The Rose Demon

by Paul Doherty

  A full day passed before they began to recover from their shock, the mother first. She gathered her family together, talking to them softly, reaffirming Matthias’ assurances. Every so often she would grasp Matthias’ fingers and squeeze them.

  ‘My husband is a merchant,’ she whispered. ‘We were on a pilgrimage to York.’ Her face now looked comely, her hair tied decorously back. ‘We slept in one morning. We became separated from our party and then stopped to eat. The outlaws struck.’

  Matthias gently stroked her cheek. ‘Did the outlaws harm you or your daughter?’

  ‘No, they found the wine. They were evil!’ She spat the words out. ‘Demons from hell!’

  Matthias nodded and walked away. He knew about demons.

  Two days passed. The man introduced himself as Gilbert Sempringham, a prosperous clothier.

  ‘I did a stupid thing,’ he confessed. ‘I thought it was safe.’

  ‘It is,’ Matthias reassured him. ‘You were just unlucky. Never ever do it again. Never leave the roads, never go on to the moors.’

  At last the Sempringhams recovered from their shock. The children first, so absorbed in the present, they viewed the outlaws’ attack as a horrid nightmare to be quickly forgotten. Sempringham’s wife, Margaret, was a calm, common sense woman. Elizabeth, the daughter, comely, rather shy, spent most of the time gazing adoringly at Matthias as if he were some gallant knight errant clothed in silver armour rather than a wild-haired hermit. Matthias enjoyed their company. Then Master Gilbert said it was time they should leave, and would Matthias accompany them back to the nearest village? He quickly agreed. The fear and terror in young Elizabeth’s eyes at the prospect of the family being alone again and the beseeching look Mistress Margaret gave him could not be resisted.

  ‘What do we do with the outlaws’ corpses?’ the merchant asked. The corpses still lay where they had fallen.

  ‘They lived Godless. They died Godless,’ Matthias retorted. ‘Let them lie Godless!’

  He led the Sempringhams out of Barnwick and on to the road to the nearest village. Again Master Gilbert importuned Matthias to stay with them and he agreed. The following morning he arranged for the family to join another party of merchants making their way south to York. When he said he’d go no further, the Sempringhams, their eyes filled with tears, gathered round him in the small cobbled yard of the tavern where they had stayed the night.

  ‘I’d best leave you now,’ he said.

  Mistress Margaret caught at his hand. ‘I have talked to the landlord. He says there’s a hermit out at Barnwick. It’s you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

  Master Sempringham pushed a bag of silver into his hands.

  ‘No,’ he warned as Matthias made to refuse. ‘After what you have done, sir, it would be a grave insult. Please.’

  ‘What is your name?’ Elizabeth asked.

  Matthias stared across at the tavern sign: the Two Brothers.

  ‘My name is Cain,’ he replied. He stared at these people, so homely, leading ordinary lives, deeply attached to each other. ‘I am cursed by God,’ he continued. ‘I bear His mark.’

  ‘Surely not?’ Mistress Margaret put her arms round his neck and, standing on tiptoe, kissed him on each cheek. ‘God will reward you,’ she whispered. ‘And we will never forget.’

  Matthias made his farewells, collected his horse and rode out across the moorland. A slight mist was creeping in. He dismounted and stood stroking the muzzle of his horse, half-listening to the shriek of a curlew. He did not want to go back to Barnwick. Rosamund’s small tomb was built and the outlaw attack had shattered his peace. Others from the gang might come and they would certainly seek vengeance. Moreover, Matthias had enjoyed the company of the Sempringhams. He should rejoin the world of men, but go where? What should he do? He stared at the leather bag hanging on his saddle horn. He had weapons and a few pathetic possessions. He’d ride south, perhaps visit London.

  Matthias travelled south. He kept well away from the main trackways and paths. The journey was an uneventful one. He reached Colchester ten days later, where he stayed at the Golden Fleece tavern and hired a barber to shave his face and cut his hair, closely cropped like that of a soldier. He bought new clothes in the marketplace — sober, dull attire — and then continued his journey. Two days later he arrived at St Giles, Cripplegate, and entered London.

