Father Hubert grasped Matthias’ arm and pointed to the bottom of the door. A ghostly blue light glowed there.
Matthias went to grasp the latch but Sir Humphrey knocked him away. As he did so a woman’s voice could be heard.
‘Oh please, oh in God’s name, no! Oh please stop!’
This was followed by the sound of scraping and hammering, as if someone were building something behind the door. Again the woman’s voice, her heart-wrenching pleas for mercy, echoed out. This turned into deep- bellied laughter of someone who had grown witless, or like a mad dog howling at the moon. This devilish chorus — the woman’s pleas, the mocking laughter — grew, interspersed with periods of silence. By straining his ears Matthias could hear the man talking, muttering to himself, filthy curses, vows of vengeance. The gallery was now so cold, Father Hubert was rubbing his arms trying to keep warm. One of the soldiers, unable to bear the tension, simply fled the keep.
‘Let me go in,’ Matthias said.
Sir Humphrey held him back.
‘You are my son-in-law,’ he smiled bleakly. ‘Not now, Matthias, not on this, your wedding night-’
‘This has happened before,’ Father Hubert broke in. He glanced at Matthias. ‘It will happen again. It can wait!’
Matthias agreed. The light under the door vanished. There was silence from the stairwell beyond so they turned and left the keep.
When they returned to the hall, Matthias refused to tell Rosamund what had happened. Instead he went round his guests, filling their wine cups, trying to forget what he had witnessed. He drank a little himself, and the wine settled his stomach and soothed his mind.
A trumpeter amongst the musicians blew long melodious blasts on his horn, then Matthias and Rosamund were led from the hall up to their nuptial bed in Rosamund’s chamber beside the solar. The sheets on the new four-poster bed had been turned back, the bolsters piled high. The guests drank one last toast to the bride and groom and left.
Matthias and Rosamund sat on the edge of the bed. Matthias put his hand gently round her waist and pulled her closer. He whispered softly in her ear, tickling her face with the tip of his tongue. She laughed and turned away, pulling at the laces on her white satin dress. Matthias grasped her fiercely and they fell back on the bed.
For the next few days the wedding revelry continued. Matthias and Rosamund lived in their own dreamlike world. They had married on a Monday and Sir Humphrey declared the rest of the week a holiday. The newly wedded couple were left alone, allowed to wander the castle by themselves or, better still, take horses from the stable and ride recklessly over the heathland. Sometimes they filled the saddlebag with bread, cheese and other food wrapped in linen cloths, took a wineskin and rode out to some lonely copse where they could sit and talk or lie quietly in the grass, arms around each other.
On the Sunday, Matthias took Rosamund down to the wall, the ruins where he and Vane had sheltered the night before they had arrived at Barnwick. There was no sign of the old hermit Pender. Matthias, remembering what he had been told, searched the ruins carefully. At last, he found what he was looking for, a carving above a hearth: a man dressed in a cloak standing on a rose in full bloom. Beneath the rose were the strange marks or runes such as he had seen in the deserted church at Tenebral.
‘What is it, love?’ Rosamund came shyly beside him, slipping her hand through his. She saw how pale her husband’s face had become. ‘Matthias, what is it?’
Matthias ran his fingers over the carving. Rosamund tugged at his arm.
‘Matthias Fitzosbert!’
‘Yes, Rosamund Fitzosbert!’
‘What is it?’ Her sweet eyes held his. ‘Matthias, I am no fool, I know you have a secret. Father Hubert knows. I am confident it’s nothing evil, nothing wicked.’ She grasped his face between her hands. ‘The haunting in the north tower? Father Hubert told me about it. I know that it has increased since you arrived. When you came, you were Matthias the Miserable.’ She grinned. ‘Fitzosbert the Grim. Now you leap for happiness like a child into its mother’s arms. What is it, Matthias? Why did you bring me down to the wall? Yes, it’s beautiful. The autumn sun is still strong, the ground is firm but, for the last hour, you have searched like a miser who has hidden a bag of gold but can’t remember where he has put it. Yet, now you’ve found it, your face is pallid.’ She moved her hand and wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘What is it, Matthias Fitzosbert? What passion drives you?’ Her hand fell away. ‘You sleep deeply but you talk and you mutter about men called Rahere, Santerre.’ She blinked furiously. ‘And a woman called Mairead. Was I wrong, Matthias Fitzosbert?’
