The Nightingale Gallery

Buckingham, with their fluttering eye-lashes and graceful, dainty gestures; men who preferred to be women but hid their natures under the cloak of darkness lest they be discovered and boiled alive at Smithfield. Finally, the good priest Crispin. Was his leg as malformed as he pretended? When he first met the priest in the solar Athelstan had noticed how ungainly he walked, but when later he had joined them in Springall's chamber, Atheistan had observed how the priest had changed into Spanish riding boots, the heel of one slightly raised to lessen his deformity. In these he moved quietly and quickly.
    Sir John suddenly groaned and sat up.
    'Oh, God, Athelstan,' he moaned, 'I feel sick!'
    The coroner rose and staggered to the door.

CHAPTER 3
    Outside the alehouse Sir John paused to vomit, afterwards loudly protesting he was all right. Athelstan linked his arm through that of the coroner and they carefully made their way down Cheapside. It was raining and had become messy underfoot. They were stopped by the Watch, a collection of arrogant servants and retainers from the households of some of the great aldermen. They would have arrested them both, delighted to pick on a friar. Athelstan, however, informed them his companion was no less a personage than Sir John Cranston, who was now ill, so they stepped aside, doing their best to hide their smirks. As Athelstan turned off Cheapside into Poultry, he could still hear their loud guffaws of laughter.
    The coroner's house was a pleasant, two-storeyed affair in an alleyway off the Poultry. Athelstan hammered on the door until Sir John's wife appeared – a small, bird-like woman much younger than Cranston, who greeted her husband as if he was Hector back from the wars.
    'The weight of office!' she shrilled. 'It's the weight of office which makes him drink.'
    And, grabbing Sir John roughly by the hand, she unceremoniously pushed him upstairs.
    Athelstan stood in the hallway looking carefully around for this was the first time he had been to Cranston's house and met his wife. The room beyond the hall was cosy and comfortable with clean rushes on the floor and a large, high-backed chair before the fire. Athelstan caught a fragrant aroma from the kitchen, the supper Sir John had missed. The friar realised how hungry he was.
    Cranston's wife Maude rejoined him, still behaving as if Athelstan had brought her husband home from a heroic field of battle rather than half drunk, his doublet stained with vomit.
    'Brother,' she said, taking the friar by the hand, her bright blue eyes full of life, this is the first time I have met you. Please, you must stay.'
    Athelstan needed no second bidding and sank gratefully into a chair, accepting the meat pastry, mince tart and cup of cold wine that Lady Maude pushed before him. After that, she showed him up into a chamber at the top of the house. Athelstan said his prayers, the Dies Requiem for Springall, Brampton, his own brother and others, made the sign of the cross on himself and thanked God for a wholesome day.
    He slept like a babe and woke just after dawn. He felt guilty at not returning to his own church but hoped that his few parishioners would understand. Had Simon the tiler fixed the roof? he wondered. Would Bonaventure be fed? And surely Wat the dung-collector would make sure the door was locked and Godric safe? And Benedicta the widow who attended every morning Mass, whose husband had been killed in the king's wars beyond the seas…? Athelstan sat on his bed and crossed himself. Sometimes he would catch Benedicta looking at him, her lovely face pale as ivory, her dark eyes smiling.
    'No sin!' Athelstan muttered. 'No sin!' Christ himself had his woman friends. He gazed at the floor. For the first time ever he realised how he missed the woman when he did not see her. Every morning at Mass he sought her smiling eyes as if she alone understood his loneliness and felt for him. Athelstan shook himself, dressed, and went along to the kitchen to beg from a startled maid a bowl of hot water, a clean napkin and some salt with which to scrub his teeth. After his ablutions, finding the house still quiet, he left and went back down Cheapside to the church of St Mary Le Bow. The bells were clanging in the high tower which soared up to a steel blue sky. Athelstan saw the night watchman douse the light, the beacon which was lit every evening to guide travellers through the streets of London.
    Inside the dawn Mass was just ending, the priest