‘Nothing is certain,’ he added wistfully. ‘Well, not in this vale of tears. No.’ He shook his head at the murmur his words created and lapsed into silence. The two Carmelites and the others had all assembled in Sir William Higden’s council chamber next to his chancery office on the second floor of the merchant’s manor in Candlewick. Sir William, Parson Smollat, Gascelyn, Amalric and Simon the sexton as well as the royal clerk, Beauchamp, who’d recently arrived from his own house in Ferrier Lane only a short walk away. Beauchamp sat opposite Stephen, the raindrops still glistening on his fair hair. ‘You have reached certain conclusions, Brother Anselm,’ Beauchamp urged. ‘You must share them.’ ‘By Saint Joachim and Saint Anne that is true.’ Anselm drank from his water goblet. ‘Richard Puddlicot,’ he began slowly, ‘broke into the royal treasury in the crypt at Westminster in April 1303. He and his coven, which comprised most of London’s notorious sanctuary men, outlaws and wolfheads, stole a King’s fortune.
