by Paul Doherty
Cranston burped. ‘I don’t know,’ he slurred. ‘It could still be black magic because I’m damned if I can find a way through the tangle. Now, as I have said to Lady Maude . . .’ The coroner suddenly stopped and stared into his wine cup, and the good humour drained from his face.
‘Come, Sir John,’ Athelstan said quietly. ‘It’s time we slept.’
Surprisingly, Cranston agreed, drained the cup and slammed it down on the table. He stood up, swaying and smiled benevolently down at his companion.
‘But do you believe, Brother?’
‘What, Sir John?’
‘In the black arts? I mean, the business in your cemetery?’
Athelstan grinned. ‘To be perfectly honest, Sir John, I am more frightened of the human heart than any mischievous demon. Now, come. Let’s rest.’
Athelstan was pleased he had judged the moment right because, by the time they reached the top of the rickety wooden staircase, Cranston was half-asleep and beginning to mumble piteously about how he missed Lady Maude. Athelstan led him down the cold, darkened passageway and into the small chamber. He gently lowered Cranston on to the bed, pulled off the coroner’s boots and made his companion as comfortable as possible. The coroner turned, belched, and quietly began to snore. Athelstan grinned and covered the huge frame with a coverlet. Sleeping, Cranston reminded the friar more than ever of the huge bear in the bailey of the Tower. Athelstan went over and knelt beneath the small, horn-glazed window, crossed himself and gently mouthed the words of David’s psalm.
‘Out of the depths have I called to thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice.’
By the time he had reached the fourth verse Athelstan was already distracted. Was Sir John right? he wondered. Did the great demon, the Red Slayer, haunt both his cemetery and the Tower of London? He closed his eyes, finished the psalm and made his way to the pallet bed. For a while Athelstan lay listening to Cranston’s heavy snoring and fell asleep almost at the very instant when, back in the darkened cemetery outside St Erconwald’s, shadows flitted across the graveyard to crouch over a freshly dug grave.
CHAPTER 11
In his dream, Athelstan stood on a darkened ship. The bowsprit, mast and sails were covered in black crepe. Above him on the poop, a skeleton, face a white, leering mask, held the wheel and grinned wickedly down at him. The sea was smooth and clear as thick, dark glass. The sky overhead was empty of stars and hung like a purple-blue cloth around the ship as it drifted towards the horizon where a fiery red glow lit the gateway to Hell. On one end of the mast a figure jerked spasmodically. Athelstan glimpsed the blackened, twisted face of Pike the ditcher hanging by the neck. The friar turned as someone tapped him on the shoulder. His brother Francis stood there: his face was blueish-white under a shock of black hair. A thin red snake of blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth; his chest was an open, bubbling mass of blood where he had received his death wound.
‘You ran away from your monastery, Brother?’ His voice sounded hollow.
Athelstan stretched out his hand. ‘I am sorry, Francis,’ he murmured. Athelstan stared around. Was Cranston here? He was sure he could hear the coroner’s voice.
Athelstan walked to the entrance of the hold and gazed down. A naked woman squatted there, her face hidden behind a black veil; from her mouth came a foul toad and round her neck curled an amber snake, its red-slit eyes flashing like diamonds. A fat-bellied rat crouched beside her. Athelstan walked down the steps. Behind the woman, kneeling stern and impassive, was a knight in full armour, gauntleted hands resting on the hilt of his great two-handled sword. The hold stank of death and Athelstan could feel someone pressing close behind him. He squirmed violently as a hand seized his shoulder.
‘Athelstan! Athelstan! Brother, for God’s sake!’
The friar opened his eyes. Cranston, his fat face wrinkled with concern, stared down at him.
‘Brother, what is the matter?’
Athelstan stared back. ‘Good Sir John, I was dreaming.’ He raised a clammy hand and rubbed his face. ‘I was dreaming,’ he repeated.
‘And not a pleasant one!’
‘No, Sir John. Some succubus of the night with the power of a thousand scorpions seized my mind.’
Cranston gazed quizzically back and Athelstan grinned.
‘I am only joking. I think my nightmare was due more to the table than the grave. We dined too well last night.’
‘Yesterday is gone and today is today,’ Cranston pompously replied. ‘Come on, Brother, it’s daybreak.’
