The Rose Demon

and what I did is condemned by the Church. I live with a woman but, God be my witness,’ his eyes filled with tears, ‘I love her more than life itself and I would leave Heaven for Hell to find her there.’

    ‘But what is wrong with Mother?’ Matthias found he couldn’t stop trembling. ‘Is she sickening?’

    ‘I don’t know.’ His father rubbed his eyes. ‘Sometimes she wonders if we did wrong. Whether this place is accursed.’

    He smiled wanly and pointed across to a small aperture built below the window. Inside it was a yellowing, aged skull. Nobody knew why it was there. The priest’s house had stood since the reign of the first Edward, almost two hundred years ago. The skull had been built into the brickwork: all Matthias could ever see were the teeth, face bones and dark holes where the eyes had been. Parson Osbert chewed his lip. Christina had strange fancies. She now believed the skull was a source of evil. He had remonstrated with her, explaining that, from the little he knew, the skull was really a sacred relic, the remains of a priest who had been killed here many centuries ago by marauding Danes.

    ‘Father, Father, what’s the matter?’

    The priest looked at his son’s pale, attentive face. He felt a great surge of affection. Perhaps I’ve not been a good priest, he thought, but in Matthias I have been truly blessed.

    ‘Your mother is tired, Matthias, just tired. Come now, let’s say our prayers.’

    Matthias brought his hands together and bowed his head, his lips moved soundlessly as he recited the Paternoster and Ave Maria.

    Parson Osbert stared across at the black crucifix against the wall. What was really wrong with his wife? She seemed agitated, constantly dreaming as if her body were here but her mind elsewhere. The parson’s face became grim. He knew he had enemies in the parish council. Fat Walter Mapp, the local scrivener - he was not above, during Sunday Mass, circulating a piece of vellum filled with malicious questions, such as why their priest preached to them but kept a woman and his bastard son as a burden on the parish. Osbert closed his eyes and prayed for forgiveness. A gentle soul, he had never really hated, but Mapp, with his pig-like eyes, fleshy nose and slobbering mouth . . . Parson Osbert crossed himself and quickly said a prayer for Walter Mapp.

    ‘Father, I’ve finished my prayers. Shall I go to bed?’

    The priest smiled. ‘And what is the last thing, Matthias, you must say before you go to sleep? And the first thing you must repeat when you wake in the morning?’

    Matthias took a deep breath.

    ‘If you get it right,’ his father added, ‘there’s a sweetmeat in the buttery . . .’

    Matthias closed his eyes. ‘Remember this, my soul, and remember it well.’ His voice grew loud and vibrant. ‘The Lord thy God is One and He is holy.’ Matthias paused to recall the words. ‘And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind, with all thy heart and all thy strength. And thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’

    The parson kissed him on the brow. ‘Oh, holiest of boys,’ he grinned. ‘Take the sweetmeat and go to your chamber.’

    Matthias, the sweetmeat firmly in his mouth, scampered up the stairs. These were narrow and winding: Matthias always pretended he was a knight climbing a castle to rescue a maiden. He was most fortunate. Unlike other boys of his age, he had a small chamber, a little garret to himself under the eaves. It contained a cot, a desk, a battered leather chest and some pegs on the wall for his clothes. The small casement window, which overlooked the cemetery, was covered in horn paper. His mother had left it open. The room smelt fragrant but rather cold. Matthias climbed on to the bed. He was about to close the window when he glimpsed, in the moon-dappled cemetery below, a shadow beneath one of the yew trees, as if someone were standing there staring up at him. Yet, when he looked again, the shadow was gone.

    In Margaret of Anjou’s camp, pitched within bowshot of the great Abbey of Tewkesbury, the Lancastrian Queen and her generals were holding counsel late into the night: Sir Raymond Grandison, Prior in the Order of the Hospitallers, with Sir Thomas Tresham, John Wainfleet and the Queen’s two principal commanders, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset and Lord Wenlock. They all sat along the trestle table hastily erected in the Queen’s gold-fringed, silken tent. On the floor around them were piled