Bloodstone (2 page)

Such memories would never go away, whilst lodging in this abbey did not help the soul. Sub-Prior Richer said the Wyvern Company and all who supported them would go to eternal damnation. They’d be herded into a rough, murky prison full of stench, filth, dark shadows and verminous demons. They’d be punished along with all the other tribes of sinners through an eternity of torture. They’d be imprisoned in dungeons of fire, eating the harsh crust of hell and drinking the cup of everlasting bitterness. Hanep took a deep breath. But what did that frosty-faced, self-styled man of God know? Hanep rose to his feet and filled a pewter goblet from the flagon. He moved over to one of the braziers, plucked out the narrow white-hot poker and pushed its tip into the wine until, in the light of the lantern horn, he saw it bubble. Hanep put the poker back and, grasping the goblet in his two hands, drank greedily. Once satisfied, he thrust his feet into the rough thick-soled sandals, walked across, pulled back the shutters and stared out through the lancet window at the gathering gloom. Memories were like a ravenous host just waiting to gain entry. Hanep, a veteran of many bloody combats, was used to them. He would wake suddenly in this grey-stoned, hollow-sounding abbey and the days of blood flooded back though, after a while, they would turn sweet as other memories surfaced: the days of glory when he and his companions had swaggered along the roads of France taking what they wanted, be it a flagon of wine or some plump French wench to be enjoyed despite her squeals and warbling. Oh yes, sun-drenched days, or so it seemed, when flowers covered the world, the sky was always blue and the trees remained a cluster of thick green. They were heroes then, Hanep reflected bitterly. They had shattered the power of France, the gorgeous, thundering cavalcade of the Valois. Now it was different. The King at Westminster was a child. The armies of England had retreated, forced back into the enclave of Calais. The realm was fearful of the black-prowed French galleys who threatened the passage to Dover and roamed the Narrow Seas, their crews making sudden landings along the south coast to pillage and burn. So much had changed! Here he was, he and the rest, given a corrody at this lonely, haunted abbey, living out their lives as Mahant had said, ‘like stabled cattle, waiting for the slaughter’.

The fate of old William Chalk certainly proved that: his death had been long, lingering and painful. If it had happened in France, Chalk, the defrocked priest beyond all hope of physic, would have received a mercy cut from a razor-edged misericord dagger to put him beyond all pain. Instead they had to visit him in the infirmary day after day, week after week, month in month out. They had to listen to his lamentations about the past, the sins they’d committed and the reparation they should all make. Now, thank God, old William Chalk was gone, buried in the Strangers’ Plot in the great sprawling abbey cemetery. Perhaps he should visit William’s grave, go out and brave the cold and say a prayer, if that merited anything. He could not stay here. Hanep had to, as he often did, walk this abbey in the early hours when the monks were snoring in their dormitories before the first bell of the day roused them to sing matins. He’d be warm enough in his thick serge leggings and stockings. He moved to the door and smiled. He’d forgotten the oath, the great pledge following the mysterious attack on Wenlock. He must remember that’s why his war belt now hung ready on a peg. He took this down carefully moving both sword and dagger in their intricately brocaded scabbards. Hanep circled his waist, pulling the belt tight and securing the buckle. He felt more comfortable, younger and stronger. Mahant was correct. The warrior path of cold steel and the sheer joy of battle, conflict and resolution, was everything.

