The House of the Red Slayer

refreshment, monk!‘
    Athelstan saw the pain in his friend’s face and looked away.
    ‘In a while, Sir John. First, let us see Sir Fulke. I wish to search Sir Ralph’s bed chamber here in the White Tower.‘
    Cranston nodded and lumbered off whilst Athelstan packed his writing tray away. The friar sat for a while admiring the beauty of St John’s Chapel, comparing it to the grimness of St Erconwald’s. He thought of Benedicta. How lovely she had looked at the early morning Mass. He wondered if Huddle would use her in the painting of the Visitation he was planning for one of the aisles. What, Athelstan wondered, would she do at Christmas? She had mentioned a brother in Colchester. Perhaps she might stay in Southwark and agree to go for a walk, or at least sit and share a goblet of wine with him and gossip about the past. Christmas could be so lonely... Athelstan’s eye caught a crucifix and he suddenly remembered the horrors being perpetrated in the cemetery at St Erconwald’s. He must get to the bottom of that matter. Who could it be, and why?
    ‘Brother Athelstan! Brother Athelstan!’ Cranston stood, leering down at him. ‘You drink too much claret, priest,’ the coroner mockingly announced. ‘Come, we must visit the late constable’s chamber. Colebrooke and Sir Fulke are on their way.’
    Sir Ralph’s quarters were up a polished wooden staircase in one of the turrets of the White Tower: a pleasant, sweet-smelling chamber in sharp contrast to the grim cell over in the North Bastion. Two small bay windows with cushioned seats below and an oriel window, glazed with stained glass depicting the Agnus Dei, provided light. The walls were of plaster, painted soft green and decorated with silver and gold lozenges. A thick tapestry hung just above the small canopied fireplace, the floor had been polished smooth, and the great bed was covered by a gold-tasselled counterpane. At the foot of the four-poster, with its lid thrown back, stood Sir Ralph’s huge personal coffer.
    ‘It’s luxurious,’ Cranston whispered. ‘What terrified Sir Ralph so much he had to move from here to that bleak prison cell?’
    Cranston and Athelstan squatted down before the coffer and began to go through Sir Ralph’s personal papers, but they found nothing about his years in Outremer. Every document concerned his office as constable or his service in the retinue of John of Gaunt. They must have spent an hour sifting through letter’s, indentures and memoranda. Only a Book of Hours caught Athelstan’s attention. Each page was decorated with delicate filigree-like scrollwork in a range of dazzling colours: on one page lightly drawn angel figures, on another a priest sprinkling a shrouded corpse with holy water as he committed it to the grave. The Nativity, with Mary and Joseph bowing over a sleeping child; Christ’s walk through Limbo, driving away blackfaced demons with the power of his golden eye. Athelstan became engrossed, fascinated by its beauty. He looked inside the cover and noticed how Sir Ralph had scrawled prayer after prayer to St Julian. ‘St Julian, pray for me! St Julian, avert God’s anger! St Julian, intercede for me with Christ’s mother!‘ Each of the blank pages at the back of the book was filled with similar phrases. Athelstan read them all, ignoring Cranston’s mutterings and the angry boot-tapping of Sir Fulke. Finally Athelstan closed the coffer and stood up.
    ‘You are finished, friar?’ the kinsman snapped.
    Athelstan looked sharply at him: Sir Fulke was apparently a man who hid behind a veil of bonhomie and good humour but now he looked angry, suspicious, and resentful of their intrusion.
    ‘Am I finished?’ Athelstan echoed. ‘Yes and no, Sir Fulke.’
    The knight blew out his cheeks. ‘The day is passing, friar,’ he observed tartly, glaring out of the window. ‘I am a busy man with matters to attend to. What more do you want?’
    ‘You wear boots, Sir Fulke?’
    ‘Yes, I wear boots!‘ came the mimicking reply.
    ‘And there are buckles on your boots?’
    The colour drained from Sir Fulke’s face.
    ‘Yes,’ he mumbled.
    ‘Well,’ Athelstan pulled from his wallet the buckle he had found on the frozen moat, ‘I believe this is yours. We found it on the ice outside the North Bastion tower, yet you said you were in the city all night.‘
    Sir Ralph’s kinsman paled, the arrogance draining from his face.
    ‘I lost the buckle yesterday.’
    ‘Were you on the ice?’
    Sir Fulke