The House of the Red Slayer

death. Horne looked up. Was that a sound he had heard? He sat still, his ears straining, but only the cawing of the ravens and the distant bark of some farm dog broke the chilling silence. Horne moved his feet restlessly. He would wait a few more minutes and then he’d go. He stared at the ground. Who was the murderer? he wondered. Could it be the hospitaller, Fitzormonde? Or Fulke, Sir Ralph’s brother? He’d known Burghgesh quite well. Or someone else who believed he was God’s vicar on earth to dispense justice and retribution? Or had Burghgesh survived, been taken prisoner, and then years later slipped back into England to reap bloody havoc on his foes? Or perhaps his son and heir? Had he really died in France, or else learnt about his father’s terrible fate and secretly returned to stalk his sire’s killers?
    Horne chewed on his lip. He had to face the fact that he was a killer, he had been party to Burghgesh’s murder. Sometimes at night this thought would rouse him screaming from his sleep. And was that why God had given him no son or heir? Was his wife’s barrenness due to divine justice? Horne heard a sound, jumped up in terror and stared at the apparition just next to the old wall.
    A man clothed in knight’s armour, on his breast the red cross of the crusaders, his face hidden by that helmet! The same steel, conical shell with eagle’s wings on either side and blue tufted crest on top. A chilling terror gripped Horne’s heart.
    ‘My God!’ he whispered. ‘It’s Burghgesh!’ Or was it an apparition from hell? The armoured, visored figure just stood there, feet slightly apart, mailed, gauntleted fists gripping the handle of the great, two-edged sword with the blade resting on one shoulder.
    ‘You are Burghgesh?’ Horne hissed.
    The apparition moved closer. Only the crunch of mailed feet on the hard ice broke the silence.
    ‘Adam! Adam!’ The voice was Burghgesh’s though it sounded sombre and hollow. ‘Adam!’ the voice repeated. ‘I have returned! I come for vengeance! You, my comrade in arms, my friend for whom I would have given my life.‘ One mailed hand shot out. ‘You betrayed me! You, Whit-ton and the rest!‘
    Horne moved suddenly, his hand going to the small arbalest which swung from his belt.
    ‘You’re no phantasm,’ the merchant snarled. ‘And, if you are, go back to Hell where you belong!‘
    He brought up the arbalest but, even as he did, the great two-edged sword scythed the air, neatly slicing the merchant’s head from his shoulders. The decapitated head spun like a ball in the air, lips still moving; his trunk stood for a few seconds in its own fountain of hot red gore before crashing on to the blood-stained ice. Horne’s mailed executioner carefully cleaned the sword, drew his knife and knelt beside the blood-gushing torso of his victim.

    Some hours later Sir John Cranston, muttering and cursing to himself, made his way from Blind Basket Alley up Mincing Lane into Fenchurch Street. Dawn had just broken and Sir John, unable to sleep, had risen early to confer with Alderman Venables about the continued disappearance of Roger Droxford, still wanted for the murder of his master whose decapitated corpse Cranston had found. Sir John had spent a restless night, tossing from side to side in his great double bed. He had tried to remain calm but still seethed with fury at Maude’s continued intransigence in the face of his pleadings and questions: her only answer would be to bite her lip, shake her head and turn away in floods of tears. At last Cranston had risen and gone to his personal chancery but, finding himself unable to concentrate, had finished dressing and gone to rouse Venables. Cranston grinned wickedly. He’d enjoyed that, letting the good alderman know what it was like to be awoken just before dawn. The sleepy-eyed alderman, however, could give him no further information on Droxford.
    ‘He can’t have fled far, Sir John,’ Venables murmured sleepily. ‘God knows, in this weather only a fool would try to flee the city limits, and both the description and the reward have been circulated.’ Venables had grinned. ‘After all, Sir John, he’s a man you would remember.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, he had two fingers missing from one hand and his face was covered in hairy warts.‘ The alderman pulled his fur-lined bed robe around him, moving restlessly on the stone-flagged corridor and making it obvious the coroner should leave. ‘What’s