Paul Doherty - The House of Crows

‘It was black,’ Watkin trumpeted so loudly that even the hairs in his great flared nostrils seemed to bristle with anger. ‘It was huge with bright eyes, hideous face, blue and red round the mouth and it moved like lightning.’

‘You were drunk,’ Mugwort the bell-ringer snorted. ‘Pernell the Fleming woman saw the three of you: you had not one good leg amongst the six.’

‘More like nine,’ Crispin the carpenter added, but no one seemed to understand this salacious reference.

‘Drunk or not,’ Pike screeched, tilting his face and pointing to the great red weals across his cheeks. ‘Who did that, eh?’

Athelstan pushed his hands further up the sleeves of his gown and rocked gently to and fro. He stole a look at Benedicta: he expected to find her eyes dancing with merriment and those lovely lips fighting hard not to smile, but the widow-woman looked concerned.

‘What do you think, Benedicta?’ Athelstan asked before Watkin’s bellicose wife could intervene to take up the cudgels on her husband’s behalf.

‘I believe they saw something, Father.’ Benedicta played with the tassel of the belt round her slim waist. ‘I dressed Pike’s wound: savage claw marks. Any higher,’ she added, ‘and he could have lost an eye.’

‘You are always telling us. .’ Tab the tinker spoke up. ‘You are always telling us, Father,’ he repeated, ‘how Satan prowls, seeking those whom he may devour.’

‘Yes, Tab, but I was speaking in a spiritual sense, about that unseen world of which we are only a part.’

‘But that’s not true,’ Watkin’s wife intervened. ‘In St Olave’s parish, Merry Legs claimed a devil was dancing round the steeple as I would a maypole.’

‘And I have heard imps whispering in the corner,’ Pernell the Fleming intervened. ‘Small, Father, no bigger than your fingers. I heard them scrabbling at the woodwork.’

Athelstan closed his eyes and prayed for patience.

‘What did it look like?’ Huddle the painter asked, and pointed to the far wall of the church where he was busily sketching out, in charcoal, a marvellous vision of Christ’s harrowing of hell.

‘Never mind,’ Athelstan intervened. He glanced quickly at Simplicatas, a young woman from Stinking Alley who had whispered after Mass how she wanted to talk to him about her missing husband. ‘We have other matters to discuss.’

‘But this is important.’ Bladdersniff drew himself up on his stool, wrinkling his fiery red nose and blinking drink-sodden eyes. ‘If you don’t believe us, Father, let’s go to the death-house. Let’s see for ourselves.’

His colleagues did not seem quite as enthusiastic, but Athelstan saw it as a way of pacifying them all.

‘Come on.’ He got to his feet.

‘Father, I’m frightened,’ Pernell wailed.

‘Don’t worry.’ Athelstan fingered the wooden crucifix hanging round his neck. He shooed Bonaventure off the baptismal font, unlocked and lifted the wooden lid then, taking the small enamel bowl held by Mugwort, scooped some of the holy water out.

‘If there’s a devil in the death-house,’ he declared, ‘the cross and holy water will soon make him flee.’

Led by their priest, Bonaventure stalking solemnly beside him, the parish council left the church. They crossed the cemetery, following the beaten path around the headstones and crosses to the great black-painted shed in the far corner. The door was still flung back on its hinges, a sure sign of the three men’s flight the previous night. Athelstan turned and winked at Benedicta.

‘Now, stay here. All of you.’

Holding the crucifix in one hand, the cup of holy water in the other, Athelstan strode across and stopped outside the death-house. He looked at the earth, scuffed where Pike and his two companions had fought to get out.

I never asked them what they were doing, he thought. Probably drunk: I just hope they didn’t have Cecily the courtesan with them. The only people who are supposed to lie in this graveyard are the dead. Athelstan went into the death-house and, as soon as he did, caught a fetid, pungent smell.

‘For God’s sake, man!’ he whispered to himself.

