The Rose Demon

6

The chronicler at Tewkesbury described the villagers’ attack on the hermit at Tenebral in the most colourful language. According to the old monk, who blew on his knuckles and scratched the parchment with his quill, the night before was riven with protests. A blazing comet was seen in the sky, the stars dripped blood and a screech owl was heard in the woods around the village. Strange beasts appeared, plodding through the night: men with the heads of dogs; ghostly hunters speeding through the trees. Black Vaughan and his demon riders pounded along moonlit trackways. An angel perched on the spire of the church and, in the graveyard, ghosts were seen, their grey empty shapes moving amongst the tombstones and lichen-covered crosses. Strange knockings were made on doors. The patter of invisible feet was heard in passageways. When the sun rose, Tenebral was bathed in a fiery reddish glow of Hell.

Of course these were legends. The arrest of the hermit was a simple, even pathetic affair. Matthias, forbidden to leave the house, had spent the previous evening avoiding both his father and mother as well as the sinister, chilling presence of the Preacher. The men of the village, armed to the teeth, with arbalests, longbows, spears, hatchets, dirks and daggers, marched towards Tenebral like a phalanx across a battlefield. The hermit was waiting: standing under the ruined lych-gate, he did not struggle when they bound his hands. Some of the younger men beat him with sticks and drew blood from his nose and mouth yet he offered no objection. They tied the other end of the rope to Fulcher’s great horse and dragged him like a sack of dirt into the village.

The Preacher was in charge. Parson Osbert bleated about compassion and the rights of the prisoner but the peasants’ blood was up: they were determined to try this hermit for his life.

Christina did not come down that morning but stayed in bed. Matthias heard the uproar as the men dragged the hermit into the nave of the church. He slipped out of the house and joined the women and children of the village as they thronged the church, eagerly awaiting the trial. A jury was empanelled, twelve good men and true symbolising the apostles who followed Christ. There was, however, nothing Christlike about the Preacher. Parson Osbert could only stand flailing his hands, bemoaning the violence of his parishioners. The Preacher acted as both judge and prosecutor. The jury sat on the benches facing each other across the nave. The prisoner was bound to a pillar whilst the Preacher dominated the proceedings from the pulpit. Walter Mapp the scrivener had a small table brought from the sacristy as he would act as clerk. He pompously laid out the parchment, ink horns, quills, pumice stone and the keen little knife which would keep his pen sharp.

The Preacher clapped his hands three times.

‘Vox populi, vox Dei!’ he intoned. ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God!’ He pointed to a vivid scene painted on the church wall: Christ in Judgment at the parousia, the last day, dividing the people into sheep and goats. ‘Christ is our witness,’ the Preacher began. ‘We are here in the nave of the church to try this man for the crimes of witchcraft, devilish practices and murder. What say ye?’

A roar like the howl of some great beast filled the church. Men, women and children stamped their feet and held their hands out, a sign they always used in the manor court when petitioning for justice.

‘What is your name?’ the Preacher demanded.

‘What is yours?’ the hermit coolly replied, bringing back his head.

The Preacher looked nonplussed. ‘My name is not your business!’

‘Then neither is mine yours!’ the hermit retorted.

The Preacher, his face flushed with anger, looked down at the scrivener. ‘Take careful note of what the prisoner says.’

‘I am glad you will,’ the hermit replied, ‘for the record will condemn you, your own words and actions.’

The Preacher drew himself up. He was disconcerted by the cool mockery in the hermit’s voice.

‘What do you mean?’ The Preacher could have bitten his tongue out.

‘By what authority do you try me?’ the hermit demanded. ‘You are not a member of this village. You are not a tenant of the manor. You hold no warrant either from the Crown or the Church. So, by what authority do you try me? By what right do you hold this court? What warrant gives you the role of judge and prosecutor?’

A murmur of approval greeted the hermit’s words. The villagers peered anxiously at each other, then at the Preacher. They accepted the power of the prisoner’s words. The villagers had a reverential awe of the written word, the sealed warrant, the rites and ancient customs. More importantly, what would Baron Sanguis say when he returned? Manor lords were very jealous about their rights.

