And when the helpless men were all dead the bodies were brought together by a large pool (some say bottomless) at the hollow’s centre, a pool where a beastly, ravenous earth god lived. Here their captors stropped their blades till they were sharp again, and one by one all of the bodies were butchered and tossed into the pool to feed the hungry god. They say that the sound of bones being crunched by the hellish demon-beast was frightful to behold, so loud it was like the felling of enormous trees.
Soon the pool was choked with corpses and thickening blood. The grateful trees sucked the gory wine into their roots and grew strong and black with it. The bones of the dead men are still there, people say, at the bottom of the pool, and their lost spirits wander the wood forever trying to find their way out. People claimed to have heard them still, wailing in their perpetual torment.
Three days of feasting were declared by the victors, the battle to be celebrated and commemorated each year at the same time by the light of the same full moon. But it was said that the demon-beast, once raised from its hellish prison, did not wish to return, and so remained forever haunting Devilbowl Wood, making frequent excursions into the Blackdown Hills and its environs. So every year, when the time came to commemorate the battle, an effigy of the demon-beast was built of wood and straw and burnt as a means of keeping it at bay. The tradition had continued unbroken since that time, the burning of the demon-beast bringing about an end to the annual feasting and celebrations.
It was a tradition the boy knew well. That’s why the boy was afraid of the wood, today more than any other, because that special time of year was on them again, and nobody ventured near Devilbowl Wood until after the ceremonial burning of the demon-beast. It wasn’t safe.
But he had to head towards it in his search for the two sheep that had gone missing, and he was praying that they had not wandered beyond the field, through the hedgerow and into the wood. That was one place he dared not venture into, and no thought of a hard beating from his father for failing to do so would make him enter Devilbowl Wood, especially as dusk fast approached and the encroaching rain clouds painted it darker still.
He made out the body of the first sheep, its fleece almost aglow in the gloom, laid up tight against the hedgerow that bordered the wood, and his fear was submerged by the thought that the sheep could not afford to be lost, and he ran over to where it lay.
He pulled up short, his nose wrinkling. He had seen many a dead sheep. Animals that had died of illness, emaciated by hunger or cold, killed by stray dogs, but he had never seen anything to compare with this.
It had been ripped into shreds, its entrails spread out in a long thin line, leaving a bloody trail as if the sheep had been killed and dragged some distance. Its fleece was matted with its blackening, clotted blood, and lay in strips, as if a raft of sharp blades had sliced across it. Its head was missing, and two of its legs had been severed above the knees and were absent also.
What on earth could have done this, he thought?
He bent down and peered through the gap in the hedge by the sheep. Wisps of wool had been snagged on the hawthorn and he knew the second sheep had been pulled through the tunnel-like hole in the hedge. The wood sat dark and forbidding beyond. Against this dreary backdrop he made out the body of the second sheep, or part of it, for there wasn’t enough there to make a full sheep. Should he go through?
The silence accused him of cowardice. The air around him grew warm. The smell of rain, of dry earth and grass swept into his nostrils, his senses honed sharp, his heart beginning to beat furiously as his fears began to muster.
‘A bad thing.’
The deep voice behind made him start and he fell back from the hedge and onto his bottom. He looked up to see a dark, shadowy figure of a man looking imperiously down at him, his face hidden by the shade of a large-brimmed hat. His long greatcoat made him look like he wore a shroud.
‘You made me jump!’ said the boy. ‘I didn’t hear you come up behind me.’
The man didn’t reply at first. He shifted his severe, silent stare to the dead animal. ‘What has caused this?’ he asked.
The boy got to his feet and brushed himself down. ‘A dog,’ he said hesitantly.
‘Then it’s a big dog,’ he said. ‘A very big and hungry dog to take two.’
‘Who are you?’ the boy asked.
