The Crowfield Demon (9 page)

“I am. I came to fetch the cart,” William said.

Brother Stephen's eyes narrowed. “Then you would be better off looking for it in the cart shed, boy, and not in the vegetable garden.”

To William's relief, Brother Martin wasn't in the kitchen. He found Brother Snail in the cloister garth, emptying out a bowl of water, red with Brother Mark's blood.

“Have you seen Brother Walter?” William asked anxiously.

“No, not since yesterday afternoon,” Brother Snail said, a frown creasing his tired face. “Have you looked in the workshop?”

William nodded. “He's not there.”

“I am sure he is hiding somewhere and is quite safe.” The worry in his voice belied his words. He took a bloodied rag from the bowl and wrung it out. “Let me know if . . . when you find him.”

“I'll keep looking,” William said, trying to stay calm. “He has to be somewhere.”

C
HAPTER
ELEVEN

“W
ell?” Shadlok folded his arms and stared at William. He had a way of looking at you sometimes, as if he could smell something unpleasant, which made William's hackles rise.

“What?” William scowled at him.

“The handcart? The one you went to fetch some time ago?”

“Oh, that,” William muttered.

“And the pail. You forgot that, too.”

“Yes, all right, I'll go and fetch them now.” William turned to leave the chapter house, then looked back at the fay. “I can't find Brother Walter anywhere.”

Shadlok straightened up. He was quiet for a moment, and William thought he caught a brief flicker of worry in the fay's eyes. “Perhaps he is with the pig. He often spends time with her.”

“I'll look on my way past,” William said.

“Bring the cart back with you this time,” Shadlok said.

“And the pail,” William said under his breath as he set off along the passageway.

“And the pail,” Shadlok called after him.

William grinned.

Shadlok's guess proved to be correct. The hob was in a corner of Mary Magdalene's sty. The pig was lying on her side in her mud wallow, grunting softly while the hob chittered beside her and scratched her back with a pawful of straw.

Glancing around to make sure there wasn't anybody within earshot, William leaned over the fence and said, “I've been looking everywhere for you. I was worried you might have been hurt when the tower fell.”

“I was in the snail brother's hut,” the hob said, scrambling to his feet and coming over to the fence. He climbed up to sit on the gatepost and looked pleased to see William.

“Is she all right?” William asked, nodding to the pig.

“The noise frightened her, but she is calm now. The sheep are still unsettled and the horse is nervous. She is old and the noise gave her a terrible fright. The hens have run away to hide.”

“How did they get out of the henhouse?”

The hob looked guilty. “They would have hurt themselves in their panic to escape, so I opened the door and they ran into the garden. The brother man who tends the animals has gone to look for them.”

“I suppose we should be grateful you didn't set the goats free, too.”

The hob looked away. William stared at him suspiciously. “You didn't, did you?”

The hob lifted a shoulder and said nothing.

William stepped away from the sty and looked over at the goat-pen. The gate was ajar and the pen was empty.

“It might be a good idea if you helped Brother Stephen to find them,” he said, hiding a smile.

The hob nodded and climbed down from the fence post.

There was a loud angry yell from the direction of the vegetable garden. The hob's face split in a wide grin. “I think the brother man has found them by himself.”

“You'd better hope Brother Stephen never catches up with
you
.”

“He can't see me!” the hob said gleefully. He scampered away, tail in the air, and disappeared around the corner of the sty.

At midday, the monks gathered in the east alley for sext, needing to keep to their daily routine in the face of the disasters that had befallen the abbey that day. They gathered at the foot of the day stairs up to the dorter, where Brother Mark lay unconscious in his bed, as if to include him in their prayers. Brother Mark's right arm and two fingers were broken, along with his nose and several ribs. The bones would heal, Brother Snail had assured them, but so far Brother Mark had not woken, and that was a worry.

William and Shadlok carried on with their work in the chapter house. A thought occurred to William, and he asked, “Could you use magic to heal Brother Mark? Knit his bones and wake him up?”

“I could, yes, but I am not going to.”

William frowned. “Why not?”

Shadlok brushed stone dust from his hands and raised his eyebrows. “What do you imagine the monks would say if Brother Mark suddenly sprang out of bed, whole and healed?”

William thought about this and said, “Oh.”

“Oh, indeed,” Shadlok said drily. “If it is all the same to you, I would rather not be tied to a stake and burned by the prior for practicing the infernal arts, as he would no doubt see my healing skills to be.”

William saw the gleam in the fay's eyes and smiled ruefully. “I hadn't thought of it like that.”

“Brother Mark will mend in his own time,” Shadlok said, reaching down to pick up another ashlar block, “and that is as it should be.”

By the time the prior returned to the abbey shortly before none, the chamber was cleared of debris, though there was a large puddle on the floor and the wall paintings beneath the east window were streaked with rain. Shadlok wheeled the final cartload of stone out to the yard, leaving William to finish sweeping up the last of the stone dust.

William leaned on the broom handle, looked at the bare mortar on the floor and the damaged roof and window, and felt sorry for the monks. The roof and floor could be patched up easily enough, but the window was probably irreplaceable. There was nobody at the abbey or in the local villages with the skill needed to put the small panes back together again, if that was even possible.

Footsteps sounded in the passageway leading to the chapter house. William turned quickly. The prior walked through the doorway, followed by Sir Robert, Brother Gabriel, and Master Guillaume, the mason.

“It is very generous of you to lend us your stonemasons, Sir Robert,” the prior said. “I am most grateful to you.”

