Paul Doherty: The Darkening Glass

I awake. The dark fell of night presses down. I lie and seethe against the dying light in my own life. Shadows shroud the mountains and deep valleys of my soul, all peopled by ghosts of yesteryear. I listen to the patter of feet as the sacristan and his escort, lanterns in hand, keep strict vigil between Compline and Matins here in the Priory of Grey Friars, nestling like some bird beneath the soaring glory of St Paul’s. If I rise and peer out of the window, I can glimpse the jutting belfry of the cathedral, its beacon light glowing above the night-shadowed lanes and trackways of Cheapside, with its cross, tun and standard. The busy heart of the buzzing beehive of London. Bells, echoing sombrely, mark the passing of the hours and the creeping approach of dawn. When the call for Matins is proclaimed, I leave my bed and wash fastidiously. I dress in my heavy tunic and linen shift, with thick wool stockings over my old legs, dark leather sandals protecting my feet. Over all I put my anchorite gown to cloak myself like one of the good brothers. My hair, now white as snow, I hide behind a tight-fitting pale-blue wimple, then, vanity of vanities, I stare into a mirror of polished brass. I glimpse my face as it is now and I remember how I was when life blazed in me like a fiery torch. The ghosts of the past cluster around me, drifting up from so many, many years ago, when I was clerica medica atque domicella reginae camerae — clerk, physician and lady of the chamber — to Isabella, wife of Edward II. A time of chaos, when God and his angels slept. A hurling season when fortune’s wheel spun dizzyingly, bringing down kings and princes, a veritable litany of names of those who met horrid death on the battlefield, in lonely dungeons or high on some public scaffold.

I, Mathilde de Clairebon, Mathilde de Ferrers and Mathilde of Westminster, wake to greet these memories. The good brothers shelter me here deep in their cavernous priory. When I slip like a ghost along its vaulted passageways, the gargoyles and babewyns grin down at me as if they know why I am really here. Edward of England, third of that name, son of Isabella the so-called ‘She-wolf ’ and her fox-like mate, has ordered me to be immured here. He calls it a living death. He does not want me to wander abroad like some fey creature with a stone in her head, babbling all my secrets. The Iron King, with his dagger-like eyes and that once beautiful face, his golden hair now streaked a dirty grey, desired to hear my confession. I refused. The sea will give up its dead before I share my secrets. God knows he has tried to seduce my loyalty with his tray of baubles, but I’m content to be locked away. I observe the long holy hours from Matins through Lauds to Compline song, but at least I’m with her, Isabella. She lies interred in the choir of Grey Friars church, an exquisite table tomb that contains the remains of her beautiful body, garbed for burial in its wedding dress, close to where Mortimer, the great lord of her heart, also lies buried. Mortimer the Warrior, who ended his brief span of glory dangling naked for three days at the Elms. I eventually cut his cold cadaver down and brought it here for the good brothers to sheathe in its silken shroud. When was that? Oh, so long ago — thirty years and more!

Now I’m here. Father Guardian, young and austere, with a harsh face but a kindly heart, has provided me with a vaulted chamber overlooking the cemetery, a quiet place rich with wild flowers in the summer. The breezes, thickened with the fragrance of fresh grass, cleanse and purify my cell as they caress my face. I have a little scriptorium beneath the window where I write my secret chronicle. A lay brother, Simon of the Stocks as he calls himself, his whimsical face ever smiling under its shock of sprouting hair, now looks after my needs. He brings me food and all I require. He even walks with me out amongst the faded gravestones and weather-beaten crosses. Simon loves to point out the graves of the various brothers, accompanied by a litany of their peccadilloes, virtues and skills. He asks me what I write. What can I tell such a simple soul about the landscape of hell I’ve crossed? The clash of arms and the silent malevolent intrigue of Isabella’s court? Filthy assassins, capuchined and visored, daggers glinting, slipping through the dusk? Or cups of wine brimming at their jewelled rims, neatly coated with the most noxious of poisons? Battlefields like that at Bannockburn, where the chivalry of England in all its emblazoned colours lay like a tapestry across the soil drenched in a shifting sea of blood? Leeds Castle, stormed and sacked, its defenders dancing against the walls as the nooses tightened around their throats? Lord Badlesmere, hanged and drawn, the steaming quarters of his corpse boiled and pickled, displayed like lumps of meat above the gates of Canterbury? And those other secrets contained in the coffer of my mind, bound, tied and clasped?

A strange one, Simon of the Stocks! After Lauds last Candlemas, it was he who gave me the idea of asking Father Guardian if I could paint a fresco along the gloomy plastered wall that runs down the vaulted passageway outside my chamber. Now, I am a magister in physic, as skilled as any practitioner cum laude from the universities of Montpellier or Salerno. I was given firm grounding in medicine, skilled and disciplined by my uncle Reginald, physician-general in the order of the Templars before Philip, King of France, that prince of hell, attacked and dissolved the order in a welter of blood. I am also a painter with a sharp eye for colour, though not possessing the skill I, and perhaps others, would like. Frescoes, painted panels and decorated walls fascinate me. I remember the tap room of the Boar’s Head in Kings Street, Westminster, where we stopped when the royal guards brought me down to Grey Friars. The walls of the tavern were lustily painted with red lead worked in oil, decorated with gilt motifs provided by a dozen stencils and cups of gold dust. The tavern master explained it all to me as I sipped a stoup of ale and tried to ignore the foul chatter of my escort, Edward’s bully boys, a group of household knights with a penchant for lechery; hotter they were than a flock of sparrows in spring. Such paintings like that in the tavern absorb and distract me. I wondered if I could do my own, a parable on the harrowing of my own hell. Father Guardian kindly agreed and had the wall freshly plastered. He supplied me with lime water and sinopia, that blood-red chalky material, to draw the outlines. A generous man, Father Guardian also supplied the paints and coloured dishes, as well as a clutch of squirrel and hog-haired brushes.

I ground my colours and worked as busily as any itinerant painter in a parish church. I found such activity a soothing balm to my soul. I chose as my theme the parable of Belshazzar’s feast in Babylon, as described in the Book of Daniel. A searing tale in which God’s finger scrawled on a wall that ominous warning to the king and princes of Babylon: ‘Mene, Mene Tekel and Parsin — I have numbered, I have weighed in the balance and I have found wanting.’ Oh yes, the truth indeed! Father Guardian and the brothers came down to stare. God bless Francis of Assisi and his brethren. If they laughed behind their hands, they did not show it. Of course Belshazzar’s feast was simply an image to summon up my own past. The people who throng this painting are those nightmare wraiths lurking in the memory chambers of my soul. As in life, so in death, these demons rub shoulders with the angels, those souls who touched me gently and healed my wounds. Grey-haired, kindly uncle Reginald de Deynecourt, physician-general in Paris; Bertrand Demontaigu, the Templar priest who hid in the household of my mistress as a clerk, the only man I have ever really loved. I certainly remember the one I cannot see. I cannot accurately paint his face, but I recall it so well: long, sallow and severe, with close-cropped black hair. A preacher’s face, swiftly redeemed by beautiful, kindly sea-grey eyes and those deep laughter lines around his mouth.