The Straw Men (16 page)

‘Deliberately so,' Artorius whispered. ‘The gate is heavy. The bars delay Maximus so I have enough time to get back in here.'

‘And how do you get him back and seal the gate?' Athelstan asked.

‘A juicy piece of meat placed at the far end of the cage oozing blood. Maximus loves that. He knows his routine, which is as fixed as any monk's horarium. Maximus becomes busy with his food. I close over the gate with a hooked pole, pull the bolts across and place the bars back down.' He paused. ‘Now, watch this.' Maximus had pushed open the gate. Athelstan glanced through the door hatch, fascinated by the bear's speed. Maximus, the long chain rattling out, raced across the wharf and plunged into the icy moat, revelling in the splashing water.

‘It's safe now,' Artorius declared. He opened the door and led them out.

‘Is it safe?' Athelstan asked anxiously.

‘Maximus loves to swim and fish,' the keeper reassured him. ‘He'll be there for hours.'

‘Fish?' Athelstan asked.

‘Oh, yes,' Artorius replied, ‘once he caught a porpoise swept in by the river. Maximus will eat anything and everything.' Athelstan just stood and watched. Maximus was swift and confidently plunging up and down, swimming expertly – sometimes only his massive head protruded above the surface. The silver chain, fine and delicate in appearance, was very strong. Maximus had the freedom to swim although not to reach the far side of the moat.

‘God be praised!' Athlestan whispered, crossing himself. ‘For such splendour! Sir John, I think we should go.'

They thanked Artorius and left St Thomas' Tower, going out through the Lion gate, the roars and snarls from the menagerie ringing in their ears. Athelstan refused Cranston's offer to see the other beasts; instead he plucked Sir John by the sleeve and led the unresisting coroner into the sweet onion-smelling tap room of the Hook of Heaven, an ancient tavern which overlooked the Thames. They cleaned their hands in the bronze basin hanging by a chain from the rafters in full obedience to the warning carved around the rim: ‘Wash with water your hands so clean that, on the towel, no spot be seen.' Once done, Athelstan ordered blackjacks of ale and bowls of thickened chicken stew. Cranston had remained ominously silent during their visit to the snow bear. Athelstan suspected Sir John was reflecting deeply on Thibault's hidden threats and the menaces which swirled around them. He wanted Cranston to lighten his mood.

‘We will do our duty, My Lord Coroner,' Athelstan whispered as he polished his horn spoon and took a generous mouthful. ‘Let us reflect, Sir John, warm our bellies and,' he gestured at the sack, ‘fathom these mysteries further. Now listen. You must return to your chambers in the Guildhall. Yes? Lady Maude will also be hungry for your embraces. However, make careful scrutiny of this. Search among the Spicers of Cheapside, discover everything you can about Humphrey Warde. Sir John, you remain silent. You have been so . . .'

‘The tribes.' Cranston finished his soup. ‘Brother Athelstan, my little friar, my friend: Barak is dead, Lettenhove slain, Eli mysteriously murdered, but these are only bubbles on the surface of this morass. Brother,' Cranston put his spoon down and grasped the friar's hand, ‘believe me, the tempest has been sown. God help us,' he murmured, ‘we are going to reap the corpse-makers' storm.' The coroner, still distracted, gathered his thoughts. ‘I have business, little friar, so have you, and the hour candle burns.'

They left the tavern. Cranston, lost in his own thoughts, turned off up an alleyway leading to the city. Athelstan, grasping the bag with its grisly contents, moved towards the bridge. The Angelus bells began to peal. Traders, merchants, hucksters and apprentices were all preparing to cease trading in order to break their morning fast. Most of these were swathed in cloaks and hoods against the biting cold. The air was riven with shouts and cries. People pushed and shoved towards the cook shops, alehouses and taverns. Beggars, blue with cold, whined for alms and shook their clacking dishes or tapped their canes. The ‘stealthy night shapes' as Cranston called them, were also busy – the sneak thieves, the shadow stalkers hungry for prey. Bailiffs and beadles, determined on their food, hurried a line of miscreants to the great stocks next to the bridge. A sheriff's man pushed a moveable, three-branched gallows with the cadavers of house breakers stripped naked, their dead flesh a pasty white, along the thoroughfare. A herald went before them, declaring the gallows proclaimed the dire consequences of breaking the King's peace. How their wolfish souls, guilt-steeped and sin-scorched, had received their just desserts from both God and man. A relic-seller in a snoop cap followed, hoping to trade among the gathering crowd, loudly declaring he had holy fragments of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus for sale. Behind him a singing cleric bargained with a funeral party escorting a corpse, stitched in its deer-skinned shroud, to chant the death psalms.

