The Skull

by Christian Darkin

  Nash had just been responsible for the death of one of the most respected men in the community, and Alfred was the only one who knew it. If Alfred made it back to the village, Nash would be on trial for his life.

  Alfred turned and dived back into the woods. He had a few moments’ head start before Nash could find a way around the landslide, but there was still only one way down to the village, and that was through the densest part of the forest.

  Branches scratched Alfred’s face and legs as he ran blindly into the darkness. Away from the path, the thorny brambles grew in thick patches. He dodged one clump and leapt over another. As he swerved to avoid running into the enormous trunk of an ancient oak tree, he crashed sideways into a wide thicket of ivy and blackberry. The brambles tore at his clothes, catching around his ankles and dragging him backwards. He scrambled over the matted branches where he could, but soon found himself on the ground, on all fours, pushing underneath the thorns, ignoring the mud and the stinging nettles.

  The bottom of the thicket was easier to fight through than the top. The plants grew towards the light, and the underside of the brambles were dark and thin. Even so, Nash would be close behind, and Alfred was sure he was making so much noise that he would be easily heard even against the storm.

  He scrambled on through the mud. Suddenly the brambles opened out into a tunnel just wide enough for him to crawl through, and Alfred dived into it. It was almost made for him, winding through the thorn bushes, forking and dividing as he pushed his way onwards. He knew immediately what these tunnels were; he had read about them in the prior’s bestiary. They were the trails made by badgers searching for food. He knew that they would lead from the badger’s sett out to the edge of the thicket. As long as he was moving in the right direction, he would eventually find a way out.

  Abruptly, the thorns gave way, and Alfred was back in open woodland. He clambered to his feet and started to run. He had no idea where he was, but the village was at the bottom of the hill, so he headed downwards. The hillside was steep, and he had to zigzag back and forth to avoid falling headlong. His lungs were gasping and his heart beating fast. Around him, the storm was still at its height. The wind blew leaves and sticks and rain in gusts from every direction, and the loose mud and stones threatened to topple him at every turn.

  He struggled to hear sounds of pursuit over the gale, but every sound could have been Nash’s shouting. His eyes tried to focus on the jumping shadows as he fought his way down the hill, but each time he thought he saw a hand reaching out at him or a cloak billowing, it turned out to be just a branch waving violently or a frightened animal scurrying off into the night.

  Under his feet, the ground suddenly levelled out. He had hit the path. He pelted along the wet, slippery surface as fast as he could, at last able to run without worrying that he would hit a tree. The path turned downwards in a familiar arc. In an instant he knew where he was. Just a few more turns, back and forth along the hillside, then a sharp straight drop and the road would level out into the village.

  Alfred took a great gulp of air. It felt as though he’d been holding his breath without even realising it. He followed the path, picking up speed. The path made a sharp bend around four solid tree trunks, blocking his view, but he knew it well.

  He leaned in around the bend and smashed straight into Nash’s open arms. Alfred crashed into him so hard and so fast that they both went flying to the ground. Nash tried to grab him. Alfred flailed and struggled. He jumped to his feet, but Nash gripped his ankle and he twisted and fell again. Nash was on his feet now, and stooping over to get hold of him. Alfred kicked his legs hard against the man’s chest, and the force of it pushed the boy off the path and onto the muddy slope. Suddenly he was rolling over and over. Mud and stones were sliding around him, as he half-skidded, half-fell down the hill. Behind him, Nash was shouting and cursing, but he couldn’t follow. His furious yells disappeared into the storm.

  Abruptly, Alfred’s fall stopped. The trees and the hillside were at an end, and he lay in the grass, exhausted.

  Now he felt the rain again. It was coming down almost in solid sheets, but he didn’t care. He could see the first huts of the village, hear the animals inside, almost feel their warmth. For as long as he could remember, he had never thought of the village as somewhere he belonged. It was somewhere to escape from. But tonight, it felt like home.

  Above him a single star shone through a tiny break in the cloud. The prior had pointed it out to him one night. Mars. He fixed his eyes on it, forced them to focus, as if that effort alone could draw him up out of the mud.

