‘Oh, Morning Star. . Oh, Key of David. .’

When they had finished, Athelstan shook his head in wonderment.

‘All I can do.’ He opened the wallet on his cord and took out a silver coin, a gift from Cranston. He twirled this between his fingers. ‘The labourer, or rather in this case,’ he proclaimed, ‘the singers, deserve their wages. Merrylegs, your pies are baked fresh and piping hot. .?’

Athelstan’s parishioners needed no further encouragement. The coin was snatched and Athelstan had never seen his church empty so swiftly.

‘Was it so good, Father?’

‘Benedicta, even the angels of God must have wept.’ Athelstan walked over and grasped her hands, warm in their black woollen mittens. ‘Benedicta, I am starving. Would you please look after the church and put the vessels back in the fosser?’

With Benedicta’s assurances ringing in his ears, Athelstan left by the corpse door. Bracing himself against the cold, the friar walked back up the lane to the priest house. He opened the door and stared at the huge figure seated on the stool, horn spoon in one hand, crouched over a steaming bowl of oatmeal. Beside Athelstan’s guest, watching every mouthful disappear, was Bonaventure, waiting so when Sir John Cranston, Lord High Coroner of London, finished the bowl he could lick it really clean.

‘Judas,’ Athelstan whispered. ‘Cat, your name is Judas.’ He raised his voice. ‘My Lord Coroner, what is the penalty for stealing a poor friar’s breakfast?’

‘Murder.’ Cranston, wrapped in a Lincoln green war cloak, a brocaded beaver hat of the same colour on his head, turned, his rubicund, white be-whiskered face wreathed in a smile. ‘Murder, my little friar! I have left enough for you then we must go. The sons and daughters of Cain await us.’

‘The eyes of the dark robe of night. The shadow lands which stretch past evensong, these are all part of my story. .’ The enterprising taleteller, perched on an overturned barrel at the end of the lane leading on to the thoroughfare down to London Bridge caught Athelstan’s attention. The friar plucked at Cranston’s arm and paused to catch the dramatic words and colourful images which he hoped to use in a future sermon.

‘There,’ the teller of tales bawled, ‘the larvae of human souls wander whispering like bats twittering in a cave, for this truly is the realm of the screech owl. .’

‘Come on, Friar.’ Cranston, face almost hidden behind his muffler, pointed to where his principal bailiff Flaxwith with his hideous-looking mastiff Samson stood waiting ready to clear a way before the coroner. ‘Come on,’ Cranston repeated, ‘I’ve got a better tale to tell you.’

Athelstan dug into his wallet, dropped a penny into the storyteller’s box and, cowl pulled well over his head, joined Cranston to battle through the surging crowd. Despite a cutting breeze from the river and the stench of uncleared refuse on the slippery paths, London’s citizens had flocked out hacking and sneezing in the freezing air, oblivious to the leaden, brooding clouds which threatened more snow. They hurried down to the tawdry markets around the bridge to gawp, purchase or just gossip. The more vigorous also thronged around the stocks close to the river to fling refuse at Guillaume Lederer, who sat imprisoned for calling Bertram Mitford ‘a covetous snot, a vagabond, a wagwallet’ not to mention, ‘a side-tailed knave’. Guillaume’s name and crime were proclaimed on a placard around his neck, which also invited passing citizens to hurl abuse as well as anything else they could lay their hands on. Further down a more serious business was drawing to an end: the hanging of two women, Dulcea and her companion Katerina, who’d feloniously murdered Alice Willard of Rotherhithe — strangled her, no less, during a pilgrimage to Canterbury. The crowds swirled around the execution cart which abruptly pulled away just as Athelstan and Cranston passed. Both women were left to dance in the air as they slowly strangled on the hempen noose dangling down from the sooty, four-branched scaffold.

