Devil's Acre

by Stephen Wheeler

  ‘Give me a moment. I’ll come down.’

  The wagon was a covered one which was something at least to be grateful for since it would provide Samson and me with some protection from the snow which was falling heavily again. Lambert was waiting with that smug look on his face and pulled back the cover of the wagon. The bodies were exactly as I had seen them the previous afternoon in the priory church: Ralf wrapped in his now familiar embroidered shroud, and alongside him Jane in her plain one.

  ‘Ralf looks remarkably clean for someone who’s supposed to have been in the ground for days,’ I said to Lambert.

  ‘You wouldn’t want us to permit him to leave covered in slime brother.’

  ‘Slime eh? Is that what bodies get under ground?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say, brother.’

  I surreptitiously squeezed Ralf’s foot to make sure he was really there, though not surreptitiously enough for Lambert.

  ‘Would you like me to unwrap him for you brother?’ he asked smugly.

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary. Where did you find him?’

  ‘In the cemetery, where he’s been all along.’

  ‘So if I were to tell you a witness saw a monk - a tall monk, someone of your unusual height - remove the body from the grave some days ago, what would you say?’

  ‘I’d say your witness was either drunk or out to cause trouble.’

  He clearly knew it was the grave-digger and that I couldn’t name him without doing him harm. Whatever else Lambert was, he was no fool.

  ‘Let us hope he manages to stay put this time.’

  ‘Amen to that, brother,’ said Lambert putting the cover back.

  From behind me I heard Samson’s voice. ‘Walter, you’re up - good. Ready for the off?’

  I turned to see Samson bearing down on us with Maynus in tow.

  ‘Father Abbot, Father Prior, good morning both. It seems so. But I hadn’t realised we were leaving quite so early.’

  ‘You said it yourself, lad, we need all the daylight we can get.’

  ‘Yes, but I thought we might wait for the sun to join us.’

  Samson’s smile faltered. ‘I do hope you snap out of this mood. It’s going to be a long day. If we constantly snipe at each other it will wear us both out.’

  I nodded. ‘You’re quite right father. I will try to be civil.’

  ‘So, the sooner we get going the sooner we will arrive. Have you brought everything down with you?’

  ‘It seems I have,’ I said watching the servants heave my bag onto the back of the wagon.

  Maynus stepped forward and handed me a parcel. ‘This is for you, mon fils.’

  ‘Why thank you father. You’re very kind.’

  ‘Not me. From the kitchens.’

  Tomelinus. I wondered if he would make an appearance.

  ‘May I just check round my room, father, to make sure I haven’t left anything?’ I ran up the steps before he had a chance to say no. ‘I shan’t be a moment.’

  As I anticipated, Tomelinus was waiting for me in my room and looking more monk-like than ever. He had cut his hair into a tonsure and cleaned himself up a bit. He looked better-fed - clearly working in the kitchens agreed with him. Even the bandage had gone.

  ‘My dear fellow. How is your war wound?’

  He grinned and put his hand up to his forehead. ‘One more scar to add to my collection brotherliness.’

  ‘Thank you for the parcel.’

  ‘Just a small token of my thanks for all you have done for me, pripp-pripp-tip.’

  I looked at him sceptically. ‘Not more stone soup, I hope?’

  ‘No brotherliness. You will find it far more…nourishing.’

  ‘In that case I shall have it for my lunch.’ I looked at his grinning face and felt my eyes beginning to fill up. ‘Well, farewell good friend. It looks like this will be our last meeting.’

  ‘Thee never knows. The wheel of fortune turns but slowly. I may find cause to come to Bury one day, pirrip-tip.’

  ‘As prior of Acre, perhaps?’ I laughed. ‘That would indeed be something. At least you’ll have some good boots to get you there.’

  He did a little skip to show off his fine new boots. But I couldn’t see them clearly. Tears were filling my eyes again as I put my arms around the old fraudster and hugged him to my breast.

  Back downstairs Samson was already seated on the wagon, reins securely in hand and frowning with impatience. Assembled in front of the porch was the entire Cluniac brotherhood, relieved to be seeing the back of us no doubt. I bowed before the prior and kissed his hands.

