Sir John commandeered a table in the corner, greeting the ale wife as if she was a long lost sister. The lady looked like a female incarnation of Satan. She had a hooked, perpetually dripping nose, skin as rough as a sack and bleary, bloodshot eyes. She munched continuously on her gums and her fingers were dirty and greasy down to the knuckles. Her cloak of Lincoln green covered a red kirtle which hung a few inches above tallow-smeared shoes. Athelstan looked at her and prayed to God to forgive him for all he felt was disgust. She, with her wide hips, dirty grey hair and face as wrinkled as a pig’s ear, looked as blowsy as any harridan from hell. Athelstan sat looking at her in wonderment, constantly marvelling at the difference in women, contrasting this hag to the beauty of Lady Isabella. He grimly reminded himself that his vow of celibacy had certain consolations.

Cranston, however, acted as if she was an old friend, flattered and fussed her. She winked wickedly back at him, slyly insinuating that she would satisfy all his wants.

‘Enough of that, you wicked wench!’ Cranston teased. ‘Food and ale first, then other comforts perhaps.’ He dropped one eyelid. ‘Later.’

The ale wife went away cackling and came back to serve both of them huge tankards slopping over with ale and a shared platter of meat mixed with onions and leeks swimming in a sea of grease. Cranston stuffed his mouth. He downed one tankard and, when the friar nodded, helped himself to the second.

‘You are not eating, Brother?’

Athelstan toyed with the food on the platter in front of him.

‘I don’t feel hungry. I am wondering what we do next.’

Cranston, his mouth full of food, stared up at the blackened ceiling, coveting the leg of ham hooked there to be cured in the smoke.

‘There’s nothing much to do,’ he replied. ‘We have our suspicions but no proof. Oh, there’s something wrong, we all know there is. Two suicides, one murder . . . but no proof whatsoever, no evidence. We should file our record, send copies to the sheriff, go back and tell Chief Justice Fortescue that whatever secret Springall had died with him, and then return to our normal business.’

‘There’s something wrong,’ Athelstan repeated. He peered across the tavern, watching a group of men busy baiting a relic-seller who claimed he had Aaron’s beard in a sack and was prepared to sell it to them for a few coins.

‘It’s like grasping a slippery fish or a greasy pole. You think you have it, then it slips away.’

Cranston stuck his red, bulbous nose into a tankard, took one slurp and slammed it down on the table.

‘Very well, Brother, what is wrong? What do you think?’

‘I believe there were no suicides. I think all three deaths were murder, and I think the murderer still walks!’

‘And your proof?’