My Lord, the Hermit

by Veronica Heley

  But he was empty of fear for the time being, too.

  He picked up a length of wood, and wearily laid it on top of another, nearby. These two had been abandoned hard by the church wall. He must have others. He prised up the supports which had been left within the cob walls by the church, and took the hurdles in which they had penned the livestock. But still it was not enough. Father Hilarion had wanted to strip Amory of everything, and so it should be. His tent, which had been the only roof over his head for so long, must go. Moving quickly now, he dismantled his home, and dragged the poles up the steep slope, to fling on the pile. Rain scudded across the plain, and for a few minutes beat on his back. He thought it was well that he had some seasoned wood to burn, for he could never have got a fire going if he had had to go and cut wood from the forest.

  The hide would not burn. He threw it on one side. His bowl and platter and wooden spoon went on, and the dried bracken that made his bedding. He had nothing else to give, except his cloak. He would not need that now. He took it off, and added it to the pile as well. But the brooch, her brooch, the one which was so miraculously also the link with his son, he pinned inside his tunic. With any luck, Sir Bevil would not discover it, and it could be buried with him.

  It was done. He ran, hopping from tussock to tussock, to the watch-tower above the dell. He was startled to see how much closer that cloud of birds had come. They would be with him before nightfall. He shivered, shrinking against the cob walls of the watch-tower. For a moment he considered running away. Herkom had hidden things for him, but although he could clearly see, in his mind’s eye, the way Herkom had bent to whisper in his ear, he could not remember where Herkom had said the things were. Ah, he remembered, now. In the hollow oak. But the oak lay directly in the path of the oncoming enemy. He could not light the beacon, and tend it, and still reach the oak before Sir Bevil. Once more he fought a battle, and once more his better self won.

  He took those tools of his which would burn, and went back to the beacon, and lit it, with his back firmly turned to the woods. The bracken blazed, and caught at his cloak … and then the wood began to burn. He tended his fire, moving round and round, thrusting small pieces of dried bracken into it here and there. It was well alight. He could do no more.

  He went into the church, his feet dragging. His chain clanked, catching at his right ankle. He looked down at it. Well, he would soon be done with that.

  Joanna had held his hand and she had touched his hair, and she had cried. For him. She had said, ‘How I do love thee’, and she had spoken his name. ‘Amory. Amory, my love.’ A girl like Joanna did not say lightly that she loved. How would she fare, down in the valley? They would have seen his beacon by now. The wagon might not yet be within the castle walls, but surely Elena and poor limping Dickon … and Bethany, riding on Joanna’s lap … Herkom looking as if he had aged ten years in ten days … Midge … his mother. …

  How had his mother died? Of a fever? Of a chill? Why could not Father Hilarion have told him? Just that bald announcement, ‘Your mother died last October.’ Well, she was gone, and perhaps it was as well. The disgrace had whitened her hair while he had lain at the abbey, raving. …

  Poor Mariana. Why?

  Oh God, forgive me. …

  He slid to his knees, and shivered. The dusk was chill, and he missed his cloak. It did not matter. He hoped Sir Bevil would have the charity to kill him before he crucified him. He lit a rush-light from the fire outside, and pinched it into the iron holder. Its light was kindly on the flowers in the jug and the unplaned surfaces of the cross. Scabious and cornflowers, blue and purple. …

  He could not pray. He knelt with his hands folded, and bent his head, but fear of what was to come held him still, and not prayer. Why had the church failed him? Had he not striven with all of his might to make it a refuge and a holy place? Had he not accepted that he must strip himself of everything to fulfil his vow?

  Presently the answer came to him. It was not the church which had failed him, but he who had failed the church. He had not stripped himself of everything.

  ‘No!’ Yet he knew he must do it. He took the brooch from within his tunic, and laid it on the altar.

  Then he could think and pray once more. He did not pray well, but at least his thoughts, although they flittered here and there, were not wholly imprisoned by his fear. He thought of Father Hilarion, and tried to love him. He admitted his own faults, with shame. He thought of Joanna, and tried to make a prayer for eventual happiness with her cousin Julian. He hoped Rob and Col had got away.

