by S. D. Sykes
I rode along the path slowly, casting my eyes from side to side, hoping to find some sign of Maud and Rose, but the further I travelled, the more despondent I became. The forest was so large, with paths leading off in all directions. And the soil was dry and hard and gave nothing away. In fact, I found no evidence of anybody passing this way, especially not two light-footed women.
* * *
I had been riding continuously for many hours without seeing a single sign of humanity, when I decided to dismount beside a trickling stream in a glade of alder. It was here, at last, that my luck finally turned. I spotted a girl in the distance, desperately cupping water from the stream, as if she hadn’t been able to drink for many days. I recognised her immediately. It was Rose Brunham – her salmon-pink hair flowing loosely down her back as she leant over the stream to quench her thirst.
I called out to her, but her reaction to me was one of horror. She staggered back from the stream at first and then ran away at speed, disappearing through the trees. I wanted to give chase, but found instead that I couldn’t move. The memory of Agnes flashed before my eyes once more. The way that her hands had thrashed as she was pulled beneath the waters. The way that her limp body had flopped in my arms as I dragged her onto the river bank. The way that I had tried to thump the air back into her lungs. And so I watched helplessly as Rose escaped, her bright hair flying wildly behind her, until she was nearly out of sight.
It was only then, as she reached the brow of a hill in the far distance that I finally came to my senses. I couldn’t let this girl flee, even though I didn’t want to chase her. I needed to know why she and Maud had disappeared from Stonebrook. I needed to know if Maud were still alive. So I quickly mounted my horse again and pursued her through the trees, until I finally cornered her by a patch of brambles.
‘Please, Rose. Stop,’ I shouted down to her, as she threw herself further and further into this spiny undergrowth. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
‘Get away from me,’ she screamed, continuing to push her way through the brambles. Her escape route was tangled and sharp, but at least these plants were not the waters of a swollen river. The worst that Rose could do was to scratch herself badly. I quickly dismounted, hoping that I would be less intimidating on foot – but this only caused her to panic all the more.
‘Get away! Get away!’ she screeched, throwing herself even further into the tangle. She had that look in her eyes. The same expression that Agnes had worn – a wild, demented fear that drowns out all reason.
‘I only want to help you, Rose,’ I said. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘He sent you, didn’t he?’ she said, holding her hands in front of her face – her fingers forming bars across a pair of terrified eyes.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Brother Peter,’ she answered. ‘You’re with him, aren’t you? I know it.’
My heart pounded at hearing Peter’s name again. ‘What do you mean?’ I said, trying not to raise my voice. ‘I don’t understand.’
She didn’t answer. Instead she returned to her crazed scramble, now managing to pull apart the brambles in a last desperate attempt to escape me. I now had no choice but to rush in myself and grasp her by the arm. Rose attempted to fend me off, but it was not a fair fight. I was so much stronger than this young girl, and it was easy for me to drag her out.
Having forced Rose to sit on the ground, I then tried a peace offering. I passed her my flask of ale, which she refused, turning her back to me. When I knelt down beside her and tried to gently touch her arm, she cringed and screamed so loudly that I quickly withdrew.
‘I’m not going to hurt you, Rose,’ I said. ‘I only want to find Maud.’
‘You’re his friend,’ she hissed. ‘Aren’t you? I’ve seen you in the village together.’
‘Do you mean Brother Peter?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I am his friend,’ I answered. ‘So I don’t understand why you’re so afraid of him.’
She remained silent in response.
‘Has he hurt you?’ I asked. When she still refused to speak, I added, ‘Please, Rose. I am Peter’s friend, but I’m not in league with him. You must believe me. I only want to help you. So, please tell me what happened. Tell me where I can find Maud.’
Rose looked at me for a moment, before she dropped her head between her knees and spoke to the earth. ‘We were looking for Pestilence wort,’ she whispered. ‘We needed the freshest roots to protect us from plague.’
‘Where did you go?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘We took a path I’d never been on before.’ She smothered a sudden sob. ‘We’d walked for miles and miles finding nothing. But then we saw a cottage between the trees.’
‘What sort of cottage?’ I asked.
‘It was deserted,’ she said. ‘Without a good roof. We were curious to look inside.’ She paused to sniff. ‘But we shouldn’t have.’
‘Why’s that?’
She wrapped her arms about her knees and began to rock backwards and forwards. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she whispered.
I put my hand gently onto her shoulder and leant forward to whisper into her ear. ‘Please tell me, Rose. I need to know.’
She stiffened at my touch, but didn’t shriek this time. ‘We were trapped,’ she said, her voice still thin and squeaky. ‘The door slammed and we couldn’t get out again… So we pulled at the door. We kept pulling. Trying to get out.’ She gave a sob. ‘But then it suddenly opened. And it was him on the other side.’ She wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘We tried to get out, but he stood in the way. He wouldn’t let us pass.’
‘Do you mean Brother Peter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure it was Brother Peter?’ I asked, hardly able to believe this story. ‘Could it have been somebody else?’
‘I know it was him,’ she said, stifling another sob. ‘He must have followed us there. Through the forest.’
