Devil's Acre

by Stephen Wheeler

  ‘Nicholas, listen to me,’ I said to him seriously. ‘You can’t run away, they won’t let you. You have to go back.’

  But he just shook his head. ‘I’m not going back. You can’t make me.’

  He may have the mind of a child but he had a man’s size and a man’s strength. This was not going to be easy.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘why don’t you tell me what the problem is? I’m sure we’ll be able sort it out.’

  He shook his head again. ‘You’ll be angry with me.’

  ‘I won’t be angry, I promise,’ I said patiently. ‘Just tell me why you’re here.’

  By now the drunk in the grave was starting to come round. He wasn’t dead, just passed out from a combination of ale and shock. He sat up groaning and holding his head. As he did so something glistened beneath him.

  It was then I became conscious of a sticky wetness on my shoulder where the boy had blubbed over me. I thought at first it was his tears but when I touched it I realised that was blood also. Alarm bells started ringing in my head.

  ‘Nicholas, what’s happened? What have you done?’

  He started backing away from me and put his hands behind him. ‘You said you wouldn’t be angry with me. You promised.’

  ‘I’m not angry with you,’ I said, ‘but you must tell me what happened.’

  Behind me the drunk was still trying to scramble to his knees but he kept slipping back. ‘I can’t get up,’ he slurred in amazement and plucked at his sleeve. He put his hand under his bottom and pulled something out. ‘What’s this?’ He squinted at it then flung the thing down again in disgust. ‘Urgh!’

  I turned back to the boy urgently. ‘Nicholas, show me your hands.’

  But he shook his head violently from side to side and backed further away. ‘No!’

  So I pulled them roughly forward. As I feared, they too were covered in blood and in the right one he held a knife.

  ‘Nicholas!’

  He started to sob. ‘They made me do it, brother. They said if I didn’t they would. They were going to skin her alive. Like a rabbit. I couldn’t let them. Not to my Esme.’ His face creased into a picture of silent anguish.

  Now I was angry, but not with the boy. I shook him by the shoulders. ‘Who made you do this? Tell me!’

  But he didn’t have to tell me. Who else could it have been but the same boys who had tormented him the previous day? He looked so unhappy that despite myself and his blubbering sobs I put my arms around him and held him tight.

  ‘Hahaha. What’s the matter with him?’ the drunk giggled and pointed idiotically. ‘He’s crying. Cry baby!’ He laughed again.

  I looked angrily at the man. I could see now what was stopping him from rising but I wasn’t going to tell him. Scraping around in his drunken stupor he had impaled his sleeve with his knife. It wasn’t the monster that was pulling him down to hell but his own stupidity.

  ‘Isn’t anyone going to help me?’ he bleated still plucking at his sleeve.

  ‘Oh shut up!’ I barked.

  I was furious. Monster or no monster, I was determined to get to the bottom of this without delay. Those boys needed disciplining and there was only one person who could do that: Lord William.

  Before we left, however, I helped Nicholas bury the remains of Esme’s body at the edge of the cemetery which appeared to have been his original intention. We did it quickly as I could hear the dogs getting closer. Nicholas also helped me clean up the grave once I’d released the drunken fool who had pinioned himself to its floor. I had visions of Jane returning and finding Esme’s bloodied remains in the bottom. In her state of mind heaven alone knew what she might make of that. Nicholas wanted me to say a prayer over Esme’s little mound but I explained that was going too far and in any case we had to get away before the soldiers arrived. Needless to say there was no sign of the Revenant. If there had been I think I might have cut him down too. At that moment I was ready to take on the world.

  By now the moon had risen high enough for Nicholas and me to see our way through the deserted streets. We got through the town gate with little difficulty once the guard realised who my companion was, but getting into the castle grounds wasn’t going to be so easy. As we approached Nicholas took off by himself - getting back in the same way he had got out, presumably - while I continued to the west gate alone. It was being guarded this night by a buffoon of a sentry with a halberd and a tin hat. For the first time in my life I understood the term “hopping mad”. I was literally hopping from one foot to the other.

