Ashes of the Elements Read online

She looked up at him, tears welling in her eyes. At some time, she had suffered a broken nose; there was a big lump midway between the tip and the bridge. She had also lost several teeth. She said dully, ‘Aye.’

  Josse went to stand beside the woman. ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he said.

  She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Don’t know what’ll become of me,’ she said mournfully, sliding a quick glance up at him. Her voice took on the familiar whine of the professional beggar. ‘Nowhere to call me own, no man to bring in a bit of this and that,’ she moaned. ‘Where me next meal’s a-coming from, the dear Lord above only knows.’

  Josse reached into the purse at his belt and took out some coins. ‘Perhaps these will tide you over.’ He dropped them into her lap.

  Her hand shot out and the coins disappeared. ‘Thankee,’ she said.

  Josse hesitated. There seemed little point in asking this browbeaten, dejected woman if her husband had had any enemies. Would she know? And, if she did, would she tell Josse?

  He asked instead, ‘I believe your husband – er – worked with his cousin Seth? And another man – Ewen, is it?’

  The dull eyes raised to his had a sudden spark of life in them. ‘You’re very well informed,’ she said tartly. ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Woman, it may interest you to know that I’m about the only person hereabouts who has the slightest interest in bringing your husband’s murderer to justice!’ he cried, suddenly angry. ‘I am trying to find out all I can about him, and I shall want to talk to everyone who knew him!’

  ‘Huh! That won’t take you long! There’s me, and I don’t know nothing about what he got up to, leastways, except he used to go into the forest, for all that I tried to stop him.’ She sniffed, making a thick snorting sound in her throat; had Josse not been standing in front of her, she might well, he thought, have hawked up the loose phlegm and gobbed it out on to the road. ‘Right, weren’t I?’ she flashed, with a sudden angry spiritedness. ‘Seeing as how them Forest People’ve gone and done for him!’

  ‘Yes, I know. As I said, I’m sorry.’ Josse brought his irritation under control. The woman was, after all, recently bereaved. ‘Did these men Ewen and Seth go with Hamm into the forest?’ he asked, trying to keep his tone conciliatory. ‘Did they – er – hunt with him?’

  She eyed him with half-closed lids. Her eyes, he noticed, were an indeterminate pale colour, and the lashes were short and sparse. ‘They were poachers, the three of them,’ she said baldly. ‘As well you know. Everyone knows that, someone’ll have told you by now.’

  ‘Yes, I did know,’ Josse acknowledged. ‘The general view is that your husband was poaching the night he was killed, and that the Forest People didn’t like it.’

  ‘T’aint their game, no more’n it were his,’ the woman said bitterly. ‘They’ve got no call to go stopping other folk helping their-selves. Not to the game, anyhow, and as to the other—’ She bit off whatever she had been about to say.

  ‘The other?’ He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll not say no more. I’ve been beaten by my own man long enough, I won’t risk one of them others starting where Hamm left off.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No.’

  And he watched as, with a dignity he wouldn’t have thought she possessed, the woman got to her feet, carefully picked up her pot and gathered her vegetables up in her fraying and filthy skirt, then stepped down inside her house and firmly closed the door.

  * * *

  Josse came upon Hamm Robinson’s partners in crime by sheer fluke. Riding up into the outer fringes of the forest, intending to have a look at the place where Hamm was found, he heard their arguing voices.

  His luck did not extend to overhearing anything useful; hearing his horse, instantly they stopped talking. Far from being cowed like the woman, though, they went on the offensive.

  ‘Oi! What d’you think yer doing?’ one man called out.

  The other was brandishing a stout staff. ‘State yer business!’ he said grandly.

  Josse rode right up to them; Horace was a tall horse, and, being mounted, Josse felt he had the upper hand. Despite the stout stick.

  ‘Ewen and Seth, I take it?’ he said. ‘Friends of the late Hamm Robinson? Or should I say fellow thieves?’

