The Devil's Acolyte

Chapter Three

Early that Friday morning, Hamelin woke with a shock as the tavern-keeper began rolling casks through his doorway. After sleeping all afternoon and night on the bench in the open air, Hamelin’s body had stiffened. His joints and muscles wouldn’t work, and he didn’t want to see what the world looked like anyway, so he lay back with his eyes screwed shut, trying to ignore the row until it was impossible to do so any longer.

When his eyes met the daylight it felt as though someone had slammed a ten-pound hammer against his head and he snapped them closed again. Someone must have rammed a woollen mitten in his mouth, he thought, but then he reasoned that it was only his tongue, swollen and befurred. Gradually he dared open his eyes again, and his skull seemed on the brink of exploding. The pressure was awful. His tooth was now only one part of a whole chorus of agony; his head felt like a boil which was ready to be lanced; and Hamelin would have been glad enough to provide a blade to any kindly soul who would be prepared to use it. Death had to be preferable to this.

It was only after he had drunk two quarts of water that he could think of making his way back to the mine. From the town, the hill looked utterly insurmountable, but the miner knew from bitter experience that the only cure for his particular malady was exercise. He’d feel a lot worse before he improved, but once the sweat began to pour from him, his recovery would be on its way. And then he saw old Wally up ahead, and he tried to shift himself to catch up with his neighbour.

‘Wally?’

The other miner’s face almost made him feel refreshed. Wally had been brawling: his left eye was closing, and he had a cut lip. Fresh blood had dripped onto his shirt. Hamelin was tempted to ask who he had fought, but Wally’s face didn’t encourage an enquiry.

Wally shot him a look, then grunted, ‘You’re up early, Hamelin.’

Hamelin gave a sour grimace. ‘Nothing much to keep me. No bed, no money. What else could I do?’

‘What of your wife’s bed?’

‘Hal bought me some beers and I had to sleep it off.’

‘It was me put you on your bench,’ Wally said shortly. He was preoccupied with his suspicions about Joce and what the man might have done to Agnes, all those years ago. He felt the weight of the coins at his belt. He could leave the area, he told himself. Go somewhere Joce wouldn’t think of looking for him. When the Receiver learned that his pewter had been stolen, he would go insane with rage – that much Wally knew. Wally also knew what sort of a devil Joce could become when the mood took him: he had seen it happen before. Yet he didn’t want to run away with this money. It felt unclean, like the thirty pieces of silver which Judas was paid. It would be better for him to give the money away, all of it, and build a new life elsewhere. At least he had deprived Joce of it; that was a comfort.

‘You, was it?’ Hamelin grunted. ‘Nah, I didn’t want to go to my wife when I was in that state. I’ll go and see her later. We’ll know then.’

‘Know what?’ Wally asked. He wasn’t in truth very interested in Hamelin’s stories of woe, he had his own trials to cope with, but talking took a man’s mind from trudging onwards and the length of the journey.

‘My boy,’ Hamelin said hoarsely, and then the words stuck in his throat.

It wasn’t as though he was hugely fond of all the children; Hamelin loved his wife, and that took all the love he had in his soul, but there was something pleasing about Joel, his youngest. He was an affectionate child, mild-tempered compared with some of his siblings when they had been his age.

To Wally’s astonishment, Hamelin began to sob.

‘Christ Jesus! What’s the matter, man?’

‘It’s Joel. He’s dying. I don’t think he’ll be alive when I next see Emma.’

That same afternoon, Ellis the barber sucked at his own teeth while he studied Hamelin’s. It was calming to remind himself that he still had almost two thirds of his own teeth in place when he looked into other men’s mouths.

This was not going to be an easy one. He could see that right from the start, and was tempted to reach for his little leather sack filled with the tiny beads of lead which he had once bought from a plumber. This was his personal ‘sleep-maker’. That was what he called it, and it invariably lived up to its name, sending off any man against whose head he directed it, and yet this one had such a thick skull, Ellis was a little anxious about using it. He would have to give a hard blow to make an impression on this miner’s head.

