Stone of Destiny, page 24
‘Nonsense,’ Sylvester muttered. However, the Blackrobe now looked truly frightened.
‘Oh yes,’ Norbert replied. ‘I have examined the animal’s corpse, the popping eyes, the rigid muscles and that dirty froth filling the mouth and staining the lips. It’s the same.’
Athelstan also noticed the marked contusions around the right wrist, much clearer than similar marks on the corpse which had been brought to St Erconwald’s.
‘More importantly …’ Norbert stretched down and, using the small cane, opened one of the pockets of the monkey’s cape. He dug in the pointed cane and brought out a small blob of sticky substance. The prior held it up for all to see. ‘I have examined this mess carefully. I believe it is a sweetmeat, a comfit, perhaps two moulded together by decay.’
‘And the conclusion?’ Athelstan remarked.
‘Is that these same sweetmeats are poisoned. Hence Barak’s death and the symptoms he presents.’ The prior glanced at Sylvester, who now sat a broken man in the face of the evidence pressing against him.
‘I think it is best, Sir John,’ Athelstan offered, ‘if we adjourn for a while. I need to reflect.’
PART SEVEN
‘Let us hasten quickly to our country.’
Cranston agreed, ordering Flaxwith to keep a strict watch on both Sylvester and Sinclair, as well as look after Prior Norbert. He also ordered the corpse to be removed and fresh herbs to be sprinkled on the fire and braziers, so as to sweeten the air. He and Athelstan then washed their hands and broke their fast.
Afterwards, Athelstan excused himself and went round to scrutinize the stone brought from The Bannockburn. He examined it very carefully, then looked at the one Cranston had brought from Westminster.
‘What is it, Brother? Is there something wrong?’
‘For the moment, Sir John, leave it. Let us keep to the issue in hand.’ And Athelstan swiftly summarized what they had learnt from Norbert. The prior was brought up to answer a few more questions, Athelstan eventually declared himself satisfied and the coroner swiftly reconvened the Inquisicio.
‘It would seem,’ Athelstan began, once everyone had taken their seats, ‘that the drama I depicted was not complete. The Stone of Destiny was removed on the Wednesday with all the eerie occurrences I have described. Barak the monkey did escape and cavorted around that nave, where his shadow darted and flitted in the poor light. Then Barak disappeared, probably through the Devil’s door. No alarm was raised, was it, Prior Norbert? Could you just confirm that for me?’
The prior nodded in agreement.
‘And why should the alarm be raised?’ Athelstan continued. ‘Barak could come and go as he wished as he did probably on that Wednesday evening, going in and out of that lancet window.’ Athelstan lifted a hand. ‘However, I suggest that sometime on Friday, before the first Sunday in Advent, Barak returned to his master’s chamber. Scampering around, he came across the platter of sweetmeats already primed with the most deadly poison. He ate one of these and put others in his pocket, then fled his master’s chamber to enjoy the spoils. Of course the poor creature falls ill and, weakened by the poison, cowers in some hiding place. Prior Norbert, during the adjournment, you informed us that the corpse was found three days ago.’
‘Yes, yes it was.’
‘So we can conclude that you, Sylvester, prepared those poisonous sweetmeats, your pet monkey ate some and only then did he disappear. Naturally it was not an issue you wished to be investigated. You must have realized that Barak had taken some of the poisoned sweetmeats and would die. Hence the story of Barak’s escape became common knowledge over that Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Just one of those unhappy occurrences. As for the corpse of the monkey brought into St Erconwald’s, that was mere coincidence. Pet monkeys are common enough in London, especially amongst the rich of Cheapside, whilst it was difficult to make out any distinguishing mark, especially on either wrist. People believed a monkey had escaped and a monkey was found dead. They put the two together and left it at that.’
‘Where did you find Barak’s corpse?’ Cranston asked.
‘In God’s Acre, some of our lay brothers were collecting holly to decorate our halls and green our chambers. The poor creature must have crawled in there and died …’ Norbert’s words hung in the air, a deep silence broken by an occasional sob from Sacristan Sylvester.
‘Brother Athelstan, Sir John, this Inquisicio is finished, yes?’ Cranston glanced at Athelstan, who nodded.
‘In which case,’ the prior stood up, ‘I need urgent words with you alone.’
