The House of Shadows

and receive absolution.’
    The knights were clearly taken aback and stunned into silence.
    ‘In fact,’ Athelstan continued, ‘I do not want you in my church. You have committed fornication.’
    ‘More importantly for me,’ Cranston remarked, ‘one, two or all of you may have committed murder. Where were you on the night these girls were killed?’
    ‘We left the tap room.’ Sir Maurice Clinton spoke up. ‘We left after the Great Ratting. We returned to our chambers.’
    ‘All of you?’ Cranston asked.
    ‘Tell the truth,’ Brother Malachi said. ‘Go on, Sir Laurence.’
    The knight rested his elbows on the table, running his fingers through his thinning hair.
    ‘We all returned to our chambers. Brother Malachi came to mine, alarmed by the sound from the fight below. He wanted to know if I would share a cup of wine with him, but I’d gone back downstairs to see what the fray was all about.’
    ‘And so?’ Athelstan asked. ‘What did you do, Brother Malachi?’
    ‘I went downstairs, to see what had caused the tumult. By then the man was dead, his corpse laid out in the tap room. I went to take the night air in the stable yard. I saw Sir Stephen come back, his cloak all about him. He appeared agitated.’ The Benedictine glanced quickly around the table. ‘I do not want to betray my comrades. But we must tell Sir John what happened in the tap room.’
    ‘Well?’ the coroner demanded.
    ‘During the Great Ratting,’ Sir Maurice replied, ‘Chandler parted company with us. I saw him arguing with the two whores.’
    ‘You mean he solicited them?’
    Sir Maurice nodded. ‘They would have nothing to do with him,’ he continued. ‘They were laughing, pushing him away. He came back sweating, cursing under his breath.’
    ‘Oh Domine, miserere ! Lord have mercy,’ Sir Laurence whispered.
    Cranston spread his hands on the table.
    ‘Is it possible,’ Davenport asked, ‘that Sir Stephen was insulted by those two whores? He may have invited them here but they refused him because they had another assignation.’
    ‘I must confess,’ Sir Maurice broke in, ‘we have been through Sir Stephen’s possessions. He owned a small arbalest, which is now missing.’
    Athelstan scrutinised these knights of Kent, powerful lords, men who owned rich estates, warriors of the Cross, who lived secret lives, coming up to London — Athelstan curbed his anger — to roister and carouse. They’d sin secretly in the dark of night then swagger into his church to eat and drink the body and blood of Christ. Oh yes, Athelstan reflected, Sir Stephen, indeed any of these men, would kill a whore in the blink of an eye, out of rage, frustration, or a sense that their famous honour had been besmirched! He stared down the table at Sir Jack, who was also lost in thought; he recalled that the coroner had told him how knights like these, lords of the land, were flinty-eyed, hard of heart and grasping. Little wonder the poor peasants in the shires round London seethed with discontent. Men whispered how there would soon be a rising, led by the Great Community of the Realm. Cranston claimed the revolt would begin in Kent , no surprise with narrow-souled hypocrites like these lording it in the shire.
    ‘Did any of you go to that barn?’ Cranston asked.
    ‘What would I have to do with whores?’ The Benedictine raised his right hand and displayed his stunted fingers. ‘The work of a scimitar, Sir John. I could not handle a crossbow. Ask any of these good men here.’ Malachi’s voice was rich with sarcasm. ‘I am more a danger to myself with such a weapon than to anyone else.’
    ‘And you, Master Rolles. Where were you?’
    The taverner got to his feet and went to the door. He shouted for Tobias who served as cook and cask-man and returned to his chair. A short while later a young man with spiked red hair, a leather apron wrapped about him, came into the solar.
    ‘Tobias, tell the gentlemen here where I was after the Great Ratting.’
    The man scratched his face with bloodied fingers, then played with the flesher’s knife in the pocket of his apron.
    ‘The fight broke out,’ he mumbled. ‘Yes, that’s right, the fight broke out, but you were busy in the kitchen. By the time you returned, Toadflax was dead. You had the corpse laid out in the tap room, then you returned to the kitchen.’
    ‘Yes,’ Rolles declared exasperatedly, ‘and what happened then?’
    ‘You told me off for letting some of the pork burn, for not