The Crowfield Curse (30 page)

William stared at him. How could Robin sound so gleeful about such horror? London sounded like something from a nightmare and not at all how he'd imagined it to be.

“London is a terrible and monstrous beast. It is dangerous and will devour the unwary traveler. Like your brother, perhaps,” Robin said, smiling as if he had made a joke, but it didn't reach his eyes.

William had no idea what to say. There was something about Robin that disturbed him, a streak of cruelty he did not like.

Robin stopped for a moment to take his flute from his bag. “Nothing persuades the feet to walk a little bit faster than a lively tune.” He slung his bag over his shoulder, put the flute to his lips, and began to play.

William walked along the grassy edge of the track, his footsteps keeping time with Robin's song. The music wrapped itself around him, filling him with a strange elation, and for a while he barely noticed the rain. The mud and the cold breeze were soon forgotten. He quickly picked up the tune and hummed along. Robin looked at him over the flute and nodded in approval. William grinned back. Every now and then his boots slipped on the wet grass or his cloak caught on a trailing bramble branch, snagging the wool, but he didn't slow down. He
couldn't
slow down. The notes rippling from the flute would not let him. Panic fluttered in his chest. The music was somehow pulling him along in its wake. He tried to stop, but his feet no longer obeyed him; they skipped and stamped along by themselves in a dance that was getting wilder and faster by the moment. He turned to Robin in alarm, but the boy was looking ahead now, and his fingers flew over the holes in the flute with bewildering speed.

“Wait!” William said sharply. “Stop!”

Robin glanced at him, eyes narrowed, but he carried on playing. His wet hair seemed a darker shade of red in the dusk, and his eyes were the bright green of early summer leaves. Whatever Robin was doing, he was doing it on purpose, William realized, and he was enjoying it.

“Stop playing,” William said angrily. “Stop
now!”

Robin lowered the flute. His face was a mask of surprise. “What's the matter?”

“Put the flute away.” William's hands clenched into fists. He had no idea how Robin had managed to do that to him, to make his feet move as if they were no longer his own, but he wouldn't let him do it again.

Robin's expression was unreadable. “I just thought music would make the journey more pleasant.”

William stared back, refusing to show fear in front of the boy.

“Have it your own way,” Robin said with a shrug. He dropped his bag on the grass and squatted down beside it to pack the flute away. He took out the bread and cheese he had kept for himself and held it out to William. “You might as well have this. I will no doubt eat well enough in Yagleah tonight.”

William hesitated, desperate to accept the food but still wary of Robin.

“Just take it,” Robin insisted, “by way of an apology.”

William took the bread and put it in the pocket sewn inside his cloak. “Thank you,” he said gruffly.

Robin sighed and stood up. He hefted his bag onto his shoulder and turned to trudge away along the track. William watched him, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. The boy's thin, bedraggled figure would have wrung pity from the hardest heart, but William had the strangest feeling that there was more to Robin than met the eye. It was as if the real Robin was hiding behind this one. It was an unsettling thought. He would be glad when they reached the abbey and parted company.

Robin walked a little way ahead of William for the rest of the journey. The silence between them was not an easy one. The rain pattered on last year's dead leaves and dripped from branches, but beyond those soft noises William noticed how quiet the woods were. There was no birdsong, he realized with surprise. The wind had dropped, and Foxwist was as silent as the grave.

William glanced around with a growing sense of unease. The late afternoon shadows were creeping between the trees. He could feel a change in the air, a strange stirring that tingled through his body. The woods no longer seemed familiar. The track ahead of him
looked
the same as ever, but it felt very different. He had the unsettling feeling that it no longer led to familiar places, to Crowfield and Yagleah, but to somewhere else entirely. And was it his imagination, or did Robin look different, too? Taller and wider across the shoulders, perhaps, his hair longer? William fought down the fear welling up inside him.
It's just the fading light making things look strange, he reasoned. Not much farther now, and I will be safe.

Up ahead, the rags tied to the bushes near the Hollow hung like dead hands, limp and dripping in the steady rain. Robin walked past them without as much as a glance. William hardly dared to breathe until the Hollow was safely behind him. Robin disappeared around the next bend in the track. William clambered back onto the grass verge and broke into a run. Robin was waiting for him by the fork in the track leading to the abbey. He was the same skinny, lank-haired boy William had met in Weforde. Whatever William thought he had seen earlier, it must have been all in his mind, conjured out of fear and the failing daylight.

“Thank you for the food,” William said awkwardly. As strange as the boy was, he had been kind enough to share his bread and cheese with William, and such rare generosity should not be ignored.

Robin's eyes gleamed. “It's my pleasure. I hope you enjoy it.”

William opened his mouth to say he would, when he noticed a dark patch on the causeway, just a few paces away. He turned to look more closely and was disturbed to see that it was blood, mixed with small clumps of reddish fur. He crouched down beside it and picked up a tuft of fur between his thumb and forefinger. He turned it slowly and caught his breath. It was the same shade of red as the hob's fur. Fear squeezed the breath from his body and it was several moments before he realized that it was not
quite
the same, but a shade or so paler and not as coarse. It was fox fur. He glanced back down at the blood. There was a great deal of it, but strangely, there was no sign of the injured animal and no trail of blood to show where it had gone.

William noticed something else on the bloodstained ground. Carefully, he picked it up and to his surprise saw that it was a bundle of oak twigs, tied with a length of wool. A cold chill of foreboding crept over him. He looked up at Robin and saw that the boy was staring at the abbey with a strange expression on his face.

“What do you suppose this is for?” William asked, holding up the oak twigs.

Robin glanced at them and took a step backward. “Who knows?” He seemed ill at ease and anxious to be on his way.

William dropped the fur and the twigs and stood up. He wiped his blood-smeared fingers on his cloak. Robin started to walk up the causeway to the track.

“I am sure the monks would give you lodgings for the night if you asked them,” William called after him. “You could continue your journey in the morning.”

“I told you, the rain and the dark do not trouble me,” Robin said sharply. He glanced from the patch of blood to the abbey buildings, and for a couple of moments his gaze lingered on the church tower. William thought he saw a flicker of fear cross the boy's face.

“I'm sure we'll meet again, William,” Robin called over his shoulder.

William grimaced and thought,
I hope not.
He stepped over the bloodstain and sprinted down the track toward the abbey gatehouse, splashing through the puddles and floodwater. He looked back when he reached the abbey gate, but Robin had disappeared into the darkening forest, and the trackway was empty.