The Crowfield Curse Read online

  The hob examined the spoon for a couple of moments, and then put it on the floor. “Nuts, berries, leaves.” He sniffed the pottage and wrinkled his nose. He glanced up at William and then took a cautious sip from the pot. “Not usually pond water and leaf mold.”

  William grinned. “It’s Brother Martin’s vegetable pottage. I brought you some bread, too.”

  The hob picked up the small maslin loaf and smelled it. “I have heard of bread.” He licked it and took a small bite of the crust with small, pointed, and very yellow teeth. “It tastes better than the pond dredgings.”

  William could not argue with that. He settled himself on the floor with his back against the table leg while the hob ate his meal. The creature seemed much better this evening. Whatever Brother Snail had put in the caudle, it had worked quickly and very well. The danger with open wounds was that fever could set in and burn its way through the whole body, and sometimes turn the blood foul.

  William had seen it for himself when Piers, the blacksmith in his home village of Iwele, had been kicked on the back by an ox he was shoeing. That wound had turned red and then black, and the smith had died in a fevered agony, his skin covered in black blotches.

  William stirred restlessly; he tried not to think of Iwele these days. It did not help to remember the places and people he had grown up with. And though Iwele was only a day and a half’s walk from Crowfield, it might as well have been a hundred days away, because he would probably never see it again. Not unless his brother, Hugh, came to take him home. And that was not likely to happen — not when Hugh had gone off to London to make his fortune three years ago and did not even know about the fire that had destroyed the mill and killed all but one of his family.

  William had no idea where London was, but he knew it was far away, a mighty town full of crowded streets and people from distant lands, with a great river that led to the sea. He could not even begin to imagine what the sea looked like: water stretching away for days and weeks in all directions, with waves that could swallow a whole ship. If Hugh was there, in London, then why would he ever want to return to Iwele? No, William had long since faced the very real possibility that his brother was not going to come looking for him. He was on his own.

  The hob picked out a piece of carrot from the pottage and bit into it. “Why did you save me from the trap?”

  William was startled by the question. “I couldn’t leave you there; you would have died.” He did not add, Or whoever set the trap would have killed you, but the look in the hob’s eyes told him the creature had already guessed that much for himself. People did not set traps only to rescue the animal, or hob, they caught.

  “Hunting for food is one thing,” William added, “a quick, clean kill, but maiming an animal and causing it a slow and painful death is another.”

  “I have seen men commit acts of terrible cruelty, not just to birds and animals, but to other men,” the hob said, dangling a bit of leek from his fingers. “And to trees.”

  “Trees?” William frowned, puzzled. How could you be cruel to a tree?

  The hob stared at him for a moment. “They are alive, too.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  “You have never seen a tree spirit?”

  “No,” William said. “Have you?”

  The hob sucked the leek from his fingertips and fixed William with a hard stare. “Of course.”

  I suppose I should not be surprised, William thought. If hobs exist, then why not tree spirits?

  Or angels?

  William shifted restlessly. This was all so strange. A whole world existed alongside the everyday one that he had never once suspected was there.

  Brother Walter was watching him closely. “It disturbs you, knowing it isn’t just your world, doesn’t it?”

  “Perhaps,” William said, feeling more uncomfortable by the minute, as if he had been caught out in some wrongdoing, without fully knowing what it was he was supposed to have done. “It’s just . . .”

  “You didn’t realize you were sharing it?” the hob suggested, eyes narrowed.

  William shook his head.

  “Most humans don’t. They believe it is theirs alone, and that all the living things in it are there for them to use as they please.”

  “I’m sorry,” William said, shrugging helplessly, not knowing what else he could say.

  The hob’s hard green stare softened a little. “You are not the worst human I have ever come across.”

  “Thank you,” William said with a brief smile.

  The hob turned his attention back to the pottage and for a while William was content to sit and watch him.