  At first Matthias found it difficult. So many people of different sorts: madcaps, beggars, white-eyed Abraham men dancing their mad jigs along the streets. Merchants and lawyers in their wool and samite robes. The gaudily decked whores, the courtiers in their taffeta; the city toughs and bravos with their tight hose and protuberant codpieces. These walked narrow-eyed, fingers constantly tapping the hilt of their swords or daggers. The streets were dirty and packed. People moved in shoals round the stalls, which sold everything from Spanish herbs to cloths from Bruges. Fights broke out. Apprentices touted for custom, bailiffs and beadles stood in the doorways of churches and shouted their messages. Iron-wheeled carts crashed and lumbered across the cobbles. Funeral processions wound their way to the city cemeteries.

  Matthias grew so dizzy he had to dismount. He stood for a while in a tavern yard, sipping at a tankard of ale to calm his stomach and soothe his wits. A party of sheriff’s men ran by the gateway crying, ‘Harrow! Harrow!’ in pursuit of a felon against whom the hue and cry had been raised. On the corner of St Martin’s Lane, just near the Shambles, an execution was being carried out: a rogue who had killed a shopkeeper was now being hanged from the sign of his victim’s shop. The crowds gathered round to watch him kick in his death throes. Matthias pushed his way through. He wondered if anyone would be interested in him. In law he’d received a pardon after East Stoke but, there again, he had not served his three years at Barnwick.

  Matthias made his way up, past the grim, stinking prison of Newgate. He turned right after Cock Lane into the great expanse of Smithfield. The open area in front of St Bartholomew’s was fairly desolate. A group of beggars chattered beneath the huge gallows in the centre. A woman knelt before the great blackened stake where people were burnt, hands clasped, sobbing quietly to herself. Two rogues, caught selling bogus relics, had their hose removed, were tied back to back and forced to wander until darkness fell and their crime was purged. A madman ran up, a dribble of white foam coming out of the corner of his mouth. He was dressed in a dirty linen robe with a cord round his waist.

  ‘Have you heard?’ he screamed. ‘The Great Whore has returned to Babylon! Her dragon has been seen in the skies! The moon will turn to blood! The stars will fall from Heaven! The Antichrist is now on his way. Have you seen him?’

  A long, sharp dagger appeared from the sleeve of his gown.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ he threatened.

  ‘Yes,’ Matthias replied soothingly, ‘I have. He’s been taken to Newgate.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you, brother.’ The madman ran off, brandishing the knife in his hand.

  A whore slipped silently up beside him, her hand going out to stroke his genitals.

  ‘A fine cock there,’ she murmured. ‘And all fit for the crowing!’

  ‘I have a loathsome disease,’ Matthias replied, ‘which will rot your stomach and turn you blind.’

  The whore screamed an obscenity and ran off. Matthias paused and glanced around. A long line of gong carts trundled out of Little Britain, the area behind St Bartholomew’s. They had just emptied the public jakes: the breeze wafted the stench, Matthias covered his mouth and nose. He glimpsed a tavern sign, the Bishop’s Mitre, and made his way across. He was tired, rather disturbed by his abrupt arrival in London so he bargained with the landlord for a stable for his horse and a narrow, dank garret for himself.

  Matthias spent his first two days in London eating, drinking and sleeping. Then he asked the taverner for his advice and went to St Paul’s to stand by the ‘Si Quis’ door where merchants, traders, noblemen and lawyers came to hire servants and maids. Th
e place was thronged: the great central aisle full of people waiting to be hired. Matthias paid a scrivener to write a short description of his name and his skill as a clerk. Matthias pinned this to his tunic and walked around the great tomb of Duke Humphrey but, though some expressed an interest, no one would hire him. He carried no letters of accreditation and was reluctant to discuss his recent service at Barnwick.

  The days passed. Matthias’ supply of silver dwindled. He lost his garret but the landlord agreed, in return for Matthias doing tasks around the tavern, that he could sleep in the stable. Matthias eventually had to sell his horse and saddle but he kept his arms. He tired of walking St Paul’s and spent more time out in the graveyard where the thieves and rogues of London sheltered from the sheriff’s men.

  One day, about a month after his arrival in London, Matthias was sitting with his back to the wall sunning himself. He was wondering if he should leave and go back to Baron Sanguis when someone tapped his foot. He raised his head, shading his eyes, and peered up at a grizzled-faced, one-eyed man.

  ‘God save us both, if it’s not Master Matthias Fitzosbert!’

  The fellow crouched down. Matthias studied the narrow-seamed face, the white eye covered by a milky film, the other dancing with mischief. The man was dressed in a soiled ragged shirt, tattered leather jacket and hose. He wore two right boots of different size but Matthias noticed the sword and dirk pushed in the waistband were sharp and clean.

