‘You don’t have to see him,’ Parson Osbert said.
‘He’s going to die, isn’t he? We’ll take him some wine, some bread.’ She went like a dreamwalker back up the stairs.
Parson Osbert went across to the small podium where the church missal was put. He opened this, pretending to study the gospel from the Mass of the day. He felt sick, anxious about the Preacher’s actions. Matters had proceeded far too fast. On his return, Baron Sanguis would not be pleased.
Christina came back. She’d put a dress over her linen shift, tied her hair back and covered it with a veil, wooden sandals on her feet. She took a small jug of wine from the buttery, some manchet loaves and, without saying a word, walked out of the house. Parson Osbert and Matthias hurried after her. The scene in the cemetery was like that of an armed camp. Women and children sat on the grass or on fallen headstones sharing out the food they had brought. Their menfolk strutted up and down, boldly showing off their rusty swords, daggers and spears and bent shields. A group of young men, under the direction of the Preacher, stood on guard outside the stone death house. As they approached, the Preacher held his hand up but Parson Osbert had regained his courage.
‘This is my church! This is my cemetery!’ he declared. ‘I must protest at the proceedings: the prisoner needs some spiritual comfort.’
The Preacher shrugged and stepped back. One of the young men pulled back the bolts. Parson Osbert stooped and went in. He wasn’t long and came out shaking his head. Christina took the bread and wine in. Matthias looked around the cemetery. He saw a wild rose bush and, using his small dagger, cut a shoot off. The rose was full-blown, still wet from the morning dew. The door to the death house was flung open; Christina, her face soaked with tears, came out. She brushed by her husband and ran across the cemetery.
‘You’d best go in, boy,’ Parson Osbert whispered. ‘But don’t be long.’
‘Will the lad be safe?’ a villager asked.
‘If the hermit wished to hurt him,’ Osbert snapped, ‘he would have done so already.’
The death house was dark. Matthias waited until the door slammed behind him, then he ran across. The hermit, sitting in the corner, embraced him warmly.
‘You spoke for me, Matthias,’ he murmured. ‘You spoke for me!’
The boy gave him the rose. ‘I thought you’d like this. It’s not as good as the one you drew in the church.’
The hermit took the rose. He laid it on the ground and, moving like a cat, he went and knelt before the boy.
‘Do not cry for me, Matthias. Promise me you won’t cry for me. Now go!’
The boy stared at him in puzzlement.
‘Go on!’ the hermit smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Matthias. Death is never an end to anything. Please! They will listen at the door. Please go! They’ll only become suspicious.’
Matthias left. His father had also gone. Someone said he was in the church. Matthias groaned: some of the village boys were coming towards him. They would only tease and taunt him about what had happened so, like a rabbit, he scuttled amongst the gravestones, climbed the cemetery wall and ran to the other end of the village. Here the lane snaked past the hedgerows towards the great road south to Bristol.
For a while Matthias hid in a ditch, thinking about what had happened. Now and again he would look at the sky and notice the black smoke rising like a plume from the village. He felt hungry so he stole back to his house. The kitchen was untidy, the platters unwashed, there was no sign of his parents.
Matthias ate some salted bacon and bread from the buttery then went into the cemetery. The place was now empty, the door to the death house flung open. Matthias walked into the village. He caught the smell of wood smoke and something else, like fat boiling over the fire. He turned the corner and stared in horror down the high street. Fulcher had done his job well. The old bear-baiting post had been taken out and put on a small makeshift platform. The hermit had been lashed to this, dry brushwood piled high around: the flames had already caught hold. As Matthias pushed his way through the crowd, he could just make out the hermit’s face behind the wall of flame. Yet something was wrong. The fire roared but the prisoner bound to the stake did not squirm or cry out. The villagers, too, were silent.
‘Is he dead?’ someone asked.
‘Has he fainted?’
Matthias sniffed, wrinkling his nose. He could not understand it: the fire must have caught the hermit’s body.
‘Has he swooned?’ someone shouted.
As if in answer, the hermit started to sing, his voice loud and clear through the flames. A chill swept through the assembled villagers. Men who had served in the King’s wars and seen others die in different horrible ways, stared aghast. The flames roared higher, hiding the hermit’s face. Still the song was sung, the words clear and full on the air: at first in French, ‘La Rose du Paradis’, the second verse in English. The voice was strong and vibrant like a man sitting on a summer afternoon carolling his heart out. Some of the villagers ran away. Others crossed themselves. A few fell on their knees. The singing died away. The stench of burning flesh became unbearable. Matthias, whose shoulder had been gripped by Joscelyn the taverner, broke free and fled up an alleyway.
Matthias ran blindly, not stopping till he found himself in the woods. He crouched at the foot of a tree, then made his way along the trackway to Tenebral. He went into the church. The sanctuary was full of sad reminders of his friend: a piece of leather, scraps of bone and meat from his cooking. Any meagre possessions had already been stolen by the villagers. Matthias gazed in awe at the beautiful rose painted on the walclass="underline" the runes, the strange marks beneath, had grown in number, as if the hermit had spent his last night etching out these signs. Matthias walked slowly out on to the porchway. The breeze caught his face. He heard the whisper: ‘Oh Creatura, bona atque parva!’
He stared around, no one was there.
Matthias left the church, vowing he would never return, and hastened along the trackway. He turned the corner and almost ran into the Preacher who, with his scrip on his back and a stout ash pole in one hand, was striding along.
‘Murderer!’ the boy screamed.
The Preacher hawked and spat, narrowly missing Matthias’ face.
‘Your friend is dead. I am off to Tewkesbury where the good brothers will give me sustenance!’
Matthias made an obscene gesture at the Preacher’s receding back. The boy didn’t know what it meant but he had seen the men at the Hungry Man make it when tax collectors or royal purveyors were about. Matthias hoped the Preacher would turn but the man strode round the bend of the trackway.
By the time Matthias returned to the village, the fire was out. The platform against the bear-baiting post had crumbled under the searing heat. Simon the reeve was piling the ash into one great mound.
‘We’ll throw it into one of the cesspits,’ he declared, not lifting his face.
Matthias went across to the grassy verge. He picked some of the wild flowers growing there and tossed them on the top of the burning ash. The flowers began to scorch. Matthias thought of throwing on some more: he glimpsed a bone, yellow and blackened amongst the cinders, so he walked away.
The Hungry Man was full of customers, the villagers carousing, celebrating as if they had won a great victory, drinking deeply of the taverner’s newly brewed ale, eager to forget the memories of the day. Matthias spied his father amongst them, his face flushed, eyes glittering. Parson Osbert beckoned his son over. Matthias glared back, then hurried on.
The following evening Thurston the tinker and his pretty wife, Mariotta, left the town of Tewkesbury. Their small barrow was full of scraps, pieces of armour and other items they had collected after the battle. Mariotta pulled the cart, the ropes biting into her shoulders, whilst her husband, full of ale, staggered beside her. Mariotta didn’t mind. The day had been a prosperous one. They could take the armour to a forge, have it beaten flat and make a good profit. Mariotta was pleased to be out of the town. The corpses of those killed in the battle were now laid out on the steps of the churches, naked as white worms. Around the town, corpses hung from the signs of inns or on the gallows near the market cross, whilst severed heads adorned the pikes above the gates.