The House of Shadows

excitement in his stomach. He had seen something today, small items glimpsed and then dismissed. He wished he could go back to St Erconwald’s, sit down and reflect on what he had learned. Lost in his thoughts, he re-entered the tavern. Rolles was in the tap room, supervising the slatterns and the cooks. Athelstan, uninvited, walked into the kitchen. Through the clouds of steam billowing across from the ovens and the two great blandreths hung above the fire, he studied the open windows and the side door.
    ‘Can I help you?’ Rolles, wiping bloodied fingers on his apron, stood in the doorway.
    ‘Yes, sir. Have you had sight of the Judas Man?’
    ‘Not a glimpse, but his horse and harness remain in the stables.’
    ‘I would like to see his chamber.’
    Rolles shrugged and ordered a tap boy to take Athelstan up. Cranston decided he would stay and sample the tavern ale. The boy, armed with a bunch of keys, took him on to the second gallery and unlocked the door to the Judas Man’s chamber. The friar closed this and leaned against it, staring around. There was nothing much: a truckle bed, a few sticks of furniture, a lavarium; the chest at the foot of the bed was empty, as was a small coffer on the table. Athelstan noticed the fresh ink stains on the table and wondered what the Judas Man had been writing. He was about to leave when he changed his mind and began to search the room more thoroughly, lifting stools, moving the bench, pulling the bed away from the wall. He exclaimed in pleasure at a small screwed-up piece of parchment lying on the floor. He unrolled it and took it over to the small window to obtain a better view. On one side was a list of supplies, but on the other the Judas Man had written, time and again, ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 , 4 not 5, 4 not 5... ’ He had underscored these columns. What on earth did that mean? 4 not 5!
    Athelstan heard voices from the yard below and, standing on tiptoe, stared out of the window. Henry Flaxwith, his two hounds of hell beside him, was arguing with an ostler. Athelstan folded the piece of paper up, slipped it into his wallet and went downstairs. Cranston was sitting in the tap room, Flaxwith whispering in his ear. The coroner beckoned the friar over.
    ‘I do not want to drink, Sir John.’
    ‘What a pity,’ Cranston smiled. ‘I think you are going to need one.’ He patted Flaxwith’s burly hand. ‘Henry’s been a good hound. He has been out along the river and visited the Fisher of Men.’ He lowered his voice and leaned closer. ‘He’s found the Judas Man, naked as he was born.’ Cranston tapped his chest. ‘Dead as a stone. A terrible wound to his chest. The Fisher of Men found his corpse trapped amongst weeds under London Bridge .’
    ‘You are sure?’ Athelstan asked. ‘Henry, how did you know?’
    ‘I have just come from there. I asked the Fisher of Men to view his corpses. I would recognise that man anyway, drenched with river water, his skin slimed green. Brother, it was the Judas Man, and he is dead...’

    Cranston and Athelstan stood at the entrance to the Barque of St Peter which stood set back from the quayside near La Reole. The air reeked of tar from the nets and cordage drying in the weak sun; a sombre place, especially now in the early afternoon as the sun began to wane and the mist to boil in from the Thames . Even on a sunny day this was not a place frequented by many. People called it ‘the House of the Drowned Man’, or ‘the Mortuary of the Sea’. The Barque of St Peter was a single-storey building fashioned out of grey stone, with a steep red-tiled roof, built by the fathers of the city as a death house for corpses dragged from the Thames: a primitive chapel where the bodies of the drowned could be laid out for inspection and either collected by grieving relatives or, if not, buried at very little cost to the Corporation in one of the poor man’s plots in the City cemeteries.
    The main door of this macabre chapel fronted the quayside, all about it clustered the wattle-and-daub cottages of those who served there under the careful guidance of the Fisher of Men. Above the wooden porch was a roughly carved tympanum showing the dead rising from choppy waves to be greeted by the Angels of God or the Demons of Hell. Beneath it were scrawled the words ‘And the sea shall give up its dead’. On the right side of the door, near the net slung on a hook which the Fisher of Men’s company used