toast to the company and returned to his tale.
The Physician’s Tale
Part Two
‘Saint Michael, defend us on the day of battle. Do thou leader of the heavenly host, thrust down to hell Satan and all his horde who wander the world for the ruin of souls.’
Stephen, kneeling beside Anselm, answered, ‘Amen.’ He rose and followed the exorcist from the chapel across the nave, under the great, elaborately carved rood screen and up the main sanctuary steps into the sacristy. He helped his master divest and returned to ensure all was cleared from the chantry chapel of St Joseph. Afterwards he followed his master, clothed in the brown and white of the Carmelites, as he strolled around St Michael’s, Candlewick. They had both slept well in the comfortable chambers provided by Sir William. They’d risen before dawn, washed and dressed, packed their panniers and moved across to the church, where a sleepy-eyed Stephen had helped Anselm prepare for the dawn Mass. As usual, Stephen had acted as Anselm’s altar server; now he was famished, eager to break his fast. Anselm, however, was keen to catch what he called ‘the essence of this place’, so Stephen leisurely followed him around the ancient church. In the grey light of the April dawn St Michael’s did not look so forbidding: it appeared clean, swept and tidy, with benches and stools neatly arranged. The sanctuary was laid out in strict accordance with canon law: pulpit, lectern, ambo and offertory table. The pyx hung on a thick brass chain, a fluttering red sanctuary lamp dangling beside it. The windows were filled with horn or oiled pig’s bladders; a few were glazed and some of these brilliantly decorated with the heads of angels or saints, the face of Christ with a nimbus of gold and, of course, depictions of St Michael the Archangel in various guises: as a nobleman, judge, even a knight in armour. In the corner of the chantry chapel dedicated to St Michael stood a life- size statue of the Archangel, cleverly carved and brilliantly painted with the royal colours of blue, scarlet and gold. Anselm stopped before this and pointed to where the painted stone had crumbled; the hilt of the Archangel’s sword was cracked, while the heraldic devices on St Michael’s great oval shield were clearly battered.
‘Sir William told us the statue had been tipped over.’ He gestured at the candle stand of heavy iron. ‘That, too. What force, Stephen, could move them?’ He glanced around. ‘Ah, well, it’s so different now, I mean, from when we were here last night — look!’ He pointed at the light pouring through the windows, now turning gold in the glow of the rising sun. Stephen agreed. St Michael’s now seemed no different from any London parish church — St Mary Le Bow, St Nicholas or St Martin. Anselm walked round. He lit a taper in the Lady chapel, inspected the different inscriptions and went into the Galilee porch. He paused to examine the bell which hung just inside the door. Any man, fleeing from the law, who sought shelter would enter here, ring the bell then hasten up into the sanctuary and grasp the horn or side of the altar, as Joab had done in the Old Testament when fleeing from the killers dispatched by King David. Anselm studied both door and bell closely then walked across to the empty sanctuary recess where he crouched, tapping the palliasse; a fleeing man would use this during his forty-day stay in the church.
‘Magister?’
‘During the exorcism last night, Stephen, a male voice, different from the rest, spoke about being dragged from here. I wonder who it was?’
‘Magister, last night during the exorcism you seemed distracted. What truly happened?’
Anselm rose to his feet and peered down the church. ‘Something quite common, Stephen.’ Anselm rubbed his forehead. ‘During an exorcism I do suffer tricks of the mind,’ he confessed. ‘I do not know whether they are just phantasms born from what is happening or the ploy of an evil spirit. But, rest assured,’ he added grimly, ‘they’re certainly here. Indeed, I think of Ecclesiasticus, chapter twenty-nine, verse thirty-three: “There are spirits who thirst for vengeance and in all their fiery fury inflict grievous torment”. Do they, I ask myself, conjure up visions of sin from the past to dull my soul, chill my heart, darken my mind and so frustrate my soul? Grinning, mouldering skulls, snatches of violence, the smoke and stains of past offences?’ Anselm stared down at Stephen. ‘Augustine claims our sins run like foxes through our souls while God, for his own secret purposes, sends in his hounds to hunt them down. In times of distress these foxes manifest themselves.’
‘Even if you have confessed and been shriven?’
