The House of the Red Slayer

claret.’
    Cranston, huffing and puffing, checked the saddle girths of his horse. ‘I would like to, Brother,’ he replied over his shoulder, ‘but I must return.’
    Cranston did not wish Athelstan to probe his anxieties about the Lady Maude. ‘I need to reflect upon what we saw at the Tower.’ He pointed to the graveyard. ‘I’ll see what I can do to help you there.’ He swung himself on to his horse, and with an airy wave clattered into the darkness.
    Athelstan sighed and went round to unlock the church. It was cold inside but the friar was pleased that it had lost its musty smell. He revelled in the fragrance of the green boughs so lovingly placed along the nave and sanctuary steps. He remembered the chapel of St John and wondered what lies he had been told there. Athelstan was sure the murderer was in the Tower and equally certain that some evil deed from the past had finally caught up with Sir Ralph.
    He took a tinder from his pouch, lit two sconce torches in the nave and collected his battered prayer book from the sacristy. He knelt on the sanctuary steps and began the Divine Office. He reached the line in the psalm ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ and stopped. He stared into the flickering light of the candle, leaning back on his heels. Had God forsaken him? Why did things such as the desecration of the cemetery happen, Sir Ralph’s murder or Cranston’s sadness? Oh, Athelstan knew about the problem of evil but sometimes he wondered, especially when he stared into the darkness, was there really anyone listening to him? What if there was not? What if Christ had not risen from the dead, and religion was mere hocus-pocus?
    Painfully, Athelstan drew back from the precipice of doubt and depression. He finished his prayers, made the sign of the cross, and crouched with his back against the chancel screen. He took deep breaths, trying to calm his mind and soul so he could concentrate on the recent events in the Tower.
    ‘What happens,’ he asked the darkness, ‘if Sir Ralph has been killed by secret peasant leaders? And if the revolt comes...?’
    He dozed for an hour until a warm, furry body slid under his hand, ‘Good evening, Bonaventure!‘ he whispered.
    ‘A cold day for a gentleman of leisure.’
    He sat up and stroked the cat gently, scratching between the backs of its ears, making Bonaventure purr with pleasure. ‘So, you have been visiting all your ladies in the neighbourhood?’ Athelstan knew about Bonaventure’s sexual prowess. Sometimes the cat even brought his ‘ladies’ back to the church steps to sing their own eerie vespers to a cold silver moon. ‘What will happen, Bonaventure, when the rebellion comes? Will we side with Pike the ditcher and the other dispossessed?’
    Bonaventure grinned in a fine display of pink gums and sharp ivory teeth. Pike the ditcher! Strange, Athelstan thought, but there it was. He had no proof but he was certain the ditcher was a member of the Great Community and carried secret messages to its leaders. Athelstan tensed as the church door opened.
    ‘Brother Athelstan? Brother Athelstan?’
    The friar smiled. Benedicta. Perhaps she would share his supper? They could exchange gossip about the parish; anything to distract his mind. He put Bonaventure down, stood, and broadened his smile, to hide his disappointment. Beside Benedicta stood a tall man, his features quite clear in the torchlight. His face was burnt dark by the sun, his raven-black hair tied in a knot at the back of his head. He was dressed in a long blue robe which reached down to snow-flecked boots. Athelstan went along the nave to meet him. The man was strikingly good-looking, he thought, with the sharp features of a hunting peregrine, vivid cherry-brown eyes, a hooked nose and neatly clipped moustache and beard. Athelstan saw the pearl pendant which hung on a gold chain from one ear lobe.
    ‘This is Doctor Vincentius,’ Benedicta exclaimed.
    Athelstan clasped a strong, brown hand. ‘Good evening, sir. I have heard of you.’
    And who hadn’t? Athelstan wondered. The physician lived in Duckets Lane off Windmill Street, on the other side of the Tabard Inn. He had recently bought a huge house there with a garden which bordered on the river, directly opposite Botolph’s Wharf. Vincentius had won himself a name as a reputable physician. His fees were petty and he didn’t bleed his patients with leeches or use strange zodiac charts and stupid incantations. Instead he