by Paul Doherty
The day proved a fine one. At first there was unease as they entered the open countryside; they had heard about the outlaws and wolfsheads who plagued such deserted areas and preyed upon hapless pilgrims. Harry the taverner, however, soon mollified them, pointing out that the knight was armed and there was a goodly number of robust fellows in their company who would frighten off any outlaw.
They rode through the bright spring sunshine past great open fields where the green, rain-drenched shoots were beginning to appear. The knight began his tale for the day. It was about the Theban knights Arcite and Palamon and their rivalry for the hand of the beautiful sister of the queen of the Amazons. He had finished the story by the time they reached St Thomas’s watering hole. Here they had to pause for a while. The miller was as deep in his cups as the night before and had continued to sup from a wineskin ever since they had left the Tabard. Harry the taverner tried to reason with him.
‘No, by God’s soul!’ the miller cried. ‘I will not keep quiet. I insist on telling my tale now and, if I am drunk, blame it on Southwark ale. However, hearing our knight talk about Oxford, I’ll tell you a tale of a different ilk! About a stingy carpenter who lived in that city and his weasel-slim wife Alison, who was as hot for bed sports as any woman could be.’
The reeve, a carpenter by trade, heard this and immediately a great quarrel broke out between the two which lasted until they’d finished their journey for the day. No one really paid much attention to the miller. He had been drunk since the day he joined them and, by the time they had finished supper, he was snoring in a corner, one arm around his bagpipes. They waited until the servants had withdrawn from the room they had hired then begged the knight to continue his tale.
He was standing by the window staring out into the darkness, watching the shadows in the trees across the road from where the tavern stood.
‘Come on, sir knight,’ Harry called cheerfully. ‘For pity’s sake, sir, you began a tale last night which terrified us all. We won’t rest secure in our beds until you have finished it once and for all!’
The knight stared into the darkness. He was sure he was being closely studied, either by someone trailing the pilgrims along the Watling Way or by one of his travelling companions. He did not know, but kept a watchful eye upon the monk. He sensed the man’s cheery bonhomie hid deeper, darker waters. Harry the taverner repeated his request, the knight smiled and came back to the head of the table.
‘I shall finish my tale,’ he declared. ‘Now listen well!’
PART III
Chapter 1
Dame Constance’s screams at what she had seen roused the convent and brought Sir Godfrey and Alexander running from the refectory. They gathered in the abbess’s parlour and, for a while, Dame Constance could hardly speak but sat quivering with fear. Only when Alexander carefully forced a cup of wine between her lips did she relax and describe, in halting phrases, the nightmarish scene she had glimpsed from her window.
Sir Godfrey immediately ordered all doors and windows to be locked. He hurried across to the guest house, Alexander accompanying him. He donned his hauberk and great sword belt and strode out into the darkness, sword in one hand, dirk in the other. Alexander, similarly armed, followed him around the convent buildings yet they could discover nothing amiss. Only the nightbirds chattering in the trees, the occasional howl of a dog and faint noises from the light-filled windows of the convent broke the silence. They searched the grounds until Sir Godfrey became concerned that the men Dame Constance had glimpsed might have entered the building by some postern door or open window.
‘You go back there, Alexander,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll finish searching here.’
Sir Godfrey walked to the far side of the convent away from the church and into the large orchard that stretched down to the boundary walls. He caught the sweet-sour smell of rotting apples underfoot but, as he entered the trees, he sensed there was something awry and cursed the wine that had fuddled his wits. Holding his knife and sword before him, he strode through the orchard into a small glade and realized what was wrong. A deathly stillness had fallen; not even the chattering of a nightjar, the hoot of an owl or the rustling of night animals in the overgrown grass disturbed the silence. The knight walked into the centre of the glade. The clouds had broken and the trees were bathed in the silvery light of a hunter’s moon. Sir Godfrey paused. He listened to the sound of his own heavy breathing, then gave a strangled cry as five figures detached themselves from the trees and walked towards him. Dressed completely in black, they blended into the darkness. Their faces were hidden by masks, so that Sir Godfrey could glimpse only the glint of an eye, the faint patch of skin above a mouth. He adopted a fighting stance, resisting the urge to flee back to the convent.