Athelstan, head covered, pushed through this throng on to the bridge. He ignored the fishy, oozing stench from the river as he did the sweet flavour from the public ovens where the morning waffles, cakes and pastries had been baked. He did not look to the left or the right, ignoring the thunder of the Thames as it broke against the starlings of the bridge, the clacking of water mills and the constant noise of the traders crammed into the narrow causeway which ran between the houses and shops either side. He passed Becket's chapel. On its steps a wandering preacher, standing next to a bonfire of burning rubbish, its creeping flames spluttering in the wet mist, screamed with scorched throat his dire prophecies. How the souls of London's citizens were polluted by carnal lust. How Christ would soon come again, a brilliant flaming figure appearing like a gorgeous rainbow in the storm-swept skies above London.

Athelstan walked on, knocking away the apprentices plucking at his sleeves and the fleshy-mouthed whores who sidled up whispering what delights they could offer. Athelstan ignored such harrowers of the dark. Nevertheless, the world and all its business still pressed in. A group of Newgate bailiffs pulled two river pirates to the balustrade overlooking the river. Ignoring their screams, the officials tied nooses around the prisoners' necks and toppled them over. Athelstan glimpsed a prostitute on her knees before a costermonger, feverishly loosening the points of his hose as both sheltered in a narrow runnel between two soaring houses. Athelstan looked away but his eye was caught by other scenes. A beggar, one leg crushed by a cart, lay dying beneath a stall attended by a Carmelite. Two courtesans from The House of Imminent Pleasure just beyond the bridge sauntered by swathed in cheap finery and even cheaper perfume. A group of armed knights, gorgeous pennants proclaiming John of Gaunt's arms, forced their destriers through the crowd. Curses and insults were thrown. The leading knight, visor down, lowered his lance and the crowd swiftly parted. A gust of river wind, heavy with the smell of rotting fish, buffeted Athelstan. The friar felt dizzy, disconcerted, as if he could feel the pent-up anger and lusts of the people around him. He took a deep breath and moved on, reaching the end of the bridge and the steps either side leading to the upper stories of the yawning bridge gate.

Athelstan climbed these, knocked on the iron-studded door and was ushered into what the mannekin Robert Burdon called his ‘workshop'. Custos of the Bridge and Keeper of the Heads, Burdon was scarcely five feet tall, a small, pot-bellied man who loved to dress in blood-red taffeta, the colour of what he jokingly called his ‘fraternity of the shearing knife'.

In the chambers above Athelstan could hear the screams and shouts of Burdon's brood of children.

‘Brother Athelstan! Brother Athelstan, come deeper in.' The friar walked up the macabre chamber, long and narrow, lit only by arrow-slit windows, its wooden floor scrubbed clean, as was the long table which ran down the centre of the room. On shelves along the wall ranged rows of freshly severed heads; these had been washed in brine and recently tarred at the neck, glassy eyes above gaping, bloody mouths gazing sightlessly at him from under half-open lids. Athelstan refused Burdon's offer of refreshment. He explained why he had come and placed the sack on the table. Burdon, calling blessings down on Sir John, undid the twine and brought out both heads. Clicking his tongue noisily as he critically examined them, the mannekin picked each up, sniffed at them in turn, wetted his fingers and stroked the grey, wizened skin of the two severed heads. He then examined the cut necks. Athelstan had to turn away when Burdon prised open the mouths, poking around with his fingers. Once finished he placed both heads in a space along the shelves.

‘Do you know, Brother,' Burdon smiled, ‘at night, when darkness falls like a sheet of blackness and the river mists billow in, they come for their heads. Oh, yes! Heart-stricken, bloated and dangerous, the ghosts, the terrormongers, rise from the dismal woods of Hell. They gather here, ushered in by the night hags, a synod of wraiths.' Athelstan stared at him in disbelief.

‘True, true,' Burdon lifted his hands towards the shelves, ‘the ghosts of all my guests. I hear them pattering up the steps. Sometimes I glimpse them, smaller than me, hell-borne goblins. They bang on the walls. They gabble like Abraham men then they whisper, a sound like roasted fish hissing on a skillet. But,' Burdon rose to his feet, ‘not these two. You see, their ghosts cannot cross the sea though their heads did, mind you. I detect salt water on their skins, while I'm sure both were severed not by an English axe but a two-handed broad sword, the execution weapon of Brabant?' Burdon raised his eyebrows. ‘Flanders? Both heads are dry. The skin withering, the carrion birds will soon peck them to the bone. One head belongs to an old woman, the other to a fairly youngish man. Both have had their tongues plucked out.'

