The House of Crows Read Free

swordbelt around him, opened the door and went into the gallery. The door to Sir Oliver’s room was half open, the glow of the candlelight seemed to beckon him on. He went in. Sir Oliver lay in his coffin but there was no sign of the priest. Sir Henry turned and saw a dark shape lying on the bed.
    ‘Lazy bastard!’ Sir Henry muttered.
    He went across to the coffin and stared down. His heart skipped a beat: three bloody red crosses had been carved; one on the corpse’s forehead and one on either cheek.
    ‘The marks!’ he muttered. ‘What?’
    He started, but too late. The assassin’s noose was round his neck. Sir Henry struggled but the garrotte string was tight and, even as he died, choking and gasping, Sir Henry heard those dreadful words.
    ‘Oh day of wrath, oh day of mourning, heaven and earth in ashes burning. See what fear man’s bosom rendereth . . .’
    Sir Henry’s dying brain thought of another scene, so many years ago; corpses kicking and spluttering from the outstretched arms of an elm tree, bearing the red crosses on their foreheads and cheeks whilst dark-cowled horsemen chanted the same lines.

CHAPTER 1
    It was Execution Day on the large, bare expanse of Smithfield. Usually the place was busy with various markets selling horses, cattle and sheep; the area around Smithfield Pond would be thronged with stalls and booths offering leather, meat and dairy produce. The crowds always flocked there to see the freaks and performing animals, whilst the puppet-masters, fortune-tellers and ballad-mongers from all over London, the quacks, the gingerbread women, the sellers of toy drums and St Bartholomew babies would do a roaring trade. Men and women of every kind came to Smithfield: nobles and courtiers in their silks and taffetas, merchants in their beaver hats, the red-headed whores from Cock Lane. Their children would frighten themselves, and each other, by staring into the glassy eyes of the severed pigs’ heads which were piled high on the fleshers’ stalls. Nearby, in the Hand and Shears tavern, the Court of Pie Powder would deal out summary justice to those caught pickpocketing, foisting or indulging in any other form of trickery. Consequently the blood-spattered pillory posts were always busy. Wednesday, however, was Execution Day. The great six-branched gibbet would dominate the marketplace, nooses hanging; the condemned felons would be brought down from Newgate, past St Sepulchre’s, stopping at the Ship tavern in Giltspur Street so that the condemned felons could have one last drink before they were turned off the ladder.
    Sir John Cranston, King’s Coroner in the city of London, always hated such occasions but, on that particular Wednesday, the feast of St Hilda, it was his turn to be king’s witness to royal justice being carried out. He sat on his great, black-coated destrier, chain of office around his neck, his large fat face pulled into a mask of solemnity, his kindly blue eyes now cold and hard. Now and again his horse would whinny at the crowds thronging behind him but, apart from scratching his white beard or twirling the ends of his moustache, Sir John hardly moved.
    ‘I should be home,’ he moaned quietly to himself. ‘Sitting in the garden with Lady Maude or watching the poppets chase Gog and Magog.’
    Sir John had four great passions: first, his wife and children; secondly, a love for justice; thirdly, his great treatise on the governance of the City and finally, a deep affection for his secretarius and assistant in rooting out murder and horrible homicides, Brother Athelstan, the Dominican parish priest of St Erconwald’s in Southwark.
    ‘And your claret,’ Sir John whispered to himself. ‘Not to forget your London ale and sweet tasting malmsey.’
    Sir John never knew in what order these passions should really be listed. In fact he loved them all together. Cranston’s idea of heaven was a spacious London tavern full of sweet-smelling herbs and blossoming roses where he,