  It was peaceful in the shadowy little hut, and a good deal warmer than the cold stone rooms of the abbey. William would never understand why anyone chose to build in stone. He thought of the wooden mill house, where he had grown up, and the way the timbers creaked and moved when the waterwheel turned. Dust and flour from the millstones caught in the cobwebs that hung from the rafters. They waved gently, like gray rags, in the drafts coming up through the building from the millrace. The house had felt alive, somehow, with moods and a character all of its own. The abbey buildings were as cold and stiff as a corpse.

  “The snail brother is a skilled healer,” the hob said, putting the empty pot on the floor and wiping his mouth with the back of his paw. “He is a strange shape, though.”

  “The bones in his back have curved forward and grown together,” William explained. “I don’t know why.”

  “He can’t heal himself?” the hob asked, head on one side, eyes full of curiosity.

  “It doesn’t seem so,” William said with a shrug.

  The hob was quiet for a while, then asked, “What is your name?”

  “William Paynel. You can call me Will.” It was what he had always been called at home.

  “Will,” the hob repeated. “Will. Not Brother Will?”

  William smiled. “No. I’m not a monk.”

  “Why are you here, then, living in this strange stone place with the brother men?”

  “Because I have nowhere else to go. My home burned down the summer before last and my family died in the fire. The monks agreed to take me in, and in return I work for them.”

  The hob winced as he shifted position, trying to get comfortable. “The brother men are kind.”

  William frowned. Taking him in was not kindness on their part. It was merely recognizing cheap labor when they saw it.

  After the fire, the village priest at Iwele had brought William to the abbey and asked Prior Ardo to give him a home. “He’s a strong lad, and used to honest hard work,” the priest had said, turning William around for the prior to inspect, as if he were a pig at market. “All it will cost you is his bed and board.”

  “Is there nobody in Iwele who can give him work and a place to live?” the prior had asked, surprised by the request.

  The priest had looked uncomfortable and asked to speak to the prior in private. William knew what he was saying, though: The boy escaped from the burning mill house without so much as a blister, while the rest of his family died. And people being what they are, they could not help but view the boy with superstitious fear. Nobody came forward to offer him a home. Not that anyone believed he started the fire, of course, but it was unnatural the way he had survived it unscathed. And it was odd that he had no memory of how he had managed to get out of the burning building. One minute he was in the grain loft, the next he was standing in the middle of the yard, with no idea how he had come to be there. It set the boy apart somehow, and people were wary of him now. Too wary to want to live under the same roof as him, it seemed.

  So Prior Ardo had allowed William to stay at the abbey. He had made sure William worked hard every single day to repay the abbey’s great generosity. He was given a straw pallet on the kitchen floor to sleep on, and cast-off clothing several sizes too big when he outgrew his own clothes. If kindness played any part in the prior’s dealings with him, William had not seen much evid
ence of it.

  “Brother Snail is kind, and he’s to be trusted,” William said at last. It was the best he could say for Crowfield and its monks.

  The hob nodded in agreement, and then settled down in the basket again. “I’ll sleep now. Thank you for the food.”

  William smiled as he got to his feet. He added some more wood to the fire, then picked up the hob’s empty pot and the lantern. “I’ll look in on you later.”

  There was no reply. The hob was already asleep. As quietly as he could, William left the hut and set off along the path through the vegetable garden. Something white suddenly loomed out of the darkness and swooped toward him. William felt a stir of air as it brushed past his face and he quickly ducked out of the way. His heart hammered with fright as he turned to stare after it. His first thought was that it was an owl, quartering the East Field and abbey gardens. The white bird landed on the roof of Brother Snail’s hut. Its body hunched forward and it gave a harsh kaa-aak. It was not an owl, William realized in surprise, but a crow. A white crow, flying at night when others of its kind were safely roosting.

