The House of the Red Slayer

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 altar wine. Afterwards he picked up the jar and gazed suspiciously at the contents.
    ‘It looks,’ he announced to the empty darkness, ‘as if our sexton, Watkin the dung-collector, is sampling the wine!‘ He filled the water bowl for the Lavabo, that part of the Mass when the priest cleanses himself of his sins, and gazed down at the water where thin slivers of ice bobbed. ‘What sins?’ he whispered. The alabaster-skinned face of Benedicta, veiled by her blue-black hair, sprang to mind. Athelstan felt Bonaventure brush against his leg. ‘No sin,’ he whispered to the cat. ‘Surely it is no sin? She’s a friend and I am lonely.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You’re a fool, Athelstan,’ he muttered to himself. ‘You are a priest, what do you expect?’ He continued this line of thought as he finished robing. He had confessed as much to the Father Prior, yet why was he lonely? Despite his moans, Athelstan sought to be loved by the parish and the people he served. But it was his other office, as clerk to Sir John Cranston the coroner, which depressed him. And why? Athelstan absent-mindedly picked up Bonaventure and began to stroke him. He could cope with the violent deaths, the gore and the bloody wounds. It was the others which chilled him — the planned murders, coolly calculated by souls steeped in the black night of mortal sin. Athelstan felt he was on the verge of another such mystery. Something warned him, a sixth sense, as if the evil lurking in the lonely cemetery was waiting to confront him. He stirred himself and kissed Bonaventure on the top of his head.
    ‘There’s Mass to be said.’
    Athelstan went back into the church, glanced up and saw the first light of dawn through the horn-glazed window. He shivered. Despite the braziers, the church was deathly cold. He reached the altar and stared towards the Pyx holding the Blessed Sacrament, Christ under the appearance of bread, swinging under its golden canopy with only a lonely taper on the altar beneath as a sign that God was present. Behind him the door crashed open and Mugwort the bell clerk waddled in, his bald head and quivering red cheeks concealed beneath woollen rags.
    ‘Good morrow, Father!’ he bellowed in a voice Athelstan believed could be heard the length and breadth of the parish.
    The friar closed his eyes and prayed for patience as Mugwort began to pull on the bell — more like a tocsin than a summons to prayer. At last the clatter stopped. Benedicta, shrouded in a brown cloak, slipped into the