Paul Doherty: The Darkening Glass

Then she was gone, in a swirl of fragrant perfume, calling for her squires. I walked out of the rose garden into the darkened friary church so full of brooding memories, haunted by the ghosts of those slain. I made my way up to the lady chapel and lit tapers for those murdered souls and for my own beloveds. The flames danced against the darkness. I glanced up at the serene, beautifully carved face of the Virgin and intoned a poem my mother had taught me: Tu as mis au monde le Sauveur de l’Univers. Benie sois-tu, Marie. .

Ah well! Now sheltering here in another Franciscan house, I gaze down through the murk of years past. I glimpse in a glow of golden light the beloved faces of those long dead. I also see Dunheved’s. Oh, Brother Stephen Dunheved! We like to think of God’s justice as in some miracle play, shooting out like an arrow or flashing like a barb of lightning. Of judgement falling immediately. Of sentence being imposed swiftly. Life isn’t like that. Time creeps, and so does God’s judgement. Dunheved’s day of doom eventually arrived, as it did for all the others: Lancaster, Pembroke, Hereford and Warwick. The murdered dead caught up with Dunheved at Berkeley Castle some fifteen years after those hurling times at York. I was there when he was brought to judgement. My face was the last he saw before they bricked him up, sealing him into a living tomb, where his body now rots. But that was for the future, when the furies once again massed like black clouds, low and threatening, before God’s judgement lashed down like rain to wash away more of man’s sin.