  It was a stab in the dark. But it got a response; the man carrying the stick began to swing it threateningly above his head, crying, ‘It were his idea! Hamm found it, it were Hamm made us go in along of him! I never—’

  At that point, the other man hit him. Swung his elbow violently into the man’s stomach, so that he bent over into a right-angle, whooping for breath.

  ‘Take no notice of Ewen,’ Seth said over his friend’s gasping. ‘He’s right, sir, it were Hamm who said there was good game to be had in the forest, and us what went along with him.’

  ‘Game,’ Josse repeated. The wounded man had not, he was quite sure, been speaking of game. But, whatever he had meant, Josse wasn’t going to find out.

  ‘We’ve got our bellies to fill, same as everyone else,’ Seth went on self-righteously. ‘When there’s rabbit and deer aplenty in there,’ he jerked a thumb back towards the dark forest behind him, ‘then where’s the harm? That’s what I say, sir!’

  ‘Quite,’ Josse said. ‘Only someone, apparently, didn’t agree. To the extent of slaying your late cousin with a well-aimed spear.’

  The man paled visibly at the reminder, but stood his ground. The wounded man – Ewen – renewed his moaning. ‘I told you, Seth!’ he said shakily. ‘Told you, aye, and him too! Hamm, I says, you go in there again, and they’ll—’

  He was, Josse observed, not a man to learn a lesson quickly; as before, what he had been about to say was abruptly cut off. This time, the blow was severe enough to floor him; as Josse turned Horace’s head and kicked him into a trot, he saw Seth aim a booted foot at his fallen friend’s head.

  * * *

  All the way back to the Abbey, Josse puzzled over what a smalltime poacher and, probably, petty thief, could have discovered deep within an ancient forest. What could be valuable enough to make not only Hamm but his two colleagues go into that place of fearful legend? Superstitious, like all their kind, it must surely have been something extraordinary.

  Whatever Hamm had discovered, it seemed to have led directly to his murder. It had always struck Josse as fairly unlikely, that these mysterious forest folk should have speared a man to death purely for snaring a brace of coneys; it was far more credible that, somehow, Hamm had uncovered something they preferred to keep secret.

  But what?

  Something, probably, that Hamm reckoned he could turn readily into cash, for nothing else, surely, would have made him risk the forest by night.

  Buried treasure? A hoard of Roman coins? The rumours spoke of Roman occupation of the great Wealden Forest; they had extracted iron from it, made sound tracks through the primeval woodland, traces of which could still be found now, a thousand years later. Had Hamm, in the course of his poaching, dug into a rabbit warren under some ancient oak and come across a bounty he didn’t expect?

  Speculation. It was all speculation. No matter how likely it was beginning to sound, Josse had no proof.

  And, he concluded as he rode through the Abbey gates, there was only one way to change that.

  * * *

  Abbess Helewise was sitting in the cloister, eyes closed, the late sun on her face. Josse didn’t like to disturb her, but, on the other hand, she had said he might report any findings to her …

  He was still hovering, trying to decide if to wake her or not, when she said, ‘I’m not asleep. And I know it’s you, Sir Josse, nobody else here wears spurs that jingle when they walk.’

  He went to sit beside her on the narrow stone ledge. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. I know you’ve had a busy day.’

  She sighed. ‘Indeed. But the outcome has, in part, been satisfactory. The sick baby was bapt
ised – his brother, too – and he has, I think, taken a turn for the better. He is suckling well, and has a little colour.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Josse said.

  ‘Amen.’ There was a slight pause, then she said, ‘And you, I imagine, have news, too?’

  ‘Aye.’ Briefly he told her what he had discovered, and what he now thought had happened. ‘I’m going to have a look,’ he added, with an attempt at nonchalance. ‘Tonight, probably. Nothing like striking while the iron’s hot!’ He attempted a laugh, not very convincing, even to himself.

  The Abbess said slowly, ‘You think Hamm Robinson was killed by the Forest People because he had found out about something they prefer to keep to themselves, and now you propose to go into the forest tonight, and try to find out what this something was.’

  ‘Aye.’ Funny how, when she said it, it did sound a little foolhardy. ‘I’ll be all right, Abbess, I can take care of myself.’