  William stood on the path, watching the crow with a growing sense of unease. It was too dark to see the bird clearly but he had the distinct feeling that it was watching him. The crow’s head dipped as it gave another harsh kraak, and then it lifted from the roof and flapped away across the river, to disappear into the woods on the far bank.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  Brother Martin was in the kitchen, taking the pottage bowls from a shelf and banging them down onto the table. He glared at William.

  “Finally decided to turn up, did ye? Take the maslin through to the frater, boy, and be bloody quick about it.”

  William cut up the larger loaves of bread and piled the pieces into baskets, keeping a wary eye on Brother Martin as he did so. The monk slopped the pottage into a large serving bowl and carried it through the door to the frater. William followed a moment later, breadbaskets piled on top of each other in an unsteady stack.

  A long table and several benches stood at one end of the large and otherwise empty room. All but two of the abbey’s inhabitants were gathered into this chilly corner, sitting quietly at the table to wait for their dinner. As usual, Abbot Simon was not present. He was too sick to leave his bed and took his meals in his chamber, not that he ate much anymore. And there was no sign of Peter Borowe. Lay brothers did not eat with monks, even if there were only eleven monks and one lay brother. Peter had eaten a meal of bread and cheese earlier and would have supper with William in the kitchen after the monks had been fed and the bowls washed and dried.

  It was Brother Stephen’s turn to stand in the wooden pulpit high up on the end wall of the room, reading from a book of prayer. He was a small, quiet man who tended the abbey’s animals. He had taught William how to milk a cow, and help a ewe give birth to her lamb and the best places to look for hens’ eggs, and William liked him. The monk was patient and did not waste words on unnecessary matters.

  Brother Stephen would eat his meal later with Brother Martin, a prospect few of the monks looked forward to when their turn to read during dinner came around. Watching Brother Martin eat was a challenge to the strongest stomach. He fed quickly and noisily, dribbling or spitting bits of food over the table, himself, and whoever was unfortunate enough to be sitting with him.

  Brother Martin ladled the pottage into the bowls while William fetched jugs of small beer from the cellarium beside the kitchen and set out the mugs. To his great relief, the loaf he had taken for Brother Walter had not been missed.

  It was bitterly cold in the frater. Blade-sharp drafts found their way past the ill-fitting window shutters, and a vicious chill struck up from the stone-paved floor, in spite of the covering of straw and rushes.

  Brother Stephen’s voice was barely audible as he mumbled his way through the reading. The pulpit was reached by a spiral of narrow wooden steps and looked down over the frater, which was more than Brother Stephen could do. William could just see the round tonsure on the top of his head behind the lectern and the tips of his fingers gripping the edge of the pulpit.

  The monks shivered and their cold-numbed fingers fumbled with the coarse maslin bread as they tried to break bits off to drop in the pottage. It was a cheerless meal. Prior Ardo’s face was pale and drawn. He stared straight ahead, seemingly lost in thoughts that gave him no comfort. William remembered Edgar the carpenter and his strange talk of the dead angel. That must be why the prior looked as if he were carrying the weight of the world on his bony shoulders.

  William caught Brother Snail’s eye for a moment. The monk smiled slightly and made a wry face. William saw that the monk was shivering and felt a stab of concern for him. This bitter cold could not be doing him any good. William had noticed that Brother Snail’s joints had been giving him more trouble than usual, and that the caudles the monk mixed for himself did not seem to ease the pain.

  When dinner was finished and the monks had filed into the church to give thanks for the food, William cleared the table and wiped it down. He folded the rough linen napkins and returned them to the cupboard near the door, and then carried the bowls and mugs back to the kitchen and washed them in a pail of warm water. He had almost finished when Peter Borowe came into the kitchen and stood by the fire to warm his hands.

  “Did you ask Brother Snail for the wax candle for the guest chamber?” William asked.

  Peter shook his head and a look of alarm crossed his face. William smiled reassuringly at him.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll do it later. When are the guests arriving?”