The Preacher in the pulpit was also concerned. Unless he reasserted his authority, these proceedings would end like some mummers’ farce. He dug into his wallet and drew out a scroll of parchment, dark and greasy with age. He unrolled this, holding it up so the villagers could see the indentations down the side and especially the great purple blob of wax at the bottom, an official seal.

The villagers sighed with relief.

‘What is that?’ the hermit mocked.

‘The warrant of Holy Mother Church!’ the Preacher snapped. ‘Permission from the great Order of the Hospital to preach God’s words, extirpate heresy and bring wrongdoers to justice.’

‘It has no authority here,’ the hermit declared.

‘Hasn’t it?’ the Preacher replied silkily.

He came down the steps of the pulpit. He now realised standing there was a mistake. Too aloof, too distant from the people he wished to manage. The Preacher handed his warrant to the scrivener, who studied it carefully and nodded wisely.

‘It has the authority of Holy Mother Church,’ the scrivener lied.

‘Then why am I bound?’ The hermit seemed determined to fight the Preacher every step of the way.

The Preacher nodded and gestured at Simon the reeve. He must not allow the prisoner too much sympathy. The cords were cut. The hermit, rubbing his wrists and flexing his arms, walked into the centre of the nave. Matthias, who had managed to worm his way to the front of the crowd, squatted open-mouthed. The hermit caught his eye, smiled faintly and winked.

‘I accuse you,’ the Preacher decided to waste no more time, ‘of the murder of Edith, daughter of Fulcher the blacksmith!’

‘What proof do you have?’

‘So, you don’t deny it?’

The Preacher now walked up and down, more intent on the parishioners than the prisoner.

‘You have accused me of a crime,’ the hermit retorted. ‘And I ask you for the proof. If I see the proof then I will reply.’

The Preacher decided to shift his ground, to move on to other cases, only to receive the same incisive reply. Matthias stared at his father but Parson Osbert, his face haggard, shoulders drooping, had lost all control over the proceedings. He sat on the steps of the small Lady Chapel, eyes down, refusing to lift his head. For the first time ever, Matthias felt ashamed, scornful of his father’s cowardice before this stranger. Now and again the Preacher would look to the priest for assistance but there was none.

The Preacher, fingers to his lips, walked up and down, silent for a while: this was not going the way he wanted it. The hermit, instead of protesting his innocence, kept bringing his questions back to matters of legal principle, evidence, witnesses. The Preacher realised that, indeed, the hermit knew more of the law then he did. What, therefore, had Prior Sir Raymond Grandison advised? He paused in his pacing.

‘You ask about rights and evidence,’ he snapped. ‘Are you a true son of Holy Mother Church?’

‘It is up to you,’ the hermit replied, ‘to produce evidence that I am not.’

‘Recite the Creed!’ the Preacher snapped.

The hermit turned to face the villagers.

‘Credo in Unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae.’

The Preacher made a cutting movement with his hand. That was a mistake, he realised. The hermit had launched into the Nicene Creed, which was always intoned in Latin every Sunday by their priest: the Church’s eternal hymn of belief to the Trinity, to the Incarnate God and to the Church.

‘You don’t pray,’ the Preacher taunted.

‘How do you know that?’ the hermit replied.

‘You consort with lewd women.’

‘I didn’t know there were any in Sutton Courteny,’ came the quick reply, causing a ripple of mirth amongst the villagers. ‘This is Sutton Courteny,’ the hermit continued smoothly, ‘not St Paul’s churchyard.’

The Preacher stopped his pacing. He tried to hide his confusion. He glanced quickly at the hermit. His opponent’s eyes mocked him: I know you, his gaze said, your secret sins, your weakness for soft flesh, for the pleasures of the bed.

The Preacher swallowed hard and glanced quickly at the jurors. He did not like what he saw: not one of them would meet his eye. Two or three of them were shuffling their feet. The Preacher went to the mouth of the sanctuary screen and stared at the crucifix, then at the red lamp glowing beneath the pyx which contained the Blessed Sacrament. The Preacher recalled the words of Sir Raymond. He cursed his own impetuosity as he watched the flickering red lamp.

‘Do you go to church, hermit?’ he asked, not turning round.

‘I live in one,’ the prisoner replied, causing a fresh outbreak of laughter.

