The Anger of God (2 page)

‘Husband, drink.’

He staggered across, snatched the cup from her hand and gulped the rich, cloying wine.

‘What shall I do?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘Why does Elizabeth do this to me?’

He came and sat beside her on the edge of the bed. She grasped his hand as he gulped the wine; his fingers felt like slivers of ice.

‘Eleanor?’ He stared over the wine cup. ‘What can be done? Is she possessed? Has some demon taken over her soul?’

Eleanor’s sharp eyes flickered in contempt. ‘She’s a liar and a mummer!’ she jibed. ‘She has taken to her bed with the vapours.’ She wiped the sweat from her husband’s brow. ‘Walter, she is tricking you, playing some evil game.’

‘How can she be?’ he replied. ‘You hear the knocking. I watch her hands. They are above the blankets. How could she arrange that, eh? Or the terrible smell or that voice? I have searched her room when she has been asleep and I can find nothing.’

‘In which case,’ Eleanor replied sharply, ‘she is possessed and should be removed, together with that aged beldame her nurse, to some other place. A hospital, a house for madcaps. Or . . .’

‘Or what?’ he asked hopefully.

If this is true, if her mother’s ghost returns, then it must be a demon in disguise to spit out such lies. And both she and the room must be exorcized and blessed.’

‘But who can do that?’

Eleanor prised the wine cup from his fingers. ‘Priests are two a penny.’ She put her arms round his neck and kissed him gently on his cheek. ‘Forget these ghosts. Your daughter is a trickster,’ she whispered. ‘And I’ll show her up for the liar she is!’

Sir John Cranston sat in the window seat of a bed chamber in a house in Milk Street just off West Cheap. He stared through the mullioned glass window which gave a good view of the church of St Mary Magdalen, watching a prosperous-looking relic-seller lay out his stall and shout for custom. Cranston smiled mirthlessly as the fellow crowed, his words carrying faintly from the street below.

‘Look, I have Jesus’s tooth which he lost at the age of twelve! A finger of St Sylvester! A piece of the saddle on which Christ sat when he entered Jerusalem. And in this casket, specially embossed, the arm of St Polycarp – the only thing left after the lions tore him to pieces in the arena at Rome! Gentle folk all, these relics, blessed by the Holy Father, can and will perform miracles!’

Cranston watched the crowd of easily gulled spectators cluster around. A rogue, he thought. He looked across at the corpse laid out on the four-poster bed, the winding sheet, carefully wrapped round it, exposing only the face which now lay back, jaw gaping, eyes half-open.

‘I am sorry, Oliver,’ Cranston muttered to the silent room. He got up, crossed to the four-poster bed and stared down at the grey, sunken face of his former comrade.

‘I am sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I, Sir John Cranston, King’s Coroner in London, a man who sups with princes, the husband of Lady Maude of Tweng in Somerset, father of the two poppets, my beloved sons Francis and Stephen – I am sorry I could not help you. You, my comrade-in-arms, my right hand in our battles against the French. Now you lie murdered and I can’t even prove it.’

Cranston gazed round the bed chamber, noting the rich possessions: the silver cups, the finely carved lavarium, cupboards and chairs quilted with taffeta, the silken cushions, testers, the gold filigree candelabra.

‘What does it profit a man,’ Cranston muttered, ‘if he gains the whole world – only to be murdered by his wife?’

He fished in his wallet, brought out two pennies, fixed them on the dead man’s eyes then covered the face with the sheet. He sighed, walked to the foot of the bed, and jumped at a sudden scurrying sound behind him.

‘Bloody rats!’ he muttered as he glimpsed the sleek, long-tailed, fat rodent slide under a cupboard and scrabble at the wooden panelling. Another darted from beneath the lavarium and easily dodged the candlestick an infuriated Cranston flung in its direction.

‘Bloody rats!’ he repeated. ‘The city’s infested with them. The heat’s brought them out.’

He stared at the lonely, sheeted corpse of his friend. He had arrived to find Sir Oliver Ingham not only dead for hours, but with two rats gnawing at his hand. Cranston had roared abuse at Ingham’s pretty young wife but she had smiled slyly and said she had done her best to protect her husband’s body since it had been found by a servant earlier in the day.

‘He had a weak heart, Sir John,’ she lisped, one soft, white hand on the arm of her ‘good kinsman’ Albric Totnes.

‘Some kinsman!’ Cranston muttered to himself. ‘I bet the two were dancing between the sheets even as Oliver died. Bloody murderers!’

