‘And has he done you any harm, boy?’
‘Of course not. He lets me go with him. We talk.’
‘About what?’
‘About God and Christ.’
Matthias licked his lips, his mind now racing. What did the Preacher think they did? What did they talk about? Matthias suddenly realised the hermit was his friend, closer to him than any of the village children — he felt a pang of guilt — even closer than his mother or father. They had always been distant, more involved with each other than him. Oh, they loved him but it was as if he were a second thought.
‘And what does he say?’ the Preacher insisted.
‘That the Lord God,’ Matthias recalled his own lessons, ‘that the Lord God made Heaven and earth and that He sent His Son to redeem us.’
‘Does he ever practise magic, sorcery, the black arts?’
‘Pish!’ Parson Osbert spoke up. ‘The boy would know little about that.’
‘The Devil casts his net wide,’ the Preacher retorted.
‘He is only a child.’ Christina suddenly sat upright in her chair. ‘And a very tired one at that. Matthias, it’s time for bed.’ She stared defiantly across at the Preacher. ‘He is my son. He is only a child. He is very tired.’
Matthias was only too pleased to escape. He kissed his mother and father, nodded quickly at the Preacher and almost ran from the parlour.
Matthias was awoken the next morning just after dawn by the sound of the church bell tolling, and got up in alarm. Hastily wrapping a horsehair blanket round him, he hurried downstairs. The kitchen was clean and swept, his mother, rather pale-faced, was standing over a bowl of oatmeal bubbling above a weak fire.
‘What’s wrong?’ Matthias cried.
‘Your father has decided to call the villagers to a meeting in the nave of the church, before he celebrates the Requiem for Fulcher’s daughter.’
‘What about?’
‘Hurry up and get dressed, Matthias. You and I are both going.’
Matthias obeyed. He washed, put on his Sunday robes and went down to the kitchen to break his fast. His father and the Preacher came in. Parson Osbert was now dressed in his dark brown gown, fastened round the middle by a white cord. He had washed and shaved but the Preacher appeared no different. His sallow, dirty features had a look of excitement as if he savoured what was about to happen. They ate in silence, interrupted now and again by knocks on the door, as villagers enquired what was happening. Parson Osbert quietly told them to meet in the church. He and the Preacher left. Christina doused the fire and, taking Matthias’ hand, walked across the cemetery and through a side door into the nave.
Matthias slipped away, back into the cemetery — God’s acre, as his father always termed it. He went to stand under a yew tree and watched as the villagers came into the graveyard. Many of the peasants mumbled and protested at being called away from the fields but, after yesterday’s events, they were frightened of other occurrences. The law of the village was very clear: if the church bell was rung in alarm they all had a duty to assemble. They left their scythes, hoes and mattocks in a pile in a corner of the church wall. The women went straight in but the men stamped their feet and looked up at the brightening sky, bemoaning the waste of a good day. They fell silent as Fulcher, followed by his wife and family, came up the graveyard path. The blacksmith’s family were all dressed in their Sunday best with pieces of dyed black ribbon sewn on their tunics and gowns as a mark of mourning. The other villagers let them through, murmuring their condolences, before following the blacksmith into the church. Matthias stared round the cemetery: he glimpsed the fresh mounds of earth where his father had buried the unfortunates killed the day before. The boy chewed on his thumbnail. He did not know whether to stay or flee to Tenebral. The Preacher meant his friend the hermit no good and shouldn’t he be warned? Matthias stood up. Surely he wouldn’t be missed?
‘Matthias!’
The boy turned. Christina was standing in the church porch.
‘Matthias, you are to come, your father is missing you.’ Matthias sighed and followed her into the church. Christina’s firm grip on his hand showed she would stand no nonsense and the way she kept looking down at him made him wonder. Did she know? Did she suspect what he had been planning? The nave was packed. All the families of Sutton Courteny, the old as well as the young, filled the small nave. Fulcher and his family sat at the front, grouped around the parish coffin, which stood on black-draped trestles guarded by six purple candles. The church bell began to ring again. The chattering and the gossip died. The bell ceased its tolling. Parson Osbert, dressed in the black chasuble of the Requiem Mass, came out through the rood screen followed by the Preacher. The villagers watched with interest. Any desire to go out into the fields or gossip outside the Hungry Man was now replaced by a thrill of excitement. Something was about to happen, to shatter the tedium of of their lives. Parson Osbert climbed the steps into the pulpit.
‘Brethren!’ His voice echoed round the church. ‘Today we intend to sing the Requiem Mass and perform the funeral obsequies for a child of this village, Edith, daughter of Fulcher our blacksmith.’ He paused as Fulcher’s wife put her face in her hands and sobbed noisily. ‘The events of the last few days have shattered the peace and harmony of our village. There has been a great battle outside Tewkesbury. Once again the roads are full of soldiers but there are other evils. Edith is not the only person to have died, been murdered, in such terrible and mysterious circumstances. I have news that similar deaths have occurred throughout the shire. I have agreed that the Preacher here-’ Parson Osbert gestured to where the Preacher stood at the foot of the pulpit, staring down the nave, his eyes moving slowly from one face to another — ‘this man of God has news on this. In normal circumstances I would have gone to see Baron Sanguis but our lord is still absent, and these affairs cannot wait.’
Parson Osbert made the sign of the cross and came down the steps. The Preacher now mounted the pulpit. Matthias watched expectantly. This mysterious stranger seemed taller, broader, more powerful than he’d been the night before. For a few moments the Preacher just stared round the church.
‘Satan!’ His voice thundered, making Matthias jump. ‘Satan, as the Good Book says, goes about roaring like a lion, seeking whom he may devour!’
The villagers stared up at him. The reference to the Devil or works of Hell always caught their attention.
‘The murder of this child,’ the Preacher continued, ‘is not the bloody-handed work of anyone who knew her. These deaths, as Parson Osbert has told you, have occurred elsewhere. I ask you now to search your memories. Have such deaths ever occurred before?’
With his hands clasped on the pulpit, the Preacher reminded Matthias even more of a hunting kestrel on its perch.
‘There were deaths eight years ago.’ Joscelyn the taverner spoke up. ‘Not in the village but between here and Tewkesbury.’
‘Horrible murders!’ another cried. ‘Throats gashed, corpses drained. Even then we thought it was the work of night walkers!’
The Preacher stilled the growing clamour with one wave of his hand. ‘And I ask you,’ he was now enjoying himself, ‘who was here in your village at that time?’
Again silence. Matthias tensed. He looked up at his mother. She was now white as a ghost. She sat as if carved out of stone, her eyes never leaving the Preacher. Matthias closed his eyes to pray.
‘The hermit!’
Matthias opened his eyes with a start.
‘The hermit!’ Joscelyn the taverner shouted. ‘He was here, where he is now, in the ruined church at Tenebral!’
‘But he’s a holy man.’ Simon the reeve got to his feet.
‘Holy?’ the Preacher retorted, glaring down at the reeve. ‘No one is holy but God!’
‘I mean. .’ Simon the reeve swallowed hard. He was used to holding his own at such meetings and refused to give up so easily. After all, he knew his letters and could write, was skilled in the hornbook and the ledger. He did not like this stranger entering their village and telling them what to do. Yet the Preacher’s eyes seemed to burn into him. ‘I mean,’ he stammered, ‘he did no one any harm, except beg for food.’