  ‘Yes, Sir Josse,’ she said with heavy irony, ‘you have, I’m well aware, eyes in the back of your head which will see the spear coming.’

  It was not a good thought; he felt the muscles of his back contract in a brief involuntary spasm. ‘I’ll be armed,’ he said defensively. ‘And, unlike poor Hamm, I’ll be on the look out.’

  ‘That’s all right, then,’ said the Abbess.

  ‘I have to do something!’ he said with sudden fierceness.

  ‘Hush!’ she hissed swiftly, ‘someone will overhear!’

  ‘I want to find out who killed him and why,’ Josse went on, in a whisper that was almost as loud as his normal speech. ‘I can’t just let it go, even if you can!’

  That last remark was unfair, and he knew it. Regretting the words as soon as he had spoken them, he said, ‘Sorry, Abbess. I know you would find the killer if it were within your power.’

  She didn’t reply for some time, and he was afraid he had mortally and irredeemably offended her. But then, stretching out a hand in his general direction, she said, ‘I will have a pack made up for you – some food, drink, a flint and a torch. If you are going into the forest by night, it is only sensible to take precautions.’

  ‘But—’ He didn’t want to be burdened with a pack. Still, if doing what she could to help him was her way of showing that she had forgiven him – and that she, too, wanted to do her bit to catch the murderer – then it seemed he had little choice but to accept.

  He valued her friendship too much to let ill-feeling remain between them.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said humbly. ‘I shall be grateful.’

  * * *

  He ate with the sisters that evening, and, on an impulse, went with them to Compline. The last office of the day, it had, he found, a particularly calming effect on his stretched nerves. It was always that way, he reflected, listening to the heavenly sound of the choir nuns, just before going into action. Muscles and sinews taught as bowstrings, mouth dry, heartbeat unsteady. Whereas, as soon as the fight began and you—

  But that didn’t seem a very suitable thing to recall, in church listening to hymns of praise. Deliberately he turned his thoughts to his devotions.

  * * *

  He slipped out of the Abbey a couple of hours later. All was quiet, and, as he raised the Abbess’s small and neatly prepared pack on to one shoulder, not a single light showed from any of the Abbey buildings.

  He collected his sword and his knife from the corner of the wall between the porteress’s lodge and the Abbey’s front wall, where he had concealed them earlier in the day. Sliding his sword into its scabbard, he felt his confidence grow. He opened the gates just enough to slip out, and carefully closed them behind him.

  Then he set off up the track into the forest.

  * * *

  The moon was waxing, and, only a day from the full, gave sufficient light for Josse to make his way without stumbling. Until, that was, he moved deep under the shadow of the trees. He stopped and waited for his eyes to adjust, fiddling idly with the strap on his pack.

  His hand encountered something. An object – made of metal, to judge by its cool smoothness – fastened to the flap. Feeling all around it with his fingers - it was quite small – he thought it was a little cross.

  The Abbess, he thought. She put it there, for protection.

  God bless her kind heart!

  His night vision had sharpened as much as it was likely to. With gratitude for such a friend giving a lift both to his spirits and to his steps, he headed on into the depths of the forest.

  Chapter Seven

  As he trod warily deeper and deeper into the forest, despite his best efforts Josse found his mind filling with every bad thing he had ever heard about its sinister reputation.

  In the stillness beneath the thick tree canopy, he developed the odd sensation that he was within some great living thing, some dark creature of unimaginable mystery and strangeness. His careful footfalls on the forest floor could, if one did not keep tight rein on the imagination, be mistaken for a quiet, steady heartbeat. And the distant sound of the faint breeze stirring the treetops sounded very like patient, watchful breathing …

  Deliberately Josse stopped, stood up very straight and, with his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, said aloud, ‘I am not afraid.’

  It helped. A little.

  He made himself take in the details of the woodland all around him.

