Bernard Knight - The Elixir of Death

Hilda turned from the window and closed the shutter, as the grey sky began to spit cold rain down on Dawlish. She sat on a padded chair near the small fire that burned in the hearth, the narrow cone of the modern chimney taking the smoke up through the tiled roof. Her embroidery stood neglected on its frame near by, as for the past few days she had felt too restless to bother with it. Elegant in her blue kirtle of fine wool, wide sleeved and girdled with low-slung gilded cords, she stared into the glowing embers and felt both sad and angry. She was sad over the loss of her husband, and also for the uncertainty of what life held for her — or what it might fail to hold. Her anger was for the way he had died.

Though she had never loved Thorgils in the way that she had loved John de Wolfe, she had felt considerable affection for him and respected him for his unfailing generosity and concern for her welfare. Though many years older, he had had a healthy passion, and she readily acknowledged that she had enjoyed their coupling in bed, though for the last year or two his advancing age had cooled his desire. She herself was very fond of lovemaking, and now she wondered whether she would ever feel those delicious moments of rapture again, with any man. Thorgils was gone, John was wrapped up in his marital problems and his infatuation with the ale-wife, so where did that leave her? At the moment, she could not even visualise going with another man, and though she knew without any conceit that she was still very attractive, her widow's wealth might prove to be a burden. Suitors would be easy to find, but would they want her for herself or for the contents of her treasure box?

These past few days, she had spent a lot time sitting alone and staring into the fire. Thorgils had been buried for several weeks and every few days she went to place flowers on the low mound of earth in the churchyard. She spoke to him under her breath as she bent over the grave, telling him that she wished she had been able to love him more, and pouring out her sorrow at his passing and her loneliness. Gradually, her self-pity was replaced by a slow but growing anger. He had been a good man and he had been stolen from her. As she had told John de Wolfe, she had long been resigned to the cruel sea taking him one day — but not the cowardly blade of some evil killer.

Hilda felt guilty as she stared into the reddened logs, guilty not because of her failure to truly love her husband, or even because she had occasionally been unfaithful to him with her childhood sweetheart.

She felt guilty that she could not avenge him, discover who killed him and for what reason. He deserved a better end than to be stabbed by some uncaring murderer, she thought bitterly. When would they be brought to justice, if ever? De Wolfe himself seemed powerless to discover the culprits — she would have heard by now if there had been any progress in his hunt for them.

Hilda was a determined, practical woman of peasant stock, daughter of a village bondsman. She was relatively young, both fit and strong — was there nothing she could do to avenge Thorgils? Getting up, she paced the chamber to recall what little she knew, as told by John. The key must surely lie down in the west, where her husband had met his death. She was under no illusions about the difficulties, not least the problem of a woman travelling about the countryside — but that might be the one advantage she had over the coroner and the sheriff and their heavy-handed investigations. Maybe a woman, especially a local Saxon, could better infiltrate the common folk of the villages and learn something useful.

At least she could try — and it would be something to fill an empty life. She avoided admitting even to herself that most of that emptiness was caused by the knowledge that John de Wolfe could never be hers.

The same Atlantic wind that whipped up white horses on the sea off Dawlish whistled even more menacingly over the bare island of St Michael de la Burgh. On the windward side of the craggy isle, which was less than a quarter of a mile across, the waves lashed up in angry, snarling breakers, gouts of creamy spume flying upwards like feathers. The tide was ebbing, and already a line of sand was appearing between the island and the low headland that guarded the entrance to the River Avon.

In the anchorite's cell at the summit of the island, Joel peered out through the low doorway, a crude wooden frame closed by some rough planks of driftwood. It faced inland, away from the prevailing gales, and he could see the mouth of the river directly in front of him. A few days ago, in calmer weather, he had seen the rescued cog, the Mary and Child Jesus , sailing cautiously out to sea, with a half-size sail slung across a stumpy pole that did service as a temporary mast. Another smaller vessel, which had brought men and materials from Dartmouth, followed it like a sheepdog with a stray lamb, shepherding it down the coast and around Bolt Head to the safety of Salcombe.

It was late afternoon when the hermit crept out of his hut, his height making him almost bend double under the slab of slate that acted as a lintel. When he stood up, he could almost see over the roof, as the hovel was hunkered down so low in the rocky turf. Made of irregular stones set in a circle, it was topped with heavy flat slabs laid on stout branches dragged from the mainland. A turf roof could not survive the winds on that exposed crag as he had discovered the hard way, when he first came to the island more than twenty years earlier. When it rained, as it seemed to do for half the year, water poured in between the slabs and soaked everything in his hut — but as there was so little inside, this was no great problem. He had a pile of damp bracken to sleep upon, a crude fire-pit in the centre and a single milking stool on which to take his ease. A roughly carved crucifix jammed into one of the cracks between the stones completed the furnishings, apart from a handbell standing on the floor. A strict ascetic, Joel welcomed every personal discomfort, as for a score of years he had been trying to exculpate his previous sinful life by seeking hardship in whatever form he could devise. He drank nothing but rainwater and lived almost entirely on fish, feeling guilty when he occasionally ate a little bread given to him by one of the boatmen for whom he carried out simple tasks. Perched up on his rock jutting out into the bay, Joel could see when a shoal of herring or pilchard arrived from the activity of the gulls and the disturbance in the water. Then he would stand on his roof and clang his brass handbell to alert the fishermen. When they hurried to launch their flimsy curraghs, he would wag his arms about to direct them to the shoal, where they would scoop up the fish by the thousand.

This was almost his sole contact with the secular world, except for a monthly visit to the tiny church at Ringmore, where he would take the Sacrament and make confession to Walter, the parish priest. Joel never found this satisfactory, as Walter was dour and uninterested, always impatient to get away to his wineskin — but the hermit had little choice of confessor in this lonely district.

Now he stretched himself after being confined in the cramped hut and, from sheer habit, turned to scan the surface of the sea. It was too choppy to seek out any shoals and the fleeting rays of a low sun beaming through the gaps in the scudding clouds struck silvery patches across the angry swell. He turned back towards the mainland and picked his way like an old goat down the steep track he had worn over the years to reach the smooth sandbar which was now widening between the island and the low headland opposite. The winter was setting in rapidly, as a sudden swirl of snowflakes reminded him. Though he relished cold and discomfort, he knew that without a fire he would soon die of exposure on that bleak islet. That held no terrors for him, but he repudiated an early death, for it would cut short his self-inflicted misery, the atonement for his great sins of long ago, when he had killed and maimed — and, even worse, had revelled in the blood-lust of battle.