  ‘Merci, mon père, pour toutes vos bontés.’

  ‘Tu es les bienvenus, mon fils,’ he smiled. ‘We won’t forget you, Brother Walter.’

  ‘Nor I you, dear Father Maynus.’

  ‘Oh do come along Walter,’ said Samson from his seat on the wagon. ‘Thetford is still a long way.’

  ‘Are we not stopping at Tottington this time?’ I said climbing up next to him.

  ‘No. We go direct to the sisters of Saint George.’

  I couldn’t say I was sorry to hear that. The thought of spending another night in Absalom’s crawling byre did not appeal. After the turmoil of the past few days I was looking forward to getting back to Bury as soon as possible. One night fewer on the road was one closer to home.

  At last with a crack of Samson’s whip over Clytemnestra’s back the cart lurched forward and we were off. With the Te Deum ringing in our ears from the assembled brothers I looked back to see Maynus making the sign of the cross, tears flowing down his cheeks. I didn’t know it then but that was the last I would ever see of him.

  Chapter 25

  CONFESSION

  We set off out the priory gates at a cracking pace, but instead of turning right through the town which would have been the most direct route we took the path leading straight ahead. It was a track that was little more than a path to the fields full of potholes and really quite unsuitable for wheels. I wondered for a moment if Samson had made a mistake, but then I remembered his promise to the townsfolk.

  ‘Do you think anyone will notice father?’

  ‘Notice what?’

  ‘That we are deliberately going the long way round in order to confuse the monster. I presume that is what you’re doing.’

  ‘Oh - yes.’

  ‘Not that anyone is likely to see us. I doubt if this track gets used very much at this time of the year.’

  I glanced over my shoulder at our two silent passengers bouncing around on the back boards. At least they couldn’t complain about the ride. I, on the other hand, was having to hold on to the seat with both hands to prevent myself being thrown out. It did seem a little excessive. After one particularly violent jolt I felt I had to say something.

  ‘Is it really necessary to keep up this pace, father?’

  ‘I want to put as much distance between us and the town as I can while we can.’

  ‘At this speed we’ll be lucky to arrive at all. Remember the wisdom of Aesop.’

  The fable of the tortoise and the hare is what I meant. Samson seemed to get the point and slowed down a little, much to my relief, and no doubt to Clytemnestra’s too. We seemed to do a complete circuit of the town and were passing now beneath the walls of the castle shrouded at this hour in mist and I looked up at its pennants flying from the turrets. That was one place I was not sorry to be leaving behind.

  ‘It’s been quite a week,’ I reflected. ‘What was meant to be a brief sojourn of a couple of days has turned into quite an adventure. Who would have thought so much could have happened in so short a space of time? Three deaths…’

  ‘Three?’

  ‘Ralf, Jane - and Esme,’ I reminded him.

  Samson snorted. ‘Damn puppy!’

  ‘Damned to us perhaps but not to young Nicholas. A simple pleasure for a simple mind. I told you, didn’t I, what those boys made him do to her?’ I shook my head. ‘Disgraceful. Personally I suspect Richard of being beh
ind the whole business.’

  ‘Be careful how you slander the nobility, Walter. They have a way of getting their own back.’

  ‘Fortunately there’s no-one out here to hear me - unless Lord William has his spies secretly hidden under the wagon.’ I made show of peering over the side. ‘Not all the Warennes are so rum. There’s the lady Adela. Quite a different fish from the rest of them.’

  He looked at me. ‘What do you know of the lady Adela?’

  I hesitated. ‘Well, I suppose I may as well tell you, it can’t do any harm now. I know she’s Richard’s mother - Maynus told me as much and she all but confirmed it herself. And,’ I added sotto voce, ‘the identity of the father. It seems our liege lord has been indulging his usual weaknesses. But as to the other lad - Maynus seemed remarkably ignorant on that score. Or so he says. Between you and me I think he knows more than he’s telling.’

  I looked at Samson but he appeared to be concentrating on the road ahead.