  ‘Do I know you, sir?’

  ‘Dickon,’ the fellow replied. ‘Don’t you remember, Master? The gatehouse at Barnwick? I served as an archer there. I held you down the day. .’ the good eye began to flutter, ‘. . the day young Rosamund was killed.’

  Matthias closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Of course!’ He looked at the man. ‘So, what have you been doing?’

  Dickon shrugged. ‘Well, when we were driven out of Barnwick, I thought that’s it: no more soldiering for Dickon boy! I travelled south, a little bit of fighting here, a touch of robbery there.’ Dickon was now peering at him carefully. ‘I’ve never forgotten you, Master Fitzosbert. Even now I still tell my friends about the north tower of the keep. Do you remember it?’

  ‘If I have to.’

  ‘You seem down on your luck.’ Dickon sat beside him.

  ‘I’d say that was a fair assessment of my situation.’

  Dickon patted him on the thigh. ‘I thought you were dead.’ He shifted, his good eye studying Matthias. ‘But, of course, the likes of you don’t die, do they? Do you have any money?’ he continued.

  Matthias flicked his empty wallet. ‘I have what you see. And, as for food, I’d give my right arm for a meat pie and a tankard of ale.’

  Dickon scrambled to his feet. ‘Come on!’ he urged. ‘I have someone who would like to meet you.’

  Matthias stayed where he was. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Henry Emloe. He’s a. .’ Dickon grinned, ‘he’s a merchant, a trader. You’ll get more than a meat pie and a blackjack of ale from him.’

  Matthias glanced round the graveyard: the tawdry stalls, the mummers and the jackanapes. Perhaps it might be best to stay rather than go, cap in hand, to Baron Sanguis. He scrambled to his feet and followed Dickon out along Bowyers Row, past Blackfriars. They crossed the Fleet river and entered the tangled maze of alleyways which surrounded the great convent of Whitefriars. Matthias had never been here before. It was a small town in itself: a ward dominated by thieves, cutthroats and wolf’s-heads. The great-storeyed houses were shabby and dilapidated. They rose up so close together, the lanes and alleys beneath narrow and gloomy. Ramshackle bridges stretched from one house to another. The doorways to the taverns were thronged with beggars, men and women who had good reason to hide from the law. There were no stalls, but hawkers and garishly dressed journeymen pushed their wheelbarrows around, piled high with goods and trinkets they had filched from the markets in Cheapside. Whores, guarded by their pimps, called out salacious invitations. Every so often Dickon and Matthias were stopped and asked their business. The men were some of the most depraved Matthias had ever seen: their faces showed their souls were steeped in villainy. Some bore the mutilations of previous punishments: brand marks upon their faces, slit noses and lips, their hair was often long to conceal cropped and clipped ears. A few had lost a hand or a foot. Nevertheless, they were all well armed and watchful over who passed along their respective street or alleyway. Dickon did not carry or show any pass, he simply murmured Emloe’s name and these self-appointed guardians slunk back into the darkness.

  Dickon brought Matthias to a house standing at the mouth of an alleyway which led down to the river. The house was four-storeyed with wooden plaster. The paint was peeling, falling like flakes into the small, overgrown garden which stood in front of it. Dickon went down the uneven pathway and rapped hard at the knocker shaped like a grinning skull. The door opened, Dickon beckoned Matthias inside.

  At first, because the passageway was so gloomy, Matthias had to blink and place his hand against the wall to get his bearings. The passageway was long. The wainscoting on either side was of black shiny wood: the strip of plaster above painted purple. A few candles, also purple, burnt in bright steel holders but they created more shadow than light.

  ‘Come on! Come on!’ Dickon whispered.

  Matthias followed him deep into the house. They passed chambers, then went up a broad stairway, its woodwork also painted a glossy black. Matthias felt he was entering a house of death. The drapes which hung on the walls and galleries were all sombre, sometimes lined with silver silk. However, despite the poor light and the shabby exterior, the house was opulently furnished. Woollen rugs woven together covered most of the floor and deadened any sound. Heavy drapes covered walls and doorways. The tables and benches were all carefully sculptured and, again, painted black. Matthias was about to express his concern when Dickon turned abruptly, finger to his lips.

  ‘The walls have ears,’ he murmured. ‘And I mean what I say!’