‘So,' Athelstan sketched a blessing in the direction of the heads, ‘two heads brought from Flanders by Gaunt's agents. They were undoubtedly the victims of judicial decapitation, probably carried out in secret. Before execution, their tongues were plucked out, the usual statutory punishment for those guilty of grievous calumny and slander. Both heads were to be shown to My Lord of Gaunt.' Athelstan paused. ‘I suspect the heads were taken by the Upright Men during their assault near Aldgate and searched for when Thibault's men stormed the Roundhoop.'

‘I heard about both incidents, Brother. I took custody of a number of heads . . .'

‘Well, Robert,' Athelstan clasped him on the shoulder, ‘you have two more.' He bowed and walked towards the door, reluctant to say any more. After all, Master Burdon might be Thibault's spy. The friar whispered goodbye and walked into the freezing cold.

T
he light was dying. People, wrapped in cloaks, mantles and hoods, hurried home. The Southwark gallows rose fearsome and sombre through the murk, the corpses hanging there already freezing hard. The stocks nearby were full of miscreants, locked by neck, wrist or ankle. The moans of the prisoners were so pitiful Athelstan begged the bailiffs, for the love of God and the honour of Sir John, to free them. A couple of coins provided the necessary encouragement. Athelstan walked up the main thoroughfare into the tangle of alleyways leading towards his church. The friar paused, still lost in thought. ‘The heads were severed in Ghent,' he murmured, ‘their tongues plucked out beforehand. They must have uttered some terrible slander against My Lord of Gaunt, but what? Something connected with that mysterious prisoner?'

‘Brother, are you well?' Athelstan blinked and stared at the sharp features of Ranulf the rat catcher peering out at him from the shelter of his tarred, pointed hood. Ranulf lifted his cage carrying his ferocious ferrets, Ferox and Audax. ‘All quiet at the church, Brother. Master Thibault's gifts disappeared in the twinkling of an eye. Slices of roast pork and stoups of ale. Well,' Ranulf shook his cage, ‘Moleskin the boatmen's shed is plagued by rats. The cold has driven the enemy out into the open,' and, muttering to himself, Ranulf wandered off, swaying slightly on his feet.

Athelstan continued up the alleyway on to the open enclosure before St Erconwald's. The old church rose eerily in the murky light under its carpet of frozen snow, a white wilderness which only emphasized the dull, black mass of the sombre church. A beacon light, lit by Mauger the bell clerk, glowed from the steeple. Candlelight flared behind the shutters of the death house where Godbless and his goat sheltered. Athelstan stared around at the sheer bleakness. He wondered what visions lurked here beyond the veil? He walked to the cemetery lychgate. Did the Soul-harrier, Satan's apostate angel, hide among the gravestones? Did the shadow spirits, the wandering wraiths and shade-souls, hover to plot dark designs against the living? Athelstan closed his eyes. Was Godbless right? Did the dead swarm here like larvae, squalid ghosts, eyes the colour of boxwood in faces of waxen yellow? The beggar claimed he had heard their night shrieks. Athelstan rubbed his eyes. ‘And you, Friar,' he quietly accused himself, ‘are becoming tired and your brain fanciful.' He took a deep breath, tried to clear his mind and went in search of where Benedicta had hidden the house key. Once he found it, he ensured Philomel was comfortable, unlocked the door and walked into the stone-flagged kitchen, clean-swept, tidy but very cold. Athelstan took a taper to the hour candle. He lit the spigots and lantern horns before firing the braziers and the kindling in the hearth. Benedicta had left a lamp with perfumed oil of the anointment of roses to sweeten the air. A scratching at the door disturbed the friar's enjoyment of the fragrance. He allowed Bonaventure in and the cat immediately joined the friar at the hearth. Athelstan pulled across the two rods; from each hung a small cauldron on a chain, one containing oatmeal, the other a soup, thickened and seasoned with herbs and onions. The room slowly thawed, the savoury smells from the pots curling out. Once the food was ready Athelstan prepared two bowls for himself and a pot of oatmeal for Bonaventure. The friar sat at the table, blessed both himself and the cat and ate slowly, staring into the flames.