The House of Shadows

was mandrake it would truly cure you of all those ailments.’
    The leech half smiled.
    ‘You’d be dead within a day, and free of all pain,’ Athelstan stated.
    Cranston stepped back and, swinging his cudgel, smashed the tray, jerking it loose from the cord, then began to grind the pouches under his boot. Flaxwith’s two mastiffs growled. The bailiff himself joined in, squeezing the pouches under his muddy boot into the dirt and ordure, before kicking them towards the sewer which ran down the centre of the street. The travelling leech, aware of his hideous mistake, tried to flee, but Cranston grabbed him by his shabby jerkin.
    ‘You’ll be gone from the City within the hour, or I’ll have you whipped the length of London Bridge ,’ he shouted.
    The cunning man bolted up an alleyway whilst Cranston and his small retinue continued apace. They passed the gate leading to St Thomas’ hospital and down the busy thoroughfare which led to the Night in Jerusalem . Athelstan had been here before. The tavern was a stately four-sided mansion, built on a stone base with white plastered walls stitched with black timber. A place of contrasts. Some of the windows high in the wall were mere arrow slits, but others lower down were protected by sheets of horn, or treated linen set in strip panels, with an open lattice framework and shutters on the inside. For the grand chambers on the second floor, the windows were of mullion glass and, in some places, even decorated with small pictures of leaping white stags, red hearts or yellow shields. Athelstan knew Master Rolles by reputation. He had only met him when begging for alms, and the taverner had been most generous. They found him in the spacious stable yard, talking to a group of ostlers. As Cranston swept into the yard, Master Rolles dismissed these: he treated Sir John as an equal, grasping his hand and nodding at Athelstan.
    ‘Master Henry Rolles,’ Cranston exclaimed. ‘Squire to Sir Walter Manny. How well you have prospered!’
    Cranston stared around the yard.
    ‘I understand you had the Great Ratting last night. I’m sure you had a licence from the Corporation?’
    ‘The City has no power here, Sir John,’ the taverner replied, ‘and you know that. If I have broken the law then I shall be summoned to the Guildhall. Yet who cares about licences when there’s been gruesome murder?’
    He beckoned them forward.
    ‘I do pay taxes, Sir John, for the King’s peace to be upheld.’
    Cranston ignored the jibe at his expense. Rolles led them all, including the Judas Man, across to an outhouse, pulled back the doors and ushered them in. Two lantern horns hung on hooks suspended from the rafters. In the pool of light below lay three corpses on wooden pallets. Athelstan immediately recognised Toadflax. He had seen him collecting the corpses of dogs; now his own corpse sprawled, eyes staring blindly, blood-encrusted mouth gaping, the front of his shabby jerkin soaked in gore. The other two Athelstan did not recognise, but he felt a deep pang of sadness. Alive, these two young women must have been vibrantly beautiful, with their ivory skin and golden hair, which not even the horror of death could disguise, but now they too lay sprawled, eyes open, heads to one side, faces encrusted with splatters of blood. One had been stabbed, a knife thrust to the belly,- the other had had the top half of her chest crushed by the iron-hard crossbow bolt still deeply embedded there.
    Athelstan knelt down and gently moved the blonde hair from each of their faces. He began the prayer, ‘ De profundis... Out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord...’
    ‘Lord, hear my voice!’
    Athelstan turned round. Brother Malachi had entered the outhouse.
    ‘I have already recited the death prayers,’ the Benedictine explained. ‘I have whispered the words of absolution and anointed their hands and faces with holy water.’
    Cranston , standing in the shadows, came forward and Athelstan introduced the two men. The coroner glanced down at the corpses. ‘Wherever their souls have gone,’ he murmured, ‘their bodies lie murdered, and someone, Master Rolles, will have to answer for that.’



Chapter 3

    Sir Stephen Chandler didn’t know he was going to die. After his return from St Erconwald, he had decided to bathe in a tub of hot water, and sip a deep-bowled cup of claret. Chandler liked to bathe; his wife and retainers laughed at him. Most men of his station only bathed on the eve of the great