by Paul Doherty
The crowd nodded. Nothing was more interesting than the workings of the Devil and his legions of demons who ran through their world turning milk sour, causing fire in hay ricks, plague in the streets or pollution in the water.
‘I have seen one too!’ an old man shouted out. ‘A grotesque shape with goggling eyes which burnt like fire!’
‘You’ve been drinking again!’ someone shouted.
‘No, the good citizen is right!’ the Preacher shouted back, hands clawing the air. ‘Look around you! Kings go to war! Battles rage but these are only the precursors of things to come!’ He stared in satisfaction as his audience, gape-mouthed, stared back. ‘Oh yes,’ he continued in a loud whisper, ‘a great demon has been loosed upon the earth. Terrible will his work be. So be on your guard!’
‘How do we know?’ a man asked.
‘This devil drinks human blood!’ the Preacher replied, and paused, one finger pointing to the sky. ‘For sustenance and strength he must drink our blood, a travesty of the Mass.’
The Preacher felt his stomach clench in disappointment. He glimpsed the disbelief in their eyes and knew that, at least in London, the great Demon, the Rosifer whom Sir Raymond had described, was not known. Only twice on his travels around Europe had the Preacher’s claims ever been vindicated by a witness who could describe, in graphic and horrifying detail, some corpse found in a ditch or alleyway, its throat slashed from ear to ear, drained of blood like an ox slung above a butcher’s stall. It was ever the same. The Demon seemed to stay well away from great cities. The Preacher added a few more phrases, telling the people to be on their guard. He sketched a blessing in the air and wandered back down the steps.
‘Is that really true?’
He turned. The red-haired, pretty-mouthed courtesan was standing, arms folded, staring coolly at him.
‘It’s true, my child.’
He would have walked away but she caught him by the hand.
‘Come,’ she invited soothingly. ‘A drink of ale to clear the throat and sweeten the mouth?’
The Preacher smiled and squeezed her fingers.
4
The Woods of Sutton Courteny, Gloucestershire, May 1471
In Paradise, in the glades of Eden,
Eve was tempted twice: first by Lucifer
Then by Rosifer who offered her
A rose plucked from Heaven.
Edith, daughter of Fulcher the blacksmith, sat in a sun-filled glade half listening to the voices of the women washing the clothes in the brook at the foot of the hill. She really should be with them but, as her father said, Edith was for ever a dreamer. This was her favourite spot: a small wood which stood on the brow of a hill. The trees were the walls of her castle, the grassy glade the most velvet of carpets and the flowers which lined the edge of the brook — teasel, bird’s-foot, mallow and elder — the ornaments of her solar. She stared around. The glade was now covered in a carpet of bluebells, dog rose, mercury and primrose. A quiet, restful place where she could hide and dream. Edith was now sixteen summers old, three years since her courses had begun and her mother had sent her out into the garden to lie down naked to enrich the soil. Edith was a woman, or so her mother kept repeating, and Edith marvelled in her new-found power. Only weeks ago a troop of Yorkist horse had stopped in the village, hiring all the chambers at the Hungry Man tavern. Of course they needed their horses shod and seen to. Edith had been there when the young squire, Aymer Valance, or so he called himself, had come down to watch her father heat the furnace and turn the iron red-hot. He had paid sweet but secret court to her and she had brought him here. They had lain beneath the trees naked as worms, wrapped round each other. He had promised to come back but her father, sharp of eye, must have sensed what had happened. He cuffed her round the ear, shouting, ‘Such men come and go, girl. We mean nothing to them!’
Edith ran her hand across her stomach and down the folds of her simple linen dress. Perhaps tomorrow, when the village gathered on the green after sunset to carouse and dance around the maypole, she might meet someone else. Her mother was now washing her best smock before laying it out along the fence at the back of the smithy to dry in the afternoon sun.
Edith heard a twig snap and her head came up, the buttercups in her hand slipping between her fingers.
‘Who’s there?’ she called.
