The Crowfield Curse Read online

  An alehouse stood on one corner of the green. A wooden board painted with a sprig of holly hung from a bracket near the door. The malty smell of brewing beer and the tantalizing waft of freshly baked bread made William’s mouth water as he walked by. Hunger gnawed in his belly and he tried not to think about food.

  In the middle of the green, beside the duck pond, was the pinfold, a fenced enclosure where stray animals were penned until they could be claimed by their owners, upon payment of a small fine to the pinder. This morning, the only occupants were a goat and two chickens.

  They walked along the lane to the bridge over the stream. The lane branched in two on the far bank. They turned left and followed the lane as far as the water mill before turning onto a narrower path, which led to a small wood. Hidden away behind a hedge of holly bushes was a small house surrounded by a well-tended garden. The few remaining holly berries left by the birds were like drops of blood amongst the dark leaves. Smoke drifted up from a hole in the thatched roof of the house.

  William helped the hob down from his shoulders. “What if Dame Alys won’t let us talk to the Old Red Man?”

  “There are ways of persuading her,” Shadlok said softly, an icy glitter in his eyes.

  William hoped it would not come to that. He had the feeling Shadlok would be ruthless with anyone foolish enough to cross him.

  A path of flat stones led between rows of cabbages and leeks, and past manured beds waiting for the spring planting. The white crow, Fionn, was standing by the hut door. It watched them as they walked up the path. Leaning forward, it cawed once, a loud, harsh noise in the quiet garden. The hut door opened and Dame Alys stood there. She looked from William to Shadlok calmly, then glanced down at the crow and said, “Leave them be.”

  The bird moved aside with an ungainly hop and flapped up to sit on top of a water butt.

  Dame Alys stepped out of the hut and rested her hands on her thin hips. Her gaze briefly flickered to the path by William’s feet. “What is it you want with me, William Paynel?”

  William cleared his throat, not sure how to explain why they had come to see her. “Eh . . . well, I was told you have a hob living here with you. The Old Red Man?”

  She waited for him to continue, her oddly colored eyes sharp and watchful.

  “We were wondering if we could ask him something.”

  “And what would that be?”

  William hesitated for a moment, unsure of how much he should tell her. “He saw something in the woods, one Christmas Eve many years ago. We want to know what he remembers of that night.”

  “I see.” Dame Alys regarded Shadlok thoughtfully for a few moments. “And who are you?”

  “Shadlok, servant to Master Jacobus Bone.” He said the words coldly with a look in his eyes that William did not like. Anyone less like a servant than Shadlok was difficult to imagine, but Dame Alys did not seem in the least bit intimidated by him. William felt a flicker of admiration for her.

  “Fine weapons for a manservant,” she said, nodding to the sword and knife in Shadlok’s belt. Her eyes narrowed slightly. “And so unusual. If I didn’t know better, I would say they were of fay workmanship.”

  Shadlok remained silent. William glanced from the woman to the fay, aware of the tension in the air between them. He wondered how she knew what fay workmanship looked like. It seemed it was not just hobs she was familiar with.

  “Perhaps,” Dame Alys said, turning to William, “you can tell me why you brought a fay to my house.” She glanced at the path again. “And a hob.”

  “You can see him? Brother Walter?” William said, surprised.

  “Is that what you have called him?” she said sharply, not sounding at all pleased by this.

  William nodded.

  “No, I can’t see him, but I can sense him. I’ll ask you again, why are they here with you? And what was it that happened in the woods that you are so keen to learn more about?”

  This was a lot more difficult than he had anticipated. William made some noncommittal noise and shrugged one shoulder.

  “That is none of your concern,” Shadlok said, a warning edge to his voice.

  “Something puzzles me, William,” Dame Alys said, ignoring Shadlok. “I have the Sight, and I can see hobs and other fay creatures, but I cannot see the hob you brought with you. Now, why is that? It would take stronger magic than such a creature possesses to hide it from me. That begs the question, whose magic is it? Not yours, I am sure,” she added, gently mocking. She looked at Shadlok. “Yours, perhaps? You are no ordinary fay, then, to be able to do this. To hide it from me.”

