by Paul Doherty
The soldier staggered into a glade; at the far end a small waterfall gushed beside a track snaking between two trees. He ran towards this, but a hooded figure moved out to block his path. The soldier turned, his sweat-beaded lips curling and snarling, but another creature was behind him. Blind with fear, the man ran into the small stream and waded towards the waterfall. He was nearly there. His mind, twisted by fear, seemed to be saying he would be safe amidst the falling water. He tripped and fell against a rock. He flailed, trying to rise, and saw the hooded figure above him – the smiling face, the lips parted as if to give the sweetest of kisses. Another joined it. He was hoisted out of the water, held up and shaken like a landed fish. He threw his head back and screamed as one of his pursuers bit deep into his soft, fleshy throat.
Chapter 2
The Trinitarian friary stood on the outskirts of Oxford, its sprawling buildings bounded by a grey ragstone curtain wall. Beyond this, the land fell away in a sheer slope down to foul swamps and marshes which the friars, despite all their labours, could not drain. The marshes, covered in a treacherous green slime and straggling bramble bushes, stretched to the edge of a dark forest where the trees clustered so densely together that any who wished to challenge the forest’s sinister reputation would find it difficult to penetrate. Edmund, prior of the friary, stood by the window of his high-vaulted cell and stared sorrowfully down at this silent, green darkness. He gently fingered the knots on the tassel of the cord tied around his waist, three in all, standing for the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Edmund had never questioned these vows. He was a scholar, an ascetic, happier amid the vellum, parchment and leather of the library than running a religious house, especially with his knowledge of the dreadful secrets it held.
Edmund had been a friar for thirty years. As a young postulant, he had heard the stories and legends of this place. The novices used to scare each other by lying awake at night and whispering all sorts of ghostly and ghastly stories. Edmund had always ignored these. His responsibilities had grown to include the care of these novices, the running of the infirmary and, above all, the care of the scriptorium where the brothers painted, in breath-taking colours, beautiful books of hours or copied the writings of Chrysostom, Eusebius, Athananasius and the other great fathers of the church. The supervision of the friary, the administration of its estates, the discipline among the brethren and the spiritual welfare of the community had always been in the firm hands of the abbot. Now the brutal and sudden death of Abbot Samson had shattered all this.
Edmund had been harshly reminded that these legends and stories were now a very grim reality and he did not know how to cope. Naturally, he had done his best. He had brought in an old hag from the forest to wash Samson’s body and dress it for burial and had informed the rest of the community that the abbot had died of a sudden seizure brought on by some morbid disease. The sooner the requiem mass was sung and the corpse buried before the high altar, he had suggested, the better. The brothers had accepted this, except for the ancient ones such as Lanfranc, who worked in the archives, and Matthew the librarian. They had their suspicions. During chapter meetings, their rheumy old eyes would challenge Edmund, as if daring him to announce that the ancient evil over which the friary had been built was free to exert its baleful influence again.
Edmund closed his eyes and whispered a short prayer. The old ones would keep their vows of silence, but for how long? No one really knew the secrets of the friary. These were only handed over to each new abbot, who swore a solemn oath never to divulge them. Edmund was supposed to have no knowledge of them. He did not want to act as abbot and yet it would be months before the mother house in France authorized the election of a successor to Samson. Edmund wiped his wet lips with the back of his hand. He had sent letters under secret seal across the Channel but all he had received was the strict instruction to keep silent. Edmund glared once more at the green marshes; time was running out. The litany of horrific deaths in the area was growing by the month. Men, women and children were being barbarously murdered and there seemed to be little anyone could do to stop it.
