flitted in and out of the doorways of the narrow runnels. The air was thick with black smoke from the glue-makers who melted the bones and offal from the Shambles in huge metal vats at the back of their squalid little houses. Cranston seemed to know his way well. Athelstan, clutching the quarter-staff, walked a little behind him, keeping a wary eye that no one was following them. Children screamed and argued. Dogs fought over the mounds of refuse. Athelstan was sure that in one pile he glimpsed a human hand, its splayed fingers putrid and rotten.
    ‘God save us!’ Athelstan muttered.
    ‘The very door to hell,’ Cranston answered. ‘Say your prayers. Brother, and keep your eyes sharp. If anyone lurches towards you, be they drunk, woman or child, give them a rap with that quarter-staff !’
    They went down one alleyway. A group of beggars emerged out of the darkness, blocking their path. Cranston drew his sword and dagger.
    ‘Piss off!’ he shouted.
    The figures retreated into the darkness. On the corner stood a woman with three children, their bodies half-covered in a dirty mass of rags, displaying terrible sores and bruises. Athelstan’s hand immediately went to his purse as the woman, bony-faced, her one good eye gleaming, stretched out a birdlike claw. Cranston slapped the hand away and pulled Athelstan on.
    ‘Keep your money, Brother. Can’t you see she's a palliard?’
    ‘A what?’
    ‘A professional beggar.’
    Athelstan looked quickly over his shoulder. ‘But the children, Sir John. Those terrible bruises!’
    The coroner chuckled. ‘It’s a wonder. Brother, what people can do with