The House of the Red Slayer

day, never mind on a freezing winter’s night.’
    ‘But you know what this means, don’t you?’ Athelstan accused, picking up the piece of yellow parchment.
    ‘By heaven, we do not!’ Fitzormonde replied.
    ‘Sir,’ Athelstan retorted, ‘I think you do, as you also know about the seed cake.’
    The two hospitallers shook their heads.
    ‘Oh, come,’ Athelstan continued. ‘Let’s not be coy. You are monks and knights. Your Order fights for the cross in Outremer. My Order, too, has brothers who serve there. They bring back tales which they relate over the dinner table at Blackfriars.’
    ‘What tales?’ Mowbray challenged.
    ‘How in the mountains of Palestine live a secret sect of infidels called the Assassins, ruled by a chieftain called the Old Man of the Mountain. This coven deals in secret assassination. They are fed on drugs and despatched by their master with golden daggers to kill whomever he has marked down for destruction.’
    Cranston watched the two knights tense and, for the first time, show a flicker of nervousness, Fitzormonde particularly.
    ‘Now these assassins,’ Athelstan continued, ‘always give their victim fair warning. They do not leave a picture but a flat seed cake as a sign that violent death will soon be upon them.’ Athelstan stood up and stretched to ease the cramp in his thighs and legs. ‘I ask myself, why is this secret sect which flourishes in the Middle Sea, carrying out murder in the cold and sombre chambers of the Tower of London?’
    ‘Are you accusing us?’ Mowbray shouted. ‘If so, do it!‘ ‘I am not accusing anyone, just remarking on a strange coincidence.‘
    ‘Rastani is from Palestine!’ Mowbray cried. ‘Sir Ralph did distance himself from his so-called faithful servant.’
    ‘Why do you say “so-called”?’ Cranston quickly asked. ‘Because I do not believe Rastani’s conversion to our faith was genuine. Such men bear grudges, they wait years to settle accounts.’
    ‘But Rastani was absent from the Tower?’
    ‘He could have slipped back.’
    ‘No, no, no!’ Athelstan sat down and shook his head. ‘Sir Ralph’s death is more complex than that. You served with him?’
    ‘Yes, we did. The Caliph of Cairo hired us to crush revolts in the city of Alexandria.’
    ‘And after that?’
    ‘Sir Ralph came home. We stayed a while longer before returning to our house in Clerkenwell.‘
    ‘Have you ever returned across the seas?’ Cranston asked.
    Mowbray shook his head. ‘No, Fitzormonde is slightly wrong. When we served with Sir Ralph we were not hospitallers. We joined after we left him. The Order sent us back to England. I am at Clerkenwell, Fitzormonde in our house at Rievaulx near York.‘
    Athelstan stared at the closed, set faces of both knights. ‘Forgive me,’ Athelstan said quietly, ‘I do not wish to call you liars but there is a great mystery here and you are party to it.’ He leaned over and suddenly pulled back Mowbray’s cloak. ‘You wear chained mail? And you, too, Sir Brian. Why? Do you also fear the assassin’s dagger? How well do you sleep at night? What secrets did you share with Sir Ralph?’
    ‘By the Rood!’ Sir Brian suddenly stood up. ‘I have heard enough. We have told you what we can. Leave it at that!’
    Both hospitallers swept out of the room. Cranston slumped on the stool and stretched out his legs.
    ‘A pretty mess, eh, Friar? What have we here? Treason by persons unknown or foul midnight murder?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Athelstan replaced the stopper in the ink horn as he rearranged his writing materials. ‘But we do have the buckle we found on the icy moat, and I know who it belongs to.’
    ‘By the sod!‘ Cranston cried. ‘For a monk you are sharp-eyed, Athelstan.’
    ‘For a friar I am very quick, My Lord Coroner, and so would you be if you drank less claret!‘
    ‘I drink to drown my sorrows.’ Cranston looked away. What would Maude be doing now? he fretted. What was she hiding? Why wouldn’t she just tell him instead of giving those long, mournful glances? Cranston glared at the small statue in a niche, the Virgin and Child; secretly, the coroner hated Christmas. Yuletide always brought back the memories of little Matthew, taken by the plague, but not before the mite had shown Sir John the wonder with which every child greeted Christmas. Did Maude also have her memories?
    ‘Sir John!’
    Cranston blinked to hide his tears and grinned over at Athelstan.
    ‘I have a need of