Sir Robert waved his thanks aside. “They will bring their tools and bedding to the abbey tomorrow and begin to clear up the mess.”

The prior nodded. “They can stay in the large barn. I will have the sacks of grain moved to the small barn, so they should have plenty of room.”

“I am sure that will be perfectly adequate,” Sir Robert said.

The look on Master Guillaume's face said that adequate was
all
it would be. The master mason paced around the room, assessing the damage with an air of detachment, while Sir Robert stood by the door, watching William intently. Indeed, he seemed far more interested in William than in the chapter house.

There was something about the lord of Weforde that made William uncomfortable. He couldn't put his finger on what it was, but some instinct warned him to be careful around Sir Robert.

“Where is the servant, Shadlok?” Sir Robert asked.

“In the yard, my lord,” William said, nodding his head in a quick bow.

“Tell him I wish to speak to him, in private.” Sir Robert looked at the prior. “With your permission, Prior Ardo?”

“Of course,” the prior said stiffly. He looked surprised by Sir Robert's request, but William guessed he was not in a position to refuse. The stonemasons' labor and the building repairs would not be cheap, and he would need to keep on the good side of Sir Robert if he wanted his help and money. The prior glanced at William. “Fetch Shadlok, then go and help Brother Snail in the herb garden, boy, and don't dawdle.”

William found the fay in the open-fronted shed, unloading the stone from the cart.

“Sir Robert is here, and he wants to talk to you in private,” William said, sheltering under the thatch and pushing back his hood. The drizzle had turned to rain, and a cold breeze drove it in gusts across the yard. The thought of working in the garden in this weather, on an empty belly, was dispiriting. Dinner was late and would only be day-old bread and the last scrapings of yesterday's pottage when it was served. If he had to wait much longer, he'd be fighting Mary Magdalene for the scraps in her swill pail.

“Then Sir Robert can come and find me.”

“I think he wants
you
to go to
him
,” William said.

Shadlok lifted another stone from the cart and said nothing.

“What does he want to talk to you about?” William asked, watching him.

Shadlok glanced over his shoulder. “Ask him yourself and you will find out.”

William wasn't going to be put off so easily. “It just seems odd, that's all. It can't be about Jacobus Bone; he's been dead a good three months and Sir Robert would have come to find you before now if he wanted to talk to you about
him
.”

“I have something he wants.”

“Oh? What?”

“That's none of your concern.”

Shadlok laid the last piece of carved vaulting on the ground. His dark tunic was streaked with dust and his hands were powdery white. In the cold gray light his face looked eerily pale and his eyes an unearthly shade of blue. Strands of his white hair had come loose from the leather strip tying it back and clung to his wet cheek. William had noticed over the past months that a subtle change came over Shadlok when he was around the monks, making him look passably human. But when he was with William the mask slipped and he looked unmistakably fay, as he did now. It was unsettling to watch.

“Does he know you're a fay?” William asked after a pause.

“Yes.”

William frowned. “Isn't that very dangerous? Can he be trusted to keep it secret?”

“Until he gets what he wants, he will do nothing to anger me.”

As far as William knew, Shadlok had no possessions other than his knife and sword. Perhaps Sir Robert wanted them. They were of fine craftsmanship, and he was sure a fay weapon would be far superior to a human one. But why would Shadlok keep
that
a secret?

“Well, whatever it is, he must want it very badly,” William said, pulling up his hood.

“He does.” Shadlok's voice was soft, and anger sharpened his face. “But he is wasting his time.”

“If the prior asks, make sure you tell him I gave you the message,” William said, bracing himself to go out into the rain again. “I don't want a flogging for nothing.”

He set off across the yard just as Brother Martin rang a handbell to announce that dinner was ready. William broke into a run. The herb garden could wait; his stomach couldn't.

By mid-afternoon, the rain had stopped. Patches of blue sky showed between breaks in the cloud and a mild breeze swayed through the trees. William and Peter were digging up weeds in the vegetable garden. They were both caked with mud, and their clothes were wet through to the skin. William inspected his hands, running a finger over the bone-hard calluses and rough skin on his palms from the last two years of hard labor. That was how long he had been at the abbey, he realized with a touch of surprise: two whole years come the first day of May. A sudden wave of homesickness caught him off guard. He missed his family so much. Their faces were there in his mind, as clear as if he'd seen them only this morning, smiling and happy. He wished with all his heart that he could wake up to find the last two years had been just a bad dream.

“Why did God do this to us?” Peter's voice pulled him back to the present, to the chill of damp boots and muddy clothes. The lay brother's eyes were full of unhappiness. “Why did he harm our church and hurt Brother Mark, Will? Is he angry? Have we done something wrong?”

William patted Peter's shoulder awkwardly. “No. The church was built on waterlogged ground, that's all. The tower fell because the ground wasn't strong enough to support it. God didn't do it, the rain did.” The lie came easily. There was no sense in frightening Peter any more than he already was. “And poor Brother Mark was just in the wrong place at the wrong moment.”

Peter seemed to think about this as he wiped the mud from his hands with a hank of grass. “So He's not angry about the birdman in St. Christopher's chapel?”

William felt as though ants were crawling all over his body. “The birdman?”

Peter nodded. His face was pale with fear. “He waits in a corner of the chapel. He beckons me inside, but I won't go, because I know he'll hurt me.”

Panic leaped inside William's chest. “Don't
ever
go in there, Peter. Stay away from the chapel. Do you understand?”