Hanep picked up the shuttered lantern, opened the door and stepped out. The night was freezing cold in its blackness. Already a frost dusted the sills and carved faces of both saints and gargoyles. A deathly silence hung like some invisible pall pressing down, smothering all sound. Hanep walked along the narrow path which took him into the main cloister: a maze of stone, soaring pillars, sills and doorways fretted in the dog-tooth fashion. Cresset torches flared, their flames leaping in the stiff, freezing breeze. Holy men and demons glared ghostly down at him. The paving stones he walked were scrubbed and dusted with dry herbs which crackled beneath his sandals. Shadows darted. A spirit-thronged place, Hanep reflected. One hand on the hilt of his sword, Hanep went round the cloister garth, out under an archway following the path which skirted the great abbey church. Hanep paused before its yawning, cavernous porch. He stared up at the tympanum above the door, garishly lit by flaring torches. The darting flames brought to life the cluster of carvings depicting the damned and the saved, angels and hellish creatures all transfixed by the dominating figure of Christ in judgement. Hanep felt his conscience prick. How many years had passed since he had been shriven? Sat in the pew taking absolution from a priest? Chalk had urged him to reflect on that yet it was impossible to remember. Hanep again stared up at the Last of Days sculptured so graphically. He remembered the only words of scripture he’d ever learnt so many, many years ago in the dusty aisle of St Mary’s Church at Leighton in Essex. He’d always, like some talisman, quoted the verses before battle: ‘The Lord is my help,’ Hanep whispered
, ‘
whom should I fear? The Lord is the fortress of my life, before whom should I cower?’ But now in this midnight darkness did he, did the others, believe in all that? Were not their souls weighed down by thick, rich, oozing layers of sin? The women he had taken, the deaths he had inflicted, the plunder seized, the drinking and cramming of his belly with the food and wine of others? The Wyvern Company had acquired a fearsome reputation as a deadly, hostile horde from the havens of hell. They had waged war with fire and sword, having no respect for anything under the sun.

Hanep ground his teeth. That was the problem. They were old lions like those in the royal menagerie at the Tower, caged and kept close. Of course there were distractions like Abbot Walter’s comely niece who resided with her guardian in the abbot’s luxurious guest house. Both women were a source of good gossip, as was the anchorite bricked up in his anker house in the abbey church. Rumour had it that he was a painter who became the Hangman of Rochester. According to whispers amongst the black garbed brothers of St Benedict, the anchorite had fled his grisly job after being plagued by the ghosts of some of his victims. Mind you, Hanep chewed the corner of his lip, it didn’t stop the anchorite still acting as the abbot’s hangman. Was the man really haunted? Was it true that the anchorite’s dead wife had once begged for help from himself and others in the Wyvern Company, only to be refused? Some story about outlaws in the Weald of Kent, who were later captured and hanged from the battlements of Rochester keep? The anchorite had laid such an accusation against them. Wenlock said he vaguely remembered it, Hanep certainly didn’t. Was the man madcap, his wits all fey? Indeed, Hanep felt a secret sympathy for that recluse; after all, didn’t the dead visit him as well, greyish-white shapes with blood-filled eyes and gaping maws to plague Hanep’s sleep? What could he do about them? Was it really too late to change? Wenlock said it was. They had discussed going on pilgrimage to Outremer and visiting the cave which served as a burial vault for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not to mention Adam and Eve. They had planned to see the cavern where the form of Aaron’s bed could be traced, the pillar of salt which had once been Lot’s wife, the house where Elijah had been born and the site of the thorn tree that had later been cut down to form the true cross. Hanep shivered. In truth they’d been more eager to feel the hot sun on their backs and sample the food, wine and other pleasures of Outremer. They certainly had to leave St Fulcher’s, at least for a while. Hanep felt uncomfortable, particularly with that sub-prior, the young Frenchman, Richer. Did Richer know the truth about how the Wyvern Company had plundered St Calliste outside Poitiers and stolen its brilliant bloodstone, the Passio Christi? Hanep and his comrades had claimed it as their own. The Crown had decided differently, ordering the bloodstone to be held in trust by one of its principal bankers and goldsmiths, Sir Robert Kilverby, on the understanding that he would pay monies into the royal exchequer as a pension for Hanep and his companions. Was the Passio Christi the reason why Richer hated them so much? Was he really here to seize it back? But that would be futile, surely? The bloodstone was securely held by Kilverby, who brought it to the abbey every Easter as well as on the feast of St Damasus. In fact, Kilverby, or his emissary, was due to arrive here tomorrow. He should bring the bloodstone for the Wyvern Company to view, as it had been agreed by solemn indenture, but Kilverby, although he still visited the abbey, now kept his distance from them. Wenlock claimed that was due to Richer’s influence. And yet, Hanep stamped his feet, Richer had proved very compassionate to old Chalk on his death bed. Had that old rogue confessed all his sins? Did Richer know the full truth? Mahant was certainly worried about that. Hanep stared up at the sky. Snow clouds were gathering. He heard a sound and whirled round.

