Athelstan gazed across the tap room, watching two drunken gamblers shove and push each other over a game of dice.

‘Even so,’ he murmured, ‘why should Brampton kill his master and take his own life? Revenge followed by remorse?’

A loud snore greeted his question. Cranston had now fallen back against the wall, his eyes closed, a beatific smile on his fat, good-natured face.

‘Was Sir Thomas murdered because of the secret?’ Athelstan muttered. ‘Or was his wife an adulteress, playing the two-backed beast with her husband’s brother?’

Some men kill for gold, he thought, others for lust. And Dame Ermengilde? Did she play a part in this charade, trying to advance the interests of her favourite son, Sir Richard? And the other two, Vechey and Allingham? Strange creatures, battening like fleas on the skill and acumen of Sir Thomas. And, of course, young Buckingham. Athelstan shuddered. He had met men like Buckingham, with their fluttering eye-lashes and graceful, dainty gestures; men who preferred to be women but hid their natures under the cloak of darkness lest they be discovered and boiled alive at Smithfield. Finally, the good priest Crispin. Was his leg as malformed as he pretended? When he first met the priest in the solar Athelstan had noticed how ungainly he walked, but when later he had joined them in Springall’s chamber, Athelstan had observed how the priest had changed into Spanish riding boots, the heel of one slightly raised to lessen his deformity. In these he moved quietly and quickly.

Sir John suddenly groaned and sat up.

‘Oh, God, Athelstan,’ he moaned, ‘I feel sick!’

The coroner rose and staggered to the door.

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Outside the alehouse Sir John paused to vomit, afterwards loudly protesting he was all right. Athelstan linked his arm through that of the coroner and they carefully made their way down Cheapside. It was raining and had become messy underfoot. They were stopped by the Watch, a collection of arrogant servants and retainers from the households of some of the great aldermen. They would have arrested them both, delighted to pick on a friar. Athelstan, however, informed them his companion was no less a personage than Sir John Cranston, who was now ill, so they stepped aside, doing their best to hide their smirks. As Athelstan turned off Cheapside into Poultry, he could still hear their loud guffaws of laughter.

The coroner’s house was a pleasant, two-storeyed affair in an alleyway off the Poultry. Athelstan hammered on the door until Sir John’s wife appeared - a small, birdlike woman much younger than Cranston, who greeted her husband as if he was Hector back from the wars.

‘The weight of office!’ she shrilled. ‘It’s the weight of office which makes him drink.’

And, grabbing Sir John roughly by the hand, she unceremoniously pushed him upstairs.