[Stephen Attebrook 11] - Missing

by Jason Vail

“Why not?” Gilbert asked.

  “If I take all of it, this Cihric’s greed may tempt him to steal it.”

  “What’s the point of taking any, then?” Harry asked.

  “I’ll carry enough to show him we’re serious about buying the boys,” Stephen said.

  “But not enough to pay for them?” Harry asked skeptically.

  “I’ll have Cihric deliver them here and collect the rest of his money when they’re turned over,” Stephen replied.

  “What’s to stop him from keeping the earnest money and the boys?” Harry asked.

  “If you stood the chance of making three or four times the earnest money by bringing the boys to Painscastle, what would you do?” Stephen asked.

  “Ah,” Harry said. “Clever. You’d make a fine merchant.”

  “You have to have a head for business to run a manor profitably,” Stephen said.

  “Well, you haven’t proven that you can do that yet,” Harry said.

  “But he has the opportunity now,” Gilbert said.

  “You mean Ida has the opportunity,” Harry said.

  “Quite so,” Stephen said with a small smile.

  “What if you’re unable to strike a deal?” Gilbert asked. “Not saying you won’t, but just asking.

  Stephen worked open the canvas bag containing his rustic’s clothes, and pulled out the coat, hat, and shirt — and the hacksaw he had bought from one of the carpenters repairing the Gloucester Castle bridge, hacksaws having been shown to have illicit uses that might prove helpful in the future.

  “Perhaps there is another way,” he said.

  Gilbert’s eyes narrowed in understanding. “You know, don’t you, that your chances of stealing the boys is next to nothing.”

  “Probably,” Stephen said. “But I have to be prepared to try.”

  The tavern maid’s directions proved to be some of the best since leaving Gloucester, and Stephen found the road and the church without losing his way.

  Father Hova was not there; he was, in fact, at the mine tending to a miner injured in a cave in.

  Stephen’s informant, the priest’s wife, Morvel, shook her head at the mention of the mine. She was a stout woman with blunt fingers and dirty nails.

  “It’s bad up there,” she said, wiping her hands on an apron; she had been weeding in the garden next to a small cemetery. She spoke no English, only Welsh, and while Stephen’s Welsh was rudimentary, it was enough to understand her. “Seems like men are killed or injured every day.” She shuddered. “It’s a cursed place, a haunted place. What will you be wanting at the mine, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Stephen pretended not to understand her question. “How can I find it?”

  “You know,” Morvel said, “I could show you how to get there, if you like. It can be a bit hard to find. It’s up on the mountain.”

  “I don’t want to trouble you,” Stephen said.

  Morvel tugged off her apron, which she hung on the wicker fence defending the garden. “Enith!” she called to a girl churning butter by the house door. “I’m going up to the mine! Mind your brothers!”

  The girl waved that she’d heard.

  “This way, then,” Morvel said. She marched out of the yard without waiting for Stephen to mount his horse.

  She turned left out of the gate onto the road which wound into thick forest that covered the sides of the mountain. The road meandered through the wood, rising gently. A stream could be heard babbling to the right, sparkling occasionally through the bushes that had not yet sprouted their leaves. Here and there was a clearing with a house in it and a flock of sheep and gaggle of dirty-faced children and suspicious-faced adults. Although Morvel waved and called to them, this did not allay any of the adults’ suspicions at the sight of Stephen. Strangers always were a source of danger and had to be watched until they proved themselves.

  Shortly, a road came in from the right. Morvel turned down that road. She leaped a stream that was hardly more than a trickle while holding her skirts up, and the road now began a steep climb.

  He called for her to stop. When he halted the mare beside Morvel, he asked, “Are there any more turn offs ahead?”

  “No, the mine is straight up the road.”

  “I think I can manage the rest of the way without help.”

  “All right, then,” Morvel said, disappointed.

