The House of Shadows

the Thames . There is no evidence whatsoever that the knights, Rolles or that Witch Queen ever came into any unexpected wealth.
    Item A relationship did exist between the Misericord and the two sisters, Beatrice and Clarice. They too began to hint of unexpected wealth, of transforming their lives, of knowing what had happened to their mother. The only clue they would give was a veiled allusion to something Edith, the Misericord’s sister, wore upon her person. I cannot discover that.
    Item Mother Veritable had good reason, therefore, like Sir Stephen Chandler, to hate the Misericord, who may have been plotting to take away two of her favourite girls. All three of them had mocked a very valuable customer. Yet there is no evidence whatsoever that Mother Veritable, or indeed anyone else, went to Cheapside to deliver that poison pie to silence the Misericord.
    Of course the Judas Man has disappeared, except for his horse and harness. He may have killed the Misericord and returned to attack Malachi in the church. But why?
    Item What did the Misericord mean by shouting ‘Askit, Askit’ before he died? And what were those strange etchings on the prison wall? The quotation ‘ Quem quaeritis ’, not to mention the numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5?

    Athelstan paused in his writing and carefully scrutinised his conclusions. Cranston , who had listened as he finished off the bread and wine, came over and sat next to him. He studied the clerkly abbreviations Athelstan had made in listing all his points.
    ‘In the end,’ Cranston muttered, ‘we come back to the great robbery.’
    ‘There are two people,’ Athelstan replied, ‘we haven’t questioned. And we should, sooner or later. His Grace, John of Gaunt, and Signor Teodoro Tonnelli.’
    Athelstan stared across at the glorious red rooster Huddle the painter had begun to depict on one of the pillars. It was supposed to represent the cock which crowed three times, marking Peter’s denial of Christ during the Lord’s Passion. On the other pillar an elegant pelican stabbed its own breast to feed its young, a symbol of Christ giving His Body and Blood to the world. The friar realised only now, sitting here, how he had underestimated Huddle’s consummate skill in bringing these two symbols to life, and he felt a pang of regret at not congratulating that dreamy-eyed painter more forcefully.
    ‘Brother?’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ Athelstan replied, ‘we should do it now. But Tonnelli won’t see us without John of Gaunt’s permission, he’ll act the cautious banker.’
    ‘I’ll send the letter myself,’ Cranston offered. ‘His Grace the Regent is at his palace in the Savoy .’
    Athelstan became busy, hurrying across to his house for a sheet of better vellum, a sander of pounce and a slice of sealing wax. Sir John dictated the letter. Athelstan melted the wax and used the sander to sprinkle the very fine dust, so that the ink wouldn’t blur. The letter was sealed by Sir John, and sealed again when Athelstan folded it.
    ‘Benedicta’s in the house,’ Athelstan declared. ‘I think Malachi is getting under her feet. She’ll take this over to the Savoy .’
    He hurried off and came back to find Cranston beating his boot on the paved floor.
    ‘There’s the other mysteries,’ the coroner declared mournfully. ‘In God’s name, Athelstan, how was Chandler poisoned? And that psalter of his, what great wrongs had he done to keep begging forgiveness?’
    ‘He was a soldier, and only the mind of God knows what horrors he committed in Outremer whilst his lust for soft flesh must have been a canker in his soul. But for his murder? I can’t say, Sir John, and the same for Broomhill. Oh, he was lured into that cellar, but by whom, how and why remain a mystery.’
    Athelstan sat on his stool, head in his hands. Cranston stared at him out of the corner of his eye. Such mysteries often perplexed him; he was more concerned that Athelstan, this little dark-faced friar, was mystified. Time was slipping away like sand in a glass. How long could he detain those knights? Sooner or later they would assert themselves and seek the writ of the Chancellor or a Justice of the Bench at Westminster , and he would have to let them go. Athelstan lifted his face and smiled.
    ‘Now I know,’ he sighed, ‘what the ancients meant by psychomachia.’
    ‘Pardon?’
    ‘A Greek term, Sir John, signifying war in the mind or the soul, the conflict of different ideas. Contradictions impede any progress,’ he