The Heart of Darkness

by Odelia Floris

  The Chaucy Shire Medieval Mysteries

  Book 1

  The Heart of Darkness

  by

  Odelia Floris

  SECOND EDITION

  Copyright © Odelia Floris 2014

  All rights reserved.

  www.odeliafloris.com

  CONTENTS

  The Fall

  The Darkness Comprehended it Not

  Hell, Heaven and Uncertainty are Visited

  Pride Takes a Fall

  Death and the Maiden

  Surprises from Demons, Angels and Unknowns

  Lightning Strikes and a Phoenix Arises

  Fear in the Forest and at the Feast

  Nocturnal Nightmares see the Light of Day

  The Revelation of the Night

  Lest Your Heart’s Blood Should Run Cold

  Vengeance is Thine

  Sir Richard has a Brush with Vice, Virtue and a Cooking Pot

  The Spirit’s Morning Call

  Desolation

  Men of iron

  Entombment

  The Castle of the Skull Receives a Ludicrous Challenge

  Hope is Faithfull

  The Face of Evil

  Hang ups and Let Downs

  The Heart of Ice and the Heart of Fire

  Glymewood in the Red Dawn

  Saint George for Justice

  Epilogue

  Beguile Me Not Sample

  Note from the Author

  CHAUCY, ‘the measliest shire in all England’, is entirely fictional, as is its felon-harbouring neighbour of Lothbury Shire. The topography of Chaucy and Lothbury was created mainly in the author’s imagination, and is not intended to accurately mirror that of Devon.

  Some of the characters in this story speak in English that is not always grammatically correct. This is deliberate. I wanted to reflect the range of regional dialects, and the differences between the speech of the wealthier educated class and the peasant class.

  .1.

  The Fall

  Chaucy Shire, South West England, August 1430

  LADY Sabina furiously snatched the instrument from her cousin Rowena’s hand. ‘I told you not to play my new lute!’

  Feeling, as always, like a common little garden weed beside the tall, stately lily that was her cousin Lady Sabina, Rowena pushed back her thickly curling red hair with a jerk that served to keep her wounded feelings at bay. ‘But you badly damaged my own lute, smashing it down on the edge of that table in frustration. It was hardly my lute’s fault that you were having difficulty playing a new piece of music!’

  The richly dressed damsel haughtily placed the lute on a table behind her. ‘Rowena, an inferior instrument cannot produce a sound satisfactory for someone as talented as I. Frustration was inevitable. And nay, generous as I am, you cannot touch my lute. My music master says that if someone of little skill plays this fine instrument, its sound will be damaged.’

  The red-haired maiden drew herself as tall as possible in an attempt to compensate for her shortness. ‘Then you should not play it.’

  ‘Do you mean to insinuate that I play badly?’

  Rowena put her small hands on her hips and glared up at her cousin. ‘After suffering through many hours of music that sounded more like an instrument being tortured than played, I can tell you with absolute certainty that you do indeed play badly.’

  Lady Sabina gasped, and before Rowena could duck, she felt a stinging pain in her cheek as her cousin’s hand hit it hard.

  With eyes watering, the short, simply-dressed maiden clutched her smarting face with one hand while she considered her options for a moment. Then, with a swift swipe, she knocked off her cousin’s tall, steeple-like hennin headdress. The hennin rolled across the bare wooden floorboards, its long, white gauze veil picking up a very satisfactory coating of dust as it went along.

  Lady Sabina gasped in horror at the sight. When the headdress finally came to rest, she looked at Rowena again. Her icy blue eyes were cold, glinting daggers. ‘Do not dare to lay a hand on me again,’ she spat. ‘Do not forget that I am your superior in rank, breeding and class. My father is a wealthy lord whereas you are the daughter of a mere troubadour, a penniless wandering minstrel. I’ll make you pay for this, you insolent peasant!’

  Lady Sabina screwed up her eyes and managed to squeeze some tears out. ‘Mother, Mother, horrid cousin Rowena just hit me because she was using my things and I told her not to,’ she cried, running into the next room. ‘Tell her to stop being so vile!’ Her voice sounded more like a whining child than the young woman of eighteen she really was.