‘What did he want?’
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘He just started shouting at us. Ranting and raving.’
‘About what?’
Rose looked up at me with anguish, the blood having risen to her face, so that her cheeks were nearly the same shade as her hair. ‘I didn’t understand any of it,’ she said. ‘It was just loud words. Cruel things. And I was so frightened.’ She broke off again to take a deep breath. ‘He tried to grab hold of me,’ she said, her eyes now full of tears. ‘He took me by the wrist and tried to drag me out of the cottage. But Mistress Maud fought him off, so then he attacked her instead.’ Another sob. ‘I ran out of the door, Brother Oswald. I wanted to help Maud, but it was too late. There was nothing I could do for her.’
I couldn’t speak for a moment, unable to comprehend this story. ‘So you ran away?’ I asked, finding my voice at last.
‘I wanted to get help,’ she said. ‘But every time I thought that I’d reached the right path, I was somewhere else that I didn’t know.’ She wiped away a tear. ‘Sometimes I was going around and around in circles. For hours. I thought I would never get back to Stonebrook. I thought I was going to die.’
I hesitated, trying to make sense of my wild, conflicting thoughts. ‘Do you know where this cottage is?’ I said finally.
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I can’t remember the direction I came from.’
‘You have to try, Rose,’ I said, now letting frustration creep into my voice. ‘I need to find this place. Maud could still be there.’
‘When I got away from the cottage, I ran so fast that I didn’t know what direction I was taking,’ she replied. ‘And then it was dark and I was lost. I thought he was going to chase me. I thought I was going to die.’ She started to sob, her whole body trembling until I offered her the last of the food that I’d taken from the kitchens at Somershill. The girl was starving – grasping the bread and cheese from me and devouring it in great mouthfuls.
‘Try to remember something abo
ut the cottage,’ I said softly, as she began to revive. ‘Anything that could help me to find it.’
She raised her eyes to mine. ‘Are you going there?’ she asked me.
I nodded. ‘Yes. I must.’
‘No. You mustn’t,’ she replied. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘Brother Peter wouldn’t hurt me,’ I said. ‘He’s been my tutor for many years.’
She grasped my arm. ‘You must believe me,’ she said. ‘I saw it in his eyes. He wanted to kill me, and he wanted to kill Mistress Maud.’ She pressed her fingers into my skin. ‘If you go there, then he will kill you as well.’
The words were spoken with conviction, but how could any of this be true? How could this man – a person whom I had trusted and loved for most of my life, be the killer that Rose described? Brother Peter had never behaved this way before. Rose must have misread his actions, or exaggerated them at least. And I needed to remember that Peter himself had called this girl a liar.
And yet…
And yet I heard a small voice inside my head, desperately calling out for attention – asking me questions that I didn’t want to hear. Why had Agnes been so terrified of priests, unless a priest had attacked her? Why had Brother Merek disappeared having just confided in Peter? Why, indeed, had Ranulf Sawyer been murdered just after I’d sent Peter to find him? And why, why had Peter repeatedly warned me away from my investigation? I felt my heart miss a beat and my breath tighten. Had I been blind to his faults all along… No, no. I just couldn’t believe it. Despite all of the evidence building against Peter, my instincts still told me that he was innocent. I just needed to discover the truth behind his actions. There had to be a reasonable explanation.
I turned back to Rose, and tried again. ‘If you can’t remember the location of this cottage, then try to describe the surrounding area. Was there anything distinctive nearby? A river perhaps? Or a clearing?’
Rose frowned in concentration. ‘There were some rocks,’ she replied.
‘What type of rocks?’
‘They were odd. Full of gaps. Just wide enough for a person to squeeze through.’
This description narrowed my search down a little. There are outcrops of sandstone that rise up from the clay in certain parts of the weald – creating unexpected ridges of rocks in the middle of the forests.
‘And you can’t remember anything else?’
She creased her brow. ‘I know that this sounds foolish,’ she said. ‘But one of the rocks looked strange. It looked just like…’ She hesitated.
‘Like what?’ I asked.
Rose turned her head away from me, seemingly embarrassed. ‘It looked like a giant frog, sitting on top of a pedestal. We stopped to look at it, because it made us laugh.’ She smiled briefly at the memory, before her face darkened again. ‘But then we got trapped in that cottage.’
‘So the cottage is near to this rock?’
Rose scratched at her cheek. ‘I think so,’ she whispered, before another sob escaped. ‘But I can’t be sure, Brother Oswald. I’m sorry.’
I knew the place Rose was talking about. As a boy, I had heard my older brothers speak about this rock when they returned from their hunting trips. It had sounded so strange and remarkable to my childish imagination, that I had repeatedly begged William and Richard to take me hunting with them. To see something as exciting as a giant stone frog. They had refused, of course – claiming that I would ruin their chances of catching anything with my loud feet and childish, squealing voice; but they had been forced to take me in the end by my father, as he had been driven mad by my whining.
