Paul Doherty: The Devil's Hunt

‘Brutal, sudden death!’ Father Ambrose, Parson of Iffley church, had proclaimed, ‘Shall be sprung like a trap upon every man living upon the face of God’s earth.’

Piers the plough boy, leaning against a pillar of the parish church, had listened to the sermon half dozing or casting lustful, hot-eyed stares at Edigha, the blacksmith’s daughter. Now, later that same Sunday, Piers was to have his heart’s desire. He’d met flaxen-haired Edigha beside the village well. They’d stolen out of the village, down the beaten track, past the gallows and into the field of ripe corn. Edigha had giggled and pulled at Piers’s hand.

‘I shouldn’t really go!’ she whispered, her blue eyes bright with merriment. ‘Father will expect me!’

‘Your father’s damping the ashes down in his forge,’ Piers retorted, grinning with a display of cracked teeth. ‘Whilst, Edigha my love, the flames in my belly burn hot for you.’ He said the words proudly, repeating what he’d heard the travelling minstrels say to a tavern wench in the Goat’s Head tavern after he’d come from ploughing the previous Monday. Piers’s short but eloquent speech had the desired effect. Edigha giggled again and trotted along beside him. Keeping their heads bowed, they moved through the sea of waving corn. Rabbits and mice, alarmed by their approach, scuttled for shelter, whilst above them wood pigeons fled like darts from the shadow of a hovering hawk. Piers stopped and looked up at them. For some strange reason he recalled Father Ambrose’s words: the hawk hung against the blue sky, motionless, waiting, watching, before its killing plunge. Piers shivered.

‘What’s the matter?’ Edigha pressed herself against him. ‘Have the fires gone out?’ She wrapped her arms around his waist, slipping one hand down to brush his groin. ‘We have to be back by sunset,’ she whispered.

Piers stared at the sun now setting in a glorious ball of fire, lighting up the sky with red-hot sparks. He turned, the breeze ruffling across his brow, and stared across at the small copse.

‘There’s something wrong,’ he whispered. ‘It’s so silent.’

‘You are frightening me,’ Edigha teased back yet she caught his mood. A tryst with Piers was what she had wanted but now, out here in the open, the corn swaying about her in the whispering wind, she was not so sure. She gazed across at the trees. It would be dark and cool in there, and her stomach jerked as she realised they would have to return the same way. If anyone saw them there would be teasing and whispering in the Goat’s Head and around the village well for weeks to come.

‘Can’t we go back by the trackway?’ she muttered.

‘We’d be seen.’ Piers grasped her hand.

He made to run forward but then he recalled the ghoulish stories: Ralph, the reeve, standing in the tap room, a tankard in his hand, describing in hushed tones the severed corpses recently found in the woods around the city.

‘Bleeding like stuck pigs they were,’ Ralph had warned. ‘Blood bubbling out like wine from a broken jar: their heads wrapped by hair to the branches above.’ Ralph had shaken a warning finger. ‘It’s those bloody ne’er-do-wells!’ he ranted. ‘Those so-called scholars from the town with their airs and graces.’

Everyone had nodded. Oxford was strange: a town with its own rights and privileges; with its own peculiar smells and sights. All towns were bad enough with their swaggering merchants and sharp-eyed traders but Oxford, with its scholars, many of them strangers from other parts and even from foreign countries across the seas, was worse than Sodom and Gomorrah, or so Father Ambrose said. Whilst the scholars with their bird-like talk and gaudy raiment, were devils incarnate. Now and again some of them came out to Iffley, strutting like peacocks, their knives and swords pushed in their belts. They’d eye the girls and look for anything they could steal. Naturally these same students now took the blame for the hideous corpses found in the countryside around the city.

‘If they’re going to commit hideous murders,’ Bartholomew the miller had growled, ‘they should do it within their own walls.’

‘But why?’ Father Ambrose had intervened. ‘I’ve heard that the corpses belonged to beggars. Some people claim they were used,’ his voice fell to a whisper, ‘for foul, Satanic rites.’

‘Piers! Piers!’

The ploughboy broke from his reverie.

Edigha was playing with the laces of her bodice and lust flared again in his belly.

‘Come on!’ he muttered thickly. He gently touched the generous swell of her breasts, his fingers fluttering down around the slim waist. He pulled her close. ‘You are so giving!’

‘I’ll be your wife, won’t I?’ Edigha enjoined, her blue eyes holding his. ‘You said so. I’ll be handfast as your wife. At the church door before All Hallows?’

Piers stooped to kiss her but then jumped, his head snapping back as he looked up. A speck of blood splashed on his face, a feather drifted down: the hawk had plunged to make its kill. Piers didn’t wait any longer; Edigha might change her mind. They hurried on through the corn, stopping now and again to hug and kiss, Piers’s sweaty fingers scrabbling at Edigha’s bodice, tugging at the cords. At last they reached the edge of the wood and ran into its cool green darkness. Piers pulled Edigha down on top of him. She giggled and resisted, then broke free and ran on. Piers sighed. Girls always did that, turning their courting into huntsman’s bluff. Piers got up and chased after her, catching her in a small glade. He sighed with pleasure: her hair had broken loose and was hanging down, a mass of gold on either side of her red, sweaty face, her blue eyes were bright. He grasped her hand, pulling her to him, and they walked between the trees. He began to kiss her, relishing the sweet smell of her skin, licking at the sweat which laced her throat. Suddenly Edigha went rigid. She pushed him away and stepped back, staring at something behind him. Edigha’s face was white, her eyes screwed up, her mouth opening and closing in terror, whilst strange sounds gurgled from the back of her throat.

‘What is it, love? What is it?’

She half raised her hand. Piers turned slowly as if he knew what he was going to see. At first he could see nothing untoward, but then he looked up. From an old oak tree a branch jutted out like a spear and, on its end, lashed by its hair to the branch, was a severed head. Piers took a step closer: the eyes were half-open, the grey cheeks sagging, the mouth gaped bloody like that of a slaughtered animal. The neck was cut and ragged, still caked with gore. Piers’s mouth went dry. His legs began to tremble. Edigha seized his hand, and they both turned and fled from the terror in the woods.

In Sparrow Hall, near Turl Street in Oxford, Death had also sprung like a trap. Ascham the archivist knew he was going to die. He lay, his legs bent in pain, his mouth opening and shutting. He tried to force a scream but he knew it was useless. No one would hear; the doors and windows were closed. His death had come spinning through the air, the crossbow quarrel taking him full in the chest.

Ascham knew he was dying. He could taste the iron, salty tang of blood gurgling at the back of his throat. Stabs of pain went through his body. He closed his eyes, whispering the words of the Confiteor, seeking God’s absolution: ‘Oh, my God, I am sincerely sorry for these and all the sins from my youth…’ His mind wandered even as his body trembled with pain. Images from the past came to him — his mother bending over him, the shouting of his brother, his early days in Oxford, jaunty, full of life. The girl he met and would have married, sad-eyed and moist-mouthed when he turned and walked away; Henry Braose; his great friend, scholar, soldier and founder of this very Sparrow Hall where he now lay dying. So much evil now! Resentment, fury and hatred. The Bellman proclaiming the Devil’s malice, trying to destroy everything Henry had built up.