‘Wrong in what?’ he asked.
‘I’ll never stop loving you,’ she continued. ‘The fires of Hell can freeze and the world will crack before Rosamund stops loving Matthias.’ She squeezed his fingers. ‘But do you love me, Matthias? Love me enough to tell me your great secret?’
Matthias kissed her on the brow. ‘We have some bread and some wine,’ he murmured. He took his cloak and placed it on the ground. ‘Sit and listen, Rosamund.’
He ensured the horses were hobbled, took off the saddlebag and returned. She was kneeling, sitting back on her heels. Matthias laid out the cloth, filled the two pewter cups, then sat beside her, his back to the wall. He stared up at a white cloud the size of a man’s hand.
‘I have told you something about my life,’ he began, ‘but there is something else. So, listen carefully.’ He paused. ‘And then you’ll realise why I am Fitzosbert the Grim.’
Matthias talked for over an hour. As he did so, the cloud, no bigger than his fists, filled out across the sky. Rosamund never interrupted. Sometimes Matthias would pause, drink some wine or just close his eyes to reflect. He tried to tell her everything. Sometimes the account raised fears in his own soul. Once he did glance at Rosamund’s face. He was alarmed to see how the colour had drained, her eyes were half-closed, lips slightly parted. When he finished, the silence grew oppressive. Rosamund hardly moved.
‘Now you know why Fitzosbert is the Grim,’ Matthias joked.
‘Did you ever think I housed this being?’ Rosamund arranged the folds of her dress. ‘Whatever he, whatever it is, Matthias, he loves you: that’s why Santerre died. He was trying, in his own way, to show how much you meant to him. It’s true isn’t it?’ she continued in a rush. ‘And what better way than to possess my mind, my soul?’
‘As God is my witness,’ Matthias whispered, ‘your name disturbed me but never once. .’
‘Why not?’ Rosamund snapped.
‘I’m not really sure,’ Matthias replied. ‘But the Demon can only enter where there’s a pathway in. Some moral, some spiritual weakness like an enemy forcing its way through a gap in a castle wall. You have no weakness, Rosamund. You are pure as candlelight and burn as strongly. Secondly, the little I do know, the little I have discovered, is that it would not be acceptable. The Rose Demon wants me to accept him, a free act of will, a final decision. He will not force me.’
‘But isn’t that what he’s doing?’ Rosamund faced him squarely. ‘He pursues you, he is forcing you to accept him.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Matthias replied. ‘I freely accepted the friendship with the hermit and that of Rahere.’
‘You were only a child!’
‘Children make choices, Rosamund. Imperfect, mistaken but they are still choices. The same is true later on. I chose Baron Sanguis’ patronage. I chose to go to Oxford. I chose Santerre as my friend. I chose to alienate Rokesby. I accepted Symonds’ help. I stayed with the rebels.’ Matthias spread his hands in a gesture of despair. ‘Yes, at times I feel my life is not my own. But is anybody’s? Would you have been different, Rosamund, if your mother had lived?’ he asked. ‘And, you forget, if what has happened had not happened to me, how would we have ever met? Once you begin to unravel the past nothing remains.’ He got to his feet. ‘How do I know?’ he continued. ‘What might have happened to me without the Demon? Would I have spent my days as the bastard son of a village parson, digging the soil, worrying about the price of corn, or a leak in my thatched roof? True, I blame the Rose Demon for the evil in my life. A theologian might argue that he is also the author of my good fortune.’
‘Does that include me?’ Rosamund moved a tendril of hair from her face.
‘No, it doesn’t, that’s my point. I have made choices, Rosamund. I married you because I love you, not
