Free Roseblood by Paul Doherty

blamed her obvious fluster on the steep climb. She half listened to the maid, who could chatter without pausing for breath: how Master Roseblood seemed very distracted, how the taproom was busy and hadn’t Katherine heard her shouting?
    They passed through the Great Cloister. The refectories, as her father grandly described the eating chambers, were positioned on either side of the gateway. Here, each table was cleverly closeted so that customers could dine and talk in peace. The principal taproom and buttery, fronting the city, seethed with noise and bustle. The drinking chamber was spacious and high-ceilinged, its tiled floor regularly brushed and swilled with clean water; no rushes were ever strewn there. Hams, cheeses, flitches of bacon and dried fruit hung in white string nets from the rafters, well away from vermin, their tangy smell mingling with the sweet odours from the wine tuns and beer barrels, not to mention the fragrance from the hog roast turning on its spit under the mantled hearth. Some of the shutters and horn-covered windows had been removed to provide more air. The noise was clamorous as tradesmen, beggars and scavengers crowded into the popular tavern.
    Katherine’s father, protected by Ignacio, stood near the common board. He glimpsed Katherine and raised a hand in acknowledgement, indicating with his head that she should help the scullions and slatterns hurrying about with brimming pots, tankards and black jacks. Servants scurried in from the kitchen courtyard bearing platters and bowls of stewed capon, mutton and lemon, aloes of beef, strips of venison all hot and sauced in chopped vegetables and tangy spices. Shreds of crispy pork were being cut from the spit turned by the buttery boy, whilst the tavern baker managed the ovens either side of the hearth, where fresh bread was being baked.
    Katherine donned the offered apron. She bundled her rich auburn hair under a kitchen bonnet and helped where she could, only pausing to peck at her father’s cheek, kiss Ignacio roundly on the lips and wave at Raphael, who, his square face all worried, bustled in with a ledger. As she moved around, she listened to the conversation. The great taproom was the meeting place of the Guild of Scavengers, the Fraternity of the Doom, the Brotherhood of the Babewyns and the Coven of the Gargoyles, all inhabitants of the decaying tenements and crumbling garrets along the narrow runnels of Queenhithe and beyond. Katherine glimpsed Master Reginald Bray, seated in the corner all by himself, a bowl of pottage before him. This self-styled pilgrim looked serene and smiling, but his unblinking stare carefully took in all around him. He caught her eye, scratched his mop of blond hair and raised a beringed white hand in greeting.
    She moved across the taproom and into the calm buttery chamber, where the greyheads of the ward gathered. Wherever she went, be it the Great Cloister garth or the kitchen courtyard, Katherine caught the tension and fraught mood of the day. The summons issued against her father was now common knowledge. York’s threat was real: he wanted to be regent and remove the fey-witted King. She also heard fresh comment about the disappearance of prostitutes, and recalled glimpsing Calista with the man dressed as a monk whom Sevigny had thought to be one of the priests from All Hallows.
    The very thought of the clerk made Katherine pause: those mocking eyes, the laughing mouth, the way he found her so amusing. He was Mordred, however, the black knight about to enter the lists of Camelot and challenge the world of Avalon. So lost was she in her thoughts that Katherine almost dropped the jug she was carrying when a voice boomed out.
    ‘I am the rider of the Pale Horse and all hell follows in my retinue.’ The speaker stood in the sun-filled entrance to the taproom, cloak thrown back, sword and dagger drawn. He was tall, with shaggy hair and beard, his jerkin and hose stained and tattered, cheap jewellery decorating