‘So we come to the Passio Christi,’ the coroner declared. ‘Did you steal it? Of course if you did you are excommunicated, cut off from the church. You shouldn’t even be here in these hallowed precincts.’ He sighed. ‘Naturally you’ll deny that. Anyway, tell us, how did you find the bloodstone?’

‘To be as blunt,’ Wenlock retorted, ‘after Poitiers we swept the fields like a windstorm, the very fires of hell.’

‘In other words you plundered and pillaged?’ Cranston barked. ‘I was there, you know. I took part in it. Our army was full of vagabonds, runaways, rascals and ribauds, the scum of our prisons who came from slums so horrid even the rats hanged themselves.’ Cranston’s words were greeted with silent disbelief until Wenlock beat the table with a maimed hand, bellowing with laughter.

‘True, Sir John.’ He glanced around his companions. ‘Come on, that is the truth! We had cozeners, tumblers, ape-carriers.’ His words won nods of approval. ‘However, we were master bowmen,’ all the good humour drained from Wenlock’s face, ‘and the Passio Christi was found in a casket on a cart along a leafy country lane.’

‘By you?’

‘By us, Friar.’

‘And what else was in that cart?’

‘Some cloths.’ Wenlock paused. ‘Cups, mazers, a few manuscripts.’

‘And you surrendered all of this to Edward, the King’s son?’

‘We did.’

‘And?’ Athelstan persisted.

‘An indenture was drawn up. You can study it at the Exchequer of Receipt. .’

‘I have,’ Cranston interrupted.

‘We were given an allowance every month. The jewel was to be held by Kilverby, the Prince’s treasurer. You know the rest so why should we tell you?’

‘How long have you been here?’ Athelstan asked, fighting off the weariness of the day.

‘About four years. We came from France then did guard duty at the Tower, Sheen, Rochester and King’s Langley. Five years ago we petitioned the Crown. We were promised corrodies here.’

‘And why St Fulcher’s?’

‘Ask Father Abbot, Sir John. The old King and his son, before they left London for Dover and their chevauchées through France, stopped here to light tapers. They arranged for Masses to be sung to Christ, Our Lady of Walsingham, and all the saints that God would favour the Leopards of England. The old King even founded a chantry chapel here dedicated to St George.’ Wenlock pulled a face. ‘St Fulcher received other gifts and endowments from the royal family.’ Wenlock gazed over his shoulder at the capped hour candle on its stand in the far corner of the refectory. ‘Sir John, Brother Athelstan, the day goes and so must we.’

‘Richer,’ Athelstan moved his writing tray, ‘do you find him hostile? After all, he is from the Abbey of St Calliste which once held the Passio Christi?’

‘They claim they once held it,’ Wenlock replied. ‘We have no real proof that the bloodstone we found belonged to that abbey. I mean, if it was,’ he smiled, ‘why was it outside the abbey on a cart?’

Athelstan gazed at these former soldiers. He recalled how he and his brother consorted with such men, practical and pragmatic without any real interest in religion or indeed anything else outside their own narrow world. Wenlock’s blunt language was typical.

‘Was the cart abandoned?’ Athelstan asked. ‘What happened to its escort?’

‘By all the saints,’ Brokersby exclaimed, ‘that was years ago! What does it matter now?’

‘Because, my friend,’ Cranston shouted back, ‘if it was proven, even now, that the Passio Christi was stolen from the Abbey of St Calliste that renders you excommunicate, whatever the number of years. You would still be proclaimed public sinners and stripped of everything. You might even hang. So tell us,’ Cranston added quietly.

‘We found it in a cart,’ Wenlock answered coolly.

‘No escort?’

‘Nothing, just plunder of war waiting to be taken.’

Athelstan sighed noisily. ‘That is your story.’

‘We are our own witnesses,’ Mahant declared. ‘Who else is there?’

‘Tell us,’ Cranston asked, ‘why should two of your company be so barbarously slain?’

‘We don’t know,’ Osborne declared.

‘We are old soldiers serving our time,’ Mahant added.

‘So why go armed in this abbey?’

‘Because Sir John, this abbey is not what it appears to be.’ Osborne threw off Brokersby’s warning hand.