  ‘I demand to see Lord William.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Yes. I have urgent business with his lordship so you will do well to stand aside, my man, and let me in.’

  ‘Lord William usually tells me if he’s expecting anyone,’ said the guard equably.

  I gave him my sternest look. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  The fool shrugged.

  ‘I am Master Walter de Ixworth, personal physician to the Abbot of Edmundsbury. You’ve heard of him, I take it?’

  The clown nodded.

  ‘Then you will understand that my visit could be a matter of life and death,’ I said pulling my robe together and trying to disguise the blood and saliva on my shoulder. ‘Lord William will not be best pleased if he hears you have been obstructing me.’

  ‘Well, in that case,’ said the man, and to my satisfaction he raised the barrier to let me in. But I had barely gone two yards inside the grounds when I felt a hand grab hold of my hood lifting me up onto my toes. Without missing a beat I was propelled straight past the castle entrance to the east gate where with a shove I was sent sprawling in the snow, much to the amusement of the guards who were manning it.

  ‘And if he tries to get back in again,’ said the first guard dusting his hands together, ‘throw him in the moat.’

  I staggered to my feet slipping on the mud in my confusion while my audience continued to laugh at my expense. Humiliated and angry, I was inclined to give them all a piece of my mind, but I didn’t relish the thought of a swim in the icy waters of the moat at that time of the morning. Discretion, therefore, being the better part of valour, I withdrew to nurse my bruised ego and to try to think of another way of getting into the grounds.

  But I didn’t have to think for long for another figure now materialized out of the gloom like a heavenly apparition. It was the lovely Simone, the gentlewoman servant from the previous day. She beckoned me with an angelic white hand.

  ‘Brother Walter?’

  ‘Yes?’

  She smiled. ‘Follow me,’ and she led me back past the guards who watched us go with hooded eyes.

  Simone led me up over the drawbridge and through yet another gateway into the inner bailey, the final defensive barrier of the castle. Up close I could see the donjon was less of a fortress than a sturdy house built of solid masonry four stories in height. But instead of going inside as I expected Simone led me to a wooden outbuilding that stood in the courtyard. This seemed to be some kind of hawking house - the stench of the aviary was unmistakable even to my untutored nostrils. As we entered, the exotic birds were sitting quietly on their individual perches each eyeing me with inscrutable benignity. At the far end stood a figure with its back to me, but there was no mistaking its identity. The countess was quite alone except for a single manservant holding a tray from which she was feeding morsels to one of the hawks.

  ‘Master Walter is here, countess.’

  ‘Thank you Simone,’ she said without turning. ‘That will be all.’

  Simone curtsied to her mistress’s back and then smiled and winked at me before leaving. I think at that moment I was in love.

  By now my anger over Nicholas had dissipated to be replaced by a sense of apprehension. Why had I been brought here? No-one could have known I was coming for I hadn’t known myself until a short while before, yet my presence seemed somehow…expected. Perhaps Samson was wrong and my services were to be required of after all, but if so it was an odd ti
me of the day to call upon them. And why here in this strange place?

  The countess wiped her hands on a cloth draped over her manservant’s arm and turned to face me. Before me I saw a woman in, I guessed, her seventh decade of life although with her hair completely hidden behind her tightly-drawn wimple it was difficult to say for certain. There was still a residual beauty there but time had taken its toll on her looks. Yet this was not a vain woman - at least, not one engaged in the futile effort of defying time with lead-white and rouge as so many ladies of her age do. As a result her natural beauty shone through. But she looked drawn and tired not helped by the stress of having her husband so close to death. She selected a chunk of raw liver which the bird eagerly plucked from her fingertips and swallowed in a single gulp.

  ‘This is Pennyboggid, my pride and my vanity,’ she said stroking the creature’s plumage. ‘The name in the Welsh language means “leader of hawks”. What do you think?’