The prior wove his long fingers together nervously. Why, oh why, he wondered, had Abbot Samson broken his vow and unlocked the iron-bound door leading to the vaults? No abbot was supposed to do that but Samson, ever headstrong, had not only opened the vaults but disturbed the chain-bound coffer. And someone had been with him – a stranger who had slipped into the friary as silent and deadly as some bat. Abbot Samson had personally met the shadowy figure at the gate and taken him to his own quarters, where they had stayed until the rest of the community had retired. Prior Edmund had glimpsed these strange happenings but ignored them till he woke late at night soaked in sweat and shaking from horrible nightmares. Edmund had hurried down into the vaults to find the abbot dead, no mark upon his body but his face convulsed in a terrible grimace, mouth gaping, eyes open. There was no sign of the mysterious visitor. Edmund had stepped into that grey, evil-filled vault and looked at the coffer, now disturbed, the rusty padlock forced, the chains cast back, the lid slightly shifted to one side. Edmund had moved the lid back and brought down a new padlock, fastening it securely.
He had kept his eyes turned away, but even he had been shocked by what he had glimpsed: the uncorrupted body of a handsome youth, eyes closed as if in a deep, peaceful sleep. Edmund had stared around that vault. He was sure the coffer had been ransacked, but he could not tarry. He had removed the hammer and crowbar Samson had used and dragged the abbot’s body out, re-locking and re-sealing the door to the vaults. He had pulled the corpse out of the tunnel and, under the cover of darkness, carried the heavy-boned body to the abbot’s study, where a servitor found it the following morning. Why, Edmund moaned, had the Abbot opened the vault? What had happened to him? What had he seen? What had he done? Were those marshes at the foot of the hill responsible? Had Samson been looking for gold, new-found wealth to drain the marshes and turn them into fertile pasturelands? Who was his mysterious visitor? Edmund turned his back on the window and glared at the locked door of his cell. He must stop this; he kept hiding from the rest of the community and already they were beginning to sense something was wrong. He picked up his crucifix from the prie-dieu beside him and clutched it to his chest. The sheriff had said help was coming, but what would happen when it arrived? Abbot Samson’s death and the horrific murders were terrifying, but so might be these royal commissioners with their power to question and threaten.
The prior leaned against the prie-dieu, half listening to the birds who rustled their wings in the eaves of the friary roof. Perhaps he should take matters into his own hands? Confront Lanfranc and Matthew and demand to see the secret chronicle? He tapped his fingers on the wood, remembering that secret doorway, the awesome, slimy, rat-filled passageway beyond and that lonely coffer. Prior Edmund was a good but weak man; he shivered and, bowing his head, begged God for help against the powers of darkness.
The friar’s anxieties and fears would have turned to heart-throbbing terror if he had known of the meeting being held in the depths of the forest just beyond the friary. The sombre, cowled figures had entered it by secret paths, not stopping till they had reached a glade surrounded and darkened by great oak trees. In the centre of the clearing were oblong stone plinths ravaged by age and covered with moss. Once these had formed a great altar used by the Druids, who had slaughtered their victims there before hanging them from the branches of a nearby oak as an offering to the gods they worshipped. The group of black-cowled figures now used the stones as benches, sitting there in silence, merging with the darkness. In the faint daylight seeping through the trees they looked like monks coming together to worship in some ancient cathedral. Indeed, they regarded this place as a church, calling it their field of blood, for it was protected by ancient evils and reeked of terrible sins. They were safe here, wrapped in the darkness, away from prying eyes and straining ears. They sat silent as the weak sun, dipping in the west, was hidden by clouds. Their leader sighed-the
only noise to break the silence, for no animal ever went near the glade. Its green, sinister silence was never broken by the chant of birdsong. The leader sighed again.
‘We have come,’ he intoned. ‘We are assembled here in order to draw strength and plot our course. I have news. The king’s men will be here soon. We cannot stop their journey any more than we can resist the power of the so-called sacred relic.’
‘We should have destroyed that!’ One of his companions spoke up.
‘We cannot. It’s too powerful and, if displayed in our midst, might unveil our true natures.’
‘Then what shall we do?’
‘First, we leave the relic. Second, we pretend. Let the king’s men chase their moonbeams and will-o’-the-wisps. They will soon tire and their master will grow weary. They will be recalled; this kingdom is at war with France and the king needs every man. Yet, while they’re here we must be careful.’ He paused and took a deep breath. ‘The spirit of our Master is now free,’ he continued, ‘and the rumour of his return has gone out. Our existence is known in Paris, in the great cities along the Rhine and in the villages beyond the Danube. Soon, those from where our Master came will hear of us.’ The leader looked round the ancient circle. ‘We shall re-open the sacred groves and take strength from our enemies, for their blood is our food.’ The leader stopped and waited until the thin rays of daylight died among the trees. ‘Light the torches!’ he ordered. ‘The Dark Lord awaits us!’