  A few moments later Rowena’s aunt, Lady Cunningham, stormed in. Her daughter, who was snivelling loudly, followed. Anger filled Lady Cunningham’s features. Undoubtedly she had once been beautiful, but now her face was hard and haggard, eroded by the slow poison of years spent nursing an intense disappointment at not rising from the lower nobility to a position at the royal court. She had made the mistake of marrying a man whose ambition was to amass wealth rather than climb the social ladder, wrongly thinking the drive he showed in business would naturally extend to social climbing.

  ‘How can you be so cruel to your poor cousin after all we have done for you!’ shrilled Lady Cunningham, jutting out her sharp chin and wagging a furious finger at Rowena. ‘Your uncle and I have taken you in these twelve months despite fearing that, as your father was so lowly born, you might corrupt our own dear Sabina, you ungrateful child!’

  Rowena pushed back the hair that had fallen over her face again. ‘Corrupt her? I think her parents have done that themselves in the eighteen years I’ve not been here! She is the most spoilt, frivolous and silly girl I’ve yet been cursed enough to cross paths with!’ Rowena was about to sharply remind her relatives that she was a woman of twenty-four, not a child, when she quickly thought better and shut her mouth.

  Her aunt’s hard grey eyes had narrowed to thin, hateful slits, while behind her, her child let out a histrionic wail of angst.

  It was time to go. Rowena lifted the almost threadbare skirt of her faded red gown and made for the door. But before she could escape the unhappy room, her aunt suddenly lashed out with the belt she had quietly undone from about her waist.

  Rowena made a desperate dive for the open doorway as the metal pendants and silver globes hanging on long chains from the belt whizzed past frighteningly close to her head. But the momentum she managed to get up was so great that when she burst out the upstairs solar and into the passageway, she could not make the turning. Her bare feet screeched as they slid on the wooden floor, and then there was an earth-shattering clang as she collided with the suit of armour displayed against the wall.

  ‘Wait until Lord Cunningham gets back, by God and Saint Leroy he’ll make you regret this! Do you hear? You’ll wish your stupid, selfish mother had never had you!’ came Lady Cunningham’s scream.

  Already unbalanced, Rowena went down like a tree that has received the woodsman’s final axe-blow. She caught her breath sharply as a piece of the armour suit she had landed on cut into her knee. Despite the pain, she wasted no time in scrambling back to her feet. She could hear her aunt’s rapidly approaching footfalls and was in no mood for a second bout.

  There was a tearing sound as she stumbled over the fallen armour, and she looked down to find part of her dress’s hem in tatters. Oh well, what was another rip when a dress was already so full of patches and repairs? The only thing that mattered was getting outside; outside in the fresh air and the sunlight, in the freedom.

  ‘Typical of my sister to do something like that,’ Lady Cunningham’s screech followed Rowena as she flew down the stairs. ‘How much more selfish can you get than tearing yourself from the bosom of your loving family and
then going and dropping dead, leaving a wild animal of an unmarried daughter to burden them with!’

  Once outside Stoatley Manor, Rowena set off along the path that led down the valley to Willowmead, a small hamlet on the Cunningham lands.

  Their lands covered a large area of the fertile, rolling hills of the Heathcote Downs, in the little shire of Chaucy. It was the largest estate in Chaucy, which was not saying a lot. Much of the shire’s land was wild and poor, and hence of little interest to grand men. Of those few old families who could once have rightly thought themselves grand, the Cunninghams were the only ones who had not been weathered down by poor soils, mean harvests and slow trade.

  Rowena did not intend to return to Stoatley until evening, by which time she hoped Lord Cunningham would have returned from his business in Hartfield, the shire’s only market town, and gone up to his private chambers for the night. With a bit of luck, by the next morning he would have forgotten all about Lady Cunningham’s complaints about her. Lord Cunningham was rarely seen about at Stoatley during the day, spending most of his time either in Hartfield on business or shut away in his private chambers answering letters, reading the reports of his overseers and adding up his profits.