‘Do you attend Mass?’ the Preacher continued. ‘Do you take the Sacrament?’

Without even looking round, the Preacher knew he had hit his mark. For the first time the hermit was silent.

‘Well? Well?’ The Preacher walked back, arms folded. ‘A hermit who lives in a church, who constantly asks for evidence for this and evidence for that. Do you take the body and blood of Christ?’

The hermit was staring at the floor.

‘Well, do you?’

‘I am unworthy.’

‘In the eyes of God we all are,’ the Preacher replied tersely. ‘But the Church encourages the faithful to eat the sacred species. Why don’t you?’

‘I have answered that question. I will say no more.’

The Preacher stared at the villagers, walking slowly towards them, arms raised.

‘Belief in the Eucharist,’ he declared, ‘is the heart of our faith. Moreover, the prisoner talks about law. It is an ancient custom that a man can prove his innocence by partaking of the Body and Blood of Our Lord. In the time of King Edward the Confessor, the traitorous Earl Godwin, being offered the host, choked and died. I now appeal,’ his voice rose, ‘to Heaven!’

And, swinging on his heel, the Preacher strode into the sanctuary. He ignored the protests of Parson Osbert and the murmur from the villagers. He took down the pyx, placed it on the altar and genuflected. He opened it, took out the host and walked purposefully towards the prisoner.

‘Ecce Corpus Christi!’ he intoned.

The prisoner turned his head away.

‘Behold the Body of Christ!’ the Preacher repeated. He turned to John the bailiff. ‘Take some men, seize him, open his mouth!’

‘You cannot do this,’ the hermit protested. ‘It is against God’s law to force the host upon any man!’

‘He speaks the truth.’ Parson Osbert got to his feet, his hands hanging by his side. He had been rubbing his eyes until they were red-rimmed. ‘Enough is enough,’ he whispered to the Preacher. ‘If he will not partake, he shall not partake, that is the law of the Church. If you press him further it will be a blasphemous sacrilege.’

The Preacher glared down the church. The victory was his. He returned the host to the pyx and walked back into the nave. He stopped before the jurors.

‘How do you find him?’

‘Guilty.’

‘And you?’

‘Guilty.’

The other ten replied the same.

‘And how do you find him?’ he appealed to the congregation.

‘Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!’

The chant rose, echoing round the church. The Preacher clapped his hands.

‘And what sentence?’

‘Death by fire!’

The response came loud and clear, men stamping their feet as they repeated the words, relishing the sombre threat of their verdict.

Matthias felt cold, stricken to the heart. He could not believe what was happening. The Preacher, his lips curled in a sneer, turned towards the hermit.

‘Do you have anything to say?’

‘Yes.’ The hermit’s face was pale but he held himself upright, head erect. He walked towards the villagers. ‘You have condemned me without evidence. Let me remind you — yes, I came here eight years ago. And, since my first arrival to this moment, has not Sutton Courteny been spared? No soldiers, pillaging or burning? Your crops have been rich and plentiful? Your cattle grown fat?’

The villagers stared back.

‘Fulcher the blacksmith, are not your profits so great that you are planning to build a better house? And look to provide a good marriage dowry for your remaining daughters? Simon the reeve, do you not have plans to purchase more meadow land? Even Baron Sanguis is thinking of allowing you to be a partner in the profits from his sheep. John the bailiff, Fulke the tanner, Watkin the tiler, have not your businesses prospered? Joscelyn, your beer and ale is now sold as far afield as Stroud and Gloucester, is it not?’

The villagers heard him out. One or two of them were nodding, others stared narrow-eyed. They could not understand how the hermit knew so much about their affairs yet he spoke the truth. In the last eight years Sutton Courteny had prospered and become the envy of its neighbours. No war, no famine, no pestilence.

‘And you?’ The hermit spun on his heel and pointed to the scrivener. Matthias caught a look of venom in his friend’s eyes. ‘Are not your storerooms full of good hides? Do you not have a lucrative trade with the scriptorium at Tewkesbury Abbey?’

The hermit walked closer. The scrivener, quill raised, was fearful at how this man’s eyes seemed to search his very soul.