  ‘Mind you, if I had a son like Nick I don’t suppose I’d want to own up to the fact either. Who’d want to marry into a family that might produce another like him? His father would almost certainly disown him. But that still leaves the question of who the mother is. Not Adela - the boys’ ages are too close together. One of the other sisters perhaps?’

  Still no response.

  I shook my head. ‘No, any child born to Maud or Isabel they’d almost certainly eat.’

  ‘You know Walter,’ he said without taking his eyes from the road. ‘Sometimes you talk an awful lot of rot.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ I sighed. The snow had stopped but it was still cold and I huddled down against the rising mist.

  We continued thus through the morning lost in the silence of our own thoughts until eventually we got back onto the Swaffham road and firmer ground again. It was a relief to get off the side roads and away from all the potholes. Samson had certainly been as good as his word criss-crossing so many country lanes. If Ralf really was a Revenant he would have little chance of finding his way back to the priory. I wasn’t sure I would either.

  At last we reached the top of the hill and were able to look down upon the snow-covered rooftops of Swaffham. We seemed to have got here remarkably quickly.

  ‘Are we stopping to refresh the mule, father?’ I asked him eyeing Tomelinus’s parcel.

  ‘No. We press on.’

  It seemed Tom’s parcel would have to wait a while longer. We skirted the market where I had bought food for Esme. That all seemed like an age ago and we were soon out the other side. Villages that I remembered from our trip up came and went as we quickly passed through without stopping. We were making good progress certainly compared with the journey down. Anyone would think we were in a hurry to get away from the place.

  By now we had been travelling for four solid hours and I for one was frozen to the marrow and very hungry. The sleet was blinding me it must also be blinding Samson.

  ‘Father, your hands are turning blue. I think we should stop soon if only for the sake of the mule.’ He didn’t reply but continued doggedly on. ‘We are making good time. I am sure we will be in Thetford by dusk as you intend.’ I glanced over my shoulder: ‘Perhaps we should ask our guests what they think.’

  That seemed to get through to him at last. He pulled off the road a few yards. ‘Very well, a brief stop. I’ll light a fire.’

  I nodded with some relief. I was beginning to think I would have to continue all the way to Thetford without stopping.

  By the time I returned from relieving myself Samson had built the fire into a raging inferno so much so I was beginning to fear for the safety of the wagon. I started to move it a little further away.

  ‘Leave it,’ said Samson.

  ‘But father, it is in danger of catching fire.’

  ‘It won’t. Now sit. Eat. Here’s a bowl of pottage.’ He held it out for me.

  I shrugged and sat down on a log. The air was still, not a bird to be heard, nor wind rustling the trees. It felt like one of those cathartic moments when something momentous was about to happen.

  ‘Father, may I ask you something? You can refuse to answer if you wish, but it is the question that has been troubling me since we first set out on this journey. Now that we are alone…’

  ‘You want to know the truth about Ralf.’

  I was taken aback. ‘Well yes, as a matter of fact, I do.’

  ‘The answer’s yes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, I killed him. That’s what you want to know isn’t it?’

  Needless to say, my jaw metaphorically hit the snow-covered ground. ‘You admit it?’

  ‘I do.’

  For the moment I couldn’t speak. I continued eating but I was scarcely conscious of what I was putting in my mouth. I was concentrating on how I was going to respond. This wasn’t the confessional and I wasn’t his chaplain. He couldn’t rely on my silence. Indeed, I had a duty to speak out. What stunned me even more than the admission itself was the casual way he told me. The one question that had been on my mind all week so easily answered. If it was this easy why had it taken so long to tell me?

  Despite the roaring fire I shivered. There would have to be consequences of course once we returned to Bury. The sheriff would have to be told as would all of my brother monks. Bishop John de Gray of Norwich perhaps, Bishop Eustace of Ely, possibly Archbishop Hubert Walter and even the king himself. Was he even still the Abbot of Saint Edmundsbury? There were so many questions cascading through my head but they all distilled down to one word:

  ‘Why?’

  He took a moment before he answered, possibly gathering his thoughts together. ‘As you know there is a history between Ralf and me.’