A tinder was struck and each lit the flambeau he carried. They all stood and moved in procession to stand in a circle around the great oak tree, whose branches thrust up like dark fingers towards the sky. The tree had always been twisted and, in the natural hollow of its branches, the Druids had once placed the wicker baskets containing their human sacrifices. Now it bore its own grisly burden: the corpse of the Hospitaller.
At the convent, Godfrey had unpacked his bags, stripped, washed and made himself as comfortable as possible on the small cot bed. He stared around the cell, stark and austere, and was wondering how long it would be his home when he drifted into sleep. He was roughly woken by a grinning Alexander.
‘Come on, soldier,’ the clerk jibed. ‘Food is served.’
Godfrey sat up, sniffed the savoury odours and went downstairs to find a bustling Mathilda had laid out cups of wine, some cheese, pure flour bread and two bowls of steaming hot broth. Both men wolfed the food down and had hardly finished when Dame Constance returned with the two strangers Godfrey had glimpsed in her chamber. One was short, with the rosy red cheeks of a maid, tufts of blond hair pressed down over his thinning scalp. He waddled rather than walked and, with his protuberant belly and stuck-out chest, Sir Oswald Beauchamp, sheriff of Oxford, reminded Alexander of a very fat pigeon he had once owned as a pet. Nevertheless, despite his bland features, the sheriff was a shrewd, calculating man with restless eyes and a mouth as thin as a miser’s purse. He had the irritating habit of scratching the point of his nose until the skin had begun to peel off. His companion, Nicholas Ormiston, proctor of the university, was an oldish-young man; although of no more than thirty summers, his thin face was already lined, his hair fast receding and his shoulders stooped after years of study. Nevertheless, his quick, dark eyes were friendly and welcoming.
Dame Constance finished the introductions and shooed Mathilda back to the convent kitchen, closing the door firmly behind her.
‘You have eaten and drunk well?’ she asked, coming back to sit at the head of the small table. ‘Good! Good!’ she continued, not waiting for an answer, and carefully folded back the sleeves of her gown. ‘What you are about to learn, as king’s commissioners, is both bloody and sinister. Terrible murders have been perpetrated in Oxford and we think more will occur. Sir Oswald?’
‘Yes, yes,’ the small man muttered officiously and, plucking a small piece of parchment from his wallet, tossed it on to the table.
Alexander picked it up and studied the six names on it.
‘Who are these?’
‘The names of students from Stapleton Hall in the Turl who have disappeared over the last few months.’
‘Disappeared?’ Alexander clicked his fingers. ‘Like a mist? No trace?’
‘None whatsoever.’ The proctor intervened in a deep mellow voice. ‘They took their belongings, what few they had. One or two of them were glimpsed walking along the High Street before they vanished. They came from different parts of the kingdom except for one, Guido, who was a Fleming. Their families are anxious for they too have neither seen nor heard of them.’
‘But there’s more isn’t there,’ Godfrey interrupted, ‘than the disappearance of these six young men?’
‘Yes, yes, there is. In the city, over the last few months, houses have been broken into,’ the sheriff replied. ‘Though I use that term wrongly, there was no sign of violence against doors or windows. Different households,’ he murmured as if talking to himself, ‘each time with the same result. Every man, woman and child in that house is killed, their throats cut and the bodies drained of blood. Yet the assassins disappear as quietly and mysteriously as they came.’
‘There is no connection,’ Godfrey asked, ‘between any of the families killed?’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘And are the houses plundered?’
‘Coins are taken, gold, silver but nothing else.’
‘And is there any sign of resistance?’