‘Plenty of money,’ the hermit declared in a loud whisper. ‘The joys of the tavern, the bodies of lithe young women thrashing beneath you.’ He wiped the spittle from the corner of his mouth. ‘But even that does not satisfy you!’

‘You have proved your own witchcraft,’ the Preacher intervened, fearful of the hold this man might have over the villagers.

‘No, sir. You have proved it!’

The Preacher refused to answer but shouted at the villagers, ‘Is there anyone here who will speak for him?’

A deathly silence.

‘I ask you now, before God, is there any man, woman or child who will speak for the prisoner?’

‘I will!’

The words were out of Matthias’ mouth before he could stop them. He was on his feet, walking forward. His father, wringing his hands, just shook his head. Matthias didn’t care. He didn’t like the Preacher. He felt sorry for the hermit — like when he and the other children gathered here in the church to study their hornbooks, would go out into the cemetery and play a game: ‘Who will play with him?’ ‘Or who will play with her?’ Matthias always felt sorry for the boy or girl left alone. It was no different now. He walked over and looked up at the hermit. His friend gazed back, the tears rolling down his cheeks.

‘Oh, Creatura bona atque parva!’ he whispered. ‘Brave little man!’

‘You are a child,’ the Preacher declared.

‘He was kind,’ Matthias replied. ‘He could hold doves and knows the names of flowers. He showed me young fox cubs, he caught a rabbit and roasted it.’

Matthias blushed at the laughter from the villagers.

‘It’s true! It’s true!’ he cried.

He stamped his foot and the Preacher, mimicking him, stamped his. The villagers burst into laughter. Matthias, face burning red, fled the church, across the cemetery and into his house. He ran up the stairs and burst into his mother’s room. She was lying on the small four-poster bed, face buried in the bolsters. He ran up, tugging at her hand.

‘Mother, they are going to take him out and burn him!’

Christina lifted her sleep-laden face from the bolsters. Matthias could see she had been crying.

‘It’s finished,’ she whispered. ‘There’s nothing you can do. May God help us all!’

She let his hand drop and fell back on the bolsters, staring at the blue and gold tester over the bed.

‘Did your father speak?’

‘Some.’ Matthias bit back the insults he felt. ‘It made no difference.’

He walked slowly out of the chamber, closing the door silently behind him, and went down the rickety stairs. He sat for a while poking the cold ash in the fireplace with a stick. From the cemetery came the shouts and cries of the villagers. The door opened and his father came down the passageway. Matthias did not look up. He sat jabbing at the ash, wishing it were the Preacher’s face.

‘They’ve put him in the death house,’ Parson Osbert said. ‘The Preacher and others are guarding him. They. .’ Parson Osbert licked his dry lips. ‘He says sentence must be carried out by dusk. Fulcher and the rest, they are piling brushwood around the bear-baiting post. You know,’ he continued in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘it’s near the gallows. Matthias?’

The boy kept jabbing at the ash. His father came and knelt beside him.

‘Matthias, why did you speak?’

His son turned to him. Parson Osbert had grown old that morning: cheeks sagging, eyes constantly blinking.

‘I don’t know,’ Matthias replied.

‘He wants to see us,’ his father continued. ‘He made that last request: to see me, you and Christina before he died.’

‘I thought he would.’

Parson Osbert whirled round. Christina stood in the doorway, a woollen coverlet round her shoulders.

‘I thought he would,’ she repeated.

‘Christina, are you well?’

The parson went across and pressed his wife’s hands: they were lifeless and cold like those of a corpse. Her face had an unhealthy pallor. Her hair, usually so lustrous, now hung lank and untidy.

‘You don’t have to see him,’ Parson Osbert said.

‘He’s going to die, isn’t he? We’ll take him some wine, some bread.’ She went like a dreamwalker back up the stairs.

Parson Osbert went across to the small podium where the church missal was put. He opened this, pretending to study the gospel from the Mass of the day. He felt sick, anxious about the Preacher’s actions. Matters had proceeded far too fast. On his return, Baron Sanguis would not be pleased.