  I nodded. ‘To the time you were both together in Tottington?’ I was trying to remember the conversation Ralf and I had had at the nunnery en route to the priesthouse. ‘An argument, Ralf said. He’d had an argument with someone. Am I right in thinking that someone was you?’

  ‘What did he say about it?’

  ‘Simply that the matter had to be settled by combat - a duel, he said. He didn’t go into details but said he would tell me more the following morning. Except by then he was already dead.’

  Samson frowned. ‘It was so long ago, it hardly matters now. Suffice it to say there was indeed a battle which he won but he reneged on the agreement we had between us.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I nodded. ‘He said that he pledged his wealth to the abbey if he succeeded but then broke his word. He also said that he blamed Saint Edmund for his blindness.’

  Samson waved a dismissive hand. ‘He blamed himself for that, his own greed - and rightly so.’

  ‘And because of that you took his life?’ I asked, incredulous. ‘Now, forty years after the event?’

  ‘Would you prefer I had done it sooner?’

  I shook my head. ‘I still can’t believe it.’

  He looked irritated. ‘Believe it for it is the truth.’

  I did not know what to say. ‘The countess asked me - no, she commanded me - to trust you. She told me to lay aside my suspicions and obey the abbot without argument.’

  He looked at me intensely, more intensely than I could remember he had ever done before. ‘And will you?’

  I returned the abbot’s gaze. His face was more familiar to me than my own yet he was a stranger to me.

  ‘After what you just told me, father, I’m not sure that I can.’

  Chapter 26

  REAWAKENING

  ‘I envy you, Master.’

  ‘You Gilbert, envy me?’

  ‘Yes master. You are on the verge of a great adventure, probably the greatest adventure of all.’

  ‘Ah, you think I am about to meet my Maker.’

  ‘But is it not a wonderful thought? To see God in heaven and to meet old friends again?’

  ‘Not all of them may wish to meet me again. And as for God, he may send me to the other place - which, come to think of it, is probably
where most of my friends already are, teehee.’

  ‘You should not jest about these things, master. Death is a serious matter. You should be reconciling yourself to God. You may not have much time left.’

  ‘Don’t be too confident my young friend. I could yet live as long as your namesake Gilbert of Sempringham. He was a hundred-and-six when he died. You, on the other hand, could trip over your own feet this very night and break your neck.’

  ‘Neither case is very likely, is it master?’

  ‘All I say, Gilbert, is be careful where you place your feet - and into whose pond you dip your toe.’

  ‘Does he suspect you?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Sometimes I think he does but other times it is like the ramblings of a diseased mind. He is rotting from the inside.’

  ‘Harsh words. Tell me Gerard, why do you hate him so?’

  ‘For the same reason you do, my lord.’

  ‘I don’t hate him. In my case it is simply politics. But you have a visceral loathing for the man. Why is that?’

  ‘It is his liberality that offends. He does not condemn that which any religious should condemn. His so-called brother - that atheist. Such people should not be permitted to breathe God’s air yet he refuses to condemn him. And not just his brother. Murderers, perverts, prostitutes - he would make room for them all. As though the sin itself were not bad enough, the toleration of it is worse. It is better that he be removed from the world and his opinions with him.’

  ‘I see. Well, it looks as though you may get your wish quite soon.’

  *

  Did I believe Samson’s confession? Had he truly arranged this trip for the sole purpose of disposing of an old enemy? Certainly killing Ralf made more sense than his original explanation of coming to hear the earl’s dying confession - that I never really believed. Frankly, I couldn’t believe this new explanation either. But assuming for one moment that it was true and murder was indeed his real purpose, why take me along, a potentially hostile witness? It made no sense. I had contributed nothing to this journey, my presence was entirely superfluous. He could easily have undertaken it alone and I would have been no more aware of what had transpired than had Jocelin and the others. And it wasn’t as though he had taken me into his confidence. Quite the opposite. He had spent the entire week deceiving, denying and confusing in order to throw me off the scent. And now just when success was within sight he decides to confess. It was madness.