‘We mean you no harm, Sir Godfrey Evesden,’ the central figure declared. His words, though, were followed by a snigger that turned a solemn reassurance into a menacing threat. ‘Well, we mean you no harm for the present. What happens in the future is a matter for you to decide.’
Sir Godfrey stepped back; the figures stayed still.
‘Who are you?’ the knight challenged. ‘Why are you here? What do you want with me? Why frighten a poor old abbess in the dead of night?’
‘Come, come, Sir Godfrey,’ the voice replied. ‘We know why you are here and the commission you carry. Go back to your masters in London and take the snooping clerk and that blind-eyed bitch with you. Tell the king this is no matter for you, no conspiracy against the crown, silent treason or the corruption of officials. And lower your sword. If we wanted your life we could have taken it.’
‘So, what do you want?’ Sir Godfrey snapped.
‘To finish our work here.’
‘Which is?’
‘None of your business, knight!’
‘Then how will you finish it?’ Sir Godfrey persisted. ‘By murder? By shedding the blood of innocents? By terrible crimes perpetrated in the dead of night? By slitting the throats of innocents and drinking their blood?’
‘No different from what you do, Sir Godfrey,’ the voice replied. ‘Have you not fought on the battlefields of France where the dead are piled waist-high or taken a barge along the river Thames and seen the corpses bobbing like bits of refuse? Human life is cheap, Sir Godfrey. So easily,’ the voice chuckled, ‘and so pleasurably replaced.’
‘You are devil-possessed assassins!’ the knight retorted.
‘We all have our different lords, Sir Godfrey, but enough is enough. We have frightened that old bitch the abbess. She should not have brought you here and we have delivered our warning to you. Be out of Oxford within three days!’
‘And if not?’
‘Then we shall meet again.’
The figure stepped back, retreating within the trees, and disappeared. Sir Godfrey sheathed his sword and dagger and leaned against the cold bark of a tree. He waited until the tremors racking his body ceased and then walked back to the convent building.
Alexander was waiting for him just within the entrance. He took one look at Sir Godfrey’s face.
‘You’ve seen a ghost, sir knight?’
‘Worse, clerk, I’ve seen the devil himself!’
And Sir Godfrey gave Alexander a curt description of the meeting in the orchard. The knight sat on a bench and leaned his head against the lime-washed wall, staring up at a gaunt, black crucifix.
‘They came to frighten,’ he murmured, ‘and to warn.’ He glanced at the clerk. ‘If they knew what little progress we are making, they would not have bothered.’
‘Everything hinges,’ McBain replied, ‘upon one fact.’
‘Which is?’
‘How, in sweet God’s name, do they get into these houses without any hue or cry or disturbing the neighbours?’
Alexander went back into the refectory and brought back two goblets of wine. He handed one to the knight and grinned.
‘Dame Constance has retired. Dame Edith is praying in the church and I have given my personal assurance—’ His grin w
idened. ‘My personal assurance that Lady Emily is safe.’ He paused. ‘We could do one thing, Sir Godfrey.’
The knight looked at him quizzically.
‘We know the Strigoi are in Oxford this evening. Perhaps they plan to make another visit elsewhere. Let us walk the city – see what does happen at the dead of night in the alleys and streets of Oxford, who does prowl around.’
Sir Godfrey felt tired, still slightly fuddled after the meal of rich food and heavy drink. However, he accepted the wisdom of the clerk’s words and, within the hour, booted, cloaked and wearing their weapons, they left the convent and began their journey around the sleeping city of Oxford.
