Sweet Jesus, the monk told himself, have mercy on us poor sinners!
The weight of the cart was immense. He had thought the Godpoxed things were easier to push, but the wheel-hubs kept getting caught in the brambles and bushes. There were so many little saplings, too, all pushing up through the murk, some of them so thin he could hardly see them at this time of night, others thicker and substantial, so massive that several times he squeaked to himself, fearing that they were men sent to catch them and bring them back.
It had been so terrifying, when he had woken and learned that the man had done it already. So many weeks of planning, and yet now that the one-eyed man stood before him with his dagger dripping gore, Brother Anselm was struck with terror. He could only moan gently, as his entire world fell away.
This wasn’t his place. He was a happy man, cheerful. All knew him to be the contented, amiable one of the abbey. It was the others who were greedy, fractious and truculent. Never Anselm. It was his part usually to calm the others. He’d been doing it for so many years that finding a new role was peculiar.
Surely it was that which had tempted him. He had been lured by the anger constantly rising in his breast as the rest of the community sparred and bickered. ‘Oh, it’ll be fine. Anselm can soothe them all later,’ was the attitude. And until now, that was what he had done.
When poor Abbot Champeaux died, though, yes, that was when all changed. First he had begun to realise how divided the monastery was growing, with factions forming about John de Courtenay and Robert Busse, the two brothers who were seeking election to the abbacy; it was enough to blunt the loyalty he had once felt to the institution where he had lived for so long.
It was not only the abbey, though: it was the entire realm. No matter where a man was to go, there was no confidence. After the queen’s departure to France to negotiate a truce, the belligerent attitude of the country towards the king had become ever more evident. People were terrified. They knew that she had been treated like a felon by her own husband, with her lands stolen and her household broken up. If the royal family itself harboured a festering dispute that could drive a wedge between king and queen, no one was safe.
No more were they. All over the realm men were living as outlaws, where once they had been loyal servants of the king. The dispossessed now formed a great mass in the land, and there was no possibility of their being reconciled to the law. The law itself was false, unequal to the struggle of controlling so many disputatious people.
‘Oh, shit!’ he muttered as the left hub caught a new tree trunk and the cart slewed round.
‘Shhh!’ hissed his companion.
There was no arguing with him. Anselm had not met him before, this old man. He looked frail and rather pathetic, but in fact he was as strong as many youths. His body might be ancient and twisted, but his muscles had the resilience of old hemp.
Besides, the old man’s companion had already petrified Anselm. In the past, his worst nightmares had involved the ghosts said to occupy the moors and the abbey. Now they included the third man in their party.
This man, Osbert, was fearsome-looking, with a huge scar that ran from his temple across his face. It had put out his eye, but that only served to make the remaining orb look still more brutal and lunatic. When he stared at Anselm, the monk felt his guts turn to water.
‘Shhh!’
Anselm froze as his companion held up a hand. There was no sound for a while. Nothing but the slow soughing of the wind through the trees, the creak of the cart, and the thundering roar of Anselm’s heart. And then the little snuffling sound at his breast.
‘Come on, then! What, you going to wait there till Christmastide? Get a move on, monk, move your arse!’
Anselm would have given him a short instruction on the merits of politeness towards a brother in Holy Orders, but he didn’t like this man, and nor did he feel sure that any comments wouldn’t be rewarded by more than a curt word. He held his tongue as he and the other two pushed, heaved, sweated and swore.
‘You push like a woman, monk,’ the man snarled as Anselm slipped in the mud.
‘Damn you …’
‘Aye, and damn your soul, little monk. Sold it for twenty pounds of silver, eh? The devil drives a hard bargain, you’ll find. You won’t be getting your soul back intact.’
‘I am still a man of God. That confers privilege!’
‘Not here it doesn’t. And if you think …’ Osbert crossed to the other side of the cart and came upon Anselm suddenly, grabbing his robes and bunching them in his fist, pulling the monk to him so that their faces were only a matter of an inch or so apart. He held him there, his one eye staring into Anselm’s fixedly, while Anselm had the unappealing view of the empty socket. The man was so close, Anselm could smell the garlic on his breath, the staleness of old sweat in his clothes, the fetid odour of his unwashed body, and he curled his lip, wanting to be away from there.
The man’s voice was low, sibilant and menacing as the devil’s own trident. ‘If you think you can keep your robes on and use them to get away, and maybe later denounce us while you try to save your neck, monk, you’ll soon learn that my dagger has a long blade. Doesn’t matter where you try to go, I’ll find you, and I’ll put you to so much pain, you’ll wonder what’s happened to you. You’ll even forget who you are. You understand, you little prickle?’
Anselm nodded, but even as he did, he felt, rather than heard, the scrabble of paws at his breast.
‘What the …?’
He was shoved away, and the man stared uncomprehendingly as Anselm opened his robe. Inside nestled the puppy. ‘I couldn’t leave …’
The man swore, quietly but with utter venom. ‘What of the bitch?’
‘I didn’t bring her, I thought that-’
‘You thought? Did you think that she’ll soon wake and begin to wonder where her little puppy has gone?’
‘I took the pup from her last night. She slept without him!’
‘Did you not think that she’ll whine and howl and wake the camp? Did you not think she’ll come after us as soon as they release her from her leash? Did you not think they would follow her to us? Did you not think at all? Sweet Jesus, save me from mother-swyving churls like this one. I’ll have to take her back.’
‘You can’t go and-’
‘Monk, shut up! You will have to push the cart back while I do this. You won’t be able to. So put your back into it, and get the cart back safely. You hear me?’
Osbert stepped quietly and very cautiously as he returned to the camp. The body of the pup lay still in his hand now. He had snapped its neck like a coney’s. It would be a short while before he reached the camp, he thought. The smell of burning wood was in his nostrils already from the fire the evening before. Now it had been banked, there was but a dull glow from the mass of the embers. Nothing to give him even the slightest of shadows.
All about there were the peaceful sounds of sleeping people. A child up with the travellers had a sniffling whimper — he recalled that the brat had a cold — and his mother gave a murmured remonstration before rolling over again. The remaining archers were snoring, while Anselm’s companion was whiffing out little breaths as though he was panting in a dream. He lay in the midst of the archers, the seven about him guarding him better than they had their precious cargo.
There was no guard. Not now. Only one sentry had been set, a man who was content to wander about the camp with jealousy, eyeing the sleepers, but not one of them. When Osbert had offered to join him and keep him company until his watch was changed, he had been pathetically grateful. Then Osbert had grabbed him from behind and his dagger had made short work of him, plunging into the man’s liver five times, while Osbert’s hand stayed clamped over his mouth, stifling the desperate screams for help. No one heard anything, not out here at the edge of the camp where the man had gone to relieve himself. Osbert had left the body out there so that it couldn’t be immediately discovered, were someone else to wake.