Stephen caught his breath. He glanced towards St Michael’s. The cemetery was no longer just a stretch of moving grass. Tall trees now grew there bristling with thorns, their leaves like blades of red-hot iron. Near the lychgate a cauldron, seething with oil, pitch and resin, belched flames of black, smoky plumes. A huge snake, coiled round the cauldron, reared its ugly head and breathed out fiery sparks which assumed a life of their own. Somewhere in the darkness a filthy, grunting herd of swine rooted and snouted for food, their stench hanging like a heavy veil. The drizzle seemed to be raining down fresh horrors.
‘Stephen, Stephen!’ Anselm was shaking him. The novice broke from his nightmare, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in his own head. ‘Stephen,’ Anselm whispered, ‘I can feel the same. This night is as restless as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed. Something is about to happen. Pray God we keep safe!’ They walked on. Cutwolf drew sword and dagger as they left the thoroughfares of Dowgate. They entered the little, crooked, dog-legged alleys of White Friars, which ran under houses so dingy they’d turned black, and were so ancient and corrupt they had to be supported by wooden crutches. Now and again little knots of figures would break from wallowing in the dirt and dart like bats into the doorways or alley-mouths. Here human wolves alongside crime, filth and disease lurked in the shadows or behind dark doors leading down to even darker vaults and cellars. Underfoot the path was nothing more than slimy mud and stinking water. The dungeon-like doors and prison-like windows remained shut. Nevertheless, voices called and trailed. An occasional light flared and dimmed. Cutwolf was recognized, the two Carmelites noted as they made their way through the squalid, hellish maze of the needle-thin paths, their ill-dug sewers crammed with disgusting refuse.
Stephen had to cover his mouth against the constant, pressing, infected smell. He felt frightened. A hideous presence hovered close, hurrying breathless to his right then to the left, only to slip behind him like some threatening assassin. The sweat started on his body. Stephen fought the mounting panic until suddenly, without being bidden, Cutwolf broke into song, his harsh voice intoning St Patrick’s Breastplate, a powerful invocation for God’s help.
‘
Anselm joined in. Stephen grew calm, and also took up the refrain:
‘
The darkness thinned. The terrors receded as they swung into a narrow street and stopped before the ill-lit St-Olaf-all-alone, the creaking sign with its rough depiction of the northern saint almost hidden by dirt and grime. They pushed open the door into the drinking chamber, a gloomy place lit by the occasional taper glow. The taverner, standing by the board, recognized Cutwolf and snapped at the two oafs guarding the makeshift staircase built into the corner to stand aside. These gallowbirds, who rejoiced in the names of ‘Vole’ and ‘Fang’, stepped back into the darkness. Cutwolf led the Carmelites up into the stygian, stinking blackness along a narrow gallery lit by a lantern horn perched on a stool, and into a shabby chamber. Bolingbrok crouched by a pile of sacking which served as a bed. On this sprawled a narrow-faced man; in the mean light of the tallow candle his pallid, unshaven skin shimmered with sweat and blood bubbled between chapped lips as he clutched his belly wound, a soggy, gruesome mess.
‘This is Basilisk,’ Bolingbrok murmured. ‘Thief, assassin, God knows what else. Stabbed over a cogged dice and now bound for judgement.’ He leaned down. ‘Aren’t you, my bully boy?’
Basilisk could only gasp. ‘
‘Yes, yes,’ Bolingbrok replied. ‘I keep my eyes and ears open for the likes of Basilisk. He needs a priest. He couldn’t care now about this or that. He has told me one thing, even though he recognized me as a cast-off priest, a defrocked one. We have chattered, Basilisk and I, and he has confessed.’
‘To what?’
‘To being a retainer of the Midnight Man’s coven.’
‘As God be my witness,’ Basilisk still had his senses, ‘I was recruited over a year ago.’
‘And how do you meet?’ Anselm pushed his way forward to kneel by the bed. Bolingbrok gently withdrew, allowing the exorcist to lean over the dying man. ‘The day after every full moon,’ Basilisk gasped, ‘the summons is posted in terms only we understand. On the great post near the Si Quis door at Saint Paul’s. The date, the time and the place.’
‘But anyone curious could note these?’
‘No, no,’ Basilisk whispered, ‘the place is numbered — fourteen, for example. We then look for a second bill, written out simply, the number reversed so it is forty-one, which stands for Saint Michael’s. The places are well known to us, usually along the mud flats or beyond the city walls.’
‘And the Midnight Man?’
‘He appears hooded and masked, well-guarded.’
‘And the ceremonies?’
‘No.’ Basilisk glanced at Anselm beseechingly. ‘I was only a guard, a retainer — not a member of their coven. I was not present at their filthy rites at Rishanger’s house or elsewhere.’
‘So what did you do exactly?’
‘He was an assassin,’ Bolingbrok hissed. ‘He was summoned whenever there was killing to be done.’
‘Who?’ Anselm placed a hand gently on the dying man’s chest. ‘Who?’ he repeated. ‘You are to go before God’s dread judgement, Basilisk. Hell awaits you, that blind world, mute of all light, dark, deep and cloud-filled. Hell is a horrible valley where the devils rain down the souls of murderers to melt like lard in a frying pan and seep through the iron-grilled floor as molten wax does through a straining cloth. Do you wish to escape such a place? Then repent, confess, be absolved!’
‘I and others,’ Basilisk whispered, ‘imposed order on the coven.’
‘You mean those who strayed or disobeyed?’
‘In
‘You are schooled? You are a clerk?’
‘As God be my witness, a clerk, schooled in the hornbook. A scholar of Oxford. I served in the King’s array and returned steeped in blood.’
‘You were given the names of those the Midnight Man marked down?’
‘Yes, it always meant sentence of death. A grocer in Poultry, a tanner in Walbrook. We were given both the name and the house — we never failed. Most of the deaths were judged as an accident: a fall from a chamber, crushed by a cart or a boating mishap near London Bridge.’
‘And Rishanger?’
‘We were ordered to follow him and, if he tried to flee, kill him. We attacked him at Queenhithe but he fought like a man possessed.’
Basilisk paused, breathing out noisily, gargling on the blood filling the back of his throat. He abruptly braced himself against a shaft of pain.
‘I gave him an opiate mixed in heavy wine,’ Bolingbrok whispered. ‘He cannot last much longer.’ Basilisk began to ramble, chattering in Norman French, the words ‘Mother’ and ‘Edith’ being repeated time and again. Stephen, who had stood with his back against the shabby door, wiped the sweat from his face. The chamber was growing unbearably hot; the only window was a mere arrow slit. Stephen’s gaze was drawn to it. He tensed at the bony, taloned fingers which grasped the rim of the narrow opening as if some repulsive creature clung to the rotting masonry outside, desperate to pull it out and force an entry. ‘The hour of greatest darkness!’ a voice murmured. ‘See the fluttering banners of Hell’s Host. The Lords of the Night gather. The Knights of the Pit prepare for
‘Rishanger?’ The exorcist recovered from his coughing fit.
‘We pursued him. Killed him in the abbey but we were unable to find the treasure he had hidden.’
‘And?’
