I stopped a passer-by, a middle-aged man with a square face and black hair under a wide cap, and asked if he knew which was Master Oldroyd’s house.

‘Who wants t’know?’ he replied, looking at me keenly. I noticed his hands were covered in scars as Oldroyd’s had been.

‘We come from St Mary’s,’ I said. ‘I am afraid he has met with an accident.’

‘An accident? Peter?’ His face filled with concern.

‘Did you know him, sir?’

‘Of course I did, he is in my guild and a friend too. What happened, maister lawyer?’

‘He fell from his ladder early this morning while working on the monastery church. I fear he is dead.’

The man frowned. ‘Fell from his ladder?’

‘The circumstances are uncertain. We have been appointed to investigate by the King’s coroner,’ I said. ‘If you knew him, Master…’

‘Ralph Dike. I’m a master glazier, as Peter was. He was a good man.’

‘Perhaps you could tell us about Master Oldroyd. Does he have a family?’

‘His wife and three bairns all died in the plague in ’38.’ The glazier crossed himself. ‘He had only an apprentice.’

No family then, I thought with relief. Master Dike pointed to a house two doors down. ‘Peter lived there.’ He gave us a long look, then took a step away. ‘I have business now,’ he said. ‘I must tell the guild of this.’ He turned and walked hastily off.

‘He didn’t want to talk, did he?’ Barak asked.

‘I think he was suspicious of us, southerners from St Mary’s. Let’s see his house.’

The property Master Dike had pointed out needed plastering, and the paint on the front door was cracked and flaking. I knocked, but there was no reply so I took the key and turned it in the lock. As I did so Barak nudged me, nodding at a window in the house opposite. A woman’s face was quickly withdrawn. I pushed the door open.

The house was built round a central hall, like Master Wrenne’s but smaller, with a hearth in the middle and a smoke-hole in the black-raftered ceiling. The ashes of last night’s fire lay in the little grate. I noticed the plate displayed on the buffet was mostly pewter, the furnishings clean but cheap.

‘Hullo!’ I called out. ‘Anyone at home?’ There was no reply.

‘That’s odd,’ Barak said. ‘You’d expect a servant to be around, or the apprentice.’

I walked over to an inner door. It gave on to a hallway doors, and a wooden staircase leading to an upper floor. Opening the first door I found myself in the kitchen. I went to the oven; it was warm. Someone had been baking recently. Apart from faint sounds from the street, the house was silent. I crossed to the other door, which led to an enclosed yard with a gate and a furnace in an open shed in one corner. Windows of stained and painted glass mostly, with two broken, were stacked in piles against the walls. I shuddered, remembering that blood-soaked cart. I saw Oldroyd had been separating out some of the small painted panes for reuse. He had laid them on a cloth, representations of birds and animals and mythic beasts. None had religious themes. ‘It’s like he told us,’ Barak said. ‘He’s been taking the glass to reuse.’ I bent and looked down at the figures; some of them were beautiful, hundreds of years old. I wondered if they had come from St Mary’s.

Barak had gone over to the furnace. A large bucket full of pieces of glass showing monks at prayer stood beside it, for melting down no doubt. Barak touched the side of the furnace. ‘It’s cold,’ he said.

‘Let’s try upstairs.’

We went back in and climbed up to a little hallway with two more doors. I opened one; it gave on to a bedroom, empty save for a truckle bed with a straw mattress and an open trunk containing clothes and a blue cloak.

‘The apprentice’s room, perhaps,’ I said.

‘Lucky to have his own room.’

‘Poor Oldroyd may have had no other use for the room if his family all died of plague.’ I opened the other door, which led into a master bedroom. A wall-cloth in green and yellow stripes went round the whole room, leaving a gap only for the window. There was a good bed with a feather mattress and a couple of big solid trunks, carved and painted. Opening them I found a stock of clothes, neatly folded.

‘Wonder where he kept his papers,’ I said, then turned as Barak laid a hand on my arm. He held a finger to his lips for silence and nodded over his shoulder. ‘There’s someone on the stairs,’ he mouthed. ‘I heard the boards creak.’ Motioning me to stay where I was, he crept to the door, listened a moment, then threw it open. There was a shrill cry and he stepped back in, his arm round the neck of a plump lad in his early teens with a shock of red hair and an apprentice’s blue coat.

‘Listening at the keyhole,’ Barak said. ‘Tried to bite me when I grabbed him, the little weasel.’ He released the boy, giving him a shove that sent him spinning against the opposite wall, then stood with his back to the door. The lad stared between us, his eyes wide.

‘Are you Master Oldroyd’s apprentice?’ I asked.

He gulped. ‘Ay, maister.’

‘We are King’s officials.’ The words made the boy open his terrified eyes even wider. ‘We come from St Mary’s Abbey. What is your name?’

‘P-Paul Green, maister.’

‘You live here?’

‘Ay, sir, with Maister Oldroyd.’

‘Have you been with your master long?’ I asked more gently.

‘Two years. I were ’prenticed at fourteen.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I meant no harm, maister. I came back from fetching the charcoals and heard voices in Maister Oldroyd’s bedroom.’ I saw the boy’s eyes flicker to a spot low down on the wall, just for a moment. ‘I thought it might be robbers, sir.’

‘There’s a sack of charcoal at the foot of the stairs,’ Barak confirmed.

‘Are there no other servants here?’ I asked.

‘Only the cook, sir. She’s gone to try and find some fowl for maister’s supper. There’s a shortage, everything in t’city’s being bought up by King’s purveyors. Maister told me to set up furnace to melt down the monkish glass, but I had to go and get the coals.’ He stared at me, his eyes still full of fear.

‘I have bad news, Green,’ I said gently. ‘I fear your master is dead. He fell from his ladder at St Mary’s into his cart, early this morning.’

The boy went white. He sat on the bed with a thump, his mouth open.

‘Master Oldroyd was good to you?’

‘Ay,’ he whispered. ‘He was. Poor maister.’ He crossed himself.

‘We have been asked by the King’s coroner to investigate his death.’

The boy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Was it not an accident?’

‘That is what we have to find out.’ I looked at him. ‘Had your master any quarrels with anyone, that you know of?’

‘No, maister.’ But there was a hesitation in the boy’s voice, and I saw his eyes start to move to the spot on the wall again, though this time he checked himself.

‘Did you know the names of all your master’s friends and family?’

‘His friends are mostly guildsmen, and them he did business with. He had no family, maister, they all died in the plague. His old apprentice died too, he took me on afterwards.’

‘So you know of none who might have wished him harm?’

‘No, sir.’ Again that slight hesitation.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, sir. I -’

But before the boy could answer there was a bang at the front door, not a knock but a loud crash. We all started, and the boy let out a squeak of fear. Heavy footsteps sounded, some going into the downstairs rooms and the yard and others thundering upstairs. Barak jumped away from the door just before it was thrown open and two guards in the King’s uniform stormed in, swords held at the ready. Barak stood in the centre of the room, his hands raised. The apprentice moaned in terror. The nearest guard looked at us, then smiled wolfishly. ‘Don’t move, any of you,’ he said threateningly, then called downstairs. ‘Sir! There’s three up here, in the bedroom!’

‘What is going on?’ I asked. ‘We are -’