  It was a perfect day to linger. The late summer’s day was warm and mellow, and a soft breeze rippled through the golden cornfields like waves upon a lake and playfully tossed about Rowena’s long red locks. She could hear the skylarks singing joyously as they swooped and soared in the air, high above the earth.

  The young woman paused beside this field of gold and put a shielding hand above her eyes as she looked heavenwards. How wonderful it would feel to be as free as they were! Local folklore had it that the larks flew so high that they reached the pearly gates of heaven, where they heard the angels singing, and as the birds swooped back towards earth they sang the angels’ songs.

  Still smiling at this charming thought, Rowena eventually continued on her leisurely way along the path, which finally arrived at the door of a humble little cottage. There, she stopped and knocked.

  The door creaked slowly open and a mop-haired little boy paired out. When he saw who was standing on the front step, his eyes lit up with delight. ‘Mama, Mama, it’s Rowena!’ he cried. Then his eyes alighted on the basket she was carrying. ‘And look what she’s brought us!’

  Upon hearing this, his three brothers immediately rushed to join him. The delighted children grabbed Rowena by the hands and skirts; laughingly, she let them pull her inside.

  Their mother Becky, a tall, robust-figured woman of twenty-nine, arose from a bench by the fireside holding a sleeping baby cradled in her arms. ‘Oh Rowena, you’re ever so good to us!’

  ‘Well, it’s the least I can do,’ said Rowena, setting the basket down on the table.

  The basket was immediately pounced on by eager little hands and all its contents examined with great excitement and strewn across the table. There were dusky plums, fat red strawberries, oatcakes, and most excitingly of all, little tarts filled with sweet berries. The delighted finders wasted no time in stuffing them into purple-lipped, gap-toothed little mouths.

  Turning back to the children’s’ mother, Rowena frowned concernedly. ‘How is poor Durwin?’

  ‘He’s mending remarkably fast, God be praised,’ replied Becky, her full lips broadening into a wide smile that revealed a mouth of even, pearly-white teeth. ‘The herbalist hermit-monk who has been attending to him is working a fair miracle. He said Durwin should have full use of his arm again soon.’

  ‘The mason Durwin works for seems to be a decent soul, keeping his job for him to come back to. It would be an easy matter to find another stonemason’s labourer.’

  Becky smoothed back her mass of thick honey-blonde hair thoughtfully. ‘Aye, that he is. Though I do believe he may feel a little remorseful about what happened to my Durwin. Accidents will happen, but them ropes they were using to lift the big stone blocks up to the top of the bell tower were too old. If they’d taken more care that last block would never have come crashing down on my Durwin’s poor arm.’

  ‘Quite. He was fortunate not to be killed.’

  Becky’s earnest hazel eyes lifted heavenwards. ‘I thank God every day for not recalling my Durwin to our heavenly home just yet, but it’s been real hard feeding the five little ones on the few coins I had put away for lean times like this. Last week we didn’t have enough to pay the rent. Old Miser Cunningham’s sour little rent-man was not best pleased, but I managed to talk him into letting me owe him until this week.’

  ‘Well you need be indebted no longer,’ said the red-haired maiden, holding out her hand. ‘I’ve also brought you a little money so that you can pay the sheriff’s tax collector and give the landlord his rent.’

  Becky gratefully pocketed the money. ‘May the Lord bless your good soul.’

  The younger woman waved away her friend’s gratitude. ‘It’s a mere trifle; just enough to keep the sheriff from turning up here bothering you because you can’t pay your taxes.’

  ‘Aye, we live in constant fear of that,’ said Becky, glancing around anxiously as if expecting him to burst through her door at any moment. ‘Folks say he is very harsh on those who don’t pay their taxes on time, turning up the very next day with his men to seize what little they have. They also say he is most hard on anyone caught breaking the law. If a felony is committed, he is very zealous in his efforts to find the perpetrators; like a dog with a bone, he is. And God have mercy on them if he catches them, because they ain’t going to find no mercy in Sir Richard’s dark heart!’

