by Paul Doherty
The sun was setting, the evening turning cold, so he walked briskly across Smithfield and into the musty, darkened taproom of the Bishop’s Mitre.
Matthias informed the landlord that he would be leaving that evening before the curfew sounded. He settled his account and followed the landlord out into the courtyard. Matthias inspected the horseflesh kept in the stables and brought out a sturdy, berry-brown mount which seemed sound of wind. Matthias checked the horse’s mouth and feet and declared himself satisfied, though he did not question the landlord too closely on where the horse came from. More haggling followed before Matthias was able to buy back the saddle and harness he had sold to the taverner when he had first arrived in the city. The fellow, pleased at making such a profitable sale, offered Matthias, free of charge, a small garret for the night.
‘You can also have a free meal and break your fast tomorrow, ’ he urged. ‘It will be far better than riding dark, wind-swept roads.’
Matthias agreed. He trotted his new horse around the cobbled yard to make sure that he had spent his silver well, checked the saddle and harness and returned to the taproom. He had supper with the rest at the common board and went up to his garret where he carefully packed his saddlebags, lay down on his bed and fell into a dreamless sleep. He woke late the next morning, more refreshed and determined to leave as soon as possible. He ate bread and cheese in the taproom and, hiring a razor and a jug of hot water, returned to his garret to finish his preparations. The landlord was not as jovial as the night before but Matthias ignored that. He carefully shaved and was about to dry himself when the water in the bowl rippled and moved. Matthias stared, fascinated, at the shapes which appeared, as if he were looking through a window or staring into a mirror. The scene was commonplace. He recognised the stable in the yard below. He saw the berry-brown horse he had bought and his saddle and harness on a peg in the wall above the stall. Two men were talking to the landlord. They turned. Matthias’ heart skipped a beat: he recognised Roberto and another of Emloe’s henchmen. They had their war belts on. The landlord said something, they nodded then separated, going into the shadows at each end of the stable. Matthias touched the water and the scene disappeared. He dried his hands and face, put his war belt on, picked up the saddlebags and his small arbalest.
When he crossed the taproom, the landlord refused to meet his gaze but turned his back. Matthias went out. He placed his saddlebag and cloak on the ground, set a bolt in the groove of the crossbow, pulling back the cord, and walked into the darkened stable. He heard a sound from his right: the assassin came at a run. Matthias loosed the crossbow and the bolt took the man full in the chest, sending him crashing back against the stalls. The horses reared and neighed. Matthias turned, throwing the crossbow at Roberto’s head as he slipped silently towards him. It missed, the Portuguese moving sideways. Matthias drew his sword and dagger and stood back.
‘Leave!’ he pleaded. ‘Roberto, I don’t want your death. Go back and tell Emloe we are finished!’
‘Master Fitzosbert, you know I cannot do that. An order is an order.’
‘Please!’ Matthias begged.
Roberto rushed in, sword and dagger snaking out. Matthias countered, they drew apart. Again they closed in a clash of steel but the Portuguese was an indifferent swordsman. Matthias was able to block and, with one counterparry, thrust his dagger deep into Roberto’s belly. He pulled it out. Roberto staggered, bending over double, coughing on his own blood and fell with a groan to the ground. Matthias collected his cloak and saddlebag, then saddled his horse. As he left the stable, the landlord came running out, all a-fluster.
‘Lackaday! Lackaday!’ he cried. ‘What’s happening here?’
‘You are a liar,’ Matthias declared, swinging himself into the saddle. He gathered the reins. ‘You can send for the sheriff but then he might want to know why two assassins were waiting in your stables. Or you can send a courier to Master Emloe but he will ask why I expected to find his two men waiting for me. All in all,’ Matthias turned his horse’s head, ‘you are in for a very interesting day.’
Matthias left the city, riding up Aldersgate. After Charterhouse the houses became sparser, the crowds less dense. By noon he was out in the open countryside, taking the road west. He rode hard and fast, stopping occasionally to rest, feed and water his horse. At night he sheltered in a wayside tavern, the occasional friary and, on one occasion, slept in a small copse.