  Oak, birch and beech. Ivy and lichen-covered trees, some of them huge with age. Yes. The forest was ancient, had been old even when the Romans came. It had been the haunt of mysterious men and women who understood the trees, worked with Nature, worshipped Her, sacrificed to Her. Went out under the moon to gather the mistletoe with golden sickles and perform rituals in Her honour.

  Some said they were still there, the secret people from the far past. Still living deep in those vast tracts of impenetrable woodland, still emerging, briefly, to do terrible violence and then withdraw once more into their leafy strongholds …

  Determined not to let his renewed fear overcome him, Josse’s hand crept to his pack, sought for and clasped his talisman. The cross fitted into his palm, and, as his fingers closed around it, he detected a loop at its head, made of the same metal.

  Stopping, he unfastened it from the pack. Pulling out from under his tunic the length of leather cord on which he wore the crucifix given to him at baptism, he untied the cord and slung the Abbess’s larger cross beside it.

  Proceeding once more, holding the Abbess’s cross in his hand, suddenly he felt a good deal braver.

  * * *

  He could tell by the stars that he was going almost due west; there were regular clearings amid the trees, wide enough for him to see quite large areas of the sky and locate the Plough and the Pole Star. Having worked out which way was north, the rest was easy.

  He would be in trouble if, when he was deep in the forest, the sky clouded over. If that happened, he’d be there till morning.

  Not a pleasant thought.

  After about a mile of fairly easy going, he came to a wide track. Relatively wide, at any rate; the paths he had followed until then had been mere deer or badger tracks. Or perhaps boar; he had noticed the marks of scrabbling feet on the banks either side of some of the better-defined paths that were typical of wild boar. Now, the track was wide enough for two to walk abreast.

  He walked along it for possibly half a mile, whereupon it branched. Left or right? He hesitated, unsure. He became aware of an urging voice in his mind: go right!

  Well, he had to do something.

  He set off along the right-hand track.

  And, soon afterwards, came across a length of plaited braid. Tripped over it, in fact.

  He picked it up. Unless he was very much mistaken, it was part of a snare. Dropped by Hamm, or one of his poacher friends?

  Thoughtfully Josse wound it up and tucked it into his pack.

  A little further on, he saw ahead of him a patch of bright moonlight, startling in the dim forest. Approaching, he realised what had happened: a gre
at oak had fallen, right across the path, and its falling had left a hole in the leaf canopy above.

  Josse went into the patch of light. Not one tree but two lay on the ground. One seemed to have fallen from some natural cause; its roots, torn up out of the earth, soared above Josse’s head in a great semicircle, leaving a deep hole where they had been. There was water at the bottom of the hole.

  The other tree, slightly smaller than its fellow, had been felled by the action of man. Not very expertly felled, at that; the furrowed trunk had been savagely hacked at in several places before the main cut had been made that had brought the tree crashing to the ground.

  Why had it been felled?

  Josse edged forwards, peering down into the hole beneath the bigger tree. There was a gap, a sort of earthy cave, opening off the side of the hole … Taking a firm handhold on one of the oak’s thick roots, and swinging the Abbess’s cross over his shoulder and out of the way, Josse climbed down.

  What had looked like a cave was in fact the mouth of a tunnel. Not a very long one, but it must have led straight under the tree that someone had cut down.

  With the tree lying on the ground, the next task had apparently been to dig out its roots. Someone had been doing that, too. Further along, the tunnel was open to the night sky.

  Scrambling out again, standing up and brushing earth off his knees, Josse thought he had probably found Hamm Robinson’s treasure trove. And, also, the secret of the Forest People, which they had killed to keep.

  He had been going to delve down into the tunnel, to see if Hamm had been disturbed before he had cleared everything out of it. But, suddenly, that didn’t seem like a very good idea. Apart from anything else, he would need to make a light. And a light, even a small one, could attract attention that he wouldn’t welcome.

  Especially not when, for all that he was trying to master it, he kept having the distinct and highly disturbing feeling that eyes were upon him …

  Looking round for his pack, he picked it up and hurried away from the clearing and the fallen trees. Then, trying not to break into a run, he set out on the track that led back to the outside world.