‘What was that light?’ Matthias asked, coming forward.
‘What light?’ the hermit teased back. ‘Matthias, you’ll make a great poet or troubadour.’ He saw the puzzlement in the boy’s face. ‘A troubadour is a singer of songs,’ he explained. ‘A dreamer of dreams. A teller of tales.’
‘Are you a murderer?’ Matthias asked harshly.
‘Creatura!’
The hermit sat down at the foot of a crumbling pillar, resting his head against the ivy which wound round it. He tilted up his face and, from under heavy-lidded eyes, studied the boy.
‘They say you are,’ Matthias blurted out, coming forward. ‘They say you killed Edith and others. Now and eight years ago.’
‘Who says that?’
‘The stranger, a preacher.’ Matthias now ran towards him. He tugged at the hermit’s robe. ‘They are going to come here tomorrow morning. They are going to arrest you. They call you a witch. They’ve put guards on the path through the woods.’
‘And you came to warn me?’ The hermit stretched out his legs and patted his lap. ‘Sit here, Matthias.’
The boy did so. The hermit put his arms round him.
‘I’m not supposed to be here. My mother, she told me not to come.’
‘But you came, didn’t you, Matthias?’ The hermit was now whispering in his ear. ‘I can see the cuts on your hands and face. You came here to warn me, didn’t you?’ He stroked Matthias’ hair. ‘Oh Creatura, come.’ He got up and led Matthias into the sanctuary.
Matthias stared at the rose on the wall, brighter, more breathtakingly beautiful than ever. There were now more runes or strange marks carved beneath it. The hermit told him to sit down on a stone. He himself sat on the floor opposite and studied the boy.
‘I’m going to tell you things,’ he smiled, ‘that you may not understand now, but in years to come you will. Look around you, Matthias. All you see is a ruined church. However, as I have said before, there’s more to reality than your life or what you see, feel or touch. In the heavens,’ he looked up towards the sky, ‘I have seen souls, as many as snowflakes, yet each is a brilliant flash of lightning. I have seen spirits of the great nine circles: cherubim, seraphim, angels and archangels. They wheel and turn before the throne of God.’ He touched Matthias’ cheek. ‘I said you might be a poet. A long time ago, in Italy, there was a great poet.’ He leant forward, his eyes bright with excitement. ‘A man called Dante. He wrote a poem about earth, Hell and Heaven.’ The hermit pointed over his shoulder at the rose. ‘According to Dante, just before you enter the presence of God,’ he held his hand up, ‘He who is All Holy, you go through the Paradise of the Rose on which the Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — meditate and reflect for all eternity-’
‘Have you seen this?’ Matthias broke in. He couldn’t fully understand what the hermit was saying. Yet his words evoked memories. His father’s sermons and the paintings in the parish church showed the great angels of God going about their divine work.
The hermit was now looking at a point above Matthias’ head.
‘Like Dante,’ he replied slowly, ‘I have seen the Paradise of the Rose. Like him I have glimpsed the love of God.’ He paused. ‘They say God is love but the preachers and the priests don’t know what love is. A Greek writer who lived centuries ago, Dionysius the Areopagite, he came close to the truth. He said love was the search for harmony.’ The hermit’s eyes now filled with tears. ‘The priests have it wrong, Matthias. They prattle about love but they don’t understand the first thing about it.’ He held the boy’s gaze. ‘You can lose Heaven for love, be damned for love, and for all eternity turn your face against the Lord God because of love. It’s the one thing, Creatura, which the intellect and will makes its own decision about. You can force a man to hate you. You can break him on the wheel, hang him on the gallows or bribe him with gold and silver. Take him into the seventh heaven and show him all the mysteries but you cannot make anyone love you.’ He sighed, it was like a breeze echoing round the sanctuary. ‘And if you love, even if it’s not requited, even if it creates an eternal hunger in you, no one, not even the Lord God, can force you to give it up. So, Creatura bona atque parva, do you love me?’
