The Crowfield Curse Page 8

  William nodded. “I saw his hand, or what’s left of it.” He curled his fingers over his palm in a pale imitation of Master Bone’s ruined hand. “And he wears a mask to hide his face.”

  Brother Snail looked worried. “I didn’t realize that he did. I haven’t seen our guest yet. Are you sure his hand wasn’t injured in an accident, Will? Maybe a fire?” A flush of color rose into the monk’s face as he realized what he had said. “William, I’m sorry. I didn’t think . . . it was tactless of me.”

  William looked away. He knew what a fire could do to a person. He had seen the remains of his parents and his sister and brother after they had been dragged from the smouldering wreckage of the mill.

  “He’s a leper,” William said softly.

  “Then in God’s name, why has the prior allowed him to come here?” Snail said with a rare flash of anger. “I must speak to him straightaway. Go about your work, Will.”

  William was startled by the monk’s tone and his abrupt dismissal but did as he was told. He was in a thoughtful mood as he went back to the frater to finish scrubbing the table. Perhaps Brother Snail could make the prior see reason and persuade him to send Master Bone away. He had heard that some of the larger abbeys had leper hospitals, well away from villages and towns. Master Bone could find shelter in one of those.

  William dried his hands on the front of his tunic and carried the pail of water back through the kitchen, to empty it in the yard.

  Brother Martin was skinning a rook. Several more, some already skinned, some just stiff little corpses of glossy black feathers, were lined up on the table beside him. He was taking the skin and feathers off in one piece, saving himself the bother of plucking the birds. He glanced at William when he came into the kitchen.

  “Make yerself useful and fetch some herbs from Brother Snail’s workshop,” he growled, chopping off the rook’s head with one slash of his knife. It joined a small pile of heads on the bloodstained table. He slit the raw pink body open and hooked a finger into the cavity to drag out the innards. William stared in horrified fascination.

  “Fetch somethin’ strong. Garlic, mebbe,” the monk said, scraping the rook’s innards into a pile and wrinkling his nose at the smell that rose from them. “Somethin’ really strong.”

  Something to mask the taste of stewed rook. William was not sure anything would be able to do that, no matter how pungent.

  William left the kitchen and headed across the yard toward the gate between the far corner of the south range and the goat- and pigpens. It was the long way around to the workshop, but William wanted to be by himself for a while, out of the chilly gloom of the abbey buildings. After all the talk of the angel and the fay king, he wanted to be somewhere as everyday and ordinary as the abbey garden.

  The gray day clung damply to the abbey buildings and softened the mud in the yard. The crows high up in the treetops of Two Penny Copse were subdued that morning. As well they might be, William thought grimly, after seeing what had happened to the rooks. Brother Martin was surprisingly good with a slingshot, given that he only had one eye. The crows were probably anxious to draw as little attention to themselves as possible.

  William caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, over toward the pigpens. Something small and reddish-brown moved past a gap in the wattle fence. Frowning, William went to see what it was.

  The hob was sitting on the edge of Mary Magdalene’s water trough, his injured leg stretched out along the rim. A new growth of fur bristled around the healing wound. His tail was curled up his back and over his shoulder to keep it out of the water. The pig sat in front of him.

  “What are you doing here?” William hissed, glancing quickly around the yard. “You should be in Brother Snail’s hut, not out here in the open. Someone might see you.”

  The pig turned at the sound of William’s voice and shuffled over to him, grunting softly, in the hope of some food. William scratched her ear.

  “I wanted to see the abbey,” the hob said with a dismissive wave of his paw. Then he nodded toward Mary Magdalene. “The pig sees all the comings and goings from her pen. She has seen some strange things these last few days.”

  “She told you that, I suppose?” William said, raising his eyebrows.

  The hob nodded and tapped his forehead. “We can talk in here. Not in words.”

  Just like Peter and the white crow, William thought, looking down into the pig’s intelligent amber eyes. She gazed back at him calmly and he knew, without doubt, that the hob was telling the truth.

