by Pat Walsh
For a few moments, William hesitated. It was Lent, and the eating of meat, or cheese or milk or butter — anything coming from an animal — wasn’t allowed, other than on a Sunday, and today was only Wednesday.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Robin asked.
“It’s Lent,” William said reluctantly. He saw Robin’s blank look and felt a flicker of surprise. “Don’t you fast for Lent?”
Robin smiled thinly and glanced at the hunk of bread. “It seems not. Don’t you want this?”
“Well, yes,” William said, “but . . .”
“But what?”
“I shouldn’t.”
Robin’s eyes narrowed. “Who would know if you ate it? I won’t tell anyone.”
William was sorely tempted. Hunger gnawed with rat-sharp teeth at his stomach. Would it really be so bad to eat the bread and cheese? He would work extra hard in the abbey for the rest of Lent to make up for it. The prior would have his hide if he found out, but surely God wouldn’t punish him too harshly?
“All right, thank you,” William said at last, grinning with delight. He took the bread and sank his teeth into it. It was still warm, and the cheese had softened. There was even a smear of melting butter on the bread. Yet another sin to add to his growing list. He closed his eyes with pleasure and chewed slowly. He had never tasted anything so wonderful before. When he opened his eyes, he saw that Robin was watching him with amusement.
“Don’t they feed you at the abbey?”
“If you can call it food,” William said. “It’s not like this. And there’s never enough of it, especially now that Lent has begun.” He took another mouthful and muffled, “Though that’s probably not a bad thing.”
He noticed that Robin didn’t touch his piece of bread. Instead, the boy tucked it back into his bag.
“You delivered your message safely?” Robin asked.
William nodded. “Sir Robert is sending his master mason to the abbey in the morning.”
“And will this mason be able to stop the church from collapsing, do you think?”
William made a face. “I hope so. How long will you stay in Yagleah?”
“A day, a week, who knows?” Robin looked sideways at William with the slightest of smiles. “Perhaps I will never leave.”
William thought this was an odd thing to say. “Where did you live before you took to the road with your flute?”
“It wouldn’t mean a thing to you if I told you, but I am a long way from home.”
“Have you ever been to London?” William asked after a few moments. Since his brother Hugh had set out for London three years ago, he’d been curious about the city. He wanted to be able to picture in his mind where his brother was; perhaps then Hugh wouldn’t feel quite so far away.
“Many times. Why do you ask?”
“My brother Hugh is there. At least, I think he is. That’s where he was going when he left home.”
“It’s a long journey from Iwele to London. A lot can happen along the way. For all you know, he might be lying dead in a ditch somewhere,” Robin said with a shrug.
William stared at him speechlessly for several moments, shocked by the boy’s callous words, but then frowned. “How did you know we lived in Iwele?”
“You told me,” Robin said lightly.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then I must have overheard someone talking about you in the village.”
“Why would anyone in Weforde be talking about me? And most people there only know I live at the abbey, not where I came from.” William watched Robin’s face closely.
“Well, somebody must have mentioned it, because I know, don’t I?” Robin said reasonably, his eyes wide and innocent. Up close, the boy’s eyes seemed greener, William noticed, and not really brown at all.
William let the matter go for the moment and finished the last of his bread and cheese.
They walked up the sloping track and into the forest. The afternoon was losing light quickly. The misty gloom of the woodland made William shiver. He was very glad of Robin’s company.
“We’d better hurry,” William said, squinting up at the lowering sky through the falling rain, “if you’re going to reach Yagleah before dark.”
“The darkness doesn’t trouble me,” Robin said, grinning, “nor a spit of rain.”
William knew he should warn Robin about the dangers lurking in Foxwist, but even so, he hesitated before adding, “The forest won’t be safe after dusk.”
“Forests and lonely trackways seldom are. Wherever I travel, I hear stories of wild animals, thieves, and ghosts.” Robin leaned a little closer to William and added, “Not to mention tales of fay creatures ready to lead the unwary traveler astray. Do you believe in fays, William?”
William just shrugged and looked away.
“Most people don’t. They are just the stuff of stories told around the fire,” Robin said. The slightest of smiles touched his thin lips. “But I can say with all honesty that I’ve traveled this land from one end to the other and have never once been troubled by a fay creature.”
“Yes, well,” William muttered, feeling his cheeks redden. If Robin didn’t believe in fays, there was nothing he could say to change his mind, unless he told him about Shadlok and the hob, and William had no intention of doing that.
“But if the fay do walk these woods,” Robin added, an odd gleam in his eyes, “then it won’t be safe whether it is night or broad daylight.”
They walked along without talking for a while. William searched for something to say to break the silence.
“What’s London like?” he asked at last.
“Big,” Robin said. “It would fill the whole of that valley behind us. Narrow streets full of houses, people jostling for space with horses and dogs, cats and rats, disease and hunger, wealth and plenty and poverty. You can watch a man being hanged on the gallows at Smithfield in the morning and see his head on a pole above the gatehouse of London Bridge that afternoon. And the noise!” Robin’s face seemed to light up with a strange excitement. He turned to grin at William. “Imagine everybody in Weforde jumping to their feet, all shouting and yelling at once. That would be just the smallest part of the noise in London. The smell of river mud is bad in winter and worse in summer. The air is thick with smoke from hundreds of fires and ovens, and ripe with the stink from cesspits and the drains down the middle of the streets. It has a taste that stays with you long after you leave.”