She sniffed the air and caught a fragrance: she had smelt it before, of roses. Once at Easter, when her mother bathed, Edith had been allowed to use the water afterwards. She still remembered the rose petals floating there and the sweet fragrance which tickled her nose. The scent was stronger now. Edith, a little alarmed, got to her feet. She’d heard stories, travellers’ tales, of horrid murders in lonely places. Of corpses found, the blood drained, like the loving couple found in a meadow outside Tewkesbury.
‘Who’s there?’ she repeated.
A voice began to sing softly. Edith was confused. The words were French. She had heard Aymer use the same tongue but, strangely, now she could understand it: about a rose which had bloomed in heaven before the world had ever begun. Edith took a step backward but the man who stepped out of the trees did not frighten her. He was tall, his face dark, his mouth merry. When he smiled, his teeth were so white and clean, he reminded her of Aymer. Edith smiled and stretched out her hands towards him.
PART I
SUTTON COURTENY, 1471
The pure light of dawn is only the pale glow from the rose gardens of Heaven.
1
Matthias Fitzosbert made sure the belt round his tunic was fastened tight, then crawled quietly over the weather-beaten gravestone in the cemetery and through a gap in the hedge. He scuttled like a mouse along the earth trackway and on to the highway of Sutton Courteny village. On the corner, beneath a large, overspreading oak tree, he turned and stared back. He clawed nervously at his black, shiny hair, licked his lips and scratched a spot high on his olive-skinned cheek.
Above the trees soared the spire of his father’s church. Matthias hoped that he would not be missed for some time. His father, who had been weeding around the graves, had taken a stoup of ale and was now fast asleep in the shadow of the lych-gate. Christina, his woman, Matthias’ mother, was in the small herb garden at the back of the priest’s house tending the camomile, mint, thyme and coriander, which she would later pluck, dry and store in small jars in the buttery. All was quiet. Not even the birds chirped. They were hiding under the cool, green leaves well away from the surprisingly hot May sun. Somewhere a bee buzzed angrily in his search for honey. A snow-white butterfly came floating by. Matthias went to catch it but missed his footing and fell on the trackway. He yelped but then froze. He must remember he was only seven. He had no right to be out by himself, going through the woods to the derelict village of Tenebral.
Matthias ran on. Thankfully the houses of the cottagers and peasants were all quiet. Men, women and children were out in the fields, driving away the legion of birds and small animals which plundered the corn and anything else that the villagers had sown. Matthias crouched in the shadow of a house and stared further along the highroad. He studied the entrance to the Hungry Man tavern where the loungers and the lazy would squat with their backs to the walls, supping ale or quarrelling quietly amongst themselves. Such men were to be watched. They were always curious about Parson Osbert and his illegitimate by-blow.
Osbert was a priest and, according to Canon Law, should lead a chaste and celibate life. However, when he had come to Sutton Courteny fourteen years ago, Christina, daughter of Sigrid, a prosperous yeoman, had caught his eyes as he preached in church. They had fallen in love, become handfast and Matthias was their love child. Most of his parishioners accepted this; however, they were still curious and might go running up to the church to ask Parson Osbert why his son was stealing out of the village again.
Matthias stiffened as the burly, hard-faced blacksmith, Fulcher, lurched out of the tavern with a tankard in his hand. The man should have been out in the fields with the others but his
daughter, Edith, had been found barbarously murdered in Sutton Courteny woods: her throat had been torn, her blood drained. Edith’s poor mangled corpse now lay in the parish coffin at the door to the rood screen of the church. Fulcher was mourning her in the only way he could.
‘Drunk as a pig!’ So he announced. ‘Until the pain has passed!’
Matthias’ eyes softened. Fulcher looked so distraught, and Edith, his dreamy-eyed daughter, had been so kind. Whenever a corpse was laid in the coffin, Matthias always helped his mother to make sure that all was well before Requiem Mass was sung and the corpse was buried in its shroud beneath the outstretched yew trees in the cemetery. Corpses did not frighten Matthias. They were all the same: stiff and cold, lips turning blue and eyes half-open. This time, however, Osbert had been insistent that he himself tend the corpse. He wrapped it in a special canvas sheet and screwed the coffin lid well down till the poor girl’s remains were buried.
