The assembled mourners moved like sinister ghouls through the gloom. They huddled in the dark either side of the candlelight watching the sin-eater, a gnarled old man with long dirty hair, moustache and beard. He wore a crown of ivy, his face was painted black, his eyelids and lips a deep scarlet hue. He muttered some chant as he moved along the corpse, picking up with painted lips the offerings of sin symbolized by pieces of bread and dried meat. Now and again he would stop and chew noisily, throwing his head back like a dog, clap his hands softly, gesture towards the ceiling and move on to the next piece. Stephen expected Anselm to intervene but the exorcist just stood and watched. The old man’s chanting grew louder. Greedily and noisily he devoured the sin offerings. Stephen did not like the ceremony; other beings were busy thronging in. Stephen could see, and he was sure Anselm also did, their swarthy, worn faces. These flocked close to his own, cheek by jowl, with pointed beards, glittering, dagger-like eyes, their chattering tongues crudely imitating the sin-eater’s words. Stephen stared at the corpse; the more he did the stronger the visions grew: a road was opening up, long and dark, lit by a full moon and lined by shiny green cypresses, the moon-washed path glittered as the light sparkled on its polished pebbles. An owl, wings extended, passed like a ghost over the bedraggled figure staggering down the path. Stephen recognized the mud-splattered Bardolph. The dead gravedigger had lost his swagger and used the spade he carried as a crutch. As this hideous figure staggered closer, Stephen recoiled at the sight of Bardolph’s eyes and mouth tightly stitched with black twine.
‘Stephen!’ Anselm shook him vigorously; the figure disappeared. The sin-eater had gobbled all the offerings. Someone was playing a lute. The mourners were drifting back to the casks where dirty-winged chickens roosted on their iron-hooped rims. A woman broke away from the rest and came towards them. She had a heavy, leathery face, hard eyes and a rat-trap mouth. She brusquely asked their business while she scratched her face, fingers glittering with tawdry rings. She forced a smile when Anselm courteously introduced himself and Stephen. She replied that she was Adele, Bardolph’s relict or widow. Anselm leaned down and whispered in her ear. Her puffy arrogance and shrewish ways abruptly faded. She stared, mouth gaping, and gestured that they follow her into the buttery at the back of the alehouse.
‘What did you say?’ Stephen hissed.
‘I told her that, unless she told the truth,’ Anselm whispered, ‘I had a vision of how, within a year and a day, she would join her husband in purgatory.’ He nudged Stephen playfully. ‘It always works; it still might.’
Adele took them into the buttery, a squalid room with chipped shelves, battered cups and tranchers, small casks and barrels. ‘What do you want?’ She sat down on a stool and nodded back at the taproom where raucous singing had begun. ‘I have guests to cater for.’
‘And a tidy profit to make on your husband’s death, Mistress Adele? I will be brief. You do not seem to be the grieving widow?’
‘That, Reverend Brother, is because I am not.’ Adele wiped her nose on the back of her hand. ‘I am no hypocrite. Bardolph was dead to me long before he was pushed from that tower.’
‘Pushed?’
‘Yes, Brother, pushed! What was Bardolph, a gravedigger and womanizer, doing on the top of Saint Michael’s tower? Why go there?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Did he ever go there before?’
‘Never. I tell you, Bardolph didn’t like heights.’
‘So why should someone push him? Did he have enemies?’
‘Were you your husband’s enemy?’ Stephen asked.
‘Bardolph had no time for me. We were indifferent to each other. He was only interested in his whores from that nugging house, The Oil of Gladness in Gullet Lane.’
‘Nugging house?’ Stephen asked.
‘Brothel,’ Anselm whispered.
‘He was a mutton-monger.’ Adele paused to listen to a cackle of laughter from the taproom. Stephen scrutinized this cunning woman, her soul steeped in malice. She had an aura of squalid unease, a dirtiness of spirit.
‘He was always one for the ladybirds.’ She continued: ‘Prostitutes.’ Adele sniggered. ‘Well, not now.’ She fingered the silver chain around her thick, sweaty neck: a small gold swan hung delicately from it. Both looked out of place next to the dirt-lined seams and wrinkles of her skin. ‘One in particular.’ Adele sniffed. ‘Edith Swan-neck is what that princess of the night called herself. Bought her this as a present, he did.’
‘And?’
‘The little whore disappeared, God knows where. Bardolph searched but even her sisters of the night at The Oil of Gladness couldn’t tell him.’
‘So the necklace?’ Anselm asked.
‘Bardolph claimed he found it in the cemetery at Saint Michael’s, lying in the grass. Oh, that was some time ago. Anyway, after that he’d say strange things. .’
‘Mistress?’ Anselm drew a coin from his belt purse and put it on top of an upturned barrel.
‘He said he would have his revenge against Parson Smollat.’
‘Revenge?’
‘I don’t know why. Bardolph also boasted how he would be rich one day — then I would see him in a different light. I have, haven’t I?’ she sneered. ‘Corpse light!’ Again, she sniffed. ‘I can tell you no more. He left this morning as usual, told me to look after the alehouse. God alone knows what happened.’ Adele’s fingers edged towards the coin on the barrel but Anselm picked it up and slipped it back into his purse.
‘If you have anything more, Mistress, but not until then.’
They left the alehouse and walked through the gloaming towards the torches flickering on the main thoroughfare. These had been lit by the wardsmen who had also fired the rubbish heaps to create more light and some warmth for the destitute slinking out of their corners and recesses. Some of these brought scraps of raw meat to grill and cook over the flames. The smell of rancid fat swirled everywhere. Stephen kept close to Anselm for this was the haunt of the night-walkers, the brothers and sisters of the dark, the fraternity of the bone: carrion-hunters, snakes-men, moonrakers, slop-collectors and all the rest who waited for the cover of night to do their work. The two Carmelites were swiftly inspected and ignored. A group of mounted archers appeared and the bobbing shadows and weasel-faces, all cowled and hooded, quickly disappeared. Anselm took advantage of this, stopping by a fire, watching the archers clatter by.
‘Magister, Bardolph?’
‘What do you think, Stephen?’ Anselm replied. ‘What do I think? Are we thinking what we are supposed to be thinking?’
‘Magister, you are talking in riddles.’
‘So I am — my apologies. Was Bardolph’s death the result of the haunting? Did he become possessed? Was he forced up to the top of that tower and made to jump? Or was he fleeing from some horror which crawled out of the walls?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Stephen replied, looking to his right as the people of the dark began to gather again. ‘I reflected on what happened while Adele was chattering. I saw Bardolph’s corpse, all pure in its white shroud, except for that sin-eater.’
‘Paganism,’ Anselm intervened, ‘but continue, Stephen.’
‘In life Bardolph was a man cloaked in dirt and mud. We found traces of that on the tower near the place where he fell.’
‘And?’
‘I watched you, Magister, as we went down that tower. You found no trace of mud or dirt on the steps or stairwell. Is that right?’
‘Yes, correct. You are the most observant of novices. What else?’