At dusk, Brother Gabriel rang the handbell to call the monks to the chapter house for vespers. William heard it clanging far off in the cloister and suddenly felt very alone. He was uneasily aware of the huge empty church around him. The masons had finished work for the day, but he still had half a row of tiles to lift before he could leave the chapel.
Hours spent kneeling on the rough mortar floor had taken their toll, and he stood up for a few minutes to ease his aching legs. The afternoon light had faded and it was almost too dark to see what he was doing, but if he didn’t lift all the tiles today he would have to come back tomorrow, and he couldn’t bear the thought of that. For the last hour or so he had caught fleeting glimpses of shadows flitting across the walls and heard soft rustling noises. An image of flexing wings had formed in his mind, and it had taken every last bit of courage he could muster to stop himself from making a run for the safety of the cloister.
As he stood there, a soft sigh breathed out close to his ear. William stared around the dark little chapel, eyes wide with terror, but there was nothing to see. His heart hammered in his chest as he forced himself to kneel down again and reach for the chisel. Fear made him clumsy, and he broke the next two tiles. Fighting back his rising panic, he wiped the sweating palms of his hands on his tunic. His gaze was drawn to the dark corner beside the altar and his breath caught in his throat, threatening to choke him. There was something there, a patch of darkness just a little denser than the shadows around it. He was sure that it hadn’t been there a few moments ago.
Slowly, William put the hammer and chisel on the floor and crawled cautiously away from the altar. He felt behind him for the door jamb and pulled himself to his feet. His breath was coming in short ragged gasps, and he forced himself not to turn and run in wild terror through the church. The shadow moved again. William’s foot touched the threshold, and moving as stealthily as he could, he stepped over it and out of the chapel, then turned and fled across the transept, glass and broken stone grating under his feet.
William reached the nave and skidded to a halt. It was too dark to pick his way through the rubble toward the cloister door with any measure of safety. Instead, he ran the length of the church to the West Door. Moments later, he was in the yard and running across the wet cobbles toward the abbey kitchen.
Peter was warming the monks’ evening drink of small beer in a cauldron over the fire. His face brightened when he saw William.
“Brother Martin said you were working in the church today, Will. I was worried about you.”
William forced a smile as he pulled up a stool to the hearth and warmed his shaking hands. “I’ve been lifting tiles in St. Christopher’s chapel.”
“You mustn’t go in there,” Peter said anxiously. “You mustn’t go near the birdman.” He wrapped a rag around the handle of the cauldron and lifted it from the hook. He set it on the table and started to ladle the warmed beer into waiting cups.
“I didn’t have any choice in the matter,” William muttered as he pulled off his boots and held his stockinged feet out to the fire. The wool steamed gently in the heat. Painfully itchy chilblains on his toes ached as the warmth slowly returned to his cold-numbed feet, and he rubbed them for a few moments.
“Did you see anything?” Peter asked. “Was the birdman there?”
William shook his head. Peter didn’t need to know what he’d seen and heard in the chapel.
“That’s good, Will,” Peter said earnestly. For a while, he concentrated on ladling the beer without spilling it. When he had finished, he stood the cauldron on a hearthstone. He glanced at William. “The stonemasons from Weforde said a bowl was found in the church today. They said it was the Holy Grail and that the prior brought it out of its hiding place to bring pilgrims to the abbey.”
William frowned at him. “I found the bowl, and it isn’t the Grail.”
“It isn’t? How do you know?”
William thought of the words on the bowl and the warning scratched onto the lead strip, and remembered the prior’s order not to tell anyone about them. “It just isn’t.”
“But the masons say it is,” Peter said, sounding confused.
William said nothing. He could not stop Master Guillaume from claiming the bowl was the Grail, if that’s what he wanted to do, but he wouldn’t add to the lie.
William woke at dawn on Monday morning from a restless sleep and strange, confused dreams about his family, but the dreams dissolved like smoke in the wind before he could grasp them. He lay huddled on his mattress until the cold draft under the yard door forced him to sit up, dragging his blanket up around his shoulders. He put a foot on the floor and gasped in surprise as the damp wool of his stocking touched cold stone. Where were his boots? He had been wearing them when he’d gone to sleep last night, as he did every night, but they weren’t there now.
William stared at his feet in bewilderment. Who would have taken his boots? And how? Both of the doors into the kitchen were still firmly bolted. He searched the room, but they were nowhere to be found.
What do I do now? he wondered, running his hands through his hair. Boots or no boots, he would certainly be punished if the fire wasn’t blazing beneath a cauldron of water when Brother Martin arrived in the kitchen. William fetched a pail and unbolted the door. A thin mist drifted across the yard in the gray dawn light, but at least it wasn’t raining. He picked his way slowly and awkwardly over the cobbles, trying to avoid the worst of the puddles. This is just ridiculous, William thought in exasperation. Of all the strange things that had happened at the abbey lately, the disappearance of his boots was amongst the most baffling.
He hauled up a bucket of water and filled his pail, then began the ankle-jarring walk back to the kitchen, the sodden and muddy wool of his stockings chafing uncomfortably against his skin. He set the pail down by the door and went to fetch wood for the fire. When he returned to the kitchen, he saw a pair of boots standing by the hearth. For several moments, he stared at them in astonishment. He picked them up and turned them over to examine them. They couldn’t be his boots, surely? The holes in the soles and the toes were covered by neatly stitched patches, and he could smell the tallow that had been rubbed hard into the leather to keep the rainwater out. He gazed at them in amazement and realized they were his boots. Someone had mended them while he’d been sleeping.
“They will keep your feet dry now,” a small voice said behind him.
