The Rose Demon

good marriage dowry for your remaining daughters? Simon the reeve, do you not have plans to purchase more meadow land? Even Baron Sanguis is thinking of allowing you to be a partner in the profits from his sheep. John the bailiff, Fulke the tanner, Watkin the tiler, have not your businesses prospered? Joscelyn, your beer and ale is now sold as far afield as Stroud and Gloucester, is it not?’

    The villagers heard him out. One or two of them were nodding, others stared narrow-eyed. They could not understand how the hermit knew so much about their affairs yet he spoke the truth. In the last eight years Sutton Courteny had prospered and become the envy of its neighbours. No war, no famine, no pestilence.

    ‘And you?’ The hermit spun on his heel and pointed to the scrivener. Matthias caught a look of venom in his friend’s eyes. ‘Are not your storerooms full of good hides? Do you not have a lucrative trade with the scriptorium at Tewkesbury Abbey?’

    The hermit walked closer. The scrivener, quill raised, was fearful at how this man’s eyes seemed to search his very soul.

    ‘Plenty of money,’ the hermit declared in a loud whisper. ‘The joys of the tavern, the bodies of lithe young women thrashing beneath you.’ He wiped the spittle from the corner of his mouth. ‘But even that does not satisfy you!’

    ‘You have proved your own witchcraft,’ the Preacher intervened, fearful of the hold this man might have over the villagers.

    ‘No, sir. You have proved it!’

    The Preacher refused to answer but shouted at the villagers, ‘Is there anyone here who will speak for him?’

    A deathly silence.

    ‘I ask you now, before God, is there any man, woman or child who will speak for the prisoner?’

    ‘I will!’

    The words were out of Matthias’ mouth before he could stop them. He was on his feet, walking forward. His father, wringing his hands, just shook his head. Matthias didn’t care. He didn’t like the Preacher. He felt sorry for the hermit - like when he and the other children gathered here in the church to study their hornbooks, would go out into the cemetery and play a game: ‘Who will play with him?’ ‘Or who will play with her?’ Matthias always felt sorry for the boy or girl left alone. It was no different now. He walked over and looked up at the hermit. His friend gazed back, the tears rolling down his cheeks.

    ‘ Oh, Creatura bona atque parva! ’ he whispered. ‘Brave little man!’

    ‘You are a child,’ the Preacher declared.

    ‘He was kind,’ Matthias replied. ‘He could hold doves and knows the names of flowers. He showed me young fox cubs, he caught a rabbit and roasted it.’

    Matthias blushed at the laughter from the villagers.

    ‘It’s true! It’s true!’ he cried.

    He stamped his foot and the Preacher, mimicking him, stamped his. The villagers burst into laughter. Matthias, face burning red, fled the church, across the cemetery and into his house. He ran up the stairs and burst into his mother’s room. She was lying on the small four-poster bed, face buried in the bolsters. He ran up, tugging at her hand.

    ‘Mother, they are going to take him out and burn him!’

    Christina lifted her sleep-laden face from the bolsters. Matthias could see she had been crying.

    ‘It’s finished,’ she whispered. ‘There’s nothing you can do. May God help us all!’

    She let his hand drop and fell back on the bolsters, staring at the blue and gold tester over the bed.

    ‘Did your father speak?’

    ‘Some.’ Matthias bit back the insults he felt. ‘It made no difference.’

    He walked slowly out of the chamber, closing the door silently behind him, and went down the rickety stairs. He sat for a while poking the cold ash in the fireplace with a stick. From the cemetery came the shouts and cries of the villagers. The door opened and his father came down the passageway. Matthias did not look up. He sat jabbing at the ash, wishing it were the Preacher’s face.

    ‘They’ve put him in the death house,’ Parson Osbert said. ‘The Preacher and others are guarding him. They . . .’ Parson Osbert licked his dry lips. ‘He says sentence must be carried out by dusk. Fulcher and the rest, they are piling brushwood around the bear-baiting post. You know,’ he continued in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘it’s near the gallows. Matthias?’

    The boy kept jabbing at the ash. His father came and knelt beside him.

    ‘Matthias, why did you speak?’

    His son turned