‘Well?’

The growled question from the man with the obscenely swollen cheek made Ellis decide quickly. He reached behind him and took his wine flask from the table. ‘Master, it will be painful, so first drink this. It is a good, spiced wine and will soothe your spirits.’

Sitting in the chair, the man grabbed for it and upended it. Soon his Adam’s apple was jerking regularly up and down. He would finish the whole skin, Ellis thought – but it scarcely mattered. The wine had been very cheap and the miner had paid in advance.

‘Ellis?’

The soft voice came from his room at the back of the little chamber, and Ellis glanced over his shoulder. He could just make out his sister’s form in the darkness of the room and, excusing himself, he left his patient to his drinking and went into her, closing the door behind him.

‘Sara, where in God’s name did you get to?’

Now that he was closer he could see that her happiness and confidence of the previous day was gone.

‘Don’t be angry, Brother,’ she begged, and the quiver in her voice told him that she was close to tears.

He sighed and poured himself an ale, eyeing her resentfully. She had always possessed this fragile quality. Ellis was small in stature, but had the strength of corded leather in his thin arms; his sister had the same build, but with none of his strength, either physical or mental.

‘Come, lass, it’s not that bad,’ he said gruffly.

‘I… I have been a fool, Ellis.’

‘No more than usual, I daresay. Well? Are you going to admit that you’ve been screwing around?’ he demanded bluntly.

That was when she began to sob, and she gradually told her story.

‘I slept with him, yes, but he swore he’d marry me, and that was why I went to bed with him, to cleave him to me. He made his promise, Ellis.’

Ellis thought of Wally’s expression after she had left him in the crowd the day before. ‘You can’t trust the words of men like him.’

‘I went to him as soon as I realised I was with child,’ she continued, not heeding his words. ‘I went to see him, and he took me in when he heard what I said, he took me in and gave me his oath there and then, making us man and wife, and then he sealed his vow by taking me to his bed again, and I stayed there with him until yesterday morning.’

‘I saw you with him,’ Ellis grated. His face was growing red with anger that a man might dare to molest his sister.

‘But when I spoke to him yesterday afternoon when he was with his friends, he laughed at me and said I was no more than a Winchester goose, a common slut. He denied our marriage, Ellis. He rejected me and laughed about me with his friends. I heard him. He denied me! Oh, my God, Ellis, what am I to do?’

‘I’ll see to him,’ her brother said tightly. ‘Leave him to me.’

‘Oh God, no, don’t do anything, it’ll only make things worse! I have to try to sort it out myself,’ she wailed. ‘God! What will I do? I thought I had a wealthy husband, someone who could protect me and the children…’

Ellis would have commented on the wealth of a man like Wally, but kindness made him mute when he saw her despair.

‘Instead I shall be known as a whore, and insulted in the street!’

It was some little while before Ellis could return to the miner, and when he heard the man shouting for him he rose with a sense of bone-weariness mingled with anger that this miner Hamelin should interrupt his grim contemplations.

He climbed to his feet and walked back out into the chamber, and there he produced his pliers with a cruel flourish, pleased to see the fear leap into the miner’s face. A man could brave a sword or dagger in a street, and yet grovel like a coward before the barber’s tools, he reflected.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, taking away the wineskin and walking around behind his patient. ‘This will hurt you much more than me.’

His sleep-maker struck the man’s head like the clap of doom, and Ellis stood gazing down at the slumped figure for some while before he could bestir himself to remove the offending tooth. He was still thinking about his sister’s words. Although he had hoped he was wrong, she had admitted that she was pregnant. She hadn’t said who the father was, but he knew. Oh yes, he knew!

‘The bleeding bastard,’ he said to himself, before gripping his pliers again and opening the snoring Hamelin’s mouth.