He dug into his wallet and fished out a short letter Oliver Ingham had sent him only the previous day. Cranston sat down and read it again as his large, protuberant eyes filled with tears.

I am dying, old friend. I committed the worst folly of an old man: I married someone two score years younger than me. A veritable May and December marriage, but I thought she would love me. I found she did not. Yet her smile and touch were enough. Now I find she has betrayed me and could possibly plot my death. If I die suddenly, old friend, if I die alone, then it will be murder. My soul will cry to God for vengeance and to you for justice. Do not forget me.

Oliver

Cranston neatly folded the piece of parchment and put it away. He had shown it to no one yet he believed his friend was right. Something in Cranston’s blood whispered ‘Murder’, but how could he prove it? Sir Oliver had been found dead in his bed at mid-morning by a servant and Cranston, as both his friend and Coroner, had been sent for. He had arrived to find Ingham’s young wife, Rosamund, supping with her ‘kinsman’ in the solar below, whilst the family physician, a balding, ferret-faced man in smelly robes, had simply declared that Sir Oliver’s weak heart had given out and his soul was gone to God.

Cranston got up and walked to the side of the bed where the jug, knocked from its table by Oliver in his final apoplexy, still lay. At his insistence the doctor had sniffed the jug and then the cup, Oliver’s favourite, and solemnly pronounced:

‘No, Sir John, nothing in it except claret and perhaps a little of the foxglove I prescribed to keep Sir Oliver’s heart strong.’

‘Could more have been put in?’ Cranston asked.

‘Of course not!’ the physician snapped. ‘What are you implying, Sir John? A strong infusion of foxglove would leave the cup and jug reeking.’

Sir John had demurred and sent for Theobald de Troyes, his own physician, a man skilled in his art and patronized by many of the court. Theobald had given corpse, cup and jug a most thorough scrutiny.

‘The physician was correct,’ he announced. ‘You see, Sir John, if Sir Oliver was given too much foxglove, his corpse would bear some trace. I can find nothing except the effects of a sudden seizure, whilst the cup only carries traces of claret and a little foxglove, but no more than a good doctor would prescribe. The jug smells only of foxglove.’

‘Any mark of violence?’ Cranston asked.

‘None whatsoever, Sir John.’ Theobald lowered his eyes. ‘Except the rat bites on the fingers of the right hand. Sir John,’ the physician had pleaded, ‘Sir Oliver retired to bed last night, feeling ill. His servants heard him declare he felt weak and dizzy with pains in his chest. He locked his chamber door and left the key in the lock. The windows were similarly padlocked. No one could enter to do him mischief.’

Sir John had grunted, bade him farewell and sat in this chamber for the last two hours, wondering how murder could have been committed.

‘I wish Athelstan was here,’ he moaned to himself. ‘Perhaps he would see something wrong. Bloody monk! And I wish he would bring that sodding cat with him!’

Cranston thought of Athelstan’s fierce-looking torn cat, Bonaventure, whom his secretary and friend proclaimed was the best rat-catcher in Southwark. Cranston sighed, crossed himself, lowered his eyes and said the prayer for the dead.

‘Grant eternal rest to Oliver, my friend,’ he muttered as his mind drifted back down the passage of the years: Oliver, tall and strong, standing at his shoulder as the French knights broke through the English ranks at Poitiers. The roar of battle, the neighing of war steeds, the clash of swords, the silent purr of the arrow, the stabbing and hacking as they and a few others bore the brunt of the last desperate French attack. The ground underfoot had become slippery with blood. Cranston had stood, legs apart, whirling his sword like a great scythe against the French knights as they closed in for the kill.

A monstrous giant had rushed against him, his helmet in the shape of a devil’s head with wide, sweeping horns, its yellow plume tossing in the evening breeze. Cranston, glimpsing steel-encased arms swinging back a huge battle axe, had moved to one side, slipped and gone down in the mud. He had expected to receive his death blow but Oliver had stepped over him, taken the brunt of the blow with his own shield and, closing with the enemy, shoved his small misericorde dagger between cuirass and helm.

‘I owe you my life,’ Cranston confessed afterwards.

‘One day you can repay the debt!’ Oliver laughed as they both sat on the battle field toasting each other in cup after cup of the claret they’d filched from the French camp. ‘One day you
will
repay the debt.’

Cranston opened tear-filled eyes. He raised his right hand and stared at the corpse. ‘By the sod, I will!’ he muttered. He looked once more at the pathetic corpse under its winding sheet.

‘In our golden days,’ he whispered, ‘we were greyhounds racing for the hunt! Young hawks swooping for the kill! Ah, the days!’