William stared at him. How could Robin sound so gleeful about such horror? London sounded like something from a nightmare and not at all how he’d imagined it to be.
“London is a terrible and monstrous beast. It is dangerous and will devour the unwary traveler. Like your brother, perhaps,” Robin said, smiling as if he had made a joke, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
William had no idea what to say. There was something about Robin that disturbed him, a streak of cruelty he did not like.
Robin stopped for a moment to take his flute from his bag. “Nothing persuades the feet to walk a little bit faster than a lively tune.” He slung his bag over his shoulder, put the flute to his lips, and began to play.
William walked along the grassy edge of the track, his footsteps keeping time with Robin’s song. The music wrapped itself around him, filling him with a strange elation, and for a while he barely noticed the rain. The mud and the cold breeze were soon forgotten. He quickly picked up the tune and hummed along. Robin looked at him over the flute and nodded in approval. William grinned back. Every now and then his boots slipped on the wet grass or his cloak caught on a trailing bramble branch, snagging the wool, but he didn’t slow down. He couldn’t slow down. The notes rippling from the flute would not let him. Panic fluttered in his chest. The music was somehow pulling him along in its wake. He tried to stop, but his feet no longer obeyed him; they skipped and stamped along by themselves in a dance that was getting wilder and faster by the moment. He turned to Robin in alarm, but the boy was looking ahead now, and his fingers
flew over the holes in the flute with bewildering speed.
“Wait!” William said sharply. “Stop!”
Robin glanced at him, eyes narrowed, but he carried on playing. His wet hair seemed a darker shade of red in the dusk, and his eyes were the bright green of early summer leaves. Whatever Robin was doing, he was doing it on purpose, William realized, and he was enjoying it.
“Stop playing,” William said angrily. “Stop now!”
Robin lowered the flute. His face was a mask of surprise. “What’s the matter?”
“Put the flute away.” William’s hands clenched into fists. He had no idea how Robin had managed to do that to him, to make his feet move as if they were no longer his own, but he wouldn’t let him do it again.
Robin’s expression was unreadable. “I just thought music would make the journey more pleasant.”
William stared back, refusing to show fear in front of the boy.
“Have it your own way,” Robin said with a shrug. He dropped his bag on the grass and squatted down beside it to pack the flute away. He took out the bread and cheese he had kept for himself and held it out to William. “You might as well have this. I will no doubt eat well enough in Yagleah tonight.”
William hesitated, desperate to accept the food but still wary of Robin.
“Just take it,” Robin insisted, “by way of an apology.”
William took the bread and put it in the pocket sewn inside his cloak. “Thank you,” he said gruffly.
Robin sighed and stood up. He hefted his bag onto his shoulder and turned to trudge away along the track. William watched him, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. The boy’s thin, bedraggled figure would have wrung pity from the hardest heart, but William had the strangest feeling that there was more to Robin than met the eye. It was as if the real Robin was hiding behind this one. It was an unsettling thought. He would be glad when they reached the abbey and parted company.
Robin walked a little way ahead of William for the rest of the journey. The silence between them was not an easy one. The rain pattered on last year’s dead leaves and dripped from branches, but beyond those soft noises William noticed how quiet the woods were. There was no birdsong, he realized with surprise. The wind had dropped, and Foxwist was as silent as the grave.
William glanced around with a growing sense of unease. The late afternoon shadows were creeping between the trees. He could feel a change in the air, a strange stirring that tingled through his body. The woods no longer seemed familiar. The track ahead of him looked the same as ever, but it felt very different. He had the unsettling feeling that it no longer led to familiar places, to Crowfield and Yagleah, but to somewhere else entirely. And was it his imagination, or did Robin look different, too? Taller and wider across the shoulders, perhaps, his hair longer? William fought down the fear welling up inside him. It’s just the fading light making things look strange, he reasoned. Not much farther now, and I will be safe.
Up ahead, the rags tied to the bushes near the Hollow hung like dead hands, limp and dripping in the steady rain. Robin walked past them without as much as a glance. William hardly dared to breathe until the Hollow was safely behind him. Robin disappeared around the next bend in the track. William clambered back onto the grass verge and broke into a run. Robin was waiting for him by the fork in the track leading to the abbey. He was the same skinny, lank-haired boy William had met in Weforde. Whatever William thought he had seen earlier, it must have been all in his mind, conjured out of fear and the failing daylight.
“Thank you for the food,” William said awkwardly. As strange as the boy was, he had been kind enough to share his bread and cheese with William, and such rare generosity should not be ignored.
Robin’s eyes gleamed. “It’s my pleasure. I hope you enjoy it.”
