The Devils Novice (15 page)

Meriet
had set out as grave as ever, but as the morning progressed, so did he emerge
from his hiding-place into muted sunlight, like the day. He snuffed the forest
air, and trod its sward, and seemed to expand, as a dried shoot does after the
rain, drawing in sustenance from the earth on which he strode. There was no one
more tireless in collecting the stouter boughs of fallen wood, no one so agile
in binding and loading them. When the company halted to take meat and drink,
emptying the leather bucket, they were well into the border areas of the
forest, where their pickings would be best, and Meriet ate his bread and cheese
and onion, and drank his ale, and lay down flat as ground-ivy under the trees,
with the toeless boy sprawled in one arm. Thus deep-drowned in the last pale
grass, he looked like some native ground-growth burgeoning from the earth,
half-asleep towards the winter, half-wakeful towards another growing year.

They
had gone no more than ten minutes deeper into the woodland, after their rest,
when he checked to look about him, at the slant of the veiled sun between the
trees, and the shape of the low, lichened outcrop of rocks on their right.

“Now
I know just where we are. When I had my first pony I was never supposed to come
further west than the highroad from home, let alone venture this far south-west
into the forest, but I often did. There used to be an old charcoal-burner had a
hearth somewhere here, it can’t be far away. They found him dead in his hut a
year and more ago, and there was no son to take on after him, and nobody wanted
to live as lone as he did. He may have left a cord or two of coppice-wood
stacked to season, that he never lived to burn. Shall we go and see, Mark? We
could do well there.”

It
was the first time he had ever volunteered even so innocuous a recollection of
his childhood, and the first time he had shown any eagerness. Mark welcomed the
suggestion gladly.

“Can
you find it again? We have a fair load already, but we can very well cart the
best out to the roadside, and send for it again when we’ve unloaded the rest.
We have the whole day.”

“This
way it should be,” said Meriet, and set off confidently to the left between the
trees, lengthening his step to quest ahead of his charges. “Let them follow at
their own pace, I’ll go forward and find the place. A hollow clearing it
was—the stacks must have shelter…” His voice and his striding figure dwindled
among the trees. He was out of sight for a few minutes before they heard him call,
a hail as near pleasure as Mark had ever heard from him.

When
Mark reached him he was standing where the trees thinned and fell back, leaving
a shallow bowl perhaps forty or fifty paces across, with a level floor of
beaten earth and old ash. At the rim, close to them, the decrepit remains of a
rough hut of sticks and bracken and earth sagged over its empty log doorway,
and on the far side of the arena there were stacked logs of coppice-wood, left
in the round, and now partially overgrown at the base of the stack with coarse
grass and mosses. There was room enough on the prepared floor for two hearths
some five long paces each in diameter, and their traces were still plain to be
seen, though grass and herbage were encroaching from the edges of the plain, invading
even the dead circles of ash with defiant green shoots. The nearer hearth had
been cleared after its last burning, and no new stack built there, but on the
more distant ring a mound of stacked logs, halfburned out and half still
keeping its form beneath the layers of grass and leaves and earth, lay
flattened and settling.

“He
had built his last stack and fired it,” said Meriet, gazing, “and then never
had time to build its fellow while the first was burning, as he always used to
do, nor even to tend the one he had lighted. You see there must have been a
wind, after he was dead, and no one by to dress the gap when it began to burn
through. All the one side is dead ash, look, and the other only charred. Not
much charcoal to be found there, but we might get enough to fill the bucket.
And at least he left us a good stock of wood, and well seasoned, too.”

“I
have no skill in this art,” said Mark curiously. “How can such a great hill of
wood be got to burn without blazing, so that it may be used as fuel over
again?”

“They
begin with a tall stake in the middle, and stack dry split logs round it, and
then the whole logs, until the stack is made. Then you must cover it with a
clean layer, leaves or grass or bracken, to keep out the earth and ash that
goes over all to seal it. And to light it, when it’s ready, you hoist out the
stake to leave a chimney, and drop your first red-hot coals down inside, and
good dry sticks after, until it’s well afire. Then you cover up the vent, and
it burns very slow and hot, sometimes as long as ten days. If there’s a wind
you must watch it all the while, for if it burns through the whole stack goes
up in flames. If there’s danger you must patch the place and keep it sealed.
There was no one left to do that here.”