  Rowena, though she had been living in the area for nearly a year, had not been out in society much and knew hardly anyone in Chaucy except for Stoatley estate’s poorest families, whom she often took gifts of food (taken from the manor’s kitchen when the Cunninghams were not looking). But she had heard the local sheriff’s name mentioned by them with dread on more than one occasion.

  ‘Has Sir Richard been sheriff of Chaucy for long?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s been about three years now. My Durwin knows a few of the lads garrisoned at the sheriff’s fortress. They say he gained some renown fighting the French at the battle of Agincourt, and further cemented his reputation by saving one of the king’s most loyal barons from an assassination attempt, so was given the office by the king as a reward for his bravery. Old Henry can’t have been that impressed with our Sir Richard though, seeing as Chaucy is the measliest shire in all England. Except for the Heathcote Downs, we’re naught but wild woods and barren moors here. Hardly any trade neither; just a few peasants scratching a living. You’re never going to make much money fining and taxing us lot, however hard you try.’

  ‘So is Sir Richard worse than the sheriff you had before?’

  ‘Aye. You see, old sir Purcell, he just took his cut of the fines paid to the local shire court like he was entitled, creamed off a little, and left it at that. But this Sir Richard is not content with those rich pickings. Oh no. He had not been in office four moons before he raised the tax rate, and has done it three,’ Becky raised three fingers, ‘more times, since. Us poor folks had little enough before he came, but now we barely get by at all.’ She shook her head despairingly. ‘If the harvest were to fail we would starve for sure.’

  ‘How despicable! He really must be completely heartless. But come.’ Rowena smiled brightly, doing her best to distract the other woman from her gloomy thoughts. ‘Let us not dwell on such worries today.’ She took Becky companionably by the arm. ‘Now, you must tell me how you are all getting on, and I insist on being told all the latest local news! Shall we sit outside on the bench at the front door? It’s almost a crime to be indoors on such a lovely sunny day.’

  Becky assented gladly, and soon the two women were seated on a wooden bench outside, leaning their backs against the sun-warmed wall of the little cottage.

  After they had swapped news and chatted for a little while, a look of sadness crossed Rowena’s normally cheerful face. ‘When my mother
died last September, I dreaded leaving Pennreth to come and live here with my aunt and uncle. I wished so much that my father had not died when I was six years old, and that the Cunninghams had not been my only surviving relatives. When I am sad and lonely, I often find my mind wandering back to Pennreth in Cornwell and our little house above the sea. Sometimes, when I wake at night, I think I can hear the calls of the gulls and crash of the waves, but then I realize it is just a happy dream of carefree childhood days. From the day I arrived in Chaucy I have felt like an outsider, not quite a woman of gentle birth, but not a peasant either.’

  ‘Never you fear, I’m always here to lend an ear to your sorrows,’ said Becky, patting Rowena soothingly on the shoulder and handing her a handkerchief.

  ‘I’m not a child, you know,’ replied Rowena, unable to stop herself laughing at her friend’s motherly tone. ‘But thank you, Becky. You are a great comfort.’ The red-haired damsel sighed. ‘I do wish I could scrape enough money together to rent a room somewhere so I could move out of Stoatley Manor. I’m grateful my dear late mother taught me Latin as well as French and English, but although there is plenty of demand for those skills, the fact that I am a woman would be held against me. It is unlikely anyone would hire me.’

  ‘You never know, you might find a man...you know, to marry,’ Becky said cautiously.

  ‘I’m sure I shall never find anyone. Lady Cunningham and Cousin Sabina are forever telling me that no man of gentle birth will ever look at me while my skin is so brown from all the time I spend out in the sun, because only lowly peasant maids have tanned skin. In fact, my beloved relatives doubt very much that any man would even manage to get past my shortness, unfashionable dress and total lack of social graces for long enough to realize how wild and stubborn I am. I always reply to this by saying that if a man found my browned face, simple dress and lack of conceit so off-putting I would not care, because I would rather remain a spinster all my life than marry a man such as that. Besides, how can I afford to buy the latest fashions on my small allowance? And I certainly don’t want to plaster my face with that awful thick white powder so all my freckles won’t show like Lady Sabina tells me I should because ‘everybody’s doing it’.’