  He thought of his son, and tried not to be bitter that he had never been allowed to see him. Yet the name would live on. … It was some consolation.

  He thought of Sir Bevil, and of crucifixion. And then he began to smile.

  If Sir Bevil crucified him, it was most likely that the local people would consider he had died a martyr’s death, and would revere his memory. Why, they might even name the church after him. … St Keren the Healer … and Father Hilarion would finally have to admit – and here Amory laughed out loud – that the hermit had been something of a saint.

  The irony of the jest that was about to be played on the priest cast out Amory’s fear, and he was still laughing when the men entered the church behind him, and Sir Bevil swung his club at the back of the hermit’s head.

  Amory fell forward on to the altar, knocking over the cross, and smashing the jar. The flowers fell over his hand, the water flooded under his head, and he did not move.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE pace at which the column went across the valley was governed not only by the speed at which the oxen could drag the carts, but also by the rate at which the refugees could walk. Few of the men were healthy, and those that were had volunteered to carry the baggage, and the smallest of the children. The older children herded the livestock as best they could. The wagons were not large, and the arms filled them, weighing them down. They could carry no more.

  Father Hilarion urged Herkom to haste.

  ‘Nay,’ said that worthy, with a look of contempt. ‘My job is to see these poor people safely to the castle, and I doubt many of them will make it on their own two feet.’

  ‘Your job is to get the arms and the spare horses to the castle.’

  Herkom pointed to where Joanna was sliding down from her horse. ‘And ride when ladies choose to walk?’

  ‘Lady, no!’ said Dickon. ‘I cannot take thy horse!’ Yet his face shone white with the pain of walking so far on his bad leg.

  ‘Dickon ride,’ nodded the man who had been dumb till now. ‘Elena ride, too. Peterkin carry baggage and child.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joanna, nodding and smiling. ‘Dickon must surely ride, and then he can take the child up before him. I will ask Herkom to let Elena ride one of the spare horses.’ The collie leaped to the end of her leash, straining to return to the hill, and Joanna had much ado not to be dragged along with her. The child Bethany woke and started to scream at finding herself in the arms of a strange woman. Joanna’s tirewoman declared she could do nothing with the child.

  Herkom came up, leading his horse, on which sat an elderly woman. By his side walked the gaunt figure of Kate, the girl who had been so badly mauled by the soldiers. Kate held out her arms to the collie, and sank on to the ground beside her.

  ‘Let me have her, lady. Keren used to set her to stand guard over me at night, so that I need not fear man’s approach. Mayhap if you tell her now to guard me, she will be happy to stay at my side.’

  It seemed the girl was right, for the collie licked her face, and did not object too much when the leash was transferred from Joanna to Kate. Joanna then took Bethany from her tirewoman, and tried to comfort her.

  Elena said, ‘She is hungry, poor child. She will not eat or drink, save at Keren’s hand.’

  A stout woman came up, already nursing one child at her breast. She said, ‘Let me take her. She ought to have been weaned by now, but mayhap it will soothe her to suckle once more.’
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  ‘I will find you a horse,’ said Herkom, and signalled to one of his men.

  ‘Nay, what would such as I do, riding a horse?’ said the woman, with a good-natured laugh. ‘Fall off, I would.’ There was general laughter. In fact, none of the soldiers was now riding, but all were walking beside their horses as Herkom was, and the horses bore, here and there, a double burden on their backs. Even Father Hilarion had taken a child up before him.

  They made better time now. Elena looked back, and cried out.

  The beacon was ablaze on the hill-top, flaring against the rain-clouds. The column stopped, and silence fell upon them.

  ‘Jesu, sweet Jesu,’ muttered the large woman, blanching. ‘They come!’

  ‘On!’ said Father Hilarion.

  Herkom hesitated. ‘Ought we not to go back?’