  Still Shadlok said nothing. He moved a hand and the air by William’s feet shimmered and darkened, and the hob was there, solid and whole again.

  Dame Alys turned and walked to her door. “William, you and the hob can come into the house but the fay must stay outside.”

  William glanced uncertainly at Shadlok, half expecting him to refuse, but he merely nodded for William to follow Dame Alys.

  “Keep watch, Fionn,” Dame Alys called as she went inside. The crow hopped onto the path outside the door as if to guard it from Shadlok. It could not have been made plainer that the fay was not welcome there.

  William leaned the pig-stick against the bench and went through the low doorway.

  The house consisted of one room, with a ladder up to a sleeping loft beneath the thatched roof. Bundles of dried plants hung from the rafters and jars of various sizes crowded the shelves that lined two walls. There was a fire pit in the middle, surrounded by a hearth of pitched clay tiles. A soot-blackened pot stood on an iron trivet set squarely amongst the embers. Something bubbled and steamed in the pot and smelled so wonderful that William’s mouth began to water. It reminded him of his mother’s pease pottage, with a hint of smoked pork for flavor. Just for a moment it felt as if he were back home in the mill house in Iwele, sitting at the table with his noisy, happy family, while his mother ladled pottage into bowls. A sharp sense of loss caught him off guard and tears blurred his eyes.

  He blinked them away, pushed the memory of home to the back of his mind, and looked around the room. It was clean and as neatly ordered as the garden, with a long oak table, a chair and a stool, and a large cupboard providing the only furniture. Fresh straw covered the beaten earth floor.

  “Are you hungry, William?” Dame Alys asked.

  William nodded, trying not to look too eager.

  “Sit at the table. You can have a bowl of pottage while your hob and mine talk.”

  William looked uncertainly toward the door. “What about Shadlok?”

  “The fay can wait for you. It might do him some good to learn a little patience.”

  William grinned and pulled the stool up to the table. He wouldn’t argue with that.

  The pottage was every bit as good as it smelled. It was well seasoned with herbs and thick with chunks of smoked pork. This must be what it’s like to die and go to heaven, William thought, slowly chewing a piece of meat and letting the rich, smoky taste fill his mouth.

  Dame Alys put a piece of freshly baked white wheat bread on the table by his bowl. She gave another piece to the hob, who was watching her hopefully from the bottom rung of the loft ladder.

  A small head poked through the opening in the loft floor and two large eyes glittered red in the light from the fire. William watched as a thin creature, not unlike Brother Walter, but with longer, redder fur, climbed slowly down the ladder. Its face was as wrinkled as last year’s apples. Its body was hunched and bent and its tail was just a stump. The Old Red Man was aptly named.

  The two hobs greeted each other like the long-lost friends they were, chittering and whistling excitedly in a curious language all their own. William wondered if Dame Alys understood what they were saying. He would not have been surprised if she did.

  William dipped a crust of bread into the pottage and put it into his mouth. It was the best meal he had eaten since he had left Iwele.

  “Why are you searchi
ng for the angel’s grave?” Dame Alys asked, sitting down across the table from him.

  William choked on the bread and it was a few minutes before he could talk again. “You know about the angel?”

  The woman nodded. “Of course I do. What do you want with it?”

  William was reluctant to say more than he had to. He was not sure if he could trust Dame Alys.

  “Ah!” A look of understanding came into her eyes. “Of course, it’s not you; it’s the fay who is looking for the grave.” Her mouth hardened. “I knew someone had been asking questions in the village. It was him. Why is he so desperate to find it, William?”

  William shifted uncomfortably under the woman’s unblinking gaze. “I think . . . I think he wants to use its bones in a healing spell. For his master, Jacobus Bone.”

