Michael JECKS - The Devil's Acolyte

Simon watched him go with a shrug and sense of failing to meet Baldwin’s level of razor-sharp questioning. There was nothing more to be learned by standing in the street staring after him, though, and he bent his steps to the Abbey again.

By the time he had finished his meagre breakfast of bread and thin ale, he had come to the conclusion that he didn’t like the duty imposed upon him by the Abbot. The thought that he should support and assist some fool of a recruiter did not appeal to him at all.

The arrival of other guests to enjoy the Abbot’s hospitality reminded Simon that someone among them was an Arrayer, and he rose hastily and left the room. Outside in the cool air, he breathed in the freshness that comes only after a good downpour. It must have rained heavily overnight, he thought. He searched about for a place to sit, and finally picked upon the wall of the cemetery.

It was while he remained sitting there that he saw the Abbot’s Steward and groaned to himself when he realised that the man was making his way towards him.

‘Bailiff? I am Augerus, the Abbot’s…’

‘I know. What are you after?’

Augerus smiled thinly. Simon’s irritability early in the morning was known in the Abbey, for he had stayed here often enough on his Stannary duties, but Augerus was a proud man who was well aware of his own importance. ‘My Lord Abbot has asked me to introduce you to the Arrayer, Bailiff. But perhaps you are feeling a little tired still?’

Simon eyed the man. Augerus’ expression told Simon that confessing to tiredness would be pointless. ‘I apologise for being short, friend. It was just that my mind was on the murdered tin-miner.’

‘Walwynus? I suppose you have heard the rumours about the travellers? Everyone remembers the tale of Milbrosa.’

Simon listened as Augerus led the way to the Abbot’s lodgings. ‘Some of the monks here believe in that sort of story?’

‘Oh yes. Some are quite superstitious. Not me, I have to say. I believe that if God truly wanted to give mankind a message, He would pick a means which would be more easily understood. Surely He appreciates how often His creation manages to misunderstand Him, don’t you think?’

‘I haven’t really thought about it,’ Simon admitted. ‘I find it’s hard enough trying to understand what all the men on the moors are doing without worrying myself about His plans.’

The Steward tilted his head as though acknowledging that Simon was probably better suited to the world of men than to interpreting the will of God. He opened a door on the right of the passageway and stood back to let Simon inside.

‘Master Bailiff, this is Sir Tristram de Cokkesmoor.’

Simon held out his hand and forced a smile to his face as he recognised the man with whom he had last night shared his bed.

Hal Raddych heaved himself to his feet, rubbing at his eyes and hawking loudly. Another miner should arrive today, to take his place guarding the corpse, and he squinted in the direction of the camp, searching for a figure that could be heading towards him, but there was nothing.

He swung his arms and yawned. Holding a finger first to one nostril, then to the other, he blew his nose clean, and wiped it on his sleeve. Thirsty, he smacked his lips. A stream lay a few yards away and he glanced briefly at the corpse before strolling around the hillside to the water.

A miner all his life, Hal was impervious to the cold. His hands and face might have been carved from an ancient oaken beam, for all the effect that the elements had upon them, and he kneeled at the side of the stream and scooped handfuls of icy moor water over his head and rubbed it into his face. It was his routine, summer or winter.

His ablutions complete, he sucked up a mouthful from his cupped hands, rolling it around his tongue like a spiced wine. Not as brackish as the water nearer his own workings, he decided. A fresher, cleaner taste.

Once, when he was younger, he had asserted in an alehouse that he could tell where he was in moments, purely by drinking the water. It was a proud boast, and a foolish one, which earned him a swift pasting from an older miner who resented his cockiness, but he still believed it to be true. All the streams and pools about the moor had their own distinct flavours. This, now, this was more like a pure stream with a hint of meat in it. His own was peatier and darker; any clothes put into that would invariably come out brown, no matter what their original colour. The water was filled with the stain of peat.

Rising, he pulled his hat back over his brow and stared about him. He was tired, after standing awake much of the night at Wally’s side, and the bright morning sun made him wince, peering with his good eye like a sailor searching for a ship.

He walked back to the body, noting the smell of decay and the way the belly had expanded. If he knew anything, and he had seen plenty of dead men, this body would soon be ready to explode.

He left Wally’s remains and went to the bush with the bloodstain, picking up the timber and looking at the scratches once more. They were his mark; the timber was from his mine. Any miner would recognise it as his. Some bastard had stolen it from him, hammered the nails into it, and used it to kill Wally. Who could it be, though? Hamelin? Christ’s Cods! The man was a friend . But someone else could have wanted to frame Hal or Hamelin. Who? Tapping the timber against the palm of his hand, he let his eyes move to the mire ahead, to the smoke beyond that showed where another group of miners worked.

They were probably getting their cooking fires ready to heat a flat pancake of oats with maybe a little meat from a bird or a rabbit, whatever they could catch out here. And one of them, perhaps, had stolen a piece of his wood, knowing that he marked every balk against theft, and used it to murder Wally so that he, Hal, would be implicated. That thought was not a comfortable one.

Hal was one of the more successful miners. He had found tin in places where others saw nothing, and some said he possessed a magic, that a witch or demon had granted him the ability to find ore where others couldn’t, but he asserted it was simply his organised way of looking. Others were slapdash, digging one hole, deciding there was nothing there, and moving on to a fresh site. Hal wouldn’t do that. He dug one pit, then a line of others, running across the base of a hill where he thought a seam might lie. Sometimes he was right; often he was wrong – but the men who created malicious rumours about him ignored his failures.

Some men had grown to hate him, he knew. They were either scared of him, thinking that he was touched by the devil, or they were jealous, envying his success. He didn’t care which type of man had used his wood to kill Wally. Whoever it was, Hal had other things to concern him, like what to do now?

His eyes dropped from the smoke and a small smile touched his lips. He walked down the hillside to the green, shimmering land beneath. There was a pile of stones, as there were in so many parts of Dartmoor; this one was named Childe’s Tomb. He walked past it and on, careful now, stepping cautiously over the soft grasses and rushes. When he found a boot sinking deep into a patch of mud, he stopped. He prodded the grass in front of him with the timber, and saw the gentle rippling that spread across it.

It was a mire. One of those evil spots where the water built up beneath a thin layer of soil and plants. A man or beast who put his foot on to that would sink through the grasses and drown in the thick, peaty waters beneath. There was no possibility of rescue, so far away from civilisation.

Hal studied his timber once more, and then pushed the end of it into the ground before him. It sank quickly, and when it had disappeared, the grasses and reeds floated back over the hole as though nothing had ever disturbed the smooth grassy surface.