  With one last effort, he pulled himself to his feet, still staring upwards. His ankles and his knees were weak and bruised, and he could feel the scratches on his face and legs as he stumbled towards the nearest hut.

  As he pushed his way in, he was barely aware of the people huddled inside. He swayed on his feet, and saw someone step forward to catch him as he fell.

  ‘The prior…’ he managed as the darkness swam around him. ‘Nash has killed the prior!’

  Chapter 2

  Alfred Marchant: 1176

  By the time Alfred awoke, the storm was over, and the dawn was clear and bright. The whole village was gathered outside the hut as he emerged to tell his story. He knew everyone. He had grown up with them, but he had always felt like an outsider.

  It seemed to Alfred that the village was irrevocably tied to the sequence of planting the fields: beetroot, then beans, then fallow, then back to beetroot again. Over and over, year after year, going back as far as anyone could remember, and on and on forever. Nothing else seemed to concern them; it was all they knew and all they wanted to know. The fact that Alfred was, by some accident, better than most at growing beetroot and beans meant he was fed and kept, but these crops were something he wanted to leave behind. He wanted a different kind of future, and last night, with the prior’s kind offer, it had almost become a reality.

  But that was all over now, of course. All the future would hold for him would be beetroot and beans… forever. All the youngest faces he saw around him had already sworn themselves to be his enemies. He had worked for most of their parents in return for a share of food and shelter, and the children had learned to hate him for it.

  The parents’ faces were not set as hard against him, but he knew they were suspicious of the time he spent at the monastery. The monks were rich enough to give charity to those they chose, and powerful enough to make rules for the villagers, but the books they read and wrote were viewed as a dangerous mystery by most of the farmers. Alfred had tried to explain what the bestiary was, but his talk of dragons and creatures that could turn you to stone just by looking at you only seemed to make things worse.

  He started to tell the crowd about how the prior had offered to walk with him through the storm, and how Nash had waited for them on the hillside. As he spoke, he realised something strange was happening. The adults’ expressions begin to change. They might be suspicious of Alfred and of the prior, but they all knew Nash, and they had all seen his anger.

  When Alfred described how Nash had pushed the prior and the landslide had taken him, he was sure he could see understanding, even sympathy, in their eyes. For the first time in years, he began to feel he was a part of the village. His voice became stronger. He started to almost enjoy his story as he recounted how he’d fled through the thickets, fought off Nash, and then rolled down the hill and into the village.

  By the time he had finished, even the other children were staring, open-mouthed, willing him on. Alfred was smiling now. He couldn’t believe it. They were actually listening to him. Taking notice of him. He wasn’t just a necessary nuisance, another one of the animals to be fed and worked. He was one of them.

  The stonemason brought him back to earth.

  ‘Well…’ he said slowly, ‘I suppose we’ve got a body to find.’ He brushed his huge hands down a burned and oily leather apron. ‘And a murderer.’

  If the prior had been organisi
ng the search, everyone would have spread out in a long line along the bottom of the hill, and worked their way up, searching every bush until they reached the monastery at the top. Every inch of the forest would have been covered and nothing, or no one, would have escaped the search.

  As it was, most of the younger farmers strode out into the woods hefting spades and heavy sticks. Behind them, the older men started up the main path, while the rest of the villagers picked their way up the side of the hill in loose groups, shouting out randomly as they lost sight of each other.

  The wood was filled with their calling, and for a moment Alfred felt strangely proud that all this action was taking place because of him. Until he remembered that the prior was dead and that Nash, unless he had fled, was still somewhere on the hillside.

  Alfred led the stonemason and young farmers up the hillside, following the route down which he had slid and rolled the previous night. Finally they reached the path where he and Nash had fought.

  The mud showed signs of a struggle. Alfred saw something stuck fast in a muddy puddle. He pulled it out. It was Nash’s shoe. The leather was nearly worn through, and the sodden moss used to pad the inside fell out in great clumps as he lifted it.

