The Crowfield Curse (10 page)

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen years, last Easter.”

“Are you an oblate?”

William shook his head. Oblates were children given to religious houses, to be brought up in the ways of the abbey or nunnery. Thankfully he had been spared
that
fate. “I was orphaned and taken in by the abbey. I'm a servant.”

He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. The heat from the fire warmed his legs, a painfully pleasant feeling. He wanted to turn and hold his hands out to the flames, to feel the aching chill leave his bones.

“Did your family live in Weforde?” Master Bone continued.

William frowned, wondering where all this was leading. “We lived in Iwele. My father was the miller.” He paused. Master Bone seemed to be waiting for more. “The mill burned down over a year ago.”

“Is Iwele near the abbey?”

William shrugged. “A day and a half's walk away.”

“Do you ever leave the abbey? Perhaps to go into the woods hereabouts?”

What a strange question
, William thought. “I often go to the Wednesday market in Weforde with Brother Gabriel, and I collect firewood and take the abbey pigs to forage in Foxwist Wood.”

William glanced at Shadlok, who was standing behind his master's chair. He was watching William with a disturbing intensity. The firelight lit his face and William saw him clearly for the first time. The scars on his cheeks and neck were old, just thin white lines against his pale skin. They looked like slashes from a blade. The man's eyes, deep-set above sharply jutting cheekbones, were ice blue. There was something about them that made William shiver. An unsettling thought slid into his mind: They were the eyes of a wild animal, not a man.

William looked away, but he could still feel Shadlok's cold, unblinking stare. It was as if he could see inside William's head and was picking through his thoughts and memories.

William edged away from the fireside. “I have to see to the horses,” he said, glancing at the yard door, anxious to be away from the guest chamber and its strange occupants.

“Very well. We will talk again.” Jacobus Bone lifted a hand in dismissal. The cuff of his long sleeve slipped back just far enough to reveal part of his hand. Or what was left of it. William stared at the stumps of two fingers and a thumb and caught his breath in shock.

Jacobus Bone was a leper. That was why he wore the mask, to hide what the disease had done to his face.

William met Master Bone's steady gaze and felt the blood burn up into his cheeks. His first impulse was to turn and run from the room. Hot waves of horror washed over him as he remembered how he had handled Master Bone's possessions, his bedding and the golden lute. He had touched everything that leprous body had touched. He shuddered and took a step back from the man in the chair.

The thought of the lute was like a thump in the middle of William's chest. He would never hear it being played now.

William turned and walked quickly to the door. He glanced back once before he left the room. Master Bone and Shadlok were still watching him, silent and unmoving. It was a relief to close the door behind him and set off across the yard, to lead the horses to the stables.

Why had Prior Ardo allowed a leper to live alongside his monks? It seemed very out of character for the usually cautious prior. Then he remembered the snatch of conversation he'd overheard between the prior and Brother Gabriel. The prior had mentioned being paid for something. Was it to let Master Bone stay at the abbey?

William lit the lantern just inside the stable door. He led the horses into stalls and took off their bridles and saddles. He dried their damp flanks with straw, rubbing their chilled bodies to warm them. The abbey's solitary horse, Matilda, whinnied softly to the new arrivals. William fed his two charges and gave the elderly gray mare an extra couple of handfuls of oats.

When the horses were settled for the night, William stood in the stable doorway and stared uneasily out into the darkness. He had the oddest feeling that there were things moving through the fog, slipping silently and unseen across the yard toward the abbey. He thought he could feel the passing of fleet-footed bodies, disturbing the damp air so that it swirled through the light from the lantern and brushed William's face like deathly cold fingers.

Alarmed, he quickly stepped back into the stable and closed the door. Nothing would persuade him to leave the stable until he was sure that they had gone, whoever or whatever they were.

Shivering as much from fear as cold, William huddled in a corner of Matilda's stall, glad of the mare's warm and solid presence. She whickered softly and nuzzled his hair with her lips. William smiled and reached up to stroke her soft nose.

The abbey no longer felt like a safe place to be. Shadows seemed to be gathering around its cold stone walls, a darkness that went beyond the presence of a leper and his pale-eyed manservant. Strange things were afoot. William knew he would have to keep his wits about him in the coming days.

C
HAPTER
ELEVEN

 

 

W
illiam was woken from a bad dream shortly before dawn by the
clang-clang
of the bell for lauds. He had slept badly and was bleary-eyed with tiredness as he rolled up his mattress and carried it through to the storeroom beside the kitchen. He riddled the embers on the hearth and added branches to get the fire going. Pulling up his hood, he hurried across the yard to fetch water.

The fog had lifted during the night, and the morning was gray and damp and very hard on the spirits. William yawned and stretched sleep-stiffened muscles as he stood for a few minutes by the well. Light showed around the edges of the shutters covering the windows of the guest quarters. He thought of Jacobus Bone, sitting in the chair by the fire or lying in the carved bed beneath velvet coverlets, and a shiver went through him. The thought of having to take water and firewood to the guest quarters every day filled him with dread.