‘Yes,’ Matthias said in a rush. He wanted to ask questions but sensed this was not the time or the place.
‘Then remember what the apostle Paul said.’
Matthias caught the humour in the hermit’s voice.
‘Love covers a multitude of sins.’ He rose to a half-crouch and stretched out his arms. ‘So come, Matthias, here in our secret place, one last embrace.’
This time the hermit squeezed him tightly, holding him so close the boy could feel the man’s tears wet on his cheek. The hermit released him.
‘Go now, little one. Go on!’ He clapped his hands. ‘Show me how fast you can run.’
Matthias did so. He felt a lump in his throat. He wanted to stay. When he reached the ruined lych-gate, he stopped and turned round but the hermit had gone. Matthias ran into the woods, following his secret way, creeping past the guards, now shouting and laughing as they filled their tankards and discussed, yet again, the Preacher’s strange sermon. Matthias returned to the village, slipping back into his house. He fled to his chamber and, lying on his bed, wondered what would happen to the hermit.
At Tenebral the hermit, who had taken the name of Otto Grandison, was already preparing for what would happen the following morning. He lay face down in the sanctuary, the tears streaming down his cheeks, his body trembling with sobs as he whispered into the darkness.
‘I have loved and I will not lose,’ he said. ‘I have tried one way and I have failed. I will return!’
He lay stock-still waiting for the answer but the only image which filled his soul was of the beautiful woman, hair bright as the sun, her hands stretched out to take the thornless rose.
Then another image followed: the small, dark face of the boy, proof that, at last, if he searched long enough for love, love would respond.
6
The chronicler at Tewkesbury described the villagers’ attack on the hermit at Tenebral in the most colourful language. According to the old monk, who blew on his knuckles and scratched the parchment with his quill, the night before was riven with protests. A blazing comet was seen in the sky, the stars dripped blood and a screech owl was heard in the woods around the village. Strange beasts appeared, plodding through the night: men with the heads of dogs; ghostly hunters speeding through the trees. Black Vaughan and his demon riders pounded along moonlit trackways. An angel perched on the spire of the church and, in the graveyard, ghosts were seen, their grey empty shapes moving amongst the tombstones and lichen-covered crosses. Strange knockings were made on doors. The patter of invisible feet was heard in passageways. When the sun rose, Tenebral was bathed in a fiery reddish glow of Hell.
Of course these were legends. The arrest of the hermit was a simple, even pathetic affair. Matthias, forbidden to leave the house, had spent the previous evening avoiding both his father and mother as well as the sinister, chilling presence of the Preacher. The men of the village, armed to the teeth, with arbalests, longbows, spears, hatchets, dirks and daggers, marched towards Tenebral like a phalanx across a battlefield. The hermit was waiting: standing under the ruined lych-gate, he did not struggle when they bound his hands. Some of the younger men beat him with sticks and drew blood from his nose and mouth yet he offered no objection. They tied the other end of the rope to Fulcher’s great horse and dragged him like a sack of dirt into the village.
The Preacher was in charge. Parson Osbert bleated about compassion and the rights of the prisoner but the peasants’ blood was up: they were determined to try this hermit for his life.
Christina did not come down that morning but stayed in bed. Matthias heard the uproar as the men dragged the hermit into the nave of the church. He slipped out of the house and joined the women and children of the village as they thronged the church, eagerly awaiting the trial. A jury was empanelled, twelve good men and true symbolising the apostles who followed Christ. There was, however, nothing Christlike about the Preacher. Parson Osbert could only stand flailing his hands, bemoaning the violence of his parishioners. The Preacher acted as both judge and prosecutor. The jury sat on the benches facing each other across the nave. The prisoner was bound to a pillar whilst the Preacher dominated the proceedings from the pulpit. Walter Mapp the scrivener had a small table brought from the sacristy as he would act as clerk. He pompously laid out the parchment, ink horns, quills, pumice stone and the keen little knife which would keep his pen sharp.