Michael JECKS - The Devil's Acolyte

Hal shrugged his shoulders and returned to his tool. ‘You should pay that Ellis a visit when we go to Tavvie for the coining on Thursday.’

Hamelin nodded slowly. Gazing about him at the scatterings of soil with the leat tumbling down its narrow way in the middle, he felt the desolation of the place sinking into his soul and infecting him with despair.

Hamelin was not born and bred on Dartmoor. His father had been a serf who had run away from his master in Dorsetshire and made his way to Exeter, where he had lived for a year and a day without being captured, thus securing his freedom. Hamelin had been brought up as a poor freeman with no training, for his father couldn’t afford to apprentice him, and yet he had managed to make himself a small sum of money by hard work. Then his little shop burned to the ground and he lost almost everything. All his spare money was tied up, but he was lucky, so he thought, that at least he had loaned cash to a local man who was plainly wealthy enough to repay the debt with a good rate of interest. Except he wasn’t. He had gambled the lot away, and then he went to the Abbey, so the debt couldn’t be enforced.

That was why Hamelin had hurried to this desolate place. Cold, wet and grim, he had a loathing for it that bordered on the fanatical. He had come here determined to find a rich lode of tin. From all he had heard in Exeter, it was easy. You walked about until you saw traces of the tin-bearing ore in a riverbed, and then traced the river back upstream until you found the source. You might have to dig a few times, exploratory little pits designed to see whether you had the main line of the tin, but that was it. It had seemed incredible to Hamelin that everybody didn’t run to the moors to harvest the wealth that lay beneath the soil.

But after six long years of intensive searching, after wearing through spades, after all but breaking his back moving lumps of moorstone and trying to bale water from pits he was trying to dig, he felt as though it was all in vain. Luckily Hal had taken him under his wing. Apart from Hal’s friendship, the only wealth he had found was Emma. She was the only source of joy in Hamelin’s life. The children he was fond of, but they were a continuing drain into which all his money was tipped, while Emma, with her smiling round face, was a comfort to him.

He had met her on one of his journeys to the Stannary town of Tavistock years ago. She had been serving in a pie-shop, and he had bought one pie, and then stayed there for the rest of the day, chatting and teasing her. He had adored her from that moment. It was something he had never thought could happen to him, but she was kind, generous of heart, and made him laugh; and he seemed to make her as happy in return. Soon they betook themselves to a tavern and drank, and that night they fell together on her bed. Within a week they were wedded, with many witnesses watching at the church door.

That happiness was blessed with children, as the priests liked to say, but Hamelin spat on the idea. Blessed ! How could children be thought of as a blessing? They needed food, and that meant money. Hamelin had nothing. The children stared at him with their sunken eyes, their swollen bellies, each time he went to see them, every few weeks, and when he saw his lovely Emma and how wizened she had become, he felt as though his heart would burst. She was broken down with toil, her back bent, her face aged beyond her years. As he took his leave-taking to return to the moors he had grown to detest, she hugged him and kissed him and wept a little, as did he as his feet took him up the steep hill towards Walkhampton, over the common, and on to the Nun’s Cross at the edge of the Great Mire. Yes, he wept too, for the life that he should have been able to offer his wife. If he still had his money, he’d be able to, as well.

Injustice! That was what tore at him. If he’d not made that damned loan to the bastard who’d fleeced him, he’d be able to support his family. Instead, he was out here, stuck in the middle of this hell-hole.

From his vantage point at the top of Skir Hill, he could look all along the small valley that pointed northwards. His house was a huddle of stones, almost invisible among the clitter, with its thick layer of turf for a roof. It was small and smoky, but at least it was warm in the winter, which was more than other miners’ places. His home was not too bad – but it was this desert all about which appalled him. It was as though he had been convicted of a crime and punished with exile in this hideous land, all alone but for the occasional traveller passing by. If he could only get at his money, he would be safe, but even the lawyers he had spoken to had laughed at the idea of appealing a monk. Who wouldn’t balk at the prospect?

He felt crushed by the unfairness. Today the sky was a grey blanket that smothered his soul. There was no pleasure here, only despair, he thought.

A sparkle caught his eye, and he frowned, peering northwestwards. There, on the track that led from Mount Misery towards the Skir Ford, he saw a tiny group of people and carts. Travellers. It was tempting to go and speak to them, but he had work to be getting on with. Perhaps today he would find a rich seam, maybe enough to buy food for his wife and children.

Or maybe he would find a purse of gold, he thought cynically, and returned to his work.

When the messenger found Bailiff Simon Puttock, some few days after Brother Peter’s story-telling, the Bailiff and his servant, Hugh, were watching the routine of Tavistock’s coining. Simon was doing so with more than his usual care, after the fiasco of the previous couple of days.

It was all because of his blasted daughter, he told himself again. She had no consideration for others. Two days ago, when he was due to set off for Tavistock, she had disappeared without telling him or Meg, his wife, where she was going. When he realised that she had been gone most of the morning, he nearly went out of his mind. It was all very well for Meg to point out that she herself had gone for walks with men when she was fourteen and fifteen, as Meg had probably been more mature in nature and outlook even when she was Edith’s age; and in any case, boys today weren’t the same as when Simon was younger. They were less respectful, less well-behaved, more likely to ravish a beautiful young girl like his Edith. The little sods.

As usual when she came back, there had been an almighty row. She couldn’t understand, Edith sulked, why her parents should be so over-protective. She wasn’t a child any more.

That was when Simon saw red. He bellowed at her and was near to thrashing her for her insubordination and lack of regard for his and her mother’s feelings; if he hadn’t been due to travel here to Tavistock, he would have done just that. He knew his neighbours all believed that women needed a beating now and again, and Simon was a source of amusement for his tolerance, but that day his daughter had gone too far.

Just when he had wanted to set off early, the arguments and wailing and weeping had held him up, and he gathered up everything in a rush, stuffing it any old how into the bags on his packhorse. His servant helped moodily – for Hugh was always grumpy when there were voices raised against his favourite, little Edith. Simon then gave his wife one last hurried kiss before throwing his leg over his mount and setting off at speed. Hugh desperately hopped along at the side of his own pony, trying to hold it still long enough to clamber atop. After so many years of riding alongside his master, he was less like a sack of sodden oats in the saddle these days, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed the experience, and he still eyed horses as nasty, vicious creatures whose only pleasure was to unseat him as soon as possible.