Beauchamp shook his head. ‘That’s what’s terrifying. The rooms are awash with blood but there’s no mark of violence, no sign of a fight, never once are the neighbours aroused. It’s as if—’ The sheriff nervously rubbed the end of his nose. ‘It’s as if some demon can move through walls and doors, quietly kill, drink the blood and disappear.’
‘Are the victims old?’ Godfrey asked. ‘Surely a young man would put up some form of resistance?’
‘One family had two young sons,’ the proctor replied, ‘one fifteen summers old, the other seventeen. They died like the rest.’
‘And the streets are patrolled at night?’ Godfrey asked.
‘We have beadles, officials from the university and some soldiers from the castle,’ Beauchamp snapped. ‘They are now too terrified to venture out at night and what is the use, Sir Godfrey? Not even a beggar or the occasional whore has glimpsed anything amiss.’
‘Some witches’ coven is responsible,’ Dame Constance intervened. ‘A group of Satan worshippers who have studied the legends.’
The sheriff shook his head in exasperation. ‘Lady, lady, we have heard these stories before, nothing but legends.’
Alexander moved his wine cup aside and rested his elbows on the table. ‘I collect legends,’ he smiled, ‘my own people’s stories of Oengus and his war dog.’
‘These are different,’ the abbess responded curtly. She drew in her breath. ‘Many years ago,’ she began, ‘shortly after the Conqueror subjugated this country, a young man arrived in what was then the small village of Oxford. He came from the east. No, not a Saracen or a Turk, but from the countries north of Greece hemmed in by wild mountains and dark forests. He was apparently a kindly man much given to the service of God and the rendering of good works. He drew others to himself. They took over a derelict keep and, digging stones from the local quarry, rebuilt and refurbished it.’ Dame Constance sighed. ‘England was in turmoil at the time and many such strangers arrived. At first, the local people welcomed this stranger and his companions who prayed so much and did such good work among the poor, especially tending to travellers on the road going up to the northern shires or to those who took barges along the river. They even built a bridge across the Cherwell. However, within a year of the stranger’s arrival, strange deaths began to occur; men, women and children were found with their throats cut, their bodies drained of blood.’ Dame Constance smoothed the top of the table with her fingers. ‘To cut a long but brutal story short, after months of such horrible crimes the blame was squarely laid at the feet of the stranger and the mysterious order he ha
d founded at the keep in which they dwelt.’ She licked her lips. ‘Appeals were made to London. The king sent soldiers north and, after a vicious and bloody battle, they burnt the keep and either killed or hanged whoever lived there.’ She fell silent and stared down.
‘And the stranger?’ Alexander asked.
‘According to the legend, Sir Hugo Mortimer, the Norman commander whose descendants still own land hereabouts, burnt the keep to the ground. Underneath it Mortimer found secret tunnels and passageways, so he had this wicked stranger placed in a lead-lined coffin, bound with chains and buried alive.’
The abbess paused. Godfrey realized how quiet the guest house had become, the only sound being the water dripping from the eaves outside. Alexander sat fascinated, the other two men looked subdued.
‘What are you saying, Lady?’ Godfrey asked.
‘I haven’t finished. According to the legends, a monastery, later taken over by the Trinitarian friars, was built on that site. The centuries passed and the old sins, reeking of an ancient evil, were laid to rest by masses and prayers.’
‘But now you say the curse has returned?’ Alexander queried.
‘Yes.’ She smiled faintly. ‘I study the stars and their different constellations. Oh, I know the church condemns astrology, but the planets have moved into some deadly configuration and the spirit of that accursed stranger has come back amongst us.’
‘What proof do you have of that?’ Godfrey asked.
‘Nothing, except the series of bloody deaths which evokes an evil past and, God knows how, perhaps the death of Abbot Samson at the Trinitarian friary.’ She licked her dry lips. ‘Although a healthy man, Samson died suddenly and, rather mysteriously, his body was coffined immediately and laid to rest before the high altar.’ She shrugged. ‘Both I and the sheriff attended the funeral mass. There is something sinister at that friary.’
‘And these disappearances?’ McBain spoke up. ‘Surely the Master and fellows of Stapleton Hall have investigated?’