The man didn’t answer. He took off the pack that he had slung over his shoulders and let it fall to the ground. The boy had seen similar packs, laden with blankets, canteens and water bottles, worn by the militia that had been based nearby, men gathered together to fend off Old Boney when he invaded. Napoleon had been another bogeyman he’d grown up with, and he’d heard tales of the little Corsican roasting and then eating children alive, and his armies slaying thousands of innocents and spearing babies on their bayonets as they carved their bloody path through Europe. He was never gladder than to hear that Napoleon had been defeated at the glorious battle of Waterloo two years ago. He thought he was finally safe from being eaten, but now, as he gazed upon the tattered corpse of the dead sheep, he wasn’t so sure.
The man peered through the hole in the hedge and without a sound launched himself through it. The boy wanted to shout out a warning, but held his tongue in check lest the man think he was afraid. He watched as the man went over to the second animal and bent down to it. He prodded it with his finger, looked up and stared deep into the wood and then returned, pushing his way through the hedge.
‘There’s even less of that one,’ he said.
He had a handsome face, the boy thought, if a little tired and worn. It was a face that had seen much of the world, of that he was sure. A mysterious and fabulous world outside his village he could only guess at. The man had black hair, strands falling onto his forehead like lines of ink on tanned paper, the remainder clawed back and tied into a pigtail. His jaw was dark with stubble, his lips thin and almost bloodless, his narrowed, thoughtful brown eyes deep and emotionless. The boy could make out the red of a soldier’s uniform beneath the open buttons of the man’s greatcoat. He’d seen many soldiers coming home from the wars, now that they were finally at an end.
‘What do you think killed them?’ the boy asked. ‘It has to be a dog, doesn’t it?’
The man picked up his knapsack and slung it over one shoulder. It was obviously very heavy and he slumped under its weight. ‘What else could it be?’ he returned, a shadow of a smile breaking out on his lips. ‘It’s going to rain,’ he said. ‘I’d find shelter if I were you.’
‘My father will be none too pleased at the two dead sheep,’ he said.
‘The fault does not lie with you. Sheep go where they will, and will follow each other even into the jaws of death.’ He appeared to gaze onto another scene entirely for a moment. Then his head turned towards the wood. ‘Devilbowl Wood. It will afford me some shelter for the night,’ he said.
‘You can’t go in there,’ the boy said suddenly. ‘Lord Tresham doesn’t allow it.’
‘Lord Tresham? Does this land not belong to Lord Blackdown?’
The boy shrugged. ‘Not anymore. I’m told it is Lord Tresham’s property now.’
Thomas Blackdown frowned. ‘Still, I’ll go where I please,’ he said evenly. ‘And no man – or boy – tells me otherwise.’ He threw his knapsack over the hedge and crawled through the hole after it.
‘It’s not a good place to camp,’ said the boy.
‘It’s as good a place as any,’ he returned.
‘People don’t go into Devilbowl Wood. There are all sorts of tales…’ he began, but again thought better of it. ‘There’s an inn in the village.’
‘I don’t like inns,’ he said shortly. ‘And you would be wise to learn that tall tales cannot hurt you.’
‘Where there’s smoke…’ he said.
‘Where there’s smoke there’s poor visibility,’ Blackdown said.
The boy watched him through the hole in the hedge as the man bent down to the second dead sheep again, took out a kni
fe and began to slice off meat. He was aware of the boy watching and turned to face him, holding a bloody length of flesh up. ‘You won’t miss one tiny piece of it.’
‘It’s been dead a while. It will be rotting after baking in the sun.’
‘I’ve eaten far worse.’
‘Lord Tresham’s gamekeeper, Mr Budge, will shoot you,’ he called.
‘Lord Tresham’s gamekeeper can try,’ he returned. ‘Anyhow, I thought you said no one came into the wood.’
‘The gamekeeper’s made of sterner stuff than most.’
‘And I am made of sterner stuff than any gamekeeper. Keep your mouth shut about seeing me and no one will be any the wiser that I harmlessly lodge in someone else’s grim looking wood for a night or two.’ He waved the bloodied knife at the boy. ‘You hear me?’
