‘You’ll keep an eye on things, Lady?’

Benedicta, biting her lip to stop her laughter, nodded.

‘And you’ll come back at Vespers?’

Again the nod.

Athelstan urged Philomel on and, with Cranston behind, blowing kisses at Benedicta, they left the churchyard and rode down towards London Bridge.

‘What’s happening at Vespers?’ Cranston abruptly asked.

‘We are going to meet the devil, Sir John. You, me and Benedicta.’

Cranston belched like a trumpet blast. ‘What the hell do you mean, monk?’

‘Wait and see.’

Any further conversation proved impossible; as it was market day, the streets of Southwark were full and Athelstan had to wave to different parishioners.

‘Greetings, My Lord Coroner!’ Pike the ditcher and Tab the tinker bawled as they sat outside a tavern, stoups of ale in their hands.

‘Sod off!’ he roared back, sensing the mockery in their voices.

They passed The Piebald. Cranston looked longingly through its darkened doorways and closed his eyes as he smelt the savoury pies baking there. Athelstan, however, refused to stop. Eventually they had to dismount to get through a crowd clustering round a chaunter who was loudly reciting the news of the day.

‘The French made a landing at Rye and burnt the church! The Lord Sheriff is dead, struck through the heart in his own garden, as is Sir Thomas Fitzroy, dead and stale as many of the fish he sold. A witch has been seen flying over St Paul’s and a boy with two heads has been born in a house near Clerkenwel!’

On and on the chaunter went, reciting what he had learnt, a mixture of half-truths and lies. Athelstan and Cranston passed on. Near the bridge itself the vegetable markets were doing a brisk trade; people walking along with their eyes fixed on the goods, frowning thoughtfully. The stalls were packed with different types of vegetables: crimson love apples, bundles of white glossy leeks, celery with pink stalks and bright green tops, the white knobs of turnips and the rich brown coats of chestnuts. Stall owners shouted: ‘St Thomas’s onions!’ ‘Leeks fresh from the garden!’ Porters forced their way through, teeth clenched, jerkins wet with sweat as they walked, half-bowed, under the overflowing hampers on their backs. A bird seller, his boots red with the soil of the brick field, stood by a pile of cages, selling linnets, bull finches, gold finches and even nests bearing eggs. A little girl, dressed in black rags, sold water cress from a small tub. She looked so pathetic Athelstan bought tuppence worth and Philomel munched it in the twinkling of an eye.

Cranston and Athelstan, fighting to make their way, passed stalls selling cheese cakes, others combs, old caps, pigs’ feet; a hawker of knives, sharpening hatchets, shouted abuse at a market official trying to collect the tax. Whilst outside a tavern, the Pied Powder, a court sat to regulate, or at least try to, the running of the market. The air was thick with the smoke and odour from the tanners as well as the packed mass of sweaty bodies.

‘Hell’s teeth!’ Cranston breathed. ‘This is the devil’s own kitchen!’

For a while they had to stop whilst a group of exasperated beadles tried to clear a legion of cats and stray dogs which had congregated around a stall which sold offal. Now and again the old lady behind would throw down pieces of stale, dirty meat: this only wetted the strays’ appetites and brought down upon the old crone the imprecations and curses of her fellow traders. Athelstan, leading Philomel, edged his way through, smiling at Cecily who sat on the steps of the market cross, talking earnestly to a young fop in tawdry clothes and stained hose. She waved at Athelstan and cooed at Cranston, who turned away and grunted. Suddenly, the Coroner’s arm shot out and grabbed a ragged-arsed, balding, little man who was slinking through the crowds with a lap-dog in his arms. Athelstan, with Philomel nudging him for more water cress, watched in amazement as the burly Coroner lifted up the little man, still holding the lap-dog, by the scruff of his neck.

‘Well, well, if it’s not old Peterkin!’ Cranston gave the ferret-faced beggar a shake. ‘Old Peterkin the dog catcher. You snivelling little bastard! What are you up to now?’

‘Nothing, Sir John. I found this dog and am trying to find its owner.’

Cranston bellowed across to a beadle and the bleary-eyed official hurried across.

I am Sir John Cranston, Coroner. And this,’ he thrust Peterkin and the dog into the beadle’s arms, ‘is a little turd who goes across into the city, steals some lady’s lap-dog and then brings it back to claim the reward. Take care of him!’

Cranston handed Peterkin over without further ado, winked at Athelstan, and they turned the corner and passed down the thoroughfare to London Bridge.

The stocks and pillories on either side of the road were full of miscreants; night hawks, pickpockets, and every rapscallion in Southwark. Some stoically took the humiliation and the dirt pelted by passersby as if it was an occupational hazard whilst others moaned and cried for water. Athelstan quickly studied their faces, relieved to see none of his parishioners placed there. At the entrance to the bridge Cranston stopped and pounded on the iron-studded door of the gatehouse. There was no reply so the Coroner, ignoring Athelstan’s questions, kicked on it, bawling, ‘Come on, Burdon, you little bastard! Where are you?’

The door was flung open and a small, hairy-faced little creature appeared. A veritable mannikin. Athelstan smiled at Robert Burdon, father of at least thirteen children and constable of the gate tower.

‘Oh, it’s you, Cranston. What do you want?’

‘Can I come in?’ Sir John asked.

‘No, you bloody well can’t! I’m busy!’

Cranston stared up at the spikes above the gatehouse and their grisly burdens: the decapitated heads of traitors and malefactors.

‘Fine,’ Cranston breathed. ‘But who’s stealing the heads?’

‘I don’t bloody well know!’ Burdon replied, sticking his thumbs in his belt, his little dark eyes glaring at Athelstan. ‘What am I supposed to do, Father? My job is very simple. I’m to guard the gatehouse and place the heads on the spikes, and I always look after them. However, if some vile viper wishes to come and steal them, what can I do?’ He puffed his little chest out till he reminded Athelstan even more of a cock sparrow, I am a constable, not a guard.’

‘Robert!’ The woman’s voice inside was soft and alluring.

‘My wife,’ Burdon explained. ‘She’ll tell you the same. I don’t know what happened, Sir John. I goes to bed, the heads are there. I wakes up and, though there’s a guard here, the heads are gone.’ He leaned closer. ‘I think it’s witch hags,’ he whispered, ‘The night riders.’

‘Bollocks!’ Cranston roared.

‘Well, that’s the only bloody answer you’re going to get from me, so sod off!’ Burdon disappeared, slamming the door behind him.

Cranston sighed, shook his head and took a generous swig from the wineskin.

‘Come on, Brother.’

‘Who do you think is stealing the heads?’ Athelstan asked, threading Philomel’s reins round his wrist and riding alongside Cranston.

‘God knows, Brother. This city is full of every fiend in Hell. It could be a warlock or witch. The Corporation were particularly angry at the disappearance of the head of that French privateer, Jacques Larue — you remember, the one taken off Gravesend? Mystery after mystery,’ Cranston moaned. He stopped outside the chapel of St Thomas built midway along the bridge.

‘Forget the stealer of heads,’ he muttered. ‘Who gives a damn? Burdon doesn’t, and the guards of the Corporation are half-sodden with drink.’ He nodded at the iron-studded chapel door. ‘Years ago, when I was lean and lithe, a veritable greyhound, Oliver Ingham and I came here to take our vows as knights and consecrate our swords to the service of the King. So many years ago.’ The tears pricked at Sir John’s eyes.