It was Roger who answered. ‘Send him to Plymouth or Dartmouth, Coroner. They’ll serve.’
‘Right, then. Dartmouth it is. You will go there across Dartmoor, from Oakhampton, straight down to the port, and when you get there you will do all in your power to find a ship to take you away from the king’s lands. All you own and possess is forfeit to the crown for your crimes. Do you accept these terms?’
‘Yes. All right,’ Osbert said.
‘Good. Because if you fail in any particular, you will be declared outlaw and can be hunted to death by any man. If you fail to do your utmost to obey my commands, I will set the wolf’s head upon you, man, and you will die. Personally I hope you do turn outlaw, so that I can hunt you down myself. You will not be permitted to abjure a second time.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Second Saturday before the Feast of St Martin in Winter*
Near Crockern Tor
In the mistiness, Osbert winced as the rain sheeted into his face. In this weather, his thin shirt and coat appeared no more substantial than a single thickness of linen in the face of the onslaught that was being hurled at him. Without his hat, the rain was like fine gravel thrown in his face. The weight of the cross on his shoulder, the proof of his penitence and the protection of his body from any who might choose to attack, for it signified that he was defended by the Church, was a dull and constant ache. The edge stuck into his shoulder, rubbing it raw beneath his shirt and setting up a savage anguish that would not cease. He had never seen so massive a cross for an abjurer, and he felt sure that it was evidence of the coroner’s loathing of him. Sir Richard must have ordered it to be made so. If he could, Osbert would enjoy visiting some of this on Sir Richard in return. He hated to leave a debt unpaid.
For all the pain at his face and shoulders, it was his feet that hurt the most. They were shredded by stepping on rocks and furze. But there was no help for it. Abjurers were fortunate to be allowed to keep shirts and coats — but none could keep boots or hats. These essentials were taken away for the king. He must, Osbert reckoned, have an insatiable appetite for such clothing, since he took all from every abjurer.
He was near a vast lump of rock that stood resting on three others to form a roofed shelter, in which two ponies stood. They could attempt to dispute his right to take some rest there, but if they were to do so, they would learn quickly that a man in desperate need was not to be trifled with. And he had a large baulk of timber on his shoulder that could easily act as a weapon.
It was a good enough place, he felt, to sleep the night. There was nowhere to seek companionship on the moors here. The lands to the south where he must travel to find his way to the port would all be as open and foully rainswept as this, and another resting place would be hard to find.
He hunkered down, chewing a little of the dry bread that the vill had provided him. It was stale and full of cinders and burned grains, much like the peasant breads he had eaten as a child, and the crunchiness and the taste of charcoal were like a reminder of his youth. It was quite good to experience them. But when he got to France — damn the souls of the men here who’d sent him away — he would only eat white bread. And there, so it was said, the weather was always summer. It would be warmer than here in the miserable wastes of Dartmoor, anyway. But anywhere would be, he told himself, glancing about the landscape with a curl to his lips.
It was then that he saw a figure, or so he thought. It was a hunched form, that of a man who was bent under an intolerable load, it seemed, and then a wash of rain pelted across and the man was hidden from view.
A man. Clearly a man, Osbert told himself. After all, the old tales were nothing more than that: myths invented to upset children, stories designed to petrify the recalcitrant, used deliberately to make children fear disobedience and keep them in check. They were not likely to make a man fear.
No, the idea of the devil wandering about the moors to pick up unwary travellers, that was invention. As was Crockern, the spirit of the moors, vengeful, resentful, cruel. Just as the idea of pixies leading travellers astray into bogs and mires to leave them drowning slowly was clearly untrue. There was nothing to any of them. And yet …
Where was he? Osbert peered closely, but there was no sign of the indistinct shape he had seen. It had disappeared into the murk before him as efficiently as a wraith dissolving in a mist. And it made him shiver suddenly, as though there was a ghost out there right now, watching him.
No! There was nothing there. It was just the way the swirling mist was moving. He squatted again, telling his heart not to be so fearful. It was in truth nothing to worry about. And yet he found that his eyes kept returning to that place, as though he half expected to see someone appear again.
It was unsettling. Very unsettling. He moved back into the safety of the chamber, leaning up against the rock, and tried to rest. The cold was ferocious, and he could feel his feet starting to stab with pain now. When he looked at them, he had to wince. The furze and stones he’d passed over had slashed at them, and now the soles were mingled blood and filth, and the little of the skin he could see was blue with cold.
There was a rattle and a thud outside. His head snapped up, and his eyes moved quickly all over the landscape in front of him, his heart suddenly pounding. No one there. No one and nothing. The swirls of mist moved about and the rain fell in a constant curtain, obscuring all beyond a few feet from him, but his heart told him that there was something out there. Something that wanted his death.
He hadn’t regrets. He had enjoyed most of his life. What was unreasonable was that for the first time in his life he had tried to make something happen for himself. All the other projects he had worked on, he had been trying to help his master. This was the first situation in which he had been attempting his own profit — and it was the first and most ruinous failure he had suffered.
A clattering made him jerk awake. For a moment there he had started to slip into drowsiness and his head had begun to nod, but now he was fully alert and staring about him.
There was no animal that could have made that noise. That was a stone being tossed, or he was a Scotsman. Outside was a man, and someone who meant him ill. Well, Osbert was no coward, and he would not be easy prey. He slowly eased himself upright again, clutching the heavy cross in his hands, and edged to the front of his shelter. No one would say that he hid cowering in the back of a cave while someone was pursuing him.
There was a snick as a small stone hit the roof, but he wasn’t stupid enough to look up. The man was out there, hidden in the gloom, trying to tempt him to look around so that he could be hit from behind. He wasn’t going to fall for that, he thought.
An appalling, smashing explosion of pain over his ear, and Osbert was thrown sidelong into the rock beside him. His first coherent thought was to wonder why he was lying on the ground, and then he was trying to rise, but as soon as he did, there was a slam at his head again, and he was on the ground once more aware of the trickle of blood running down the line of his jaw and pooling below his Adam’s apple. Slowly he began to get up again, and this time the blow was over the back of his head, driving his face into the dirt and rock of the moor. He felt his nose crunch, he felt the water and mud in his nose, the tang of blood in his mouth as the teeth snapped, and his empty eye socket was filled with icy water. He tried to roll away to see who had attacked him, but it was impossible to even move that much.