Read The House of the Red Slayer for Free Online Page B

woman’s voice, clear and lilting, broke into one of Athelstan’s favourite carols. They stopped for a moment to listen then crossed the ice-glazed square. Above them soared the Tower’s sheer snow-capped walls, turrets, bastions, bulwarks and crenellations. A mass of carved stone, the huge fortress seemed shaped not to defend London but to overawe it.
    ‘A very narrow place,’ Cranston muttered. ‘The House of the Red Slayer.’ He looked quizzically at Athelstan. ‘Our old friends Death and Murder lurk here.’
    Athelstan shivered and not just from the cold. They crossed the drawbridge. Beneath them the moat; its water and the dirty green slime which always covered it, were frozen hard. They went through the black arch of Middle Tower. The huge gateway stood like an open mouth, its teeth the half-lowered iron portcullis. Above them the severed heads of two pirates taken in the Channel grinned down. Athelstan breathed a prayer.
    ‘God defend us,’ he muttered, ‘from all devils, demons, scorpions, and those malignant spirits who dwell here!‘ ‘God defend me against the living!’ Cranston quipped back. ‘I suspect Satan himself weeps at the evil we get up to!’
    The gateway was guarded by sentries who stood under the narrow vaulted archway, wrapped in brown serge cloaks.
    ‘Sir John Cranston, Coroner!’ he bellowed. ‘I hold the King’s writ. And this is my clerk, Brother Athelstan, who for his manifest sins is also parish priest of St Erconwald’s in Southwark. A place,’ the coroner grinned at the outrage in Athelstan’s face, ‘where virtue and vice rub shoulders and shake hands.’
    The sentries nodded, reluctant to move because of the intense cold. Athelstan and Cranston continued past Byward Tower and up a cobbled causeway where their horses slithered and slipped on the icy stones. They turned left at Wakefield Tower, going through another of the concentric circles of defences, on to Tower Green. This was now carpeted by a thick white layer of snow which also covered the great machines of war lying there — catapults, battering rams, mangonels and huge iron-ringed carts. On their right stood a massive half-timbered great hall with other rooms built on to it. A sentry half dozed on the steps and didn’t even bother to look up as Cranston roared for assistance. A snivelling, red-nosed groom hurried down to take their horses whilst another led them up the steps and into the great hall. Two rough-haired hunting dogs snuffled amongst the mucky rushes. One of them almost cocked a leg against Sir John and growled as the coroner lashed out with his boot.
    The hall itself was a large sombre room with a dirty stone floor and brooding, heavy beams. Against the far wall was a fireplace wide enough to roast an ox. The grate was piled high with logs but the chimney must have needed cleaning for some of the smoke had escaped back into the hall to swirl beneath the rafters like a mist. The early morning meal had just been finished; scullions were clearing the table of pewter and wooden platters. In one corner, two men were idly baiting a badger with a dog and other groups were huddled round the fire. Athelstan gazed around. The heavy pall of death hung over the room. He recognised its stench, the suspicion and unspoken terrors which always followed a violent, mysterious slaying. One of the figures near the fire rose and hurried across as Cranston bellowed his title once again. The fellow was tall and lanky, red-haired, with eyes pink-lidded and devoid of lashes. An aquiline nose dominated his half-shaven, lantern-shaped face.
    ‘I am Gilbert Colebrooke, the lieutenant. Sir John, you are most welcome.’ His bleary eyes swung to Athelstan.
    ‘My clerk,’ Cranston blandly announced. The coroner nodded to the group round the fire. ‘The constable’s household, I suspect?’
    ‘Yes,’ Colebrooke snapped.
    ‘Well, man, introduce us!‘
    As they moved across, the people crouching on stools near the fire rose