Angel of Death

painful against the encroaching freezing night. A hopeless scene. The grounds were taken up by the dead and used by those who lived in a sort of half-dead state.
    A dreadful place, Corbett concluded, it evoked the old demons in his soul. He remembered a friend, an Arab physician whom he had once met years ago in London, talk of a sickness of the soul which excited the base humours of the body; the mind became clouded and eventually it led to suicide. Corbett thought such a nightmare always awaited him, that he would settle in some black fit of depression and, unable to continue, simply lie down and die. The graveyards and grounds of the Cathedral of St Paul's evoked these demons: here, in Christ's house, where Christ lived, his figure perpetually crucified, the priests fed like pigs, their bodies, sleek, fat, plump, clothed and warm; while the poor, like the cat he had seen earlier, squatted where they could, eating what they had scavenged.
    Corbett passed a group of horses tethered together, waiting for their masters to finish their feasdng, the grooms long since disappeared. Corbett rounded a corner and entered the south door of the cathedral. On either side of the gloomy entrance were small wooden iron-barred gates leading to the tower. Corbett ensured these were fastened. He didn't know why, but he simply did not want to pass a door which might be open, for he could not shake off a feeling of evil, of watchful malice. He walked up into the nave. On either side of him the transepts were shrouded in darkness, the stout rounded pillars standing like a row of silent guardians, thrusting the mass of stone, as if by magic, up into the air. The place was deserted. Usually, this market-place of London would be packed by scribes, lawyers, parchment-sellers, and servants. Here men would come to talk of lawsuits and crop prices; women had neighbourly chats even while divine service was being celebrated, sometimes only becoming quiet when the host was elevated. St Paul's was a useful meeting-place where enemies might confer on safe ground; arbitrators decide a land quarrel; a young man with marriage on his mind arrange to meet a young girl and her family.
    Corbett jumped as the great bell of St Paul's began booming out, a sign that the curfew would be imposed, the gates locked and chains laid across them to deny access to any of the roaring gangs of lawless youths who terrorized the city at night. It was cold, deathly cold. Corbett walked on past the small, shadowy embrasures where the chancery priests sang masses for those who paid money to escape God's judgement for their sins on earth. He climbed the steps into the choir; on either side the wooden stalls were empty, the carved gargoyles staring in motionless terror towards him. Wall torches still spluttered faintly, throwing deep shadows and giving the patterned stone-work a life of its own. Corbett entered the silent sanctuary. Here too, torches fixed into their iron sockets in the wail provided a little light. Corbett looked up at the high altar which had been cleared. The sacred vessels were now covered with a thick, dark cloth, though the incense from the morning mass still hung in the air like souls who refused to ascend to heaven.
    The high altar with its carved frontal was now shrouded in virtual darkness, except for the solitary red winking sanctuary light which shone through the gloom like a beacon in a storm. Corbett remembered the words carved on the wooden sanctuary screen he had just passed through. 'Hic locus terribilis. Dominus Dei et porta coeli' – This is indeed a terrible place, the house of God and the gate of heaven. Corbett shivered. Perhaps it was also the gate of hell. Here Christ dwelt under the appearance of bread and wine, surrounded by a horde of adoring angels, the whole might of heaven's armies. But was that true? Corbett could hardly believe it. Did what the priest say really exist? Was it true? Were some philosophers right when they said that man lived in a world of simple appearances? Did Corbett constantly dwell in the shadows unaware of the true reality beyond it? Or, as St Augustine put it, was man a mere child playing in the rock pools of a beach ignoring the great ocean whispering beside him? Yet there was a reality here, even if it was just the reality of evil. Corbett found it difficult to believe that this cathedral, founded on the ruins of an ancient Roman temple, was really a holy place.
    Here, after all, a priest had been