  She lingered, however, and Stephen realized she expected to be paid, which was why she had been so eager to show him the way. He almost turned away, because every bit of silver in his possession was precious and he didn’t want to lose any of it if that could be prevented. But remembering the poverty of the garden and yard by the church, he dug into his pouch. He intended to hand over a farthing, but a half penny stuck to the end of his finger. It fell from his finger as he drew out his hand and Morvel scrambled for it by the horse’s front hooves with an eagerness that was embarrassing. The poor hill people probably didn’t see much silver or get their hands on it.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, straightening up, the half penny clutched in her hand as if it might fly away. You could buy a pair of laying hens with that much silver, and a laying hen was a precious thing.

  Stephen went on, eyes and ears alert for any indication of someone else ahead. He originally planned to ride straight into the mining camp. But a little voice in his head, hardly more than a whisper whose words were indistinct yet prodded the edges of his mind with an anxious insistence, led him to change that plan on the fly. The voice seemed to say: why don’t you find out the lay of the land first?

  The road leveled out through a broad pasture inhabited by black and white cows. Stephen paused at the pasture’s edge, considering whether to ride around the fringe rather than take the risk of going straight across on the road. Caution won out and he turned left and made his way through the trees bordering the field. Several times he came near some of the cattle, and cows looked up to see who it was. Since he did not seem interested in them, they went back to their grazing.

  On the other side of the pasture, Stephen did not go out onto the road now, but followed it while remaining in the woods. He could not move fast this way, but he wasn’t interested in speed.

  Presently, after a steep climb, Stephen smelled woodsmoke. He dismounted and tethered the mare to a tree. Stephen debated whether to leave the sword behind; it could be awkward moving in the woods with one bouncing on the hip, and running with a sword in the forest could trip a man, a mishap that in this case could be fatal. But he felt naked without it, so he walked on.

  He crept another two hundred yards or so when he heard voices. He halted and listened. It sounded like women talking; he could not make out what they were saying, but that didn’t matter. The fact he could hear them was enough of a warning.

  Stephen now moved with the same stealth a hunter employed when creeping up on a deer, slowly, carefully placing a foot, rolling it on the leaf litter rather than plonking it down so that the step was if not audible more than a short distance away.

  Before long, the outlines of roofs could be seen through the wicker of leafless branches. He slipped down into a gully, climbed the other side and dropped to his stomach.

  He slithered on his belly for a few yards, concealed by a fallen tree. He peered around the tree, and before him was a large clearing in the forest with a house, a barn and people in it. There were also six small shacks made of random branches and bunches of old thatch heaped up into a conical shape. Admittance was through a doorway so low that a grown man had to stoop at the waist to get through it. All were in an arc around a fenced garden where three women were tending early beans, cabbages near to harvesting; and carrots thrusting healthy-looking green plumes skyward that looked robust enough for harvesting as well. A boy worked a hoe among the parsnips. Stephen also spotted an abundant herb garden, with rosemary, sage, St. John’s wort and thyme growing in profusion. Beyond the garden was a house, a standard thing with two doors, one for the people and the other for animals. Two women s
tirred a steaming tub of gray water with long-handled paddles by the house — the weekly laundry.

  A man in a priest’s habit emerged from one of the sheds. His habit was worn and patched, the hem ragged. His feet, broad like a duck’s, were bare even though it was not yet spring, when many of the Welsh abandoned their boots to save on shoe leather. A wooden cross hung round his neck on a leather thong. His face was broad as well and creased at the corners of his mouth and eyes. His face was grave. This had to be Father Hova.

  One of the women weeding in the garden straightened up at Father Hova’s appearance.

  “He’s gone, then,” the woman said.

  “I am afraid so,” Hova said. He went to the fence and rested his hands upon it. “Have you something I can wrap the boy in?”

  The woman sniffed. “You’ll have to take him as he is. I’ve nothing to spare.”

  “Please! It is indecent!”

  “Cihric won’t tolerate the expense. He’s furious enough at the delays the cave-in caused.”

  “So, we can expect nothing for the boy’s burial expenses, either? You’ll send no one to dig his grave?”

