Devil's Acre (23 page)

And then...

Laughter. The ghouls were laughing. They chirruped and cavorted like monkeys mocking the soldiers in their flight and came back grinning and guffawing. It took me a moment but I recognized them, all five of them - or was it six?

‘You’re late!’ barked Samson
seeming to have recovered his former strength.

Cousin John frowned. ‘With respect, father, we were expecting you last night, and on a different road.
The boys have been searching since dawn. We were about to give up. It was only by good fortune we came across a poacher and his son who put us right.’

‘Blame Walter
for that,’ growled Samson glaring at me. ‘If we had left when I wanted to -’ He flapped a dismissive hand. ‘Never mind that now. We’ve a more urgent problem. He’s woken up.’

The boys exchanged
glances. ‘Woken up? How?’

‘The drug that Italian doctor gave him wasn’t strong enough. Although,
it should have been,’ he said glaring again at me.

I raised a
tentative finger. ‘Erm, who’s woken up?’

‘He must be half frozen
by now,’ said Samson, ignoring me. ‘Two of you build a fire. Walter, you help me get him off the wagon.’

‘
Get who off the wagon?’

‘
Come on, come on, look lively now. We’ve very little time. Once those soldiers realise their foolishness they’ll be back.’

‘
Father!’ I said grabbing his arm. ‘
Who
have we got?’

He
looked at me as though I were a simpleton. ‘Why Nicholas of course.’

Once we had removed the shroud we lay the boy as close to the fire as we dare. Samson was right: he was icy cold to the touch. And he was a very unhealthy-looking colour.

I placed my cheek near his mouth. ‘I don’t think he’s breathing.’

‘Then make him breathe!’ snapped Samson. ‘You’re a doctor for God’s sake!’

A doctor, yes, not a magician. I was used to treating patients in the quiet of the abbey infirmary or at worse lying
on their beds at home; certainly not out on an icy river bank with a freezing mist closing in and the light fading fast. I tried to think.

‘
What’s he taken?’

‘Something the earl’s doctor gave him to knock him out.’

‘It’s slowed his breathing as well as his consciousness. You don’t know what it was, I suppose?’

No of course they didn’t. It could be any one of a dozen possibilities. Not that it would matter even if I knew for I still needed my laboratorium and my medical texts to identify an antidote - assuming one even existed. And even then I’d have to find the appropriate plant, process it and turn it into a form to be taken by mouth. It was a hopeless task.

‘Look! He’s turning blue,’ whistled John Gaptooth through his teeth.

We looked closer. Nicholas was indeed changing colour. I had seen it before on men hanged or drowned.
Never on somebody still alive. Samson was wringing his hands as we watched Nick’s lips and gills slowly turn blacker and blacker and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it.

‘For the love of God Walter do something,’ he growled. ‘Why else are you here?’

Why else am I here? I looked at him with horror. ‘That’s what this has all been about, isn’t it? This is what the countess meant. This is my test. To bring Nick back from the dead.’

Samson frowned. ‘Of course it is
. What did you think? Now do your job. Save the boy.’

I was suddenly angry.
Save the boy. It wasn’t as though I didn’t want to. But how?

I
knelt beside Nick and put my ear to his mouth but I could hear nothing. Not even a gurgling sound. It was hopeless. They had miscalculated. Nick didn’t need a doctor, he needed was a priest.

I shook my head. ‘It’s no good. We’re too late.’

‘But we can’t be!’

‘Father,’ I said gently, ‘we must face it. Nicholas has gone from this life. What we must do is our duty to facilitate his passage into the next. I have oil in my kit and we have prayer. That is what we can give him now.’

Samson’s face folded. ‘No! I won’t have it! Not after all we’ve been through!’

He grabbed the boy and pulled him to his chest and as he did so Nick let out a long rasping sigh.

Samson’s eyes widened. ‘Look! He breathes!’

I shook my head. ‘No, it is only
the body’s final collapse. It happens with the dead.’

‘He breathes I tell you!’

