The Abbot's Gibbet (3 page)

But Hugo took his vocation seriously. He rejected the world of money, of influence, of worldly goods. It was his duty—a solemn, holy duty—to save the souls of the sinners he saw each day.

“Brother?”

Hugo turned. It was the man who had stood by him as 12

Michael Jecks

he preached. The friar gave a faint smile. If only one was prepared to listen, that was at least something. “Yes?”

“Is it right that a man should take money from another when he doesn’t need it?”

“Christ taught us that money is evil. It’s right that a man who creates a barrel should be rewarded for his labor, the same as a man who makes a tapestry, or a millwheel, but making money from money is a sin. If a man takes money he has not himself earned from his own labor, he is guilty of avarice, and that is a sin.”

Some of the crowd had returned, hoping that the friar was to be the target of ridicule. A little boy with a stick poked Hugo’s side, and he gently ruffled the lad’s head. “There’s too much hankering after riches in this world. Look at this boy—he doesn’t care for money. He doesn’t need bells of jewels or gold. He is content. If there was no greed for money, the world would be freed of much of its discord.”

At the sound of steps he faced the road through the woods again. “My friends, repent of your sins. Do you realize your peril? St. Jerome said . . .”

“Shut up, priest. We don’t need your sort to preach at us.” The speaker was a tall, swarthy character, with skin burned from wind and sun. He traipsed along at the head of a group of four, all dressed in cheap tunics and hose, and all armed with clubs and swords like men-at-arms. “We know how religious you and your brethren are, eating meat every day and taking whichever woman takes your fancy.”

“My son, I eat little meat, only some fish. Does my belly look as if I live on meat and wine? But your soul, if you come to the fair to fill your pockets, will be eating the devil’s food. If you come to make profits from other men’s labor, I will . . .”

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“Shut up, old fool.” The man shoved Hugo out of the way. “We haven’t time to listen to your prating.”

“Come on, leave him alone, he’s doing no harm.” Hugo was gripped by the elbows and lifted from the roadway. The man who had questioned him now stood between him and the four. “He’s only trying to help people.”

“We don’t need his kind of help,” said the spokesman. “We’re watchmen—from Denbury—here to keep the peace, and if you get in our way you’ll not see the fair except through the clink’s bars.”

“Well, in case you don’t find me, my name is Roger Torre. I’d be happy for you to try to take me to the jail now, but . . .” he jerked a thumb toward the town “. . . you might find it hard to carry me so far. I’m heavy.”

Hugo could hear the light tone of Torre’s voice, but his stance betrayed his readiness. The watchman curled his lip, but was in no mood for a fight after walking over ten miles already that day. He shouldered his club. “I’m Long Jack. If you cross me, I’ll make sure you regret it.”

“I doubt it,” Torre said cheerily, and stood back to let them pass.

On they trudged, and Hugo watched them disappear down the slope. “Thank you, my friend, for speaking for me, but don’t put yourself in danger to protect me.”

“I reckon you need someone to look after you, brother. But enough! Come with me, and I’ll buy you some beer. I want to talk to you about money.”

- 2 O f all the roads he’d travelled since the murders, this one, with the unwanted

memories insinuating themselves into

his mind, felt the most ominous.

The trees met overhead, their branches intermingling to shut out the light and creating a cavern of twilight beneath. Here in the gloom lay the road. In the oppressive, muggy heat of late August, the horses’

hooves and harnesses sounded dull. Soft grass underfoot deadened the tramping feet. The rumble of the wagon wheels, the squeaking of the axles and chains, the hollow rattle of pans knocking together, all sounded dead to him, as if he was riding on in a dream in which the pictures were distinct but all noise had been killed. Many years ago this environment had given him peace. Now it represented only danger. As the track began to rise, he could remember that last journey as distinctly as if it had been last week, not years ago. It felt as if the road was taking him back to his past, and it was with a mixture of fear and hope that he jolted along. Both struggled to overcome him, but he kept his face expressionless. His fellow travellers could not guess at his emotions.

