The House of Shadows

found the small roll of parchment. Sir Thomas was very eager. I asked if he wanted Rosamund to come after dark. He replied no. When the wench arrived, that’s how we found him, dead.’
    Athelstan asked Cranston to clear the room. The coroner politely told Rolles and the two knights to wait downstairs. Athelstan went to the high wooden settle. He sat, arms crossed, staring down at the corpse and the blood pools all about it.
    ‘Sir John,’ he whispered, ‘in God’s good name, what is happening here? Here is a man hale and hearty, more interested in his claret and his wench than anything else, but he is found stabbed to death in a locked chamber.’
    ‘He had drunk heavily, Brother. Perhaps more deeply than we thought, which would make him weak and vulnerable.’
    ‘To whom?’ Athelstan lifted his head. ‘There’s only one explanation, Sir John; the only logical explanation is that the assassin crept in here, stabbed Sir Thomas, and hid until the door was broken down, but even then...’ He got to his feet. ‘I must see this fair Rosamund.’
    They went down the stairs. Athelstan told Sir Maurice he could see to the corpse of his comrade. Rolles took him out into the garden, where Rosamund, wrapped in her cloak, was sitting in a flower arbour, cradling a cup of posset and chewing rather noisily from a bowl of grapes.
    Athelstan introduced himself and Cranston and sat down beside the young woman. Despite her fiery red hair, laughing mouth and merry eyes, Rosamund reminded Athelstan of Cecily the courtesan. For a while, he just sat staring out across the garden, admiring the small lawns, the raised herbers, the vegetable plots, separated from the herb garden by a small trellised walk over which rose bushes now grew. To his right, screening off the high-bricked curtain wall, broken by a small postern gate, was a line of trees. In the centre of the garden, with coloured stone edging, glittered a broad carp pond.
    ‘I always love gardens,’ he began, ‘especially ones like this, laid out to catch the sun.’
    ‘Mother Veritable has a garden.’
    Rosamund smiled at Sir John, who stood outside the arbour, glancing admiringly down at her. She crossed her legs, swinging a foot backwards and forwards, plucking at a red tendril of hair, turning her face, only too eager to flirt with this powerful Lord Coroner.
    ‘The ostler brought me out here. I am sitting in the very place Sir Thomas did before he went up to his chamber. Oh, Brother Athelstan, what a hideous sight. I’m only too pleased to be sitting here. Master Rolles’ garden is famous. They say, when he bought the tavern, he laid it out himself.’
    ‘You saw Davenport’s corpse?’ Cranston asked.
    ‘Oh yes, like a lump of meat on a flesher’s stall, blood everywhere, and that pricket, sticking out like a demon’s knife.’
    ‘And there was no one in the room?’ Athelstan asked. ‘I mean, besides the corpse.’
    ‘Of course not.’
    Rosamund chatted on and, without being invited, smiling flirtatiously at Cranston , recited everything which had happened that day, from the moment she had been summoned by Mother Veritable, to finding the corpse of Sir Thomas. She then finished the bowl of grapes, drained the cup of posset and jumped to her feet.
    ‘I must go now,’ she said softly, her eyes never leaving Cranston . ‘I’ve been a good girl.’
    Cranston opened his purse and thrust a silver piece into her hand. Standing on tiptoe, Rosamund kissed him on each cheek and, hips swaying, walked up the path back into the tavern. Cranston sat down next to Athelstan.
    ‘Beautiful garden,’ he agreed. ‘I wish I could have the same, but the dogs would eat the carp and the poppets would fall in the pond. What do you make of all this, Athelstan? Who could have killed Sir Thomas?’
    ‘Shifting mists. Shifting mists,’ Athelstan repeated. ‘Sometimes, Sir John, I get a glimpse of the truth. These murders, are they in a logical line — I’ve talked about this before — or are there two lines? Different assassins, working on their own evil affairs? I’m sure that those good knights, and Master Rolles, and everyone else in the tavern, can account for their movements. Brother Malachi was apparently back in St Erconwald’s. It’s the Judas Man who concerns me.’
    He rose to his feet, followed by Cranston , and walked over to the carp pond, watching the great golden fish swimming lazily amongst the reeds. Athelstan tried to hide the flutter of