  ‘He won’t have got far without that,’ said the stonemason. He looked down the path towards the four heavy trees around which Alfred had run the previous night. Their thick leaves would have offered shelter against the rain. ‘This way,’ he said.

  He led the group up the grass bank and around behind the trees, and then shouted.

  Propped up against the tree trunk and unconscious, a body lay slumped in drunken slumber. It was Nash.

  As the group gathered round, the stonemason pulled the drunk roughly to his feet, and Nash started to wake. He grunted as he looked at the faces crowding around him, then panicked and fought weakly for a few seconds. But the stonemason’s hands were used to far tougher work. Suddenly, Nash shook his head and focused on Alfred.

  ‘Murderer!’ he screeched, wrenching an arm free and stabbing it at Alfred. ‘Witch! Witch!’

  Alfred flinched in horror. If an accusation of witchcraft was taken seriously, it would mean a witch trial – even torture and execution. The villagers already mistrusted the prior and his books. While nobody dared challenge the monks’ authority, Alfred was just a boy, and an unpopular one at that. If anyone had a grudge to settle, here was their chance.

  There was a long silence. A crowd was gathering around the tree. Alfred held his breath. At last, the stonemason spoke. ‘And I suppose you’re an angel an’ all?’ he boomed. The crowd laughed, and Alfred let out a huge sigh.

  There was no doubt in his mind now. Something had changed for him today.

  Alfred pushed on up the hill. The stonemason kept pace with him, while the others followed, dragging the cursing Nash with them. The only thing left to do was to find the prior. The mudslide had taken him down the far side of the hill, and as they neared the top, they could see the gap left by the trees that had been carried away when the ground subsided.

  The group crossed the crest of the hill in silence before they reached the top, and headed down and around to the bottom of the landslide area. Alfred dreaded what he would find there. The prior had been the nearest thing Alfred had to family. Only a few hours ago, he had promised to take Alfred into his care, to teach him. Had the prior told any of the other monks about his decision? Would they honour it? Alfred had no idea.

  Suddenly, up ahead, Alfred could see gaps in the trees that had not been there yesterday. Villagers were standing between the trees, staring in silence down into a new clearing. At first, Alfred couldn’t see what they were looking at. A crowd blocked his way, and he was too short to see over them. He ran forward, pushed his way through, and stumbled out into the sunlight.

  The landslide had carved a strip of mud like a freshly ploughed field all the way from the top of the hill to the bottom. Every tree that had stood in its path had been uprooted, and was now piled in broken splinters at the bottom of the hill. The villagers had gathered at either side of the clearing in two long rows, none of them daring to step forward into the mudslide’s path.

  Alfred stood alone, ankle deep in the mud. Looking back, he could see only the crowd’s horrified faces. The stonemason stood among them, his great hands covering his mouth in shock. As Alfred watched, he turned and and started to run, pounding his way up the hill. Terrified, Alfred turned slowly to face the centre of the clearing. There was the prior’s body. Mud and blood soaking his clothes, he was lying bent over backwards, held up clear of the ground by a huge lump of rock.

  But it was not a rock.

  At the bottom of the mass of stone, the shape of a vast empty eye-socket was visible above the mud. Higher up, the stone tapered to form a blunt snout, lined with curved, serrated teeth. The massive mouth was frozen, gaping open, and the whole skull was embedded in grey rock as though the earth had grown around it like flesh and muscle. The terrifying jaws formed a deep crevice in the boulder on which the prior had landed, his fragile body impaled on its terrible sharp teeth.

  It seemed as though a dragon had reared out of the ground in the night, grabbed the prior in its teeth, and then been turned to stone by the first rays of the dawn sun.

  She had claimed her first victim in a hundred million years.

  Scattered around the bloodied stone were the contents of the bag the prior always carried with him. Rough scraps covered in unreadable symbols and sketched drawings of strange creatures. Alfred recognised them as practice scribbles for the great book, but the villagers saw only mysterious and dangerous incantations.