Their
slower companions were coming up through the trees. Meriet led the way down the
slight incline into the hearth, with Mark close at his heels.

“It
seems to me,” said Mark, smiling, “that you’re very well versed in the craft.
How did you learn so much about it?”

“He
was a surly old man and not well liked,” said Meriet, making for the stacked
cordwood, “but he was not surly with me. I was here often at one time, until I
once helped him to rake down a finished burn, and went home dirtier than even I
could account for. I got my tail well leathered, and they wouldn’t let me have
my pony again until I promised not to venture over here to the west. I suppose
I was about nine years old—it’s a long time ago.” He eyed the piled wood with
pride and pleasure, and rolled the topmost log from its place, sending a number
of frightened denizens scuttling for cover.

They
had left one of their hand-carts, already well filled, in the clearing where
they had rested at noon. Two of the sturdiest gleaners brought the second
weaving between the trees, and the whole company fell gleefully upon the logs
and began to load them.

“There’ll
be half-burned wood still in the stack,” said Meriet, “and maybe some charcoal,
too, if we strip it.” And he was off to the tumbledown hut, and emerged with a
large wooden rake, with which he went briskly to attack the misshapen mound
left by the last uncontrolled burning. “Strange,” he said, lifting his head and
wrinkling his nose, “there’s still the stink of old burning, who would have
thought it could last so long?”

There
was indeed a faint stench such as a woodland fire might leave after it had been
damped by rain and dried out by wind. Mark could distinguish it, too, and came
to Meriet’s side as the broad rake began to draw down the covering of earth and
leaves from the windward side of the mound. The moist, earthy smell of
leaf-mould rose to their nostrils, and half-consumed logs heeled away and
rolled down with the rake. Mark walked round to the other side, where the mound
had sunk into a weathered mass of grey ash, and the wind had carried its fine
dust as far as the rim of the trees. There the smell of dead fire was sharper,
and rose in waves as Mark’s feet stirred the debris. And surely on this side
the leaves still left on the nearest trees were withered as though by
scorching.

“Meriet!”
called Mark in a low but urgent tone. “Come here to me!”

Meriet
looked round, his rake locked in the covering of soil. Surprised but
undisturbed, he skirted the ring of ash to come to where Mark stood, but instead
of relinquishing the rake he tugged the head after him across the low crest of
the mound, and tore down with it a tumble of half-burned logs, rolling merrily
down into the ashen grass. It occurred to Mark that this was the first time he
had seen his new helper look almost happy, using his body energetically,
absorbed in what he was doing and forgetful of his own concerns. “What is it?
What have you seen?”

The
falling logs, charred and disintegrating, settled in a flurry of acrid dust.
Something rolled out to Meriet’s feet, something that was not wood. Blackened,
cracked and dried, a leathern shape hardly recognisable at first sight for a
long-toed riding shoe, with a tarnished buckle to fasten it across the instep;
and protruding from it, something long and rigid, showing gleams of whitish
ivory through fluttering, tindery rags of calcined cloth.

There
was a long moment while Meriet stood staring down at it without comprehension,
his lips still shaping the last word of his blithe enquiry, his face still
animated and alert. Then Mark saw the same shocking and violent change Cadfael
had once seen, as the brightness of the hazel eyes seemed to collapse inward
into total darkness, and the fragile mask of content shrank and froze into
horror. He made a very small sound in his throat, a harsh rattle like a man
dying, took one reeling step backwards, stumbled in the uneven ground, and
dropped cowering into the grass.