  “What has she seen?” he asked.

  “Two strangers came to the abbey yesterday,” the hob began.

  William nodded. “Jacobus Bone and his servant. They are staying here.”

  “And behind them, there were two others, creeping through the fog. The pig could not see who or what they were.”

  “I sensed that there was something in the yard last night, though I couldn’t see anything, either,” William said, a shiver going through him at the memory. It had been a long time before he had dared to run back to the safety of the kitchen. He had locked the door and sat huddled by the kitchen fire late into the night, wondering what was lurking in the foggy darkness outside. It had not made for a good night’s sleep.

  The hob gazed at him thoughtfully for a moment, head on one side. “You are unusually sensitive to such things, for a human. You have the Sight.”

  “That’s what Dame Alys said.”

  Again, that odd shuttered look came into the hob’s eyes. William was more certain than ever that the hob knew something about Dame Alys that he was in no hurry to share. He knew the hob well enough by now to know he would be wasting his time trying to pry it out of him.

  “It seems that someone is very interested in Jacobus Bone and his servant,” William said. “I wonder why?”

  The hob shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “He’s just an old man who, I think, has come to Crowfield to die,” William added quietly. “He’s a leper.”

  The hob sat upright in a quick jerky movement that startled William. He grabbed the edge of the trough with both paws to stop himself falling backward into the water. “A leper?”

  William nodded, astonished by the sudden widening of the green-gold eyes and the fierce expression on the hob’s face.

  “Has he brought anything with him, an instrument of any kind? A lute, perhaps?”

  “Yes, along with two flutes and a recorder. Why?” William asked, his heart beginning to beat a little more quickly.

  “Is it a lute made of golden wood?”

  “Yes,” William said, his breath catching in his throat. “How did you know?”

  The hob ignored his question. “Bone’s manservant, what is his . . . name?” He said the last word softly.

  “Shadlok.”

  “Ahhh,” the hob breathed out in a long juddering sigh. He banged the sides of his head with his fists. “Sceath-hlakk. Shadlok. Of course! Of course!” He turned and glared at William. “If you had said his name straightaway, we would not have wasted all this time in idle talk.”

  “You know him?” William asked, too surprised by the hob’s alarming behavior to be offended.

  “No, but I know of him, and of the one you call Bone. And I know who is following them. This is not good, Will Paynel, not good at all.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  Sceath-hlakk is a fay of the Seelie Court,” the hob said, talking quickly. “A great warrior.” He waved his skinny little arms in wide arcs to emphasize just how great a warrior Shadlok was. “He was once the consort of Yarael, a queen of the Seelie Court and age-old enemy of the Dark King. I think the Dark King knows they are here, and the creatures in the yard last night were his Unseelie fays.”

  William could easily believe the scar-faced man was a warrior. There was something in his bearing, a cold arrogance that made William think he would be a formidable opponent. And he could readily believe Shadlok was not human; it was there in his eyes.
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  “What is the difference between Seelie and Unseelie fays?” William asked.

  “The Seelie Court fays are the Blessed Ones, good for the most part,” the hob explained. “The Unseelie are the darkness to their light.”

  “Why is Shadlok here? And why is he the servant of a leper?”

  “I do not know,” the hob said, shaking his head and looking worried. “Sceath-hlakk was exiled from Queen Yarael’s court hundreds of winters ago. Nobody knows why. The one you call Bone was the queen’s minstrel, the most gifted musician ever to have played for a fay queen.”

  “Is he a fay as well?” William asked, trying to make sense of this strange story.

  “Bone is human,” the hob said, climbing the wattle fence awkwardly, wrapping his tail around a post to steady himself.

  William glanced around to make sure nobody was watching, then picked up the hob and put him on the ground.

  “But he cannot die,” the hob finished. He limped over to the gate. William noticed that he no longer needed to use the crutch. It seemed fays healed much faster than people did.