  “You do it. You’ve done it often enough.”

  “Too often,” Hova muttered. “You’ll allow me use of the wheelbarrow?”

  “In the bier.” The woman pointed a thumb at the house.

  Hova entered the bier and came out pulling a two-wheeled barrow behind him as if it was a cart and he was the cart horse. He turned the wheelbarrow over at the corner of the garden; horse dung spilled out. He shook the barrow until it surrendered the last of its cargo, then he pulled it to one of the shacks, the one on Stephen’s left nearest to the house. Hova entered the shack and staggered out with a boy’s body. He gently lowered the body into the wheelbarrow, took up the handles, and headed down the road toward the church.

  “Just be sure to bring it back this time!” the woman shouted at Hova.

  “Send someone for it!” he shouted in return.

  Stephen slithered back to the gulley and then climbed the other side, bent double and praying that the women in the clearing were too occupied with their work to see him, silhouetted as he probably was. Out of sight of the clearing, he ran for his horse.

  He found the mare where he had left her, mounted and rode downhill faster than he had come up it.

  He reached the pasture and reined up. There was a wagon on the road plodding across the open expanse. Stephen waited for it to pass into the woods at the north of the pasture before moving himself, still keeping to the screen of the trees.

  He waited behind a large elm on the other side of the pasture, where the road dropped downward. Soon, he heard the creak of wooden wheels and a man breathing heavily, and moments later, Hova and the wheelbarrow came into view.

  Stephen walked his horse into the road.

  Hova dropped the handles of the wheelbarrow and held out his hands, fear on his face. “I’ve nothing of value! Can’t you see I’m a poor man of the church? Stay back!”

  When Stephen remained ummoved, Hova whipped out a small knife that had been strapped to a forearm. It was a puny thing to use to threaten a man with a sword, and he seemed to know it from the way his hand shook.

  “You have something of value to me,” Stephen said.

  “What could that be?” Hova cried.

  “Information.” Remembering Morvel’s eagerness for the half penny, he added, greed warring with need, he added, “And I will pay you for it.”

  “Information? Pay me?” Hova sounded confused, but the point of the knife dropped.

  “In good silver, for your help.”

  “What do you want to know? I doubt anything I can tell you would be worth a wooden farthing.”

  Stephen dug into his purse for a penny, which he held out to Hova, mindful to keep an eye on the hand holding the knife. Nobody holding naked steel could quite be trusted.

  As Hova plucked the penny from Stephen’s palm, Stephen noticed the face of the dead boy in the wheelbarrow and his heart stopped. The boy was about twelve or thirteen, though it was hard to tell because he was so thin. The crown of his head was wrapped in a dirty rag but wisps of ordinary brown hair stuck out from beneath the wrapping. His jaw was strong with a cleft chin. He looked familiar, although Stephen had never seen him before.

  “Do you know his name?” Stephen asked Hova, trying to keep his voice from shaking.

  Hova’s eyes followed Stephen’s glance as he put his knife away. His expression said the question bewildered him.

  “People at the mine called him Mug,” Hova said. “But I was told his name Christian name was Theobald.”

  Stephen tied the mare’s reins to a post on the wheelbarrow and took up the handles, replacing Hova, whose fatigued expression made him look older than his roughly forty years.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Hova said. “I’m perfectly capable of it.”

  “Consider it part of my payment to you,” Stephen said.

  “Well, then, what do you want to know?”

  “Theo has a brother,” Stephen said. “John.”

  “I know of a brother, yes.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “Barely, I’m afraid. The young ones don’t last long.”

  “There are six huts back there. Is that where the slaves sleep?”

  “You know about that,” Hova said, surprised.

  “The shacks and the slavery, yes.” Stephen gazed through the trees overhanging the road. “The church doesn’t approve of slavery.”

  Hova sighed. “I know. But there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “You could preach against it.”

  “And accomplish what? Lord Hywel owns this mine. He doesn’t care what happens here as long as it runs to his profit. And my livelihood depends on his good opinion.” He lowered his head. “No doubt you think me a coward.”

