Matthias thanked him and left. He took the pathway to Sutton Courteny. The mist still hung thick, deadening all sound. Matthias soon found himself in the woods. Memories flooded back: how he used to run and play here before the hermit ever arrived. The night the soldiers attacked him: the hermit’s intervention and how, as a boy, he’d run, lungs fit to burst, to warn the hermit of what the villagers were planning.
Matthias was in Sutton Courteny before he knew it, the hanging stone looming up before him. The gibbet, which soared above it, still stood firm. A piece of rope, the strands decaying, danced in the morning breeze. Matthias rode on. He stopped outside the Hungry Man tavern. He dismounted and looked through where the sturdy front door had once hung. He couldn’t stop the tears flowing. The last time he had been here was on that dreadful night when the storm had broken. Matthias walked on. He felt as if he were a ghost walking through the Valley of Death. He could remember everything as it was and yet, despite the mist, see so precisely what it had become. The blacksmith’s house, the crumbling forge; the prosperous tenement of John the bailiff, its roof long disappeared, the gardens around it overgrown. No sound broke the silence except the slither of his boots and the creak of harness. Now and again the horse would slip on the mud-soaked cobbles, the sound echoing along the high street. Matthias half-expected to see someone come out of the house and greet him, yet everywhere he looked was ruin and decay. Weeds sprouted in the high street and Matthias wondered where the survivors had gone.
As he approached the church, Matthias’ sense of nostalgia was replaced by one of quiet dread. The silence had grown oppressive, with not even the creak of a door or the call of a bird. He stopped outside the lych-gate. The headstones and crosses were flattened as on the night of the massacre. The church, however, looked untouched, even the tiles on the roof had not been pillaged. The wooden door in the main porch hung slightly askew. This was powerful testimony to how the local villagers must regard Sutton Courteny as a place of dread, not even worth entering to plunder what remained.
Matthias, the reins gathered round his hand, walked on up to the house. Everything was as it should be. Oh, the horn in the windows had long gone, tiles had slipped from the roof, the garden was overgrown, but if he half- closed his eyes the mist would lift, the sun would come out and he’d find Christina in the buttery or his father dozing in his chair before the fire.
However, when he entered his childhood home, he found it bleak and desolate. The furniture had long gone, probably taken by the survivors, the rooms were gaunt and empty. He crouched by the parlour hearth and ran his fingers through the cold, soggy dust. This was probably the remains of the last fire his father had ever made. Matthias stared towards the niche where the skull had been. All he glimpsed were shards of bone as if someone had taken a club and smashed it to pieces. He went carefully upstairs: the chambers were barred and equally desolate. Someone had lit a fire in his room, the walls were black and scorched. In his parents’ chamber, all was gone except for a cross daubed in faded red paint, beside it, the words ‘Jesus miserere’. Matthias sensed the intensity with which the unknown painter had done this. Was it his father, or had one of the survivors come and taken what they wanted, then left a memento of how God had abandoned the place?
Matthias tried hard not to scream in protest at the way his life had been shattered. He went downstairs and sat in the parlour, his back to the wall. If he could only turn back the years. He recalled the words of the Hospitaller and tried to concentrate on where his father might have hidden his Book of Hours, his breviary or, perhaps, a letter, a memorandum which might explain the tragedy of those last few hours of his childhood. Matthias closed his eyes. Where would his father hide such documents? On that last All-Hallows Eve he’d gone to the church to comfort the parishioners who had fled there. Matthias racked his brains. He could not remember his father carrying anything. All he could recall was Parson Osbert’s face, his kindly eyes, the attempts at reconciliation.
Matthias went out into the old cemetery. He checked on his horse and went across to where the death house stood. It was covered in creeping lichen and the shutters over the small window had long disappeared. Matthias peered through this. He almost screamed: standing in the gloom was the Preacher glaring malevolently at him. He was dressed in the same rags as when they had hanged him on the gibbet. Matthias recoiled. He looked again, there was nothing. He walked across the cemetery towards the church.
‘Matthias! Matthias!’ The voice was like a hiss.
