Paul Doherty: The Cup of Ghosts

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It is many years since. .’ I sat back on my heels and gazed at the white, waxen face of the corpse stretched out on the low bier before me. Father Guardian, at least eighty-five summers old, stitched in his shroud, ready for the good brothers to carry him to the church to lie ringed by purple candles before the sanctuary, a hallowed place where angels hover so that the hordes of demons who prowl, hunting the souls of the dead, cannot trespass. Later, those same brothers, the Poor Men of Grey Friars, which nestles under the shadow of St Paul’s, would chant their requiem mass, and afterwards bury Father Guardian in God’s Acre, to shelter beneath some battered cross until the elements melt and Christ comes again.

I describe Father Guardian as past his eighty-fifth summer; I’m not much younger. For months I had prepared myself to be shrived by him. To the rest of the community I am a simple anchorite from her lonely cell, more concerned about cleaning the garden paths or scrubbing the kitchen flagstones. Father Guardian, however, suspected my secret. Often, when the other brothers were busy, he’d search me out in the apple orchard or the sunken garden where I’d be weeding the fringes of the carp pond. He’d touch me gently on the shoulder or pluck at the sleeve of my gown, and invite me to some shady arbour or lonely garden nook where we could sit and talk about the old days. I never told him much, though he knew who I was. How I’d served the Queen Mother, Isabella of France. How I had been with her from the time she descended into hell until she rose in glory, only to fall again. How I’d sheltered long in the shadow of the She-Wolf, been a disciple of ‘that New Jezebel’ (a clever play on her name). Oh yes, like a visored knight, I’d been in the heart of that bloody, tangled melee when the great ones toppled from gibbet ladders or knelt, as Edmund of Kent did, like a chained dog by a gate until a drunken felon severed their heads. I trusted Father Guardian. I dropped hints and told tales, sometimes referring to the great lords, all gone before God’s judgement seat. I described my dreams, about corpses rotting on scaffolds or men, cowled and daggered, stealing through courtyards at the dead of night. Of shadowy meetings in ill-lit chambers, the tramp of armies, the neigh of war-horses; of great feasts and banquets where the wines of Bordeaux and Spain flowed like water from a broken cask, of sweetmeats, gorgeous tapestries and exquisitely decorated chambers; of silent, soft-footed murder in all its hideous forms, of my pursuits of the sons and daughters of that old assassin Cain.

I have seen the days and Father Guardian recognised that. Sometimes, rarely, I would talk of Isabella, she of the lustrous skin and fiery blue eyes, her hair like spun gold and a body even a friar would lust after. Isabella ‘La Belle’, the Beautiful, of France, who tore her husband from his throne. She locked him in Berkeley Castle, sealing him up like some rabid animal until, so the chronicles report, killers slipped in and, turning him over on his face, thrust a red-hot poker up to burn his bowels and so leave no mark upon the corpse. Of Mortimer, proud as an antlered stag, a king in his own right, a Welsh prince with his secret dreams of power. Of Hugh Despenser, his hair and beard the colour of a weasel, with darting green eyes, fingers itching and heart bubbling with lust to possess Isabella. Edward himself, the golden-haired, blue-eyed king, great of body and small of brain, followed by all the others in their silks and satins and high-heeled pointed boots; lords of the soil who had their day before being murderously dispatched into eternal night.

I closed my eyes then opened them, gazing round Father Guardian’s austere chamber, its limewashed walls, the floor bone-hard and dusty. Only the candles and a small chafing dish sprinkled with incense fended off the cold and the foul stench of death. I studied the corpse’s white, pointed face, the eyes half closed, the lips slightly parted. Father Guardian had prayed for me, he’d told me that. Even as he leaned over the chalice to murmur the words of consecration or took the bread to turn it into Christ’s blessed body, he always prayed the same petition: that one day I would kneel before him, make my confession and my peace with God, and so prepare my soul for its long journey to join the rest.

‘Mathilde.’ Father Prior would clasp my hands between his cold, thin fingers and nip the skin gently, those watery brown eyes staring at me compassionately. ‘I feel it, Mathilde, your soul is heavy with sin. Your mind, memories and dreams are haunted, they reek of sour evil.’

Shrewd and cunning was Father Guardian. One of the few men I’ve met who could read a person’s soul. Of course, I demurred. I told him that I would keep my secrets and argue my case before God’s tribunal like any malefactor would before the King’s Bench in Westminster Hall. Father Guardian would only sigh and let my hand go.

Last summer, around the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist, I began to reflect. I felt as if I had a belly brimming with soured wine. I wanted to vomit, to purge, to clean the evil from my soul, so I went and talked to her, Isabella, Queen of England, where she lies beneath her chest tomb just to the right of the high altar in Grey Friars. Ah, yes, that was where she asked to be buried, not in a shroud but in her wedding dress, even though she was well past her sixtieth year. As she died, coughing up her life blood, Isabella asked for my hand, begging me with her eyes.

‘Mathilde, ma doucette !’

Her cheeks were sunken, her hair was grey, yet I could still glimpse the lustrous beauty of former days.

‘Bury me,’ she whispered, ‘in my wedding dress, my husband’s heart clasped between my hands but next to Mortimer, like a bride beside her lover! Promise me.’

I kept my promise. I begged to see her eagle-eyed son, Edward the Great Conqueror, Lord of England, Ireland, Scotland and France and any other lands he can seize. I crouched on my knees before him in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey. I whispered out his mother’s last wish. The king, of course, cursed me, beat me about the shoulders, though at last he agreed. He ordered his sheriffs, marshals, bailiffs and beadles to clear the highway along Mile End, round past the Tower, so his mother’s corpse could be processed in great honour and pomp, with trumpet, fife and drum, amidst gusts of fragrant incense, to be buried, after solemn requiem mass, beneath the flagstones of Grey Friars.

Later, months after his mother’s death, the king sent his stonemasons and carpenters to erect a beautiful chest tomb for his ‘beloved mother’. You can view it, with its crouching golden leopards and silver fleur-de-lis, its crowns and coronets, its pious inscriptions, all the macabre beauty of the grave. Edward did this as an act of reparation. Isabella had never forgiven him, not for what he’d done to her ‘Gentle Mortimer’, and that was what brought me to Grey Friars. I came to look after her tomb. The king ordered me here screaming, his foam-flecked lips curling like those of a snarling dog.

‘You were with her in life,’ he shouted. ‘Stay with her in death.’

I joined the Poor Men of St Francis, the Grey Friars, accepting the Bishop of London’s licence to be an anchorite in a cell in their grounds. Only Father Guardian knew from the start why I was really there. I was given menial tasks, the lowest of the low. On one matter, however, Father Guardian would brook no opposition.