Cranston tapped his broad girth, pulled the bed curtains close and stamped out of the chamber, pausing only to glance once more at the damaged lock.

He tramped like a Colossus down the stairs and marched into the solar where Lady Rosamund and ‘kinsman’ Albric were playing cat’s-cradle in the window seat. Rosamund looked all the more beautiful in a gown of black damask and carefully arranged veil of the same colour, her narrow face twisted into an approximation of grief. Cranston just glared at her, and even more contemptuously at her smooth-faced, sack-lipped, weak-eyed young lover.

‘You are finished, Sir John?’ Rosamund rose as the balding, red-faced giant marched towards her. She at least expected him to kiss her hand but Cranston seized her and Albric by the wrist and pulled both to their feet, squeezing hard as he pulled them close.

‘You, madam, are a murdering bitch! No, don’t widen your eyes and scream for help! And you, sir –’ Albric’s eyes fell away. ‘Look at me, man!’ Cranston squeezed harder. ‘Look at me, you whoreson bastard!’

Albric’s eyes came up.

‘You are party to this. If you had the courage I would challenge you to a duel and take the head from your shoulders. Don’t forget, the offer’s always there!’

‘Sir John, this is . . .’

‘Shut up!’ Cranston growled. ‘Upstairs lies the truest comrade a man could ask for. A good soldier, a shrewd merchant and the best of friends. Oliver’s heart may have become weak but he had the courage of a lion and the generosity of a saint. He adored you, you whey-faced mare, and you broke his heart! You betrayed him. I know you killed him. God knows how but I will discover it!’ Cranston shoved them both back into the window seat. ‘Believe me, I’ll see you both dance at Smithfield on the end of a rope!’

He spun on his heel and walked to the door.

‘Cranston!’ Rosamund yelled.

‘Yes, bitch!’ he replied over his shoulder.

‘I am innocent of my husband’s death.’

The Coroner made a rude sound with his lips.

‘In ten days’ time my husband’s will shall be read out. All his property and his wealth will be mine. I shall use that wealth to prosecute you in the courts for slander and contumacious speech.’

‘In ten days’ time,’ he retorted, ‘I’ll see you in Newgate! You may remove the corpse but nothing else. I have an inventory of what’s there!’

Cranston walked into the passageway, trying to curb his anger at the derisive laughter behind him. Ingham’s old retainer Robert stood near the front door, white-faced.

‘Sir John,’ he whispered. ‘How can you prove what you say?’

Cranston stopped, one hand on the latch, and stared at the servant’s lined, tired face.

I can and I will,’ he growled. ‘But tell me once more what happened yesterday.’

‘My master had been ill for days: fatigued, complaining of a lightness in his head and pains in his chest. He left supper last night with his wine cup. I saw him go to the buttery and fill the jug with a small infusion of foxglove to mix later with his wine as the physician had prescribed. Then he went to bed. He locked his chamber door and, because I was concerned, I stood guard.’ The man’s voice quavered, I thought I would let him rest but when the bells of St Mary Magdalen began to chime for mid-morning prayer, I tried to rouse him. I summoned the servants, we forced the door. The rest you know.’

‘Couldn’t someone have saved him from the rats?’ Cranston retorted.

‘Sir John, the house is infested with them. The Lady Rosamund hates cats or any animals.’

Sir John patted him on the shoulder. ‘Your master will have justice, I will see to that. Now, pray for his soul and take care of his corpse. One of my bailiffs is coming to seal the room.’

Sir John walked out into Milk Street. He entered the church of St Mary Magdalen and lit five candles before the smiling figure of the Virgin and Child.

‘One for Maude, two for the poppets,’ he whispered, thinking of his fine, sturdy sons, now six months old. ‘One for Athelstan,’ he murmured, ‘and one for Sir Oliver, God rest him.’

Sir John knelt, closed his eyes, and recited three Aves before realizing how thirsty he was.

He lumbered out of the church, down Milk Street and into a deserted Cheapside. The stall-owners had now packed up for the day, removing their possessions back to the front rooms of their shops, taking down their booths and leaving the broad thoroughfare to the bone and rag collectors, a lazy-eyed whore looking for custom, snapping mongrels and sleek, fat alley cats who couldn’t believe their luck at the myriad of rats which now plundered the mounds of rubbish and human refuse. A few tinkers and pedlars still touted for business; these shouted friendly abuse at Sir John, who gave as good as he got as he passed, swift as an arrow, into his favourite tavern, The Holy Lamb of God.