Five days after leaving London, he glimpsed the spire of Tewkesbury Abbey and, a short while later, urged his horse up trackways and passageways he remembered from boyhood days. Matthias felt the bitter sweetness of nostalgia as certain landmarks brought back memories of Parson Osbert or Christina. He avoided Sutton Courteny and Tenebral but took a more circuituous route to Baron Sanguis’ manor house. This was much decayed. The curtain wall had gaps in it. The gates hung askew. No soldiers stood on guard. Matthias glimpsed only a few servants, whilst the outlying barns and granges looked dilapidated. The manor house was no better: the paths leading to it were choked with weeds. The gardens had not been tilled, the windows were all shuttered and the paint on the front door was cracked and peeling. A servant answered his knock. Matthias asked for Taldo the seneschal.
‘He’s dead,’ the old man replied mournfully. ‘All are dead.’
‘And Baron Sanguis?’
‘Who are you?’
‘A friend from London.’
‘Then you’d best come in. Baron Sanguis has few friends now.’
The old manor lord was crouched on a chair before a fire in his shabby solar. Matthias was shocked by his appearance. Sanguis’ face was lined and seamed. He was rheumy-eyed, his hair fell in greasy locks and for a while he just peered at Matthias, who wondered if the old man’s wits were wandering.
‘I am Matthias Fitzosbert,’ he repeated. ‘You remember, my lord, Parson Osbert’s son? I came here often as a boy. You gave me sweetmeats.’
The old man’s fingers flew to his lips.
‘Has the devil come again?’ he asked, staring blankly at Matthias. ‘They say the devil flew down to Sutton Courteny. He killed the entire village. My lands are cursed, my family’s cursed. My boy was killed at Bosworth and the new King in London has never forgiven me.’ He gripped the arm of his chair with his rheumatic fingers. ‘I was the King’s good servant,’ he pleaded as with himself. ‘I fought under York’s banner.’ He scratched his unshaven chin. ‘But Satan crept in to Sutton Courteny and my fortunes changed. You say you are Matthias Fitzosbert. No, he died with the rest. You can’t be. They are all dead!’
Matthias bowed and made his way back to the door.
‘Wait!’
He turned. The old manor lord was now standing up, hands outstretched.
‘You are not to go there,’ he warned. ‘Stay well away from Sutton Courteny. The place is thronged with ghosts.’
The old servant was waiting outside in the hallway.
‘His wits have wandered?’ Matthias asked.
‘Sometimes,’ the fellow replied dourly. ‘Yet he speaks the truth. It’s common legend how Satan swept into Sutton Courteny and everything changed. The old lord’s right. I heard him shouting. You should not go there.’
Matthias collected his horse and left the manor. For a while he became lost but he remembered the forest trackways and found the path leading to the woods. He reached Tenebral late in the afternoon. Sharp memories flooded back. Nature was busy reclaiming its own. The houses were more ruined, some had disappeared altogether. Bushes and brambles now choked doorways and windows, and crept over walls to cover gardens.
Matthias dismounted and hobbled his horse. He searched out the place where the hermit had taken him to see the young foxes but this was all hidden by gorse and bramble so Matthias returned to what had been the old high street and made his way up to the ruined church. Part of the wall had now crumbled, the lych-gate had disappeared, but the church, with its ruined doorway and nave open to the sky, had changed little. Matthias made his wa
y carefully down the path. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. He remembered his father standing there that terrible morning when they had reached Tenebral and Matthias believed Parson Osbert was going to kill him.
‘I am sorry,’ Matthias murmured. ‘I am truly sorry.’
He entered the church and made his way up into the sanctuary. He expected to see the rose on the wall much faded but the colours were as fresh and as vigorous as if they had been painted the day before. Matthias exclaimed in surprise at how beautiful and exquisite, how precise had been the hermit’s work. The rose was large and red; the golden centre still glowed like a sun whilst the silver stem had all the freshness of a dewy spring morning. Matthias crouched down and studied the runes written in column after column beneath the rose. He touched the lettering and wondered what they meant. Why had the hermit taken so much time, so much care with these?
He went out and brought back his horse. As he led the animal into the overgrown cemetery and through the doorway of the church, it abruptly became restive, shaking its head, rearing and Matthias had to stroke it and speak softly to it. He cut some of the wild grass from the cemetery and created a makeshift stall. He then unsaddled his horse and took the harness and his saddlebag up into the sanctuary.
