The Rose Demon

the side of his face, his chest heaving as if he had been running. He was staring at the floor. Now and again his mouth would twist into a grimace or he would shake his head as if he were carrying on a conversation with someone she could not see. She picked up a bowl of wine he had brought and, sitting beside him, raised it to his lips. He drank like a babe, then he coughed, retched and, with his hand covering his mouth, ran across the room to the piss bowl where he vomited. He crouched there like a dog, cleaning his mouth with his fingers.

    ‘Matthias, are you sickening?’

    Amasia became frightened. Last summer the sweating sickness had swept through Oxford. They said it had been brought by Henry Tudor’s soldiers when they had marched through the city after their victory over Richard III at Market Bosworth. Amasia knew all about that battle: two of the pot boys had fought on the Yorkist side and had never returned. Amasia got to her feet. Perhaps she should go downstairs to Goodman the taverner.

    ‘I’m all right,’ Matthias muttered. ‘Don’t be afeared.’

    He got to his feet, poured some water over his fingers and cleaned his mouth. He came back to the bed.

    ‘You look pale, Matthias!’

    ‘No, no.’ He shook his head and, taking her by the arm, forced her to sit next to him. ‘Tell me again,’ he said. ‘Tell me what happened to Agatha.’

    Amasia did so.

    ‘You are always lost in your books, Matthias,’ she concluded. ‘Haven’t you heard about the other deaths? People like Agatha and myself, slatterns, maids. No one misses us. No one makes a fuss. No one except you,’ she added. ‘Why, did Agatha dance for you?’

    Matthias got to his feet and began to dress.

    ‘And where did you say the body had been taken? Ah, yes, the Crutched Friars.’

    Amasia, with the sheet up about her, watched as the student put on his hose, linen shirt, his tabard, which bore the arms of his college, Exeter in Turl Street. He pulled the hood over his head, tied the leather belt around him, his fingers going to the hilt of the dagger in its embroidered scabbard.

    ‘Don’t forget your boots!’ she teased.

    Matthias was not listening. He picked these up, pulled them on, then walked out of the room without a by-your-leave or a backward glance.

    ‘Time for your studies?’ Goodman the taverner, filling a tankard from a tun near the door, hailed the student as Matthias crossed the taproom. Goodman would have loved to have drawn this young man into conversation. One day, when the time was ripe, Goodman hoped to have his own tryst with Amasia. He wished to savour the pleasures yet to come.

    ‘How long was Agatha missing?’ Matthias asked harshly.

    ‘Three days.’ The taverner got to his feet. ‘We’ll all miss her dancing. I mean in . . .’ The filthy remark he was going to make died on his lips. The student’s pale face and hard, watchful eyes frightened him. ‘I’m busy.’ The taverner turned away. ‘And I’m glad the slut Amasia can return to her other duties!’

    Matthias went out into the alleyway, along Northgate and Oxford High Street. He walked purposefully, hood pulled over his head. He did not acknowledge the cries and shouts of those who knew him. Matthias was blind to anything but the direction he was taking. A sow, flanks quivering, careered across his path. Chickens pecking at the dust scattered before him. A dog, which came yapping out of a runnel, hoping to draw the student’s attention to his master, a one-footed beggar, slunk away. Nor did the stall-holders, journeymen or tinkers catch his glance. Matthias shouldered his way through, not caring whom he elbowed out of his way: the well-dressed burgesses, lean-faced scholars in their shabby tabards, even the Masters and lecturers, the lords of the schools, whom every scholar had to treat with reverence, at least to their faces.

    Matthias kept staring ahead. He felt like screaming, running, hiding in some dark hole, trying to make sense of what Amasia had told him. Images floated through his mind; Edith, daughter of Fulcher the blacksmith, in her coffin before the high altar of his father’s church; those ghosts shifting along the path of Sutton Courteny; the hermit singing as he died; Christina screaming at him; Rahere, ever present, ever watchful; his father’s last sad words; that dreadful sleep in the parish church. Matthias paused, closing his eyes. He breathed in deeply. Maybe he should go back to his hall? Seek