Athelstan rose quickly, said a hasty prayer and washed himself in the freezing water from a cracked pewter jug. They gathered their possessions and moved down to the cold, deserted taproom. The fire was not lit and the room didn’t seem as cheerful and welcoming as it had the night before; they broke their fast quickly on warm oat cakes and mulled wine, saddled their horses and rode back along the track to the highway.
The day looked as if it would be a fine one. A weak sun was about to rise, turning the darkness to a dusty grey: their horses plodded along the frozen track, both riders taking special care against the potholes, some as deep as a man, which could bring down and even kill both the unwary rider and his horse. The countryside was empty and silent. Athelstan shivered as he remembered his nightmare and the eerie stillness of that terrible dream. The hedgerows on either side were still thickly covered with snow and, beyond them, the fields lay iron hard under sheets of ice. A circle of hungry crows soared noisily above a clump of oak trees, branches black against the lightening sky.
‘I wish I was back in London,’ Cranston moaned. ‘I hate the bloody countryside, I hate the silence!’
Athelstan caught a blur of colour in a ditch on the side of the track and pulled his horse over to look closer. The corpse which lay there was frozen hard, that of an old man covered from head to knee in a loose, threadbare gown. Athelstan closed his eyes and breathed a prayer as he glimpsed the blue-black holes where the hungry ravens had pecked at the scrawny, whitening flesh.
‘God rest him!’ Cranston murmured. ‘Brother, there is nothing we can do.’
They moved on through a silent, sleeping village, only a few plumes of black smoke giving any sign of life. After an hour’s ride they approached the village of Leighton. At the crossroads they glimpsed a group of villagers huddled round the blackened scaffold. Thankfully, the iron gibbet which swung from its hook was empty. The villagers were gathered round a corpse whilst beside it two burly labourers hacked the iron ground at the foot of the scaffold. Then-hoes and mattocks cleared a shallow hole while their breath hung heavy in the frost air. Athelstan looked at Cranston. The coroner shrugged though his hand went beneath his cloak to ensure his dagger was loose in its sheath. The villagers turned at the riders’ approach. An old woman, her face yellow and lined with age, scrawny body covered in the battered hide of a cow, shuffled towards them.
‘Morrow! Morrow!’ she cried. ‘Travellers on a road like this?’ Her milky eyes grinned slyly up at Athelstan. ‘Good morning, Father. ‘Tis rare to see a priest up so early.’
‘Mother!’ Cranston bellowed back, loosening the muffler round his mouth. ‘It’s good to see anyone in such Godforsaken weather. What are you doing?’
‘Burying Eadwig.’
‘Here?’ Athelstan asked. ‘You have no church, no cemetery?’
The old hag lifted her skinny hand. ‘Come and see! Come and see!’
Reluctantly they pushed their horses nearer. Cranston’s mount became skittish and even Philomel showed a lively interest in the group round the scaffold. The villagers parted as the coroner and his companion approached. Athelstan glimpsed red, dirty faces, greasy, matted hair, and the occasional glare of hatred at their well-fed horses and warm, woollen cloaks. Cranston took one look at Eadwig’s body, closed his eyes and drew away. The peasant had been hanged. His face was black, tongue half-bitten off but still clenched tightly between yellow teeth, whilst one eye had popped from its socket and lay grotesquely against the bruis
ed cheek.
‘Good God!’ Athelstan breathed. ‘What happened?’
‘He killed himself,’ the old hag cackled. ‘And you know the law, Father?’
‘Oh, yes, Mother, I know the law.’ He looked at the small, wooden stake leaning against the scaffold. ‘Sir John, I suggest we ride on.’
The coroner needed no second bidding. They turned their horses, ignoring the soft cackles of laughter behind them. Athelstan closed his eyes, praying from whatever psalm he could remember to fend off the awful terrors which clung to the world of men. Behind him he heard the faint sounds of a wooden mallet driving the stake through the suicide’s heart.
‘Good God!’ Cranston murmured. ‘You priests, Athelstan, should change all that. Only the good Lord knows why the poor bastard killed himself, but must a suicide be buried near a gibbet at the crossroads with a stake driven through his heart?’
