The Crowfield Demon (5 page)

“It's what Robin gave me . . . it's the bread,” William said.
I ate part of that
, he thought, appalled. His stomach heaved, and he ran for the door. He stumbled around the corner of the hut and hunched over, retching.

A hand grabbed William's hair, not roughly, and pulled it back from his face. Whoever it was stayed with him until every last thing in his stomach lay on the grass beneath the blackthorn tree.

“Better?” Shadlok asked somewhere above him.

William slowly straightened up. His body trembled and tears rolled down his face. He wiped his mouth with the back of his shaking hand. “Yes,” he said hoarsely.

Shadlok was watching him with a frown. “The one-eyed cook's food has not improved, by the look of it.”

William shook his head. “It wasn't Brother Martin's cooking. Maybe God was punishing me for eating cheese on a fast day.”

“Why would He do that?” Shadlok sounded mystified.

“Because it's a sin,” William said. Shadlok raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

“Are you all right, Will?” Brother Snail asked anxiously, grabbing his arm.

“Maggots are never a good thing to eat,” the hob said, climbing up to sit on a low branch of the black- thorn and patting William on the head in sympathy.

“Maggots?” Shadlok said, sounding surprised. “Why did you eat maggots?”

“I didn't,” William said, feeling his stomach tighten ominously. “Well, I
did
, but I didn't mean to.”

“Would somebody care to explain what is going on?” Shadlok said evenly.

“Come with me,” Brother Snail said. “I will show you.”

Shadlok followed the monk into the hut. William leaned against the tree and breathed in deeply and slowly, trying to calm the chaos in his belly. It didn't make any sense. Robin had handed him maslin bread and cheese. It had been warm and fresh, and it had tasted good. Better than good, it had been the best thing he had eaten in months. He'd seen and touched the second half of the loaf when Robin took it out of his bag. He would have wagered his soul that it had been bread, plain and simple.

So where had that rotting abomination come from? If it wasn't divine punishment on him, then how had Robin managed to trick him like that?

“Maggots and black fur,” the hob said softly, poking the contents of William's stomach with a long stick where they lay beneath the tree. “Not bread at all.”

William stared at the mess at his feet in revulsion. Then he began to retch again.

A short while later, William sat and shivered by the fire. Brother Snail gave him an infusion of crushed fennel seeds in warm water to sooth his stomach.

“So,” Shadlok said softly, his eyes wide and gleaming with anger, “the king has come back. I am just surprised he has waited this long.”

Brother Snail went a shade or two paler. “You think this boy Robin was the Dark King in disguise?”

Shadlok nodded. “He covered his true appearance with glamour and tricked William into seeing and tasting bread, when in truth he was eating . . .”

“Don't say it, please,” William interrupted quickly, putting a hand to his mouth. He couldn't bear to think about what he'd eaten. His stomach rumbled queasily.

The hob, sitting across the hearth from William, said, “I wonder why he didn't just kill you.”

“He made a fair attempt at it,” William muttered.

“No, he only meant to frighten you,” Shadlok said.

“Well, he succeeded.”

Shadlok gazed into the fire. The flames were reflected in the pale depths of his eyes. “Comnath enjoys the hunt more than the kill. Like a cat with a bird, he plays with his prey and finds new and more unpleasant ways to torture it.” He looked from William to the monk and let his gaze linger on the hob for a moment. The harsh lines of his face softened slightly. “But it is me he wants to destroy. He will hurt me in whatever way he can, and that includes coming after those close to me. None of you are safe now. You least of all” — his gaze shifted back to William — “because you and I are bound together by his curse, and because you dug the angel from its grave and helped Bone to die. He will make you pay for that.”

William remembered the first time he had seen the king, in the Hollow last winter, with his unnaturally green eyes and dark red hair, startling against the pallor of his skin. As the boy Robin, the king had been almost unrecognizable. Almost, but not quite: The king could not fully disguise his eyes. If William had been paying closer attention, those green eyes would have given him away much sooner.
I should have trusted my instincts
, William thought in frustration.
I knew there was something not quite right about him
.

“Isn't there any way to stop him?” William asked. “We have to fight back.”

“Oh, we will fight him, human, make no mistake about that,” Shadlok said softly, “but it will be two of us against the whole of the Unseelie Court, and I do not care for our chances.”

“Three of us,” the hob said, patting his chest.

A rare smile lit Shadlok's face. “Your bravery does you honor.”

The hob looked delighted by the fay's praise. His face creased in a wide grin, which showed two rows of sharp teeth.

“Make that four,” Brother Snail said.

William looked at him and felt a rush of affection. The monk might have the heart of a bear, but his thin body with its twisted spine and humped back was frail. He would be of no use in what was to come, and they all knew it. And what chance would the hob stand against one of the Dark King's fay warriors?

The truth was, William and Shadlok stood alone in this fight.

C
HAPTER
SIX

W
illiam was chopping logs in the woodshed early on Thursday morning when someone banged on the abbey gate.

“Master Guillaume to see the prior,” a voice called.

William hauled open the gate and stood aside. The mason dismounted and lifted down a large leather bag.

“We meet again, boy,” the mason said. He handed the bag to William. “Take this, and then let your prior know I'm here.”

