Michael JECKS: The Abbot's Gibbet

Now, over the creaking and thundering of the wagons, he could hear other noises. There was hammering and shouting, the rasp of saws through wood, and echoing thuds as axes sliced into boughs. They were the noises of his youth, the cacophony of business as could be heard in any thriving borough, but in these surroundings they gave him a feeling of release, as if he was at last being freed from his isolation.

He came into the sun and stared down along the valley. The view was one he had held fixed in his mind over all the hundreds of miles since he had managed to escape. His nose caught a faint peatiness in the air, and he snuffed the breeze with a quick pleasure, like a spaniel scenting game, before the other memories flashed back into his mind and his face took on its customary blank hardness.

The wind was welcome. It was almost the feast of St. Rumon, at the end of a hot summer, and the soft gusts were pleasant, cooling the sweat on the traveller’s body as he glanced at his companions. Few among them could know how vicious and deadly those same winds would be in the dead of winter. He did; he had seen how the chill winter blast could kill men out on the moors.

But his thoughts were not bent toward the weather. With every foot and yard he covered, he could feel the memories rushing back to engulf him: her face, screaming; the bloody axe; the taunting cries and jeers as he ran from them – and later the disbelief that he should be the one accused, the one arrested for the inevitable trial, the one to be hanged.

He could see the gibbet in his mind’s eye: a stark shape among the softly moving trees at either side. It had been dusk when he first saw it, and as he had passed it with his father, it had squeaked in protest to the wind, and made him shiver. It sounded eerie and evil. In later years he had rarely glanced at it – there were so many up and down the country – yet once riding back from Oakhampton, he heard it creaking and moaning in the gusts, and when he looked, the trees were waving their branches in a sinuous dance as if beckoning him. He had been fixed with a sudden horror, as if the gallows were calling to him alone.

At the time he must have been Hankin’s age. He glanced at the boy. Hankin sat on the cart, reins slack in his hands, nodding somnolently under the effects of the warm sun and the quart of good ale he had drunk for his lunch. Hankin was the orphan of an English merchant in Bayonne, and when no one else would look after the lad, he had taken him on as apprentice. Hankin in some way filled the gap left by his wife, who had died from a hemorrhage while pregnant with their first-born, and he liked to think his own son would have been much the same, quick to learn and self-confident.

They were coming out of the woods now, and he slowed, to the loud disgust of the men and women behind, as he stared down at the town.

In the late afternoon of a summer’s day, it was a scene of perfect tranquility. From this direction, the valley looked like a wide saucer of land. The river was a glittering band cutting through the countryside like a curving steel ribbon. Smoke rose from the houses and hamlets dotted around the small plain, and the gray moorstone blocks of the church and Abbey stood somehow indistinct in the haze. The towers rose spectacularly, gaunt and bold in their great simplicity. Little could compare with their stark squareness; their very regularity was a testament to their holy design. Nearby buildings were dwarfed.

Trees bordered the pasture, and rose up the slopes of the little hillocks. It looked as if the meadows and strip fields were isolated and surrounded by encroaching woods, whereas in reality the trees were being forced ever backward as the Abbey’s lands expanded. Every year the monks, farmers and burgesses had more of the massive trunks cut down for firewood or furniture, leaving space for sheep and cattle to colonize. The process was more or less complete, with the fringe of trees pushed so far back that only their topmost branches could be discerned over the rolling hills. His horse moved skittishly beneath him as the heavily laden wagons passed by, and he dismounted and walked a short way from the track, sitting and staring down the valley.

It felt odd to be able to see once again the place where he had lived. It was his home, and the view brought a constriction to his throat, as if a ball of food had stuck. He swallowed but it wouldn’t go away: he had an urge to hurry forward, as though the intervening years would dissipate and he would be renewed to youth when he arrived at the town. To eyes used to strange foreign cities, it was a curiously unexceptional scene, a commonplace outlook he knew well; yet it was also charged with danger, and he was aware of the latent menace represented by the huddles of cottages.

Staring at it, the muscles of his face set once more into their familiar mask. The loathing stirred again in his breast for the people who had forced him from his land and destroyed his life.

With a decisiveness he did not feel, he climbed back onto his horse and cantered to Hankin’s wagon. There was a relief at rejoining the travellers. Among them he felt screened, obscured by their numbers – just one more merchant on his way to a fair. There was no point in delaying; he had waited too long already. Now all he wanted was to hurry to get there, to see the man he had come so far, and at such risk, to see. With that thought he smiled and continued down the plain toward the Abbey.

Jordan Lybbe had returned.

The roof was ripped apart piece by piece while David Holcroft stood and watched, distaste twisting his features as the squares of rotten wood were tossed, spinning, to join the pile before him. Each time he heard one crack, he winced. The little shed was essential for the fair. It was here that the merchants would pay their tolls for the privilege of selling their goods. Tavistock Fair would attract people from as far away as Castile, and it was his responsibility, as port-reeve, to make sure it was ready.

There was no need to have so many men, he knew, but if he let one go, the others would plead their own cases, and soon he’d have nobody. They scrambled all over, getting in each other’s way and snapping shingles not already ruined. Each was fitted with a pair of dowels which hooked onto the lathes running along the rafters, and as the men worked along the pitch, he could see the wood splintering where the pegs fitted. They’d be lucky to rescue any, the way these cretins were working.

“Sir? The Abbot wondered…”

David Holcroft turned suspiciously. A youth stood by him, grinning. The Abbot’s official kept his voice low and calm, but it was evident enough to the lad that Holcroft was controlling his frustration with an effort. “Yes, yes. The Abbot wants to know when we’ll have this job finished so he can be sure to earn as much as possible, and he’s told you to come and see that I’m getting everything sorted out. Well, you can tell him from me that I’m standing here making sure these idle whelps get on with things, and the more interruptions there are, the slower the job will be!”

“I’m sorry, sir, I was only asked to…”

“To come over here and make my life a misery. Look, it’s hard enough keeping the lazy buggers from the alehouse without having Abbot Robert sending his messengers across every few moments. What does he think I’m doing, eh? Sitting in a tavern and supping ale? He asked me to ensure that the booth was ready, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. But when you report back, you can tell him that there are other things for me to see to, like making sure the shambles are laid out, and seeing to the weights and measures. Even the tron hasn’t been checked yet.”

He shot a glance at the men, keen to be away. The tron was the huge beam used to weigh goods. It had to be tested to make sure it was accurate, and that was just one more chore he must do when this nonsense was completed. With relief he saw that the shingles were all piled on the ground, and that most of the men had come down from the roof. Only two remained sitting on the walls, beating the panelling away from the frames with their hammers. “Why didn’t I get this done before?” he asked himself aloud now.