‘No, I don’t think - ’

I stopped. The boy’s left eye flickered slightly. It was the thinnest of movements but definitely there. I
shoved Samson roughly aside and grabbed the boy’s shoulders. I looked into his face, those little slanting eyes, that great bulbous nose, those huge fleshy lips. What do you want me to do Nick? What must I do? Tell me!

He gurgled.

Instinctively I shook him. His head fell back and he gasped again this time a great gulping suck of air, then another, and another.

‘You’ve done it!’ yelled Samson. ‘I knew it! It’s a miracle! God be thanked!’

‘No, not a miracle,’ I said. ‘His tongue.’

‘What?’

I should have remembered. Of course I’d noticed it the first time I saw the boy that his tongue was too big for his mouth. It was why he slobbered so much and had to keep his mouth open to breathe. His tongue was so big it was blocking his throat. By dropping his head back it unblocked again. It was as simple as that. I put my hand on his forehead and pushed it away from me flexing his neck to keep the throat clear. I put my ear to his chest. Yes, the heart was beating and growing stronger with each pulse. His face too was slowly returning to pink. Then at last the boy coughed and moaned.

‘
You did it!’ yelled Samson. ‘Walter you did it! I knew you would! Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!’ and he thumped me hard on my back.

‘F
ather please! Lest I drop him.’

Nicholas’s eye opened and swam blearily about. His face crumpled. He started to cry like a baby - and God be praised, the boy slobbered all over me and all over Samson. And what a sight we must have made the three of us: The abbot of Bury, Baron of the Liberty of Saint Edmund, confidante of kings and popes, kneeling in the snow and slush of a river bank with his arms around me, himself, an
d this strange, gasping boy as we wept and rocked and wept again.

Chapter
27

EXPLANATIONS

Now
you know as much about the affair as I do. It was a trick from the very beginning, a construct of smoke and mirrors, painted scenery and false floors. Initially when I realised this I was angry for no-one likes to be taken for a fool. But once I understood that the purpose was a noble one - to save the life of one imperfect child - my anger subsided somewhat, although who among us can judge who is perfect and who is not since we are all made in God’s image?

Like most complex stories the essence of this one
is really quite simple but first we have to go back to that business in the hall at Acre Castle. The boy Nicholas was about to be squired to a knight, a position his uncle, Lord William, fully expected him not to survive. Why? Because William resented the boy’s antecedence. That fact alone might not have done for the lad; after all he wasn’t the only bastard in this family. William’s own father the earl Hamelin, and Nicholas’s cousin Richard, were both fathered out of wedlock by kings. No son born of such a union could become king himself, of course, but he might become an earl or an archbishop - like Archbishop Geoffrey, he of the muddied tonsure. Richard was eventually ennobled as Baron Chilham in the county of Kent and lived a fruitful life. Had Nicholas been born with all his wits he too might have won hearts and prospered, but it was the boy’s ill luck not only to be born on the wrong side of the blanket but also an idiot, and that his uncle could not forgive. He wanted rid of the boy and the simplest way was to have him heroically killed in one of King John’s futile wars against King Philip of France.

Fortunately the boy was not entirely without
supporters, in particular his grandparents, the earl and the countess. While Hamelin lived William could do nothing against the boy but as soon as he inherited his father’s coronet he would be free to do as he liked. I believe the old earl clung to life just long enough to ensure Nicholas was safe and then gave himself into God’s receiving arms. As for the countess: formidable woman though she was, she was still a woman and unable to resist the demands of her son. Given the choice any knight would follow a strong man rather than a weak woman. At any rate, she didn’t think she could take the risk.

And so a plot was hatched. It was a daring plan that must have taken
months if not years to arrange. Unfortunately by the time it was ready to be enacted the earl was too ill to take command himself and so the countess turned for help to an old friend, Samson of Tottington. He in turn drew on his own family and friends along the way to assist him. Together they would spirit the boy away to a place of safety out of Lord William’s reach. But time was not on their side. With war looming in France and Nicholas about to come of age it would have to be now or never.

