Michael JECKS - The Last Templar

No, here the land was still wild and untamed, here nature still ruled and men walked cautiously. The dark and threatening woods crowded closer at either side of the road, as if struggling to reach the humans that travelled along it so that they could squeeze the life from them. The brambles sprawled from the edge of the trees in an attempt to colonise the packed dirt of the lane, catching and ripping at the clothes of any passer-by unwary enough to walk too close. In between the trees, he could sometimes hear the tick and crack of the wood settling, but to his fearful ears, raised from the cradle to be scared of the various spirits that haunted the moors and hills of Devon, they sounded like the voices of the unspeakable, ghostly horrors as they hunted for humans. In the dark, this road reminded him of the most fearsome of all: Old Nick and Old Crockern.

These two characters were well known in Devon, their fame was boundless in the countryside, and Simon found himself unwillingly considering each with a degree of trepidation he had not felt for many years. After the death of old Brewer – he still found it hard to believe that it was a murder; easier by far to consider it one of those sad but all too common accidents, a stray spark in the thatch, and, by all accounts, a man too drunk to wake – the stories and legends seemed to crowd in on him as he wound his lonely trail home.

Old Nick was the devil himself. The tales told of him riding a horse, a headless horse, all over the moors and beyond in his search for souls. At his side was a pack of hounds, evil, wild eyed creatures whose baying showed that they had the scent of a human spirit ready for taking. The wild hunt was reputed to be a regular event, not requiring fogs or mists to cover its cruelty as the horde swept after its quarry.

The other was a more understandable spirit, if just as unpleasant to meet. Old Crockern was the ancient soul of the moors. He was everywhere, but on occasion would make himself appear to those who threatened his lands, and would destroy them. It was true that he would normally use simple methods, like bankrupting a farmer who decided to take more of the moors than he needed, by ensuring that he could grow nothing on the ground he stole, but if Old Crockern found someone intentionally affecting the life and security of the moors, it was rumoured that he would come and take the perpetrator away, to a hell more evil than ever Satan could devise.

As Simon passed by, the lanes were darkening. The sunset had been a warm, orange glow on the horizon, promising another dry and clear day ahead, and he had been momentarily pleased to reflect on the fact before his mind drifted back to consider the ancient superstitions. It was not that he was overly credulous himself, but the lanes leading up to Sandford were narrow and lined with dark ranks of trees, standing silent like accusing monsters from a far-distant past. The great twisted, primeval boughs loomed grey and foreboding on either side, reaching upwards into the swiftly gathering darkness as if trying to block off the light, as if trying to strangle any remaining glimmer before it could reach the road. Simon could almost fancy, as he rode along, that the branches were attempting to touch over the road, and that when they did their gnarled and tortured limbs would drop, plummet down, to smother any passer-by…

He shook himself vigorously. A mist swept silently, malevolently, across the road in front of him, and he shivered. “God’s teeth!” he thought. “How old am I?” And he spurred his horse faster.

But he still looked over his shoulder occasionally.

By the time he arrived home the dark had settled heavily over the land like a grey velvet carpet, and his fears retreated at the sight of the orange glow from the windows of his house. Taking his horse round to the stables, he gave it a quick rub down and settled it for the night before going in.

It had been costly, but he was pleased that he had paid, as Margaret had suggested, for the wood-panelled passageway. It cut the hall off from the kitchen area, the buttery and servants’ quarters, and stopped some of the more vicious drafts from the front door that had whistled around the hall and disturbed the rushes.

At the other end of the hall was his solar, the family room, blocked off from the hall itself by the huge curtains. He had intended, when he had been able to afford it, to have that panelled off too. His lip curled into a self-mocking sneer. Too late for that now. There would be little point in spending money on the place with the move to Lydford coming up.

His wife was sitting in the hall with Edith, both on the large bench in front of the fire. His daughter seemed to be asleep, lying down in her light dress, her head resting on her mother’s lap. Margaret was sitting and stabbing at a tapestry with quick, vicious thrusts, looking as if she was trying to kill the cloth.

Simon stared at her. She did not look up, but said, as if through gritted teeth, “There’s stew for you in the pot,” without looking up from her needlework.

He quietly stepped over to the fire in the middle of the room. The stew sat in its small cauldron, hanging from the steel tripod, and he could see that it had been ready for some time – the meat had all but collapsed in the liquid.

“Hugh!” he shouted, and when the servant rushed in, told him to fetch a bowl and spoon. When he had his earthenware bowl filled, he sat beside his wife and began shovelling the stew. “All right, so tell me what’s wrong.”

She threw down the cloth and glared at him, her fury mixed with despair at his lack of understanding. “What’s wrong? You were supposed to be here all day and instead you’ve been out! You promised Edith you’d spend the day with her, how do you expect me to explain when you disappear?” Feeling Edith squirm, the prelude to waking, she broke off and gentled her daughter, picking her up and carrying her out to the solar. But soon she was back, and speaking low, her voice a sibilant hiss, she said, “Why couldn’t you have sent one of the others – the constable, Tanner, or just left it to a priest? Why did you have to go there and see to a fire yourself?”

She glowered at him, feeling the injustice of it. Margaret was no shrew, no nagging vixen, but she needed him to understand. Of course, she knew full well that now, especially now he was bailiff, he had responsibilities that he must meet. But she too had important jobs to perform, not least of which was managing the household, and when their daughter was expecting her father to spend the day with her, she could be very fractious and difficult. She had been today.

Margaret had counted on being able to reorganise the buttery and prepare for their next brew of cider, but every time she had tried to have a word with Hugh she had found Edith nearby and wanting attention. Every time she had gone out into the kitchen Edith had followed and asked her to join in a game or simply kept asking questions until Margaret had lost her temper and told her to play outside and leave her alone.

It was then that her diminutive and tyrannical daughter had told her that her father would never say that to her and that she hated her.

Margaret had been shocked and deeply hurt – for all that she knew it to be untrue, that it was just a sudden flaring of temper that would soon be forgotten, and that she, the mother, would be expected to forget it too. But she could not. And it had made her resentful that Simon had been able to spend his day, yet again, out of the house and involved in uninterrupted work. Why was it considered right that the father should be free from his encumbrances when the wife, with as much work to do, was not?

So, after being able to leave her anger and annoyance to establish themselves and develop for the afternoon, she felt justified in lashing out at him on his return. But as she glowered at him, her anger undiminished by the absence of the cause of her afternoon’s disturbance, he started to grin, and she soon found herself torn between fury that he could still have this effect on her and pleasure at his happiness.