The Midnight Man by Paul Doherty

seen, heard and felt in my life. No, no,’ he shook a hand, ‘I am not talking about the present ills of the church, be it the priest who is lecherous or,’ Beauchamp grinned, ‘the friar who might be even more so. God knows we are all sinners, born weak. No, I remember being in one of the King’s
chevauchées
in France. I led a posse of mounted archers into a village south of Rouen. Marauding mercenaries had just swept through.’ Beauchamp blinked, clearing his throat. ‘I shall never forget what I saw.’ His voice fell to a whisper. ‘Corpses stripped, bellies ripped from crotch to throat, men, women and children. The village priest had been hung upside down in his own church; he’d been castrated. Children, babes in arms, lay with their skulls shattered like eggs. I found it difficult to accept a loving God would allow that. So,’ he picked up his goblet, ‘if that is life here on earth, is it any different beyond the veil? Isn’t that what you investigate?’ He glanced sharply at Stephen. ‘Of course, you’re the innocent. You believe different, that we really haven’t lost Eden?’
    â€˜You know he does,’ Anselm retorted. ‘You are the Keeper of the King’s Secrets. You must have heard the gossip, the tittle-tattle, and read the reports? You know more about Stephen and myself than we do about you.’
    â€˜You want to be a Carmelite?’ Beauchamp gestured at Stephen. ‘Do you really? Are you one because of your father, or in spite of him?’
    Stephen felt a flush of anger. He ignored Anselm’s swift intake of breath and moved his arm from the exorcist’s reassuring grasp. Something about Beauchamp, as with Gascelyn, reminded Stephen of his own father. He felt the furies gather.
    â€˜I became a Carmelite . . .’
    Beauchamp abruptly stretched across the table and squeezed Stephen’s hand. ‘I am sorry,’ he soothed placatingly. ‘I know you are the son of a famous, well-respected physician of Winchester.’
    â€˜One who was also famous for being free with both his fist and his cane?’
    â€˜You are also a young man who had visions from an early age, or so they say?’
    â€˜I’m not sure,’ Stephen replied hotly, ‘I was an only child.’ He blinked away the tears of anger. ‘My mother,’ his voice faltered, ‘died young. I remember seeing her, as well as other people who had died. When the church bells tolled, voices whispered to me. Faces and shapes appeared in the dead of night. I would also glimpse them in puffs of incense smoke.’ Stephen paused. ‘My father thought I was moon-touched, fey-spirited. He sent me to the White Friars, the Carmelites at Aylesford. He claimed that I would never follow his profession, which dealt with facts. Do you know something, Beauchamp? The more he pressed me the more intense the visions became. I was glad to be free of him, to hide, to shelter at Aylesford.’
    â€˜And I,’ Anselm intervened, ‘took him under my wing.’ The exorcist smiled across at the novice. ‘Cherished him as I would the apple of my eye.’
    â€˜Or as your own son,’ Beauchamp cut in, ‘the one you lost?’
    â€˜Aye,’ Anselm pulled at his sleeves and stared down the table, ‘the one I lost with his little sister and my beautiful Katerina. You know about the great pestilence sweeping in like the Doomsday angel? In a matter of days my entire family was wiped out. Perhaps I went mad; I certainly lost my wits. To me the world, the very air, became dank. Nothing but visions of death, a yawning darkness. Out of this emerged an old woman with wild hair and glaring eyes wielding a broad-bladed scythe, and behind her a horde of hellish skeletons garbed in moth-gnawed shrouds, their bare-boned faces grinning with malice. Vipers curled in their ribs, clawed hands grasped the heads of the dying. Demons