  They walked on. Matthias stopped to examine a painting, a man ladling out silver coins in a counting house, beside him two young women, the tops of their dresses cut low to expose full ripe breasts. Matthias pretended to be fascinated but he noticed a movement and realised that there were eyelets in the picture to allow others to peer out. Again Dickon hoarsely urged that he should hurry. Matthias was about to follow when out of the shadows stepped a man, his face hidden by a hood pulled well over his head. A sword peeped out from beneath his cloak and he carried a cudgel. Matthias bowed sardonically at this sinister, silent guard and hurried on.

  The second gallery was much the same. Matthias was led into a small chamber. It had a window open: this offset the dark funereal cloths on the wall and the silver death’s-head placed in the middle of a shiny table which stood in the centre of the chamber. Matthias went to the window and stared out as Dickon closed the door behind him. He glimpsed the dark swirling waters of the Thames and watched as a seagull skimmed lazily over the surface. He heard a sound and turned.

  The man who stood in the doorway was very tall and angular. His black hair was closely cropped well above his ears; his long, narrow face had a lantern jaw and protruding spiky nose, thin bloodless lips and eyes as dead as pieces of glass. He was dressed like a priest, in a black gown from neck to toe, his hands hidden up the sleeves of his habit. The man bowed.

  ‘I am Henry Emloe,’ he declared softly. ‘Welcome to my house. You wish some wine?’

  And, before Matthias could answer, Emloe brought his hand up and clicked his fingers. Emloe continued staring at Matthias, as if memorising every single feature. A servant bustled in, his face hidden by a hood. He placed a silver tray bearing a jug and goblets on the table and scurried out. Emloe poured the wine himself. It came thick and red, swirling out like blood. He passed a cup to Matthias and toasted him.

  ‘Welcome to my house, Matthias Fitzosbert.’

  Emloe’s eyes betrayed no emotion, still and glassy like those of a corpse. He sipped at hi
s wine.

  ‘Dickon told me about Barnwick.’ The words slipped out, Emloe hardly moving his lips, talking in a guttural manner, as if that were the only exertion he could afford.

  ‘A frightening time,’ Matthias replied.

  Emloe gave a crooked smile, turning his face sideways. ‘You’ll find London,’ he taunted, ‘is just as full of demons!’

  24

  Matthias entered Emloe’s household. He had a few pricks of conscience but shrugged these off, muttering that beggars can’t be choosers and, if wishes were horses, no man would walk. He was given a chamber in one of the galleries. Dickon said this was a mark of honour, most of Emloe’s retainers slept in the outhouse behind the gloomy mansion. Now and again Emloe entertained Matthias in a small hall below stairs. His cooks and scullions served up the most delicious meals. Once or twice they were alone, on other occasions they were joined by whores, city courtesans and Emloe’s henchmen.

  Matthias soon learnt Emloe was a king of Whitefriars. He ruled by fear, with a finger in the profits of every housebreaker, foist, pickpocket and counterfeit man. Above all, he traded in stolen goods, sometimes returning these to the rightful owners for a heavy price. Or, if that was too dangerous, transporting them across to the stews in Southwark to be sold in the shabby night markets.

  Emloe never interrogated Matthias, at least not outright; a question here, a question there; a tart observation or a wry comment. Yet within two weeks Emloe had created a patchwork picture of Matthias’ life. He treated Matthias most courteously, as did those around him. On occasions, however, Emloe would let Matthias witness his justice, summary and ruthless. A foist who refused to hand over his profits was brought into the cobbled yard behind the house, his hands spread out on the fleshing table: three fingers were neatly sliced off, the stumps smeared with boiling hot pitch. A courtesan who had rebuffed one of Emloe’s clients had her cheeks nicked with a dagger. Two ruffians who mistakenly attacked one of Emloe’s acquaintances coming in from the city abruptly found themselves arrested and handed over to the sheriff’s men. Matthias observed and took careful note and, apart from Dickon, he kept to himself. He never asked questions and found he was never entrusted with a task he could conscientiously refuse. Clothes, food, a chamber were provided, as well as a regular supply of silver which he entrusted to a Cheapside goldsmith. Matthias’ duties were comparatively light. He would stand on guard when Emloe met mysterious, cowled figures from the city. Matthias would guide them to and from Emloe’s house, carry messages to different parts of the city and, on one occasion, even as far as Canterbury. Emloe seemed to trust him except in one matter. Matthias, like the rest of the henchmen, was strictly excluded from the top gallery of the house. The stairs to this were guarded. Even Dickon, who revelled in gossip and collected as much tittle-tattle as he could, was unable to enlighten Matthias about what happened there.