The House of the Red Slayer

St Erconwald’s is often used for the burial of corpses of strangers — beggars on whom no claim is made. No grave of any parishioner’s relative has been disturbed.’ He breathed deeply. ‘Nevertheless, Watkin is correct. Three graves have been robbed of their bodies. Each had been freshly interred. A young beggarwoman, a Brabantine mercenary found dead after a tavern brawl, and an old man seen begging outside the hospital of St Thomas, who was found in the courtyard of the Tabard Inn, frozen dead.’ Athelstan licked his lips. ‘The ground is hard,’ he continued. ‘Watkin knows how difficult it is to dig with mattock and hoe to furnish a grave deep enough, so the very shallowness of the graves has assisted these blasphemous robbers.’
    ‘A guard should be placed,’ Pike the ditcher called out. ‘Will you do it?’ Benedicta asked softly. ‘Will you spend all night in the cemetery, Pike, and wait for the grave robbers?’ Her dark eyes took in the rest of the council. ‘Who will stand guard? And who knows,’ she continued, ‘if the robberies are committed at night? Perhaps they take place in the afternoon or eventide.’
    Athelstan glanced at her gratefully. ‘I could watch,’ he interrupted. ‘Indeed, I have done so when I — er...’ he faltered.
    ‘When you study the stars, Brother,’ Ursula the pigwoman broke in, provoking a soft chorus of laughter for all the parishioners knew of their priest’s strange occupation.
    Huddle the painter stirred himself. ‘You could ask Sir John Cranston to help us. Perhaps he could send soldiers to guard the graves?’
    Athelstan shook his head. ‘My Lord Coroner,’ he replied, ‘has no authority to order the King’s soldiers hither and thither.’
    ‘What about the beadles?’ Watkin’s wife bellowed. ‘What about the ward watch?’
    Yes, what about them? Athelstan bleakly thought. The alderman and officials of the ward scarcely bothered about St Erconwald’s, still less about its cemetery, and wouldn’t give a fig for the graves of the three unknowns being pillaged.
    ‘Who are they?’ Benedicta asked softly. ‘Why do they do it? What do they want?’
    Her words created a pool of silence. All faces turned to their priest for an answer. This was the moment Athelstan feared. The cemetery was God’s Acre. When he had first come to the parish nine months ago he had been very strict about those who tried to set up market there or with the young boys who played games with the bones dug up by marauding dogs or pigs. ‘The cemetery,’ he had announced, ‘is God’s own land where the faithful wait for Christ to come again.’ Even then Athelstan had not given the full reason for his strictures; secretly he shared the Church’s fears of those who worshipped Satan, the Lord of the Crossroads and Master of the Gibbet, and often practised their black arts in cemeteries. Indeed, he had heard of a case in the parish of St Peter Cornhill where a black magician had used the blood drained from such corpses to raise demons and scorpions.
    Athelstan coughed. How could he answer? Then the door was flung open and Cranston, his saviour, swept grandly into the church.

CHAPTER 2

    Sir John pulled back his cloak and tipped his beaver hat to the back of his head.
    ‘Come on, Brother!’ he bawled, winking at Benedicta. ‘We are needed at the Tower. Apparently Murder does not wait upon the weather.’
    For once Athelstan was pleased by Cranston’s dramatic style of entry. The friar peered closely at him.
    ‘You have been at the claret, Sir John?’
    Cranston tapped the side of his fleshy nose. ‘A little,’ he slurred.
    ‘What about the cemetery?’ Watkin wailed. ‘Sir John, our priest has to see to that!‘
    ‘Sod off, you smelly little man!‘
    Watkin’s wife rose and looked balefully at Cranston.
    ‘My Lord Coroner, I shall be with you presently,’ Athelstan smoothly intervened. ‘Watkin, I shall attend to this business on my return. In the meantime, make sure that Bonaventure is fed and the torches doused. Cecily, you will put out food for the lepers?’
    The girl stared vacuously and nodded.
    ‘Mind you,’ Athelstan muttered, ‘they tend to wander and look after themselves during the day.’
    He smiled beatifically around his favourite group of parishioners and made a quick departure down the icy steps of the church and across to the priest’s house. He cut himself a slice of bread but spat it out as it tasted sour and stale. ‘I’ll eat