  William pushed the gate open and let the hob go through ahead of him.

  “The queen gave Bone the gift of music, and for a time he was famed in every court and nobleman’s hall in countries far and wide,” the hob continued as he set off along the path toward the orchard. “The Dark King decided to punish the queen for giving such a gift to a human. A terrible and bloody war between the two courts was waged. Neither side lost, but neither won, so the king took his revenge on Bone in the cruelest way he could think of. He made Bone a leper, and then made him immortal. Bone is cursed to wander the world for all eternity,” the hob finished softly.

  “That’s horrible.” William thought of Jacobus Bone’s hand and was filled with pity. What a terrible punishment for simply being the best at what he did. “But if Master Bone isn’t here to die, why is he here?”

  The hob shrugged. “Perhaps this is just the next step on an endless journey.”

  “No,” William said thoughtfully, “he came here for a reason. He paid the prior to be allowed to stay. He could have gone anywhere, but he chose to come here.”

  “I can think of nothing that would bring him here,” the hob said, looking up at William. He made a face and added, “I can think of no reason anyone would want to come here.”

  William smiled. “You did.”

  “It was either that or die in the woods.”

  “You’ll soon be well enough to go back to Foxwist,” William said. He realized he would miss the hob when he was gone.

  “I will stay here for now,” the hob said. “If the Dark King’s fays are following Bone and the Seelie fay, then the woods are no place for a solitary fay to be.”

  “I’m not sure you’ll be much safer here,” William said, “if the Dark King’s fays can come and go so easily inside the abbey walls. Though they will be the least of your worries if Brother Martin or one of the other monks sees you. You should go back to Brother Snail’s workshop and stay out of sight.”

  The hob nodded. “The pig will keep watch on the yard for us, but we must find out why Bone is here.” He looked at William through narrowed eyes. “And you can tell the brother man with the slingshot to stop killing the rooks.”

  William smiled thinly. “You can’t tell Brother Martin anything. The rooks will just have to take their chances.”

  “They will not forget what he has done,” the hob said darkly.

  If it came to a fight between the monk and the rooks, William knew whose side he would be on.

  William and the hob made their way along the path through the orchard to Brother Snail’s workshop. The hob let himself into the hut while William went to see what he could find in the small herb garden. Brother Snail grew pot herbs here and his medicinal plants in the herb garden in the cloister. Most of the plants had died back over the winter. Only a woody old sage bush and some straggling thyme had managed to survive the cold weather. Brother Snail had long since cut and dried last summer’s herbs and hung them in bunches from the workshop rafters. The roots of most of the plants were deep in the earth, waiting for the first warm days of spring to shoot again.

  William broke off a handful of sage stems and sniffed their pungent scent. He would need something with a stronger flavor than sage to hide the taste of rook meat. Not that there was anything growing at Crowfield, or anywhere else, that was going to make this evening’s supper edible, and even for Brother Martin, that was quite some achievement. With a sigh, he tucked the sage into the pocket of his jacket and went to see what he could find in the hut.

  * * *

  When word got out that one of the abbey’s guests was a leper, the monks were horrified. William heard angry voices when he passed the door of the chapter house with a basket of firewood for the warming room. He paused to listen for a few moments.

  “You condemn us all!” someone shouted. It sounded like Brother Stephen, normally the mildest of men. “This is a most ill-judged action . . .”

  “Master Bone has been generous,” Prior Ardo said, a hard edge to his voice. “Crowfield Abbey is a poor house, we all know that. We cannot afford to turn away a wealthy benefactor, leper or not.”

  “What use will his money be when we are all eaten away by this sickness?” Brother Odo called, his voice shrill with fear. “Most of us have our health and strength but we barely survive from one year to the next as it is. What hope will we have when we lose our hands, our feet? All the money in the land won’t help us then.”

  “Master Bone’s money will buy two cows next spring, as well as an extra pig, and will pay for repairs to the nave roof. These are things we need,” Prior Ardo said.

