When the food had been served and blessed, the kitchen shutters replaced, the fire built up and the doors closed over, Beauchamp raised his goblet in toast towards Anselm, who replied by lifting his beaker of water.
‘Well,’ the royal clerk dabbed his lips with a napkin, ‘Brother Anselm, I have business with you. However,’ he shrugged, ‘that can wait. Why did you go back to the church?’
‘I had to,’ Anselm retorted. ‘An important principle. An exorcist never lets himself be driven out, though God only knows the truth behind all this.’
‘I began it,’ Parson Smollat put his horn spoon down, ‘or rather, I noticed it first, both me and my good friend, Simon.’
The sexton nodded in agreement.
‘Tell them all,’ Sir William urged, ‘from the beginning.’
‘I was provided with the benefice here,’ Parson Smollat began, ‘two years ago by the grace and favour of Sir William, who has the right of advowson to Saint Michael’s, Candlewick.’
‘As well as other parish officials,’ Simon, his spotty face flushed with claret, quickly added.
‘Saint Michael’s is an ancient church,’ the parson continued, ‘built during the time of William the Norman. You can see that from its nave — the thick, clumsy pillars have none of the beauty of Westminster or La Chapelle. The great tower is built on the side and has been strengthened and extended by successive generations. To the north-east of the church lie the sacristy and store rooms, and there is a cellar and a crypt which serve as our charnel house. The cemetery itself is sprawling, the soil very coarse, difficult to cultivate. The dead have been buried there for at least three hundred years. During the day, despite my protestations, the people used to flock there to trade. Well,’ Smollat’s fat face creased in embarrassment, ‘it depends on what they were trading. Prostitutes, tinkers and hawkers. During summertime the cemetery is the trysting place of lovers of either sex or both. At night, well, sorcerers, wizards, warlocks and practitioners of the dark arts creep in to sacrifice black cockerels and offer their blood to the full moon.’ The parson’s voice grew weary. ‘I did my best. The parish is, or was, a busy, thriving community — baptisms, shrivings, weddings, funerals, ale-tastings. We observe the liturgical feasts, especially Michaelmas, the solemnity of the great Archangel. We have a fine statue to him.’ The parson paused as the door opened. A woman came in, round as a dumpling with cherry-red cheeks, a smiling mouth and eyes bright as a sparrow. She was garbed in a blue dress with a silver cord around her plump waist. A thick white veil covered her black hair, streaked with slivers of silver, and over her arm she carried a heavy cloak.
‘My housekeeper, Isolda,’ Parson Smollat explained. The woman bobbed a curtsey to the assembled guests. ‘She came with me tonight,’ the parson continued. ‘Isolda, what do you want?’
‘Shall I stay, Parson Smollat, or do you want me to go?’
‘It’s best if you left.’
‘Ask one of my men to act as Lucifer,’ Sir William joked, ‘light-bearer.’ He answered the woman’s puzzled look. ‘One of them will see you safely across to the priest’s house.’
Isolda again bobbed a curtsey. Stephen noticed the smiling glance she threw Parson Smollat as she made her farewells to the rest of the guests.
‘God be with you,’ Anselm called out.
‘And you too, Brother.’ Isolda gazed hard at the exorcist then left.
‘Very good, very good,’ Beauchamp softly declared once the door closed behind Isolda, ‘but why are we really here?’
Stephen glanced at the parson. A good man, he thought, but weak and reluctant to grasp the tangled root of the evil festering here. Despite the warmth, the wine, the sturdy furniture and brightly painted wall cloths, the evil, the bleak despair, the heinous malice Stephen had experienced in that church had followed them here. It lurked watching in the shadows, away from the light. Some malevolent ghost or hell-born creature was dragging itself through the murk across that great barrier between the visible and invisible. The exorcist was also alert; he fingered his Ave beads, the other hand touching the small wooden tau cross on a cord around his neck. Stephen recalled one of Anselm’s sayings: ‘Thistles of the souls bring forth sin and despair. Satan and his demons can only feast on what we offer them’. What was at stake here? Stephen broke from his reverie as Parson Smollat pointed to the red cross with trefoiled ends painted on a shield which hung on the wall above the mantled hearth. Next to it a second shield displayed the Agnus Dei, a white lamb with a nimbus of gold showing three red rays. The lamb held a scarlet cross against a field of deep azure and a banner which had a silver staff with a gilt crown on top.
‘For all our weaknesses and stupid sins,’ Parson Smollat confessed, ‘I thought we were a godly community shielded against evil, protected by the Lord and his great henchman, Archangel Michael.’ Parson Smollat took a deep breath. ‘All that changed last year around the Feast of All Souls. You know,’ he swallowed hard, ‘that the eve of All Saints, thirty-first of October, Saint Walpurgis, is one of the most solemn black feasts of the sorcerers and other practitioners of the dark arts. I was absent that evening, when our cemetery was invaded by a warlock well-served by the knights of hell, the one who calls himself “The Midnight Man”.’
‘I’ve heard of him,’ Anselm broke in. ‘One day I would like to meet him.’
‘One day you shall!’ Beauchamp retorted. ‘You can shrive him just before he’s burnt as a warlock at Smithfield.’
Anselm turned in his chair and stared at the subtle clerk. ‘God,’ he whispered, ‘has ordained all our ends. Pray God we are not consumed by his fire in the second death.’
Beauchamp’s smile faded. He looked sharply at Anselm, then indicated that Parson Smollat should continue.
‘As I said,’ Anselm would not be outfaced, ‘I would like to meet the Midnight Man — he claims to be constantly attended by a spirit dressed in a flesh-coloured tunic under a dark robe. I wonder,’ he mused, ‘why warlocks and sorcerers place such great emphasis on petty demons like that?’
‘I do not know any of this, nor does anyone here.’ Parson Smollat sniffed. ‘Nor do I know what went wrong, what horrid sights and hideous manifestations made their presence felt. Murderous chants, snatches and war cries were heard amongst the howling of a pack of wild dogs which invaded the cemetery and drove off a herd of pigs, snouting around the dead. Apparitions were glimpsed, ghouls and night-stalkers. Menacing shadows with strange lights were also seen.’ Parson Smollat crossed himself. ‘All I know is that sooty souls, their evil minds fastened in wicked sins, came into our cemetery and sang their own devilish vespers. They opened the very doors of hell. According to rumour and, it is only rumour, the Midnight Man and all his devilish crew were so terrified at what they’d provoked, they fled.’ The parson mopped his fleshy face with a napkin. ‘I should have been content with that. The rogues and villains fled but, no sooner had the Feast of All Souls come and gone, than the hauntings began.’
‘At first they were minor matters.’ The sexton took up the story while the parson wetted his throat. ‘Tombstones were tumbled. Crosses were knocked over, then those who crept into the cemetery after dark, the night-lovers, stopped coming, eager to avoid the place.’
‘Why?’ Beauchamp asked.
‘They talked of prowlers, sinister shapes and threatening shades snaking around the tombs. Cries and strident screams were heard. Strange lights and tongues of flames licking the darkness.’