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It was nearly twenty years ago, he recalled. Yet after so long, the smells and sounds were still familiar. This was the place of his birth. These were the smells of his childhood: herbs, peat fires, the tang of cattle in their yards, the musky stench of humans. Even the reek from the midden was oddly poignant.

Now, over the creaking and thundering of the wagons, he could hear other noises. There was hammering and shouting, the rasp of saws through wood, and echoing thuds as axes sliced into boughs. They were the noises of his youth, the cacophony of business as could be heard in any thriving borough, but in these surroundings they gave him a feeling of release, as if he was at last being freed from his isolation. He came into the sun and stared down along the valley. The view was one he had held fixed in his mind over all the hundreds of miles since he had managed to escape. His nose caught a faint peatiness in the air, and he snuffed the breeze with a quick pleasure, like a spaniel scenting game, before the other memories flashed back into his mind and his face took on its customary blank hardness. The wind was welcome. It was almost the feast of St. Rumon, at the end of a hot summer, and the soft gusts were pleasant, cooling the sweat on the traveller’s body as he glanced at his companions. Few among them could know how vicious and deadly those same winds would be in the dead of winter. He did; he had seen how the chill winter blast could kill men out on the moors.

But his thoughts were not bent toward the weather. With every foot and yard he covered, he could feel the memories rushing back to engulf him: her face, screaming; the bloody axe; the taunting cries and jeers 16

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as he ran from them—and later the disbelief that he should be the one accused, the one arrested for the inevitable trial, the one to be hanged. He could see the gibbet in his mind’s eye: a stark shape among the softly moving trees at either side. It had been dusk when he first saw it, and as he had passed it with his father, it had squeaked in protest to the wind, and made him shiver. It sounded eerie and evil. In later years he had rarely glanced at it—there were so many up and down the country—yet once riding back from Oakhampton, he heard it creaking and moaning in the gusts, and when he looked, the trees were waving their branches in a sinuous dance as if beckoning him. He had been fixed with a sudden horror, as if the gallows were calling to him alone. At the time he must have been Hankin’s age. He glanced at the boy. Hankin sat on the cart, reins slack in his hands, nodding somnolently under the effects of the warm sun and the quart of good ale he had drunk for his lunch. Hankin was the orphan of an English merchant in Bayonne, and when no one else would look after the lad, he had taken him on as apprentice. Hankin in some way filled the gap left by his wife, who had died from a hemorrhage while pregnant with their first-born, and he liked to think his own son would have been much the same, quick to learn and self-confident.

They were coming out of the woods now, and he slowed, to the loud disgust of the men and women behind, as he stared down at the town. In the late afternoon of a summer’s day, it was a scene of perfect tranquility. From this direction, the valley looked like a wide saucer of land. The river was a glittering band cutting through the countryside like a The Abbot’s Gibbet

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curving steel ribbon. Smoke rose from the houses and hamlets dotted around the small plain, and the gray moorstone blocks of the church and Abbey stood somehow indistinct in the haze. The towers rose spectacularly, gaunt and bold in their great simplicity. Little could compare with their stark squareness; their very regularity was a testament to their holy design. Nearby buildings were dwarfed.

Trees bordered the pasture, and rose up the slopes of the little hillocks. It looked as if the meadows and strip fields were isolated and surrounded by encroaching woods, whereas in reality the trees were being forced ever backward as the Abbey’s lands expanded. Every year the monks, farmers and burgesses had more of the massive trunks cut down for firewood or furniture, leaving space for sheep and cattle to colonize. The process was more or less complete, with the fringe of trees pushed so far back that only their topmost branches could be discerned over the rolling hills. His horse moved skittishly beneath him as the heavily laden wagons passed by, and he dismounted and walked a short way from the track, sitting and staring down the valley.

It felt odd to be able to see once again the place where he had lived. It was his home, and the view brought a constriction to his throat, as if a ball of food had stuck. He swallowed but it wouldn’t go away: he had an urge to hurry forward, as though the intervening years would dissipate and he would be renewed to youth when he arrived at the town. To eyes used to strange foreign cities, it was a curiously unexceptional scene, a commonplace outlook he knew well; yet it was also charged with danger, and he was aware of the latent menace represented by the huddles of cottages. 18

Michael Jecks

Staring at it, the muscles of his face set once more into their familiar mask. The loathing stirred again in his breast for the people who had forced him from his land and destroyed his life.

