Paul Doherty - The Midnight Man

‘And?’ the man of law asked.

‘She was hanged then burnt.’

‘Satan stabs the heart with terror,’ the prioress murmured, stretching out to clasp her chaplain’s hand.

The conversation now descended into the pilgrim’s personal experiences. Tales about gruesome demons with horns and tails, fire spurting from every orifice with harsh, horrifying voices. How demon ghosts had spindly bodies, bulging eyes, lipless mouths, horns, beaks and claws. Master Chaucer watched this carefully. Most of the pilgrims joined in, though the summoner sat stock-still, lost in his own dark memories. The knight, too, was silent, staring down at the table top, tapping it with his fingers. Master Chaucer had his own misgivings. The physician was sitting in his costly robes all serene, yet there was a tension here. Chaucer shivered. Wispy shapes swirled around the physician’s head, which disappeared. Were these, Chaucer wondered, just his imaginings? Ghosts or traces of smoke from the chafing dishes and braziers? The taproom was decked out to be merry with its long table. Sweet-smelling hams, bacon and vegetables hung in nets from the smartly-painted rafter beams. The rushes on the floor were spring-green, glossy and powdered with herbs. Candlelight, lamplight and lantern horn all danced vigorously, yet there was something wrong. The physician’s story had summoned up a dark cloud which housed its own macabre secrets. The friar looked not so merry now while the haberdasher, dyer, weaver and carpet-maker, so trim and fresh in all their livery, sat heads together, locked in hushed conversation. Next to them the cook, scratching his leg ulcer, listened in, his scabby head nodding vigorously.

‘Master physician,’ Minehost of The Tabard also sensed the unease, ‘your tale is unsettling.’

‘We’ve heard about this.’ The fat-faced haberdasher, eyes all choleric, half-rose. ‘Oh, yes, the great mystery at Saint Michael’s, Candlewick.’ He swallowed nervously. ‘Hidden crimes, scandalous secrets. .?’

‘And I know of The Unicorn.’ The cook spoke up. ‘I’ve worked there. Master Robert Palmer and his daughter Alice. .’

‘Please,’ the physician spread his hands, ‘do not spoil my tale.’

‘These ghosts and demons. .’ the bulbous-eyed manciple exclaimed. Thankfully his interjection forced the conversation back on to the personal experiences of ghosts, hauntings and visions of hell the pilgrims had either been told of or dreamed of. How the violent are boiled in blood while murderers turn into trees, their leaves and bark shredded and eaten by hog-faced harpies. The only exception was the Wife of Bath. She sat all flush-faced, slightly sweating. She did not join in the conversation but sat quietly, hands on her lap. She had taken out a pair of Ave beads and was threading these through her fingers, eyes glazed, lost in her own memories.

Minehost banged his tankard on the table. ‘Enough!’ he declared. ‘The flame on the hour candle has eaten another ring. Master physician, your story, please?’

‘I can only tell you what I suspect.’ Magister Anselm folded back the voluminous sleeves of his coarse, woollen white robe. ‘Nothing is certain,’ he added wistfully. ‘Well, not in this vale of tears. No.’ He shook his head at the murmur his words created and lapsed into silence.

The two Carmelites and the others had all assembled in Sir William Higden’s council chamber next to his chancery office on the second floor of the merchant’s manor in Candlewick. Sir William, Parson Smollat, Gascelyn, Amalric and Simon the sexton as well as the royal clerk, Beauchamp, who’d recently arrived from his own house in Ferrier Lane only a short walk away. Beauchamp sat opposite Stephen, the raindrops still glistening on his fair hair.

‘You have reached certain conclusions, Brother Anselm,’ Beauchamp urged. ‘You must share them.’

‘By Saint Joachim and Saint Anne that is true.’ Anselm drank from his water goblet. ‘Richard Puddlicot,’ he began slowly, ‘broke into the royal treasury in the crypt at Westminster in April 1303. He and his coven, which comprised most of London’s notorious sanctuary men, outlaws and wolfheads, stole a King’s fortune. They were not allowed to enjoy it. A royal clerk, Drokensford,’ he glanced fleetingly at Beauchamp, ‘hunted them down. Puddlicot, a married man who’d left his wife, was consorting with a woman of ill-repute — Joanne Picard. They lived in Hagbut Lane. .’

‘Lord, save us,’ Sir William interjected, ‘that’s Rishanger’s house, the goldsmith who tried to take sanctuary in the abbey and was murdered.’

‘The same. I shall come back to him,’ Anselm agreed. ‘What is noteworthy is that Puddlicot, the great thief and violator, escaped from Drokensford’s clutches and, Parson Smollat, took sanctuary in Saint Michael’s, Candlewick.’ Anselm’s words created further cries and exclamations of surprise. ‘It’s true,’ he confirmed. ‘I have visited the crypt. I cannot say what happened there except that those involved in the great sacrilege decades ago still haunt that gloomy place. Little wonder! I also asked Sir Miles to bring from the memoranda rolls stored in the Tower all the records pertaining to Puddlicot. Our notorious felon was plucked by force from Saint Michael’s, sanctuary or not.’

‘But that is against church law!’ Parson Smollat cried. ‘Not to mention the statutes of Parliament?’

‘Oh, at the time the Bishop of London and all the city clergy pleaded and protested but Drokensford had his way. Puddlicot was lodged in the Tower where he was tried before the King’s justices. He tried to plead benefit of clergy, that he was a cleric — this was later proved to be a lie. He was condemned to hang on the gallows outside the main abbey gate. The King insisted that he be humiliated, so Puddlicot was pushed from the Tower to the Westminster gallows in a wheelbarrow. He was hanged, then his corpse suffered further indignities, being peeled and the skin nailed to the door leading down to the crypt.’ Anselm paused at the exclamations this provoked.

‘Our present King’s grandfather,’ the exorcist continued, ‘was determined that the monks of Westminster never forgot their part in the sacrilegious theft. They had to pass that door with its grisly trophy every time they wound their way up to the chapter house.’

‘And the skin remained there,’ Almaric whispered fearfully.

‘From what I learnt from the records, yes. It decomposed and merged with the wood. I went and re-examined that door; traces of human skin can still be detected.’

‘So Puddlicot’s ghost still walks?’

‘Puddlicot, God rest him, was a great sinner. He left his wife to consort with a whore. He committed sacrilegious theft and died a violent death. I doubt if his corpse was given holy burial. Little wonder he haunts Westminster as well as here, at Saint Michael’s, Candlewick in Dowgate ward.’

‘You are sure?’ Sir William swallowed hard.

‘Puddlicot definitely lived in Dowgate, in Hagbut Lane. He and Joanne Picard were members of this parish.’

‘Sir William is correct — that’s where Adam Rishanger lived,’ Almaric declared. ‘Puddlicot was a thief and so was Rishanger. .’

‘A hateful soul.’ Sir William spoke. ‘A greedy madcap full of dark designs and sinister stratagems. He once approached me for money. He claimed he’d found a way to create the philosopher’s stone and so transmute base metal into gold. Gascelyn threw him into the street.’

‘Mad as a March hare,’ the squire declared lugubriously.

‘Rishanger rarely took the sacrament,’ Parson Smollat observed. ‘Rumours abound that after he was murdered treasure was found close to his corpse.’