‘Sometimes the foxes are only driven off — they slink away and lurk waiting in the undergrowth.’ He patted Stephen on the shoulder. ‘All I can do is ask God, if I’m in His grace, to keep me there and, if I’m not, to put me there. My sins may be absolved, Stephen, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t lost my appetite for them.’ He gestured around. ‘There’s certainly a banquet going on here, an unseen, diabolic feast. Evil spirits summoned up by the Midnight Man have, and are, feasting like hungry hounds on the rank despair which seeps through this church. Anyway, go round, look for anything untoward.’
Anselm walked across the sanctuary. Stephen went down the steps into the sombre nave. He entered the chantry chapel of St Joseph and admired the cleverly carved statue of Christ’s protector as well as the paintings depicting scenes from the carpenter’s life. He turned left and stopped before the tombs of former parsons, read their inscriptions, then walked on. The light was dim except where the painted glass caught the flash of the sun. Nonetheless Stephen now felt a prickling fear: he was not alone. He glanced up and caught the twisted smile of some gargoyle carved at the top of a pillar or the corner of a sill. He recalled the legend of how such babewyns could spring to life and crawl down the pillar to taunt and trip the unwary. Stephen stopped before a wall painting describing the death of Holofernes in the Book of Judith. The artist had created a vivid scene in the fallen tyrant’s pavilion. Judith the heroine clutched a great two-handed sword. The tyrant’s corpse lay sprawled amongst his precious cloths and treasures; his severed head had rolled away and stared out from the corner of the painting. Not a dead gaze, the eyes held a ghastly glare, as if the head still lived and was aware of its ignominious situation. The more Stephen stared at the painting the more those eyes seemed to pulsate with a vindictive life. He walked on to another fresco, undoubtedly the work of the same itinerant painter. Here the artist proclaimed his own vision of hell: a great city high and wide under a sky of fiery bronze, cut through by a turbid, blood-black stream boarded by trees with thorns as sharp as daggers. Flames leapt up to greet black snowflakes and pelting grey rain. Fruit, bloated and rotten with noxious potions, gave sustenance to savage dogs. Lungeing vipers and all kinds of loathsome insects crawled. Demons swarmed like bees, thick and plentiful from the hives of hell. Dragons swam the fiery heavens while beneath the soil of hell other monsters reared their ugly heads, fighting to break through. Stephen glimpsed the tags written beneath the painting. ‘“Within its darkness dwell”,’ the novice translated, ‘“regions of misery and gloom”.’ He heard his master cough and turned. Immediately a fierce chill seized him. Anselm was staring up at an iron bracket fixed to a wall in the far aisle on which lantern horns could be hung. The exorcist was not alone. Figures clustered around him: a blond-haired man dressed in a shabby jerkin, followed closely by young women with long dirty hair, ragged clothes, pitted skin and horrid faces. Stephen shut his eyes and cried out: ‘Magister!’ When he looked again, Anselm was standing by him.
‘What is it? Stephen?’
‘Magister, nothing.’
‘Nonsense!’ Anselm pushed his face close. ‘You saw something, didn’t you?’
Stephen nodded and described what he’d glimpsed.
‘I felt it,’ Anselm murmured, staring at a shaft of window light. ‘Even now, Stephen, at day time, they make their presence felt, but come. .’
They left by the corpse door going out into the cemetery. At first Stephen considered it to be a different place from the night before. The weak sun’s glowing warmth soothed his fears. The tumbled headstones and crosses didn’t seem so threatening. The ancient yew trees were just solid reminders of how things were rather than threatening shapes through the darkness. The wild grass and flowers exuded a sense of the ordinary. The air was sweet with different scents. Beyond the cemetery wall surged the noise of the ward coming to life: the clatter of carts, the clop of horse hooves and the first cries of tradesmen. Anselm insisted on walking the length and breadth of that unkempt cemetery. They went round the church, Anselm peering up at cornices, sills, ledges and buttresses. He seemed fascinated by the sun sparkling the glass and pointed out the carved faces of gargoyles with their gaping mouths, through which the rain water would pour. Anselm patted the grey stone wall of the square tower built to the right of the main door. He stepped back, shading his eyes as he stared up at the sheer height of this soaring donjon. He then walked on, stopping to rattle the latch of the narrow door to the sacristy, though that had been