‘Who’s there?’ Hanep peered anxiously through the murk, fingers stroking the steel coiled hilt of his long, stabbing dagger. He must move on. The sacristan would soon appear with his retinue of acolytes, candles burning, lanterns swaying, keys jangling. Hanep hurried on. He reached the cemetery lychgate, lifted the latch and slipped through the musty entrance into sprawling God’s Acre with its jumbled mounds, tumbled crosses and decaying tombstones. Here the silence was broken by the scurriers of the night. The hush-winged owl, rats scraping from beneath the stone-canopied tombs, as well as foxes foraging for any scraps amongst the thin layers of dirt which covered the dead. Hanep gazed around. Was this the thronging place of the ghostly dead, the stalking ground of the
Custos Mortuorum
, the Guardian of the Dead, the soul of the last person buried here? Hanep smiled grimly; that would be his boon companion, William Chalk. William, however, had been buried deep. He and Hanep had shared many a girl and a wassail-cup, and sung all the glee songs they knew, but that was in the past. Hanep put the lantern down and followed the pebbled path snaking around the crumbling monuments of the dead. He staggered and slipped over the occasional briar and trailing bramble. The breeze seemed to be stronger here, colder with a knife-edge cut. He pulled at his hood and tucked up the muffler of his cloak. He strained both eyes and ears. He had not forgotten that earlier sound, an alien one in the deserted silence of this place. Hanep, both sword and dagger now drawn, walked on. He passed the soaring cemetery cross with its stone figure of Christ in agony and continued on to Chalk’s grave, a freshly dug mound now glistening with hoar frost. The cross had slipped sideways. Hanep knelt, swiftly blessed himself, put down his weapons and made to straighten the cross. He heard a sound and whirled round, one hand going for the hilt of his sword – too late, too stupid! The hooded figure, black against the poor light, was already swinging back his great sword, a flash of shimmering light as it sliced deep into the side of Hanep’s neck  . . .

ONE

‘Mummer: an actor wearing a mask!’

‘
F
or my sins, truly I know them,’ Athelstan breathed as he plunged the rough rag back in to the bucket and splashed the herb-drenched water on to the last grey flagstone which lay before the door to his priest house.

‘My sin is always before me,’ Athelstan continued, ‘against you and you alone have I sinned  . . .’ Once he’d finished washing the flagstone, Athelstan, Dominican friar and parish priest of St Erconwald’s in Southwark, proudly gazed round on what he’d achieved on this the Feast of St Damasus twenty days before the great celebration of the Nativity. He’d cleaned the house thoroughly. He had scrubbed and polished every nook and cranny. The small bed loft was all clean and sweet-smelling, its linen sheets, bolsters and blankets had been changed, and not a pewter dish or copper pot had been missed by him. After that Athelstan had turned his attention to what he mockingly called his solar, the great flagstone kitchen with its whitewashed walls and rough-stone hearth. Everything had been cleaned, from the tongs and pokers in the hearth to the large oaken table which served as both his supper bench and chancery desk.

‘What do you think, Bonaventure?’ Still kneeling Athelstan joined his hands in mock prayer and gazed fondly at the great, one-eyed tom cat sprawling before the crackling hearth like the Grand Cham of Tartary on his gold-encrusted divan. The cat, the prowling scourge of the needle-thin alleyways round St Erconwald’s, deigned to lift his head; he gazed sleepily at his strange master then flopped back as if the effort had proved all too much for him.

‘I know what you are waiting for, my friend.’ Athelstan scrambled to his feet. He emptied the pail of water, wrung out the cloth and walked back into the kitchen. He crouched before the hearth next to Bonaventure and stared hungrily at the blackened copper pot hanging by its chain above the darting flames. He closed his eyes and smelt the warm savouriness of the bubbling oatmeal, hot and sweet with the precious honey Athelstan had stirred in.

‘We’ll eat well, Bonaventure.’ Athelstan stroked the cat’s silky fur. ‘But not yet – God waits.’

Athelstan stripped, shaved, washed then dressed quickly in woollen leggings, drawers and the hair shirt he always wore beneath the black and white robes of a Dominican friar. He buckled the straps of his stout sandals. Going over to a corner he took out the polished dish, a gift from a parishioner, which also served as his mirror. Athelstan stared hard at the face which gazed back at him: the close-cropped black hair, the rather long, serious face with its furrowed cheeks, the wrinkles round both mouth and eyes. Did the face portray the soul, he wondered, or was it just the eyes? In which case Athelstan reflected ruefully, God help him, his eyes were dark and deep set. He practised that hard stare he often used on some of his parishioners.