Paul Doherty - A haunt of murder

‘I… er…’ The summoner was alarmed.

Robin and Isabella were enjoying their game. They pulled a cloak off a peg and tossed it to the floor. They picked up the grimy towel from the lavarium and waved it like a pennant. The wench was now frightened. She climbed off the bed and retreated to the door. Isabella was ready for her, pulling across the bolts and turning the key. Other items were picked up and thrown like scraps of straw.

The summoner paled with fright, beads of sweat ran down his cheek. He was so taken by the terrors that he wet himself. He sat rigid, hands on his knees. The maid began to scream.

‘Stop it!’ Beatrice called. ‘For the love of God, stop it!’

Immediately Robin and Isabella became docile and stood with their hands at their sides, heads lowered, looking at her from under their brows. Their eyes seemed to have lost their colour. The tavern wench drew back the bolts, flung open the door and went screaming down the gallery. The summoner moved quickly, grasping at his possessions, putting the silver coin back in his purse. He threw himself through the open doorway. Robin and Isabella laughed.

‘You see, Beatrice,’ Isabella crowed, grasping her husband’s hand. ‘Brother Antony was wrong. You can cross the divide. You could intervene.’

‘How?’ she asked.

‘Let your hate flow,’ Robin replied with a smile. ‘Think of it as a stick or a dagger, put all your mind, heart and soul behind it.’

Beatrice stared at this precious pair. What they offered was tantalising but she sensed there was something dreadfully wrong about it, that if she accepted what they said, there would be no turning back.

‘I want to go,’ she said.

‘Beatrice! Beatrice Arrowner!’

She looked through the window. Brother Antony stood in the street below, shaking a raised finger in warning.

Beatrice fled from the room, down the steps. But outside there was no high street, no Brother Antony, only a long, dark trackway fringed by trees. The chapman leading his sumpter pony, the two great mastiffs bounding before him, was coming towards her.

Words Between the Pilgrims

The clerk paused in his tale. The pilgrims clustered round the crackling fire beseeched him with their eyes to continue. The pardoner, clawing at his flaxen hair, was smirking mischievously at the summoner who sat, head down, shoulders hunched.

‘Have you ever been to Maldon, sir?’ The pardoner asked sweetly.

‘Never!’ this messenger of the Church snapped. ‘I’ve never been to Maldon. I know nothing of a tavern called the Pot of Thyme.’ Yet the way he moved his lips and a shift in his eyes showed the pilgrims he was lying. The man of law hitched his fur robes tighter round his shoulders. This tale disturbed him, and so did this God-forsaken wood, with the mist seeping in, the sounds of the night all around them. Only the fiery warmth of the fire kept the terrors at bay.

‘I’ve been to Maldon,’ the reeve announced, looking quickly at the knight. Sir Godfrey hid a smile behind his hand. He knew all about the reeve’s activities in the great revolt that had swept through Essex and Kent some nine years previously: the reeve had been high in the rebels’ council.

‘I recognise some of the names,’ the Reeve continued in his nasal whine. ‘The farmer, Piers, Taylis the taverner, though he’s now dead.’

‘These visions you describe, Master Clerk,’ Sir Godfrey said, ‘can you explain them?’

Surprisingly, the monk leaned forward, one bony hand extended as a sign that he wished to speak.

‘There are many worlds,’ he said in a deep, rich voice. ‘How do we know that five or six realities don’t exist at the same time? Even the great philosophers admit to such a possibility.’

‘And do you think,’ the knight asked, ‘that there are creatures who can pass through the twilight?’

‘Why, of course, Sir Godfrey,’ the monk replied softly. ‘And they come for many reasons.’ He bared his teeth.

The wife of Bath flinched at the sight of his sharp dog’s teeth.

‘In death as in life, there are hunters and hunted.’

‘Aye,’ Sir Godfrey replied. ‘And it is as well to know which is which.’

The monk glanced away.

‘I would like to know,’ the wife of Bath chirped up, ‘if this is a true story, or at least which strands of it are true. How do you know what Beatrice saw?’ She studied the clerk’s soft face. In the flickering firelight he looked very handsome and the wife of Bath wetted her lips. It had been so long since she had bounced merrily on a bed. The clerk did not answer her question. He looked round at his audience and said, ‘Prepare your minds, kind sirs and ladies, for the Lords of Hell!’

Beatrice stood and watched the man on his sumpter pony draw nearer and, as he did so, the snow-filled valley and the hounds disappeared. Once again he looked like an ordinary chapman on the high road of Maldon, his pony a bedraggled mount with bulging panniers and baskets on either side. The man was tall, now soberly dressed in a brown leather jerkin and brown leggings. His blue cloak was gathered behind him, fastened at the neck by a silver chain. A war belt round his slim waist carried sword and dagger. One hand held the reins, the other a stout walking staff. He had a handsome face, deep-set eyes, sharp nose and a merry mouth. His black moustache and beard were neatly clipped. Beatrice noticed that his fingers were long, the nails carefully cut. On one wrist he wore a gold band, on the other a leather guard. He stopped in front of her.

‘Beatrice Arrowner?’ He smiled, showing teeth that were white and even. The little bells sewn to his jerkin tinkled musically at his every movement.

‘Who are you?’ Beatrice asked. ‘I can see you and you can see me. Are you a ghost?’

‘I’m the Minstrel Man.’

‘And where are you going, sir?’ Beatrice was too curious to heed Brother Antony’s warning.

‘Why, Beatrice, the same as you, Ravenscroft Castle.’

‘But are you a ghost?’ she insisted.

He slipped the staff through a cord in the saddle of his sumpter pony and grasped her hand.

‘Come with me, Beatrice. I’ve been invited there. I’ve heard the summons. I want to see what songs can be sung, stories told, webs woven.’ He squeezed her hand; his touch was very warm. Beatrice felt calm and peaceful; and it seemed only natural to walk with him. Soon she was chattering like a child, telling him everything that had happened. The Minstrel Man was a good listener. When she fell silent, he began to sing a song softly under his breath, a heartcatching tune though Beatrice did not understand the guttural words.

‘What words are they?’ she asked.

‘Ah, it’s an ancient song.’ The Minstrel Man paused and turned to face her. ‘I’ve sung it many a time, before the soaring monuments of Egypt, the hanging gardens of Babylon, the great towers of Troy and the golden palaces of the Byzantine.’

‘You’ve travelled far?’ she asked.

‘I travel, Mistress, wherever I’m invited.’ His reply was soft, followed by a slow wink of the eye.

‘And what will you do at Ravenscroft?’

‘Why, Beatrice, make music.’

‘But they won’t hear you!’

‘Oh, they will. The song I sing has been heard many times.’

Beatrice felt a tinge of apprehension. She noticed how dark the highway had become and something else: in the fields on either side the grazing cattle were moving away and all birdsong had ceased. There was no crackling or bustling in the thicket. She stared back in the direction of Maldon. Shadows clustered there as if an army of the dead were following them. Nothing substantial, just those black plumes of smoke she had glimpsed from the taproom of the Pot of Thyme, now gathering together. Above her the sky was streaked with dark-red clouds.