  To his astonishment, Dame Alys started to laugh. Her mouth widened amongst a maze of wrinkles and her body shook. Her laugh was like the harsh grate of rusty iron hinges and her eyes were bright with malice. She spread her thin fingers on the table and rocked back and forth on her stool. William stared at her uneasily, wondering what was so funny.

  “You live in a world of fools, of monks and fays. You should choose your friends with more care, boy. They will lead you a merry dance to the gates of hell.”

  William put his spoon down. His appetite had deserted him. What was the woman talking about?

  William pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “Thank you for the food, but I think we should be going.” His voice sounded strange to his own ears.

  “As you like,” Dame Alys said with a shrug. She left the table and crossed to the door, where she stood with her hand on the latch.

  William brushed the crumbs from the front of his jacket. The movement dislodged the piece of parchment from his cuff. He caught it as it fell, and the four-leafed clover slipped out onto his palm. His hand tingled as if he had brushed against a nettle. Around him the room seemed to darken and he saw, for a brief moment, a figure in the shadows beside the cupboard. It was wrapped in a tattered gray cloak and wore a mummer’s mask in the shape of a long-beaked bird — a heron, perhaps.

  William gasped and his fist clenched, crushing the clover leaf to dust. The figure disappeared. The room became lighter and everything was as it had been before.

  “Did you see it?” he said, his voice catching in his throat. “Over there, in the corner?”

  Dame Alys was watching him. Her eyes, one blue, one brown, were wide and bright. He could see the white line around her tightly closed lips. She did not answer him. She opened the door and stood aside to let him leave.

  William stared into the corner beside the cupboard. He had the uneasy feeling that the bird-headed figure was still there, though he could not see anything.

  “What was it?” he asked.

  “I didn’t see anything,” she said stiffly, her stare unblinking.

  “There was someone over there, wearing a mask,” William insisted, but Dame Alys did not let him finish.

  “The firelight plays tricks with the shadows,” she said softly. “You saw nothing.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but then closed it again. He knew he would be wasting his breath. The hob hurried over to him and together they left the house. The door closed behind them.

  “Did you see it? The figure in the bird mask?” William asked, glancing down at the hob.

  The hob nodded. His eyes were wide and full of fear. “It was a bad thing, a shadow-thing,” he whispered.

  “What was it? Do you know?”

  The hob hesitated. He looked nervously over his shoulder at the shuttered window of the hut as if worried that he would be overheard. “I saw something like it, a long time ago, in the grove of oaks by the Hunter’s Tree. Back in the time before strangers from over the sea came to the forest and built the straight stone track, people would make offerings to the spirit there, a shadow-thing with a bird’s head.”

  “A holy grove?” William said, puzzled. “Where?”

  The hob shook his head. “It is gone, cut down and burned. I thought the shadow-thing had gone, too, but now I am not so sure.”

  With a last glance back at the hut, William walked to the gate. The hob hurried ahead of him, clearly anxious to be away from whatever it was they had seen.

  Shadlok was waiting for them in the lane, arms folded and pacing back and forth impatiently. Fionn was perched on a fence post nearby, watching the fay beadily.

  “Well?” Shadlok said sharply. He did not look pleased at having been made to wait so long. “What did you find out?” He peered more closely at William’s face. “What happened in there?”

  “We saw something,” William said. Quickly, he told Shadlok about the bird-headed figure.

  Shadlok said nothing for a few moments but there was a thoughtful look in his eyes. “The bird head was a mask, you say?”

  William nodded. “I think so.”

  The fay said something softly in a language William did not understand. It sounded like a name, but William could not be sure. The white crow rose into the air with a loud caw and a sudden clap of its wings that made William jump. It flapped up to sit on the roof of Dame Alys’s hut, where it continued to call angrily, as if at any moment it might swoop down and attack them.

  “What’s the matter with him?” William said.

  Shadlok smiled grimly. “The bird has secrets to guard. It does not want us here.”

  William wondered what Shadlok had said that had sent it into such a rage.

  “So what was it,” William asked, “the thing in the hut?”