Hamelin reached the door of his house in Tavistock some short while after dark. It was quiet as he entered the alley, and he felt that was good. If there had been bad news, he would have been greeted by cries and wailing. Instead, as he walked in through the door, he could see that Emma was so far from being distressed that she had fallen asleep with Joel in her lap. The other children were curled on their palliasse, the dogs on their old rags next to them. Hearing the door, one small dog opened an eye and wagged his tail, before falling to scratching himself conscientiously. Fleas meant that much of his coat had already been pulled out by the roots, and he was bald in many places.

Hamelin smiled at the dog. All was well in his world. He had a sore head, and a bloody mouth, true, but his son was alive, his tooth had been pulled – thank God! – and he’d had an enormous stroke of luck today. Emma stirred, and Joel grunted in his sleep, and it was that which woke her. Startled, her face showed terror for a moment, but then relaxed, her hand going to her heart. That brief shock made Joel begin to sniffle and wail, a low moaning noise that grew, and Emma grabbed him up and rocked him, the little stool on which she sat squeaking and cracking under their weight.

It was some while before she could settle him again. She rested Joel in a small crib, and stood, stretching her back. When she turned to face him, her apron awry, her tunic stained and faded, Hamelin thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The warm firelight was kind to her, smoothing out the wrinkles and lines of worry, while emphasising the soft curves of her body. She pulled the hair from her eyes and smiled almost shyly, accepting his hand as he pulled her down onto a rug near the fire, lifting her skirts and parting her legs. Afterwards, when his breathing was calmer again, he kissed her.

‘It’s good to have you back here again, love,’ she said simply.

‘How is he? I couldn’t stay away, not knowing.’

‘No better, I think. We need good beef broth or an egg. Decent nourishing food,’ she said with quiet sadness. Her emotions were worn away with sorrow after so long. It was as though she was already in mourning for her dead child.

Hamelin felt his heart lurch within his breast, and taking a deep breath, he rolled over on to his back. ‘I had expected to come here and find him dead.’

‘I know. There’s nothing more we can do. If he dies, it’s God’s will.’

They held each other silently. They knew too many children who had succumbed to wasting diseases or who had suffered from that hungry illness over winter when their teeth became loose and their gums bled. Sometimes the teeth would fall out and the child would slowly die.

‘I have brought money,’ Hamelin told her tenderly. ‘There’s no need for you to go without for a long while.’

‘Money?’ Emma sat up sharply. When she saw her husband’s eyes gleam as they took in her bare breast, she hastily pulled her tunic across and gathered it together with a fist. ‘Where did you get money? There was nothing for you at the coining yesterday. How did you come by it?’

‘Calm down, woman,’ he commanded, and with a hand he gently forced her fist to open, so that he could cup her breasts. ‘I sold my debt.’

‘Who to? No one would be stupid enough to buy that!’

‘One man was – Wally. He thought it was a good deal and paid me cash for it.’

‘Wally? Where would he get money?’ Emma scoffed. ‘He has no more than us!’

Hamelin could almost feel her body cooling, as though she suspected that he was a thief. ‘Come, love, I haven’t killed anyone. We were walking back to the mines today when he asked me why I was so glum, and I told him about Joel. He already knew about Mark robbing us. He said, “Injustice is terrible. Let me buy the debt to save your son’s life.” ’

‘Wally never had two farthings to rub together.’

‘I know,’ Hamelin said. ‘But maybe he got lucky.’

‘You swear you haven’t robbed anyone?’ she demanded.

‘Of course not. All I know is, I have a purse full of coins for you.’

Emma felt herself wavering. She would hate to think that he could have robbed someone – but the thought of money was horribly attractive. It meant life for her child, freedom from fear for a while.

Hamelin was speaking, and she forced herself to listen. ‘It was odd this morning. I had walked back to my camp, and I saw that fat bastard Brother Mark up there. He was having an argument with Wally. I could see them clearly – it sounded as if he was giving Wally instructions or something. Then old Wally went off eastwards while Mark turned back towards Tavvie. I was coming back here myself – to get my tooth pulled and to see you – so I set off a little while after, just to annoy him. Mind, he kept going at quite a pace without looking over his shoulder even once.’

