The Rose Demon

the coffin lid well down till the poor girl’s remains were buried.

    ‘Edith!’ Fulcher cried up at the sky, swaying backwards and forwards on his feet. ‘Edith!’

    Piers the ploughman came out, caught Fulcher by the arm and took him back into the tangy coolness of the Hungry Man taproom.

    Matthias ran on, slipping like a shadow past the doorway of the tavern and up through the village. He stopped at the gallows stone from which Baron Sanguis’ gibbet stretched up, black and stark against the sky. No corpse hung there but, now and again, the Manor Lord gibbeted a victim coated in tar, bound with old rope, as a warning to the outlaws, wolf’s-heads and poachers to stay well away from his domain.

    At last the line of cottages ended. The trackway narrowed as it entered the dark wood. Matthias paused: his father and mother had warned him, on many an occasion, to stay well clear of this place.

    ‘Men as violent as wolves,’ the kindly parson’s face had been serious, ‘wander like demons. These horrid murders!’ Parson Osbert had shaken his balding head. ‘Moreover, there are armies on the march and, where there are soldiers, murder and rapine ride close behind. Isn’t that right, Mother?’

    Christina had brushed her thick, blonde hair away from her face and stared, white-faced, at her son. Matthias, being so young, did not know what murder and rapine were, though they sounded interesting. What concerned him more was how tired and grey his mother now looked. Usually merry-eyed, laughing and vigorous, Christina had, over the last few weeks, become quiet, withdrawn and ever anxious. Only last night Matthias had woken and found her in her shift, a blanket about her shoulders, staring down at him. The tallow candle in her hand had made her face look even more gaunt. When he’d stirred, she had sat down on the edge of his pallet bed and gently stroked his face.

    ‘Matthias.’

    ‘Yes, Mother?’

    ‘You go through the woods, don’t you? You go to see the hermit? . . . In his refuge at Tenebral?’

    Matthias had been about to lie but his mother’s eyes looked so strange, so full of fear, he had nodded slowly. Christina had turned away. She had told him to go back to sleep but, as she’d turned to say good night, he’d glimpsed the tears on her cheeks.

    Matthias now gnawed on his lips; the wood was a dark and secret place. He remembered the stories the villagers liked to tell when they all gathered around the great roaring fire in the taproom of the Hungry Man: about the pigmy king who lived beneath the tumuli, the ancient burial mounds, deep in the woods. Of Edric the Wild and his demonic horsemen who hunted along the banks of the Severn.

    A bird stirred noisily in the branches above him. Matthias recalled other stories about the Strigoi, the ravenous birds with hooked feet, grasping talons, eyes which stared fixedly - fowls from hell who preyed on the young. Or the hag whose carcass was clothed in feathers and whose belly was swollen with the blood of her victims. Yet he had to go on! The hermit would be waiting for him and Matthias loved the hermit, with his magic and his stories, his merry mouth and laughing eyes. The boy took a deep breath, closed his eyes and, hands flapping by his side, ran into the shade of the trees. He tried to ignore the sounds from the undergrowth. He mustn’t think of Old Bogglebow, his name for Margot, the evil-eyed hag who lived in Baron Sanguis’ manor house and who, so the villagers whispered, practised the black arts on behalf of her master. Matthias did fear Old Bogglebow, with her sunken cheeks, twisted nose and sharp dog teeth scattered in rotting gums like tombs in a moon-lit churchyard.

    Matthias opened his eyes and smiled. He had run so fast he was sure he was near the edge of the woods. He turned a corner and ran on, his eyes fixed on the trackway before him. He found breathing difficult, even more so when he tried to hum a song Christina had taught him. His fears only increased for, when the wood ended, he would be in Tenebral.

    Once a village, its inhabitants had been wiped out by the Great Death, which had raged along the Severn valley a hundred years previously. The ancient ones still talked about it, of the dead lying in their beds, or at a table, or in the fields, their hands still fixed to the plough. Tenebral was a place for ghosts, haunted and eerie. Matthias paused and drew in his breath. Yet the hermit would be there: he would protect him.