Chapter Eight

IT
WAS NO MORE THAN AN INSTANT’S WITHDRAWAL from the unbearable, recoiling into
his enfolding arms, shutting out what nevertheless he could not choose but go
on seeing. He had not swooned. Even as Mark flew to him, with no outcry to
alarm the busy party dismantling the stack of cordwood, he was already rearing
his head and doubling his fists grimly into the soil to raise himself. Mark
held him with an arm about his body, for he was trembling still when he got to
his feet.

“Did
you see? Did you see it?” he asked in a whisper. What remained of the
half-burned stack was between them and their charges, no one had turned to look
in their direction.

“Yes,
I saw. I know! We must get them away,” said Mark. “Leave this pile as it is,
touch nothing more, leave the charcoal. We must just load the wood and start
them back for home. Are you fit to go? Can you be as always, and keep your face
before them?”

“I
can,” said Meriet, stiffening, and scrubbed a sleeve over a forehead dewed with
a chilly sweat. “I will! But, Mark, if you saw what I saw—we must
know
…”

“We
do know,” said Mark, “you and I both. It’s not for us now, this is the law’s
business, and we must let ill alone for them to see. Don’t even look that way
again. I saw, perhaps, more than you. I know what is there. What we must do is
get our people home without spoiling their day. Now, come and see to loading
the cart with me. Can you, yet?”

For
answer, Meriet braced his shoulders, heaved in a great breath, and withdrew
himself resolutely from the thin arm that still encircled him. “I’m ready!” he
said, in a fair attempt at the cheerful, practical voice with which he had
summoned them to the hearth, and was off across the level floor to plunge
fiercely into the labour of hoisting logs into the cart.

Mark
followed him watchfully, and against all temptation contrived to obey his own
order, and give no single glance to that which had been uncovered among the
ashes. But he did, as they worked, cast a careful eye about the rim of the
hearth, where he had also noticed certain circumstances which gave him cause
for thought. What he had been about to say to Meriet when the rake fetched down
its avalanche was never said.

They
loaded their haul, stacking the wood so high that there was no room for the
toeless boy to ride on top on the return journey. Meriet carried him on his
back, until the arms that clasped him round the neck fell slack with
sleepiness, and he shifted his burden to one arm, so that the boy’s
tow-coloured head could nod securely on his shoulder. The load on his arm was
light enough, and warm against his heart. What else he carried unseen, thought
Mark watching him with reticent attention, weighed more heavily and struck cold
as ice. But Meriet’s calm continued rock-firm. The one moment of recoil was
over, and there would be no more such lapses.

At
Saint Giles Meriet carried the boy indoors, and returned to help haul the carts
up the slight slope to the barn, where the wood would be stacked under the low
eaves, to be sawn and split later as it was needed.

“I
am going now into Shrewsbury,” said Mark, having counted all his chicks safely
into the coop, tired and elated from their successful foray.

“Yes,”
said Meriet, without turning from the neat stack he was building, end-outwards
between two confining buttresses of wood. “I know someone must.”

“Stay
here with them. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

“I
know,” said Meriet. “I will. They’re happy enough. It was a good day.”

Brother
Mark hesitated when he reached the abbey gatehouse, for his natural instinct
was to take everything first to Brother Cadfael. It was plain that his errand
now was to the officers of the king’s law in the shire, and urgent, but on the
other hand it was Cadfael who had confided Meriet to him, and he was certain in
his own mind that the grisly discovery in the charcoal hearth was in some way
connected with Meriet. The shock he had felt was genuine, but extreme, his wild
recoil too intense to be anything but personal. He had not known, had not
dreamed, what he was going to find, but past any doubt he knew it when he found
it.

While
Mark was hovering irresolute in the arch of the gatehouse Brother Cadfael, who
had been sent for before Vespers to an old man in the Foregate who had a bad
chest ailment, came behind and clapped him briskly on the shoulder. Turning to
find the clemency of heaven apparently presenting him with the answer to his
problem, Mark clutched him gratefully by the sleeve, and begged him: “Cadfael,
come with me to Hugh Beringar. We’ve found something hideous in the Long
Forest, business for him, surely. I was just by way of praying for you. Meriet
was with me—this somehow touches Meriet…”