He reckoned he had a few hours of daylight. Matthias started copying the runes as faithfully and as quickly as he could. He did not want to reflect on what this place meant to him, how it had changed and shattered his life. He had reflected and thought enough. Since leaving Oxford, apart from his time with Rosamund, he had wasted his life over too much brooding. He required answers and assistance. If he brought this information back to the Hospitallers, perhaps some solace, some comfort, or at least some explanation, would be given.
He crouched, using the saddlebag as a rest, his pieces of parchment spread out over it. Matthias quickly drew the rose and faithfully copied the symbols inscribed beneath it. He had to rest, his neck and arms becoming cramped and tired.
He stared up at the darkening sky and wondered about what had happened just before he had left London. The Rose Demon had come to his assistance once again. If it had not been for that vision, Emloe’s men would either have taken him prisoner or killed him. Matthias got up and walked vigorously the length and breadth of the church, stretching his arms, easing the cramp. He went out and stood in the doorway. Daylight was fading. The breeze had turned sharp and cold. He looked further down the ruined village and glimpsed the first faint tendrils of a mist creeping in.
Matthias decided to stay the night. He collected some brushwood, made a fire and took out the food he had bought on his journey to Sutton Courteny. He lit a second fire beneath the markings on the wall. He worked as faithfully as he could until, fearful he might make some mistake, he decided he would finish the task in the morning. He went down and checked his horse. The animal seemed to have lost its early fears.
Matthias heard a sound. He spun round. Two figures stood in the sanctuary, grey shapes, cloaked and hooded. Matthias could not make out their faces or who they were.
Matthias felt no fear but walked back. He drew his sword, not knowing whether these were phantasms or real. The figures turned and he realised they’d had their backs to him. They started to move towards him — not a run or charge but gliding swiftly across the ruined church floor. Matthias held his sword up. As they came towards him they parted. He glimpsed features hidden deep in a hood, pasty white with black-rimmed eyes. Matthias recognised one of the assassins he had killed in the Bishop’s Mitre. Swerving abruptly, he glanced at the other and recognised the corpse-like face of Roberto. A rush of cold wind wafted a smell of rottenness with them. By the time he had recovered his wits, the phantasms had disappeared.
Matthias stood in the centre of the church, chest heaving. He wiped the sweat from his brow and stared around but he could neither see nor hear anything untoward. He crouched down, gasping for breath, forcing himself to relax and soothe his mind. The occurrence reminded him of that journey back to Sutton Courteny, when he had sat on the saddle of the hermit’s horse and seen that line of ghosts coming towards him. Of course it was dusk, the same time of day as then. The visions were not threatening, apart from a malevolent glance, and did no injury. He went and sat on the cracked steps of the sanctuary. He recalled a lecture he had attended at Oxford, the words of a Master, ‘The dead, for a while, always stay with us.’ But why did he see such phantasms? And would he see any more?
Matthias returned and built up a fire. He decided after all to continue his copying but this time more slowly, more carefully. He gasped when he reached one line. By now he recognised that these signs made up words, with gaps between them. He already suspected he had copied his own name but now he was certain that he had copied that of Rosamund. There were nine symbols in all. The hermit had carved a small flower and, in the poor light, Matthias believed this was the shape of a rose. He put the parchment and quill down, carefully screwing on the top of the small ink pot. He sat chewing on the bread and meat he had laid out. Now and again taking mouthfuls from the wineskin.
‘How could that be?’ he asked. ‘How could the hermit have known about Rosamund?’ He stared up. The sky was overcast, no stars, no moon. ‘How could that be?’ he murmured again. ‘When these symbols were written I was only a child!’ He threw more wood on to the fire, watching it snap and break: the hungry flames danced high.
‘Matthias, is that you?’
He scrambled to his feet. The voice came from the far end of the church as if someone were standing in the doorway. Matthias took a burning brand from the fire and walked down.
‘Matthias, is that you? Why do you trouble me?’
He stopped, holding the burning ember out in front of him as far as he could.
‘Matthias!’
