Paul Doherty - The Rose Demon

Parson Osbert took his son’s face and kissed him on the forehead.

‘May the Lord keep you in His peace.’ He blessed his son, got to his feet and walked towards the sanctuary.

Fulcher came running up.

‘Can’t you hear it?’ he demanded.

Parson Osbert stopped. The tapping on the shutters had increased but he also heard the tinkling of the corpse bell fastened over old Maud Brasenose’s grave. Parson Osbert swallowed hard. He turned to face his parishioners. Even as he did so, the tapping grew louder, more insistent. Similar knocks and raps could be heard on the side door and the main door of the church. Peter the cobbler stared through the window. He shrieked and drew away, fingers to his mouth.

‘They are in the graveyard!’ he whispered. ‘People in shrouds! The dead are all about us!’

The knocking and clamouring rose in a crescendo. The villagers in the church screamed and, as if of one mind, they came to huddle before their priest.

‘I can do nothing,’ Osbert declared. ‘But I bid you-’ he looked round the church: Matthias was now fast asleep -

‘I bid you say an act of contrition. I will give you absolution.’

He ignored their cries and protests. He recited the words to shrive them from their sins. He had barely finished when he saw Fulcher staring in horror at something behind him. Osbert turned slowly as if in a dream. Rahere was standing in the mouth of the rood screen: his cloak was doffed, his hair tied in a knot behind him. In one hand he bore a sword, in the other an axe. Osbert drew his own knife and ran screaming towards him. .

Amasia, slattern of the Blue Boar tavern near Carfax in Oxford, rolled over on her narrow cot bed. She stared down at the man sleeping beside her. He lay on his back, head slightly tilted, breathing deeply. Now and again his lips moved, lost in some dream or nightmare. Amasia clutched the soiled bedsheet around her. She sat up and ran a finger gently down the man’s face. She would have to admit, Matthias Fitzosbert was a handsome student, a dark, lean face, clean shaven. When awake, his eyes were light green, sometimes sad, but when he laughed or smiled, the crinkles transformed his rather sombre face. His hair was jet-black and oiled, though Amasia noticed tufts of grey about his ears. She stared down at the silver cross Matthias always wore round his neck on its strong copper chain. He never took that off. Amasia touched it gently.

She was only seventeen summers old, so she thought, and she was in the habit of entertaining many students: Matthias and his friend, the young Frenchman Santerre, were her favourites. She made a face and puckered her mouth. No, that wasn’t right! Santerre, with his devil-may-care smile, snow-white skin and shock of red hair? Well, she could take or leave him. He was too cutting and she felt he was always laughing at her. Amasia could not stand people who secretly laughed behind their hands but never shared the jest with her. However, one thing she had learnt from Matthias was that, though she was a slattern, she had a dignity she should defend. He had told her so on that night four months ago when he had hit the drover, drunk as a sot, who pushed his dirty hand down her smock and grabbed her breasts. Matthias, not the tavern keeper, had come to her aid. He’d given the man a beating he would never forget before throwing him on to the muddy cobbles outside.

Amasia sat with her back against the cracked, plastered wall. It cooled her sweaty skin. She looked round the garret Matthias called a chamber. Not much dignity here, she thought, with its crumbling walls and rush-covered floor. On a table in the far corner stood a cracked bowl and jug, beneath it a large, dirty piss-pot. Amasia closed her eyes. She wondered if Matthias, when he became a Master, would take her out of here. He’d sometimes hinted at it. But where to? She knew so little about him. She often teased him about the mystery yet she’d learnt very little. He had been a scholar in the abbey schools at Tewkesbury and Gloucester before his patron, Baron Sanguis, had paid for him to come to the Halls of Oxford. More importantly, Matthias didn’t know what he was going to do. Sometimes he talked of being a clerk, even a priest. Then he became tight-lipped, narrow-eyed: his jaw would stick out as if he had made a decision but stubbornly refused to tell anyone about it. Amasia sighed and opened her eyes. If only he would talk more. .

‘Will they miss you in the taproom below?’

Amasia jumped and looked down. Matthias was staring up at her.

‘How long have you been awake?’ she snapped and, leaning over, pinched his nose.

The student laughed and pushed away her hand. He sat up beside her.

‘Do you want to go?’ she asked archly.

‘I have to,’ he replied. ‘There is still enough daylight left.’

He pointed to the narrow window at the far end of the room.

‘Ah!’ Amasia threw the sheets back. She swung her long legs off the bed, stood up and stretched, looking coyly at Matthias. She knew men liked that: her body turning, her breasts thrust out. She smiled as Matthias moved and teasingly took a step backwards.

‘I have to go,’ she simpered. ‘I really must. Agatha isn’t-’

‘Oh yes,’ Matthias interrupted, ‘Agatha Merryfeet.’

‘That’s not her real name,’ Amasia snapped.

‘Oh, I think it is,’ Matthias replied, keeping his face straight as he caught the note of jealousy in her voice. ‘Whatever she is, Agatha can dance.’

‘Aye!’ she snapped. ‘On the tables, flaunting herself.’ Angrily Amasia picked her shift up and pulled it over her head. ‘Well, she’ll dance no more. She’s dead! Dead as a worm,’ she continued. ‘Her corpse has been taken to the death house at the Crutched Friars. Found in Christ Church Meadow she was,’ Amasia trilled on. ‘Pinch marks on her neck. Like two holes, the bailiff told us, as if someone had taken a nail-’

She was spun round. Matthias clutched her shoulders, his fingers biting deeply into her flesh. Amasia struggled but she forgot the pain: it was Matthias’ face which frightened her. No longer the soft, calm student. His face was pallid, skin drawn tight, eyes fixed and staring. He opened his mouth but then swallowed hard.

‘Matthias!’ She slapped at his wrist.

The student’s grip still held firm.

‘Matthias, you are hurting me!’

He let go of her and slumped down on the bed. Amasia stepped away and watched him carefully. She had heard stories about men like that. Quiet ones but, when they were in a chamber alone with a woman, they became violent, taking their pleasure out of pain. But was Matthias one of these? She noticed a trickle of sweat running down the side of his face, his chest heaving as if he had been running. He was staring at the floor. Now and again his mouth would twist into a grimace or he would shake his head as if he were carrying on a conversation with someone she could not see. She picked up a bowl of wine he had brought and, sitting beside him, raised it to his lips. He drank like a babe, then he coughed, retched and, with his hand covering his mouth, ran across the room to the piss bowl where he vomited. He crouched there like a dog, cleaning his mouth with his fingers.

‘Matthias, are you sickening?’

Amasia became frightened. Last summer the sweating sickness had swept through Oxford. They said it had been brought by Henry Tudor’s soldiers when they had marched through the city after their victory over Richard III at Market Bosworth. Amasia knew all about that battle: two of the pot boys had fought on the Yorkist side and had never returned. Amasia got to her feet. Perhaps she should go downstairs to Goodman the taverner.