The Crowfield Demon (16 page)

How long he crouched there, trembling and terrified, William didn't know. When at last he forced himself to stand up, his body was stiff with cold. There was a scraping noise from a corner of the hut. William spun around in fright. The hob, his eyes huge with fear, crawled out from behind the wood basket.

“I did not think it would
ever
leave,” the hob said shakily. “It stood by your mattress and watched you while you slept.”

William poured himself a cup of water and knelt by the hearth to drink it. The hob crept over to sit beside him. He leaned against William and shuddered from time to time.

Had the demon somehow put the nightmare in his mind? William wondered. The worst thing about it was how clear the faces of his family had been. It was as if they had really been there with him. Seeing them again had been almost too painful to bear, and his sense of loss was a knife in his heart. Watching them die in the fire was a torture he had been spared two years ago; seeing it now was agony.

William wiped away the tears that blurred his eyes. If the demon had been responsible for the nightmare, then it had looked inside his mind and knew what memories to use to hurt him. And if it could do that, what else could it do?

William was in a quiet mood as he went to fetch the wood cart from the shed early on Monday morning. The nightmare had left a heaviness of spirit that he couldn't shake off, and his thoughts were of his brother Hugh. He was filled with a painfully strong need to see him again.
Where are you, Hugh? Please come home. Please come and find me
.

Peter emerged from the kitchen carrying the wood basket and walked toward the shed. William waited for him, but the lay brother didn't reply to his friendly greeting and wouldn't look at him.

“Peter? What's wrong?” William asked, catching hold of Peter's sleeve.

“I have to fetch the firewood for the kitchen,” Peter mumbled, pulling away from him. He looked terrified. William was disturbed to realize that the lay brother was frightened of
him
.

“Peter, what is it?”

“Brother Martin told me not to speak to you,” Peter blurted out, twisting his hands together anxiously around the handle of the basket.

“Why not?” William asked in surprise. He saw the confusion in the lay brother's eyes as he struggled to decide whether or not to answer him.

“You don't have to be scared of me,” William said gently. “We're friends, aren't we?”

Peter nodded reluctantly.

“Did Brother Martin tell you . . . something bad about me?”

After a moment's hesitation, Peter nodded again.

“What did he say?”

William didn't think the lay brother was going to reply, but at last, in a voice small and hoarse with fear, Peter spoke. “He says . . . you are in league with the devil.”

“He said
what
?”

“He says that you get into his dreams to torment him and that the devil is there with you.”

“I get into his dreams? Are you sure that's what he said?”

Peter nodded. “You did last night.”

William stared at the lay brother, appalled. It felt as if there was a lump of ice lodged in his chest. The creature was turning the cook against him through his dreams. How could he possibly defend himself against that?

“Listen to me,” he said, reaching out to touch Peter's arm again. The lay brother flinched as if he had raised a hand to hit him. “Listen, Peter, I'm not in league with the devil, I promise you.”

“But I've seen you, too, Will, in
my
dreams,” Peter whispered, “with the devil standing behind you. It looks like a crow but its wings are red and it is so
tall
. . . it looks like the birdman in the chapel.” Panic flashed in his eyes and he took a couple of stumbling steps backward. “Brother Martin says you will hurt us all, like you hurt Brother Mark.”

William was speechless. He merely stared at Peter, his body cold with shock. Peter seized his chance. The firewood forgotten, he turned and ran across the yard as if the whole of hell was hard on his heels.

William sat on the chopping block by the shed door, his head in his hands as he tried to make sense of what Peter had told him. What if Brother Martin managed to persuade the rest of the monks that William was evil? He had appeared to Brother Martin in his nightmares, and everyone at Crowfield knew how terrible
they
had been lately. And Peter claimed to have seen him with the demon in his dreams, too. But the very worst of all was the suggestion that he had somehow harmed Brother Mark.

A shadow fell across William's face, and he glanced up. Brother Snail stood by the door.

“Will!” the monk said in surprise. “What are you doing, hiding away in here?”

“Have you heard what Peter and Brother Martin are saying about me now?”

Brother Snail didn't need to ask what William meant. He sighed and lowered himself onto a stump of wood. He gazed at William with a look of compassion. “Yes, I have.”

“It's not true,” William said defensively. “It's the demon. It's getting into people's dreams and it's making them think that I'm there, too.”

“I know.” Brother Snail reached out to put a hand on William's arm. “I've been telling them so, but they are too frightened to listen.”

“Did you tell them the demon is a fallen angel?”

The monk shook his head. “No, and until we find something to prove what we suspect, I can say nothing.”

William leaned back against a stack of cut logs and stared bleakly out at the yard. “Why is the demon doing this? Why has it picked on me?”

“Perhaps the demon knows you had a hand in releasing the angel from its grave last winter,” Brother Snail said, “and if the angel had come here to hunt it down, it won't thank you for that.”

William frowned at the monk. “Then why hasn't it turned on Shadlok? It was his idea to dig up the angel, not mine.”

Brother Snail was quiet for a while. There was a troubled look in his eyes.

“There's something you're not telling me, isn't there?” William said suspiciously.

“I just wondered . . . ,” the monk began. He cleared his throat and started again. “I just wondered if the demon wants . . . more from you.”

“More? What do you mean?”

“Do you remember what Abbot Simon said on his deathbed, Will? About you?” the monk asked. “He said that the light shines brightly in you, and that it marks you out from those around you. What if the demon is drawn to you precisely because of that? What if it is trying to take that light for itself?”