He stopped. The Preacher was now standing beneath the overhanging branches of a yew tree. He was dressed in black from head to toe, his face a liverish white, his eyes pools of glaring malevolence. The phantasm bared his teeth, like a dog ready to attack, in a hiss of air, a long-drawn-out breath of hatred. Matthias stood rooted to the spot. His hand went to his dagger. He couldn’t tear his eyes away. At the same time he was aware of other shapes, shrouded in grey, appearing around the cemetery. Although used to such phenomena, Matthias couldn’t control his sense of dread. He closed his eyes. When he looked again, there was only the mist curling its tendrils above the cemetery. Somewhere in a tree a bird began to chatter. Matthias ran to the door of the church. The porch was dank, dark and musty. He pushed with all his might and slammed the old door shut behind him.
Matthias, trying to control his breathing, walked down the nave, gloomy as a grave, except for the faint rays of light pouring through the arrow slit windows. He paused and leant against a pillar. The church was greatly changed. Someone had burnt down the rood screen. The altar, too, had gone. The pulpit had been overthrown. Wood lay piled in one of the transepts as if someone had taken an axe and smashed the benches. All the statues were gone. No crucifix hung on the walls. It was like a long-disused barn from which both God and man had fled.
Matthias collected bits of wood, took them into the sanctuary and built a small fire. He sat for a while warming himself then, taking an ember from the fire, walked back down the nave. He carefully studied the floor and pillars. There were cuts and marks, dark splashes on the pillars and walls. Matthias surmised these must be blood stains from the massacre. He stamped his feet and blew into his hands. The church was much colder than he had realised. He returned to the fire and remembered he had left his saddlebags in the house so he went back for these, crossing the cemetery at a run. He found them just within the doorway of the priest’s house, and hurried back.
He could see nothing untoward except, when he returned to the church, some of the dark stains he had glimpsed before were now glistening. Matthias stared at the pools of blood trickling along the paved stone of the nave. He returned to the sanctuary, accepting he would not be allowed to escape unscathed from this ghost-ridden place. Nevertheless, he was determined he would not leave empty-handed. He ate some food and drank a little wine. He went back to his childhood days, to his father celebrating Mass here.
‘Yes,’ Matthias spoke into the darkness, ‘there was a place where he hid things. The little silver pyx he used to take the viaticum to the sick. The oils and chrism he needed for baptisms and marriages.’ Matthias drank more from the wineskin. ‘That’s it. Father always complained about how thieves would enter village churches and steal such valuable items.’
Christina had laughed at this and asked why he didn’t keep it in the house. Parson Osbert had shaken his head. He claimed such sacred objects should always be kept in a holy place. Matthias got to his feet and walked slowly round the sanctuary. He examined the small lavarium built in the wall where his father used to wash his fingers during Mass before he touched the sacred species. There was nothing. Matthias scrutinised the bricks in the wall, searching vainly for one that might be loose. He knelt down and closed his eyes.
‘Please,’ he prayed. ‘Some sign!’
Daylight was fading. The church was growing darker and he grew more desperate in his searches. On hands and knees, Matthias crawled across the paving stones but these held firm and secure. He recalled his father saying there was no crypt beneath the church. Matthias’ hands and knees became sore from crawling, his eyes hurt. He returned to the fire and bit into the cheese he had bought from the old manor steward, yet he’d lost his appetite and he wondered if his search were a wasteful, dangerous task. He stared down the church, trying to ignore the pools still glistening on the floor. Where else would his father hide anything? Taking a firebrand to light his way, he went down the nave, through a narrow door into the small bell tower. The steps were wet and mildewed; somewhere above there must be a crack in the walls or tiles through which the rain and snow had poured in over the years.
Matthias climbed, moving carefully until he reached the small gallery where his father had stood to summon the parishioners to Mass. The bell rope had long rotted away. Matthias lifted the firebrand and stared at the wooden pegs around which the rope had once been wrapped. These were driven into a wedge of wood fixed into the wall. Matthias pulled and tugged at these; they held firm.