  Peter thought for a moment, his brow furrowing with the effort. “On St. Clement’s Day, or soon after.”

  That was in two days’ time.

  “Do you know who they are? Or why they’re coming here?” William asked. Peter probably knew more about what was happening in the abbey than anybody else. The monks barely noticed him and spoke freely in front of him. William had discovered that if you asked the right question, Peter generally had the answer.

  “A Master Jacobus Bone and his manservant,” he said. “Sir Robert of Weforde sent word to Prior Ardo at Martinmas to ask if Master Bone could come and stay here.”

  William cut up bread and cheese for their supper while he thought about this. He remembered the day Sir Robert’s messenger had come to the abbey to speak to the prior, because he had been told to see to the man’s horse, though until now he had no idea what business had been discussed that day. Sir Robert’s ancestor, Ranulf de Tovei, had been Crowfield’s original patron. He had given the first monks the land to build the abbey on, and a generous gift of money, so Prior Ardo could hardly refuse Sir Robert’s request.

  “But why does this Master Bone want to come here?” William asked, puzzled. “Surely Weforde Manor can offer more in the way of comfort and good food? Why doesn’t Master Bone just stay there?”

  Peter shrugged and made a face. “I don’t know, Will.”

  William ladled the last of the pottage into two bowls and put them on the table with the bread and cheese. He and Peter pulled up stools and sat down to eat.

  “Master Bone has been Sir Robert’s guest at Weforde these past three weeks,” Peter went on. “I heard Prior Ardo say he wishes Master Bone would stay there, but he also said the abbey needs the money Master Bone has promised in return for his bed and board.”

  William turned his attention to his supper. No doubt Master Bone had his reasons for wanting to come here, but William could not begin to imagine what they might be.

  After supper, Peter went off to his bed in the lay brothers’ dormitory, which in reality was just a small chamber that had once been a storeroom, next door to the cellarium. Years ago, when there had been more lay brothers at Crowfield, their dormitory had occupied the long first-floor room that was now the abbot’s chamber. Peter had a bed and a chair and a tiny slit of window overlooking the yard and the pigpen. It was not much but to William it seemed like the wealth of ki
ngs.

  William unrolled his mattress and blankets and laid them on the floor near the hearth in the kitchen. The couvre-feu guarding the glowing embers of the fire held in the heat, so the kitchen was cold. With a sigh, he lay down and pulled the blankets up to his ears. He should have been in his own bed, at home in Iwele mill, listening to the mumble of water in the millrace. Instead he was huddled up and shivering on the floor of an abbey, a kitchen boy with no home or family or future.

  The world does not make much sense sometimes, William thought sleepily. There was Master Bone, paying good money to come and live at Crowfield, when William, if he’d had any money, would have paid to leave it.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  Shortly after noon the following day, a cart rumbled up to the abbey gatehouse. Brother Stephen hurried out from the byre to see who was there.

  William was passing a few idle moments by the pigpen, scratching the ears of Mary Magdalene, the abbey’s elderly sow. Brother Stephen had managed to resist all attempts by his fellow monks over the years to turn the pig into joints of meat and boiled puddings. Instead, he bought two piglets from Weforde market every spring, to be fattened up and then slaughtered in the autumn. Prior Ardo only tolerated Mary Magdalene’s continued survival because Brother Stephen made sure she did not eat too many of the scraps needed to fatten up the other pigs.

  William turned to watch as Brother Stephen opened the gate, and the cart, pulled by two horses, rumbled into the yard.

  “I were towd to bring this lot here,” the carter called out. “Sir Robert of Weforde towd me hisself, this lot to go to Crowfield. For Master Bone. He’s stayin’ at the manor and will follow along tomorrow, so Sir Robert says.”

  “Take the cart over there,” Brother Stephen said, pointing to the west range and the outer door of the guest chambers. He turned to William. “Go and fetch the door key, boy. Fetch both, cloister and yard. Quickly now.”