The bag was heavy and clanked as whatever was inside it shifted. William got a good grip on the handles and said, “I think Prior Ardo is in the church. I'll take you to him.”

Master Guillaume tied the pony's reins to the wattle fence of the pigpen. Mary Magdalene, the abbey's elderly sow, came over to inspect the animal, grunting as she lifted her snout to sniff the pony. William leaned over the fence to give her ear a quick scratch. She grunted again and settled herself in the muddy wallow by her trough. The pony found a patch of grass and began to graze.

It had stopped raining, and the sky was a clear light blue. The mud in the yard was starting to dry out in the breeze. The kitchen door was propped open with a stone, and William could hear Brother Martin banging around inside.

“Get out of here before I wring yer scrawny necks!” the monk yelled. “Ye'll be in the pot feathers an' all if I catch ye in here again, ye little buggers.” There was a loud crash, a squawk, and a flurry of hens flapped out through the kitchen doorway and scattered across the yard.

William grinned at Master Guillaume's look of surprise. “That's the cook, Brother Martin. We'll go the long way round to the church. It's best to keep out of his way when he's cooking.”

William took the stonemason through the vegetable garden to the dark arch of the passageway beside the chapter house that led to the cloister.

Brother Mark was sitting at his desk overlooking the cloister garth, his head bowed over a sheet of parchment and a goose quill pen in his hand as he copied a prayer from a Book of Hours beside him. He glanced up when William and Master Guillaume emerged from the passageway.

“Master Guillaume is here to see Prior Ardo,” William said, nodding to the mason.

“The prior is in the church,” the monk said, putting down his pen and rubbing his hands together to ease his cramped, ink-stained fingers. “He will be glad to see you. The crack in the chancel wall is worse this morning.”

After the bright, mild day outside, the light in the church was dim and the building was chilly. Prior Ardo, Brother Gabriel, and Brother Snail were standing outside St. Christopher's chapel in the north transept.

“It can't be rain damage,” Brother Gabriel was saying insistently, “because only the saint's face has been affected.”

“I can see that for myself,” the prior said sharply, “but what else can it be, if not the damp seeping through the wall?”

“In just that one small patch?” Brother Gabriel said. His plump cheeks were pink, and there was a shrill note in his voice. “I think it might be a sign.”

The prior turned to frown down at the monk. “A sign of what, exactly?”

“I don't know,” Brother Gabriel said, sounding flustered, “but I don't think it's anything
good
.”

Brother Snail noticed William and the stone-mason and touched the prior's arm.

“This is Master Guillaume,” William said, nodding to the mason.

“Perhaps we can have your opinion on the matter,” Prior Ardo said, gesturing to the chapel entrance, inviting Master Guillaume to come and look.

William glanced at Brother Snail and saw the worried look in his eyes.
What now
? he wondered as he peered over the stonemason's shoulder. He had never been inside the chapel before and stared around in wonder at walls painted with fish beneath little blue waves, and trees and flowers on grassy riverbanks. Above the altar, there was a painting of St. Christopher carrying the infant Jesus on his shoulder. The child was plump and smiling, and a halo circled his head. William barely glanced at him but stared up at the saint instead. Where St. Christopher's face should have been was a patch of bare stone. The plaster had fallen away from the wall in a neat circle and lay in a small heap on the altar.

“Well?” the prior asked. “Is the wall damp?”

The mason stepped into the chapel and slowly walked around, running his hands over the walls, peering up at the ceiling and down at the floor. “It's damp, right enough. And the floor. Even so, it's strange that the plaster's come away like that, just the saint's face and nothing else.
Very
strange,” he said with a puzzled frown. He looked at the prior. “Sir Robert told me there is a crack in the chancel wall. Can I see it?”

“This way,” the prior said, brushing past William without seeming to notice him. Brother Gabriel and the mason followed him, but Brother Snail stayed where he was, twisting sideways to look up at the damaged wall painting.

“What do the words say?” William asked, pointing to a ribbon of letters above the saint's head.

“
Cristofori faciem die quacunque tueris
,” Brother Snail read slowly. “
Illa nempe die morte mala non morieris
. It means that whoever looks on the face of St. Christopher shall not that day die an evil death.”

“He doesn't have a face,” William said uneasily.

“No,” the monk agreed, “he doesn't.”

C
HAPTER
SEVEN

W
illiam glanced around. There was an atmosphere in the gloomy little chapel he did not like. He looked up at the painted ceiling. Two angels flew between stars and a large full moon. One was clothed in white and had sweeping feathered wings. It had clearly been painted by the same person who had decorated the walls of the chapel, but the other angel was different. It was crudely painted and looked as if it had been added by a different hand. Its robes and wings were red, and it had the head of a crow and carried a sword. William found it deeply disturbing. There was something in the back of his mind, a vague feeling that he had seen something like this before, but it was gone before he could grasp it. He remembered Shadlok's reluctance to go near the church and his certainty that something evil lurked there. Shadlok was right, he thought. The chapel might have been a holy place once, when St. Christopher watched over it, but it wasn't now. The saint was blind, and something else inhabited the chapel. They were not welcome here.