‘The bishops have tried to stop it,’ Athelstan replied. ‘But Christ’s teaching, Sir John, in certain parts and over certain hearts, lies as thin and as loose as a spider’s web.’
They rode through Leighton, following the track which skirted the dark mass of Epping Forest and into Woodforde just as the church bell tolled for Nones. The village was an unprepossessing one: a few villagers, hooded and cloaked against the cold, scurried about shooing scrawny chickens away from the horses. Some boys were bringing battered wooden buckets up from the well and the occasional housewife emptied the slops from the night jars out into the middle of the street. Even the ale-house was still shuttered and locked.
‘Like a village of the dead,’ Athelstan murmured.
‘Aye, it might as well be, Brother,’ Cranston replied through his muffler. ‘The cold will stop all work in the fields.’
A young urchin, his face pinched white by the cold, suddenly appeared and walked solemnly alongside them, a dirty canvas bag clutched in one bony hand. Athelstan reined in Philomel.
‘What’s the matter, boy?’
The urchin just stared, round-eyed, at Philomel’s tail.
‘Come on, lad, what do you want?
‘Mother told me to follow. Told me to wait for the horse to lift its tail.’
Cranston chuckled. ‘He is waiting for our horses to shit!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s good manure and, if dried, burns well and cheerily.’
Athelstan grinned, pulled back his hood, dug into his purse and threw the boy a penny. ‘You can have everything our horses will drop, boy,’ he announced solemnly. ‘And there’s a penny for your trouble. You know the Burghgesh family? They have a manor house here.’
‘Oh, all gone,’ the lad replied, his eyes still fixed on Philomel’s tail. ‘The house lies beyond the village near Buxfield but it is deserted and closed up. Father Peter will tell you that.’ He pointed to where the tiled-roofed church with its grey, ragstone tower peeped above the tree tops.
‘Then,’ Athelstan said, kicking Philomel into a trot, ‘that’s where we’ll stop!’
They rode through the wicket gate of the church, following the pathway which snaked between the trees and overgrown graves to the Norman church which stood on the brow of a small hillock. Beside it was a modest, two-storeyed house, its roof made of yellowing thatch, the windows nothing more than wooden shutters. Athelstan looked back. The young boy still stood behind him, one hand gripping the bag, the other balled into a tight fist, guarding Athelstan’s penny as if it was the key to heaven itself.
‘Father Peter’s in?’
‘He will be there,’ the boy replied. ‘And, for another penny, I’ll look after your horses.’
Athelstan nodded and another coin was tossed in the air.
‘That young man will advance far,’ Cranston murmured as they dismounted and knocked on the door. They heard bolts being pulled back, the door swung open and a clean-shaven, cheery-faced Father Peter peered out.
‘Travellers in this weather?’ His voice was burred by a thick country accent but, despite the snow-white hair and slight stoop of the shoulders, Father Peter was an active, cheerful man. He hardly waited for their introductions but ushered them into the warm, sweet-smelling room, chattering and asking questions like a magpie. He took their cloaks and told them to sit on a bench which he pushed towards the heat of the fire.
‘A coroner and a Dominican come to visit me,’ he announced in mock wonderment, and squatted down beside them on a stool. Father Peter took three earthenware bowls from a small cupboard near the inglenook and served them generous portions of soup from a black bowl which hung perilously from an iron hook above the flames. ‘Bits of fish, some herbs, what’s left of my vegetables.’ The priest screwed up his eyes. ‘Ah, yes, and some onions.’
Both Athelstan and Cranston gripped the warm bowls and sipped at the rich stew which scalded their mouths and lips but put some warmth into their frozen bellies. Father Peter watched, even as he sipped from his own bowl. Athelstan smiled back and put his bowl down.
‘At the moment it’s too hot to eat, Father,’ he murmured apologetically. ‘Even to hold.’
Cranston, however, had no such difficulty. He slurped as noisily as a ravenous dog, mopping up what was left with hard crusts of bread which Father Peter shoved before him on a wooden platter. At last Cranston burped, smacked his lips and handed the bowl back.
‘The best meal in many a day, Father. We thank you for your hospitality.’ The coroner stretched his great hands out towards the flames. ‘We will not keep you long. You know the Burghgesh family?’