With a decisiveness he did not feel, he climbed back onto his horse and cantered to Hankin’s wagon. There was a relief at rejoining the travellers. Among them he felt screened, obscured by their numbers—just one more merchant on his way to a fair. There was no point in delaying; he had waited too long already. Now all he wanted was to hurry to get there, to see the man he had come so far, and at such risk, to see. With that thought he smiled and continued down the plain toward the Abbey.

Jordan Lybbe had returned.

The roof was ripped apart piece by piece while David Holcroft stood and watched, distaste twisting his features as the squares of rotten wood were tossed, spinning, to join the pile before him. Each time he heard one crack, he winced. The little shed was essential for the fair. It was here that the merchants would pay their tolls for the privilege of selling their goods. Tavistock Fair would attract people from as far away as Castile, and it was his responsibility, as port-reeve, to make sure it was ready.

There was no need to have so many men, he knew, but if he let one go, the others would plead their own cases, and soon he’d have nobody. They scrambled all over, getting in each other’s way and snapping shingles not already ruined. Each was fitted with a pair of dowels which hooked onto the lathes running along the rafters, and as the men worked along the pitch, he could see the wood splintering where the pegs fitted. The Abbot’s Gibbet

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They’d be lucky to rescue any, the way these cretins were working.

“Sir? The Abbot wondered . . .”

David Holcroft turned suspiciously. A youth stood by him, grinning. The Abbot’s official kept his voice low and calm, but it was evident enough to the lad that Holcroft was controlling his frustration with an effort.

“Yes, yes. The Abbot wants to know when we’ll have this job finished so he can be sure to earn as much as possible, and he’s told you to come and see that I’m getting everything sorted out. Well, you can tell him from me that I’m standing here making sure these idle whelps get on with things, and the more interruptions there are, the slower the job will be!”

“I’m sorry, sir, I was only asked to—”

“To come over here and make my life a misery. Look, it’s hard enough keeping the lazy buggers from the alehouse without having Abbot Robert sending his messengers across every few moments. What does he think I’m doing, eh? Sitting in a tavern and supping ale? He asked me to ensure that the booth was ready, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. But when you report back, you can tell him that there are other things for me to see to, like making sure the shambles are laid out, and seeing to the weights and measures. Even the tron hasn’t been checked yet.”

He shot a glance at the men, keen to be away. The tron was the huge beam used to weigh goods. It had to be tested to make sure it was accurate, and that was just one more chore he must do when this nonsense was completed. With relief he saw that the shingles were all piled on the ground, and that most of the men had come down from the roof. Only two remained sitting on the walls, beating the panelling away from the 20

Michael Jecks

frames with their hammers. “Why didn’t I get this done before?” he asked himself aloud now.

“There’s so much to be done through the year, sir. Things like this are always forgotten till the last minute,” the messenger said encouragingly.

“It should have been done by Andrew last year,”

David muttered, but he knew the work should have been done by
him. He
was the port-reeve. Many looked on the job as a sinecure. It only lasted twelve months, being an annual appointment by the Abbot’s steward, the port-reeve being selected from two or three names put forward by the town’s jury, and as well as the allowance of a couple of shillings, there was freedom from the year’s taxes. But after almost twelve months, David was worn out by his duties. The port-reeve was the man who arranged the conduct of the fairs and markets. He had to tie together all the little details and make sure they went smoothly, to the Abbey’s profit. The port-reeve must witness any large trades, ensure that the watchmen behaved, tally up any sums owed, tell the beadle of any amercements that must be collected . . . in short, he was responsible for any problem, no matter when it might occur. There was no blaming Andrew, last year’s incumbent, for not rebuilding the booth. It had been leaning when David was elected at Michaelmas last year, and now it was almost St. Rumon’s Day. From the end of September until now, the end of August, he had never found time to see to its refurbishment. In fact, it had slipped his mind completely until the Abbot reminded him the night before. He’d been with the Abbey’s steward finalizing plans for the layout of the livestock pens when the Abbot had entered.