The House of the Red Slayer

don’t want your death,’ he replied. ‘I want the dead in my cemetery to he as God expects them to. I want you to go, doctor.’ Athelstan rose and dusted down his robe. ‘I am sorry I struck you.’ He stared at Vincentius. ‘But you must be gone from here. I don’t know where to, and don’t really care, but in a week I want you out of the city!’ Athelstan suddenly felt tired and weak, and realised he hadn’t eaten for some time. ‘I am sorry I struck you,’ he repeated, ‘but I was angry.’ He suddenly remembered Cranston was waiting for him and looked back at the doctor. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you owe me one favour.’
    Vincentius sat back in his chair. ‘What is that, Father?’
    ‘Well, two to be exact. First, you had a visitor here — Lady Maude Cranston. Why did she come?’
    Vincentius grinned. ‘The Lady Maude, despite being in her thirtieth year, is now enceinte.’
    Athelstan stared back in disbelief. ‘She’s with child!‘
    ‘Yes, priest. About two months gone. Both she and the child are healthy but she is frightened of Sir John not believing her. She doesn’t want to disappoint him. I believe they lost a child some years ago?’
    Athelstan nodded and the doctor enjoyed the look of stupefaction on the priest’s face.
    ‘She told me about Sir John. I advised her most carefully against the pleasures of the flesh. I believe her husband is a mountain of a man?’
    ‘Aye,’ Athelstan answered, still dumbstruck at what he had discovered. ‘Sir John is certainly that.’
    ‘And the second favour, Father?’
    ‘You served in Outremer?’
    ‘Yes, I did. For a time I practised in hospitals in both Tyre and Sidon.’
    ‘If you met someone there, how would you greet them?’ Now the physician looked surprised.
    ‘ Shalom,’ he answered. ‘The usual Semitic phrase for “Peace be with you”.’
    Athelstan lifted his hand. ‘Doctor Vincentius, I bid you farewell. I do not expect we will meet again.‘
    ‘Priest?’
    ‘Yes, physician?’
    ‘Are you pleased that I am going because of what I have done, or pleased that I am leaving and will not see the widow Benedicta again? You love her, don’t you, priest? You, with your sharp accusations against others!‘
    ‘No, I don’t love her!’ Athelstan snapped. But even as he closed the door behind him, he knew that, like St Peter, he was denying the truth.

    Sir John Cranston, Coroner of the City, squatted bleary-eyed in a corner of the Holy Lamb tavern and stared self-pityingly across Cheapside. He had drunk a good quart of ale. Athelstan had not arrived so he’d decided to return home. He would deal with his wife like a man should, with abrupt accusations and sharp questions, but he wished the friar had come. He would have liked his advice on so many things.
    Cranston leaned back against the wall and squinted across the tavern. The latest business at the Tower was dreadful. He had gone to see Fitzormonde’s badly mauled corpse: half the face had been tom away and the man’s body savaged almost beyond recognition. Cranston rubbed the side of his own face with his hand. At first Colebrooke had believed the death was an accident.
    ‘It was just after dusk,’ the lieutenant had informed him. ‘Fitzormonde, as was customary with him, had gone to watch the bear. One second everything was peaceful, the next Satan himself seemed to sweep out of hell. The bear broke loose and mauled the hapless hospitaller. I ordered archers down and the bear was killed.’ Colebrooke shrugged. ‘Sir John, we had no choice.’
    ‘Was it an accident?’ Cranston asked. ‘The bear breaking loose?’
    ‘At first we thought so, but when we examined the beast we found this in one of his hindquarters.’ The lieutenant handed Cranston a small bolt from the type of crossbow a lady would use for hunting.
    ‘Who was in the Tower at the time?’
    ‘Everyone,’ Colebrooke replied. ‘Myself, Mistress Philippa, Rastani, Sir Fulke, Hammond the chaplain — everyone except Master Geoffrey who had returned to his shop in the city.’
    Cranston had thanked the lieutenant and gone over to the shabby, dank death-house near St Peter ad Vincula where Fitzormonde’s mangled remains lay, waiting to be sewn into their canvas shroud. The corpse was hideous, nothing more than a scarred, bloody pile of flesh. Cranston had left as quickly as he could, questioned those he found, and concluded that the crossbow bolt had been loosed by some secret archer: this had goaded