Michael JECKS - The Devil's Acolyte

‘What should I have learned? The Abbot did not ask me to investigate the theft,’ he said, purposefully leaving the word in the singular.

‘Aha! So you weren’t piqued with interest? But perhaps other things have been taken from here, which could lead to the reputation of the Abbey being damaged – badly so. Don’t you have a duty to seek out the truth?’

‘Not if the Abbot told him not to,’ Augerus said, and hiccuped. ‘Isn’t that right, Bailiff?’

‘Yes,’ Simon said. ‘After all, I have no jurisdiction here, do I?’

‘If a man is threatening to trample the Abbey’s good name in the mud, he should be punished,’ Mark said, but now his eyes were turned away, and Simon felt he was almost talking to himself. ‘He deserves punishment.’ Then he turned to face Simon again. ‘Any man who dares harm this Abbey will suffer the consequences,’ he declared. ‘God won’t allow blasphemous behaviour.’

After a long and strenuous ride, Baldwin and the Coroner had slept the Tuesday night in a pleasant inn at South Zeal. The weather had been kind to them, and they had made good time, riding fast on the swift road that led through Yeoford and then Hittisleigh, finally arriving in the village only a short time after dark.

Sore from their ride, Baldwin rose with a grunt as the innkeeper arrived and started opening the windows. This, Baldwin thought, was the worst aspect of travelling. Small inns so often had nowhere to put guests, and all they could do was make space for a man to sleep on a bench, or perhaps allow him to sleep on the hay in the stables. Perhaps he should be glad that at least there was space near the fire, because the weather was turning unseasonably cold. The landlord and some local men asserted that it was normal for the time of year, but Baldwin found it hard to believe that the weather so near to his own home could be quite so different. And the midges were foul, too. When he went out during the night to piss against a nearby tree, he found himself crawling with them in the space of a few minutes.

It was a great relief to be up and ahorse after a rushed breakfast of cold meat and some coarse bread. While he chewed, Baldwin saw the Coroner putting half his own loaf in a cloth and tying it into a neat bundle.

‘What’s that for?’

‘I thought it would be as well to take something for our lunch.’

‘There are plenty of good inns on the way to Tavistock, Coroner. We have eaten in some of them.’ Baldwin eyed his own loaf. ‘I certainly do not think that this would be comparable with some of the food at inns there.’

‘No. If we were to ride around the north side of the moor, you’d be right,’ the Coroner agreed. ‘But I didn’t intend that.’

‘Which way do you want to go, then, Sir Roger?’

‘Over the middle.’

Baldwin considered this. ‘You do realise how quickly the mist can come down?’

‘I have been on the moors and lived to tell the tale when that happened to me,’ Coroner Roger said lightly. ‘No, I merely wish to see the place where this death happened before we go to Tavistock and hear what people think we wish to hear.’

Baldwin nodded, but he was not content. Even when they had mounted their horses and he could see that the sky was almost devoid of clouds, that the top of the nearby hill was smooth and an apparently easy ride, and that the ground underfoot was dry and not at all boggy, he still felt a nagging anxiety.

‘Come on, Sir Baldwin. Courage!’

They had left the inn, and were riding down the main street, past all the houses in their burgage plots on either side, and then turned right at the bottom of the road, heading for the great hill Baldwin had seen before.

‘I am not fearful,’ he said stiffly. ‘Yet I swore to my wife that I would avoid spending too much time on the moors. Every time I visit, there is death and murder.’

‘Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’

Baldwin grunted. He could not put his feelings into words. He was aware of a curious awe about the moors which bordered on the superstitious; probably, he told himself, because his wife’s attitude had coloured his own. Earlier this year, before the double disasters of the tournament at Oakhampton and then the murders at Sticklepath, he would have scoffed at the idea that the moors could themselves be unlucky or fated, but now he was growing to feel if not a fear, certainly a degree of apprehension.

‘How do you know where we are to go?’ he asked. ‘I thought you only knew that the body was over towards Tavistock.’

‘It is. It’s down near Fox Tor. I know that way a little – there was a knife-fight there some years ago and a man died, and I had to go there to hold the inquest. It was one of my first cases, so of course I recall it well.’ Cheerfully, he related the tale of a man who had come to the area with a friend, both seeking to become miners, but then one day they argued, and one stabbed the other.

Baldwin listened with only half an ear. They had followed the narrow lane for some hundreds of yards, with the land rising steeply on their left, while on their right there was an area of pasture with a small stream beyond, chuckling merrily. Their track took them right, down a dip and up the other side, and here Baldwin realised that they were climbing the hill.

From a distance it had looked immense, like a great bowl which God Himself had inverted on the horizon, and Baldwin was glad that the daunting sight of it was concealed by the thick woods that grew here at its base. In among some of them pastures had been cut, and the woods were receding as the men from the borough cut their winter logs and coppiced and cleared, but there were enough trees to hide the vast bulk.

They wound upwards, and then took a left fork. ‘No point climbing to the top,’ the Coroner muttered as he led the way. ‘This is the peat-cutters’ track.’

The track led between two walls, both of which had bushes and trees growing in them and reaching high overhead, creating a tunnel of verdure. At their feet, it was metalled with rocks of moorstone which had sunk to an even level, so that packhorses could pass up here even in the worst of the winter weather, and Baldwin was glad of it because at the side of the trail was a trickle of water. If there were no stones, this would soon become another quagmire.

The way climbed, but more shallowly, and at last they were out into the open, leaving the trees behind.

Baldwin took a deep breath. The last time he had been up on the moors he had seen another death, and it had touched his soul with sadness. That was partly why he was growing to detest the moors, because he could only ever associate them with death and murder. Not that this visit would make him feel any more content, with another murdered man at the end of the journey.

Here, though, it was hard to view the surrounding landscape with anything but awe and delight. The ground dropped away to their left, while on their right was the steeper rise to the summit, the side of the hill scattered with a thick clitter of stones. A tough climb on foot.

Coroner Roger took him on, past a strange little triple row of standing stones. ‘God knows what they’re doing here!’ and on to a lower hill. From here, he pointed south. ‘All this land is the King’s. He must have magnificent hunts over here, eh?’

Baldwin could not help but agree. As they trotted on, he marvelled at the odd, soft beauty of the place. It was as though the only people alive were he and the Coroner. No noise of axe or pick reached their ears, and no house could be seen. There was only the endlessly rolling little hills, mostly smothered in a bright mantle of purple heather.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ the Coroner said, smiling at the sight of Baldwin’s face.