Athelstan stripped, shaved, washed then dressed quickly in woollen leggings, drawers and the hair shirt he always wore beneath the black and white robes of a Dominican friar. He buckled the straps of his stout sandals. Going over to a corner he took out the polished dish, a gift from a parishioner, which also served as his mirror. Athelstan stared hard at the face which gazed back at him: the close-cropped black hair, the rather long, serious face with its furrowed cheeks, the wrinkles round both mouth and eyes. Did the face portray the soul, he wondered, or was it just the eyes? In which case Athelstan reflected ruefully, God help him, his eyes were dark and deep set. He practised that hard stare he often used on some of his parishioners.

‘Lord forgive me,’ he prayed, ‘I have to; otherwise they’d lead me an even merrier jig.’

The thought of his parishioners made Athelstan hurry around. He doused the few candles, banked the fire, gazed proudly around his ‘new swept kingdom’ and, grasping his psalter, left the priest house. He secured the door and began what he called his daily pilgrimage. He walked carefully; a hard frost shimmered on the path leading up to the dark mass of St Erconwald’s. All lay quiet. He crossed to the stables, pushed open the half-door and smiled at Philomel, his mount, sprawling on the thick bed of hay Pike the ditcher had so carefully turned the night before. The old war horse lifted his head, neighed and snatched at the fodder net. Athelstan sketched a blessing in the ancient destrier’s direction and continued on. He stopped by the newly refurbished gate to the cemetery, opened it and stepped into God’s Acre. He quietly thanked the Lord for winter because in summer this was a favourite trysting place for his parishioners and others so much so, as Athelstan had wryly remarked to Sir John Cranston, on a midsummer’s day more of the living lay there than the dead. Now it was murky, forbidding and frostbitten. Only a meagre light gleamed from the ancient death house where the keeper of the cemetery, the beggar Godbless, lived with his constant companion, Thaddeus the goat. Athelstan murmured a prayer of thanks for both of them. Young lovers lying down in the long grass of summer were not so troublesome as the warlocks, sorcerers and witches who plagued the cemeteries of London with their midnight rites to summon up the dark lords of the air. The ever-curious, garrulous Godbless, with his equally curious goat, would put any practitioner of such forbidden ceremonies to flight. Godbless, called so because of his constant use of that benediction, would talk them to death whilst the omnivorous Thaddeus would chew any grimoire of spells to shreds.

‘Benedicite,’ Athelstan called out, ‘Pax et bonum.’

‘God bless you too, Father,’ came the swift reply.

Athelstan passed on up to the church. He fumbled with the key ring, opened the battered corpse door and stepped inside. He wrinkled his nose: despite his best efforts to scrub the floor, the mildewed air of the old church caught his nose and mouth. Athelstan peered through the gloom; the charcoal braziers still glowed like welcome beacons fending off the cold mustiness. Athelstan took out a tinder from the pouch on his cord. He lit the candles paid for by the Brotherhood of Rood Light, a wealthy group of local merchants who used St Erconwald’s as their guild chapel. In return they generously supplied the church with tallow and beeswax tapers. Athelstan lit those in front of the Lady chapel as well as the candles before the statue of St Erconwald. He gazed up at the severe face of the Saxon bishop of London who’d founded the first church here. Huddle the painter had elegantly regilded the statue, delicately picking out the scarlets and whites of the bishop’s vestments. Athelstan, ignoring the scurry of mice in the far corner, lit some of the sconce torches. The friar noticed the tendrils of mist seeping under the corpse door as if they were pursuing him and shivered.

‘God bring us spring soon,’ he murmured, ‘for swarms of bees and beetles bringing in the soft music of the world, for heavy bowls of hazelnuts, sweet apples, plums and whortleberries.’ Athelstan turned to go up into the sanctuary when he glimpsed Huddle’s new painting on the far wall above the leper squint. Athelstan wandered across. Huddle had been busy sketching out in charcoal the Seven Deadly Sins. Athelstan thought the painter would begin with ‘Lust’, which all the parish council wanted. Instead Huddle, who gambled and was desperate for income, had decided on ‘Avarice’. The painting was graphic enough, bold and vigorous, an eye-catching vision of startling colours and images. A goldsmith of Cheapside was Huddle’s incarnation of the deadly sin: a shrivelled up old man, bow-legged and palsy stricken, with a head as bald as a pigeon’s egg, a beard as bushy as a tangle of brier, skimpy loose cheeks, goggling eyes either side of a nose pointed and as sharp as a hook. The goldsmith was being attacked by two shaggy demons that were dragging him away from his money bags. One of these hellish creatures, all hoofed and horned, had wrapped his goatskin legs around the banker and forced his bald head down so as to clamp his wolf fangs into the back of his victim’s exposed neck. The other demon was clawing the goldsmith’s belly, ripping it open to spill out the man’s black and red innards. Gossips, and that was virtually everyone in the parish, claimed Avarice was no less a person than Sir Robert Kilverby, city goldsmith, former alderman and an acquaintance of no less a person than Sir John Cranston, the King’s coroner in London.

‘Sweet Lord, I hope not,’ Athelstan murmured, ‘or Cranston will have Huddle’s head. I just wish our painter would paint and leave the cogged dice alone.’

Athelstan plucked at his waist cord and fingered the three knots symbolizing his vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Cranston could be genial but, like all law officers in London, watchful and wary of any dissent or mockery of authority. Winter was proving very harsh. The price of bread and other purveyance remained high. Defeat abroad and piracy in the Narrow Seas made matters worse, especially in London where The Upright Men, leaders of the Great Community of the Realm, were plotting bloody revolt to turn the world upside down. Huddle should be careful of whom he mocked. Athelstan went back to the corpse door and picked up his psalter from the stool near the collection of leaning poles. He moved under the rood screen, stood at the bottom of the sanctuary steps and stared up at the Pyx dangling on its chain, shimmering in the glow of the red sanctuary lamp hanging close by. Athelstan genuflected then busied himself, taking out the palliasse from the small alcove where any sanctuary man in flight from the law could settle. Thankfully there was no one. Athelstan unrolled the palliasse at the bottom of the steps just outside the rood screen. He prostrated himself on this, intoned psalm fifty then confessed his sins, a litany of weaknesses: his failure to love, his irritation with Watkin the dung collector, his short temper with Ursula the Pig-woman and her godforsaken sow which followed her everywhere, including into Athelstan’s vegetable patch. The friar caught his temper and smiled. If he was not careful he would be sinning again, yet behind all these petty offences gathered greater shadows: the death of his beloved brother, Francis-Stephen, and his secret love for the widow woman Benedicta, though she was not his only distraction from matters spiritual. Even more so was Athelstan’s fascination for hunting down killers, assassins and murderers who believed they could snuff out another’s life as easily as they might a taper, wipe their lips and, like Pilate, wash their hands of any blood and guilt. Athelstan let his mind drift deeper into the gathering darkness to confront more threatening shapes which questioned his very vocation and basic beliefs.