They went along the streets, covering their noses at the stench of the refuse piled in the ditch near Holywell, past Smithgate, along Bocardo Lane, under the silent, dark mass of St Michael’s in Northgate and down into Fish Street. At first they thought the streets were empty but, now and again, they would meet a group of students slipping along the alleyways, whispering excitedly and laughing at their exploits in breaking free of their halls’ regulations. Near St Aldate’s they met the city watch, a huddle of rather frightened men warming their hands over a glowing brazier. Their leader stopped them but, when Sir Godfrey explained who they were, allowed them to pass without further hindrance. Beggars were everywhere, with their thin, skeletal arms, whining cries and beseeching calls for alms or food. Now and again dark shadows would flit across an alley, but Sir Godfrey dismissed these as the usual city night hawks – a footpad looking for easy prey, some student deep in his cups or a citizen hurrying home from a night’s roistering in a tavern.
‘Nothing,’ Sir Godfrey murmured as they turned their horses back in the direction of the convent.
‘Nothing, yet something,’ Alexander replied.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, the streets aren’t as deserted as perhaps we thought. It’s possible that one of these groups we met—’ Alexander cleared his throat. ‘Let me phrase it more correctly. It’s possible that the murderers could pose as any of the groups we met. A group of roistering students asking for directions, two burgesses seeking shelter from a pursuing footpad. Think, Sir Godfrey, think again. What sort of person would you open your door to in the dead of night?’
As the knight and the clerk returned to St Anne’s, the Cotterills, a family of tinkers, were just finishing their evening meal in their house in an alleyway just off Bocardo Lane. The occasion had hardly been a cordial one. Isolda, Raoul’s wife, had sat tight-lipped throughout, hardly touching her earthenware bowl of soup made from onions and mushrooms. She glared at her daughter Caterina with her dark lustrous hair, creamy complexion and brown merry eyes. She noted how her daughter’s ample bosom strained against her threadbare woollen smock and attracted surreptitious glances from her second husband Raoul. Isolda had cause for concern. Earlier in the day, just after Raoul had pushed his hand-cart back from the market, Isolda had caught both of them in the small garden plot behind the house, sharing an embrace hardly fitting between a father and step-daughter. After all, Caterina was her one and only child by Alexander who now lay buried under the old, gnarled yew trees in the corner of St Peter’s graveyard.
Isolda’s six-year-old son by Raoul, red-haired, freckle-faced Robert, sensed the tensions at the table and, seeing his mother’s attention was diverted, slipped upstairs to continue his favourite game. Robert had found a small room, no more than a cupboard in the wall, reached through a small trapdoor concealed behind the iron-bound copper chest in the small passageway outside his mother’s room. He had found that by squeezing over the chest and raising the trapdoor he could crawl into his secret chamber, where he could play his favourite game of dragons and monsters. As he lifted the trapdoor his father called his name, but it was too late. Robert crawled in and closed the trapdoor behind him. He took the tinder he had filched from his father’s store and lit the old tallow candle standing on the floor in the centre of the room. The little boy watched the candle-flame grow. He giggled softly to himself as he used his hands and arms to make shadows dance against the far wall.
‘Here be a dragon,’ he murmured, clenching his little fist and holding it up. He watched the shadows flicker ominously on the wall. Then he held up his three little fingers. ‘And here be the knight on his horse, come to fight the dragon.’
Robert paused; he heard a knock on the door downstairs, his mother laughing, a scraping of stools, and his father going along the hallway.
‘Visitors!’ the boy whispered. He strained his ears, but could hear only one voice. ‘Just one!’ he murmured and went back to his shadow playing. He heard his mother call, ‘Robert, come down!’ But the little boy sat with his back to the wall and continued his game. He must have dozed for a few minutes. He was awakened by what he thought was a scream, slight, muted. Downstairs the door opened again and Robert heard more people coming into the house. Or were his parents leaving? He heard heavy footsteps on the stairs; that must be Father, he thought, going up to the garret to get a tun of his best ale.
Doors opened and shut. Someone was outside in the passageway, breathing heavily. Suddenly the little boy became frightened. Without thinking, he leaned over and doused the candle and sat crouched in the darkness. Terror tingled every fibre of his body. His legs shook. His hands felt heavy and cold, like the great block of ice he’d helped his father bring in from the river last Yuletide. Something terrible was outside the room. A grotesque creature from one of his worse nightmares was standing on the other side of the wall. The boy crouched, frozen like a rabbit. He allowed the terrible sense of evil to waft around him and ruffle the back of his neck with its cold fingers. Robert dare not move. The devil had come into his house and all boyish games were ended.
