Read Son of the Morning for Free Online

definitely,’ said Osbert.
    The priest unlocked the door as the farmer stepped into the church.
    ‘I’ll have no bloodshed in my church!’ shouted the priest, ‘Nor any more running and shouting! He’s coming out now. If you want to kill him, lead your mob around the side, not through here!’
    Osbert was gone already, out into the gardens. He ran around a duck pond, past a hen house and quickly skirted the snarling alaunt on its long rope. Then he ran up an alley and into Mincing Lane. From there it was through more back alleys and gardens as far as St Olave’s.
    ‘There he is, skin the bastard!’
    Osbert ran around the church, his breath heaving with fear. There, by the church was the priest’s house – a two storey affair with a bedchamber supported on wooden pillars projecting out above the main bulk of the building.
    He raced around the back – down an alley between the house’s uneven garden wall and another property. Panting like a flogged carthorse, he threw his roll over the garden wall, climbed up the rough brick and dropped down the other side. He found himself in an overgrown and seemingly untended garden. Osbert ran towards the back of the house. If there were servants there, he intended to offer them indulgences for their sins in return for hiding him.
    The back door was no more than a few planks nailed together and not sturdy.
    ‘He went over the wall!’
    ‘Get round the front and the other side and make sure he doesn’t come out.’
    Osbert glanced at the opposite wall to the one he’d climbed over, but it was so overgrown with brambles that he would have no chance of scaling it. Another house had been built directly against the rear wall, removing all chance of escape.
    The door was locked but only on a latch. He took up a stick from the floor and lifted it. He went directly in to a big pantry, or what had once been a pantry. Whatever food had been in there was long rotted and gone, though rats still scuttled away as he entered the room. It was dark and dusty, sparsely furnished with just a stool and a bench among broken pots and cups. It smelled of damp and disuse.
    Osbert moved inside and through another door. People were hammering at the front now and he could hear voices behind him. He had no idea what to do. To his left was another door. It was locked. That might help him. If the men chasing him were law abiding, they might balk at breaking a householder’s lock. He had enough experience of life on London’s streets to know how to deal with that. He took a pig’s bone he had been selling as the rib of St Mark and inserted it into the lock. A bit of wiggling and waggling and he pushed the internal lever aside. The older style lock was so crudely made it was hardly worth having. There was a narrow set of stone steps going down. A cellar. Perhaps he could hide in there. It was a scant hope but he had no other ideas.
    He went within and closed the door, fiddling with the bone and the lock again to secure it. It was flat dark with the door closed and he stretched out a foot to feel his way down the steps. People were moving through the house. Under his breath he said a Hail Mary.
    ‘Get me out of this, Lady, help me, help me.’
    Suddenly it was light and Osbert gave a little cry.
    ‘Who is it that seeks the aid of the mother of God?’
    The cellar was a large room and, in contrast to the rest of the house, was swept, the floor neatly flagstoned. There were desks and tables in there, all heaped with books, and strange things in neat piles on the floor or stored on rough shelves that leaned against the walls – dismembered cats, bottles, scribbled drawings, astrological charts.
    At the far end was a figure Osbert would never have expected to see in his life, let alone in the cellar of a broken down house. It was a cardinal, in red robes and wide brimmed hat, standing with a lantern in his hand. The pardoner recognised his uniform from miniatures he had seen at his monastery.
    ‘Your,