  “Something you would be wise to stay as far away from as you can,” Shadlok said with a finality that made William think twice about questioning him any further.

  The fay looked down at the hob. “What did you find out from the Red Man?” he asked.

  “He said the brother men carried the nangel along the track toward this village,” the hob said, keeping a wary eye on the white crow.

  “What else did he tell you?”

  “That the king cut off his tail.” The hob made a slicing movement with his paw. “Chop, tail gone.”

  Shadlok’s eyes narrowed. “I meant, about the angel.”

  The hob bristled with indignation. “A hob’s tail is his greatest pride.”

  Shadlok stared at the hob in silence.

  “That was all he said,” the hob added with a lift of one shoulder, looking away.

  “Hobs,” Shadlok said with biting contempt. “I should have known we would be wasting our time.”

  William hid a smile. With a quick flick of his hand, Shadlok made the hob disappear again. For one worried moment, William wondered if the fay had done something more sinister, but a paw grabbed the leg of his hose and he felt the hob climb up onto his shoulders.

  William was in a thoughtful mood as they walked back to the village. He was puzzled and unsettled by the figure he had glimpsed in the hut. It was not a creature of flesh and blood, so what was it? And what was it doing in Dame Alys’s house?

  Dame Alys’s appearance as an old woman who made salves and caudles was deceptive. William had the feeling that she was dangerous; she knew too much and saw too much. It might be prudent to keep away from her from now on.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  Shadlok walked on ahead of William and the hob. He was not in a good mood and William decided that keeping some distance between them was probably for the best, so he slowed down and soon fell a little way behind.

  Ralph Saddler walked over to his gate when he saw William coming along the village street.

  “Wasn’t Dame Alys able to help you then, lad?” he called. “Needed some herbs, didn’t you?”

  “No, she didn’t have any to spare,” William lied, shaking his head. The movement unsettled the hob, who grabbed William’s ears to steady himself. William grunted in surprise, but quickly turned it into a cough. Ralph peered at him curiously.

  “You all right, young Will?”
r />   “Yes, fine,” William muttered, feeling his cheeks redden. The hob’s grip on his ears tightened as he tried to settle more securely on William’s shoulders.

  “Sorry,” the hob murmured, his breath tickling William’s ear.

  William coughed again, louder this time, hoping Ralph had not heard the hob. He started to edge away from the saddler, not wanting to stop and talk. Shadlok was already partway across the West Field and showed no signs of slowing down to wait for him.

  Ralph leaned on the gate, his large hands resting on the wooden bar. He nodded toward Shadlok. “He’s a strange ’un, isn’t he? What do you make of him?”

  “I barely know him. He only came to Crowfield a couple of days ago.” William took another step away from the gate.

  “You’ve seen that master of his? The leper?” Ralph asked. He seemed set for a long gossip. William tried to hide his impatience and merely nodded. He liked Ralph, but the saddler could talk the back legs off an ox. That was all right if it was market day and you were just standing around, but William did not have time for this today. He did not want to walk back through Foxwist with just the hob for company, and he was not at all sure Shadlok would wait for him.

  “Can’t imagine why anyone would choose to serve a leper,” Ralph went on, shaking his head, “unless they were very holy and good, or the leper had a hold over them in some way.”

  William could think of several words to describe Shadlok, but holy and good were not amongst them.

  The hob seemed to share William’s anxiety to hurry after Shadlok. He started to fidget and squeezed William’s ears between his thin little fingers. William jerked his head sideways, almost dislodging the hob.

  Ralph cast another curious glance at him. “You’re sure you’re all right, lad? You seem a mite fidgety today.”

  “Lice,” William said quickly, scratching his head. The hob joined in, his fingers poking and scratching at William’s scalp. William scratched more vigorously, and managed to prod the hob in the stomach in an attempt to make him sit still.

  “Well, you’ll have to run if you want to catch up with your friend,” Ralph said, straightening up. “I’ll see you next market day.”