But there was a
problem. The one person who could not know about the plan was the boy himself. In this Nicholas’s trusting and open nature was his greatest enemy for I doubt he could have kept the secret, certainly not from his clever cousin Richard who was only too happy to see an end of his embarrassing cousin. I am sure Nick would have betrayed his rescuers in an instant if he thought he could have prevented a single moment of little Esme’s agony. Come to think of it, that was probably Richard’s purpose in torturing the animal, to get Nicholas to expose the plot. So Nick had to be saved in spite of himself and without knowing what was happening to him. Mine was a small but crucial part in the drama for what use would it be getting the boy safely out of Acre only for him to die on the open road? Even in that I nearly failed.

The plan was for Nicholas to
be drugged and smuggled out of the town under the very nose of his uncle while he was preoccupied with making ready for war. The tricky part was finding a body that no-one would think to challenge, and here luck was on the conspirators’ side. I doubt if the invention of the Revenant was part of the original plan but it played well into the plotters’ hands. Everyone was glad to see the back of it, Lord William himself speeding it on its way. But substituting one body for another meant the first had to disappear and that was the greatest confidence trick of all for there never was another body. Oh it was Ralf I saw in the cellars of the convent all right, but I was never allowed to examine him too closely - Sister Benjamin made sure of that. Somewhere between showing me the body and loading it onto Clytemnestra’s back the switch was made. For Benjamin the deception was no great matter for anything Samson asked of her she would have done without question: in her eyes he was God’s appointed and could do no wrong. But it had troubled little Monica-Jerome. Like all the other nuns she had been sworn to secrecy and it was only when Mother Odell died that she felt released from her oath. That was what she came to tell me in the infirmary. Odell died in the convent infirmary last Christmas Eve aged ninety.

O
ther things are explained, too. Why, for instance, Samson was so reluctant to give Ralf the last rites. Because there was no body to receive them. Pretending to bury a fake corpse was one thing; debasing the holy sacraments by offering them to a dummy was quite another. He couldn’t bring himself to do it and would not permit me to either. For that’s what it was we carried to Acre: a dummy made of moss and peat sewn up in a shroud specially designed for the purpose by Sister Angelina - the same pile of moss and peat that Tomelinus accidentally tripped over in the wayside chapel. That, incidentally, was what was in the parcel Tom had given to me. Not my lunch but a sample of the moss from the chapel. He had already worked it out and wanted me to open it up on the open road and come to the same conclusion. With all Samson’s revelations I’d forgotten all about it and only rediscovered it when I got back to Bury. The dummy also explains why Samson did not fear the Revenant. After all, if no-one died there could be no living dead and therefore no monster to fear.

T
he great tragedy in all this was what happened to Jane. She died truly believing it was Ralf’s body we carried from Thetford to Acre and was buried in the priory cemetery. It was something for which the conspirators, and Samson in particular, must bear responsibility. I later challenged him over this but he was less contrite about it than I thought he should be. He insisted that she was merely Ralf’s housekeeper since no priest could truly be married. And keeping her in ignorance had been agreed as necessary by all the conspirators including Ralf himself. Jane’s death was never anticipated.

However
there is one other, darker aspect of this part of the affair that I hesitate to articulate too clearly. You may remember that before we began our journey Samson made out his Will. When nine years later he died and this Will came to be read it provided for a priest to say prayers for the easement of Jane’s soul. Now why would he have done that before we even began our journey if he did not know Jane would not survive it?

All of which explain
s the
what
but not the
why
. Why was so much energy expended and so many disparate souls enlisted to protect one imbecilic boy? This is the conundrum to which I apply myself in these pages. It cannot simply be because of the resentment of his boorish uncle. There had to be more to it than that. I am sure the answer lies somewhere here among my notes. It is the final knot yet to be untangled.

* 

The shock of seeing Ralf’s corpse come back to life on the back of the wagon was only slightly less than the discovery of its true identity. And yet seeing Nicholas lying there half conscious in the muck of the river bank somehow made sense. I felt a great wave of relief like coming up for air from the depths of a murky pool. There were many questions to which I wanted answers but for the moment I was content to keep my own council.