  ‘And leave your charges undefended?’ said Father Hilarion. ‘On, men, on! We must be in the castle ere nightfall.’

  ‘And what of Keren?’

  ‘Sir Bevil swore to crucify him!’

  ‘I will pray for him.’

  Joanna was helping a wizened child to herd some pigs along. As Father Hilarion passed her, she lifted her hand to him. He stopped.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘You intended his death.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘All things are in the hand of God.’

  ‘You will recite the Office for the Dead on your return.’

  He spurred his horse. She felt rain strike her face. They bowed their heads and struggled on. If the rain kept up, it was likely that the wagons would become mired, and the arms would then have to be carried on the backs of the soldiers. …

  Sir Bevil bent over Amory, raising his club to strike once again. His victim did not move. Two more of his men came into the church, holding torches, which sent shadows dancing around the walls. The pool of liquid under Amory’s head looked like blood.

  ‘He is not dead, is he?’ demanded Sir Bevil. ‘Why, I hardly tapped him.’

  His lieutenant lifted Amory’s head by the hair, and let it fall.

  ‘Your tap, master, has sent him ahead of you to hell.’

  Sir Bevil’s fury was fast leaving him. The fallen cross seemed to mock him, reminding him that he had just killed a man who was kneeling in prayer at the altar, on holy ground. ‘I said I’d crucify him, and I will do so. Set up a cross on the hill-top, and nail him to it. Alive or dead, what’s the difference?’

  His men were crowding around, outside the church and inside, peering over his shoulder. It had begun to rain, they were far from home, hungry and tired. Normally they were a noisy lot, but now they shuffled, and muttered one to another.

  ‘What is it?’ Sir Bevil yelled. ‘About your tasks! Put up the tents, bring the horses in here for the night. Set guards.’

  ‘Master,’ ventured one at last. ‘The hermit was a good man. He healed many, and the country folk hereabouts are a superstitious lot.’

  ‘What care I for that?’ quoth Sir Bevil. And yet he glanced over his shoulder at the still body of the hermit.

  ‘We would not see him shamed in death.’

  Another said, ‘Find another man to nail him to the cross. It would be like crucifying Christ again.’

  A third said, ‘Remember Thomas a Becket, struck down at the altar, and what became of that. …’

  Sir Bevil’s neck swelled with rage. Seeing which, his lieutenant intervened, to use an argument which he thought might appeal to his lord.

  ‘Master, he could have left with the others, but he stayed, and he must have known what would come of it. He died bravely, did he not?’

  ‘He died with a laugh on his lips,’ whispered one man to another. Two men crossed themselves, furtively, and others followed suit. They had heard that they had been excommunicated for their part in the rebellion, but the quarrel was not of their making and they had no choice but to follow their lord in all things. However, they had been brought up in the Faith, and the brutalities they had committed of late had not hardened them completely.

  ‘Very well,’ said Sir Bevil. ‘Throw his body under the altar for now. In the morning you may bury him, if you wish. Now, where are the shelters which you said had been put up here?’

  But shelters there were none. Wood there was none. Only one hide remained, and that was sodden with the rain that now swept the hill-top. The men had brought some makeshift tents which they put up, and in which they took shelter, sleeping badly, and cursing. The horses, stabled in the unfinished church, were restless. One man, peering in that direction during the night, swore he saw lights in the church and heard a man praying, but this was set down by his fellows to flying gleams of moonlight, and the stir of horses, closely packed together. The body of Amory lay where it had been rolled under the altar. The men who had put him there had gone to some trouble to lay him out, in spite of the driving sleet that hindered them. They had even taken the trouble to throw an old blanket over him, for the sight of his calm face disturbed them.

  In the morning it was still raining, and the men were restless. They wanted to go down into the valley straight away, and take the castle. There would be gold and women down there, and food and shelter. Here they had nothing.

  But, ‘Not yet,’ said Sir Bevil, caressing his unshaven chin. ‘We are but forty, and cannot hope to take that great pile without siege engines, unless we can take them by surprise. We will wait for my neighbour Sir Geoffrey to arrive, and then we will make a push for it.’