‘He’s allowed on the moors, isn’t he?’ Emma said flippantly.

‘I’ve never seen him up there before, though.’

‘Forget him.’

‘How can I?’ he growled. ‘He ruined us.’

‘But you say Wally might have saved us?’

In answer, Hamelin grabbed his purse from his belt on the floor beside them and, opening it, tipped a pile of bright copper coins amounting to several shillings over her breast. Then, kissing her nipples, her throat, her chin, he said, ‘Do you believe me now? I got money for you and the children. What’s wrong with that?’

Emma opened herself to him again; after all, if he said he had come by it fairly, it wasn’t her place to doubt him. They needed the money, no matter where it came from.

Hal Raddych had also returned to their camp on that Friday morning. He was tired, and his head ached a little, but less than it should have, after drinking so much the night before. Hamelin had already been there, wandering about like a man in a daze, but Hal thought his tooth must be troubling him. It was merely a relief to see him go.

He didn’t comment when he saw the mess their timber-pile was in. Hamelin was in no mood for listening to more instructions at the moment. Hal would wait for a better time. It was the store of wood that he and Hamelin needed for their works. As he was always telling Hamelin, it was important that stores were kept in an orderly manner. Letting good wood lie on the damp soil of the moors would ruin it and lead to wastage. Grunting to himself as he surveyed the collapsed heap, he shook his head, then set to rebuilding the stack. It looked as though Hamelin had grabbed a balk from the bottom of the pile and let the rest simply collapse. Slapdash as ever, in Hal’s mind. A sloppy miner was a miner who would die as his mine fell on him.

If Hamelin didn’t mend his ways, Hal would have to find a new partner, he thought to himself irritably, noticing that a hammer, too, had been carelessly left to sink part-way into the mud.

He didn’t notice the small handful of nails that were also missing.

On the following Monday, Simon was woken by an agitated voice. He opened his eyes and recognised the red-headed acolyte he had seen at the coining.

‘What the…’ he demanded, pulling his cloak back over his nakedness before rubbing his tired eyes.

The night before, he had been invited to a feast with the Abbot in celebration of the successful coinage – they were several thousandweight above the previous coining and the Abbot was delighted with his profits – and Simon’s head was naturally more than a little woolly. He felt fine, he told himself, but at the moment he wanted water rather than food. There was a faint odour of vomit in the air, and he wondered fleetingly whether he had been sick over himself, but then he focused again on the red-headed novice.

‘What’s your name, boy?’ he growled.

‘Gerard, Sir Bailiff.’

‘Well, Gerard, you must learn that, in future, when you come to the room of a man who has enjoyed your master’s hospitality, you should bring a pot of water or wine.’

He looked about him. This room was the main chamber for respected visitors – the servants and lower classes must sleep in the stables or out in the yard itself – and Simon stretched contentedly in the bed. For once he had been able to sleep alone. Usually when he came to the coinings, he was forced to share his bed.

This morning the chamber was quiet. There had been several guests the night before, but they seemed to have gone already. Most of the beds were already empty; only one still had an occupant, a yellow-faced, rather dissipated pewterer, who lay on his back, breathing in heavily, then puffing out gusts with faint, but now Simon could concentrate, deeply annoying, popping sounds. At the side of his bed was a small pool of vomit. Simon wrinkled his nose.

‘Doesn’t matter what you eat, there are always peas and carrot in it,’ he muttered.

‘Sir, the Abbot… I mean… Oh! Sir, I am…’

Stifling a yawn, Simon looked up at the lad. ‘Don’t be flustered, just speak slowly and clearly. My head isn’t all it has been.’

‘Sir, the Abbot asked me to call you because Wally has been found dead on the Moors.’