‘Edith!’ Fulcher cried up at the sky, swaying backwards and forwards on his feet. ‘Edith!’
Piers the ploughman came out, caught Fulcher by the arm and took him back into the tangy coolness of the Hungry Man taproom.
Matthias ran on, slipping like a shadow past the doorway of the tavern and up through the village. He stopped at the gallows stone from which Baron Sanguis’ gibbet stretched up, black and stark against the sky. No corpse hung there but, now and again, the Manor Lord gibbeted a victim coated in tar, bound with old rope, as a warning to the outlaws, wolf’s-heads and poachers to stay well away from his domain.
At last the line of cottages ended. The trackway narrowed as it entered the dark wood. Matthias paused: his father and mother had warned him, on many an occasion, to stay well clear of this place.
‘Men as violent as wolves,’ the kindly parson’s face had been serious, ‘wander like demons. These horrid murders!’ Parson Osbert had shaken his balding head. ‘Moreover, there are armies on the march and, where there are soldiers, murder and rapine ride close behind. Isn’t that right, Mother?’
Christina had brushed her thick, blonde hair away from her face and stared, white-faced, at her son. Matthias, being so young, did not know what murder and rapine were, though they sounded interesting. What concerned him more was how tired and grey his mother now looked. Usually merry-eyed, laughing and vigorous, Christina had, over the last few weeks, become quiet, withdrawn and ever anxious. Only last night Matthias had woken and found her in her shift, a blanket about her shoulders, staring down at him. The tallow candle in her hand had made her face look even more gaunt. When he’d stirred, she had sat down on the edge of his pallet bed and gently stroked his face.
‘Matthias.’
‘Yes, Mother?’
‘You go through the woods, don’t you? You go to see the hermit?. . In his refuge at Tenebral?’
Matthias had been about to lie but his mother’s eyes looked so strange, so full of fear, he had nodded slowly. Christina had turned away. She had told him to go back to sleep but, as she’d turned to say good night, he’d glimpsed the tears on her cheeks.
Matthias now gnawed on his lips; the wood was a dark and secret place. He remembered the stories the villagers liked to tell when they all gathered around the great roaring fire in the taproom of the Hungry Man: about the pigmy king who lived beneath the tumuli, the ancient burial mounds, deep in the woods. Of Edric the Wild and his demonic horsemen who hunted along the banks of the Severn.
A bird stirred noisily in the branches above him. Matthias recalled other stories about the Strigoi, the ravenous birds with hooked feet, grasping talons, eyes which stared fixedly — fowls from hell who preyed on the young. Or the hag whose carcass was clothed in feathers and whose belly was swollen with the blood of her victims. Yet he had to go on! The hermit would be waiting for him and Matthias loved the hermit, with his magic and his stories, his merry mouth and laughing eyes. The boy took a deep breath, closed his eyes and, hands flapping by his side, ran into the shade of the trees. He tried to ignore the sounds from the undergrowth. He mustn’t think of Old Bogglebow, his name for Margot, the evil-eyed hag who lived in Baron Sanguis’ manor house and who, so the villagers whispered, practised the black arts on behalf of her master. Matthias did fear Old Bogglebow, with her sunken cheeks, twisted nose and sharp dog teeth scattered in rotting gums like tombs in a moon-lit churchyard.
Matthias opened his eyes and smiled. He had run so fast he was sure he was near the edge of the woods. He turned a corner and ran on, his eyes fixed on the trackway before him. He found breathing difficult, even more so when he tried to hum a song Christina had taught him. His fears only increased for, when the wood ended, he would be in Tenebral.
