had last seen the creature.When a cloud passed over the sun, leeching warmth from the air, the terrified men bolted and ran.
“Stand!” cried the knight, to no avail. He watched his men deserting him, thrashing through the brush in their blind haste to escape the horror encircling them.With a last glance around the tainted meadow, brave Guiscard joined his men in flight.
Back at the builders’ camp, the breathless searchers told what they had found in the forest and how they had been attacked by the forest phantom—a creature so hideous as to defy description—and only narrowly escaped with their lives.
As for the missing oxen, they had been completely devoured by the creature.
“Except for the vitals,” one of the men-at-arms explained to his astonished audience. “The devil thing devoured everything but the guts,” he said. The soldier next to him took up the tale. “The bowels it vomited in the meadow.We must have startled it at its feeding,” he surmised. Another soldier nodded, adding, “C’est vrai. No doubt that was why it attacked us.”
But the soldiers were wrong. It was not the phantom that fed on the stolen oxen. That very evening, in British huts and holdings all along the valley, a score of hungry families dined on unexpected gifts of good fresh meat that had been discovered lying on the stone threshold of the house. Each gift had been delivered the same way: wrapped in green oak leaves, one of which was pinned to the parcel by a long, black wing feather of a raven.
CHAPTER 34
Brother Aethelfrith paused on the road to drag a damp sleeve across his sweating face. The Norman merchants with whom he had been travelling had long since outpaced him; his short legs were no match for their mules and high-wheeled carts, and none of the four traders or their retainers had consented to allow him to ride in back of one of the wagons. To a man, all had made obscene gestures and pinched their nostrils at him.
“Stink? Stink, do I?” muttered the mendicant under his breath. He was a most fragrant friar, to be sure, but the day was sweltering, and sweat was honest reward for labours spent. “Normans,” he grumbled, mopping his face, “God rot them all!”
What a peculiar people they were: big, lumpy lunks with faces like horses and feet like boats. Vain and arrogant, untroubled by any notions so basic as tolerance, fairness, equality. Always wanting everything their own way, never giving in, they reckoned any disagreement as disloyal, dishonest, or deceitful, while judging their own actions, however outrageously unfair, as lawful God-given rights. Did the Ruler of heaven really intend for such a greedy, grasping, gluttonous race of knaves and rascals to supplant Good King Harold?
“Blesséd Jesus,” he muttered, watching the last of the wagons recede into the distance, “give the whole filthy lot flaming carbuncles to remind them how fortunate they are.”
Then, chuckling to himself over the image of the entire occupying population hopping around clutching painfully swollen backsides, he moved on. Upon cresting the next hill, he saw a stream and a fording place where the road met the valley. Several of the carts had paused to allow the animals to drink. “God be praised!” he cried and hurried to join them.
Perhaps they would take pity on him yet.
Arriving at the ford, he called a polite greeting, but the merchants roundly ignored him, so he walked a little way upstream until he came to a shady place, where, drawing his long brown robe between his legs, he tucked the ends into his belt and waded out into the stream. “Ahh,” he sighed, luxuriating in the cool water, “a very blessing on a hot summer day. Thank you, Jesus. Much obliged.”
When the merchants moved off a short while later, he remained behind, content to dabble in the stream a little longer. By all accounts, Llanelli was a mere quarter day’s walk from the ford. No one was expecting him, so he could take all the time he needed; and if he reached the monastery by nightfall, he would count himself fortunate.
The fat friar padded in the stream, watching the small, darting fish. He hummed to himself, enjoying the day as if it were a meal of meat and ale spread before him with lavish abundance. Upon reflection, he had no right to be so happy.
His errand, God knew, was sin itself.
How he had come to the idea, he still could not say. An overheard conversation—a marketplace rumour, an errant