Father Peter’s eyes narrowed. ‘Aye,’ he replied. ‘I know of them.’
Athelstan began to sip carefully at his now cooling bowl of soup.
‘Will you tell us, Father?’
The priest shrugged. ‘What is there to say? Bartholomew Burghgesh and his wife lived in a manor house near Buxfield. Bartholomew was always a restless man, born to the sword and the horse rather than the plough and the bailiffs accounts. He went to London and served in the retinues of the great ones. In the old King’s time he was in the garrison of the Tower, then he went abroad with others to fight in Outremer.’
‘And his wife?’
Father Peter made a moue. ‘She was a quiet, sickly woman. They had one boy . . . what was his name? Ah, yes, Mark.’ Father Peter sighed. ‘Oh, they were well looked after. A steward administered the manor, and Bartholomew always sent gold. Then about – oh, some fourteen or fifteen years ago – news came of Bartholomew’s death. He had been killed on board a ship taken by the Moors in the Middle Seas. By that time Mark was a young man. He took his father’s death with little show of regret but the mother became ill and died within a year of her husband.’
‘And Mark Burghgesh?’
‘He was like his father, his head full of stories about Roland and Oliver and performing marvellous feats of arms. For a while he was Lord of the Manor. After the old King’s victories in France, he raised money from the bankers, bought a destrier, and armour, and formed a small retinue of archers of like-minded men from the village.’ The priest paused and stared into the flames. ‘I remember the morning they left,’ he continued dreamily. ‘A beautiful summer’s day. Sir Mark on his black warhorse, his dark red hair oiled and combed; before him went his squire carrying a banner with the Burghgesh arms, and marching behind were six archers with steel caps, quilted jerkins, long bows and quivers full of goose-quilled arrows. A brave sight.’ The priest rocked himself gently. ‘None of them came back,’ he murmured. ‘They all died in the blood and muck.’
Athelstan caught his breath. So like his own story. He and Francis had joined such a retinue. Athelstan had returned but his brother’s body still lay mouldering in some forgotten field in France.
‘None of them came back?’ Cranston repeated, fighting hard to control the excitement in his voice. ‘So Mark Burghgesh could still be alive?’
The priest stared at him and shook his head.
‘Oh, no, Sir John. I spoke wrongly. No one came back alive. Come, I’ll show you where Mark is.’
/> They rose. Father Peter handed them their cloaks, taking his own from a wooden peg, and they followed him out into the cold. The young boy still stood like a soldier, holding the reins of the horses, his eyes looking eagerly at the piles of steaming dung obligingly dropped by both Philomel and Cranston’s mount. Father Peter stopped.
‘Boy, take the horses round to the stable. You’ll find some oats there. Then go in and take some soup. Don’t worry, the horses won’t wander off.’
The urchin stared at Athelstan.
‘Go on, lad,’ the friar ordered. ‘You’ll freeze to death standing there. And, I promise, the horse dung’s yours.’
They reached the church door. Father Peter unlocked it and they entered the darkened nave. It was cold, the air icy. Athelstan gazed at the square, squat pillars decorated with greenery like his own in Southwark, though not as beautiful. He hasn’t got a painter, Athelstan thought. Father Peter caught his eye and Athelstan felt guilty at his petty pride.
‘A fine church, Father,’ he murmured.
Father Peter grinned. ‘We try, Brother. But I would give a king’s ransom for a good painter and craftsman.’
They went beneath the simple chancel screen, across the sanctuary into a small lady chapel which lay in the far corner of the church. A large wooden statue of the Virgin and Child stood on a stone plinth whilst around the walls were raised tombs, simple and square, lacking any effigy or ornamentation. Father Peter went across and gently tapped one.
‘Sir Mark Burghgesh lies here,’ he announced quietly. ‘His body was sent back for burial.’
Cranston stared in disappointment at the grey ragstone tomb. ‘Are you sure, Father Peter?’
‘Yes,’ the priest said. ‘The embalmers did their best to dress the corpse: before the coffin was lowered, I looked once more at the face. Sir Mark had received a terrible death wound on the side of his head, caused by a battle axe or mace, but I am certain it was he.’
Athelstan hid his disappointment and gazed despondently at Cranston. Their cold journey through the bitter Essex landscape had been fruitless.