by Paul Doherty
‘The church,’ Philip replied, ‘constantly renews itself not only with souls but also with buildings. My dear people, look around this church! The roof is beginning to decay, the walls are cracked, the light is poor. Once again Lord Richard’s generosity has been manifest: we do plan to build a new church at High Mount. He will provide the money. The materials will be quarried locally and we hope that all in the village will assist in its building. I have brought my friend, a master mason from London who has worked on the church of St Bartholomew’s in Smithfield.’
He paused at the ‘Ooohs’ and ‘Aahs’: some of the more wealthy peasants had made the journey to the capital. They now began whispering what a great church St Bartholomew’s was.
‘What about the cemetery?’ A man in the front stood up. ‘Everything you say, Father, makes sense. We are glad there are two priests here. Now, this church has never been popular with the people. Isn’t that right?’ He turned to get the reassurance of his fellows.
Philip suddenly realised how, in all the churches he had visited, the priest often had a battle to keep children from playing amongst the tombs or traders using it as a market place. Yet, even in his short time here, Philip had never seen anyone, man, woman or child, in the graveyard.
‘Our people are buried here,’ the man continued.
‘Give the priest your names,’ Lord Richard shouted.
‘Brodkin!’ the stout fellow replied. ‘I own three fields, two ploughs, forty sheep . . .’
‘And that doesn’t include his wife!’ someone shouted from the back.
Philip used the laughter that followed to look down at Sir Richard Montalt, who nodded approvingly. A fight would have ensued between Brodkin and his taunter but Lord Richard stood up and an immediate hush fell on the group.
‘Church law,’ the manor lord declared, walking forward, ‘is quite clear. Those buried within living memory, and that includes poor Waldis whom we have just returned to Mother Earth, will be exhumed and moved to the new cemetery. This will be done at night. The children will stay away. Many of the bodies will be nothing but dust and ashes. Others,’ he added, ‘might not smell so sweet as they did in life . . .’
A general discussion followed. The parishioners got to their feet. Some declared they wanted their loved ones re-interred. Others that their kinsfolk were now with God so where they were buried was of little import. Questions were asked about when all this would happen. Philip, at a sign from Lord Richard, used this to bring the meeting to an end.
‘We will pray,’ he declared. ‘God will send us a sign.’
And, before any further points could be made, Philip raised his hand in benediction and the parishioners teemed out of the church. Henry and Isolda followed, eager to be away from the watchful eye of Lord Richard who stayed behind.
‘You look pale, Philip,’ the manor lord began.
In a few, pithy words the priest described what had happened the previous night. Lord Richard whistled under his breath and crossed himself. Philip brought out the letter he had written to the bishop.
‘I am a simple priest, Lord Richard,’ he declared. ‘These things are beyond me. I have asked his Lordship for an exorcist. Could you send one of your couriers to Rochester with this?’
‘Of course. Of course.’ Lord Richard took the letter and slipped it into his wallet. ‘If it helps.’
‘What do you mean?’ Philip asked.
‘I am not too sure, Father. However, years ago when I was knee high to a sparrow, an exorcist was brought from London. My father mentioned it once: he refused to elaborate. Anyway,’ he sighed, ‘I’d bring a legion of angels here if I could.’
He bade his farewells. Philip joined Edmund and Stephen back in the house to break their fast. Roheisia bustled around chattering about the meeting.
‘Everybody’s pleased, Father. No one really likes that church.’
Philip interrupted her to ask if she would leave out a pitcher of fresh milk for Priscilla. Roheisia looked back in puzzlement.
‘The coffin woman,’ Philip explained. He glanced at Edmund and Stephen who were eating heartily enough after their chilling experience the night before. ‘We’ll go out to High Mount,’ he announced.
‘Piers is waiting outside,’ Stephen interrupted.
‘He hasn’t told anyone, has he?’ Philip asked.
Stephen shook his head, refusing to meet Philip’s eye.
‘He’ll say nothing about what we found there yesterday. I swore him to silence. I also gave him a silver piece. I said there would be more if he kept his mouth shut.’
