Bernard Knight - The Elixir of Death

The sky had a pink-tinged greyness that confirmed his forecast, but at least the cutting east wind had abated. Hilda pulled her pilgrim's cloak more firmly around her and thanked the old man before setting off down the other branch of the junction. She trudged along the narrow track, the ground firm where the mud had dried. On either side were scattered bushes and low trees almost devoid of leaves. There was no cultivated land here, and beyond the irregular tracts of heathland the edge of the forest stood in mottled shades of black and brown. There were no travellers on this path, and the only life she saw was a slinking red fox and a pair of circling buzzards. More used to the mild bustle of Dawlish, for a while she had the fancy that all humanity had perished and she was alone in a world deserted by all but the animals and birds.

It seemed a long mile, but eventually she came into the small hamlet, a dozen crofts and tofts around a church, a blacksmith's hut and a cottage with a drooping bush above the door, the universal sign of a tavern. Behind the village, a band of strip-fields ran up to the edge of the dark forest, which loomed oppressively into the distance, where it dipped down towards the valley of the Avon.

Though hammering came from the open front of the smithy, there was almost no one in sight, other than an old woman sitting on a tree stump outside her tumbledown cottage, spinning wool from a distaff under her arm on to a spindle hanging from one gnarled hand. She looked up curiously as Hilda approached, the sight of a solitary woman being unusual in these parts, even if she was wearing the garb of a pilgrim.

'Are you lost, good girl?' the crone asked, her bright eyes taking in every detail of the new arrival's appearance. 'There's nothing down this road other than the river and the sea.'

'I thought I could get back to Aveton, mother,' answered Hilda, putting on her strongest rural accent, honed in her own village of Holcombe.

'You can, if the tide is out,' replied the dame. 'Though you'll be hard pressed to walk there before nightfall.'

'Can I find some food and drink here, mother?' she replied. 'I have some pennies and that looks like an alehouse.'

'Madge will give you something there, no doubt. But a fair woman like you should not be walking the roads alone, especially these days.'

Something in the spinner's voice made Hilda take notice.

'What is happening these days to give you concern, mother?' she asked.

The old woman's brows came together and she looked somehow furtive.

'Strange things are going on in the forest hereabouts,' she muttered. 'Ghostly figures seen at night, food and livestock vanishing. Voices calling in the woods … I fear for our souls in this vill.'

Hilda felt a frisson of unease shiver up her spine. 'Have you seen three or four Benedictines come through here at any time lately?' she asked.

The aged woman shook her head. 'I hear that some king's officer came asking the same question not long ago. But we've seen no monks here, only ghostly shapes in white robes in the woods, according to our sexton.'

Hilda thanked the lady and moved on to the alehouse, where the buxom widow Madge told her much the same story after she had given her a plain but wholesome meal for a ha'penny.

'The village men are fond of their drink, but so they have been these many years,' she explained. 'Yet it's only in the last few weeks that they have been telling these tales about strange goings-on in the forest.'

Hilda had given a cautious version of her own story, of the widow seeking answers about her husband's murder. The ale-wife, a widow herself, had responded with sympathy, though she too was surprised and curious about an attractive woman wandering the byroads alone.

'What do you think is the explanation for these visions?' asked Hilda, as she sat at the only table and ate fat bacon, eggs and beans, with fresh bread washed down with cider.

Madge, her ample bottom overflowing a stool near by, lifted her hands in supplication.

'Who knows such things? Even allowing for the romancing of some of our menfolk with too much ale in them, something unusual is happening in the forest. Months ago, men sent by the manor-lord went into the woods on the other side from the village and stayed there a week or more. We heard distant hammering, but no one was allowed near — not that anyone wished to prowl, given the villains and outlaws that sometimes infest the forest.'

'Is there anything deep in the woods? Buildings or suchlike?' asked Hilda.

'Only ruins, those of an ancient castle and next to it what was once a priory in the old days. I've never seen them myself, I keep clear of such places, but my father spoke of these derelict remains. He used to go in there poaching, I must admit. Men are too afeared these days — one lad a month ago was beaten up and almost killed by some rough fellows in there.'

At that point, the landlady went off to pour a quart of ale for a ploughman, who seemed to have come in mainly to ogle this handsome woman who had descended upon their village. Left alone with her trencher of food, Hilda thought about what the two village women had told her about the surrounding forest and became convinced that something was going on in there that was connected with these crimes. Her feelings were mainly based on what John de Wolfe had told her about this whole area … the murder of the shipmen, the warnings from Winchester about a new Prince John rising, the possibility of Moorish involvement and, not least, the appearance in several sites of these hooded monks. To such an intelligent and determined woman as Hilda of Dawlish, this was a challenge that could not be ignored. If there was someone hidden away in those woods, then surely a circumspect reconnoitre might be well worth the effort?

'Can you give me a corner to sleep in tonight, good-wife?' she asked, when Madge had finished serving the nosy villein. 'I need to be at St Anne's Chapel tomorrow to meet my pilgrim friends and return to Salcombe,' she said, manipulating the truth again.

They agreed on a palliasse alongside Madge's own in the lean-to behind the inn, as well as another meal that evening. Then Hilda announced that she was going for a walk to familiarise herself with the village, while daylight lasted, it now being early afternoon. The ale-wife looked troubled at this and urged her not to stray too far.

'Certainly don't go into the forest,' she declared. 'And be sure to be back well before dark!'

Hilda demurely agreed, put on her cloak and, once out of sight of the tavern, made straight for the edge of the forest. The lonely atmosphere of deep woodland held no terrors for her, a country girl who had spent well over half her life around Holcombe. She found a deer path and, by a combination of natural instinct and observation of the motion of the drifting grey clouds above the trees, aimed her feet directly away from the village, towards where she gathered the old ruins lay.

After the better part of an hour, she began to wonder whether she was doing the most foolish thing in her whole life, blundering about an unknown forest on the strength of a couple of drunken yokels' fantasies about ghosts. She eventually stopped and began debating whether she should turn around and go back. Then she heard a horse neigh in the distance and wondered if she had come almost right through the trees and reached the other side of the forest. The next thing she noticed was through her nose, rather than her ears. A waft of woodsmoke reached her nostrils, and carefully she walked ahead again, tracking down the smell until she could see a thin line of grey smoke wavering in the wind. It seemed to be coming from the ground itself, and when she delicately trod towards it, saw that it was indeed rising from the centre of a larger thicket of brambles.