Michael JECKS: The Sticklepath Strangler

Sighing, she glanced down at Emma. ‘Come on! We’ll have to set off back home before we even get there, at this rate,’ she called imperiously.

Emma grinned up at her. Her breast was heaving and she was plainly feeling the warmth. To Joan’s eye she panted like a dog. The sun was beaming down, almost directly overhead, and Emma’s face shone like a cherry. ‘There’s no hurry. Everyone’s out working. They won’t notice we’ve gone for ages.’

It was rare that there was anything up here of interest. They both visited the moors often enough, sometimes to see the spoor left by the fox which lived up at the wall before the moor, or to steal eggs from the larks and other ground-nesting birds, but they were natural sights. Unusual sights, like the rotting corpse of the wolf which Emma had discovered last year, were unique; not that it stayed there long. The heavy springtime rains had dismembered the remains, washing them away as though they had never existed and the two girls couldn’t even find the skull, no matter how long they searched.

What a spring it had been! Two houses down in the vill had been flooded and collapsed when their walls were washed away. Poor Ham, the son of William the Taverner, had died when a beam fell on him as he tried to help rescue the animals and belongings from the home of Henry Batyn. It was fortunate that the other buildings survived, and the houses built to replace the fallen ones were almost completed, but Joan still missed Ham. He had been a natural enemy, cat-calling and sneering at her, but sometimes even the loss of an enemy can be sad. His death had left a hole in her life.

The rains had been terrible. Not so bad as the famine years, all the adults said, but Joan and Emma wouldn’t know that. This was the year of 1322, so the priest told them, when Father Gervase deigned to speak.

Samson atte Mill said that Emma and Joan were only two and three when the great downpours started. Not that they spoke to Samson much. He was a huge, fearsome man with red, slobbering lips and a brutal expression. Joan had heard horrible stories about him, and she tended to avoid him, but he seemed to like to get close to her. Once he tried to persuade her to kiss him. Not when her parents were around, though, and Joan felt sure it was because he knew it was wrong.

This year the weather had been worryingly similar to the famine years, everyone said. The rains began in March and continued for weeks on end. Farmers took to watching the skies anxiously, for if the grain they planted were to drown, or grew to produce only weak, spindly plants with feeble, non-nutritious grains which weren’t strong enough to bake into bread or brew into ale, they would starve again. Even the little ovens which the Reeve had persuaded the villagers to build in the communal bakery next to his own house, designed to slowly dry the sodden grain before using it to cook, hadn’t worked well. In Devon, many had died during the famine. All feared another, and their trepidation as they watched their crops being tortured by the torrential downpours was communicated to the children.

But the rains had stopped, mercifully, in the early summer. Joan felt as though she would always remember that first delicious day when the clouds parted and the sun could at last break through, sending shafts of light to the ground. Before long the soil was heated, so quickly that there was a thin mist of steam. She could see it rising from the earth, as though there was a great fire beneath the land, a health-giving, invigorating fire that soothed and reassured, drying out the sodden fields and transforming people’s pinched grey faces into ones with fresh pink complexions and cheerful expressions.

It certainly worked wonders on the poor serfs slaving in Lord Hugh’s fields. Joan’s mother, Nicole, declared that it was the first time in weeks that her own clothes had not been soggy. She looked happy, revelling in the sun’s heat, standing at the door of their tiny cottage with her face to the skies, moaning in pleasure, lifting her arms slowly as though in reverence, eyes closed, as though she was drinking in the warmth. She looked almost like a child again; it was odd to see her like that.

That wasn’t the only great thing that day. The other was that Joan wasn’t told off or smacked once. It felt as though the whole vill was starting a new life together.

If that had been a marvellous day, she thought happily, this was even better. The two girls shouldn’t really be up here, of course, not so close to the moors, not without permission, for the adults of Sticklepath were always fearful of their children becoming lost or, worse, falling prey to the wild animals or the many treacherous bogs. And there were always the rumours of the ghosts and spirits which inhabited the moorland far from humans. Joan’s mother was petrified by them. She had been brought up in foreign lands, and living in the shadow of the grim hill of Cosdon, the bulky mound that rose up behind Sticklepath and the first of the massive hills of Dartmoor, was awesome. To her the moors were not merely desolate, they were terrifying. She hated Joan going up there on her own or with her friends.

Joan thought she was silly. Emma and she could look after themselves.

The path was flatter now, curving with the line of the hillside, solid green banks on both sides like walls. They were passing through sparse woods, the sun overhead making the road’s surface of dark, dusty soil, stones and grass shimmer in the haze, while the ferns and grasses growing in among the banks were dappled with bright light and shadow, as the breeze ruffled their leaves.

‘How much further is it?’ Joan asked. Glancing back towards the town, she saw that the man with the packhorse now stood at the base of the sticklepath itself, looking up the narrow track towards them. ‘We’ll have to set off home soon.’

Emma didn’t see her glance. She didn’t care about some silly man traipsing about the place with a packhorse. Tranters were two a penny during the summer when travel was less arduous. However, she was always easily offended and now, upset by Joan’s tone, she answered sulkily, ‘It’s just a little further on.’

‘Sorry,’ Joan said quickly, not wanting to spoil the mood. Yet for some reason she was feeling apprehensive.

‘There it is!’ Emma pointed a few moments later.

Following her finger, Joan saw that a small section of the bank had been washed away. Loosened, perhaps, by the rains earlier in the year, it had yielded to the weight of a fox or a dog, and the wall of the lane had collapsed. An untidy mess of grey moorstone rubble had slithered into the lane, borne along by the tide of damp soil behind, although the trees and bushes on either side appeared to bulwark the rest of the bank from further disintegration.

The two girls hurried to the rent in the wall. ‘There, see?’ Emma said, excitedly.

They crouched side by side and peered. In among the roots Joan thought she could see some cloth, filthy from long immersion in the soil, but still recognisably material of some kind. How peculiar! Someone must have buried it here. Emma had been right when she’d begged Joan to come and see this, saying that it was even more weird than the dead wolf.

‘Do you think there’s something wrapped in it?’ Joan said at last.

‘Could be, but what would someone wrap in cloth and bury? And why would they have buried it here?’

‘It could be gold, stolen by a felon, and hidden here for safekeeping,’ Joan said, reaching out and touching it.

‘Careful! You don’t want the wall to fall on you,’ Emma cried, pulling her friend away.

‘It’s strong enough.’

‘Remember how the houses fell in? I’ll never forget seeing Ham when they pulled him loose. Ugh! Blood everywhere, and his arm dangling like that.’