Page 25 - The Devil's Arsonist

Chapter 10

The Herald’s Visitation

Gilderiche Family Coat of Arms

Sable a Chevron Argent between three Martlets Or
Berners Tomb, St. John the Baptist Church, Finchingfield, Essex

th
Monday Morning 5 December 1994, College of Arms, London
It had been my intention this day, to face my demons with a visit to Hadleigh in Suffolk,
where the good Dr. Rowland Taylor was its rector. But yesterday, fate had dictated otherwise,
returning me unknowingly to Finchingfield, to Pecheys, the manorial home of my ancestors.
Such a truth was greeted with complete disbelief by both myself and my ever-present
drinking companion, ‘Young Ned’; only the haze of drink made us think it true. Yet, this
truth was written within the pages of an authoritative work for all to plainly see. And on the
very next day it was fate’s whim that I should even more strangely learn, that five centuries
and more ago, another William Gilderiche was once the Lord of the Manor there.

On every day that I now wake, this dark puzzle which bewilders and terrifies me, seemed to
become ever more distant from any enlightenment; so much so I began to doubt if its solution
would ever be found at all. For, if the monkey’s riddle be true, it is not just I and the
incarnations of my past that held within our one soul the evil, that is the Devil’s Arsonist. But
within the souls of my own ancestors, the same evil did long ago, also reside, until Pope
Zachary’s ceremony of excommunication was performed: ‘…then by bell, book and candle.
Cast out by him from the bosom. Of our Holie Mother Church here, in Heaven and on earth.’
It was this last twist and turn of thought that made my mind a maze, which decided that I
instead should travel to London on a quest learn of all I could of my ancestors, the
Gilderiches of Pecheys Manor; else I feared there will be no escape from my visions. I also
did decide to take an easy route through this maze of my mind; not following its blind alleys;
but over its high walls; for I had little patience, or time nor sanity left to waste on fruitless
pursuits.