I gathered from the hurried consultations between Samson and his cousin John that there was a problem. I’d already worked out
for myself that the original plan had been for Nicholas to remain unconscious until he reached Thetford but because of the delay in leaving Acre the boy had woken up earlier than expected. For this I was roundly and repeatedly blamed although, as I kept pointing out, only by Nicholas’s miraculous resurrection had they avoided capture. If he had remained unconscious the soldiers would have returned him to Acre and Samson into the hands of Lord William. And had the plotters seen fit to take me into their confidence I might have been more cooperative and better prepared to help when the moment came.

On this last point
at least Samson seemed contrite. ‘We didn’t think it was fair to ask you.’

‘What you mean is you couldn’t be sure I would agree.’

‘Would you have done?’

‘I might.’

He shook his head. ‘Might is not good enough.’

But this was not the time for recriminations. With the likelihood of Lord William’s men returning at any moment the need now was to leave
the riverbank as quickly as possible. The revised plan was for John and his sons to whisk the boy away by fast horse while Samson and I followed more slowly with the wagon and Jane’s body. She would undoubtedly slow us down, but we couldn’t simply abandon her. The risk of capture was the penance Samson was prepared to take.

The problem as ever was
in persuading Nick to play along. As soon as he regained consciousness and realised what was happening to him he steadfastly refused to cooperate. If it had been anyone else it might have been possible to reason with him, but he was frightened and confused among strangers and wouldn’t listen to anybody. And despite his youth he was strong so force was out of the question.

It was then that Samson played his masterstroke. Anticipating that something like this might happen he
had prepared a back-up plan. I had already noticed a seventh rider hanging about in the background and now, dismounting and removing her hood, the Lady Adela revealed herself. As soon as Nick saw her he threw his arms around her neck and sobbed. And those approaches she made to me suddenly made sense. When she’d asked me to look after “her boy” it wasn’t Richard she’d meant but Nicholas. Now her job was to reassure the boy and persuade him to ride with her to Thetford. It took some persuading but she managed it. Just before they rode off she turned one last time in her saddle, smiled and mouthed “Thank you” to me.

All that remained now was for Samson and me to follow with the wagon as quickly as Clytemnestra could be persuaded to drag us fully expecting Lord William’s men to catch us before we got half way to Thetford. By some miracle and against the odds we made it. Rumbling across the little wooden bridge, our relief to be back on honest Suffolk soil again was palpable.

That didn’t ensure our safety, of course. Lord William was not the sort of man to let the small matter of a county border frustrate his
ambitions. But even he hesitated to invade a house of God, especially one as well-prepared as Mother Odell had made Saint George’s in our absence. She had not been idle while we were in Acre and there are few things more formidable than a group of Benedictine nuns determined to defend themselves. Lord William did lay siege to the convent gate but only for a day. Adela had anticipated her brother’s pursuit and diverted to a secret destination further out in the countryside. Once he realised the boy wasn’t inside there was little point in his continuing. He also could not afford to squander resources in men and time that were needed by King John. Besides, Samson’s abduction of the boy really achieved what Lord William had wanted by other means: Nicholas’s disappearance. And disappear he did. No-one saw or heard from the boy again.

And this is the point
in the story where my knowledge begins to falter for Samson and Odell chose to exclude me from the rest of their plan. I like to think that they did this for my own safety sake for what I didn’t know I couldn’t divulge, but I suspect the real reason is that they had no further need of me. I had fulfilled my part. The boy had survived. My services were no longer required.

However, there was one
question I thought I might be able to answer myself and that is what happened to Ralf, for if he wasn’t in the parcel we took to Acre then where had he been all this time? The answer had to be that he never left the nunnery. So while Samson and Odell were scheming together in the prioress’s solar, I stole over to the priesthouse to investigate.

The house was
in darkness. But then being blind, of course, he had no need of candles. So I waited, and sure enough after a few minutes I heard the gate creak open and the familiar tap-tap of Ralf’s stick upon the gravel path. As he drew level with me he paused, cocked his head and smiled.