The Crowfield Curse (2 page)

The hob shook his head again. “Nobody.”

“Then it'll have to be Brother Snail at the abbey.”

“Mends hobs, does he?” The hob squinted up at him, a pinched expression on his face. William got the feeling the creature did not greatly trust humans. “
Likes
hobs, does he?”

“I don't think he's ever met one,” William said, after a moment's thought. “But I know he will do what he can to help you, whatever you are.”

The hob seemed to consider this. He winced as another wave of pain hit him, and that seemed to help him make up his mind. “Very well,” the creature gasped breathlessly, “I will come with you.”

William hid the firewood he had been collecting under a low, sweeping branch of the fallen tree. As soon as he had made sure the hob was in the capable hands of the abbey infirmarer, he would hurry back to retrieve it. This part of Foxwist Wood was on abbey land, and villagers from Weforde and Yagleah were not allowed to gather wood here, but that rarely stopped them. Any doubt he might have had that the villagers used the wood as their own was banished by the sight of the iron trap. They were not permitted to hunt in Foxwist, either, but a handful of them clearly did, safe in the certainty that Prior Ardo would not do a thing about it.

The hob could barely manage to struggle to his feet, so William picked him up and carried him.

The track to the abbey wove its way through the wood and dipped down into a shallow valley. A river meandered through low-lying flood meadows, a glint of pewter shining in the winter sun between the reed beds. On a rise of ground beside it stood the gray stone buildings of Crowfield Abbey.

The abbey was small and as poor as grave dirt. It had been William's home for a year and a half now: long enough for him to know there were few amongst the monks who would look upon the hob with anything less than deep suspicion. He would need to smuggle the creature into Brother Snail's workshop without being seen. Luckily, as he crossed the bridge over the river, the bell for tierce clanged out clear and sharp, calling the monks to the church. Tierce, closely following High Mass, would be short, with just a few psalms sung, and immediately afterward the monks would file into the chapter house to deal with the matters of the day. That would keep them safely out of the way and busy for a goodly while, long enough for William to settle the injured creature in the workshop and hurry back to Foxwist to collect the firewood.

They reached the gatehouse and William pushed open the wicket door to one side of the main gate. He peered around the edge of the door and saw that the yard between the gatehouse and the kitchen was empty, except for a few hens scraping about on the frozen mud. Wrapping a corner of his jacket around the hob, William hurried over to the kitchen door, slipping and skidding on the icy puddles. He let himself in.

So far so good: As he had hoped, there was nobody around. The kitchen was empty. It would be a while yet before Brother Martin started to bake the day's bread and prepare the pottage for dinner.

The thought of food, even Brother Martin's vegetable pottage, made William's mouth water. Hunger rarely left him and he often daydreamed about the hare stew and mutton broth his mother used to cook, before a fire at the mill had claimed the lives of his parents and younger brother and sister. Quickly, he put the memory of that terrible night out of his thoughts. His old life had died in the fire with his family and now he had to make the best of this new life. It wasn't what he would have chosen for himself, but at least he had a roof over his head and food in his belly. For now, that was enough.

A fire burned on the hearth in the middle of the room, directly below the soot-blackened smoke hole in the roof. The kitchen was one of only a couple of rooms in the whole abbey that had a fire, and it was never allowed to go out. William paused beside it for a moment, wishing he could stay longer, but he could not risk the hob being discovered. A broken leg would be the least of his worries if Brother Martin caught sight of him.

William opened the door to the cloister and listened. The sound of singing came from the church, thin and distant: too few voices lost in the huge stone emptiness of the abbey church. He hurried along the cloister alley to the narrow passage between the church and the chapter house, and out into the monks' graveyard. A path led away to his right, to the vegetable garden and the dovecot. Beyond it, fringed by reeds, was the abbey fishpond, and to one side of that, half hidden beneath the branches of a blackthorn tree, stood a small, reed-thatched timber hut. It was here that Brother Snail prepared potions and salves from the plants he grew in the abbey garden and gathered in the fields and woods around the abbey.

Peter Borowe, Crowfield's only lay brother, was busy pulling up leeks in the vegetable garden, working them loose from the frozen earth with a hoe and throwing them into a nearby basket. He straightened up and waved when he saw William. His face and hands were red from the cold. He leaned his elbow on the top of the hoe and blew into his cupped fingers to warm them.

William swore under his breath, but he waved back as he made his way quickly along the path to the door of the hut. He lifted the latch and went inside, closing and bolting the door behind him.

He was reasonably sure Peter would not follow him, but with Peter, you could never be entirely certain what he would do. A grown man of twenty years, he had the simplicity and mind of a child. The world he lived in was very different from the real world around him, and sometimes he forgot what he was supposed to be doing. He liked William because he was one of the few people at the abbey who took the time to sit and talk to him, but right now that was the last thing William wanted.

“You should be safe here,” William said, setting the hob down carefully beside the stone-lined fire pit in the middle of the floor. The fire was covered with a large pottery
couvre-feu
, a domed lid with holes poked through it, to stop stray sparks landing on the wooden floor or a basket or sack and setting fire to the hut.