  “I need my fingers,” Brother Mark said. Brother Snail had told William that Mark was a gifted illuminator and scribe. From time to time, he was commissioned to produce a psalter or a book of hours for some wealthy nobleman. This was a welcome source of income for the abbey. William knew it was only this money, and the rents from the tenants of Crowfield’s two farms near Yagleah, that kept the monks from destitution.

  The monks all began to talk at once, shouting each other down and drowning out the prior’s attempts to regain control of the meeting.

  William left them to it. He took the wood to the warming room and built up the fire. It was a small, windowless chamber, one of the few rooms in the abbey to have a fireplace and chimney. The monks were permitted to come in here for a short time on cold days, and warm their chilblained hands and feet. If the wind was in the wrong quarter, though, smoke would blow back down the chimney and fill the room. In wet weather, the fire would spit and sizzle or burn with sullen reluctance. But there were no fires in the frater or dormitory, and the church seemed to hold the cold within its walls even in high summer, so those precious minutes in the warming room were a much-valued privilege, smoke or no smoke.

  William stacked the logs and branches on the floor near the fireplace. He pulled up a stool and sat for a few moments, hands out to the small flames.

  Today, there was no wind. The logs on the hearth burned cheerfully. William took off his scuffed old boots and held his feet out to the flames, sighing with pleasure as the feeling returned to his chilled toes.

  What would Prior Ardo and the monks do if they knew the truth about Jacobus Bone? What would they say if they found out that Shadlok was not even human? William smiled briefly. What uproar that would cause.

  With a sigh, William pulled on his boots and stood up. He put the fire screen across the fireplace and went back out into the drafty cloister. The monks were still in the chapter house but they were talking now, not shouting.

  William turned the corner into the south cloister alley. His heart seemed to stop when a figure stepped out of the shadows near the stairs up to the abbot’s lodgings. It was Shadlok, his hair and skin startlingly white against his dark clothing. The unsettling blue eyes held no hint of friendliness.

  “Master Bone wishes to talk to you,” h
e said. Without waiting for William’s reply, he turned and walked away, his boots making no sound on the stone-paved floor.

  William hesitated. The last thing he wanted to do was go anywhere near Jacobus Bone, but he had the feeling that it would be unwise to cross Shadlok.

  William paused in the doorway to the guest quarters. The windows were shuttered and the only light in the room came from the small fire burning in the hearth. There was no sign of Shadlok, and all he could see of Jacobus Bone was the top of his head above the back of the chair beside the fire.

  “Come in, boy.” Jacobus Bone’s voice was little more than a whisper but it echoed in the stillness of the chamber.

  William walked slowly across the room, keeping as far from the man in the chair as he could. He jumped when the door closed with a hollow bang behind him. He turned quickly to find Shad-lok, arms folded, standing by the door, watching him. His face was expressionless and his cold eyes reflected the firelight. William swallowed a couple of times, but his mouth and throat had gone dry.

  “Over here, where I can see you,” Jacobus said. He was sitting stiffly in the chair, just as he had been the previous evening. Had he been there all night?

  He had removed his hood. The mask was still in place, and above it William could see his hair-less, ulcerated scalp. His ears were just lumps of discolored flesh. If he was aware of William’s revulsion, he gave no sign of it.

  “I want your help, boy.”

  William waited for Jacobus to continue. His stomach was churning and he tried not to stare at the man’s ravaged head. He was uncomfortably aware of Shadlok standing behind him, still and silent, blocking his way to the door.

  “The monks are not pleased to have a leper living amongst them,” Jacobus said. “Even now they are asking their prior to send me away, so I may not have much time at Crowfield Abbey.”

  It seemed William had not been the only one eavesdropping that morning. He stared into the dark eyes and wondered if this was what Jacobus Bone’s life was like: always shunned and turned away, even by monks who prided themselves on their charity toward those in need.