He put the cup of holy water on the long, stained table and stared around. The smell caught the back of his throat and made him cough. Athelstan took a tinder out of his pocket and, trying to keep his hands from trembling, lit the tallow candle and held it up, filling the dark, cavernous place with dancing shadows.

‘“Arise, O Lord,’” he whispered, quoting the psalms, ‘“and defend me from my enemies!”’

He walked carefully round the death-house. He always kept this place clean. He scrubbed the table and swept the floor every week. There was a small window high in the wall, and when a corpse lay in the room he always burnt incense, as he had only two days ago when Mathilda the seamstress had lain here awaiting burial. So what was the source of that horrible smell? Athelstan put the candle down and picked up the cup of holy water, blessing the place. ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ but, even as he did so, his mind teemed with possibilities. He recalled a recent letter from the master general of his Order about the signs of demonic activity: violence, unexplained phenomena.

‘Aye,’ Athelstan whispered to himself, ‘and a terrible smell which curdles the mind and frightens the soul. Nonsense!’ he added.

‘Father?’

Athelstan spun round. Benedicta was standing in the doorway. The widow-woman stepped into the death-house and then, covering her nose and mouth with her hand, abruptly backed out. Athelstan followed her.

‘Benedicta, what is the matter?’

The widow-woman’s face was pale. ‘Last night, Father. I didn’t want to mention this, but I was in my garden just after dusk, and under the apple tree I saw a dark, hideous shape.’

Athelstan stared into Benedicta’s frightened eyes. ‘Surely, woman, you don’t believe all this?’

‘Athelstan!’

The friar looked round. Sir John Cranston was standing at the far end of the graveyard, legs apart.

‘Oh Lord save us!’ Athelstan breathed. ‘Having the Lord Satan in Southwark is bad enough, but Cranston as well. .!’

‘So, you think there’s a devil in Southwark?’ Moleskin the boatman asked as Athelstan and Cranston stepped into his wherry, ready for the journey downriver to Westminster.

‘There are a lot of bloody imps in Southwark!’ Cranston retorted, taking a sip from his ‘miraculous’ wineskin, always full and ever present, hidden beneath his cloak. ‘What’s more,’ Cranston smacked his lips and put the stopper back in, ‘most of them are members of Brother Athelstan’s parish.’

Moleskin glowered angrily from under his brows as he strained at the oars, pulling his boat across the choppy Thames. He glanced at his parish priest for comfort. Athelstan, however, had his cowl well over his head and sat staring into the bank of mist now lifting under the morning sun. Cranston nudged him playfully.

‘Come on, Brother. You’ve hardly said a word since we left the church. Don’t be downcast. Benedicta will see all is well. And, if the devil reappears, she might catch it with her pretty face and beguiling ways.’

‘It’s not a joking matter, Sir John.’ Athelstan replied. ‘Benedicta saw a shape in her garden; Pike was definitely attacked. Some terrible creature was lurking in our death-house last night.’

‘But a devil, a demon?’ Cranston exclaimed. ‘Walk through the city, Brother. You’ll see plenty of demons dressed in the finest silks, supping the best wines and smelling ever so fragrantly.’

‘This is different,’ Athelstan retorted. He smiled at the boatman. ‘Moleskin, keep rowing. What you hear is not for discussion in the Piebald tavern. Holy Mother Church teaches.’ Athelstan stirred, and pointed to the choppy waters of the Thames. ‘You see, Sir John, two worlds co-exist in this river. What is on the surface and what is underneath. Both affect each other. Both are linked, yet we only see what is on the surface; beneath the Thames there is another world: wreckage, fish, plants, all forms of living things. Now, God made a visible and invisible world. When we pray we enter the invisible world.’ He paused to admire a long line of swans, their slender necks arched, their wings up, swim serenely by. ‘What happens, Sir John, if those intelligences and powers hostile to God and Man manifest themselves in our world? Oh, I am not talking about the hobgoblins and the warlocks, but something else.’