Paul Doherty - The Midnight Man

‘Blood-drinker?’ Stephen asked.

‘Brother Anselm, Sir Miles.’ Bolingbrok rubbed his brow on the back of his hand. ‘You, like me, have served in the King’s armies in France. You, Sir Miles, also read the reports of sheriffs and justices from every shire. You know who the blood-drinkers are.’

‘Blood-drinkers,’ Beauchamp’s face was sombre, ‘are usually men who have served in the array — lunatics, dangerous ones. They like to take a woman and kill her. Oh, yes, Stephen, for them that is the only way their seed can burst out. They lie with a woman whom they terrify; this excites them, even more so because they know this woman is going to die. Abroad in enemy towns and villages, these men hide behind the mask of a soldier. They can do what they wish. They return home but they cannot stop hunting. They regard women as quarry as hunters would a deer.’

‘Any names?’ Anselm asked.

‘No one knows,’ Bolingbrok replied, ‘but they say there may be more than one.’

‘And the Midnight Man?’

‘Why, Brother Anselm? Rumour abounds — they say he could be a priest.’ Bolingbrok grinned. ‘Even a Carmelite.’ Bolingbrok’s smile faded. ‘Or someone powerful.’ Bolingbrok sounded not so confident. ‘Someone who likes whores but not in the way I do. This blood-drinker likes hunting and killing them. Sir Miles, I can tell you no more.’

‘We should go.’ Anselm rose and sketched a blessing over the prisoner. He walked to the door and turned. ‘You were once a friar, Bolingbrok?’

‘Will you always be one, Brother?’ the prisoner retorted. Anselm smiled, shrugged and opened the door. Once free of the prison, Beauchamp and Anselm stood in one of the shadowy recesses of the gatehouse, heads together, murmuring. ‘Stephen,’ Anselm called out, ‘we will visit Rishanger’s house.’

‘Cutwolf!’ Sir Miles stepped from the enclave and whispered into the ear of his henchman. Cutwolf nodded, winked at Stephen and sauntered off. Stephen wished he could question his master but Anselm seemed in a hurry. They crossed the blood-soaked cobbles of the Shambles. The exorcist grasped Stephen’s shoulder and whispered how time was passing, the graves at St Michael’s were about to be opened and they had to be there when it happened. Anselm moved on to walk with Beauchamp. Stephen felt a deep, cloying fear, an agitation of the heart. He stared around, not interested in the slaughter stalls, the hacked flesh or the bizarre characters who thronged the noisy crowds. The reek from the tanner sheds and tallow shops faded, as did the strident noise. Stephen felt as if something was going to happen; he had experienced this before. His father called it a form of the falling sickness, a deep foreboding which seizes all the senses.

As soon as they reached the entrance to Hagbut Lane the warnings swept in. Rishanger’s house, narrow and tall, stood forlornly on the corner of an alleyway. The place reeked of evil. Beauchamp tore at the seals along the rim of the door and kicked it open, leading both the Carmelites into a long, ill-lit passageway. Stephen entered cautiously. This was no longer a house but a gloomy valley. On one side savage fires roared while on the other a storm of white hail and sleet pelted down. At the far end a pit glared with hell’s dark fires. A figure was walking towards Stephen. It reminded the novice of a painting he had glimpsed of the hideous, legendary Medea, who stalked lonely crossroads leading a legion of suicides, their very passing making the fiercest dog howl and shiver.

‘Stephen, Stephen!’ He opened his eyes. There was no valley, only that stinking, dark passageway. Anselm was peering at him. Beauchamp stood further along, cloaked in darkness.

They entered what must have been Rishanger’s chancery chamber; the room was stripped of everything. Beauchamp, protesting at the dank air and gloom, unlocked and threw back the shutters. Columns of light pierced the oiled linen panes. Stephen started as a mouse, jet black, shot across the floor. Anselm, also alerted to the gathering evil, had drawn his Ave beads and wrapped these around his fingers. They moved from chamber to chamber. Stephen was sure that Beauchamp, although blind and deaf to the visions he and Anselm were experiencing, was still sensitive to the oppressive evil which followed them around this soulless house. The longer they stayed, the closer the sheer wickedness perpetrated here wrapped itself around them, a heavy pall of unnamed terrors. A quickening of the breath. A lurching of the heart. A pitching of the stomach as their skin crawled. There was nothing tangible to explain this. The King’s surveyors had stripped the house. The place was relatively clean, yet a cold darkness hung like an arras around them, so much so that Stephen wildly wondered if he would ever be allowed to leave.

‘Magister, what are we searching for?’

‘Anything.’ Beauchamp drew his sword and drove its point into the plastered wall of the clean, swept buttery they had entered. ‘A secret compartment, a hidden casket.’ The clerk walked over to the staircase built into the corner of the entrance hall. They climbed the steps. Stephen blinked at the flashes of light, the leaping sparks which swam before him. Small bursts of red fire, each containing a face which came and swiftly went. Voices cried, including that of a child. Screams and yells echoed. A voice, low and sombre, quoted that dreadful verse from the Apocalypse: ‘I saw a pale rider and his name was Death and all hell followed in his wake.’ Another voice answered, ‘Hell-born souls drift like columns of blackness. This is the night of the weighing of souls. Doom-laden they are, born of hell, fit for hell. Eternal punishment will be theirs.’

‘Ignore them, Stephen,’ Anselm hissed. ‘Dismiss them as shadow dreams, nothing more.’

‘Chilling!’ Beauchamp declared as he led the way into the upper gallery. ‘Even I can feel it.’ He grinned at the two Carmelites. ‘I never did last time I was here. You must attract the spirits.’

‘Our enemies,’ Anselm retorted.

They entered the bedchamber: the outer wall was wet, the liquid gleaming like some evil sweat. The broad, linen-filled window provided some light but the shadow of brooding evil hung even heavier here. The sense of doom thickened. Voices echoed through Stephen’s mind. ‘ Miserere, miserere — have mercy, have mercy.’

‘Oh, be quiet!’ a voice growled.

Stephen started as a door downstairs opened and banged shut. Heavy footsteps on the stairs sent Beauchamp hurrying from the room sword out, his left hand clawing for the dagger in its scabbard on the back of his belt. Shapes, faint wisps of mist, trailed across the room. A harsh, barking cough made Stephen whirl around but there was nothing. Cold fingers caressed the side of his face. Anselm was shivering, moving away, flicking his hand to drive off whatever confronted him.

‘Priest!’ The coughing bark was like that of a dog. ‘You shit-ridden priest! How dare you come here?’

‘In Christ’s name,’ Anselm bellowed back. ‘Begone, begone. .!’

‘Oh, don’t be a killjoy!’ The voice changed to that of a wheedling, pampered child. Anselm held up his Ave beads to bless the air. The door to the bedchamber opened and shut with a crash. Silence descended.

Beauchamp kicked the door open and walked in, mouthing curses. ‘Don’t,’ Anselm warned. ‘No curse, no foul language. Evil feeds on evil, like a dog on its vomit.’ Again he blessed the air, breathing out noisily, dramatically, as if using his own life force to drive away the malignancy. The tension disappeared; the chamber just looked forlorn, gaunt and empty.

‘This,’ Anselm declared, ‘was certainly the abode of a malevolent, stagnant soul, immersed deeply in wickedness against the innocent. Yet the source is not here, Beauchamp. We must find it.’