Cranston agreed. The chamber was cleared. Sylvester and Sinclair were taken into custody by Flaxwith’s bailiffs, while Sir John’s henchman stood on guard outside. Once the judgement chamber had emptied and the door closed, Prior Norbert retook his seat before the dais. ‘Sir John, Brother Athelstan …’
‘Prior Norbert,’ Athelstan interrupted. ‘Sir John and I thank you for your intervention and support. It is deeply appreciated.’
‘I had no choice. Barak’s corpse was discovered some time ago. I grew deeply concerned when I listened to your indictment against our sacristan. I became convinced of his guilt, even though this is only an Inquisicio, not a trial.’
‘That is correct,’ Cranston barked, drumming his fingers on the manuscripts before him.
‘Sinclair,’ Norbert continued, ‘is guilty of nothing more than … well,’ the prior spread his hands, ‘deception whilst trying to retrieve and recover a treasure which, in truth, belongs to Scotland. Sinclair’s greatest mistake is that he failed. Let him go …’
‘I would agree,’ Cranston replied. ‘Moreover, Sinclair enjoys status and privileges as the accredited envoy of King Robert. Consequently, any further intervention with him would be fruitless. Sylvester, however, is a killer, an assassin responsible for the deaths of five innocents. He deserves to be hanged, drawn and quartered.’
‘He is a Blackrobe, a Benedictine,’ Norbert retorted. ‘Sylvester will plead benefit of clergy and, in public at least, he will be supported by our Lord Abbot, the entire Benedictine Order, not to mention the bishops and …’ Norbert added wearily, ‘Even the Holy Father. Now Sylvester has not confessed, but the evidence presses firmly against him. On the balance of all probability he is a murderer, most worthy of death, of being strangled on a gibbet. Yet, Brother Athelstan, as you well know, there are other sharper living deaths. Sylvester will be tried and judged by our Lord Abbot. I will be sitting at his right hand. Sylvester will undoubtedly be found guilty but he will not die, not yet. He will be taken to a small island off the Cornish coast, a rocky outcrop where the great storms roll. He will live on bread and water. He will be forced to reflect on his overweening arrogance and ambition. He, I am sure, devised the plot to return the Stone of Destiny to Scotland. Many would applaud him, Scots in particular. Sylvester, however, did not really care for the country of his birth, its prince or its people. Sylvester was motivated by bounding ambition. He wanted to bring home the Stone of Destiny and use that achievement to advance his career even further. Brother Robert and the others were just obstacles to be callously removed.’ Norbert paused to catch his breath. ‘Believe me, Sir John, Brother Athelstan, our former sacristan, will live a life of hard penance on that rock. The time will come, sooner or later, that he will pine for death.’
‘We accept your assurances, Prior Norbert,’ Cranston declared. ‘Now this business has finished. We have a hanging to attend.’
‘The mills of God, eh Brother Athelstan?’
‘The mills of God, Prior Norbert,’ Athelstan agreed. ‘They grind slowly but they never stop.’
Cranston and Athelstan hurried up Cheapside. Already the crowds were swollen, all thronging up to the formidable House of Iron, Newgate, the nightmare prison. A place of stygian darkness, its narrow stone passageways glistening with filthy grease and reeking constantly of a foul stench. A world of the most profound darkness, where lunatics and madmen roamed the galleries, half naked, loaded with chains. Remart the killer, the self-confessed Flayer, was dragged from this place of perpetual midnight. He was fastened to a sled pulled by an ancient dray horse. Remart, garbed only in a loincloth, had been dragged through the City, along the thoroughfares of Cheapside as well as the filth-packed narrow runnels of Whitefriars. Here the dark-dwellers lurked, a surging mob crammed into rotting houses, thick as lice on a slice of rotten meat. These denizens of the night forgot their own misery to heap on insults and hurl whatever rubbish they could over the prisoner. By the time the execution party returned to the soaring gibbet outside Newgate, Remart was a living wound, covered in dirt from head to toe. When Cranston and Athelstan met him, with the Hangman of Rochester, on the platform beneath the lofty gibbet, Remart was groaning and protesting, though his eyes still glistened with malice.
