The Nightingale Gallery

our lives? Even the church fathers condemn it.'
    'In which case,' Athelstan answered, they condemn the star of Bethlehem!'
    Sir John belched, grabbed the ever-present wineskin slung over his saddle horn, took a deep gulp and, raising one buttock, farted as loudly as he could. Athelstan decided to ignore Sir John's sentiments, verbal or otherwise. He knew the coroner to be at heart kindly and well intentioned.
    'What business takes us to Cheapside?' he asked.
    'Sir Thomas Springall,' Cranston replied. 'Or rather, the late Sir Thomas Springall, once a powerful merchant and goldsmith. Now he is as dead as that rat over there.' Cranston pointed to a pile of rubbish, a mixture of animal and human excrement, broken pots, and, lying on top, a mangy rat, its white and russet body swollen with corruption.
    'So a goldsmith has died?'
    'Has been murdered! Apparently citizen Springall was not beloved of his servant, Edmund Brampton. Last night Brampton left a poisoned cup in his master's chamber. Sir Thomas was found dead and Brampton discovered later hanging from a beam in one of the garrets.'
    'So we are to go there now?'
    'Not immediately,' Cranston retorted. 'First, Chief Justice Fortescue wishes to see us at his home Alphen House, in Castle Yard off Holborn.'
    Athelstan closed his eyes. Chief Justice Fortescue ranked foremost among the people he did not want to see. A powerful courtier, a corrupt judge, a man who took bribes and ran errands for those more powerful than he, the Chief Justice's ruthlessness was a byword amongst the petty law breakers of Southwark.
    'So,' Cranston interrupted jovially,*we meet the Chief Justice and then go to examine death in Cheapside. Merchants who are murdered by their servants! Servants who hang themselves! Tut, tut! What is the world coming to?'
    'God only knows,' replied Athelstan. 'When coroners drink and fart and make cutting remarks about men who are still men with all their failings, be they priest or merchant.'
    Sir John laughed, pushed his horse closer and slapped Athelstan affectionately on the back.
    'I like you, Brother,' he bellowed. 'But God knows why your Order sent you to Southwark, and your prior ordered you to be a coroner's clerk!'
    Athelstan made no reply. They'd had this conversation before, Sir John probing whilst he defended. Some day, Athelstan decided, he would tell Sir John the full truth, although he suspected the coroner knew it already.
    'Is it reparation?' Cranston queried now.
    'Curiosity,' Athelstan replied, 'can be a grave sin, Sir John.'
    Again the coroner laughed and deftly turned the conversation to other matters.
    They continued along the narrow stinking streets, following the river towards London Bridge, pushing across market places where the houses reared up to block out the rising sun. Near the bridge they met others, great swaggering lords who rode about on their fierce, iron-shod destriers in a blaze of silk and furs, their heads held high – proud, arrogant, and as ruthless as the hawks they carried. Athelstan studied them. Their women were no better, with their plucked eyebrows and white pasty faces, their soft sensuous bodies clothed in lawn and samite, their heads covered with a profusion of lacy veils. He knew that only a coin's throw away a woman, pale and skeletal, sat crooning over her dying baby, begging for a crust to eat. Athelstan felt his own soul dim, darken with depression. God should send fire, he thought, or a leader to raise up the poor. He bit his lip. If he preached what he thought, he would be guilty of sedition and the prior had kept him under a solemn vow to remain silent, to serve but not to complain.
    Cranston and Athelstan had to stop and wait a while. The entrance to the bridge was thronged with people preparing to cross to the northern parts of the city to the great market place and shops in Cheapside. Athelstan pulled his hood over his head and pinched his nostrils against the odour from an open sewer full of the turds of nearby households, dregs from the dye houses and wash houses, and rotting carrion which had been dumped there. The area was thick with the foul, tarry smell from the tattered cottages where tanners and leather workers plied their trade. Cranston nudged him and pointed across to where an inquest was being held over a dead pig, and two constables in striped gowns were scurrying about trying to discover whether there were any bawds, strumpets or scalds in the area in order to arrest them.
    'Are there hot