Paul Doherty: The Rose Demon

Edith ran her hand across her stomach and down the folds of her simple linen dress. Perhaps tomorrow, when the village gathered on the green after sunset to carouse and dance around the maypole, she might meet someone else. Her mother was now washing her best smock before laying it out along the fence at the back of the smithy to dry in the afternoon sun.

Edith heard a twig snap and her head came up, the buttercups in her hand slipping between her fingers.

‘Who’s there?’ she called.

She sniffed the air and caught a fragrance: she had smelt it before, of roses. Once at Easter, when her mother bathed, Edith had been allowed to use the water afterwards. She still remembered the rose petals floating there and the sweet fragrance which tickled her nose. The scent was stronger now. Edith, a little alarmed, got to her feet. She’d heard stories, travellers’ tales, of horrid murders in lonely places. Of corpses found, the blood drained, like the loving couple found in a meadow outside Tewkesbury.

‘Who’s there?’ she repeated.

A voice began to sing softly. Edith was confused. The words were French. She had heard Aymer use the same tongue but, strangely, now she could understand it: about a rose which had bloomed in heaven before the world had ever begun. Edith took a step backward but the man who stepped out of the trees did not frighten her. He was tall, his face dark, his mouth merry. When he smiled, his teeth were so white and clean, he reminded her of Aymer. Edith smiled and stretched out her hands towards him.

Matthias Fitzosbert made sure the belt round his tunic was fastened tight, then crawled quietly over the weather-beaten gravestone in the cemetery and through a gap in the hedge. He scuttled like a mouse along the earth trackway and on to the highway of Sutton Courteny village. On the corner, beneath a large, overspreading oak tree, he turned and stared back. He clawed nervously at his black, shiny hair, licked his lips and scratched a spot high on his olive-skinned cheek.

Above the trees soared the spire of his father’s church. Matthias hoped that he would not be missed for some time. His father, who had been weeding around the graves, had taken a stoup of ale and was now fast asleep in the shadow of the lych-gate. Christina, his woman, Matthias’ mother, was in the small herb garden at the back of the priest’s house tending the camomile, mint, thyme and coriander, which she would later pluck, dry and store in small jars in the buttery. All was quiet. Not even the birds chirped. They were hiding under the cool, green leaves well away from the surprisingly hot May sun. Somewhere a bee buzzed angrily in his search for honey. A snow-white butterfly came floating by. Matthias went to catch it but missed his footing and fell on the trackway. He yelped but then froze. He must remember he was only seven. He had no right to be out by himself, going through the woods to the derelict village of Tenebral.

Matthias ran on. Thankfully the houses of the cottagers and peasants were all quiet. Men, women and children were out in the fields, driving away the legion of birds and small animals which plundered the corn and anything else that the villagers had sown. Matthias crouched in the shadow of a house and stared further along the highroad. He studied the entrance to the Hungry Man tavern where the loungers and the lazy would squat with their backs to the walls, supping ale or quarrelling quietly amongst themselves. Such men were to be watched. They were always curious about Parson Osbert and his illegitimate by-blow.

Osbert was a priest and, according to Canon Law, should lead a chaste and celibate life. However, when he had come to Sutton Courteny fourteen years ago, Christina, daughter of Sigrid, a prosperous yeoman, had caught his eyes as he preached in church. They had fallen in love, become handfast and Matthias was their love child. Most of his parishioners accepted this; however, they were still curious and might go running up to the church to ask Parson Osbert why his son was stealing out of the village again.

Matthias stiffened as the burly, hard-faced blacksmith, Fulcher, lurched out of the tavern with a tankard in his hand. The man should have been out in the fields with the others but his daughter, Edith, had been found barbarously murdered in Sutton Courteny woods: her throat had been torn, her blood drained. Edith’s poor mangled corpse now lay in the parish coffin at the door to the rood screen of the church. Fulcher was mourning her in the only way he could.

‘Drunk as a pig!’ So he announced. ‘Until the pain has passed!’

Matthias’ eyes softened. Fulcher looked so distraught, and Edith, his dreamy-eyed daughter, had been so kind. Whenever a corpse was laid in the coffin, Matthias always helped his mother to make sure that all was well before Requiem Mass was sung and the corpse was buried in its shroud beneath the outstretched yew trees in the cemetery. Corpses did not frighten Matthias. They were all the same: stiff and cold, lips turning blue and eyes half-open. This time, however, Osbert had been insistent that he himself tend the corpse. He wrapped it in a special canvas sheet and screwed the coffin lid well down till the poor girl’s remains were buried.

‘Edith!’ Fulcher cried up at the sky, swaying backwards and forwards on his feet. ‘Edith!’

Piers the ploughman came out, caught Fulcher by the arm and took him back into the tangy coolness of the Hungry Man taproom.

Matthias ran on, slipping like a shadow past the doorway of the tavern and up through the village. He stopped at the gallows stone from which Baron Sanguis’ gibbet stretched up, black and stark against the sky. No corpse hung there but, now and again, the Manor Lord gibbeted a victim coated in tar, bound with old rope, as a warning to the outlaws, wolf’s-heads and poachers to stay well away from his domain.

At last the line of cottages ended. The trackway narrowed as it entered the dark wood. Matthias paused: his father and mother had warned him, on many an occasion, to stay well clear of this place.

‘Men as violent as wolves,’ the kindly parson’s face had been serious, ‘wander like demons. These horrid murders!’ Parson Osbert had shaken his balding head. ‘Moreover, there are armies on the march and, where there are soldiers, murder and rapine ride close behind. Isn’t that right, Mother?’

Christina had brushed her thick, blonde hair away from her face and stared, white-faced, at her son. Matthias, being so young, did not know what murder and rapine were, though they sounded interesting. What concerned him more was how tired and grey his mother now looked. Usually merry-eyed, laughing and vigorous, Christina had, over the last few weeks, become quiet, withdrawn and ever anxious. Only last night Matthias had woken and found her in her shift, a blanket about her shoulders, staring down at him. The tallow candle in her hand had made her face look even more gaunt. When he’d stirred, she had sat down on the edge of his pallet bed and gently stroked his face.

‘Matthias.’

‘Yes, Mother?’

‘You go through the woods, don’t you? You go to see the hermit?. . In his refuge at Tenebral?’

Matthias had been about to lie but his mother’s eyes looked so strange, so full of fear, he had nodded slowly. Christina had turned away. She had told him to go back to sleep but, as she’d turned to say good night, he’d glimpsed the tears on her cheeks.

Matthias now gnawed on his lips; the wood was a dark and secret place. He remembered the stories the villagers liked to tell when they all gathered around the great roaring fire in the taproom of the Hungry Man: about the pigmy king who lived beneath the tumuli, the ancient burial mounds, deep in the woods. Of Edric the Wild and his demonic horsemen who hunted along the banks of the Severn.