The Straw Men (2 page)

‘Look, a lantern!' one of them cried. Cranston turned in a creak of saddle. Out of the icy mist loomed a hooded rider with a lantern box attached to the rod he carried. Other figures emerged like a line of ghostly monks, cloaks and cowls, hiding everything except for the occasional glint of steel and chain-mail. Cranston touched the hilt of his sword then relaxed as the outriders approached and he glimpsed the stiffened pennants boasting the golden, snarling leopards of England against their vivid blue and blood-red background. The entire cavalcade now broke free of the mist, fifty riders in all, Cranston quickly calculated. He saw the Flemings' frozen faces shrouded in ermine-lined hoods; the rest were veteran archers from the Tower, master bowmen, who had signed an indenture to serve the Crown after years of fighting in France. Each man was hand-picked and wore the insignia of a chained white hart emblazoned on his cloak. Cranston knew their captain, Rosselyn, both by name and reputation – a hard-eyed slaughterer who'd amassed a petty fortune from ransoms in France. Cranston spurred his horse forward, pushing back his cowl, calling out Rosselyn's name. The barest courtesies were exchanged. Cranston grasped Rosselyn's hand and asked how the journey from Dover had been. Rosselyn's answer was to turn, hawk and spit.

‘Very eloquent,' Cranston murmured. ‘There was no trouble?'

‘Not yet.' Rosselyn stared up through the mist. ‘But then His Grace still believes we might be attacked close to London and within bowshot of the Tower. Treason and treachery press in from every side.'

‘What are you guarding?' Cranston asked. Rosselyn's light blue, popping eyes never blinked. He just gestured with his head to behind him, where the escort of archers had parted as they relaxed. Cranston glimpsed a woman, he was sure of that, from her lithe form and the way she sat slumped in the saddle, holding her reins. Her head was covered by a deep hood, her face completely masked with only slits for the eyes, nose and mouth. The sumpter pony behind her had an escort of four archers; she herself was flanked either side by three master bowmen. Leather straps had been tied around her waist and wrists; the ends of them were held by her escort.

‘No questions,' Rosselyn whispered.

‘Therefore no lies,' Cranston retorted. The coroner pulled up his muffler, lifted his hand and turned his horse into the flurry of snowflakes now beginning to fall. Cranston and Rosselyn rode knee to knee in silence. Cranston kept peering to the right and left; the silence around them was increasingly unsettling.

‘Reminds me of Aix in France,' Rosselyn murmured. ‘Remember Philip Turbot – Gentleman Jakes as we called him, leader of a gang of freebooters? Well,' Rosselyn continued, not waiting for a reply, ‘the Jacquerie did for his coven, impaled them all on stakes. Turbot was reduced to robbing a church. He was caught in a snow storm and, so thick did it lie, the Jacquerie couldn't take him out of the gates to the town gallows.' Rosselyn indicated with his head to the one they'd just left. ‘So they hanged him from a tavern window bar and buried him in the city ditch.'

‘I remember Turbot,' Cranston broke in. ‘He claimed to be a warlock. He boasted how he'd climbed to the top of Saint Paul's steeple, even though it is crammed with holy relics. Turbot said he held a burning glass – this caught the power of the sun and cast its light with such force on a monk walking below that it struck him dead, a bolt more violent than lightening.'

‘Yes, that's the same Turbot.' Rosselyn was enjoying himself. ‘Anyway, they thrust his corpse into the city ditch. During the night, however, a company of wolves came, tore him out of his grave and ate him up.'

‘And?'

‘His was the only corpse they devoured to fill their bellies.'

‘Well, no wolves prowl here.' Cranston made to grasp his wine skin when hunting horns brayed loudly to his left and right. The coroner gazed in surprise as the snowy wasteland all around them seemed to erupt into life. Figures garbed in white rose out of the earth. The first ranks, armed with arbalests and war bows, loosed a volley of hissing shafts while others, armed with pikes, swords and daggers, streamed into the horsemen, deepening and widening the confusion as archers struck by shafts slumped in their saddles or horses, similarly hurt, plunged and reared, striking out with flailing hooves. Cranston drew his own sword, the freezing cold now forgotten as a figure, masked and garbed in white, came at him with a pike. Cranston urged Bayonne forward; his enemy faltered, lowering the pike, and the war horse crashed into him. Cranston turned swiftly, striking with his sword, cleaving his opponent's head with such force the blood shot up in a fountain. Cranston stared around. The entire cavalcade was now under attack – white-clothed assailants swarmed everywhere. Cranston recognized the tactics. More pikemen were massing to hem the horsemen in while others turned and twisted, striking at leg and fetlock to maim and cripple. The archers' bows were useless here – they didn't have the time or space to notch and loose. The main brunt of the attack was against the Flemings in the centre, as if the enemy wished to seize the mysterious prisoner and her pack pony. Cranston urged his horse alongside that of Rosselyn; the captain was busy hacking furiously at an attacker already soaked in blood.

