Paul Doherty - The House of Shadows

Sir Laurence paused. He stared across the tap room, watching a scullion mop at a table. All pleasure had gone out of this visit, with Chandler’s death, and that olive-skinned Dominican and his harsh remarks about sin and absolution. He reached the cellar door, lifted the catch and went down into the musty darkness. Candles glowed in the gaps between the old red brick-work. It was still frighteningly dark, made worse by the scampering and squealing of vermin. Sir Laurence reached the bottom step; all was dark, except the candle which was glowing at the far end. He screwed up his eyes; was it a lantern or a lamp? He could make out the tuns and vats stacked at either side, and the wine-soaked path between.

‘Who’s there?’ His voice echoed. His hand fell to his dagger. Perhaps he should go back? The cellar had now fallen very silent. The rats and mice were cowering in the dark, as if they too were aware of what evil might lurk there. Sir Laurence stepped down, and his booted foot hit something hard. In a few heartbeats he heard a click, a snap, and his leg shattered as the cruel claws gripped and dug deep. He screamed as tongues of pain shot up his leg, forcing him back, coursing like flames through his body. He tried to move but could not, and in his agony he recalled the lush papyrus groves along the great river near Alexandria, those huge water beasts with their long snouts and cruel teeth which could drag a man down, sever a limb with a snap of their jaws. Was this happening? Sir Laurence found he couldn’t move at all. The pain was intense. That dreadful chill, the words of the Dominican echoing about sin. . Had the past leaped forward like a panther to punish him? Sir Laurence screamed as a fresh wave of excruciating pain swept through him. .

Athelstan returned to his house to find the kitchen and scullery scrubbed and cleaned. Benedicta, who had a key, had also left a pie and freshly baked doucettes. The fire was banked, fresh green logs on the top to keep the flames down, but the heat from the charcoal beneath was refreshing. Bonaventure, stretched out, lifted his head disdainfully as the Dominican came in. Athelstan cut the pie and took pewter, tranchers, horn spoons and napkins across to the church, telling the Misericord to wait a little longer. Then he visited the stables where Philomel, belly full, was snoring loudly.

Athelstan locked his house and stared up at the church tower. The mist was spreading, rolled in by a biting breeze from the river. In a few hours it would hang like a thick blanket, shrouding everything. He looked up at the sky. The stars seemed so distant. He would have loved to go up and spend the last hours of the night watching the stars wheel and wondering if that comet he’d recently glimpsed would be seen again. Athelstan loved to spend such evenings suspended, as he had described it to Cranston, between heaven and earth, watching the glory of God, whilst Bonaventure sprawled out beside him. Did the earth move? Athelstan wondered. Or was it the stars? He had read certain new treatises collected by his mother house at Blackfriars. Was Aristotle right? Did the planets give off music as they turned? What force, apart from the power of God, held stars in their position? Yet why did comets fall?

He felt a movement against his leg and stared down at Bonaventure. ‘Great assassin of the alleyways,’ he whispered. He stood for a few seconds watching the fire of the braziers and half listened to the men crouched around him. Their raucous singing made him smile. Watkin must have drunk deeply. He would only sing when his belly was full of ale. Athelstan hurried back to the church. He arranged the firing of a small brazier and filled two chafing dishes with burning charcoal. Once they were warming the sanctuary, he and the Misericord sat either side of the rood screen door, leaning against the wood as they shared out the food and wine. The Misericord ate ravenously, gulping the pie and two doucettes even before Athelstan had finished Grace. Afterwards, one hand over a chafing dish, the other holding a goblet, the Misericord stared down the nave.

‘How old is this place, Brother?’

‘Some say two, others three hundred years old. A few even claim it was built before the Conqueror came.’

‘Does it hold anything valuable?’

Athelstan recalled the ring and quickly felt his wallet, his fingers brushing the small case.

‘It contains very little,’ he conceded. ‘According to canon law we should only have a missal, a complete set of vestments, a fine linen cape, a pyx on a silver chain and a corpus case.’

‘What’s one of them?’

‘The leather pouch in which you put the pyx. You have never stolen from a church?’

The Misericord shook his head. He was about to say something but changed his mind.

‘Look.’

The Misericord pointed at the mist now curling under the doorway.

Athelstan had lit two of the wall torches but, with the mist seeping in and the shadows shifting, they made the church even more sombre.

‘Do ghosts walk here?’

‘Perhaps,’ Athelstan teased.

The Misericord gave a low groan.

‘Don’t worry,’ Athelstan assured him. ‘Ghosts can’t come into a church. Watkin claims that sometimes, early in the morning, a young man with dark red-rimmed eyes in a snow-white face can be seen on the top step outside, one arm around a dog. The parishioners claim it was a young apprentice who hanged himself on a yew tree in the cemetery. And of course,’ Athelstan continued, ‘a former parish priest dabbled in black magic. He was called Fitzwolfe. I met him once, a tortured mind with a soul as black as midnight. Oh, and by the way,’ Athelstan pointed further down the church, ‘over there, see the leper squint? Once upon a time a leper hospital stood nearby. The poor souls who lived there were not allowed to come into church, so if they wanted to hear Mass, they looked through the squint holes in the church wall from outside. The ghost of a poor leper woman is sometimes seen kneeling there. She has fiery red hair and liverish scaly skin. She is supposed to have mocked the Mass, but I think that is only a story meant to frighten the children.’

The Misericord refilled his goblet.

‘And what ghosts do you harbour?’ Athelstan asked. ‘I know you are a scholar and a singer, so what brings you here?’

‘I was a member of the Society of Pui. The name comes from the French town Puy-en-Vale. It is a society dedicated to music. Its purpose. .’ The Misericord screwed up his eyes. ‘Oh yes, that’s what its charter says: “For the increasing of joy and love and, to that end, the spreading of mirth, peace, harmony and joyousness, that they all be maintained.”’ The Misericord opened his eyes. ‘I hail from the Halls of Cambridge. I was a good singer, a poet. . The society used to meet in St Martin’s in the City. You had to pay sixpence for admission, and every year you had to compose a new song. A contest was held, and the winner would be crowned with a gilded chaplet.’

‘And what happened?’

‘Well, when we met, one of us was given money, to buy a fifty-pound candle of pure beeswax. On one occasion I was given the money, but I had fallen on hard times so I bought a cheap candle and filled the centre with fat, turpentine, cobbler’s wax and resin.’

‘Oh no!’ Athelstan groaned.

‘Oh yes!’ the Misericord declared. ‘I brought the candle back and gave it to our leader. When he was halfway down the nave of the church, the candle. . well, the flame reached the turpentine and fat, and it all disappeared in a shower of flame. I was expelled from the society.’ He shrugged. ‘And one thing led to another: thievery, trickery, filching, clipping coins. At first I was successful, until the sheriff’s men discovered who I was. I was proclaimed a wolfshead and went into hiding.’