William grinned as he turned and looked down at the hob, sitting on the mattress, wrapped in William’s blanket. “Thank you! Where did you get the leather for the patches? And how did you mend them so quickly?”
The hob grinned back and looked very pleased with himself. “The snail brother gave me an old boot that had lost its fellow, and I cut the patches from that. Hob fingers work quickly.”
“Well, these look almost as good as new,” William said. “Hob fingers are clever as well as quick.”
The hob looked at the puddle forming around William’s feet. “The snail brother gave me some tallow. Perhaps you should rub it onto your feet to keep them dry, too.”
“That’s a very good idea, but people don’t put tallow on their feet.”
“Why not?”
William shrugged. “I don’t know. They just don’t.”
The hob made a face to show what he thought of this bit of folly.
William prepared the fire and filled the cauldron with water.
“You’ll have to move from there,” he said to the hob. “Brother Martin will be here at any moment, and he won’t be pleased to see my bedding all over the floor.”
The hob bundled up the blanket and pushed it under the small table in the corner of the kitchen. Then he walked to the yard door and reached up to lift the latch.
“How did you get into the kitchen last night to take off my boots?” William called after him. “The doors were still bolted when I woke up this morning.”
The hob pointed to the rafters.
“Through the roof?”
“There are holes up there, if you know where to look.”
“And you do, I suppose?”
The hob nodded. “I follow the rats and the spiders. They know all the hidden ways in this place.”
The sound of footsteps in the cloister outside the kitchen warned them that Brother Martin was approaching. In a heartbeat the hob had gone, and the yard door creaked slowly closed.
William was scrubbing the greasy pottage cauldron with water and ashes when Brother Snail came to find him later that morning.
“These are for you, Will.” The monk held out what looked like a bundle of rags. “I found them in a chest in a storeroom. They’re old and are more patches than clothing, but at least they’re still wearable.”
Smiling broadly, William wiped his hands on the front of his tunic and took the clothes. He was moving up in the world, it seemed. As well as nearly new boots, he now owned a second tunic, undershirt, and two pairs of stockings. “Thank you,” he said with genuine delight. He plucked at the front of his damp tunic. “I might get a chance to dry these things out at last.”
The monk nodded and smiled. He glanced at William’s feet. “The hob has mended your boots, I see.”
“He’s made a good job of it, too.”
“He has nimble fingers. If it was not for the fact it would be too hard to explain away, I’d ask him to mend all the monks’ boots.”
William put his new clothes under the table with his bedding. He was already looking forward to the wonderful moment when he would be fully clean and dry again. He could barely remember how that felt.
Brother Snail stood by the fire and stared down into the embers. He was quiet for several moments and seemed preoccupied. “It has been a strange day,” he said at last. “A disturbing one, in many ways. Some of the brethren have seen or heard things that have troubled them.”
“Oh? What kind of things?”
“Several people have seen shadows and heard whispering or rustling noises in odd corners of the abbey. Brother Gabriel swore he saw the shadow of a huge crow in the church, spreading its wings. It was gone in a moment, and he didn’t stop to search for it, he just took to his heels and ran — and wasn’t ashamed to admit it.” The monk held his thin hands out to the fire. “But that’s not the worst of it. Brother Stephen found a dead lamb in the graveyard. Its throat had been cut, and it wasn’t the work of an animal, Will.”
“No,” William said, “and I think I know who did it.”
Brother Snail’s eyes widened in surprise. “You do?”
William nodded. “I think it was Dame Alys.”
Brother Snail stared at him in thoughtful silence for several moments more, then pulled up a stool and sat down. “I see. Perhaps you would like to tell me why you believe she would do such a thing.”
William squatted by the fire and told Brother Snail about the sacrificed fox and the bloodied sack he’d seen Dame Alys carrying.
“But how can you be sure the two things were connected, Will? You didn’t actually see the woman kill the fox, did you?”
“No,” William agreed, “but I saw other things.” He took the holey stone from around his neck and held it up. It twirled slowly on the woollen cord. “The hob gave me this. Shadlok calls it a seeing stone.”
Brother Snail listened in silence as William told him what he’d seen through the stone, about the Hunter’s Oak and the sacred grove. The monk’s face paled when William told him about the crow-headed god and how Dame Alys’s family had been the guardians of its grove for longer than anyone could remember.
“Shadlok believes it is a fallen angel,” William finished, “and that it’s still there, in the chapel, keeping close to its holy place.”
“One of the Fallen?” the monk breathed, horrified. “Oh, dear God, no! That is what the words on the bowl must have meant! ‘Hide the fallen one in eternal darkness.’ ”
They stared at each other in silence. Brother Snail crossed himself slowly. His thin fingers fumbled beneath his cowl for the cross he wore around his neck, and he held it tightly. “The bowl and the fallen angel must be bound together in some way, Will.”
“When I saw the sacrificed deer, I saw a bowl, too. It had been used to hold the deer’s heart.”
Brother Snail looked appalled. “Was it the bowl we found?”
“I didn’t see it clearly, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was,” William said. “Where is the bowl now?”
“Prior Ardo is keeping it under lock and key in Abbot Simon’s old chamber until the sacristy door is repaired.” The monk held out his arm for William to help him to his feet. “There has been something . . . unclean in the side chapel for the last few months, Will, but I never imagined it could be something so terrible. But somebody knew about the angel. Someone carved the words of warning on the bowl and buried it beneath the chapel. I will search through the abbey’s books to see if I can find out who it was and what they knew. There might be something written about it somewhere.” Brother Snail closed his eyes. “And in the meantime, we must pray that we can find the way to banish this angel . . . this demon, back to hell. Where it belongs.”