  Suddenly, Nash’s harsh voice burst out. ‘Witch!’ he cried. ‘Witch!’ His captors had released their grip on him and he lurched into the clearing. ‘Witch!’ he shouted again.

  Slowly, the villagers’ eyes started to turn away from the prior’s body and towards Alfred. Whispers started to hiss through the air. Alfred heard the word again from somewhere else in the crowd. ‘Witch! Witch!’

  Then again, louder this time, from the other side of the clearing. ‘Witch! Sorcerer!’

  The faces before Alfred were hardening like the terrible stone creature behind him. ‘Witch! Witch!’ The chorus grew, getting louder and louder. Children were shouting, the men pounding their sticks against the trees.

  Alfred tried to protest, but he could barely hear his own voice above the repeated shouts. Two of the men who had been restraining Nash stepped forward and grabbed him by the shoulders. In a panic, he tried to struggle, but their fingers dug deep into his flesh, pinning him to the spot. He looked wildly around. Even if he managed to break free, he was surrounded by the whole village. Everyone here wanted him dead. He didn’t stand a chance.

  Nash stepped out in front of him. He was holding a rusty knife, and it was raised above his head. He was about to bring it down.

  Suddenly, Nash froze, and looked up the hillside. The crowd’s chanting died away, and behind it, a quieter, more melodic chant rose up.

  Alfred looked up. Along the top of the hill, dark, shapes were emerging. The monks. He could just make out the stonemason pointing down towards the prior’s body as he led them towards Alfred and the villagers.

  The abbot stopped the procession in the middle of the clearing. He raised his hands high and waited for the crowd to fall silent. ‘We will take the boy with us,’ he announced.

  Alfred had been digging for weeks under the instruction of the new prior and the stonemason, but there was so much still to do. He had flattened out the ground around the dragon’s skull, so that the side of the hill now had a huge, solid step carved into it.

  Over the following years, Alfred would dig foundations as the stonemason taught him his craft. He would learn how to hew stone into blocks, and around the skull, he would build a tomb.

  The monks understood it as his education – learning a craft. The villagers understood it as a penance. A punishment for his crime, although what his exact crime was, no one would say.


  For Alfred, building the tomb was part of the deal that the monks had struck with the villagers to allow him to live. He had gone to stay with them in the monastery that fateful day, and as the prior had promised, he was also learning to read and write.

  Day after day, week after week, Alfred returned to the skull’s resting place. As he stared into the huge empty eye socket of the creature, it was almost as if the monster was looking right back at him, asking him questions he could never answer in his lifetime. As he worked in its gaze, he felt as though it was somehow shaping him. Filling him with a desire for knowledge that he would pass on to his children, and his children’s children…

  The tomb stood solid while centuries passed. The village was destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed and rebuilt again. Softened by wind, rain and moss, Alfred’s stonework remained unchanged as the woods grew back around it, while the fierce creature buried in its depths lay forgotten.

  Waiting.

  Chapter 3

  Thomas Marchant: 1535

  That was the problem, Thomas Marchant thought, as he watched his father argue with a stallholder. When you came to buy provisions for the monastery, everyone always assumed you had plenty of money. The stallholder could see their horse was a good one, and he could see the empty cart it pulled. It didn’t take much to work out they’d come to town to stock up for the monks. That, in most people’s eyes, meant you could afford to pay twice what everyone else paid for the same food.

  Unfortunately, things had changed. Henry VIII was no friend of the monks, nor of the libraries they protected. He had been slowly choking them for years; now things were getting worse by the week. The few monks who tried to keep the monasteries and libraries going were forced to lead the king’s men in a desperate dance, trying to hide anything of value from the constant inspections, surveys and taxes. Thomas knew his father could earn twice what the monks paid him as a stonemason anywhere else, but for some reason he seemed determined to stay, working constantly to stop the crumbling monastery from finally falling down. Nobody ever said out loud that the king’s death was the only thing that could save them, but there was constant talk about his wounded leg, his open sores, and the fact that he needed servants to carry him from his bed to his chair.