“How can it possibly do that?” William asked, and then he suddenly realized what Brother Snail was saying. “You think it means to kill me?”

The monk's face crumpled with unhappiness. “I pray I'm wrong, but I believe . . . the demon wants your soul, Will. By isolating you from the people around you, it leaves you vulnerable. It will try and make sure there will be nobody to help you when the time comes.”

William stared at the monk in shock. It sounded all too horribly plausible. “Shadlok won't turn his back on me,” he said, but there was a worm of doubt in his mind. Was he so sure of that? What if Shadlok had had enough of life at the abbey and saw this as a way of ridding himself of a tiresome burden? He could easily find someone else to be bound to by the Dark King's curse.

“You will never be alone, I promise,” Brother Snail said. “I will be there, and the hob, too, and unless I have gravely misjudged him, I truly believe Shadlok will stand by you. But be on your guard constantly, Will.”

William stood up. He gazed down at the monk, touched by his loyalty, but really, what could Brother Snail do against a fallen angel? What could any of them do?

“I'd better go. Brother Stephen will be wondering where I've got to with the wood cart.”

Brother Snail nodded and got to his feet. William grabbed the cart handles and started to wheel it out of the shed. “I haven't had a chance to search through the rubble heap yet. The stonemasons are always around. But I'll keep trying. The sooner the better we find whatever was hidden at St. Christopher's feet.”

“Good lad. We'll fight this demon, Will, never you fear,” Brother Snail said, forcing a smile, but William wasn't fooled. What possible chance did they stand against a creature who had defied God Himself?

C
HAPTER
EIGHTEEN

B
rother Stephen had cut up several of the larger branches, and the trackway was littered with logs. He stopped to lean on the axe handle when William arrived with the wood cart.

“Finally decided to turn up, have you?” he said sharply. “Well, now that you're here, you can start loading the logs onto the cart.”

With that, Brother Stephen got back to work and didn't speak to William again for the rest of the morning. The silence between them was not a comfortable one, and William wondered if Brother Stephen believed what Brother Martin had been saying about him. It seemed likely that he did. When the bell for sext clanged out, faint and distant, the monk leaned the axe against the tree stump and set off back to the abbey without a word, wheeling the laden cart ahead of him.

William got on with cutting up the last few branches. With luck, he would finish them before dinnertime and wouldn't have to spend an afternoon of awkward silence working alongside Brother Stephen.

The pile of logs grew, and William stopped for a few minutes to rest. He laid down the axe and stretched his arms above his head, easing out his stiff shoulder muscles.

There was a rustling in the undergrowth, and a small figure emerged from a holly thicket. It was Dame Alys. She pulled her cloak free from the spiky leaves and clambered down the grass bank onto the track, steadying herself with her walking stick. Fionn swooped down from the branches of an oak tree and landed beside his mistress. He flapped his wings and cawed loudly. William eyed the bird with dislike.

“I saw you here yesterday, with the fay,” Dame Alys said. She shook her head slowly. “I don't know what you've done to make an enemy of that one, but I would not care to be in your
shoes
. Fays are tricksy at the best of times, but
him
, he's the worst of them all.”

“You don't need to tell me that,” William said gruffly.

Dame Alys walked over to stand in front of him, almost close enough to touch. And certainly close enough to smell. She reeked of death and blood. He wrinkled his nose and turned away.

“I hear the monks have found the Holy Grail in their church,” the woman said. She stepped sideways, forcing him to look at her. “But that's a lie. The bowl belongs to
me
, and I want it back.” She peered into his face, and her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “But I think you knew that already, didn't you?”

William didn't reply. He watched her warily and tried not to breathe in her gamey odor too deeply.

“A clever boy like you can surely find a way to return the bowl to its rightful owner now, can't you?” she said with a sly smile that deepened the web of wrinkles around her mouth.

“You want me to steal it?” William asked.

The woman jabbed a finger toward the abbey. “
They
are the thieves,
not
me!”

“Then you go and take it, if it's yours,” William said. He wanted nothing to do with any of this.

The woman's oddly colored eyes narrowed dangerously. “You don't want to make an enemy of me, boy.”

William was about to say he had to get back to work when she suddenly reached out and raked a fingernail across his cheek.

There was a sting of pain, and William yelped. He clapped a hand to his face and jumped back. “What was that for?” he demanded angrily.

The woman ignored him. She fumbled in the pocket sewn inside her cloak and pulled out an oak twig. With great care she wiped the blood from beneath her nail onto the twig, then returned it to her pocket.

William remembered the bundle of oak twigs and the fox's blood he'd found on the causeway, and he recoiled. What did she want with his blood? He made a grab for her cloak, but she brought her stick down hard on his arm and he stumbled backward. In the same moment, Fionn rose into the air with a clap of wings, his claws reaching toward William's face. William dropped into a crouch. Fionn's claws skimmed his head, raking his scalp painfully. The bird swooped upward to land on a branch.

“Bring me the bowl, boy,” Dame Alys said, “or I swear, Fionn will feed on your eyes one of these days.”

William grabbed a branch and stood up. He swung the branch from side to side. If the crow came near him again, he wouldn't think twice before bringing it down. “I know what the bowl really is, and I know what your ancestors used it for,” he said, glancing at the woman, but keeping a careful eye on the crow.

Dame Alys looked surprised. “Too clever by half, you are,” she said, baring brown teeth at him. “Too clever for your own good.”