Death, of course, especially executions, was good for business and Athelstan was constantly distracted by the charlatans who always emerged on such occasions. One conjurer who, despite it being bleak midwinter, loudly boasted that the small pouch in his right hand contained three bumble bees which he could summon out, one by one each by their own name, as given to him by an angel he’d met on the road outside Havering-atte-Bowe. Other cozeners and conjurers had given up their tricks to plunder the corpses of the hanged and sell their ill-gotten items for a profit. A few of these knights of the dark just hoped the macabre scenes would influence the minds of those they hoped to cheat. Outside the Chapel of St Mary Overy a journeyman, his black capuchon, cotehardie and chausses embroidered with gold stars and silver moons, proclaimed how he, John Crok of Tedworth, had in the scarlet-blue fosser beside him a man’s head in a book. He proclaimed how the head was that of a Saracen. How he had bought it in Toledo in order to enclose a certain spirit which could answer questions about the future. Apparently the said spirit had not informed him about the approach of the coroner. One look at the burly Flaxwith and the equally fearsome Samson sent John Crok of Tedworth, his precious fosser clutched under one arm, fleeing through the crowds. Cranston just grunted noisily and muttered about some other time.

They passed under the gatehouse to the bridge, its crenellations ornamented with long poles bearing the severed heads of executed traitors, pirates and other criminals. On the steps leading up to the gatehouse sat the diminutive Robert Burdon, the keeper surrounded by his brood of children. Burdon was preparing another head, all pickled and tarred, to decorate the end of a pole. He glimpsed Cranston and Athelstan, shouted a greeting and continued with his macabre task of combing the long hair on the severed head.

Athelstan was now finding it difficult to keep up with Cranston’s stride. He still wasn’t sure where they were going or what they were doing. Cranston had told him little except that his wife, the diminutive Lady Maude, and their two sons the poppets were all ‘in fine fettle’. Then he added something, just as they left the priest house, about the mysterious death of Kilverby the Cheapside merchant as well as the gruesome slaying of one Gilbert Hanep at the great Benedictine Abbey of St Fulcher-on-Thames. The coroner also mentioned John of Gaunt, a precious bloodstone called the ‘Passio Christi — the Passion of Christ’ and that was it. Athelstan was curious for more but decided he would have to wait, especially here on London Bridge with its crowded shops, booths and stalls. The houses packed on either side soared up against the grey sky, forcing them and others to push up the broad narrow lane between, already packed with carts rattling on iron-bound wheels, braying sumpter ponies and apprentices bawling, ‘What do ye lack, what do ye lack?’ The sheer crush, the rancid stench of unwashed bodies, the clatter of waterwheels and the pounding of the angry river against the starlings of the bridge were a stark contrast to the silence Athelstan was accustomed to. He felt slightly dizzy as if he’d not eaten, even though he had. Cranston, thankfully, had not devoured all the oatmeal. Athelstan crossed himself and murmured the ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’. He certainly needed God’s help. He was about to enter the meadows of murder, creep along the twisted alleyways along which padded the silent, soft-footed assassin. The age old duel was about to begin; as always, it would be ‘lutte à l’outrance, usque ad mortem — a fight to the death’. Would it be his? Athelstan wondered. Would he draw too close, make a mistake?

Athelstan touched Cranston’s arm for comfort; the coroner pressed his hand reassuringly and they left the bridge, entering the wealthy part of the city. The streets, paths and alleyways here were packed with fatter, fuller bodies encased in gaily caparisoned houppelandes, capuchons, cloaks, poltocks and tabards. Merchants, shimmering in their jewellery pompously paraded, accompanied by wives bedecked in gorgeous clothes and elaborately decorated headdresses. Knights in half-armour on plump, powerful destriers trotted by. Lawyers, resplendent in red silks, hastened down to the ‘Si Quis’ door at St Paul’s. The stalls and booths were open and business was brisk. Merchants and traders offered silver tasselled dorsers and thick woollen cushions for benches. Priests and monks, armed with cross and thuribles, processed to this ritual or that. The air was rich with the many smells from the public bakehouse as well as the fragrance of the vegetable stalls stacked high with onions, leeks, cabbages and garlic. Next to these the fleshers’ booths offered suckling pigs and capons freshly slaughtered and drained of blood. Pilgrims to the shrine of Becket’s parents rubbed shoulders with those fingering pardon beads as the Fraternity of the Salve Regina made their way down to one of the city churches.