‘For God's sake,' Cranston shouted, ‘break off! We are mounted. We cannot be trapped here!'

Rosselyn drew a mailed foot from his stirrup and kicked his assailant away while pulling down his muffler, his face now flecked with bloody frost and sweat.

‘Sweet tits,' he agreed, staring breathlessly over his shoulder. ‘Sir John, you are right, they will hem us in.' The fighting was now furious around the centre, a swirling mass of men lunging, stabbing and cutting, churning the ground into a bloody, slushy mess. Rosselyn grabbed his hunting horn and blew three piercing blasts. At first the signal had no effect. Rosselyn repeated it and the cavalcade slowly began to push its way forward out of the throng away from the flailing sword, the jabbing pike and thrusting dagger. City men-at-arms and royal archers massed closer together, using both horse and weapon to break free of their oppressors. Bodies still tumbled out of saddles yet Cranston, who had been virtually ignored as the attack seethed around the centre, breathed a sigh of relief. The cavalcade broke through, horsemen spurred their mounts into a gallop across the frozen waste, arrows and bolts whipped the air, but at last they were completely free. The horde of horsemen thundered forward past the church of All Hallows in the London Wall, on to the main thoroughfare, glistening with ice, which stretched past Aldgate and down to the Tower.

Athelstan, parish priest of St Erconwald's in Southwark, stared despairingly at his congregation gathered before the rood screen in the sanctuary of their parish church. They were all grouped together, cloistered like angry sparrows, he thought, on this the feast of St Hilary, the thirteenth of January in the year of our Lord 1381. The parish church was freezing cold despite Athelstan's best efforts. He had brought in braziers crammed with charcoal fiery as the embers of Hell, or so Moleskin the boatman had described them. Nevertheless, the early morning mist had seeped like some wraith under the door, through any gaps in the horn-filled windows and across the ancient paving stones to freeze them all. Athelstan had decided to wait. He would not continue the Mass. He had recited the consecration, offered the Kiss of Peace then the trouble had surfaced – one incident among many. The source of conflict lay with a separate group to Athelstan's right, close to the sacristy door: Humphrey Warde, his wife Katherine, their big, strapping son Laurence, Margaret, their daughter and little Odo, a mere babe swaddled in thick cloths now held so protectively by his mother. The Wardes were spicers who had moved into a shop in Rickett Lane, a short walk from the parish church. They had, according to Humphrey, withdrawn from the fierce competition in Cheapside to do more prosperous trade in Southwark, raise sufficient revenue then return to Cheapside, or even move out to a city such as Lincoln or Norwich. A simple humdrum tale, until Watkin the dung collector, Pike the ditcher and Ranulf the rat catcher, together with other luminaries of his parish council, had intervened. They only had to level one accusation against the Wardes – traitors! Athelstan took a deep breath; perhaps that issue would have to wait, along with the other business which had surfaced during the Mass. Despite his involvement in the ritual, Athelstan had seen the narrow-faced rat catcher, as slippery as one of the ferrets he carried in his box, dart under the rood screen to whisper heatedly with Watkin and Pike. Some mischief was afoot! Athelstan glanced expectantly at the lovely face of Benedicta the widow woman, but she could only stare pitiably back. Athelstan searched for another ally, a newcomer to the parish – Giles of Sempringham, the anchorite, otherwise called the Hangman of Rochester, a strange, eerie figure garbed completely in black, his straw-coloured hair framing a ghostly white cadaver's face. The anchorite, who also worked as an itinerant painter, had recently moved from his cell at the Benedictine abbey of St Fulcher-on-Thames to St Erconwald's. Athelstan had secured the appropriate licences from both his superiors at Blackfriars as well as the Bishop of London. The anchorite, who had monies from his grisly task as the dispenser of royal justice as well as revenue from painting church walls, had financed the construction of a cell here at St Erconwald's, turning the disused chantry chapel of St Alphege into an anker hold. The anchorite now sat next to Benedicta, one hand clawing his hair, the other sifting Ave beads through his fingers. Athelstan glanced quickly at Pike and Watkin; they had lost some of their stubborn obduracy, openly agitated by Ranulf's news.

