The Anger of God

opened the small gate and led him into the garden. ‘You sit on the turf seat.’ He grinned. ‘Benedicta, you must pretend to be a wolf hound.’
    Both smiled, shrugged, but did what Athelstan asked. Cranston slumped on the turf seat and took a generous swig from the wineskin.
    ‘Now,’ Athelstan whispered, ‘Sir Gerard is sunning himself in the garden with his dogs. Sometime that same afternoon he is stabbed to death, the dagger driven deep into his body, yet he made no resistance and those fierce dogs made no attempt to defend him.’ Athelstan walked back to the wicket gate and pointed to the brick wall of the Guildhall which bordered one side of the garden. ‘Now, a murderer couldn’t come through there.’ He changed direction. ‘He could scarcely climb the fence behind Sir Gerard because both the Sheriff and his dogs would have noticed him. Nor could he come through the wicket gate, knife drawn.’
    ‘What happens if he did?’ Benedicta asked. ‘What happens if he was a friend, whom the dogs would accept, as their master cordially greeted him?’
    ‘Mountjoy had no friends,’ Cranston muttered.
    ‘No.’ Benedicta waved her hands. ‘The assassin gets very close, he draws a knife and plunges it into Sir Gerard?’
    Athelstan shook his head. ‘It’s possible,’ he replied. ‘But hardly probable. Sir Gerard would at least have seen the dagger being drawn; the assassin would scarcely enter the garden carrying it. There would have been a fight which would have alarmed the dogs. Remember, Sir Gerard was killed without any sign of a struggle.’ Benedicta stuck her tongue out at him.
    ‘There’s only one way,’ Cranston growled, pointing to the fence paling at the bottom of the garden. ‘The pentice between the kitchens and the Guildhall.’
    ‘There are gaps in the fence,’ Benedicta added. Athelstan shook his head. ‘Too narrow for a man to throw a dagger with such force and accuracy. Look, wait here.’ He took Cranston ’s dagger, rather similar to the one the assassin used, walked back into the Guildhall and down the darkened pentice. He stopped and, through gaps in the fence, could see Cranston sitting opposite him on the turf seat. He pushed the dagger through; the gap was wide enough but he was right, no man could hurl a dagger through it. Scratching his head, Athelstan went back into the garden. ‘A mystery,’ he muttered. ‘Come, let us visit the banqueting chamber.’
    Cranston pulled a face at Benedicta but followed the rather bemused friar up to the banqueting hall. The room was deserted and the tables still left as they were on that fateful night. Athelstan badgered Cranston with a string of abrupt questions.
    Who had sat where? What had they eaten? How late it had begun?
    Then, without explanation, he wandered off, saying he wished to talk to the steward who had been present that night.
    Cranston didn’t mind. He knew his ‘little friar’ had started some hare and would become engrossed until he had resolved the problem facing him. Moreover, the Coroner was only too willing to sit and chat with the lovely Benedicta who questioned him closely about Athelstan’s story of a thief stealing the severed heads of traitors from above the gatehouse at London Bridge . At last Athelstan returned.
    ‘Well?’ Cranston bellowed. ‘Have you found anything? Would you like to share your thoughts with mere mortals?’
    Athelstan grinned and tapped the side of his head, it’s all a jumble,’ he explained. ‘I need to sit, write and think.’
    ‘No better place than The Holy Lamb of God,’ Cranston mumbled.
    He led them out of the Guildhall, down the steps into a busy market place. The stalls were now laid out for a day’s trade. Apprentices shouted goods and prices or tried to catch the sleeves of passersby. On the corner of the street, Cranston ’s hated relic-seller was busy proclaiming his litany of goods for sale. He stopped as the fellow listed his different relics from the stone which killed Goliath to the arm of St Sebbi.
    ‘I have the relics,’ the fellow bellowed, ‘in a secret place, bought specially at a great high price from the Archbishop of Cologne. The head of St John the Baptist, miraculously fresh as on the day the great martyr died. I tell you this, good sirs and ladies all, you pious citizens of London , his hair is red and soft, his skin as supple, as that of a child!’
    Cranston sneered and shook his head.
    ‘Why don’t you bloody priests,’ he