House of the Red Slayer Read Free

dung-collector’s wife had wound round the great broad pillars. Athelstan was pleased. The roof was mended, the windows glazed with horn. ‘More like a church now,’ he muttered, ‘than a long, dark tunnel with holes in the walls.’ Soon Advent would be over. The greenery had been placed there to welcome the newborn Christ. ‘Evergreen,’ the friar murmured. ‘For the evergreen Lord.’ A small shadow, deeper than the rest, slunk from the darkened aisle.
    ‘You always know when to appear, Bonaventura.’
    The great tom cat padded across, stopped and stretched in front of Athelstan, then brushed imploringly against the friar’s black robe. Athelstan glanced down.
    ‘No mice here,’ he whispered. ‘Thank God!’
    He’d never forget how Ranulf the rat-catcher had secreted traps in the rushes and Cecily had caught her toe in one of them as she cleaned the church one morning. Athelstan had lived for thirty years and served with soldiers, but never had he heard such a litany of ripe oaths as those which had poured from Cecily’s pretty mouth.
    The friar crouched and picked up the cat, studying the great black and white face, the tattered ears. ‘Bonaventura the Great Mouser,’ he murmured. ‘So you have come for your reward.’ Athelstan went into one of the darkened transepts and took a bowl of freezing milk and sliced pilchard from the windowsill. ‘Whose life is more rewarding, Bonaventura,’ he murmured as he crouched to feed the animal, ‘a torn cat’s in Southwark or that of a Dominican monk who likes the stars but has to work in the mud?’
    The cat blinked back, squatted down and gobbled the food from a pewter platter, one eye alert on a small flurry where the rushes lay thick against a pillar. Athelstan returned to the bottom of the sanctuary steps, knelt, crossed himself and began the first prayer of Divine Office.
    ‘Veni, veni, Emmanuel!’ Come, O come, Emmanuel!
    When would Christ come again? Athelstan idly wondered. To heal the wounds and enforce justice . . . No. He closed his eyes. He’d sworn an oath he wouldn’t think of Cranston; he wouldn’t dwell on that fat red face and balding head, those mischievous blue eyes, and the great girth which would drain a vineyard dry. He remembered the old story about the devil collecting all the half-hearted prayers of priests, gathering every missing word in a bag for Judgment Day. Athelstan closed his eyes and breathed deeply to calm himself.
    He finished his psalms then went into the small, freezing cold sacristy. Washing his hands at the lavarium, he looked round. ‘Not purple vestments today,’ he murmured, and opened the great missal. ‘Today is the Feast of St Lucy.’ He unlocked the battered cupboard door and plucked out the gold-covered chasuble with a scarlet cross embroidered in the centre. Unlike the musty cupboard, the chasuble was new and fragrant-smelling. He marvelled at the handiwork and thought of its maker, the widow Benedicta. ‘As beautiful as she is,’ he murmured. ‘Sorry, sorry!’ He whispered an apology for his own distraction and said the prayers which every priest must recite as he dresses for Mass.
    Athelstan had trained himself. He knew the dark shadows in his soul threatened to rise and interrupt his morning routine. He must not think of them. The small window in the sacristy clattered as its shutter banged against it. Athelstan started. It was still black as night outside in the cemetery, God’s Acre, with its broken wooden crosses guarding the mounds of soil where the ancestors of the good people of the parish slept their eternal dream, waiting for Christ to come again. Yet Athelstan knew there was something else out there. Some dark evil thing which committed terrible blasphemies by dragging corpses from the soil.
    The friar shook himself free from his morbid reverie. He opened the strong box and took out the chalice and paten. He placed the white communion wafers on a plate and half filled the goblet with