‘So why go armed in this abbey?’
‘Because Sir John, this abbey is not what it appears to be.’ Osborne threw off Brokersby’s warning hand.
‘You think these good brothers are united in prayer? Well, look at the facts. The abbot hates the prior who responds with as much loathing. The prior loves the Frenchman Richer with a love not known even towards women. Our Lord Abbot is more concerned about that nasty swan than he is about the rule of St Benedict. He keeps his beloved niece, if that is what she really is, in the guest house guarded by that old harridan. Meanwhile Richer slips in and out of this abbey like a rat from its hole. We’ve seen him wander down to the watergate. Was he there when poor Ailward was murdered?’ Osborne breathed in heavily, wiping the white flecks of foam from his lips on the back of his hand. ‘Then there’s that anchorite, mad as a March hare, in the abbey church, screaming that he is haunted. He has grudges against us, as do Prior Alexander and others who, I am sure, have great sympathy for the Great Community of the Realm and their leaders the Upright Men. Now two of our comrades are foully murdered, certainly not by us. Why not make your enquiries amongst the brothers: Abbot Walter, Prior Alexander, Richer the Frenchman? After all, we’ve seen military service, but they’ve also done their fair share of spilling blood. They can wield swords.’ Osborne’s voice trailed off in a fit of coughing and throat clearing.
‘Do you see Richer as your enemy?’
‘No, Brother, but he may view us as his.’
‘So why are you armed?’
‘Because,’ Wenlock intervened, ‘three weeks ago, just before the beginning of Advent, I was attacked out in the abbey grounds. I have a passion for herbs and shrubs — I always have. I visited the gardens and afterwards I went for a walk. Nearby runs a maze, its high hedgerows, all prickly, laid out in a subtle plan. A former abbot had built it so those who could not take the cross to Outremer to fight the infidel could crawl through its maze of narrow paths to the centre where there is a Great Pity surmounted by a cross. I entered but dusk was creeping in. I was about to leave when a figure charged out of the gloom, hooded and masked, sword and dagger whirling. I was petrified; all I carried was a pilgrim staff.’ Wenlock grimaced. ‘The forefingers of both my hands are maimed, the French, God curse them. I cannot pull a bow but still, albeit clumsily, wield a weapon.’
‘You fought your assailant off?’
‘I was out looking for Wenlock,’ Mahant spoke up. ‘I heard the shouting, the slash and clatter. I answered Wenlock’s cries of ‘
‘And you reported all this to Father Abbot?’
‘I might as well have talked to his stupid swan!’
‘And you have no idea of your attacker?’
‘No, he was dressed all in black, cowled and masked.’
‘Or why you were attacked, at that time, in that place?’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘Have any of you,’ Athelstan persisted, ‘relatives outside this abbey?’
‘Not that we know of, we are old soldiers. Some of us were married but now our wives are dead.’ Mahant’s voice turned wistful. ‘Whatever children we had lie cold beside them.’
‘As do two of your comrades?’
‘Brother, Sir John?’ Wenlock’s voice turned pleading. ‘We are finished, surely?’
‘I would like to inspect the chambers of the dead men.’ Cranston rose swiftly to his feet. ‘And that includes William Chalk’s.’ Cranston gestured towards the door. ‘Now, sirs. With you or without you. .?’
The anchorite, whom the old soldiers described as mad as a March hare, stared calmly through the aperture of his anker house on the south aisle of the abbey church. The monks had finished their hour of divine office. They’d left in a soft slither of sandal and the bobbing light of lantern horns. A cold breeze now seeped through an opened door to whip the remaining glow of candles and tapers. Gusts of sweet beeswax and incense still trailed. Here and there the silence was disturbed by the scurrying of mice and rats sheltering in this forest of stone against the savage cold outside. The anchorite wondered what he might see tonight. He’d heard of Hyde pricked to death near the watergate. The anchorite had tried to warn him. He’d seen Hyde leaving in pursuit of some monk — was it the Frenchman Richer? Then another shadow followed him — a monk, surely? The anchorite was certain of that. He’d seen the flitting blackness through the dark. He glimpsed the glint of steel, but that was life, was it not? Violent and turbulent, full of tension and strife, that’s why he sheltered in these sacred precincts with his precious manuscripts, his box of treasure and pallet of paints. He was an anchorite but an exceptional one. He performed one service for the Lord Abbot which few painters did. The abbot was a Grand Seigneur with all the powers of a lord, of Oyer and Terminer, of being Justice of Assize. He had the power of axe, tumbril and gallows and the anchorite served as the abbot’s hangman. In return Lord Walter had been good, allowing the anchorite, when the church was deserted, to leave his cell and paint visions of the life hereafter on the walls and pillars around his cell. Yet she, Alice Rednal, the sinister haunter of his life, had followed him here. The anchorite was sure of that. He’d seen Alice Rednal’s hard face pressed up against the aperture, features all ghoulish, hair as tangled as a briar bush, but that couldn’t be, surely? He’d hanged Rednal at the Elms in Smithfield. He had tolerated her taunting as they rattled along in the execution cart but he’d then watched her die. The anchorite moved back to his small carrel and chancery stool. He sat, picked up his quill pen, opened his journal and began to describe the nightmare which always plagued his sleep. Was this, he wondered, the cause of the recent horrid apparitions?
‘Suddenly, without warning,’ he whispered as he wrote, ‘I saw the witch, yes I did,’ the anchorite glanced towards his cot bed, ‘climbing on to me. It greatly shocked me. I was so terrified I could not speak. In one hand the harridan carried a wooden coffin and in the other a sharpened scythe. She put a foot upon my chest to restrain me.’ The anchorite pushed his journal aside and crept back towards the aperture. He peered through at the painting on the far pillar, the evocation of his own nightmare which haunted him day and night, awake or asleep. He had executed that. At the time he’d been proud of it, and so had the good brothers who’d called it a vivid ‘
‘Go back to hell!’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Go back I sent you there! Go back! In the name of the Lord and all that is holy I adjure you to return and stay there.’ He grasped the stoup of holy water which stood just within the doorway and feverishly threw a few drops about, but the cold pricking of his spine and the nape of his neck only deepened. She had come. The anchorite closed his eyes trying to summon up images of the Virgin and Child but he could not. All he could picture was a chamber full of flames and filth where venomous demons danced.
‘Hangman of Rochester, I promised you would see me again. Alice is here.’ The woman’s voice sounded like the hissing of a curling viper.
‘What do you want?’ the anchorite pleaded. ‘In God’s name, what do you want?’
‘Your soul!’
‘That is the Lord’s.’
‘Then your blood money.’
The anchorite glanced at the small silver-hooped casket crammed with precious coins.
‘Never!’ He turned, looked and recoiled at the face leering through the aperture, chalky white with glaring eyes.
‘Remember me?’ the voice hissed. ‘At the hanging tomorrow I will see you there, perhaps?’
The anchorite grabbed the pole he kept near his bed and turned to thrust it through the gap, but the phantasm had disappeared. The anchorite closed his eyes and fell to his knees, sobbing in prayer. .
THREE