I remembered being so very disappointed when I finally saw the famous frog rock, having imagined a sculpture with all the splendour and detail of the statue of Nebuchadnezzar. Instead of that, this supposed frog was nothing more than a pair of boulders – one resting upon the other and created by chance. Its shape bore a passing resemblance to a frog, but this had been very difficult for a child to appreciate.
I got to my feet. ‘Are you going?’ Rose asked me.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I need to find Maud.’
‘But what will I do?’ The tears were forming in her eyes again. ‘You can’t leave me here. How will I find my way back to Stonebrook?’
‘You need to go to Somershill,’ I replied. ‘Stonebrook is overrun with plague, so you cannot return there.’
‘But I don’t know anybody in Somershill,’ she said.
‘Go to the house and ask for Gilbert. Tell him that I’ve sent you.’
‘But how will I find it?’ she asked. ‘I’ll get lost again,’ she said.
‘Head east with the sun behind you,’ I said. ‘You’ll reach Somershill by nightfall.’
Rose started to tremble. ‘But what if Brother Peter is still looking for me?’
‘If he wanted to chase you, then he would have caught you by now.’ When she looked unconvinced, I added, ‘Don’t worry. You’re safe now.’
She grasped my hand. Her tiny fingers scraping at my sleeve like claws. ‘If you find Brother Peter, don’t tell him that I told you where to look. Please,’ she begged, her eyes wide with fear. ‘He mustn’t know it was me.’
Chapter Thirty
I continued to the north, finding the forest becoming denser and darker with each mile. The land began to rise and fall in steep valleys that were banked with beech and oak, and lined with dark streams and secretive rivers. There was little sport here, as the hunters preferred the flatter, more open lands that I had left behind – although, ironically, this was the part of the forest where the deer were more likely to be hiding. On more than one occasion, I flushed out a doe and her fawn, feeling relieved as they sprang away into the distance – their summer coats as red as a weasel’s. The stags that stayed perfectly still were more menacing – their dark profiles appearing between the leaves as they silently watched my progress. After my conversation with Rose, I felt on guard, keeping one hand on the hilt of my short sword, constantly in fear of what or whom I would meet.
* * *
By late afternoon, I had reached the outcrop of sandstone that Rose had described to me. Weathered and grooved by the wind, the rocks were cleft with deep vertical crevices, creating long thin passages that ran back from the rock face and disappeared into the darkness beyond. But there was no derelict cottage nearby. No rock that looked like a frog sitting on top of a pedestal.
I rode along the path that wound its way beside the ridge, often passing beneath an overhang that was coated in moss and lichen. Birch saplings had found an occasional foothold within the fissures of this rock – sprouting out from the surface like tufts of hair. Despite the strange remoteness of this place, I had the feeling that it was visited by more than the secretive roe deer. This path was kept clear of brambles by the passing of humans, as the long thorny stems had been bent back and broken off at waist height.
I carried on, and soon came to an opening in the rock face that was slightly larger than the other crevices – a gully wide enough for a person to walk along. It was here that I found tangible evidence of human activity at last. There were footprints hardened into the earth here, leading from the entrance and heading off into the dark. And there was something else, calling out to be noticed. A thin skein of scent floating through the air. It was a smell that was unmistakable. Unlike any other on earth.
I dismounted, tied my horse to a tree, and then worked my way along that gully, swishing away at the bluebottles until I turned the corner at the end. At first I could not make sense of the sight that confronted me. I thought it was a pile of rotten debris. A midden heap. But then my eyes focused and suddenly I could see different shapes. A tangle of limbs, one body thrown on top of the other, as if they were carcasses dumped outside a slaughter house.
For a moment, I could not move. I had seen death many times before, but nothing in my history had prepared me for this sight, in all its raw, visceral reality. My first reaction was to turn back and get away as soon as possible, but I couldn’t
leave yet – not before I’d checked that these corpses were the women I was looking for. And so, with great reluctance, I crept closer, holding my hand over my nose as I looked into the pile to see an array of female bodies, half-dressed in ragged tunics. Their shoes, belts and jewellery were missing – no doubt now located on that shelf in Ranulf Sawyer’s hut.
I edged forward again, as far as I dared, needing to see if Maud were among the dead. I couldn’t see her face and my relief was palpable, but I did notice a larger body pushed down at the back of the heap. The leg and arm bones of this corpse were thicker and longer than the others and the ribcage was fuller. It was a man. Brother Merek, the missing monk – his body dressed only in its hair shirt – the type routinely worn at the monastery by the most devout brothers. It was strange that Merek’s habit had been removed, whereas the dead women were still wearing their tunics, but I guessed that Sawyer had scavenged this garment from Merek’s corpse, alongside his other finds. A priest’s habit is woven with high-quality wool and would have been worth something when sold.
As I turned away from this horror, I thought again of Agnes, as I often had done in the past few weeks. Her bloodstained, roughly torn tunic. The rubbing and bruising at her wrists and ankles. Her scratched and injured skin. All my feelings of sorrow and remorse flooded back in that moment, before they turned, very quickly, to rage. And it was an almighty, overwhelming rage. I had made a terrible mistake that day. I had unwittingly chased a girl into the river, but I had not been her killer. That man was still at large, and I needed to find him.