Christina came back. She’d put a dress over her linen shift, tied her hair back and covered it with a veil, wooden sandals on her feet. She took a small jug of wine from the buttery, some manchet loaves and, without saying a word, walked out of the house. Parson Osbert and Matthias hurried after her. The scene in the cemetery was like that of an armed camp. Women and children sat on the grass or on fallen headstones sharing out the food they had brought. Their menfolk strutted up and down, boldly showing off their rusty swords, daggers and spears and bent shields. A group of young men, under the direction of the Preacher, stood on guard outside the stone death house. As they approached, the Preacher held his hand up but Parson Osbert had regained his courage.

‘This is my church! This is my cemetery!’ he declared. ‘I must protest at the proceedings: the prisoner needs some spiritual comfort.’

The Preacher shrugged and stepped back. One of the young men pulled back the bolts. Parson Osbert stooped and went in. He wasn’t long and came out shaking his head. Christina took the bread and wine in. Matthias looked around the cemetery. He saw a wild rose bush and, using his small dagger, cut a shoot off. The rose was full-blown, still wet from the morning dew. The door to the death house was flung open; Christina, her face soaked with tears, came out. She brushed by her husband and ran across the cemetery.

‘You’d best go in, boy,’ Parson Osbert whispered. ‘But don’t be long.’

‘Will the lad be safe?’ a villager asked.

‘If the hermit wished to hurt him,’ Osbert snapped, ‘he would have done so already.’

The death house was dark. Matthias waited until the door slammed behind him, then he ran across. The hermit, sitting in the corner, embraced him warmly.

‘You spoke for me, Matthias,’ he murmured. ‘You spoke for me!’

The boy gave him the rose. ‘I thought you’d like this. It’s not as good as the one you drew in the church.’

The hermit took the rose. He laid it on the ground and, moving like a cat, he went and knelt before the boy.

‘Do not cry for me, Matthias. Promise me you won’t cry for me. Now go!’

The boy stared at him in puzzlement.

‘Go on!’ the hermit smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Matthias. Death is never an end to anything. Please! They will listen at the door. Please go! They’ll only become suspicious.’

Matthias left. His father had also gone. Someone said he was in the church. Matthias groaned: some of the village boys were coming towards him. They would only tease and taunt him about what had happened so, like a rabbit, he scuttled amongst the gravestones, climbed the cemetery wall and ran to the other end of the village. Here the lane snaked past the hedgerows towards the great road south to Bristol.

For a while Matthias hid in a ditch, thinking about what had happened. Now and again he would look at the sky and notice the black smoke rising like a plume from the village. He felt hungry so he stole back to his house. The kitchen was untidy, the platters unwashed, there was no sign of his parents.

Matthias ate some salted bacon and bread from the buttery then went into the cemetery. The place was now empty, the door to the death house flung open. Matthias walked into the village. He caught the smell of wood smoke and something else, like fat boiling over the fire. He turned the corner and stared in horror down the high street. Fulcher had done his job well. The old bear-baiting post had been taken out and put on a small makeshift platform. The hermit had been lashed to this, dry brushwood piled high around: the flames had already caught hold. As Matthias pushed his way through the crowd, he could just make out the hermit’s face behind the wall of flame. Yet something was wrong. The fire roared but the prisoner bound to the stake did not squirm or cry out. The villagers, too, were silent.

‘Is he dead?’ someone asked.

‘Has he fainted?’

Matthias sniffed, wrinkling his nose. He could not understand it: the fire must have caught the hermit’s body.

‘Has he swooned?’ someone shouted.

As if in answer, the hermit started to sing, his voice loud and clear through the flames. A chill swept through the assembled villagers. Men who had served in the King’s wars and seen others die in different horrible ways, stared aghast. The flames roared higher, hiding the hermit’s face. Still the song was sung, the words clear and full on the air: at first in French, ‘La Rose du Paradis’, the second verse in English. The voice was strong and vibrant like a man sitting on a summer afternoon carolling his heart out. Some of the villagers ran away. Others crossed themselves. A few fell on their knees. The singing died away. The stench of burning flesh became unbearable. Matthias, whose shoulder had been gripped by Joscelyn the taverner, broke free and fled up an alleyway.

