Paul Doherty - The Midnight Man

‘The royal surveyors,’ Beauchamp replied, ‘were most thorough.’

‘Not thorough enough!’ Anselm led them out, clattering down the stairs and along the hollow stone passageway. Anselm opened the door and went out into the overgrown garden, nothing more than rambling bramble and briar, grass and sprouting weeds which had burst out of the soil, covering the herb borders, paths, small carp pond and bird house. The garden was enclosed by a high wall on all three sides with no wicket gate or garden door. The small orchard at the far end, a deep cluster of greenery, was completely unpruned and untended. Stephen followed Anselm. Beauchamp, rather reluctantly, hung back.

‘There is nothing here,’ the royal clerk called out. Anselm ignored him. He found a rusty scythe under a clump of bramble and began to hack away. Stephen stood on the rim of the broken fountain. Anselm was searching for something. Stephen stared around. The garden was overgrown but the paving stones just beneath him were covered in branches and other decaying refuse which had been cut. He climbed down and kicked away this thick, matted cluster to reveal a paving stone with an iron ring carefully inserted into a niche.

‘Magister!’ Anselm and Beauchamp hurried over. They lifted the stone, which came up as easily as an oiled trapdoor. They slid it to one side and stared at the neatly cut steps leading down into the darkness. Stephen went first. He put his hand out and felt the walls. Finding a fully primed-sconced torch, he used Anselm’s tinder to light this. He continued down, lighting some more, Anselm and Beauchamp close on his heels. The chamber at the bottom of the steps was circular. Oil lamps and lantern horns stood in carefully carved wall niches. Stephen lit these. He fought back the horrors clinging with icy fingers to his back. The hair on the nape of his neck curled; his stomach twisted. He found it difficult to breathe. He turned, resting his back against the wall. Anselm and Beauchamp, torches lifted high, were inspecting the chamber, especially the grille in the ceiling, cleverly constructed and concealed by the undergrowth above, yet sufficient enough to allow in some light and air.

Stephen sensed the change in the air around him. He braced himself against what was to come. Two shapes raced out of the murk — square-faced gnomes garbed in leather jackets and blood-spattered butcher aprons. Stephen closed his eyes and turned away. When he looked again there was nothing. Anselm and Beauchamp crouched in the centre of the chamber, examining a canvas mattress above which hung a chain fixed to the ceiling. Beside the mattress lay a great black iron dish containing tongs, pincers and fleshing hooks with points as sharp as dragon’s teeth. Stephen crossed to join them. The mattress was soaked in blood. A deep dread seized Stephen, chilling him to the very marrow. Anselm was right: horrid murder had been committed here.

‘Who?’ Beauchamp spoke for them all. ‘Why?’

‘Some devilish practice,’ Anselm replied, rubbing his arms. ‘It’s cold,’ he breathed. ‘This place reeks of evil. We should not stay here long.’

Stephen heard a sound and turned. Shapes, swift and darting, furry shadows like those of a nimble monkey or scurrying squirrel, crossed the wall just below the ceiling.

‘Let us leave here!’ Stephen hissed. He hurried up the steps, gulping the fresh air, turning his face to the sun. Anselm and Beauchamp followed. The exorcist sat on the rim of the broken fountain. ‘You say this was once Puddlicot’s house?’ Anselm asked.

‘Yes, our crypt robber set up household here with his leman Joanne Picard.’ Beauchamp, rubbing his hands, sat down next to the Carmelite, his face pale and drawn.

‘This is what I think,’ Anselm declared. He gestured round the garden. ‘The corpse of Rishanger’s mistress was found here?’

‘In the orchard,’ Beauchamp agreed.

‘I suspect Rishanger purchased this house,’ Anselm continued, ‘so that he could discover whether or not Puddlicot buried his treasure here.’

‘And did he?’

‘No, I don’t think so, though I do wonder about those two items. Anyway, Puddlicot’s treasure is only a part of this bloody tapestry of murder and abomination. Rishanger was a blood-drinker. A man who liked to entice young women, imprison them in that hideous cavern and subject them to all forms of abuse for his own pleasure. He sated his lusts; such bloody acts loosened his seed.’

