Kate Sedley - The Wicked Winter

Sunshine still lit the scene and promised that the better weather was indeed here to stay, for a while at least. As I left the manor behind me, a gull swooped low over the estuary, heading for the open sea, and I noticed that the swineherd had turned his pigs loose again to rootle among the debris washed up along the water's edge; both signs that life was gradually regaining its customary rhythm after being brought almost to a standstill for the past two days. The Saxon tower rose up before me, clear and sharply outlined against the bright blue sky. There was something sinister about it, and I thought of that Eadred Eadrichsson who had been dispossessed of his home and land by Sir Guy de Sourdeval after this country's conquest by the Normans. Had he put a curse on the place before he departed? Maybe.

As I approached, I could see that the door to the tower was standing ajar. Brother Simeon was waiting for me, and my heart began to pound uneasily. The evening before yesterevening — was it only such a short time ago? It seemed much longer — it was the friar who had fearlessly pushed wide the door. Now it was my turn. I flung it open and went inside.

The silence engulfed me. Only the soughing of the wind, as it searched out cracks and crannies between the ancient stones, disturbed the quiet. I paused, straining my ears for the slightest sound. Surely Brother Simeon must have been watching out for me, marking my progress along the snowy path which led from the gate in the manor wall, relieved that I had come at last and that the waiting was over. But why then did he not make his presence known?

I called out, 'Brother Simeon!' but my voice echoed hollowly up the empty stairs. Foolishly, I released my fingerhold on the edge of the door and advanced a step or two within the lower room. Immediately, the door slammed shut behind me, and before I could gather my wits sufficiently to avoid it altogether, my own cudgel, aimed for the back of my head, missed its target by inches and landed full across my shoulders. I staggered forward several paces, my hands reaching for the small table which supported candlestick and tinder-box, and brought it crashing to the floor beneath my weight. Although momentarily dazed by my fall, a sense of danger sharpened my instinct for survival, and I rolled clear of the stick's second murderous descent just in time. Almost without knowing what I was doing, I scrambled to my feet and turned to face my assailant. Brother Simeon, cursing volubly, wrenched the cudgel free from the splintered shards of wood and raised it for a third attempt on my life.

As it whistled towards me, I managed to catch the free end and hung on to it grimly, shaken to and fro like a straw man at a harvest gathering. I had not believed it possible that the friar possessed so much strength, and perhaps in normal circumstances he did not. But he was fighting for his survival and to prevent me from telling what I guessed. He had watched me, for the past two days, edging closer and closer to the truth, and now intended to silence me for ever, just as he had silenced Lady Cederwell, Gerard Empryngham and Ulnoth.

His eyes were full of hatred as we tried to wrest the stick from one another, and then, by a stroke of ill-fortune, I stumbled and was forced to release my hold in order to keep my balance. With a snarl of triumph, Brother Simeon attempted to lift the cudgel yet again, but during the struggle his hands had slipped too far back along the shaft to make such an action possible without first readjusting his grip. In the second or so's grace which this gave me, I leapt for the stairs and bounded up them two and three at a time.

l did not stop to consider the futility of what I was doing, but was impelled by the simple need of the pursued to elude its pursuer. The friar was between me and the tower's only door, so the stairs offered the sole means of escape. But I was also heading into a trap from which nothing but my superior strength could deliver me. Brother Simeon, however, had one great advantage: he had the murderer's instinct to kill, which had been honed, rather than blunted, by his recent activities. With three deaths already on his conscience, he would not hesitate to add a fourth. And he had already tried to kill me once when he, not Fulk, had pushed me from the stairs.

As I reached the first-storey room, I heard him blundering after me, the cudgel rattling against the edges of the steps as he dragged it with him. Once it sounded as if he tripped, probably over the hem of his habit, and he let rip with a string of oaths which would not have shamed a waterman. But he was on his feet again in less time than it takes to tell, and his head appeared clear of the stairwell. I glanced desperately around me only to confirm what I already knew; that there was no hiding place, and nothing in the way of a weapon.

Brother Simeon paused, baring his teeth in an unpleasant grin.

'I'll get you, Chapman. You can't escape. I'm going to have to kill you, you know that, don't you? I'm really very sorry because I've enjoyed your company, but I think you've guessed the truth about me. You're a clever lad, and you would persist in asking questions. And even if you haven't quite managed yet to piece everything together, I shall be forced to dispose of you anyway, now that I've shown my hand.' He sighed gustily and proceeded up the remaining few stairs.

I climbed the second flight of steps to the chapel.

Somewhere below me I heard him laugh, a soft whinny of mirth that rose to a great neigh of joyous pleasure as he contemplated the deed before him. The scales of his poor, fired mind had finally tipped him over into madness, and that madness would imbue him with even greater strength than he had shown hitherto. The Devil now had possession of Simeon and would fight on his behalf.

In two strides, I was across the room and trying to lift the ebony crucifix down from the wall, but its weight defeated me. I cast a frantic glance around and my eyes lit on the silver candlesticks gracing Lady Cederwell's altar. I seized one in either hand, intending to use them as weapons with which to defend myself; but, at the sight of Brother Simeon as he mounted the last few stairs, I held them before me in the shape of a cross in order to ward off evil. For his expression, no longer recognisable, was that of some monstrous gargoyle, leering at me and rejoicing in his wickedness. The eyes in the parchment-coloured face were devoid of all humanity and burned only with the lust to kill.

He had dropped my cudgel somewhere on the stairs — the clatter I had heard, but barely registered until now, as it rolled off the steps into the room below — and had drawn from the breast of his habit Martha's missing black-handled, long-bladed knife, which she used for slicing meat. He advanced towards me, arm raised, gripping it like a dagger, but suddenly he faltered as his gaze came to rest on my makeshift cross. The custom of years, those years since he had first assumed, and then absorbed, the character of Brother Simeon, conquered, if only temporarily, the devil which had him in thrall. He took a deep, shuddering breath and lowered his arm a little, but without slackening his hold on the haft of the knife.

Carefully, without turning my head to look behind me, I moved a couple of paces to my rear until my back was against the wall and my head on a level with the transverse bar of the crucifix. Out of the comer of one eye, I could see the white, contorted legs of the ivory Christ, with the nail driven cruelly through the arches of the feet, and I edged a step or two sideways, forcing the man in front of me to gaze upon the agony of his Lord and Maker each time he looked in my direction. I still held the candlesticks in their cruciform shape, but was ready, at any second, to use them in my defence.

'Raymond,' I said gently. 'Raymond Shepherd, listen to me! Put down that knife. It can do you no good to kill me.