The condemned man rested against the gibbet ladder placed alongside the one the hangman would use. Athelstan stared across the platform and repressed a shiver. The purveyors of death had arrived. Walter Brasenose, master butcher and leading member of the Fleshers Guild, was preparing for the gruesome ritual. The lords of the Guildhall had decreed that Remart, known as the Flayer, would hang, choke to death, after which his corpse, because of his own heinous crimes, would be flayed, peeled, and the skin nailed to the door of the gatehouse on the Southwark side of London Bridge. Brasenose and his two apprentices, their faces concealed behind grotesque masks, their bodies covered by thick red leather aprons, were laying out the knives, cutters, slicers and prongs of their grisly trade. They would show each item to the crowd who would roar their approval. Athelstan moved away, closed his eyes and quietly prayed. He hated such occasions, yet many Londoners viewed them as a holiday. Indeed, despite the iron-hard cold, the City had turned out in droves to watch the Flayer die. The usual tinkers, traders, cunning men, felons, naps and foists were also in attendance. Hot-pot girls and pastry boys pushed through the crowd, offering food and drink. The Choir of the Damned sang mournful songs whilst Friars of the Sack and other charitable groups intoned hymns of mourning. The crowd was a sea of moving colour and constant noise, surging up against the high platform on which the gibbet reared black against the sky.
The execution ground was guarded by two rings of Tower archers, under the personal command of Sir John. These stood behind a line of City pikemen, war bows notched and ready. The braziers close to the scaffold flared into life as the butcher boys, Brasenose’s apprentices, poured on oil. The air turned rancid. Black smoke billowed backwards and forwards. Guildhall trumpeters came up the steps on to the scaffold.
‘Sir John, Brother Athelstan.’ The Hangman of Rochester sauntered across. He pointed back at the condemned. ‘Remart wants words with all three of us.’ Cranston looked at Athelstan, who nodded, and they went across. Remart, bruised and wounded, forced a smile, his battered lips curling back like those of a dog.
‘I am to hang?’
‘You certainly are,’ Cranston retorted.
‘Slowly?’
‘As slow as I can make it,’ the hangman replied.
‘Brother Athelstan, Sir John. One boon.’ Remart’s lower lip trembled. The prisoner leaned against the ladder, as if listening to the clamour of the crowd roll across the scaffold.
‘What?’ Athelstan demanded. ‘Remart, do not waste our time.’
‘The treasure chest from the Savoy Palace,’ Remart blurted out. ‘I was there, but,’ he shrugged bony shoulders, ‘I did not see it taken. Ursula did. She claimed she glimpsed a cowled masked figure, on that hot summer afternoon, push a barrow into St Erconwald’s cemetery and bury what it contained in Paltoc’s family grave.’ Remart paused, blinking and wetting dry lips.
‘The candle burns,’ Athelstan warned. ‘In a word, What?’
‘Ursula dug the chest up, she carted it away. She then came back to disguise what she’d done but by then the rebel army had swept through St Erconwald’s.’
‘And then what, briefly now?’
‘Well, priest, Ursula forced the locks and clasps, pushed back the lid to find nothing, except old pewter cups, goblets, dishes and platters.’
‘What!’
‘That’s what she found. She sold the contents to Joscelyn at The Piebald. You can ask him yourself and see what she sold.’
‘Oh, I know that already,’ Athelstan retorted. ‘They were being used on that evening when those two rogues Halpen and Mildew were lavishly entertained. So I know that’s the truth, whilst Benedicta found the coffer – the treasure chest – hidden away in Ursula’s house.’ Athelstan closed his eyes then opened them and glanced at Cranston. ‘Sir John, you can see the chest for yourself, the work of a true craftsman, and the same goes for its many clasps and locks. Ursula broke those. She also chiselled away any insignia which might betray the true origins of that chest. Well I never.’ Athelstan walked away and came back, aware of the crowd, the noise surging like the sea. Crows and ravens circled beneath the dull grey sky. Master Brasenose and his apprentices were sharpening their knives, the scraping sound echoing eerily across the execution platform. The trumpeters were now waiting. Cranston had taken the Proclamation of Death from his wallet. The hangman already had one foot on his ladder, his assistants eager to push Remart on to the other.
‘Is that all you can tell us?’
‘Yes, priest, and me?’
Athelstan nodded at the hangman. ‘When the moment comes,’ he murmured.