Beauchamp, alerted by shouting from beyond the walls, got to his feet. ‘One of my henchmen,’ he murmured as he unsheathed his sword.

‘I haven’t yet finished,’ Anselm remarked as he rose. ‘Forget the overgrown herbers, vegetable garden, flower plots — all of this is a disguise. Trust me, Beauchamp. So, alert the ward. Raise the hue and cry. Shout, “Harrow harrow!” Have this entire garden dug up. You will find a carefully concealed burial pit containing the pathetic remains of young women — Rishanger’s victims.’

‘Did he practice his black rites here?’

‘No,’ Anselm replied, ‘they need consecrated ground for that. This house stands alone, the garden protected by a very high wall. Inquisitive neighbours can’t peer in. It’s the perfect place to entice a young street-walker to be taken down to that ungodly crypt to become Rishanger’s plaything.’

‘But Edith Swan-neck’s necklace was found in Saint Michael’s cemetery. Do you think her corpse is buried here?’ Stephen asked.

‘I do not know, Stephen. I cannot answer that.’ The exorcist paused as Holyinnocent came into the garden, shouting that the graves at St Michael’s had been opened and now awaited their inspection.

By the time they reached St Michael’s a crowd had gathered outside the lychgate. The ward was now alerted. The throng of angry people were resentful at what was happening, openly grumbling at this disturbance of the dead following so soon after the macabre death of Bardolph the gravedigger. The afternoon was greying over, the clouds gathering low and threatening. The sunlight had faded, heightening the feeling of sombre menace which Stephen always experienced when entering the cemetery. Cutwolf and his men, who had drunk deeply at a nearby tavern to fortify themselves, had exchanged harsh words with the angry parishioners. The henchmen now sprawled with their backs against tombstones and crosses but scrambled to their feet as Sir William Higden, followed by Almaric, Gascelyn and Parson Smollat, strode out of the church to greet the royal clerk and the two Carmelites.

‘I hope this is necessary,’ Sir William snapped. ‘The graves are open.’

‘I now doubt if we will find anything here,’ Anselm crossed himself, ‘just as we didn’t discover anything at Rishanger’s house. Sir William, you are a royal justice in this ward, yes?’

Sir William, his face now concerned, nodded.

Anselm gestured at Beauchamp, who described in sharp, curt sentences what they had found and what they intended to do. ‘Cutwolf!’ The royal clerk waved at Sir William to hold his questions. ‘Cutwolf, go to Rishanger’s house, take your men and impress every layabout between here and that dead demon’s abode. You have my authority and that of the local justice. Dig up the entire garden until you find what is undoubtedly buried there. Now, Parson Smollat, the first grave?’

They moved across to the deep pit Cutwolf and his men had cleared. At the bottom lay a mouldy coffin, nothing better than a cheap arrow chest. Gascelyn, Smollat and the sexton, helped by the others, seized the ropes Cutwolf had lashed around the coffin and slowly began to raise it.

The chest swayed, hitting the sides of the pit. Shards of wood and lumps of soil broke free. A chilling, difficult task, as if the corpse inside was resisting this violent interruption to its eternal sleep. At last the coffin broke free of the earth, and as they settled it on the side of the grave, the top part of the chest broke away to reveal a yellowing, twisted skull, jaws gaping in a ghastly grin. ‘Master Ralph Fluberval,’ Parson Smollat announced. ‘Once a tanner, certainly a sinner.’ The parson laughed at his grim joke. ‘A widower, miserly he was, went to God after suffering a violent bout of the flux. Bardolph dug the grave.’ Anselm knelt down, making the sign of the cross over the skeleton’s head. Ignoring the protests of the others, he ripped off the rest of the coffin lid, examined its grisly contents and went to stand over the grave. Gascelyn, without being asked, clambered into the yawning hole and dropped down. Sir William handed him a spade which he dug into the packed soil. ‘Brother Anselm,’ he called up, ‘there is nothing here but dirt.’