The House of the Red Slayer

church. She smiled sheepishly at the friar who stood waiting patiently at the foot of the steps. Cecily the courtesan followed. Athelstan knew it was she by the gale of cheap perfume which always preceded her. He closed his eyes and prayed that the only tasks Cecily performed now were to work as a seamstress for Benedicta and to clean the church. He remembered the parish joke: how Cecily had lain down in the cemetery more often than the parish coffin. Pemel, the old Flemish lady, came next; her hair dyed red, her face painted white, a woman of indeterminate background and even more uncertain morals. Athelstan quietly vowed to watch her. He’d heard a story that Pemel did not swallow the host but took it home and placed it in her beehive to keep the bees healthy. If he caught he, he would not offer the Eucharist or accept her silly answer that the honeycombs from her hives were always in the shape of a church! At last Watkin the dung-collector, sexton, warden of St Erconwald’s and leader of the parish council, arrived. His ever growing brood of children clattered down the aisle in their wooden clogs; one of them, Crim, with at least his hands washed, slipped next to Athelstan to serve as altar boy. The friar felt slightly ridiculous, a dirty-faced Crim on one side and Bonaventure the cat on the other. Manyer the hangman came last and slammed the door shut.
    Athelstan took a deep breath and made the sign of the cross, vowing he would concentrate on the mysteries of the Mass and not on the evils in the cemetery outside.

    Sir John Cranston, Coroner of the City of London, was standing in Blind Basket Alley off Poor Jewry. The runnel cut like a sliver of ice between the backs of the overhanging houses. The good coroner stamped his feet and blew on his mittened fingers in a futile attempt to warm them.
    ‘Hold that torch higher!’ he snapped at the alderman’s clerk. Cranston stared at the men around him, dark shapes in the poor light, and then up at the shuttered window of the sombre, desolate house. He saved his most venomous glance for Luke Venables, alderman of the ward, who had roused him from a warm bed. Sir John liked his sleep at the best of times, particularly after a strenuous week’s work. Two days ago he had gone to the church of St Stephen in Walbrook to examine the corpse of William Clarke who had climbed the belfry to look for a pigeon’s nest. As the idiot crawled from beam to beam he’d slipped and fallen, being killed instantly. Cranston had adjudged that the beam was to blame and imposed a fine of fourpence on the angry vicar. Yesterday Cranston had been to West Chepe to examine the corpse of William Pannar, a skinner, found lying near the Conduit. Pannar had been stupid enough to go to a physician with some ailment or other. Of course he had been leeched of blood, so much so that the poor bastard had collapsed on the way home and died on the spot Cranston chewed his lip as he banged on the door again. Yet it was not just his work which bothered him, there was something else: his beloved wife Maude was not being honest with him and Cranston suspected she was hiding a dreadful secret. Sir John was infatuated with his wife and could not resist the pleasures of the bed chamber, yet recently, last night included, he had snuggled up next to her only to have his advances rejected. She had whimpered her protests softly in the darkness, would not tell him the reason and refused to be comforted. Now, in the early hours, this idiot Venables had brought him out into the cold in order to force entry into this mysterious house. Cranston hammered on the door again but there was no reply, only the muttered oaths and shuffling feet of his companions.
    ‘So!’ Cranston turned to the alderman. ‘Tell me again what the problem is.‘
    Venables knew Sir John and stared anxiously at the bewhiskered red face, the icy-blue eyes and furrowed brow under the great, woollen beaver hat. Sir John was a good man, Venables reflected, but when he lost his temper he could be the devil incarnate. Venables pointed to the broken ale-stake jutting out just above the door.
    ‘The facts are these, Sir John. The householder here is Simon de Wyxford. This is his ale-house. He had no family, only a servant, Roger Droxford. Eight days ago master and servant had a violent quarrel which continued all day. On December the sixth the servant, Roger, opened the alehouse as usual, set out the benches and sold wine, but nothing was seen of