‘I should have told Lord Richard,’ Philip mused. ‘But, come on, the day is drawing on, the light will soon be poor.’
In the event it was a fine afternoon. The sun kept the mist away and, when they reached High Mount, they went immediately to the well. Piers had brought a rope ladder, rings of cordage and two large canvas sheets all piled onto a sumpter pony. Stephen volunteered to go down the well first and, before anyone could stop him, he was over the crumbling wall, lowering himself quickly down the ladder. Philip realised that Stephen, working on buildings, would be used to making his way up and down ladders with no fear of heights. Under Philip’s directions, and Stephen’s shouted instructions from the bottom of the well, a simple pulley was arranged. A large leather bucket was lowered. Philip could hear Stephen splashing about below.
‘It’s like a charnel house down here!’ Stephen shouted, pulling on the rope. ‘Bones and skulls!’
The leather bucket was raised time and again, with its grisly cargo: skulls, parts of rib cages, legs, arms, the small bones from feet and hands. Towards the end, a few artefacts: a crude, wooden cross crumbling with age formed in the Celtic fashion; a length of cord; a piece of sandal strap.
Eventually Stephen said he could find nothing else and climbed back, his face and hands covered in mud. They now spread out the canvas sheets; ignoring Piers’ grumbling about ghosts and ghouls, they laid out what they had found. Philip tried to arrange the bones as decently and appropriately as possible. When they had finished, the sun was beginning to set as Philip counted the remains of at least sixteen corpses.
‘Where did they come from?’ Edmund asked.
Philip squatted down. He studied the artefacts, then scrutinised the bones, especially the skulls.
‘I’m not a physician,’ he declared. He picked up a skull. ‘Nor am I a soldier but I’ve been told that most wounds are to the head. I can see no mark of violence on any of these. Whilst the bits of cord and the cross suggest that these remains belonged to monks who once lived here. Now all this begs further questions. True, the monks could have been stabbed in the chest or belly, even beheaded by those marauders who ravished this area hundreds of years ago. However, I doubt if such godless men, having killed monks, would bother to toss them down a well which they themselves would use whilst any Christian soul would give them a decent burial.’
‘But,’ Edmund asked, ‘we still found them at the bottom of a well?’
Philip got to his feet. He remembered those drawings he had seen in the parish ledger marking the tomb stones here at High Mount.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that someone pillaged their graves, perhaps looking for valuables or . . .’ Philip shivered. He looked down the hill at the mist seeping across the fields. Or what? he thought. He was sure these bones had been known to Romanel and Father Anthony. He walked back through the ruins, shouting at the others to follow him. He paused where the high altar stood and tried to remember the drawings of the graves.
‘Ah yes, there’s one here.’
He crouched down beside the grave slab on the far side of the sanctuary, examining the earth around it. ‘Someone has been here before us,’ he remarked. ‘Look, they’ve moved this stone, then replaced it whilst trying to hide any sign of what they’d done. Piers, fetch those poles you brought.’
The verderer did. Philip and his brother began to lever them under a stone. In the end, the slab moved easily. Phil
ip expected to find the grave empty but a skeleton sprawled there. He knelt down, in the poor light he could just make it out. He said a prayer so that the Lord would realise he intended no blasphemy.
‘This man was not meant to be buried here!’
‘What do you mean?’ Stephen asked.
‘Of course!’ Edmund whispered. ‘He’s buried the wrong way. His head should be towards the east.’
Philip picked up the skull, there was a jagged hole in the back. He then scrutinised the rest of the skeleton: two ribs bore hack marks. He then searched the earth around, there was nothing.
‘I don’t believe this man was a monk,’ Philip declared. ‘He was killed in a most ferocious fight. The cut to his body brought him to his knees and someone smashed his skull. It’s no monk,’ he continued. ‘Any man of God would be buried with a cross, or Ave Maria beads whilst his head would lie in the direction of east, facing the altar.’ Philip glanced at his companions. ‘There’s not a shred of clothing, nothing, which means the corpse was completely stripped before being put here.’ Philip paused. ‘I believe this grave was ransacked, the skeleton thrown down the well and this one was hurriedly placed here.’
