The Nightingale Gallery

you again!'
    Athelstan did so. Sir John, now fully awake but still in his cups, belched and gazed around the tavern, murmuring what an excellent place it was. Athelstan remembered the hen roosting over the beer barrel and kept his own counsel. He sipped slowly at a cup of watered wine and decided to return to his church. The roof might not have been repaired. Cecily the courtesan might still be plying her trade. And what would happen to Godric? Fleetingly, he wondered once again if Benedicta had missed him. He looked through the narrow tavern window. The sun was beginning to set, it was time he was gone. The Springall business was hidden by a tissue of lies. He was too tired to probe and Cranston too drunk.
    Athelstan rose to his feet. 'Sir John, look!'
    The coroner glanced up Wearily.
    'Sir John, I can do nothing with you. I must go back to my church. Tomorrow or the day after, when you are in a better frame of mind, join me there.'
    Athelstan picked up his leather bag, marched out of the tavern, collected Philomel and made his way slowly through the empty streets to London Bridge.
    Cranston watched him go, then leaned back against the wall.
    'Christ!' he murmured. 'I wish you'd stay, Athelstan, just for once!'
    He groaned and pushed the tankard away. He had drunk enough and wished he hadn't. But the friar was not the only one with secrets and Sir John drank to drown his. No one remembered, except Maude who kept her thoughts to herself, that seven years ago this week his little child, Matthew, died suddenly, the victim of the plague which stalked the alleyways and streets of London. Cranston tightened his lips, blinking his eyes furiously as he always did when the tears threatened to return. Every day he thought of Matthew, the small angelic face, the blue eyes shimmering with innocence. Christ could not blame him for drinking. He'd drink and drink until the memory was gone. And why not? Yet drink clouded his mind, and in his heart Cranston knew that Athelstan was right to disapprove. His maudlin drunkenness was not helping matters. There had been murder, deliberate and malicious, perpetrated in the Springall household. But where was the proof? He vaguely tried to remember what the friar had told him. Something about neither Brampton nor Vechey killing themselves. But where was the proof? Cranston tried to clear his thoughts. He, too, knew there was something wrong. Something was bothering him, something he had seen this morning at the bridge… He looked at the half-empty tankard.
    'Christ, Matthew, I miss you!' he murmured. 'Oh, let the world hang itself!'
    He was about to order another when he thought of Maude and his promise to her. At least tonight he would return halfway sober. Cranston pushed the tankard away and waddled out of the tavern to collect his horse and return to his house in Poultry. Two days after he returned from the city, Athelstan rose early and went to examine his small garden. Outside he glared angrily about. Someone's pig had been rooting amongst the cabbage patch. Athelstan cursed in some of the language Cranston used on such occasions. He felt angry, agitated. He had come back to find his church safe but Godric gone.
    'You see, Father,' Watkin the dung-collector explained, the silly bastard thought he could slip out, so he did, through the sacristy door. Of course, they were waiting for him, the sheriff's men. They beat him up in the alleyway, tied his hands and led him off to the Marshalsea. He'll probably hang!'
    'Yes, Watkin,' Athelstan replied, 'hell probably hang.'
    Apart from that, everything had been in order except for Bonaventure, who had slipped away and had not been seen since. Athelstan hoped he was safe and would come padding back when he was hungry, tail in the air, miaowing for food and comfort.
    The friar looked up. The sky was still blue; the sun, growing in strength, promised a hot sweltering day. He sighed. He'd said his prayers and celebrated Mass, Benedicta just slipping in at the door and kneeling next to the baptismal font instead of coming further up the nave. Athelstan wondered if there was anything wrong. He moved down the side of his church to see if Crim was waiting on the steps but they were empty. He went back, took a hoe from inside the door of his house and stabbed furiously at the cabbage patch, trying to rearrange the furrows in neat order. Once Crim had arrived he would go and see Hob the grave-digger, dying they said after he had slipped and fallen under