William wrapped a rag around the handle on top of the lid and lifted it aside. He added a few pieces of wood to the embers.

“Can I trust you to watch the fire,” William asked, “while I go back and fetch the wood? I won't be long. You can rest here in the warm.”

The hob nodded and looked around, his eyes full of curiosity in spite of his pain. “I will watch your fire. Where is the snail brother? The one you said would help?”

“In church, for tierce.”

The hob frowned. “What is a tierce?”

“It's not a what, it's a when. It's one of the times during the day when the monks go to the church to pray and sing.”

The hob slowly eased his leg into a more comfortable position. “Why?”

William was a little startled by the question. It was not something he had ever thought about. He had always simply accepted the monks' routine of prayer and work. “That's just what they do. They're monks,” he added with a shrug, as if that explained everything. It clearly didn't, not to the hob anyway.

“Are they singing because they are happy?”

“I suppose so, in a way. They're praising God.”

“And they can only do that by singing?” The hob put his head on one side and gazed up at William.

“Of course not,” William said. “They pray and work and copy holy books with writing and small pictures in them.”

“That is what their god wants them to do for him?” The creature sounded surprised. He was quiet for a moment. “What does he do with all the books?”

William felt a flicker of impatience. He had more than enough work of his own waiting for him; he did not have time to try and explain things to the hob that he did not fully understand himself. “The monks don't give the books to God, and before you ask anything else, I have to go. Wait here and don't touch anything. I will be back as quickly as I can.”

The hob lay down on his side and curled his tail over his body. “Very well.”

William hesitated for a couple of moments. Was it safe to leave the creature here? What if Peter came in unexpectedly and startled him? What would he do?

“It might be a good idea, if anyone comes to the hut, for you to hide,” he suggested.

“Humans cannot usually see me,” the hob said, “unless I choose to let them, or if they have the Sight.” The creature closed his eyes. William felt a flicker of worry. The hob was in terrible pain and he had lost a lot of blood. What if he died before Brother Snail could do anything to help him?

Well, everything dies, sooner or later
, William thought, a bleakness of spirit wrapping itself around him like a fog. When your time came, that was that. It was just the way of things.

William pulled up his hood, tucking the long strands of his untidy blond hair inside, and walked to the door. What had started out as an ordinary November day had taken a very strange turn indeed. He just hoped he hadn't made a mistake in bringing the creature to the abbey.

C
HAPTER
TWO

 

 

W
illiam left the hut and set off back to the abbey. Peter looked up hopefully as he passed by, but William did not stop to talk. He did not have time. He merely waved and broke into a run, heading for the passageway into the cloister.

The monks had left the church and were now in the chapter house. William heard Prior Ardo's voice as he passed the door, low and monotonous, reading the day's chapter from St. Benedict's Rule. According to Brother Snail, it sometimes took an effort of will to stay awake during one of Prior Ardo's readings. “I think God sent the prior to us to test our patience and our devotion to Him,” Snail had once told William, a sly twinkle in his eye. “And I fear we don't always do too well.”

William jogged back to Foxwist. He reached the fallen tree and was relieved to find the bundle of firewood still hidden beneath the branch. He hefted it onto his back, threading his fingers through the hemp rope he had tied it with, and turned to go. But then he paused. The trap. He could not leave it here to be used to maim or kill some other hapless creature.

William lowered the firewood again, twisting his body to let it drop from his back and grunting with the effort.

The trap lay where he had left it, its jaws still gripping the branch he'd forced it open with. For a few moments William wondered what to do with it. If he hid the trap, someone might find it and use it again. He could not bury it because the ground was frozen as hard as stone. He needed to get rid of it altogether.

An idea suddenly occurred to him. There was one place where the trap would be safely out of reach for good, one place nobody would go anywhere near, day or night: the Whistling Hollow. Even the track from Yagleah to Weforde looped out of its way to avoid it.

William hesitated for a few moments. His heart beat a little more quickly with the first stirrings of fear. What if the stories he had heard about the Whistling Hollow were true? What if he heard the strange whistling sound that local people believed called up the Wild Hunt? It was all too easy to imagine the pack of ghostly hounds, red eyes glowing, jaws gaping, as they chased terrified victims through the wood to tear their immortal souls from their bodies and carry them off to hell.

William swallowed a couple of times and licked his dry lips. It would only take a moment to throw the trap into the pool at the bottom of the Hollow. Then he would make a run for the safety of the abbey as if all the demons in hell were hard on his heels. Did he have the courage to do it? He glanced down at the trap and saw the dried blood and tufts of brown fur caught between the iron jaws. He felt a surge of anger and decided he had no other choice.

He picked up the trap and held it cradled awkwardly against his chest. It was heavy and the iron was painfully cold. The trap was crudely made but effective. As far as William could work out, an animal only had to step on a thin iron plate to release the jaws. Then the saw-toothed edges would clamp shut, hard and fast, cutting through flesh and snapping bone. The animal would have no hope of freeing itself, and the trap would be a dead weight on its injured limb, making escape virtually impossible. Pain and loss of blood would soon leave the creature weak and helpless. William felt the sting of angry tears and blinked them away. To do that to a living creature was too cruel for words.