The Straw Men

PART ONE





‘Febris synocha: hectic fever’




Sir John Cranston, swathed in cloak, muffler and beaver hat, dug in his spurs and coaxed the great destrier, his old war horse Bayonne, closer to the scaffold, which rose like a black shadow against the snowbound countryside around St John’s Priory in Clerkenwell.

‘Do you recognize one of your friends, Sir John?’ A member of his escort, similarly garbed against the cold, called out.

‘I have no friends,’ Cranston replied over his shoulder. ‘At least, not here,’ he whispered to himself. He pushed Bayonne, who began to snort and paw the ground, nearer to the high-branched gallows. ‘I know, I know,’ Sir John soothed. ‘But at least there is no smell.’ Cranston lifted his considerable bulk up in the stirrups and stared at the frozen, decomposed cadaver, its head slightly awry, the thick, hempen rope strangling the scrawny throat like some malignant necklace. Crows and ravens had done their work, pecking out the eyes and all the other tender bits, nose, ears and lips. The corpse’s face was nothing but an icy-white, frozen mask with black holes; the rest of the shrivelled corpse had merged with the shabby tunic the felon had been hanged in. Cranston glimpsed the scrap of leather pinned just beneath the man’s shoulder. No one had bothered to remove it. Cranston did. He unrolled the stiffened leather scrap even as Bayonne, shaking its head in protest, backed away snorting, the hot breath rising like clouds in the freezing morning air.

‘Yes, yes,’ Cranston whispered, ‘we have seen worse, old friend. Remember that row of stakes at Poitiers . . .?’

‘Now, what do we have here?’ Cranston peered down at the execution clerk’s bold but faded script. ‘Edmund Cuttler, felon, nip and foist, caught six times, branded twice, hanged once.’ Cranston smiled at the gallows humour, then stared at the pathetic remains of Edmund Cuttler. ‘Nip, foist, bum-tailor, pickpocket – poor old butterfingers caught at last.’ Cranston squinted down at the scrap of parchment and studied the date. Cuttler had been hanged four days before Christmas.

‘Well,’ he murmured, ‘just in time to join the angels, if he didn’t steal their haloes.’ Cranston crossed himself, pattered a prayer for the faithful departed, pinned the execution docket back and turned his horse’s head. Once again Cranston stared along the winding path which snaked north of the old city walls. A cloying river fog had swept in, thickening the dense mist which swirled over Moorfields. A heavy pall of freezing whiteness had descended, smothering sight and sound. Somewhere deep in the fog the bells of Clerkenwell Priory boomed out the summons to divine office, calling the faithful to prayer on this the ninth of January, the Year of our Lord 1381 in the Octave of the Epiphany. Christmas, Yuletide and the Feast of the Kings were long past. No more revelry, Cranston ruefully thought. The green holly with its blood-red berries had withered. No more Christmas feasting on a juice-packed goose or brawn of beef in mustard sauce. The jugs of claret had been filled and emptied. Cranston had danced a merry jig with his lady wife Maude, his twin sons, the poppets, dancing beside him, and Gog and Magog, his two great mastiffs, throwing their heads back to carol their own deep-voiced hymn. No, the feast and the festivities were certainly over. Soon it would be the Feast of St Hilary and the courts would open. Cranston would return to the Guildhall to sit, listen and judge over a long litany of human weakness and mistakes, as well as downright depravity and wickedness. ‘How Master Clumshaw did feloniously beat upon Matilda Luckshim and did cause her death other than by natural means . . .’

Bayonne abruptly skidded on a piece of ice. Cranston broke from his brooding. He stared around the bleak-white wilderness then back at his own retinue, an entire conroy of mounted men-at-arms wearing the city livery under heavy serge cloaks. They sat, horses close together, quietly cursing why they had to be here. Cranston gripped the reins of his own horse, his fingers going beneath his cloak to stroke the pommel of his sword. When he first arrived here he’d found it boring, freezing cold, highly uncomfortable . . . but now . . .? The mist abruptly shifted and parted to reveal ruins which, some claimed, dated back to the days of Caesar. The Lord Coroner blinked, straining both eyes and ears. Had he glimpsed movement? Had he heard the clink of metal? Bayonne also became agitated, as if the old war horse could smell the approach of battle, see the lowered lance, hear the scrape of sword and dagger, the creak of harness and the ominous clatter of war bows being strung and arrows notched. Cranston quietened the destrier, fumbled beneath his cloak and brought out the miraculous wine skin, which never seemed to empty, took a deep gulp of the blood-red claret and sighed in pleasure. He pushed the stopper back even as he wondered what Brother Athelstan, his secretarius and closest friend, would be doing on a morning like this. ‘Probably preaching to his parishioners about the common good,’ Cranston whispered to himself. He breathed out noisily. Athelstan’s parishioners! Were they, or people like them, responsible for bringing him and the rest to wait by a frozen gibbet at a desolate, ice-bound crossroads for a delegation travelling as fast and as furious as they could from Dover? Was an ambush being planned, devised and carried out by the Upright Men?