Nightshade

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‘The well-fed body and delicate complexion are a tunic for the worms and hell fire!’ Brother Gratian, a Dominican of the Order of Preachers, shook one bony hand free from the sleeve of his black and white gown. A finger, thin and pointed as a bodkin, jabbed up at the lowering grey skies as if the threatening snow clouds would break to reveal Christ, seated in glory and surrounded by angels wielding swords of fire, coming to judge the people of Mistleham in the King’s shire of Essex. Some of that market town’s citizens would sagely agree that such a Day of Doom was just. For had not Mistleham become a haven of murder and mayhem? The Dominican’s powerful voice rang out, cutting like a hiss of steel across the marketplace crowded in by town houses, the guildhall and the brooding mass of St Alphege’s, the parish church, with its four-square crenellated tower, grey brick and grimacing gargoyles. The dirt-strewn, slippery cobbles echoed to the usual sounds of carts rumbling and horses clattering, their sharpened hooves sparking the stone. Peasants trodwearily as they moved from one stall to the next, looking to barter or to purchase. Now all fell eerily silent under the preacher’s eloquent voice: even the bailiffs gathered around the stocks, waiting to imprison a huddle of malefactors, paused in their shouting and cursing. Raucous laughter at an adulterer forced to carry a prostitute on his shoulders to the stocks, her skirt pulled up, bare legs swinging, faded abruptly away. The Dominican’s voice rang as clear as the sacristy bell that announced the elevation of the host during mass, the ice-cold morning air serving as God’s silver trumpet for this preacher, Lord Scrope’s personal chaplain and confessor.

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