Michael JECKS - The Devil's Acolyte

Later, walking from the Abbey church out to the dorter , he felt the skin of his back crawling. He anticipated the thunderbolt of God’s wrath at any time. At the very least he thought he deserved to be stabbed, to have his life expunged.

He’d seen the Bailiff before, and knew who Simon was, what his duties were. The man was bound to sense what Gerard had done. In fact, Gerard thought he could see the recognition in Simon’s face. When the Bailiff looked at him, there was that expression of confused suspicion on his features, like a hound which has seen his quarry, but is doubtful because the beast doesn’t run. Gerard had seen that sort of expression on a dog’s face once when he was out hunting. A buck hare was there, sitting up on his haunches, but as soon as he caught sight of Gerard and his dog, he had fallen flat down on his belly, ears low, and fixed as stationary as a small clod of earth.

His dog was all for running at the thing, but Gerard knew it could easily outrun his old hound, and anyway, there was no need to set the dog after it: Gerard knew hares. He made the dog sit, and then walked away, up and around the hedge. The hound stared at him as though he was mad, and then returned to gaze suspiciously at the hare, which simply gazed back at him.

Gerard had no idea why hares would do it, but a hare would watch moving things rather than a man. He’d been shown the trick by an old countryman years before: the man had seen a hare, and rather than set the dogs free, he’d walked closer, then hurled his coat away. The hare stared at it as it flew past, and meanwhile the man circled around it until he could grab it by the neck and quickly wring it.

The same thing almost happened with Gerard’s hare that day. He left his hound there, sitting, while he took off his jacket and screwed it up into a ball, throwing it as far as he could. He tried to circle around behind the hare, but it didn’t work. Something alarmed the animal, and it bolted before Gerard had managed to get halfway. He turned to his dog to order him on.

The hound needed no second urging. He hurled himself forward, muscles cording under his glossy coat, and pelted off, but the hare had too much of an advantage. It had escaped beneath a tree-root, through a tiny gap in the hedge, and was gone, while Gerard’s hound sniffed and whined and paced up and down, trying to find a gap broad enough to wriggle through or a spot low enough to leap over.

Simon’s expression reminded him of that day, because as he ordered his hound to stay put, and the hare sat still, he saw the quizzical doubt on the dog’s face, as though it knew that the hare was a prey, and expected the animal to bolt. Only when the hare leaped up and ran did the dog feel comfortable that it was behaving true to form. Simon was the dog, Gerard his prey. Dogs chased when smaller creatures ran, that was the way of things, and Bailiff Puttock was waiting for him to bolt.

Gerard shivered as he came to the reredorter and walked to the wooden plank with the holes cut out. His bowels had felt loose ever since news of Walwynus’ death had reached his ears. He had never thought, when he succumbed to the temptation of stealing a little bread, that it would come to this. He knew he should confess to Abbot Robert, but his master was such an intimidating man. Someone like the Bailiff who knew the Abbot only as a businessman or friend wouldn’t see him in the same light, but to Gerard he was the strict interpreter of God’s will, the man who translated His will for the poor fools like Gerard himself who couldn’t comprehend it. Abbot Robert was the supreme master in this, his Abbey, and Gerard could no more face standing before him and confessing his crimes than he could before the King.

If only it had been the wine alone. Gradually, step by step, he had been drawn ever further into crime. Not because he wanted to, but because that evil bastard had forced him to. He could weep now, to think of the coins, the baubles, the little strings of beads, the wine and dried meats… All stolen by his nimble fingers, all gone. He was to blame, and the Abbot would exact a severe penalty for his crimes. At the least he would be humiliated, but he might receive a worse punishment. Perhaps he could even be sent to the Scillies, to the islands of St Nicholas, St Sampson, St Eludius, St Theona the Virgin and Nutho. Gerard had never been to the islands, and didn’t want to. To be sent there was the punishment for only the most hardened of conventual criminals. The islands were tiny, with small communities of weather-beaten, uncommunicative men to whom piracy was a way of life whenever fish were scarce.

He hadn’t wanted to get involved. Life as an acolyte was hard, in a regime like this, and he had occasionally stolen spare food or a little wine, but then he was spotted. Suddenly he had a master, a wheedling fellow who persuaded him to take ‘Just one little loaf from the kitchen. Such a little thing.’ And so it was, something which the two could share, and all for a small wager. If he had been discovered, it was no matter. He could have borne the strap on his bared arse. That was nothing – the sort of thing that all boys were used to. After all, a beating was easy, three or four rubs and the pain was gone. Far better to have the strap than to be detained indoors on a warm, summer’s afternoon when the birds were tempting a shot with a sling, or when the dogs were baiting a bull in the shambles.

Although that was the beginning, it wasn’t the end. If only it had been. The suggestions went from a loaf to loaves. There was nothing to it. Gerard was small, slender-waisted and narrow-shouldered, and could wriggle through the smallest of windows. He found it easy, and it was fun. There was never anything serious about it. Not for him there wasn’t, but soon he was to realise that his exploits were not viewed in the same light by his confederates.

His enjoyment dimmed when his wheedling master neatly trapped him. He had been stealing to the order of his master, who now insisted that he continue. If he didn’t, at the least he would be exposed; at worst, tortured. But if he complied, he would be safe.

Gerard had been tempted to go to the Abbot and confess everything, but then he realised how weak his position was. Gradually he had taken more and more and his easy manner had begun to fail him. Whenever he saw the Abbot’s eye resting upon him, he was convinced he was about to be accused. It seemed so obvious. He became a nervous wreck. And then he had been told to steal the wine.

It made no sense to him. What was the point? They had no need to steal the better part of a pipe of the Abbot’s best wine. It could only bring attention to them. To him . If only he had not succumbed to stealing the bread in the first place, then he would be safe. Perhaps he still could be.

He would never again steal from the Abbey, he promised himself. There was no cure for his soul for the damage he had already done, but at least he could try to atone by not stealing again, and try to make amends for the things he had already taken. That would be best.

Filled with this resolve, he rose and washed his hands in the trough before making his way out to the frater . This massive block was opposite the Abbey church, at the other side of the cloister, and he must walk down the steep stone stairs outside the reredorter and cross a narrow passage between the buildings to reach it.

At the bottom of the stairs he licked his lips nervously. A fresh thought had occurred to him. If Walwynus was dead, then the man who had killed him might have been motivated by the simple urge to steal whatever Walwynus had, as the majority of the monks suspected. Someone might have seen Wally walking about with a sack on his back on the day of the coining and decided to kill him and take whatever was inside. There were plenty of outlaws even in Devon who would be prepared to murder on the off-chance. And any man who did that would have found themselves in luck, from the quantity of pewter that was in Wally’s sack.