Dove Amongst the Hawks by Paul Doherty

Author:Paul Doherty
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780755395897
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2013-06-06T04:00:00+00:00

Letter 5

Luke, Physician, to Brother Stephen, monk at Aylesford Priory in Kent. Health and greetings.

Sweet Christ, and I mean no blasphemy, but let me get rid of all the courtesies and courtly conventions. We are brothers. Indeed, you are my confessor. I can tell you what happens for, despite Blanche’s determined appeal to tell her the truth, how can I? This matter is now muddy and murky like some stagnant pool, calm and still on the surface but, once stirred, all the evil vapours and dirt rise to the top. Or, like some city whore, clothed in her paint and gilted garb but the white paint disguises sores, and the carmine lips hide rows of blackened teeth. So, too, with this business. Perhaps it was Clarence’s words or maybe my argument with Blanche or the death of Cantrone but a week after I wrote my last letter to you, Stephen, I spent days listing what I knew.

The danger had begun with Ashby’s sudden death. Strange, one night I dreamt of him. A nightmare. An evil phantasm brought by some succubus or other demon from hell. I was on a wild, desolate plain, the ground a fine white sand, the sky purple-red. In the middle of this plain was a huge castle built of iron, its windows empty and across a drawbridge a massive door which kept swinging open and shut. I went in and along a darkened passageway and found myself in a chamber. I thought the walls were covered in velvet but found, on closer inspection, that they were the living bodies of rats massed together. In my dream I sat down at a table, long and dark, either end stretching into infinity. In the middle of this table stood a huge jar of pure glass filled with water, the kind used to put some morsel or organ cut from a body but in my nightmare, the glass was large enough to take a man’s corpse. I saw Ashby floating there, his face pressed against the glass, eyes staring and wisps of hair streaming round him like some shabby halo: fat lips opening and shutting like the fish in the pond he was drowned in. He was shouting at me but I could not hear. I wanted to free him but I could not move. His hands beat against the glass as his face took on a mottled hue. I felt every gasp he took as if my own breath was being cut away.

I woke sweating and screaming. Blanche could not comfort me, so I rose and went downstairs to my own chamber. I poured a goblet of wine and sat in the darkness. I remembered Santander, a Morisco physician from Cordobo who had laughingly dismissed dreams as signs or warnings, stroking his goatee beard, he smilingly protested how most dreams are caused by humours which rise from what we eat or, in the case of those who see visions, what we do not eat. However, he added, dreams are often our cares or anxieties which come back to haunt us.

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