Michael JECKS - The Devil's Acolyte

Hal said, ‘It’s just an old piece of wood.’

Simon could see nothing else at the bush. He took the timber back and studied it again. There were some scratches at the base, three lines with a fourth connecting them, like a set of vertical stones topped by another one.

‘What’s this?’

Hal glanced at it. ‘Just some marks, nothing more. Could be a child did it. Let’s see whether there’s anything nearer him. Come on!’

Simon scrutinised it a short while longer, but there was nothing more to be learned. He dropped the club beside the bush and rejoined Hal, who was poking hopefully around another bush. Simon asked, ‘Where was his smallholding?’

‘Over towards Skir Ford. There was a deserted farm there and he took the house and began working the land. Not that he did very well. Too much rain. Nothing grows well here in the moors.’

‘That’s no more than a mile from here,’ Simon considered, gazing north as though he might be able to see the place. ‘What was he doing here?’ He snatched the wineskin back from Hugh as he saw it being upended again.

‘Coming back from the coining, probably,’ Hal said, gratefully accepting a drink.

‘Was he there?’

‘Yes. I saw him at the market.’

‘I see. You’re sure he had no money?’

The miner shook his head and spat, glancing back at the corpse for a moment. ‘No. He had nothing – nothing saved, nothing to spend, nothing worth stealing.’

‘He had something,’ Simon said shortly as he thrust his foot into his stirrup and sprang up. ‘Otherwise, why should someone kill him?’

What was the motive for Wally’s death. That was the thought which nagged at Simon as he and Hugh rode over to the dead man’s home. A squat thatched cottage with small windows, the place was tatty and unkempt, like most of the miners he knew; like Wally himself. The wood was rotten at the door and shutters; the thatch was green and sprouted weeds. Moss covered the smoother stretches, and birds had dug holes in among the straws. It looked scarcely waterproof. A small shower would pass through it as though through fine linen.

Behind the dwelling was a small, weed-infested patch of unhealthy plants: alexanders, cabbages, carrots and onions. The latter had fungus rotting their stems, and the carrots all looked brown and decaying.

Hugh drew up his nose. ‘As a gardener he made a good miner.’

‘Remember he’s dead,’ Simon said sharply.

‘Can’t forget, can I? Not after seeing him. Still, truth is truth, and this is a midden.’

Simon couldn’t help but agree with him, and it was no better inside. The cottage had a damp odour that the Bailiff was sure came from mushrooms in the walls or timbers. It was as though the house itself was dying, like a faithful hound that expires on seeing its master’s dead body.

Dank and foul it was, but there was no sign of a disturbance of any kind, nor of a theft. If Simon had to guess, he would have said that the place was as Wally had left it. On a rough table constructed of three long planks nailed together lay a jug, a cup and a purse, which was empty. Two stools sat nearby, while there was a barrel of ale standing in a corner. A palliasse leaking straw lay in a pool of brown water, and a small box was propped against a wall. Inside were Wally’s pathetic possessions: a small sack of flour, a thick coat, some gloves – all the accoutrements of a peasant with little or no money.

So why should someone kill him if there was nothing to steal?

All the way back, that was the thought that circled round and round in Simon’s aching head. When the two reached the steep hill on the way back to Tavistock, he had come no nearer to a conclusion. Walwynus was only a poor miner, after all, if Hal was right. A miner who had lost much of his livelihood since the famine years, and whose miserable plot of land wasn’t enough to sustain body and soul.

He could recall the man. Walwynus had been out on the moors when Simon first came here to take on his new job as Warden, although he had stopped mining soon afterwards. Wally had been a pleasant enough fellow, the sort of man who laboured daily whatever the weather, enduring steady, repetitive toil that would break most men’s muscles and spirit in hours, stolidly digging his pits and turning soil near rivers, always looking for new signs of tin.

Yet as Hugh said, he could not be called a gardener. His vegetables wouldn’t have served to support him through the winter, let alone given him excess produce to sell. So how had he survived?

Halting his horse, Simon leaned forward and frowned at the view. Through the trees he could see the Abbey deep in the valley between the hills, enclosed neatly within its walls, safe from the intrusive borough that crouched beneath the parish church. It was a scene of quiet progress, the little town of Tavistock. Busy, attracting men from all over the country to come and generate wealth, it was a model for other towns to follow.

It was so tranquil-looking, it was hard to believe that a man could have been bludgeoned to death so close. Perhaps he was trying to reach the town, Simon mused, and was captured by someone who beat him to death from sheer evil spirit; or was he attacked by a gang of trailbastons or other felons? Simon had seen such things before, certainly, but usually there was a good reason for an outlaw to attack, especially armed with a club.

The club. It was odd, Simon realised, and his brows darkened.

A man who was poor might choose a morning star as a weapon because anyone, however destitute, could lay his hands on a lump of wood and hammer some nails into it, and while most would prefer to set out on a career of murder and theft with a sword or at least an axe or dagger, a very poor man might be glad to make do with a home-made club. Of course, a man that hard up would surely not then toss his weapon away. He’d keep it, unless he had managed to steal a better one from his victim. And yet Walwynus had had nothing other than an eating knife on him, the last time Simon saw him.

However, a man who was wealthy enough to afford a decent long-bladed knife or sword wouldn’t have minded abandoning the murder weapon, especially if he intended pointing the finger of suspicion away from himself and allowing another man to dance a jig on the Abbot’s gibbet.

Simon was thoughtful as he spurred his mount on, and he didn’t like his thoughts very much.

When the Almoner, Brother Peter, entered the Abbot’s chamber, he was aware of a faster beat to his heart, as though it had shrunk and he now possessed the tiny heart of a dormouse in his breast. It felt as if it was preparing to burst from its exertions.

‘My Lord Abbot? You wished to see me?’

Afterwards he remembered it. Aye, at the time he saw Abbot Robert flinch, but it was so commonplace a reaction to the sight of him that Peter hardly noticed it just then. Only later would he recall it, and realise that the Abbot suspected him.

Different people reacted in a variety of ways. Some, especially the young, would first recoil with every expression of revulsion on their faces – although later, once over their initial shock, they would often speak to him about his wound and ask how he received it, how it felt, and even, could they touch it, please?

Quite often, Peter told untruths. God would forgive his dishonesty, he felt sure, for the stories he told invariably had a moral purpose. He would tell a child that he had received his scar when he was a little boy, caught stealing apples from a neighbour’s orchard, or that he was found with money taken from his master’s purse and fell into a fire while hurrying away from his crime, and every time he would solemnly declare that any child who was so naughty as he had been, would also be marked for life.