‘Father,' Crim the altar boy, kneeling on the steps beside him hissed. ‘Father, we should continue the Mass.'

‘Aye, we should!' Athelstan's strong declaration rang like a challenge across the sanctuary. He left the altar and strode over to Katherine Warde, holding his hands out for the baby.

‘Please?' he whispered, ignoring the surprised murmuring from the rest of his parishioners.

Pernel the mad Fleming woman sprang to her feet, her thick, matted hair dyed with brilliant streaks of deep red and green. Ursula the pig woman also got up, as did her great lumbering sow; ears flapping, fleshy flanks quivering, the beast followed her everywhere, even into church. Both women were staring at their parish priest as if he had introduced some new rite into the Mass.

‘Please?' Athelstan smiled at Katherine. ‘I need Odo now.' He turned. ‘Ursula, Pernel, don't get agitated, sit down.' The mother handed the baby over. Athelstan hugged the warm little body, kissed him on the brow, then went over to confront his parishioners. ‘Our Mass will now continue,' he declared loudly. Then, holding up the baby instead of the host and chalice as expected, Athelstan intoned, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the world.'

‘He's not the Lamb of God,' Pike the ditcher's sour-faced wife Imelda rasped, eyes glittering with malice, mouth twisted in scorn.

‘Yes, he is!' Athelstan replied fiercely. ‘Behold the Lamb of God. Behold Him who takes away the sins of the world! If you,' he continued hotly, ‘cannot see Christ in this little child, then do not look for him under the appearances of bread and wine. You are wasting your time, my time and, more importantly, God's time. So get out of my church!' Ursula and Pernel immediately sat down, as awestruck as the rest at the fierce temper of their usually serene parish priest. This little friar with his olive skin, dark, gentle eyes and eccentric ways now throbbed with anger. ‘If you cannot share the kiss of peace with your neighbour,' Athelstan handed the baby back, thanking the mother with his eyes, ‘you are not welcome here.' Athelstan moved back to the altar and stood there, his back to his parishioners. He heard movement. A stool scraped, a leaning rod clattered against the wall. When he turned round, Benedicta had risen and was sharing the kiss of peace with the Wardes. Others followed, including Ursula's sow. The pig sniffed at the baby and then decided to bolt through the rood screen, lumbering down the nave to the front door, now flung open, the great bulk of Sir John Cranston, Lord Coroner of London, blocking the light. Athelstan murmured a prayer of thanks. Cranston slammed the door shut and strode up the nave, kicking aside the great sow, who always regarded the coroner as a close friend. Behind Cranston padded another self-appointed friend, Bonaventure, Athelstan's sturdy, one-eyed tom cat, who always seemed to know when Mass was finishing and possible morsels were available from visiting parishioners.

‘Lord,' Athelstan murmured, ‘give me patience!' He nodded at Cranston, who stood just inside the rood screen, and continued with the Mass. He paused before the final blessing to announce that the parish council would not meet that morning but possibly tonight, once Mauger the bell clerk and council secretary had pealed the hour of Vespers. Athelstan then sketched the final blessing, declared the Mass over and swept into the sacristy. He divested, swiftly aware of Cranston standing behind him.

‘Good morrow, Sir John,' he declared without turning. ‘You walk into my church like the Angel of the Second Coming. I am needed, yes? We are needed?' Athelstan corrected himself. He turned and smiled at the white, bewhiskered face of the coroner, who just stared back, his great blue eyes full of sadness.

‘Happy feast day, Sir John. Saint Hilary bless us all. What is the matter?'

‘You are.' Cranston clasped the friar's outstretched hand. ‘I sense you are upset, Brother. The business of the Wardes, that new family? I received your message. I have whispered to the sheriffs and their underlings but they know little about them. I also approached Magister Thibault, Master of My Lord of Gaunt's secret matters. He neither said “yea or nay”.' Cranston clapped his gauntleted hands together. ‘The Great Community of the Realm plots; its leaders the Upright Men prepare for what they call the Day of the Great Slaughter; they promise a new Jerusalem here in Southwark and elsewhere. The storm is coming, Athelstan, mark my words. Some of your parishioners are deep in the councils of the Upright Men.' Cranston shrugged. ‘But, in the end, it will be your hangman who will be the busiest of them all. He will be kicking them from the scaffold in their hundreds.' Cranston sighed noisily. ‘You're needed.' He beckoned. ‘Master Thibault wants you, so collect your cloak and writing satchel.' Cranston gestured where the friar had laid these over a small trestle table. ‘Tell the widow woman and the rest to look after your church. A bloody business awaits us.'