Fast asleep on a bench in the adjoining room, Hugh had a rude awakening when his master roared in his ear to rouse himself, and then booted him off the bench and on to the floor.

Simon stormed from the chamber, and his eruption, and the hasty slapping of Hugh’s boots on the flooring, woke the yellow-faced pewterer in the bed across from Simon. A scrawny man in his early thirties, he yawned, scratching at his thin beard and groin. Then he stood and walked to the window, gazing out through the branches of the tree that grew outside, and then, since all was silent, he returned to his bed and idly thrust a hand beneath the mattress, pulling out a leather satchel. Opening it, he rootled about inside for a moment, but then his face sharpened with the realisation that something was wrong. He emptied his satchel onto the bed, staring down at the contents with shock, his eyes dark with suspicion.

That the man was dead was not in question. Just the smell was enough for Simon’s belly to rebel. He had to swallow hard. Grabbing at the wineskin dangling from his saddle, he took a good gulp to wash away the bile. Hugh, on his pony at Simon’s side, reached for the skin, but Simon irritably slapped his hand away. His servant didn’t need it – or rather, there was a priority of need in which Hugh came a long way below his master.

His guide was Hal Raddych, the stern-looking miner Simon had watched at the coining. Below his hat’s brim and above his bushy beard, his left eye peered out intelligently enough, although his right had a heavy cast that made it confusing to speak to Hal face to face. He was reasonably wealthy, compared with other miners Simon had met, a steady man, honest and reliable, who worked with Hamelin not far away.

As Stannary Bailiff, Simon had grown to know most of the miners on the moors, and he thought that Hal was as fair-minded a man as could be found. Many weren’t. The harsh life of the miner seemed to forge men who had a certain resilience, a toughness of character which made them more prone to fighting even than the peasants who lived on the fringes of the wasteland. And those bastards were hard enough, Simon reminded himself.

Hal chewed at his inner lip for a moment, then said slowly, ‘Poor old Wally. You know, Sir Bailiff – Walwynus. You must have met him? Used to have his own small claim over there, beyond Misery Tor, down at the Skir Gut. Worked a stream. Had a good year some summers ago, but bugger all since, by all account. Wally tried to keep a smallholding going, and you know how difficult that’s been since the famine. What with the dreadful weather, it’s a miracle anyone can live by farming.’

Simon grunted in acknowledgement, staring at Wally’s remains. The body was curled, foetus-like, into a ball, hands and arms over his head in a posture of defence. Two fingers were missing, which wasn’t out of the ordinary: most miners lost fingers as a matter of course, just as timber workers and carpenters did. It was a natural risk of working with exceptionally sharp, heavy tools. Except in this man’s case, the fingers had gone recently, from the look of the fleshy mess where they had been. There was a balled piece of cloth nearby, clotted with blood, as though it had fallen from his fist as he died.

Simon reluctantly passed the wineskin to Hugh and let himself down from his horse. He had no wish to approach the corpse and inspect its death wounds, but he knew he must do a formal identification if possible. It was a Bailiff’s duty. Personally, Simon was happy to leave all the actual handling of the corpse to the Coroner and his jury. They were welcome to it, he thought queasily, standing over the body, waving under his nose an apple which he had wisely taken from the Abbey’s kitchen and stuffed with cloves before setting off on this journey. It helped to neutralise a little of the hideous stench.

The body was lying between two furze bushes. One in particular was almost as tall as a tree. From here, south and east of Nun’s Cross, near Childe’s Tomb, not far from the marked track of the Abbot’s Way, Simon could see more furze westwards, and grass, with the view extending all the way to the trees that stood on the hill above Tavistock. Before him, the path dropped down into the thickly wooded valley. Beyond, on the other side of the cleft in the ground, he could see glimpses of the moorland. Tors stood like oddly-carved statues left by the giants who had once inhabited this land. It was a harsh, bleak landscape, covered with tufts of grasses and occasional lumps of stone. The sort of land to break a man’s ankle if he wasn’t careful; or break his head.