He nodded quickly.
With that the man rose to his feet and made his way deeper into the wood. Very soon he was lost from sight. All the boy could hear was the crunching and snapping of brushwood, till even that fell silent. A few fat drops of rain hit his face and he turned about and ran away to find his father and tell him about the killing of the sheep. He thought it best not to mention the stranger.
3
The Work of a Man?
Thomas Blackdown threaded his way through the thick undergrowth, the sweet smell of earth and leaves almost cloying in its intensity. This was an ancient place, he thought, passing oak and ash trees whose trunks were gnarled and swollen with great age, their arcing boughs forming an almost unbroken canopy above. Dead leaves were already beginning to break free and flutter down, intimations of the winter to come.
He came across a small clearing and searched for a suitably low-hanging bough over which to throw his canvas sheet to construct his makeshift tent. He glanced at the brooding sky through the shivering treetops, felt a spot or two of rain. He removed his greatcoat, unfastened the leather straps on his knapsack and took out the thick canvas sheet, tossed it over the bough and fastened it down at each corner with metal pegs. The rain began to fall heavier now as he gathered brushwood and struck his old tinderbox to light a fire. Taking a long bayonet from the pack he speared the strips of lamb and, like a spit, set the lethal looking blade over the flames across two pieces of forked wood. Fat began to drip onto the fire and spit and crackle. The rain disturbed the leaves of the brush about him, causing them to jerk violently in little dances. Thunder growled in the distance.
Blackdown closed his tired eyes, the scent of the cooking meat wafting over to him. The sound of the rain thumping against his canvas caused his mind to wander back. To the night before the battle. The night before Waterloo.
It had rained then, didn’t let up till morning and it soaked them through. Like a great many men he couldn’t find shelter and so did the best he could to get through the long night, wet and hungry. He’d tried to find food for his men, but there had been little to hand, and what he found he shared amongst his company. He remembered their faces as if they sat before him now. Nervous, excited, impassive. A dwindling close company of friends and comrades he’d fought long and hard alongside throughout Spain, together under Wellington’s command forcing Napoleon’s armies back into France, to that final bloody and decisive confrontation in those quiet Belgium fields around the village of Waterloo filled with chest-high ripening corn. And now they were gone. All those faces he remembered so well. He was the last of them.
The pain of remembrance caused him to sigh and he opened his eyes. Beyond the circle of fire, which complained at the rain that fell into it, the wood lay still and almost pitch-black. He tore the meat from the spit and began to chew the rancid, partially cooked flesh, washing it down with water from his bottle. Would the memories of war plague him forever?
Another memory insinuating itself on him. The young Frenchman – he can’t have been more than sixteen years old – lunged at him with his bayonet, having used up his charge, and missed him. His face was dirty and wet with sweat, wreathed in a rage born of extreme fear. But the memory of how he had managed to parry the musket aside with his sword, and brought the blade slicing down across the young man’s neck was still as clear as if it had happened moments ago. Blood gushed out in a scarlet spout and the Frenchman’s eyes first took on the look of incomprehension, and then glazed over as he toppled to the churned-up bloody ground at his killer’s muddied boots.
Blackdown drained the water bottle. Stared into the flames till his eyes hurt with it. He’d seen too many young men die, on both sides. And yet he’d been spared. The one man who cared not whether he died was left to live, to remember those whose lives had held such promise, who wanted to go on living. Why had God seen fit to punish him, to torment him? Had he not suffered enough? What had he ever done so wrong as to deserve this?
The noise snagged his attention like a thorn snags flesh. At once his senses were alert, and he stared hard in the direction of the sounds of disturbed undergrowth. It fell silent again, except for the drumming of the rain. He pulled his knapsack closer to him and took out a pistol. It was already loaded with powder and shot, an old habit, and he cocked the hammer, the click loud in the silence.
