The Rose Demon

dagger and hacked away. The grille came loose. Moving the dying firebrand to give him light, Matthias pushed his hand into the aperture and dug around. From the outside it looked like a simple drain hole but the cavity within was much larger. Matthias sighed as his fingers touched something hard. He drew out the silver pyx, now covered in dirt, then two small phials where the chrism and oil had been kept. He searched again. His hand brushed something hard. He pulled this out. In the poor light he could see the leather bag was engrained with dirt, the cord round the neck frayed. When he cut them loose, his father’s Book of Hours slipped into his hand. Leaving everything except his dagger, Matthias grasped the book and ran down the steps, back into the nave. He built the fire up and, in its warm glow, started to turn over the pages.

    The book was made up of stiff pages of parchment stitched together and held between two pieces of very thin wood covered with leather. The book contained psalms and readings from the scriptures. On some pages the carefully curved letters had faded, the small jewel-like miniature paintings grown indistinct. In many of the margins Parson Osbert had written his own commentary in a tidy cursive hand; at the back, the blank folio pages had been covered with jottings and notes. Matthias read through these, trying to ignore the memories they evoked, the homilies his father had planned on the special saints’ days of the parish. He found what he was searching for at the very back. It carried the date, the Feast of the Holy Cross, September 1471. At first Matthias thought his father had simply copied out the ‘Confiteor’, the ‘I Confess’ which every priest recited before Mass. The writing was hasty, the letters ill-formed. Matthias kept moving the book, trying to make out each word.

    I, Parson Fitzosbert, confess to Almighty God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, to all the angels and saints and to you my brothers and sisters that I have sinned exceedingly, in thought, word and deed. I have sinned against my God and my Church by becoming handfast to a woman. I have broken my vow of celibacy and chastity. God, in turn, has punished me most grievously. Christina, my wife, is dead. The boy she bore is no flesh of mine. Christina has sinned and confessed as much. She lay with the man in whose death I had a hand: the hermit of Tenebral. Yet, he deserved to die, not only for his terrible sins and what he was, but what he did in making her betray me.

    The writing then faltered. Matthias closed the book. He gripped it firmly between his hands. He couldn’t think about anything except his father yelling at him, cursing him, rejecting him. Christina’s strange behaviour, the way she fell ill the day the hermit was tried and executed. Matthias couldn’t stop shivering. He heard sounds outside, horsemen were approaching. All he could do was sit by the fire, his arms wrapped across his chest.

    ‘Fitzosbert! Matthias Fitzosbert!’

    He didn’t move.

    Again, ‘Matthias! Matthias Fitzosbert!’ The voice was harsh.

    Matthias glanced up at a window. Darkness had fallen. The riders outside were approaching the church. A horse neighed, followed by screams and the sound of swords being drawn. Someone was hammering at the main door but Matthias ignored it. Again, screams, horses rearing and neighing in terror, then silence. Matthias didn’t move. He didn’t care. When those grey shapes he had glimpsed in the cemetery thronged at the back of the church and moved like clouds towards him, he glared back in defiance. The fire began to die. The church was intensely cold. He could not make out the shapes, corpses in their shrouds. The lost, earthbound souls of the dead villagers, faces grey as the shrouds they wore, eyes dead, came and went like puffs of smoke. Matthias felt no fear. Why should he? His father had hinted at the reason for Christina’s collapse and his own soul-breaking rage. Christina had been seduced by the hermit: both she and Osbert believed Matthias was the child of this adulterous liaison.

    ‘What am I?’ Matthias called into the darkness. ‘Man or demon?’

    Was that why he had the second sight? Why he brought chaos and terror to everyone in his life? His parents had died because of him. This village had been devastated because of him. Santerre, Amasia, that long line of dead. Outside a chanting had begun as ghostly choristers assembled in the darkness. Matthias heard the words of