Except this man hadn’t fallen and knocked himself out. His head was a blackened mass, his hair matted and thickened with great gouts of blood which had spattered and marked the grass all about. There was a broad slick of it on a nearby furze bush, and Simon noted it. He would have to look at that later: it didn’t look natural.

The victim had been severely beaten, from the look of him. The back of his skull was opened, with a three-inch-long gash that must have come from a heavy weapon. From what Simon could see Walwynus had tried to protect himself, for his forearms and left hand were broken, one whitened bone thrust through the skin of his right arm, and maggots had already begun to squirm in the flesh.

It was that which made Simon move away; the sight made his stomach churn. Truth be told, he’d have preferred to remain in the Abbey and leave this job to another official, but he was the Bailiff; under the Abbot he was responsible for keeping the King’s Peace out on the moors, and if there was a possibility he might learn something about this man’s murder by visiting the place, he had to make the effort.

The Coroner had already been sent for. Simon knew that Sir Roger de Gidleigh, the Coroner based in Exeter, would come as soon as he could, but that might mean a couple of days. There was never any shortage of suspicious deaths in the Shire and this one would have to take its place in the queue. In the meantime, the body had to be protected. That was the responsibility of the people who lived near the corpse, to see that no dogs or rats got to it and damaged it. It was illegal to move the body or bury it; either was a serious offence that could only result in fines being imposed, so Simon knew that he would have to arrange for guards to look after the corpse until the Coroner could arrive.

He walked away from the body, towards the splash of vivid colour on the furze bush. It looked as if someone had taken a brush and painted it a dull red in a broad swipe. Peering down beneath the bush, Simon saw something, and he reached inside, wincing as the sharp thorns deep in among old growth stabbed at his hand and wrist.

He withdrew a heavy baulk of timber, maybe a foot and a half long and three inches square. One end was darker, and there was one little greyish lump stuck to it that Simon felt unhappily sure was a piece of bone. When he studied it more closely, he could see the small round-headed nails embedded within the hardwood, turning it into a more effective weapon, a ‘morning star’. Obviously the killer had thrown this weapon aside after killing Walwynus. He would have had no use for it after that.

‘Look at this, Hal.’

The miner peered at the piece of timber. There was a curious stillness about him, but Simon noticed it only in passing. It was no surprise, he thought. Old Hal must be feeling in a state of shock, maybe close to throwing up. He left Hal there while he took another look under the bush.

Hal said, ‘It’s just an old piece of wood.’

Simon could see nothing else at the bush. He took the timber back and studied it again. There were some scratches at the base, three lines with a fourth connecting them, like a set of vertical stones topped by another one.

‘What’s this?’

Hal glanced at it. ‘Just some marks, nothing more. Could be a child did it. Let’s see whether there’s anything nearer him. Come on!’

Simon scrutinised it a short while longer, but there was nothing more to be learned. He dropped the club beside the bush and rejoined Hal, who was poking hopefully around another bush. Simon asked, ‘Where was his smallholding?’

‘Over towards Skir Ford. There was a deserted farm there and he took the house and began working the land. Not that he did very well. Too much rain. Nothing grows well here in the moors.’

‘That’s no more than a mile from here,’ Simon considered, gazing north as though he might be able to see the place. ‘What was he doing here?’ He snatched the wineskin back from Hugh as he saw it being upended again.

‘Coming back from the coining, probably,’ Hal said, gratefully accepting a drink.

‘Was he there?’

‘Yes. I saw him at the market.’

‘I see. You’re sure he had no money?’

The miner shook his head and spat, glancing back at the corpse for a moment. ‘No. He had nothing – nothing saved, nothing to spend, nothing worth stealing.’

‘He had something,’ Simon said shortly as he thrust his foot into his stirrup and sprang up. ‘Otherwise, why should someone kill him?’