The House of Shadows

trim the candles on the high altar when Moleskin, garbed in sajreen green, the coat of his guild, fashioned out of the untanned skin of a horse and dyed a rich hue, came running through the door.
    ‘Oh, Brother,’ he gasped, ‘I was with Merrylegs. He’s a marvellous cook and had some pastry to sell to my wife...’
    ‘Never mind.’ Athelstan was unusually sharp. ‘Moleskin, you’ve heard the rumours about the great robbery? I ask you in confidence, would you bring a treasure, even in the dead of night, to the Oyster Wharf in Southwark?’
    ‘No, Father, I wouldn’t, and I’ve often thought about that—’
    ‘Twenty years ago,’ Athelstan continued, ‘who would be found at the Oyster Wharf at the dead of night?’
    ‘Well, Father, the usual, whores, a few fishermen, beggars looking for scraps or a place to sleep. Oh!’ Moleskin’s fingers went to his lips. ‘This was twenty years ago?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘The year of our Lord 1360 — the thirty-third year of the old King’s reign?’
    ‘Yes,’ Cranston barked.
    ‘Ah!’ Moleskin blithely ignored the coroner’s anger. ‘That would be three years after the year of the Great Stink.’
    ‘The what?’ Athelstan asked.
    ‘The Great Stink,’ Cranston explained, ‘occurred in the summer of 1357, after a very dry, hot summer. There was no rainfall, the brooks and the canals of the Thames became polluted and full of rubbish. The smell carried as far north as the great forest of Epping .’ He wagged a finger at Moleskin. ‘I know what you are going to say.’
    ‘That’s right, Sir John, the Stink lasted for years — at least two, I think. Many pious old ladies thought the Second Coming was due and the Seventh Seal on the Judgment Book of God about to be removed, so they formed the Vespertines. Every night after vespers, these pious old creatures would form a torchlight procession, whilst their husbands would carry statues of the plague saints; you know, Sebastian and the rest. They walked along the quaysides of Southwark, praying that God would send fresh rain and a cleaning wind. I was a young man then but I’m sure the Vespertines were still busy about the same time as the great robbery. I can still remember their chanting and prayers, asking God to repel the demons and the foul airs and vapours they’d brought up from hell.’
    ‘Thank you, thank you.’
    Athelstan dismissed Moleskin and slowly began to put away his writing implements.
    ‘So, it wasn’t the Oyster Wharf after all, Sir John. I want to visit the Chancery room in the Tower. I want to see what the documents published at the time actually said. I’ll tell Malachi where we are going

    Rosamund Clifford, she called herself. Of course, when they had held her over the font in St Mary-le-Bow Church, she’d been given another name, Mathilda, but that wasn’t a name used by the troubadours or minstrels. Rosamund Clifford had a romantic ring about it; she’d heard the legends, how once an English king had a mistress of the same name who was later foully poisoned at the centre of a maze. Well, that would not be her fate, she thought as she left Mother Veri-table’s house and turned into a needle-thin alleyway. Rosamund: Mother Veritable said it came from rosa mundi — rose of the world. That was flattering, even though her rivals, who also knew a little Latin, called her ‘Rosa Munda’, the cankered rose. She would ignore such taunts! After the deaths of Beatrice and Clarice, as well as the sudden and mysterious disappearance of Donata, she was now Mother Veritable’s principal lady of the bedchamber.
    Rosamund hunched her pretty shoulders in glee; she had received a message from what Mother Veritable called the Castle of Love at the Night in Jerusalem . Sir Thomas Davenport needed her services. Rosamund was delighted at the news, and had decked herself out in all her glory. Her fiery red hair was scooped up in an embroidered net, or reticule, whilst her low-cut gown, loaned by Mother Veritable, was of costly pers, a rich blue fabric from Provence . Beneath it, white lace-edged petticoats and stockings of dark blue with silver stars, on her feet Spanish pattens, and thick-soled high-heeled shoes over soft woollen slippers. Rosamund had visited Sir Thomas before; he always liked to see her in these. She fingered the silver brooch on her cloak, carved in the shape of a pear, a blatant symbol of sexual desire. She tripped down the alleyway oblivious to the lecherous glances and