  ‘The men are not happy here,’ said his lieutenant. ‘And there is no food. All the livestock which was here is gone.’

  ‘No, it is true, we cannot stay here.’ Sir Bevil pondered the problem as he sat in his tent surrounded by his inner band of cronies. Rain dripped from the sides of the tent and underlined the misery of their position. Suddenly he made up his mind. ‘We will go down into the valley today, but not to the castle. They will expect us to drive straight there, but that would be folly, for owing to that thrice-cursed hermit, they must have had notice of our coming, and will be ready for us. No, we will take the quarry. There are buildings there to house the workers, and a forge. We will leave ten men here to hold the head of the road, and take everyone else down into the quarry to await reinforcements. Then we will attack the castle.’

  The men nodded. Anything to get off that hill-top, and away from that eerie church, which seemed to haunt them with its reminder of the sacrilege committed there. All was bustle now. Ten men were told off to dig themselves in for guard duty, while the rest made ready to descend into the valley. Sir Bevil took his lieutenant to one side. This was the only man he trusted, and certain it was that this grizzled soldier had almost as much cunning as his master.

  ‘We will gain more by threatening the castle than by storming it. The abbot is prepared to pay, and pay well if we will refrain from devastating his lands any further, and I think it would not be difficult to persuade the Count to come to the same conclusion. Why, otherwise, would he have gone visiting the abbot at this particular time?’

  ‘I hear the Count has no money to spare.’

  ‘He will have, when the Lady Joanna weds his son.’ And here Sir Bevil ground his teeth, for this reminded him that Julian was to have wed his own daughter Blanche. ‘I will not attack the castle yet. We will see what we can wring out of the Count first. But there are one or two interesting targets outside the castle walls which might repay a visit from us, and underline the necessity of his meeting our terms.’

  ‘Such as? The shacks of the peasants’ village? They would burn well, granted, but. …’

  ‘The new convent. It must be full of rich furnishings, and more, it contains some highly-connected women of noble family. If we could swoop down on the convent at dawn, perhaps. …’

  ‘… and hold them to ransom?’ Sir Bevil’s lieutenant chuckled and slapped his thigh. ‘And the wood scaffolding they have set up round their new church, and the wooden coffering that holds up the arches of the roof; all would bur
n well. You could teach them a lesson they will not forget easily.’

  By noon the main party had left the hill-top, and the ten men remaining behind were ensconced in a corner of the cob walling, around a fire. Two men had been detailed to take up guard duties, but had not yet done so. Another two had gone unbidden, to clear horse dung out of the church.

  ‘Don’t seem right,’ said one of the men, surveying the mess the horses had left behind. ‘We’ll stable ours the other side of the fence. A church is a church, when all’s said and done.’

  The other man bent to pick up the cross which had fallen against the wall and in doing so, caught sight of something that glinted in a cranny. He said nothing to his companion, but watched his chance, and retrieved his find unnoticed. It was a brooch, a finely-wrought affair of gold with a glittering green stone in it. He put it in his wallet, and his thoughts turned once more to the chance of desertion. He had not wanted to be dragged away from his smallholding, dressed in heavy armour, and made to carry a sword; he had taken as little part as he could in the atrocities perpetrated by his companions. At heart he was a good Catholic, and the burden of excommunication lay heavy on him. The murder of the hermit had shown him that he stood at the very doorstep of hell. He had tethered his horse near the head of the track. If he could only think up some excuse, while the others were busy with their next meal and making themselves comfortable, he could slip away and down the road, and take the tidings of the hermit’s death to the castle. The brooch should be his passport. The tidings he carried of Sir Bevil’s plans should bring him acceptance. …

  ‘A pity they left none of their livestock,’ he said to his companion. ‘Yet I thought I heard a pig squeal some time back, when I was staking out my horse. I think I’ll wander that way a while, before we eat.’