Once a village, its inhabitants had been wiped out by the Great Death, which had raged along the Severn valley a hundred years previously. The ancient ones still talked about it, of the dead lying in their beds, or at a table, or in the fields, their hands still fixed to the plough. Tenebral was a place for ghosts, haunted and eerie. Matthias paused and drew in his breath. Yet the hermit would be there: he would protect him. He ran on, then stopped, searching the trackway carefully until he discovered the secret path the hermit had shown him. Matthias followed this carefully. The trees gave way and suddenly he was on the edge of Tenebral. Some of the houses still stood along the highroad, their plaster cracked, the rooms inside open to the sky. The wooden doors and windows, anything which could be salvaged, had been plundered a long time ago.
Matthias crouched down like a little dog and stared around. The highroad was overgrown, ivy crept around the cottage walls. A silent place, a village where life had suddenly stopped. Even the birds seemed to avoid it. At the far end Matthias glimpsed the ruined steeple of the church. He hurried on but hesitated beneath the remains of the lych-gate, staring down at the main porch. The wooden doors had long gone; the church walls were covered in ivy and lichen. Matthias would go no further. He was proud of having come so far, but now he would wait.
‘Hermit!’ he called. ‘Hermit, it’s Matthias! You asked me to come!’
Only a crow, circling solitary above the church, called raucously back. Matthias forgot his fears and ran up the path to the church porch. He stood within the entrance. To his left was the baptismal font. He glanced up. The roof had long gone, but the sanctuary at the far end was partially covered by bushes, both inside and outside the church, which had sprouted up to form their own canopy. The boy swallowed. The hermit should be here. He jumped as a rat scurried across the floor, then walked on. He was about to call the hermit again when a warm hand touched the side of his neck. He gasped and spun round. The hermit was there, crouching down, face wrinkled in amusement, eyes dancing, lips parted in a smile.
‘You scared me!’
The hermit grasped him by the arms and squeezed gently.
‘You tricked me!’ Matthias accused.
The hermit threw his head back and laughed. He drew Matthias close, putting his arms around him, gently crushing the boy against him. Matthias let his body slacken. His father never did this and the hermit was always so warm, smelling so fragrantly of rose-water.
‘I saw you come into the village,’ the hermit murmured. ‘I have been behind you all the time.’
‘I was frightened,’ Matthias confessed. ‘It’s so lonely.’
The hermit gently stroked his hair.
‘Creatura bona atque parva!’ he murmured.
‘What does that mean?’
The hermit held him away: he stared in mock seriousness. ‘It’s Latin, Matthias. It means you are my little and good creature.’
‘I am not your creature. You make me sound like a bat.’
Again the hermit laughed, rocking gently backwards and forwards. Matthias watched him intently. If the truth be known, Matthias could sit and watch the hermit all day. He was tall and strong, his iron-grey hair carefully cut, like that of a monk, up around his ears. His face, burnt dark by the sun, was clean-shaven, open and fresh. He had a gentle smile and his eyes were
always full of merriment. His hands, broad and brown, were warm and, whenever he touched Matthias, the boy felt soothed and calm.
‘How long have we known each other now, Matthias?’
‘You came here in March,’ Matthias replied slowly. ‘Just before the Feast of the Annunciation.’
‘So, you’ve known me two months,’ the hermit replied. ‘And when you come here you are still frightened. Never let fear rule you, Matthias. It is a dark worm inside your mind.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘And the more you feed it, the fatter it grows!’
‘Aren’t you afraid?’ Matthias accused.
‘Of some things, yes. Of people and creatures, never!’
‘But that’s because you are a soldier. You were a soldier, weren’t you?’
‘I was a soldier, Matthias. In the beginning I was a soldier.’
His face, as it sometimes did, became not serious but sad. Matthias watched his mouth, lips half-parted.
‘Did you kill many men?’ Matthias asked.
The hermit sighed and got to his feet. ‘Killing is part of nature, Matthias. The hawk kills the hen: the fox the rabbit, all things feed upon each other.’
‘If you are not frightened,’ Matthias continued, ‘why don’t you come into the village?’
The hermit crouched down and touched the tip of Matthias’ nose with the point of his finger.
‘You tell me, Matthias Fitzosbert. Why don’t I go into the village?’
‘The people be frightened of you.’
‘Why? How can they be frightened of something they don’t know?’