  ‘He’s a beauty,’ I replied.

  ‘She,’ the countess corrected me. ‘In the hawk world it is the female that is the larger sex,’ she smiled without irony. ‘Bigger, greater speed, more power. I take it you do not hunt, master monk?’

  ‘Never with such magnificent creatures as these.’

  ‘Nor indeed should you. The peregrine is an aristocratic bird to be handled only by the nobility. Oh, but I was forgetting: yours is a noble family is it not?’

  That shocked me a little. ‘I didn’t know you knew my family, my lady.’

  ‘I know of your mother. There aren’t many women who can boast an education to rival that of Héloïse of Argenteuil. And like that lady she gave up her scholastic endeavours for the sake of a man.’

  She was referring, as I knew, to the notorious liaison between Peter Abelard and his mistress Héloïse. A love affair celebrated by the troubadours. I hoped she didn’t think my mother and father were guilty of similar indiscretions.

  ‘My father…’ I began -

  ‘…was a knight who abandoned his calling to turn physick during the great struggle in the Holy Land. Yes, I know. And, I might add, applied his skills to the relief of the heathen enemy to the great distress of his Christian comrades.’

  I bridled at that. ‘He thought a wounded man no less able to feel pain or undeserving of help because he worships a different god, my lady.’

  ‘You have a brother also of that accursed race of infidels…’

  ‘…who served his adopted countrymen for twenty years thereby saving a great many Christian lives - my lady,’ I said stiffly.

  What was this? Is that the reason I was brought here, for sport at my family’s expense? But the next thing she said floored me utterly:

  ‘Abbot Samson tells me you’re an excellent doctor. Is that true?’

  My jaw fell open.

  The lady smiled. ‘Yes, he said you’d do that, too.’

  I snapped it shut again. ‘The abbot is inclined to exaggeration, my lady.’

  She tutted. ‘Oh dear. I do hope you’re not going to be dull, master monk. False modesty is such a tiresome conceit. Answer me plain. Are you any good at physicking or not?’

  ‘I have been the abbey’s doctor for a decade and a half. If I had not been any good I imagine I would have been replaced by now.’

  A slight smile creased her lip at that. What was she thinking, I wondered? Eventually she nodded. ‘You were making quite a nuisance of yourself at my gate just now. What was it about?’

  ‘It was nothing, my lady. Just something I needed to see Lord William about.’

  ‘Anything you wish to say to my son can be said to me.’

  ‘I…did not wish to burden your ladyship at such a difficult time.’

  ‘I’ll decide what burdens I can bear. Simone tells me you were angry about something.’

  I was loath to describe Esme’s mutilation to such a refined lady. The death of a dog seemed a trivial matter compared with the pain she must be suffering over her sick husband. But I could see she would not be fobbed off with lame excuses, so I gave her the barest details.

  ‘Is that it?’ she said when I’d finished. ‘A dead dog?’

  ‘The animal in question belonged to me, my lady.’

  ‘I thought monks were not permitted possessions.’

  ‘It was not by choice. Circumstances thrust the creature upon me.’

  ‘You were happy enough to let her go yesterday.’

  ‘I thought Nicholas would make a better master,’ and relieve me of the trouble of having to care for her, I could have added.

  ‘Nevertheless, you will be compensated for your loss.’

  ‘That’s most gracious, but the Lady Adela has already made the same offer.’

  She looked surprised. ‘Adela? What has she said to you?’

  ‘Only the same as you, my lady.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  I hesitated. ‘No, nothing my lady.’

  ‘Very well. I will see to the matter.’

  I bowed. ‘My lady.’

  ‘And Nicholas will be duly punished.’

  I looked up. ‘Oh, but there’s no need for that.’

  ‘On the contrary. The boy is about to join a knightly order. He must learn that with authority comes responsibility.’

  ‘But it wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘He wielded the knife. How was it not his fault?’

  ‘Because…’

  ‘Yes?’

  I hesitated again but this time could see no way round it. ‘Because he was bullied into doing it.’

