4
In Paradise, in the glades of Eden,
Eve was tempted twice: first by Lucifer
Then by Rosifer who offered her
A rose plucked from Heaven.
Edith, daughter of Fulcher the blacksmith, sat in a sun-filled glade half listening to the voices of the women washing the clothes in the brook at the foot of the hill. She really should be with them but, as her father said, Edith was for ever a dreamer. This was her favourite spot: a small wood which stood on the brow of a hill. The trees were the walls of her castle, the grassy glade the most velvet of carpets and the flowers which lined the edge of the brook — teasel, bird’s-foot, mallow and elder — the ornaments of her solar. She stared around. The glade was now covered in a carpet of bluebells, dog rose, mercury and primrose. A quiet, restful place where she could hide and dream. Edith was now sixteen summers old, three years since her courses had begun and her mother had sent her out into the garden to lie down naked to enrich the soil. Edith was a woman, or so her mother kept repeating, and Edith marvelled in her new-found power. Only weeks ago a troop of Yorkist horse had stopped in the village, hiring all the chambers at the Hungry Man tavern. Of course they needed their horses shod and seen to. Edith had been there when the young squire, Aymer Valance, or so he called himself, had come down to watch her father heat the furnace and turn the iron red-hot. He had paid sweet but secret court to her and she had brought him here. They had lain beneath the trees naked as worms, wrapped round each other. He had promised to come back but her father, sharp of eye, must have sensed what had happened. He cuffed her round the ear, shouting, ‘Such men come and go, girl. We mean nothing to them!’
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.
PART I
The pure light of dawn is only the pale glow from the rose gardens of Heaven.
1
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