  Stephen shrugged. People had to compromise on their principles all the time just to survive. “Which hut does John sleep in at night?”

  “It’s the one on the left nearest the house. Why are you asking these questions?”

  “No reason,” Stephen said offhandedly. “I’ve just come to buy John back, and his brother had he lived.”

  Chapter 21

  Hova held the farm of the parish just like Cihric held the farm to the mine from Lord Hywel, which meant he collected the parish tithes and got to keep a portion, the rest going to the actual parish priest, the lord of the manor and the local bishop. He had to work his allotment of land like anyone else in the church’s little valley to put food on the table in addition to ministering to his parishioners’ spiritual needs because his allotment of the tithes was not enough to live on. Consequently, Hova was as poor as any of his flock, as Stephen had deduced when he first spoke to Morvel, and had no servants to do the household chores, certainly none he could call on to bury Theobald without payment.

  So, Stephen dug the grave while Hova said a Mass for the dead boy and Morvel wrapped the body in an old linen sheet that Stephen paid for. There would be no coffin because there was no one in the surrounding area willing to make one, Hova said. Nobody here wanted anything to do with the people of the mine. The men who came down from it from time to time to drink ale at one of the houses down the road were a rough, rude and violent lot. One had tried raping a local wife, but she managed to put out one of her attacker’s eyes, and his friends, when they heard about this, wanted revenge. But Hova had appealed to Lord Hywel on the woman’s behalf, and Hywel sent men to deal with the attacker; he was hanged and there was no more trouble of that sort. As for the slaves, they were regarded as cursed and their spirits were believed to haunt the churchyard.

  When the grave was dug and the Mass said, Stephen carried the small body, which had grown rigid from the odd but usual stiffness that followed death, to the grave.

  He and Hova lowered the body into the earth with lengths of rope at the shoulders and feet. Hova said more prayers. The only witnesses were Morvel and two of
her children, the girl Enith and a boy of six or seven. They made poor mourners, for they fidgeted and the boy sucked his thumb and glanced about as if considering his options for escape.

  When the prayers were done, Morvel and her children went straight back to the house.

  Hova lingered for a few moments, as if he expected Stephen to ask for help in filling the grave. But when Stephen said nothing and took up the shovel, Hova left.

  He lifted the shovel and began dropping earth in the hole. He covered the body, starting at the feet, saving the face, which he had not gazed on since he laid the body by the church altar, for last. He laid the soil carefully on that face; to casually drop it seemed an insult. When nothing could be seen of it any longer, he began the long slog to fill the hole and pile up the spoil into a small mound above the body. It was indeed a small mound, for the boy did not take up much of the earth.

  By then, Stephen and this corner of the graveyard were in shadow, with an amber sun disappearing behind the skeletal trees atop the ridge on the other side of the valley. It was cooler now and Stephen shivered from the sweat he had generated during his work. His shirt stuck to his back. He put on his coat against a buffeting wind.

  The grave lay in a far corner of the graveyard, where there were a dozen other graves so fresh that grass had not grown over the mounds of piled up earth, only weeds on some. None would ever have a headstone or marker. No one in the parish wanted to remember they lay here.

  Hova had looked embarrassed at this when Stephen remarked about it.

  “My parishioners don’t want the strangers lying near their own people,” Hova said. “It took hard argument even to get them to agree to let them lie in consecrated ground.”

  Stephen put on his hat and stood over the pathetic little mound that would be Theobald’s only monument, the only tangible proof that he had ever lived. In a few years, that monument would be worn down by rain and covered with grass, and no one would know it had ever been here.

  He said a quick prayer asking Saint Milburga to care for Theobald — he secretly thought she owed him a favor for returning her bones to their rightful resting place — and turned toward his mare. She was staked out across the churchyard to eat as much grass as she could. The mare had already cropped a circle about the stake that was as wide as the lead rope allowed. Stephen moved the stake so the mare could continue feasting.