The voice became more insistent. A woman’s voice. Matthias’ mouth went dry. At first he couldn’t place it, but that slight stumble with the letter M.
‘Amasia!’ he called.
‘Just ignore her!’ A voice spoke from behind.
Matthias spun round. He held the torch up and, for a few seconds, glimpsed the grinning face of Santerre. Matthias returned to the fire. He threw more wood on and sat for a while, hands over his ears. He must have crouched for an hour whilst voices from his distant past, those who had been caught up in this deadly game, shouted his name through the darkness.
26
By midnight the voices had stopped. Matthias was left in peace. He slept fitfully and, when he awoke, a thick mist had swirled up the nave of the ruined church. Matthias built up the fire, broke his fast on the sparse rations left, then finished copying the runes from the wall. After he had finished, he saddled his horse and rode back to the manor to buy fresh supplies. The servant he had met the day before was generous in the portions he allocated, wrapping them up in linen cloths.
‘We have few visitors here.’ His watery eyes smiled. ‘Baron Sanguis still does not know who you are.’
‘What will happen?’ Matthias asked, gazing round the dusty, cluttered kitchen.
‘I doubt if the old lord will survive the winter. And the royal lawyers are waiting. He’ll hardly be cold in his grave when the Exchequer officials arrive to claim all this for the Crown.’
Matthias thanked him and left. He took the pathway to Sutton Courteny. The mist still hung thick, deadening all sound. Matthias soon found himself in the woods. Memories flooded back: how he used to run and play here before the hermit ever arrived. The night the soldiers attacked him: the hermit’s intervention and how, as a boy, he’d run, lungs fit to burst, to warn the hermit of what the villagers were planning.
Matthias was in Sutton Courteny before he knew it, the hanging stone looming up before him. The gibbet, which soared above it, still stood firm. A piece of rope, the strands decaying, danced in the morning breeze. Matthias rode on. He stopped outside the Hungry Man tavern. He dismounted and looked through where the sturdy front door had once hung. He couldn’t stop the tears flowing. The
last time he had been here was on that dreadful night when the storm had broken. Matthias walked on. He felt as if he were a ghost walking through the Valley of Death. He could remember everything as it was and yet, despite the mist, see so precisely what it had become. The blacksmith’s house, the crumbling forge; the prosperous tenement of John the bailiff, its roof long disappeared, the gardens around it overgrown. No sound broke the silence except the slither of his boots and the creak of harness. Now and again the horse would slip on the mud-soaked cobbles, the sound echoing along the high street. Matthias half-expected to see someone come out of the house and greet him, yet everywhere he looked was ruin and decay. Weeds sprouted in the high street and Matthias wondered where the survivors had gone.
As he approached the church, Matthias’ sense of nostalgia was replaced by one of quiet dread. The silence had grown oppressive, with not even the creak of a door or the call of a bird. He stopped outside the lych-gate. The headstones and crosses were flattened as on the night of the massacre. The church, however, looked untouched, even the tiles on the roof had not been pillaged. The wooden door in the main porch hung slightly askew. This was powerful testimony to how the local villagers must regard Sutton Courteny as a place of dread, not even worth entering to plunder what remained.
Matthias, the reins gathered round his hand, walked on up to the house. Everything was as it should be. Oh, the horn in the windows had long gone, tiles had slipped from the roof, the garden was overgrown, but if he half-closed his eyes the mist would lift, the sun would come out and he’d find Christina in the buttery or his father dozing in his chair before the fire.
However, when he entered his childhood home, he found it bleak and desolate. The furniture had long gone, probably taken by the survivors, the rooms were gaunt and empty. He crouched by the parlour hearth and ran his fingers through the cold, soggy dust. This was probably the remains of the last fire his father had ever made. Matthias stared towards the niche where the skull had been. All he glimpsed were shards of bone as if someone had taken a club and smashed it to pieces. He went carefully upstairs: the chambers were barred and equally desolate. Someone had lit a fire in his room, the walls were black and scorched. In his parents’ chamber, all was gone except for a cross daubed in faded red paint, beside it, the words ‘Jesus miserere’. Matthias sensed the intensity with which the unknown painter had done this. Was it his father, or had one of the survivors come and taken what they wanted, then left a memento of how God had abandoned the place?