‘You think these good brothers are united in prayer? Well, look at the facts. The abbot hates the prior who responds with as much loathing. The prior loves the Frenchman Richer with a love not known even towards women. Our Lord Abbot is more concerned about that nasty swan than he is about the rule of St Benedict. He keeps his beloved niece, if that is what she really is, in the guest house guarded by that old harridan. Meanwhile Richer slips in and out of this abbey like a rat from its hole. We’ve seen him wander down to the watergate. Was he there when poor Ailward was murdered?’ Osborne breathed in heavily, wiping the white flecks of foam from his lips on the back of his hand. ‘Then there’s that anchorite, mad as a March hare, in the abbey church, screaming that he is haunted. He has grudges against us, as do Prior Alexander and others who, I am sure, have great sympathy for the Great Community of the Realm and their leaders the Upright Men. Now two of our comrades are foully murdered, certainly not by us. Why not make your enquiries amongst the brothers: Abbot Walter, Prior Alexander, Richer the Frenchman? After all, we’ve seen military service, but they’ve also done their fair share of spilling blood. They can wield swords.’ Osborne’s voice trailed off in a fit of coughing and throat clearing.

‘Do you see Richer as your enemy?’

‘No, Brother, but he may view us as his.’

‘So why are you armed?’

‘Because,’ Wenlock intervened, ‘three weeks ago, just before the beginning of Advent, I was attacked out in the abbey grounds. I have a passion for herbs and shrubs — I always have. I visited the gardens and afterwards I went for a walk. Nearby runs a maze, its high hedgerows, all prickly, laid out in a subtle plan. A former abbot had built it so those who could not take the cross to Outremer to fight the infidel could crawl through its maze of narrow paths to the centre where there is a Great Pity surmounted by a cross. I entered but dusk was creeping in. I was about to leave when a figure charged out of the gloom, hooded and masked, sword and dagger whirling. I was petrified; all I carried was a pilgrim staff.’ Wenlock grimaced. ‘The forefingers of both my hands are maimed, the French, God curse them. I cannot pull a bow but still, albeit clumsily, wield a weapon.’

‘You fought your assailant off?’

‘I was out looking for Wenlock,’ Mahant spoke up. ‘I heard the shouting, the slash and clatter. I answered Wenlock’s cries of ‘Aux aide! Aux aide!’ By the time I arrived his assailant had fled; from that time on we decided to go armed.’

‘And you reported all this to Father Abbot?’

‘I might as well have talked to his stupid swan!’

‘And you have no idea of your attacker?’

‘No, he was dressed all in black, cowled and masked.’

‘Or why you were attacked, at that time, in that place?’

‘None whatsoever.’

‘Have any of you,’ Athelstan persisted, ‘relatives outside this abbey?’

‘Not that we know of, we are old soldiers. Some of us were married but now our wives are dead.’ Mahant’s voice turned wistful. ‘Whatever children we had lie cold beside them.’

‘As do two of your comrades?’

‘Brother, Sir John?’ Wenlock’s voice turned pleading. ‘We are finished, surely?’

‘I would like to inspect the chambers of the dead men.’ Cranston rose swiftly to his feet. ‘And that includes William Chalk’s.’ Cranston gestured towards the door. ‘Now, sirs. With you or without you. .?’

The anchorite, whom the old soldiers described as mad as a March hare, stared calmly through the aperture of his anker house on the south aisle of the abbey church. The monks had finished their hour of divine office. They’d left in a soft slither of sandal and the bobbing light of lantern horns. A cold breeze now seeped through an opened door to whip the remaining glow of candles and tapers. Gusts of sweet beeswax and incense still trailed. Here and there the silence was disturbed by the scurrying of mice and rats sheltering in this forest of stone against the savage cold outside. The anchorite wondered what he might see tonight. He’d heard of Hyde pricked to death near the watergate. The anchorite had tried to warn him. He’d seen Hyde leaving in pursuit of some monk — was it the Frenchman Richer? Then another shadow followed him — a monk, surely? The anchorite was certain of that. He’d seen the flitting blackness through the dark. He glimpsed the glint of steel, but that was life, was it not? Violent and turbulent, full of tension and strife, that’s why he sheltered in these sacred precincts with his precious manuscripts, his box of treasure and pallet of paints. He was an anchorite but an exceptional one. He performed one service for the Lord Abbot which few painters did. The abbot was a Grand Seigneur with all the powers of a lord, of Oyer and Terminer, of being Justice of Assize. He had the power of axe, tumbril and gallows and the anchorite served as the abbot’s hangman. In return Lord Walter had been good, allowing the anchorite, when the church was deserted, to leave his cell and paint visions of the life hereafter on the walls and pillars around his cell. Yet she, Alice Rednal, the sinister haunter of his life, had followed him here. The anchorite was sure of that. He’d seen Alice Rednal’s hard face pressed up against the aperture, features all ghoulish, hair as tangled as a briar bush, but that couldn’t be, surely? He’d hanged Rednal at the Elms in Smithfield. He had tolerated her taunting as they rattled along in the execution cart but he’d then watched her die. The anchorite moved back to his small carrel and chancery stool. He sat, picked up his quill pen, opened his journal and began to describe the nightmare which always plagued his sleep. Was this, he wondered, the cause of the recent horrid apparitions?