‘But why?’ Edmund asked. ‘Why open a grave, take one skeleton out and put another in?’
Philip was about to answer when he heard the jingle of harness. A shiver of fear went down his spine and he crossed himself. Edmund, too, had caught his unease. Piers the verderer lifted his bow, notching an arrow to the string.
‘Didn’t you hear that?’ Philip asked.
Again the jingle of harness, this time from the far end of the church. Stephen strode down but shouted back he could see nothing. The mist was coming in thicker now. The light was beginning to fade.
‘It’s time we were gone,’ Philip declared. ‘Tomorrow we’ll come back early.’
They replaced the tomb stone. Going back to the well, Philip ordered the remains to be wrapped in a canvas sheet and then hidden just inside the priory walls. They collected their horses: these were so skittish, Piers said he was glad he had hobbled them. The sumpter pony lashed out with his legs and, if Piers had not held on to the rope and its bridle, it would have panicked and galloped away. They left High Mount, riding a little faster than usual, on to the path through the woods to the village.
‘I suspect,’ Edmund drew his horse alongside that of Philip’s, ‘our deceased clerk, Adam Waldis, had a hand in the opening of that tomb.’
Philip looked around: Waldis was coming back from High Mount when something frightened him off this path so he became trapped in a marsh. Philip reined in, calling Piers forward.
‘Do you know where Waldis was found?’ he asked.
‘Yes. What we call the woodland mere.’
‘And could you tell where Waldis left the path?’
Piers’ face broke into a craggy grin. ‘I can follow a rabbit at night, sometimes I have had to. I’ll go first.’
Piers was about to ride on when Philip restrained him.
‘Tell me, Piers, you are a married man?’
The verderer’s smile faded. ‘No, Father, a widower.’
‘Let me see.’ The priest continued, ‘You have a child?’
‘Yes, a little girl. My sister looks after her.’
‘And your mother?’
Piers blinked, fighting back tears. ‘Died just after I was born. And, before you ask, Father, her mother likewise. I know, I know . . .’ He gathered the reins in his hands. ‘Life is like the seasons. It takes a time before a pattern emerges. Already people in the village are beginning to chatter and gossip. They talk of some curse or malediction.’
‘Do they gossip much about the past?’ Philip asked. ‘The legends about the Templars, their hidden treasure?’
‘No, Father, they don’t. It’s strange, in any village such legends would be handed down and passed from one generation to another but people here don’t like talking about them. So, what they don’t like, they choose to ignore: the way you priests never stay long: the wickedness of Romanel. Oh, we know about him, Father, and poor Father Anthony. Aye, I could tell you plenty about him but I’m freezing cold.’
Piers rode on. A few minutes later he came back.
‘I’ve found the place, just as you enter the trees and then a little further on.’
When they reached the place, Philip could tell how someone had left the track, charging mindlessly through the bracken and bushes. Piers even found pieces of cloth on a winding bramble bush. They left their horses hobbled on the road, Stephen volunteering to look after them. Philip and Edmund followed Piers deeper into the woods. As they went, Philip began to quietly curse his own impetuosity. The light was failing, the mist now curling like steam amongst the trees. An awful, dreadful silence lay over the woods, as if some presence was watching them and, in so doing, killed the clatter of the birds and the scurrying of the smaller animals through the undergrowth. Piers stopped and grinned over his shoulder.
‘Don’t worry, Father. I know these woods like the back of my hand. We won’t follow Waldis into the marsh!’
They went on. Piers held his hand up. The undergrowth gave way to hard caked mud. Philip saw how the mud suddenly became a light, attractive green, like some grassy path in a sun-lit forest glade. Piers picked up a branch.
‘Watch, Father!’
He threw it in front of them: the branch hit the top of the marsh: it stayed for a few seconds and then quickly sank.
‘What was Waldis so frightened of?’ Philip whispered. ‘To run into that?’
Piers, who had walked closer to the edge, studied the ground carefully. He came back, shaking his head.
‘I can see the marks Waldis made and those who came to drag him out but nothing else.’
‘Let’s go back,’ Edmund murmured. ‘This place is haunted. I don’t like it.’