Chapter 2
Sir Godfrey and Alexander were up early the next morning, their hearts gladdened by the bright blue sky and the flashes of weak sunlight. They joined Dame Edith in the convent church. They knelt on their prie-dieus in front of the rood screen, listening to the nuns sing divine office, followed by a mass celebrated by the convent chaplain. The priest was dressed in vestments of red and gold, a beautiful white dove made of silk embroidered on the back of his chasuble. Sir Godfrey prayed devoutly, watching every movement of the priest, as he followed the rhythm of the mass through the epistle, the gospel and the offering of the bread and wine.
Dame Edith tried to pray. In her mind’s eye, she tried to enter the great column of fire, the entrance to God’s kingdom. She didn’t know why, but every time she prayed or thought of God she imagined a sea of fire, pure love, which warmed, nourished and strengthened but never burnt. She realized why Dame Constance had asked for this mass to be said; it was a petition to God that he would send his Holy Spirit to guard and protect the convent community after the terrible events of the night before. The exorcist knew the Strigoi had been here; even as she had crouched in her cold, dark cell she’d sensed their malevolence and corrupt influence wafting through the place like the sour stench from a midden heap.
She turned her head to watch McBain, kneeling now in prayer, and had to hide her smile. The young clerk was devout enough, she was sure, but he was more intent on staring at the lovely Emily than on praying for God’s guidance. She was right. Alexander said his prayers but every so often he would stare at Emily, sitting so demurely in her stall beside Dame Constance. Alexander stared until he caught her attention and, when he did, pulled a face. The girl smiled and lowered her head. Alexander continued to stare, Emily looked coyly from beneath her eyelashes. Alexander grimaced and rolled his eyes. The girl began to giggle but, when Dame Constance looked up sharply, Alexander’s face was fashioned into that of some great mystic, head to one side, eyes intent on the altar, his face and posture as devout as any monk.
After mass, Dame Constance joined the knight and clerk as they breakfasted on ale, oatmeal and bread and cheese in the small parlour of the guest house. She came in, with Dame Edith on her arm, as severe in demeanour as before,
but both men knew that the events of the previous evening had deeply frightened her. They all exchanged the kiss of peace. Mathilda set fresh places for the two women. Dame Constance said grace, Godfrey and Alexander looking ruefully at each other, for they had forgotten that. Alexander complimented the abbess on the mass, particularly on the singing of the nuns. Dame Constance smiled thinly and came swiftly to the point.
‘Are we in danger here?’
‘You mean after the events of last night?’ Alexander asked.
Sir Godfrey shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’ He looked at the exorcist. ‘What do you think, domina?’
Dame Edith sipped gently from the horn spoon, wafting her fingers across her mouth, for the oatmeal was hot.
‘The Strigoi are demons,’ she began, ‘evil creatures who love to play games and relish the fear they provoke. They came to frighten you last night, Dame Constance, as well as to warn Sir Godfrey and Master McBain to leave Oxford.’
‘Why?’ Alexander asked. ‘Why didn’t they just kill Sir Godfrey?’
‘They might not have found that easy,’ the knight said grimly.
The clerk gently touched the knight on the back of his hand as a sign of apology. The exorcist put her horn spoon back on the table and pushed away the hot bowl of oatmeal.
‘The Strigoi are evil but not foolish. They know you carry the king’s commission. An attack upon you is an attack upon the crown. They do not want every house guarded by royal soldiers and royal judges probing into every gutter, sewer and midden heap in Oxford, but that is what would happen if the king’s commissioners were murdered. However,’ she sighed, ‘it’s best to be safe. Lady abbess, ask the sheriff for some soldiers to be sent here. Organize a curfew just before dark. Issue instructions that when the bell is rung all doors are to be locked, all windows sealed, the gateways and postern doors barred and bolted. No one is to leave or enter without your special permission.’