‘I’ll send him to hell,’ the hangman retorted. ‘And he can tell the Lord Satan I sent him there.’
‘No,’ Athelstan replied. ‘Giles, when Sir John decides, send our prisoner as swiftly as you can to God. He’s been expecting him.’
Athelstan and Cranston walked away to the far end of the scaffold.
‘Remart told us the truth,’ Athelstan murmured. ‘But why was that chest full of cheap kitchenware?’
‘Think, Brother, last June Gaunt left London for Scotland. The last thing he wanted was a war in the north. A Scottish invasion across the March into the northern shires. He knew as we all did that London was about to erupt. So he had to escape the City, as well as placate the Scots.’
‘True, true,’ Athelstan murmured. ‘And I suspect Gaunt took the Scottish regalia, including the Crown and the Black Rood with him. I believe he offered these as a peace offering to King Robert.’
‘In truth, Brother, yes. He probably intended to deal with the issue on his return. However, during his absence, he did not want some spy, some snoop to notice what was missing. Remember, Gaunt may have his minions, but they also have their price, and they are ready to sell their master for the right one. Indeed, Paltoc the mercenary is a fine example. He once served Gaunt but, when he was turned out, he became Gaunt’s enemy. Now, be that as it may, to anyone who looked in the arca, the treasure chest was still there, heavily locked and firmly bolted. If anyone lifted it, it would be heavy. To all intents and purposes there was nothing wrong. If the revolt had not occurred, if the Savoy had not been pillaged, the truth about the regalia might have stayed hidden for decades. Little wonder that Gaunt was so furious that his palace was sacked. He must have been secretly worried that the false treasure might come to public notice.’ Cranston shook his head. ‘God knows, Brother, where the regalia really is.’ The coroner laughed sharply. ‘All such scheming, tangled and twisted, all brought to nothing by Ursula the poor pig woman.’
‘Oh, Sir John, I think there is more.’ He tugged at Cranston’s sleeve, drawing him even closer, for the noise and clamour of the crowd thronging around the scaffold had grown, although it would hinder the sharpest eavesdropper.
‘Brother, what is it?’
‘This is all a nonsense, my Lord Coroner, we still don’t have the full truth.’
‘Brother?’
Athelstan pointed across the scaffold.
‘Look, Sir John, let’s hasten this malignant to judgement then use all your power and influence. We need to meet Prior Sinclair urgently, not at Westminster but in your private chamber at The Lamb of God.’
‘Brother, what do you intend?’
‘Sir John, trust me, and we will have the truth of all this.’
‘My Lord Coroner?’ The hangman called out. ‘The sheriff’s men are waiting.’
Cranston patted Athelstan on the shoulder and joined the other officials gathered at the foot of the gibbet. Trumpets brayed time and again and that deep silence which occurs just before a hanging descended. Again the trumpets. A drum began to beat. The hangman and his assistants pushed Remart up to the top of the ladder. The hangman followed nimbly on the one alongside. Remart, hands bound, was made to turn. The noose was put over his head and tightened. A trumpet shrilled. The hangman and his acolytes swiftly descended. All remained silent. The hangman gripped the ladder holding Remart and abruptly twisted it. The murderer’s body fell like a stone, ending in a sharp crack as his neck was broken.
‘God help you,’ Athelstan whispered. ‘But you have gone to judgement and I will be off to The Lamb of God.’
Athelstan and Cranston made themselves comfortable in the luxurious solar of The Lamb of God. Opposite them sat a rather nervous and subdued Prior Sinclair, who picked at the meat on his platter then turned to take a deep gulp from his wine goblet. The day had drawn on. Athelstan had left the execution ground. He had paused to say a prayer in a nearby church, then came to sit in the quiet of the tavern while Sir John brought the proceedings outside Newgate to an end. Remart had gone to God, though his naked corpse still dangled from the lofty gibbet outside the prison. Nevertheless, it was finished, and the crowd which had flocked to watch Remart die had dispersed to the many taverns along Cheapside. Once proceedings were over, Sir John had visited Westminster armed with all his warrants. The coroner had secured Prior Sinclair’s release from his chamber prison, and brought him here to be wined and dined but closely questioned.
‘Prior Sinclair.’ Athelstan dabbed his mouth on a napkin and leaned across the table. ‘I thank you for coming here.’
