The Rose Demon

months!’ Matthias exclaimed.

    ‘What did you expect?’ she snapped. ‘The deadly nightshade is a most potent poison. Did you dream?’

    Matthias shook his head. ‘If I did,’ he murmured. ‘I can’t remember.’

    ‘Good,’ she replied and grasped his hand more firmly.

    ‘Matthias, nightshade is a deadly plant and the body must purge that. However, you were sick of another fever. Something snapped in your mind. If you hadn’t slept and taken the potions I gave you, your wits would have wandered. I made you sleep and now,’ she got to her feet, ‘I will make you strong.’

    ‘What is your name?’ Matthias asked.

    She came over and kissed him gently on the brow.

    ‘I go by many names,’ she murmured. ‘But you can call me Eleanor. There is only me and my maid, Godwina. You are on a small farm not far from the Tewkesbury-to-London road.’ She drew back. ‘My orders are quite simple. You are not to leave here until you are well and strong. Once you are, you may go where you wish.’

    ‘Have you met the Master?’

    She shrugged. ‘Like you, Matthias, he comes and goes where he wishes. What form he takes is up to him.’

    Matthias spent three months at the farm, getting stronger every day. Eventually he was able to walk downstairs and enjoy the spring sunshine. His horse was well stabled and looked after. His saddlebags contained everything, including the etchings he had made at the church in Tenebral. Matthias realised the madness had passed. During his stay with Eleanor he came to accept the tragedy of his parents’ death and also accepted that he had not caused it, drawing strength from Parson Osbert’s attempt at reconciliation on that dreadful night.

    For the rest, he was left alone, no dreams, no phantasms, no visions. Eleanor tried to seduce him, even sending up young, buxom Godwina, but Matthias rejected both. He thought of Rosamund constantly and found he could not lose himself in the love of another woman.

    At the same time Matthias had secret fears which he himself would hold. If he was the son of the Rose Demon, his conception the fruit of love between his mother and an incubus, then what about his own seed? He idly wondered if Eleanor knew his secret. Was this the reason she pressed her warm, strong body against his, her arms going round his neck, her lips searching his? She was not insulted by his rejection but a coldness grew between them. When Matthias decided to leave, just after Easter, she made no attempt to stop him. Matthias was determined to return to London. He refused to tell Eleanor but his mind was set on meeting, once again, with the Commander of the Hospitallers.

PART IV

    1490-1492

    Remember a rose at full bloom is a rose about to die.

    Old Spanish saying

27

    For the year 1490, the Chronicler of St Paul’s in London could only shake his head at the way God had visited the sins of the people upon their heads. The sweating sickness swept into the city, sparing neither rich nor poor, the strong as well as the weak, the young as well as the old. The hospitals at St Mary Bethlehem, and elsewhere in the city, were overflowing. Death carts constantly trundled the streets, trading stopped, those who could, fled the city, those who couldn’t, barred themselves indoors. Great communal graves were dug out at Charterhouse and to the north-west of the city. Streets were chained off, soldiers, masked and muffled, guarded the entrances. Huge bonfires burnt in every open space for the doctors believed that fire and smoke would fumigate the city.

    Matthias heard about this as he came through Epping, on the London road: he stopped for a few days in the small village of Leighton before riding on. He took a chamber in a small hostelry in Clerkenwell and, the following day, presented himself at the Priory of St John of Jerusalem. Sir Edmund Hammond was a little more cordial than when they had first met. When he took Matthias up to his chamber, he rummaged in a chest and brought out a burnished piece of steel which served as a mirror.

    ‘Master Fitzosbert, it’s not my business to pry, but you seem like a man who has seen his own calvary.’ He thrust the mirror into Matthias’ hand.

    Matthias held it up and stared at his own reflection. His face was still olive-skinned but he noticed the furrows around the corner of his mouth, lines under his eyes and, even though he was only twenty-six, his hair had pronounced streaks of grey. Matthias smiled and handed the mirror