As soon as the monks were at mass, William took two apples and a small piece of cheese from the storeroom beside the kitchen. He wrapped them in a napkin, with a piece of bread left over from the previous day's baking. The crust was as hard as stone but it was still reasonably soft inside. He tucked the bundle of food inside his tunic and set off for the workshop.

The hob was standing on a stool beside the table. He was grinding something in the stone mortar with a pestle. His face was puckered into a frown of concentration and he took no notice when William came into the hut.

“What are you doing?” William asked, peering into the mortar.

The hob glanced up at William. “That is a stupid question.”

“I mean,” William said, “what's
that
?” He nodded to the green, pungent-smelling paste in the bottom of the stone bowl.

“Wolfsbane root. The snail brother tries to hide it, but his bones ache. This will help him.”

The hob's knowledge of plants rivaled that of the monk. Indeed, Brother Snail had confided in William that he had learned a great deal from Brother Walter over the last few days and would be sorry to see him leave. Not that the hob seemed in a hurry to go anywhere, William noticed. He had made himself quite at home in the hut, and could get around surprisingly well with the help of the crutch William had made from a forked ash branch. He was healing quickly and had expressed an interest in seeing the rest of the abbey, much to William's alarm.

William took the napkin of food from his tunic and put it on the table. The hob put the pestle down and inspected the contents of the napkin. “No hazelnuts?”

“Sorry, no. There is a small basket of nuts in the storeroom, but Brother Martin will know if I've taken any and he won't be happy.”

“The brother with the slow wits, he was digging a grave hole yesterday,” the hob said, picking up a small green glazed pot and pouring a few drops of almond oil into the ground-up roots in the mortar. “Who is it for?”

“Abbot Simon. He's dying. The prior thought it would be a good idea to dig the grave while the ground is soft, before the frosts return.”

“You bury all your dead together in fields of graves,” the hob said, his small leathery face wrinkling thoughtfully as he looked up at William, “but you do not do it for other creatures. Why is that?”

William squatted down by the fire and warmed his hands. Why did Brother Walter have to ask so many difficult questions?

“I suppose,” he began slowly, thinking about it, “we don't bury pigs and sheep, birds, cattle, and fish because they're food. They're not the same as people,” he finished with a shrug.

The hob turned to look down at William, the golden-green eyes widening in astonishment. “They are just the same in here,” he said, patting his chest.

“They don't talk or think like us,” William said. “They have no souls.”

The hob wiped his paws on a rag and climbed awkwardly down off the stool. He tucked the fork of the crutch under his arm and limped over to the hearth to stand in front of William. “I can talk, and I have a spirit that will never die, but I am not human.”

William was feeling more uncomfortable by the minute. “But you're . . . different. Not animal, not human.”

“So would you bury me in your field of graves with the brother men if I died today?” he asked.

“Eh, no, probably not,” William muttered, feeling himself redden.

“Why not? Because I am not as important as the brother men? I do not
matter
, perhaps?”

“You aren't a Christian creature,” William said. “You can't be buried in a churchyard if you are not Christian.”

“Why?”

“Because only Christian souls go to heaven.” That was what the priest at Iwele had told him, so it must be true, William thought, though he was no longer quite so certain of that. The hob's questions were forcing him to look harder at things he had accepted without a second thought before.

“So where do you think all the other spirits go?” The hob lowered himself onto the floor and eased his injured leg into a comfortable position.

“I don't know,” William said. It was one more thing he had never thought about.

The hob shook his head. “You know so little, human. One day, I will take you to the woods and show you where they go.”

William did not like the sound of this. “They're all in the woods?”

The hob glared at him and made an impatient sound. “Tcha!”

Which told William nothing. He had a disturbing vision of huge herds of ghostly animals roaming through Foxwist, all the creatures hunted and slaughtered for food over the years, though he had never seen as much as a ghostly whisker there before. Perhaps the hob had magical powers and could make him see things he normally missed.

The hob turned his attention to picking bits of straw and dried leaves from his fur. “Maybe that is why the brother men buried the winged creature in the wood. They did not want its spirit near their abbey.”

William frowned at him. “What winged creature?” As he said it, he remembered what he had overheard by the abbey gate: an angel, dead and buried. His heart began to beat a little faster. “
What
winged creature?”

“It was shot with an arrow and it died in the snow out in the woods, one midwinter, many years ago. I do not know what manner of creature it was.”

“What did it look like?” William asked. Surely it could not really have been an angel?

“I did not see it, but I heard it was as high as this hut.” The hob pointed to the roof rafters. “It had skin the color of shadows on snow, and feathered wings from its shoulders to its feet.”

“It was an angel,” William said softly, a shiver going down his spine.

“A nangel?” the hob said with a questioning frown.

“They live in heaven with God,” William explained. “They serve Him.”

The hob was quiet for a while. His ears twitched like a cat's as he puzzled this over. Something was clearly troubling him. “If they live with your god, then they must be very important.”