Matthias ran blindly, not stopping till he found himself in the woods. He crouched at the foot of a tree, then made his way along the trackway to Tenebral. He went into the church. The sanctuary was full of sad reminders of his friend: a piece of leather, scraps of bone and meat from his cooking. Any meagre possessions had already been stolen by the villagers. Matthias gazed in awe at the beautiful rose painted on the wall: the runes, the strange marks beneath, had grown in number, as if the hermit had spent his last night etching out these signs. Matthias walked slowly out on to the porchway. The breeze caught his face. He heard the whisper: ‘Oh Creatura, bona atque parva!’

He stared around, no one was there.

Matthias left the church, vowing he would never return, and hastened along the trackway. He turned the corner and almost ran into the Preacher who, with his scrip on his back and a stout ash pole in one hand, was striding along.

‘Murderer!’ the boy screamed.

The Preacher hawked and spat, narrowly missing Matthias’ face.

‘Your friend is dead. I am off to Tewkesbury where the good brothers will give me sustenance!’

Matthias made an obscene gesture at the Preacher’s receding back. The boy didn’t know what it meant but he had seen the men at the Hungry Man make it when tax collectors or royal purveyors were about. Matthias hoped the Preacher would turn but the man strode round the bend of the trackway.

By the time Matthias returned to the village, the fire was out. The platform against the bear-baiting post had crumbled under the searing heat. Simon the reeve was piling the ash into one great mound.

‘We’ll throw it into one of the cesspits,’ he declared, not lifting his face.

Matthias went across to the grassy verge. He picked some of the wild flowers growing there and tossed them on the top of the burning ash. The flowers began to scorch. Matthias thought of throwing on some more: he glimpsed a bone, yellow and blackened amongst the cinders, so he walked away.

The Hungry Man was full of customers, the villagers carousing, celebrating as if they had won a great victory, drinking deeply of the taverner’s newly brewed ale, eager to forget the memories of the day. Matthias spied his father amongst them, his face flushed, eyes glittering. Parson Osbert beckoned his son over. Matthias glared back, then hurried on.

The following evening Thurston the tinker and his pretty wife, Mariotta, left the town of Tewkesbury. Their small barrow was full of scraps, pieces of armour and other items they had collected after the battle. Mariotta pulled the cart, the ropes biting into her shoulders, whilst her husband, full of ale, staggered beside her. Mariotta didn’t mind. The day had been a prosperous one. They could take the armour to a forge, have it beaten flat and make a good profit. Mariotta was pleased to be out of the town. The corpses of those killed in the battle were now laid out on the steps of the churches, naked as white worms. Around the town, corpses hung from the signs of inns or on the gallows near the market cross, whilst severed heads adorned the pikes above the gates.

‘The place stank of death,’ Mariotta declared, stopping to rest her shoulders. She smoothed down her brown smock. She admired the new sandals on her dusty feet, then glanced sideways at her husband. She had bought these when he had been asleep, snoring his head off in an outhouse. That young squire, who had caught her eye in the tavern, had been ever so grateful. Mariotta closed her eyes. Thank God, her red-faced, irascible husband never discovered the secret source of such wealth. He, however, was now swaying on his feet, burping loudly, patting his stomach.

‘We’d best stop for the night,’ Mariotta declared.

Her husband went to release the large fardel he carried on his back.

‘Not here,’ Mariotta scolded.

She pushed him on and, grabbing the ropes, pulled the barrow. Further up the lane, Mariotta espied a gap in the hedge: sheep grazed in a meadow which ran down to a stream glinting invitingly in the rays of the setting sun. Cursing Thurston under her breath, Mariotta pulled her barrow into the meadow; he staggering after her. The sheep hardly lifted their heads. Mariotta found a suitable place to camp and went off amongst the trees looking for kindling. Thurston sat, head drooping, eyes heavy. He heard a sound and got up. He felt cold.

‘Mariotta!’ he called. Getting no answer, he released the burden on his back and staggered into the trees. ‘Mariotta!’ he yelled. ‘Where are you?’

Suddenly the ground dipped. Thurston found himself on the rim of a small dell. He couldn’t understand what he saw. Mariotta was lying on the grass, head turned away. A figure crouched over her. The figure moved. Mariotta’s throat was all gashed. Thurston screamed and ran towards her. The squire Mariotta had met turned and poor Thurston ran straight on to the dagger he held.