  She looked at me seriously. ‘Bullied? By whom?’

  By Richard of course. That at least was my suspicion. I had no proof because it was the serving boys who tormented Nicholas. But they would not have dared act as they did without approval. Naturally I couldn’t say so. But I was sure that the lady understood who we were talking about.

  ‘What you call bullying, master monk, Lord William calls toughening up. As a squire Nicholas will have to see far worse things than the death of a mere animal.’

  ‘That may be true for normal boys, madam. But you must know Nicholas is not normal.’

  Oh dear. Now I’d done it. You don’t call the sons of the aristocracy abnormal. When was I going to learn to think before I spoke? I could feel the shutters being closed.

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘In what way “not normal”?’

  Here we go again. I seemed to be having the same conversation again that I’d had with Maynus and Samson. Was I the only person who could see there was something different about Nicholas?

  ‘My lady, I am a humble doctor. Give me a bone to straighten or a boil to lance and I am your man. Questions of this nature are for God alone.’

  ‘And God’s guidance will be sought, never fear. But questions of what nature, master physician?’

  I pressed my lips together. If I wasn’t careful this could end very badly for me. But someone had to speak up for the boy since he patently couldn’t do it himself - and nobody else seemed willing to either, not the abbot or the prior or even his own family it seemed. I took a deep breath:

  ‘I think, madam, that Nicholas does not have the wherewithal to fulfil the role Lord William has mapped out for him. I think in particular he should not be squired. I think it is a mistake.’

  There, I’d said it. And may God help me for my foolhardiness. If I still had a tongue in my head by the time I left here I’d count myself lucky.

  The lady’s frown deepened. ‘That is a grave judgement, master monk.’

  ‘And one I should not have made. Please ignore it.’

  ‘Too late. The genie is out of the bottle. Well, you won’t be surprised to hear that Lord William doesn’t agree with you. He believes the only suitable occupation for men of Richard and Nicholas’s rank is the profession of arms. So there’s no more to be said.’

  I bowed, I must say with relief. I’d done my best. If the boy’s own grandmother wouldn’t protect him there was nothing more I could do. The countess seemed to
think so too. She picked up final piece of liver to feed to Pennyboggid, but seemingly changed her mind and dropped it back onto the tray before wiping her fingers one more time on the cloth.

  ‘Thank you, Robert.’

  The servant bowed and walked sedately away. Then without another word the countess started to leave.

  ‘Erm, forgive me my lady,’ I said quickly, ‘but since I am here would you like me to examine your husband?’

  She seemed surprised. ‘Examine the earl? Why should I want you to do that?’

  I felt me face colour. ‘I just thought…?’ my voice faded away.

  ‘No I don’t wish you to examine the earl. But you may tell the abbot that our meeting has been most satisfactory. Good morning to you Brother Walter.’

  Chapter 19

  TRUE COLOURS

  Most satisfactory? What on earth did she mean by that? As far as I could tell nothing happened - less than nothing in fact, for not only did I fail to get Nicholas’s tormentors disciplined I had actually succeeded in making matters worse for the lad. He was going to be punished for someone else’s crime, for much as I deplored what Nicholas did to poor Esme I could see that his intensions were good. Faced with impossible alternatives he had chosen the course that seemed the least bad to him. Someone with more wit might have found a better solution - but then someone with more wit would not have been in his position in the first place. And surely that was reason enough to exclude him from the career his uncle had planned for him. As for making use of my talents as a physician - well, excellent or not they were clearly not good enough for the earl.

  It was all too much for me to take in. I was exhausted having had no sleep this night and very little the night before. By the time I left the castle it was beginning to get light, not yet dawn but already the new day was getting underway. The heavy iron-clad doors of the gate stood open and traders were starting to come into the castle grounds and were being checked by the same guard who had challenged me earlier. Now that my temper had abated a little I realised the man had only been doing his job so I gave him a friendly nod as I passed to let him know I bore him no ill-will.