‘Alleluia, alleluia, O Sapientia Altissimi— Oh Wisdom of the Most High.’ The lucid voices of the novices intoned one of the Christmas ‘O Antiphons’. Athelstan stood, heart thrilling at the sheer passionate beauty of the sound.
‘Come,’ the choir chanted, ‘and teach us the way of truth!’
‘Aye,’ Athelstan whispered, tears pricking his eyes. ‘Come Everlasting Beauty whom we all desire, and will have no peace until we find you.’
Athelstan stood transfixed as the choir moved on to the second ‘O Antiphon’. The words, the exquisite loveliness of the chanting evoked so many bittersweet memories of his past — and his present! Athelstan beat his breast. St Erconwald’s! His parishioners? The choir and the ‘O Antiphons’? The bustling business of preparing the church for Christmas?
‘We need more holly,’ Athelstan murmured absent-mindedly.
‘Pardon, Brother?’
Athelstan glanced sharply to his right. The anchorite stood in the doorway to the chantry chapel.
‘He has gone.’
‘And may God give him eternal rest,’ Athelstan whispered, crossing himself. ‘Poor Fleischer.’
‘He made a good end.’
‘Nobody makes a good end.’ Athelstan walked towards this cadaverous spectre of a man, ‘At least not when you’re hanged.’
‘He died quickly.’ The anchorite plucked at the rope belt around his waist, curling one end with his strong fingers, ‘It’s best that way. If you topple your victim from the highest rung of the ladder the neck snaps, or so I think. Other hangmen strangle their victims. You could say the office for the dead before it’s truly over. Anyway, you want words with me, Friar?’
Athelstan indicated the bench against the wall beneath the painted window. The anchorite sat down next to him. Athelstan noticed how the man’s fingernails were neat and cleanly pared, though stained with dashes of ink and paint.
‘You’re a scribe?’
‘I am a painter as well as a hangman.’ The anchorite shifted and stared at Athelstan with his strange blue eyes. ‘I’m also a listener. I sit in my anker house and the brothers slip by me. They often forget I’m there. I hear their chatter and gossip. You’re Brother Athelstan, the consummate hunter, a lurcher in Dominican robes who seeks out his quarry. So, what do you want with me?’
‘First, who are you? Why are you here?’
The anchorite glanced away. ‘I was raised,’ the anchorite began slowly, ‘at the baptismal font in Sempringham as Giles, that’s my real name. My doting parents despatched me to the cathedral school at Ely. I sat with the other scholars in the north aisle with my horn book, ink pen and quills. I studied the Latin of Jerome as well as that of Cicero. I was meant to be a cleric but my sin,’ the anchorite bared his lips in a mirthless grin, ‘to quote the psalm, was always before me. I fell in love with the wall paintings, frescoes and coloured glass of that cathedral. I would wander to marvel at all that I saw. After my apprenticeship in Norwich I became a painter. I travelled the roads to this church or that chapel. God heaped even more blessings on me. I met my wife Beatrice and she became my helper. We had a child but we still continued to wander the kingdom. I earned very good silver and gold. I was in much demand, be it depicting the Biblia Pauperum— the Bible of the Poor for parishioners to learn from, or the single solitary scene, be it a sinner being carted off to hell by a demon in a wheelbarrow or the Assumption of the Virgin. We lodged in taverns and guest houses until the Apocalypse occurred. .’
‘When the waters swept over your head?’ Athelstan intervened, recalling the anchorite’s interruption of compline the previous evening.
‘Too powerful,’ the anchorite whispered. ‘Still too powerful — such memories! Let me tell you. We were crossing the Weald of Kent; it was early autumn. I left Beatrice and the child to go and buy paint, brushes and pigment. When I returned outlaws, wolfsheads, creatures from the stinking blackness, fiends from the dungeons of hell had attacked our cart, pillaged it, ravished Beatrice then murdered both her and our child.’ He paused at Athelstan’s sharp gasp.
‘Wickedness,’ the friar murmured, clutching at the anchorite’s arm. ‘God have mercy on them, and on you. I shall remember them at Mass.’
‘At the time,’ the anchorite continued, evenly lost in his own nightmare past, ‘I was too full of hatred and vengeance to mourn. I’d done good service for the sheriff of Kent in his castle chapel. I took my family’s corpses to him for burial. I also invoked the blood feud and he agreed to help. He raised the hue and cry and issued writs summoning up both the posse comitatus and the shire levies. The outlaws, five in number, were trapped in a wood outside Rochester. They were caught red-handed and immediately sentenced to hang from the Keep of Rochester Castle. You know it?’
Athelstan nodded.
‘I was their hangman. I took each of those wicked souls put the noose around their necks and tossed them over. I watched each do the dance of death. My reputation spread. Rochester hired me as its hangman.’ He laughed a short, bitter bark. ‘I painted their churches and hanged their wolfsheads until I met Alice Rednal.’
‘Alice Rednal — I am sure my Lord Coroner. .?’
‘I know Sir John Cranston, Brother; he hired me as Rednal’s executioner at Smithfield. I was given a chamber in St Bartholomew’s Priory which lies nearby. I didn’t just hang her but others. On execution days I would journey from Newgate to Smithfield in the execution cart with those condemned to die sitting at my feet. I also continued to do some paintings; you can see them in St Sepulchre’s which stands close to Cock Lane.’
‘Alice Rednal?’ Athelstan persisted.
‘Sorry, Brother,’ the anchorite paused, ‘you know I should go back to my cell. I want to. I always like to be alone after a hanging. However,’ he sighed, ‘Alice Rednal! She was the wickedest fiend from the darkest ward of hell. She murdered children, drowned them in the Thames. Sir John caught her and arraigned her before the Justices of Oyer and Terminer where she was condemned to hang. I collected her in the execution cart. No sooner were we out of the prison than she started to mock me. She whispered how, hanging or not, she’d taken quite a liking to me, as those others who’d murdered my wife had taken such a liking to her. I then realized, somehow, she’d been a member of their coven. She named their leader, a malignant called Wolfsbane. I challenged her, claiming she was lying, but it was obvious — she knew so much about them.’
‘What was she like physically?’
‘Oh, tall with wild, greyish hair. Harsh-faced with a full figure.’ The anchorite blinked furiously. ‘She also told me something else.’ He pointed at Athelstan. ‘Is this why I am being brought to the bar for questioning?’
‘What do you mean?’ Athelstan asked.
‘According to Rednal, after I left Beatrice, she and our child were resting under a shade of trees. Beatrice realized she was being watched by Wolfsbane and his coven and as she prepared to flee, a group of mounted archers journeying to Rochester galloped by. Beatrice tried to persuade them to help but they were in too much of a hurry. They mocked her fears and left her to herself.’
‘These mounted archers?’ Athelstan felt a coldness creeping through him as if from the hard stone around him.
‘Rednal claimed they were the Wyvern Company on garrison duty at Rochester.’
‘The same who now lodge here?’
‘I presume so, Friar.’
‘So why did Rednal tell you that?’