He gave up in disgust and was about to go down the steps when he noticed a small grille built into the base of the wall. Matthias crouched down. He used his dagger and hacked away. The grille came loose. Moving the dying firebrand to give him light, Matthias pushed his hand into the aperture and dug around. From the outside it looked like a simple drain hole but the cavity within was much larger. Matthias sighed as his fingers touched something hard. He drew out the silver pyx, now covered in dirt, then two small phials where the chrism and oil had been kept. He searched again. His hand brushed something hard. He pulled this out. In the poor light he could see the leather bag was engrained with dirt, the cord round the neck frayed. When he cut them loose, his father’s Book of Hours slipped into his hand. Leaving everything except his dagger, Matthias grasped the book and ran down the steps, back into the nave. He built the fire up and, in its warm glow, started to turn over the pages.
The book was made up of stiff pages of parchment stitched together and held between two pieces of very thin wood covered with leather. The book contained psalms and readings from the scriptures. On some pages the carefully curved letters had faded, the small jewel-like miniature paintings grown indistinct. In many of the margins Parson Osbert had written his own commentary in a tidy cursive hand; at the back, the blank folio pages had been covered with jottings and notes. Matthias read through these, trying to ignore the memories they evoked, the homilies his father had planned on the special saints’ days of the parish. He found what he was searching for at the very back. It carried the date, the Feast of the Holy Cross, September 1471. At first Matthias thought his father had simply copied out the ‘Confiteor’, the ‘I Confess’ which every priest recited before Mass. The writing was hasty, the letters ill-formed. Matthias kept moving the book, trying to make out each word.
The writing then faltered. Matthias closed the book. He gripped it firmly between his hands. He couldn’t think about anything except his father yelling at him, cursing him, rejecting him. Christina’s strange behaviour, the way she fell ill the day the hermit was tried and executed. Matthias couldn’t stop shivering. He heard sounds outside, horsemen were approaching. All he could do was sit by the fire, his arms wrapped across his chest.
‘Fitzosbert! Matthias Fitzosbert!’
He didn’t move.
Again, ‘Matthias! Matthias Fitzosbert!’ The voice was harsh.
Matthias glanced up at a window. Darkness had fallen. The riders outside were approaching the church. A horse neighed, followed by screams and the sound of swords being drawn. Someone was hammering at the main door but Matthias ignored it. Again, screams, horses rearing and neighing in terror, then silence. Matthias didn’t move. He didn’t care. When those grey shapes he had glimpsed in the cemetery thronged at the back of the church and moved like clouds towards him, he glared back in defiance. The fire began to die. The church was intensely cold. He could not make out the shapes, corpses in their shrouds. The lost, earthbound souls of the dead villagers, faces grey as the shrouds they wore, eyes dead, came and went like puffs of smoke. Matthias felt no fear. Why should he? His father had hinted at the reason for Christina’s collapse and his own soul-breaking rage. Christina had been seduced by the hermit: both she and Osbert believed Matthias was the child of this adulterous liaison.
‘What am I?’ Matthias called into the darkness. ‘Man or demon?’
Was that why he had the second sight? Why he brought chaos and terror to everyone in his life? His parents had died because of him. This village had been devastated because of him. Santerre, Amasia, that long line of dead. Outside a chanting had begun as ghostly choristers assembled in the darkness. Matthias heard the words of the Dies Irae: ‘Day of wrath, oh day of mourning, see fulfilled the heavens’ warning. Heaven and earth in ashes burning.’ Knocking then began on the walls and doors: ghostly voices calling his name. Matthias kept drinking the wine. Verses from Psalm 91 kept running through his tired brain:
Matthias staggered drunkenly to his feet.
‘I don’t fear them!’ he shouted. ‘Because I am them! I am the terror of the night! I am the arrow that flies by day! The Plague which prowls in the darkness and the noonday scourge!’
His words echoed round the church. Outside silence fell. The chanting stopped. The knocking on the doors and the pattering along the walls ceased. In the dying light of the fire, Matthias noticed the pools of blood drying up.
‘I can do no more,’ he muttered.
And, lying down on the floor, he curled up like a child and fell into a drunken sleep.
He woke stiff and cold the following morning. His limbs ached, he had a terrible pain in his head and his mouth was dry. He staggered to the window and peered out. The mist had lifted. The grass sparkled under a weak November sun. Matthias went down and opened the door. A corpse sprawled there: the side of the man’s head had been dashed against the iron studs of the door. Matthias felt his neck, there was no blood pulse. He turned the body over: sightless eyes, a horrible wound in the side of the head, the blood congealing on the door and steps.
‘One of Emloe’s men,’ Matthias muttered.
He laughed wildly. Emloe’s men must have followed him here. Of course, the warlock must have surmised that Matthias would return to Sutton Courteny. Matthias stumbled across the cemetery. Another corpse lay like a broken toy over a graveyard slab. The head was twisted like that of a hanged man, as if someone had come behind him and snapped his neck. At the lych-gate the third corpse was a mass of bruises, his face disfigured into a bloody mass. Matthias didn’t know how the other two had died but his third would-be assassin must have been holding the horses. Something had sent them mad with terror and, rearing up, lashing out with their hooves, they had pounded this man into the ground. Now all was quiet. The graveyard grass was covered in a thick white hoar frost. No sound broke the silence. Of the horses, Matthias could find no trace.
He returned to the priest’s house. His own mount was safe and secure where he had put it in the ruined stables behind. Matthias stroked its muzzle. He released the cord and took it on to the high street.
‘Go on,’ he urged, striking its rump. ‘Go on, I won’t need you any more!’
The horse, puzzled, made to stay. Matthias drew his dagger and pricked it gently on the rump.
‘Go on!’ he yelled. ‘Go on! No one will come here!’
The horse, now frightened, galloped further down the street then stopped. Matthias, who had already decided what to do, went into the small herb garden. He stopped for a while to clear his head and stared around. This was where Christina grew her herbs: camomile, briony, bogbean, hound’s tongue, comfrey, sorrel, basil and thyme. The garden was a tangle of weeds but, in the far corner, Matthias found what he was looking for. His mother had always warned him to keep well away from this tall, green, perennial herb with its much branched stems and bell-like leaves, deadly nightshade. Christina and the other villagers had used this in very small doses for stomach upsets but, in any quantity, it brought death. Matthias cut a few of the stems. He took these to the church and ground both stem and leaf. Matthias took what was left of his wine, poured it into the small metal cup he carried and put the nightshade in, stirring it constantly with his finger. Matthias had no other thoughts in his head. He felt unreal as if watching himself in a dream. He did not want to go on. How could he? How could he accept that he was a bastard child, the cause of so much death and terror? He glanced down the church and recalled the deaths of the villagers.
