“He did give a worn-out cloak to a poor man,” the wife said reluctantly, “and once, in a moment of weakness, gave a bit of bread and cheese to one of his children, for the boy was very hungry.”
“But that was not enough to win him a place in Heaven,” the husband said, “nor even in Purgatory, I suspect. He fell down dead in his forty-ninth year and the parson buried him, but none mourned him.”
“So his two good deeds were enough to delay his exile to Hell,” Gregory mused. “Why, though, do you think he could not gain Heaven or Purgatory?”
“Because his ghost came back,” the wife said, and shuddered.
“It was doubtless to give him a chance to make amends for all the wrongs he had done,” the husband said, “but he has only gone on as he did when alive. A bully he was, and as a bull he has returned, a giant bull who appears on the common in the dead of night. For weeks he will not come, and we will begin to relax when the sun sets—whereupon he will descend on us again, frightening any who dare walk abroad after dark, chasing them into rivers or mires, and bellowing so loudly on the common that he shakes the thatch off our roofs and makes the shutters bang so hard that they break.”
The roar came again and a huge dead branch came crashing down a yard from Alain’s horse. The stallion surged against the bit, but Alain held him and asked, “Have you not sent to your lord for help?”
“He would not believe his old flatterer would do ill,” the man said bitterly, “and our friar sought to exorcise the monster, but the bull was too strong for him. It roared to drown out his words, then chased him into the church.”
“We have had enough,” the woman said, “more than enough, all we can take. We would flee the village outright, but Brother Anselm persuaded us to try one last measure.”
“We have asked friars from eleven other villages to come and help put down the ghost for good.” The husband nodded toward the lights below. “There they walk, each carrying a lighted candle, and we can hear their chorus of prayers in spite of all the bull’s roaring.”
“A most worthy undertaking!” Alain exchanged glances with Geoffrey, who grinned back and said, “And a most courageous! I would see the outcome.”
“I too,” Gregory agreed. “If there is anything I do not know about laying to rest a ghost, I will most eagerly learn it—and who knows? The dozen friars may yet need our aid.”
“Thanks for the warning, good people,” Alain said to the family, “but I believe we will ride into this danger nonetheless.”
They could still hear the family groaning with fear when they were twenty feet away and picking up speed.
As they rode into the common, they saw that the half-circle had tightened, managing to ring the bull completely on three sides—and behind it rose the church. The bull towered over them, ten feet tall at least, bellowing and roaring and pawing the earth. Now and again it charged a friar, but all held their places in the circle with dogged determination, candles high as they chanted their prayers loudly and stepped forward, slowly but with great resolution. The bull turned from one to another, about and about, still making its hideous noise, confused and enraged as the circle tightened around him.
“They push him toward the graveyard!” Geoffrey said.
“Of course—it is the place of the dead!” Gregory cried. “But surely so wicked a spirit may not step on consecrated ground without pain or danger of destruction!”
Nonetheless, the bull turned toward the cemetery—but froze as it saw the dim, translucent forms rising from the ground and gathering shoulder to shoulder to form a wall.
“The ghosts of those he cheated and despoiled!” Gregory breathed. “It is ghost against ghost now, and they have the strength of Right to brace them.”
“And of numbers,” Geoffrey agreed. “Surely the bull cannot venture into the graveyard now.”
“True,” Alain said, puzzled. “It cannot go backward, and it cannot go forward for fear of the prayers and the blessed light of the candles. How then do they mean to chase it away?”
“I do not think they do,” said Geoffrey grimly. “I think they mean to lay it to rest once and for all.”
“To force it to lie in its coffin and never come out?” Alain asked, amazed.
“Something of the sort,” Gregory said, studying the friars and their roaring foe. “Let us see what they do.”
Tighter and tighter the circle became, surrounding the bull in a corral of lights. Its bellows stormed and threatened, but still the ring closed in on it. At last, with an earthshaking roar, the bull bolted toward the church door.
“It cannot go in!” Alain protested. “Not into a consecrated place!”
“It is the church, or the ghosts whose yearning for revenge burns white-hot,” Gregory explained. “Which will hurt it more?”
“The frying pan or the fire?” Geoffrey muttered.
The church shook with the bull’s shout of agony, a long roll of sound that combined anger and pain so deeply that all three men shuddered. Even Geoffrey felt fear of that horrendous creature, but the friars strode with determination into the chapel.
“I must be there!” Gregory cried. “Who knows what the beast will do when it is cornered?”
“Nay,” Geoffrey cried, “that is why you must not—”
Gregory disappeared with a small thundercrack.
“Oh, blast! What peril has he sent himself into this time?” Geoffrey turned to Alain. “Follow when you can!” And with another thundercrack he, too, disappeared, leaving Alain to decorate the evening air with some curses that any well-bred prince should not have known.
Gregory appeared inside the church with a thundercrack that was drowned out by the bull’s most agonized roar. There were no pews, as in most medieval churches, so the floor was one wide expanse of flagstone with the bull in its center and two lines of friars striding with determination along the walls toward the altar, to protect the side and rear walls while a third spread out to block the doorway. They held their candles high and filled the church with the sound of prayer, somehow louder even than the bull’s cries of pain and fury. It turned about and about, charging first one friar, then another, always repelled by the prayers. Finally it realized they were about to close the circle around it and charged the eastern wall, head down, horns stabbing out. It slammed headlong into the stone, rebounded, and wobbled back to the center, reeling and dizzy.
“It has cracked solid granite!”
Gregory looked up to see his brother beside him, pointing. His arrival, too, had been drowned out by the chanting and the bellowing. “Cracked, but not broken,” he said. “This is a hallowed building, after all. It may hurt the bull sorely, but its wall is proof against the strength of his wickedness.”
“And is stronger than he, it seems!” Geoffrey pointed. “See! It shrinks!”
Gregory looked, and sure enough, the bull was growing smaller. It must have realized its peril, though, for it sucked in a huge quantity of air, puffing itself up as well as it could.
Suddenly Gregory realized the bull’s intent. “Beware!” he called to the friars. “The ghost means to—”
The bull let out all the air in one vast bellow, spinning as it did to sweep its breath over every single candle. The wave of frigid air snuffed out each one of the little lights. In the darkness, the friars cried out in consternation and the bull bellowed in triumph.
“Excite molecules!” Gregory snapped at his brother and stared into the darkness, visualizing tiny lights piercing its gloom.
“The very thing!” Geoffrey cried, and did the same.
One by one, the tiny flames rekindled, casting their glows over the faces of the friars. With joy, the clergymen began to chant again, and the bull bellowed in outrage—but his bellow slid up the scale, higher and higher as the friars stepped closer and closer. They were near enough now so that their candles illuminated the bull from every side, showing his shrinking; their horseshoe had finally become a ring, tightening around the monster as it grew smaller and smaller. The hymn rose up in joy and triumph as the creature dwindled, its baffled bellowing becoming a bleating, then a trilling, and finally a squeaking.