They all froze at the jingle of harness, that same harsh metallic sound they had heard, up on High Mount. Piers unslung his bow, notching an arrow to the string. Again the jingle of harness, loud and clear, like fairy bells pealing deep in the woods.
‘Let’s get back to the horses,’ the verderer declared.
Philip, to his dying day, never knew why he ignored such sensible advice. However, he suddenly had a picture of himself attending school, of excelling in the Halls of Cambridge in Logic and Theology, so, why should he run from a mist-soaked wood just because he heard a jingle of harness? He was tired of being frightened.
‘I am going to find out.’
And, before they could stop him, Philip began to run at a half-crouch along the marsh. He saw firm ground ahead of him and heard once again the jingle of the harness. He ran into the trees not caring about the branches which scratched at his face or the brambles which caught at his legs. He heard a sound and spun round. Piers was following him, a stubborn look on his face.
‘If I lose you, Father, I can’t go back to Sir Richard.’ The verderer smiled bleakly. ‘This is strange, it’s not the place for horses.’
Again the jingle of harness. Philip hurried on. The trees began to thin. They both stopped to catch their breath.
‘Be careful now, Father. The trees thin, the ground dips to a broad dell, then the woods roll on, stretching west.’
Philip nodded. They proceeded more slowly. Philip stopped and sniffed the air. He had caught the smell of cooking, wood smoke. Piers, too, smelt it but shook his head.
‘There are no cottages here. Haven’t been for years. The woods of Scawsby are not liked.’
Philip approached the rim of the hill. He could now hear voices. Peering over the top, he stared down in disbelief, his heart in his mouth. The dell was full of armed men. For some strange reason the mist wasn’t as thick here. Philip reckoned there must be at least two hundred and, straining his ears, he realised they were not English: faint words of French, orders being shouted out. The men themselves were dressed in a garish collection of rags and ill-fitting pieces of armour. Studying them carefully, Philip realised
they were wearing what they had looted from different farms and villages. One young man wore a woman’s green smock. Another had a visored helmet but, over his chest, he had the chasuble stolen from some church. Beside him Piers was already beginning to withdraw.
‘A French raiding party,’ he whispered. ‘They have circled in from the coast, kept to the heathland and come in from the west through the woods.’
‘But why here?’
‘Father, it will be dark in an hour. They’ll stay tonight but they will be in Scawsby by dawn, then ride like demons for the coast. This probably was their real destination. Scawsby and the Rockingham Manor are wealthy whilst the sheriff’s men would never dream of looking for them here. By tomorrow night, they hope to be back at sea. Come on, we must warn Sir Richard!’
‘But their horses are not saddled?’ Philip murmured. ‘We heard the jingle of harness?’
‘Never mind that!’ Piers snapped.
They ran back, Philip going in front. At first, when the figure loomed out of the gloaming, he thought it was Edmund but then he stopped. The man in front of him was small, olive-skinned with glittering eyes: the fellow behind, slightly taller, raw-boned, red-faced. The small one was already drawing his knife.
‘Qu’est-ce que? Qu—’
Philip threw himself upon the Frenchman before that long knife could reach him. They both crashed to the ground, turning and writhing. Philip could smell the man’s sweat, the odour of olives and rich red wine. The Frenchman pushed him away and, rising in a half-crouch, was about to close again when Piers’ arrow took him full in the mouth. He dropped like a stone. Philip tried to control his trembling. Piers was already rifling though the wallet of the second Frenchman whom he’d despatched with an arrow in the throat. He did the same to Philip’s assailant: the priest had to admire the verderer’s cool, detached manner, muttering with pleasure at the silver coins he slipped into his own pouch.
‘Spoils of war, Father. The bastards had to die.’ Piers grasped Philip’s arm. ‘Come on, Father, say a short prayer, then we’ll bury them in the marsh.’
Philip tried to recall the words of the De Profundis but he stumbled. Piers was already dragging one corpse along the path. Philip heard a splash, then the verderer returned for the second. Both bodies disappeared within a twinkling of an eye. Piers then went back, doing his best to thoroughly remove any sign of a struggle or bloodstains from the ground.