William opened his mouth to say he would, when he noticed a dark patch on the causeway, just a few paces away. He turned to look more closely and was disturbed to see that it was blood, mixed with small clumps of reddish fur. He crouched down beside it and picked up a tuft of fur between his thumb and forefinger. He turned it slowly and caught his breath. It was the same shade of red as the hob’s fur. Fear squeezed the breath from his body and it was several moments before he realized that it was not quite the same, but a shade or so paler and not as coarse. It was fox fur. He glanced back down at the blood. There was a great deal of it, but strangely, there was no sign of the injured animal and no trail of blood to show where it had gone.
William noticed something else on the bloodstained ground. Carefully, he picked it up and to his surprise saw that it was a bundle of oak twigs, tied with a length of wool. A cold chill of foreboding crept over him. He looked up at Robin and saw that the boy was staring at the abbey with a strange expression on his face.
“What do you suppose this is for?” William asked, holding up the oak twigs.
Robin glanced at them and took a step backward. “Who knows?” He seemed ill at ease and anxious to be on his way.
William dropped the fur and the twigs and stood up. He wiped his blood-smeared fingers on his cloak. Robin started to walk up the causeway to the track.
“I am sure the monks would give you lodgings for the night if you asked them,” William called after him. “You could continue your journey in the morning.”
“I told you, the rain and the dark do not trouble me,” Robin said sharply. He glanced from the patch of blood to the abbey buildings, and for a couple of moments his gaze lingered on the church tower. William thought he saw a flicker of fear cross the boy’s face.
“I’m sure we’ll meet again, William,” Robin called over his shoulder.
William grimaced and thought, I hope not. He stepped over the bloodstain and sprinted down the track toward the abbey gatehouse, splashing through the puddles and floodwater. He looked back when he reached the abbey gate, but Robin had disappeared into the darkening forest, and the trackway was empty.
CHAPTER
FIVE
William draped the wet cloak over two stools near the fire in Brother Snail’s workshop to dry. The monk was washing his hands in a bowl of water after spending the afternoon weeding and digging in the herb garden. The hob stood by the open doorway to catch the last of the daylight while he scraped the mud from an ironshod shovel. An assortment of gardening tools — a hoe, a rake, and a three-pronged fork — stood against the wall nearby, all cleaned and ready to be put away for the day.
Brother Snail looked at William with a frown. “This boy Robin sounds very strange indeed. But generous, too, giving you half of his bread and cheese.” If the monk had been disappointed with William for breaking his Lenten fast, he had said nothing.
William sat on the floor near the fire. He pulled off his boots and held his feet in their soaked stockings out to the warmth.
“He gave me the other half of the loaf before he went on his way,” William said. He leaned over and felt for the pocket sewn inside the cloak and pulled out the bread.
Only it wasn’t bread.
William stared at the dark, seething mass in his hand in stunned silence, then with a yell flung it away from him. He scrambled to his feet, his whole body going hot and cold in waves. He wiped his hand on the leg of his trousers to try and get rid of the feel of the damp, rotting mass of . . . what was it? To his horrified gaze it looked like the remains of a small animal, long dead and crawling with maggots. A couple of maggots dropped from the fold of the cloak and squirmed on the floor.
Brother Snail looked up, startled. The hob threw down the shovel and hurried over to see what the matter was.
“Will? What is it?” the monk asked, drying his hands on a small rag of linen. He saw the remains on the floor and caught his breath. “Blessed God, what is that?”
“It’s what Robin gave me . . . it’s the bread,” William said. I ate part of that, he thought, appalled. His stomach heaved, and he ran for the door. He stumbled around the corner of the hut and hunched over, retching.
A hand grabbed
William’s hair, not roughly, and pulled it back from his face. Whoever it was stayed with him until every last thing in his stomach lay on the grass beneath the blackthorn tree.
“Better?” Shadlok asked somewhere above him.
William slowly straightened up. His body trembled and tears rolled down his face. He wiped his mouth with the back of his shaking hand. “Yes,” he said hoarsely.
Shadlok was watching him with a frown. “The one-eyed cook’s food has not improved, by the look of it.”
William shook his head. “It wasn’t Brother Martin’s cooking. Maybe God was punishing me for eating cheese on a fast day.”
“Why would He do that?” Shadlok sounded mystified.
“Because it’s a sin,” William said. Shadlok raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
“Are you all right, Will?” Brother Snail asked anxiously, grabbing his arm.
“Maggots are never a good thing to eat,” the hob said, climbing up to sit on a low branch of the black- thorn and patting William on the head in sympathy.
“Maggots?” Shadlok said, sounding surprised. “Why did you eat maggots?”
“I didn’t,” William said, feeling his stomach tighten ominously. “Well, I did, but I didn’t mean to.”
“Would somebody care to explain what is going on?” Shadlok said evenly.
“Come with me,” Brother Snail said. “I will show you.”
Shadlok followed the monk into the hut. William leaned against the tree and breathed in deeply and slowly, trying to calm the chaos in his belly. It didn’t make any sense. Robin had handed him maslin bread and cheese. It had been warm and fresh, and it had tasted good. Better than good, it had been the best thing he had eaten in months. He’d seen and touched the second half of the loaf when Robin took it out of his bag. He would have wagered his soul that it had been bread, plain and simple.
So where had that rotting abomination come from? If it wasn’t divine punishment on him, then how had Robin managed to trick him like that?