The woods were notoriously dangerous places to be for lone travellers, the countryside already filling with demobbed soldiers from the war with Napoleon. Many couldn’t find work and some of them had taken to robbery and murder in order to survive in a land that had always loathed the military and couldn’t care less whether they lived or died, abroad in some forgotten foreign war or here on home soil. The army was a necessary evil and its numbers made up of the scum of the earth – even Wellington himself had said so. Where now the gratitude for saving the country’s skin?
He crept out from under the shelter and grabbed a handful of dirt and doused his fire. He heard the noise again. Someone – or something – was moving stealthily through the dark undergrowth, and he knew enough about such things to know it wasn’t a deer or a badger. It was the distinct sound of two feet being placed one carefully in front of the other. He covered the charge in his pistol with his hand, protecting it from the rain.
But whatever it was turned and fled at speed through the bushes with a loud flurry of cracking stems, leaving him standing there with his heart beating a tattoo. He waited a moment or two, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the gloom. He pushed forward, through the bushes towards where he’d last heard the sounds. He came across dried and newly broken seed heads of cow parsley. At a height too tall for an animal. He crouched down to examine the ground, but it was very difficult to see properly in the dark. He thought he saw a footprint in the rain-softened earth. But it wasn’t a boot print, or even the print of someone walking barefoot. This was like no other print he’d ever seen. It was neither animal nor human. But perhaps his eyes were deceiving him, because it was so damn dark to see by and he was simply letting his imagination run away with him. He’d allowed himself to dwell on the past, and that was never good, for it coloured his thoughts and his judgement in a murky wash.
Whoever it was had gone now, he thought. He’d check the print in the morning when it was light, but it had probably been another traveller, like him, who’d been seeking shelter. Maybe they’d seen the comforting light of his campfire, smelt the cooking lamb and had been drawn to his campfire by biting hunger.
All the same he did not relight his fire, and sat for some time under his canvas sheet watching the darkness growing ever thicker about him, the loaded pistol sitting heavily on his lap, a cloud of bleak memories swarming around him like biting mosquitoes.
He woke early, as was his habit. He’d been so long a soldier, waking to the harsh sound of the trumpets and drums announcing Reveille, he could never hope to shrug it off. Dawn was just pouring its leaden light onto the tiny clearing in the wood as he poked his head from under his tent. A few drops of water trickled down from the canopy, but it had stopped raining. The musky smell of damp earth and foliage was strong. He rubbed away the sleep from his eyes and went over to where he
thought he saw the footprint, but he suspected the earth had been thoroughly soaked during the night and would have washed it away. He suspected right. There was only the faintest impression left on the ground.
After a breakfast of bread that was fast becoming stale, and refilling his canteen from a billycan he’d set under the canvas to catch the rain, he rolled up his tent with the intention of setting it on open ground to dry as soon as he could, and made his way out of the wood.
He heard hushed voices on the other side of the hedge that bordered the wood and he pushed through the hole in the hawthorn, much to the surprise of the three men who had gathered on the other side and were standing over the mutilated remains of the sheep.
One man – elderly, a large white beard sitting on his chest like a frozen cloud – turned quickly towards him and raised his musket.
‘Who goes there?’ he said, somewhat nervously.
‘Have no fear; it isn’t your savage dog,’ he said, dragging his heavy pack after him and standing tall.
‘Who are you?’ said one of the men. He sneered. He was dressed in a shepherd’s attire, the same as his companion, his lined face weathered a ruddy brown.
‘A soldier come home,’ he replied.
‘A poacher, more like,’ said the man with the gun. ‘What have you been doing in there? Devilbowl Wood is private property. Empty those pockets.’
‘I’ll do no such thing,’ he replied flatly. ‘And put that gun down, you’ll do someone some mischief.’
‘Do you know anything about this?’ he said, nodding at the dead sheep, his hand tightening around the stock of the musket.
‘Did I kill it, you mean?’
BLACKDOWN (a thriller and murder mystery) Page 3