The Skull (3 page)

‘Well…' he said slowly, ‘I suppose we've got a body to find.' He brushed his huge hands down a burned and oily leather apron. ‘And a murderer.'

If the prior had been organising the search, everyone would have spread out in a long line along the bottom
of the hill, and worked their way up, searching every bush until they reached the monastery at the top. Every inch of the forest would have been covered and nothing, or no one, would have escaped the search.

As it was, most of the younger farmers strode out into the woods hefting spades and heavy sticks. Behind them, the older men started up the main path, while the rest of the villagers picked their way up the side of the hill in loose groups, shouting out randomly as they lost sight of each other.

The wood was filled with their calling, and for a moment Alfred felt strangely proud that all this action was taking place because of him. Until he remembered that the prior was dead and that Nash, unless he had fled, was still somewhere on the hillside.

Alfred led the stonemason and young farmers up the hillside, following the route down which he had slid and rolled the previous night. Finally they reached the path where he and Nash had fought.

The mud showed signs of a struggle. Alfred saw something stuck fast in a muddy puddle. He pulled it out. It was Nash's shoe. The leather was nearly worn through, and the sodden moss used to pad the inside fell out in great clumps as he lifted it.

‘He won't have got far without that,' said the stonemason. He looked down the path towards the four heavy trees around which Alfred had run the previous night. Their thick leaves would have offered shelter against the rain. ‘This way,' he said.

He led the group up the grass bank and around behind the trees, and then shouted.

Propped up against the tree trunk and unconscious, a body lay slumped in drunken slumber. It was Nash.

As the group gathered round, the stonemason pulled the drunk roughly to his feet, and Nash started to wake. He grunted as he looked at the faces crowding around him, then panicked and fought weakly for a few seconds. But the stonemason's hands were used to far tougher work. Suddenly, Nash shook his head and focused on Alfred.

‘Murderer!' he screeched, wrenching an arm free and stabbing it at Alfred. ‘Witch! Witch!'

Alfred flinched in horror. If an accusation of witchcraft was taken seriously, it would mean a witch trial – even torture and execution. The villagers already mistrusted the prior and his books. While nobody dared challenge the monks' authority, Alfred was just a boy, and an unpopular one at that. If anyone had a grudge to settle, here was their chance.

There was a long silence. A crowd was gathering around the tree. Alfred held his breath. At last, the stonemason spoke. ‘And I suppose you're an angel an' all?' he boomed. The crowd laughed, and Alfred let out a huge sigh.

There was no doubt in his mind now. Something had changed for him today.

Alfred pushed on up the hill. The stonemason kept pace with him, while the others followed, dragging the cursing Nash with them. The only thing left to do was to find the prior. The mudslide had taken him down the far side of the hill, and as they neared the top, they could see the gap left by the trees that had been carried away when the ground subsided.

The group crossed the crest of the hill in silence before they reached the top, and headed down and around to the bottom of the landslide area. Alfred dreaded what he would find there. The prior had been the nearest thing Alfred had to family. Only a few hours ago, he had promised to take Alfred into his care, to teach him. Had the prior told any of the other monks about his decision? Would they honour it? Alfred had no idea.

Suddenly, up ahead, Alfred could see gaps in the trees that had not been there yesterday. Villagers were
standing between the trees, staring in silence down into a new clearing. At first, Alfred couldn't see what they were looking at. A crowd blocked his way, and he was too short to see over them. He ran forward, pushed his way through, and stumbled out into the sunlight.

The landslide had carved a strip of mud like a freshly ploughed field all the way from the top of the hill to the bottom. Every tree that had stood in its path had been uprooted, and was now piled in broken splinters at the bottom of the hill. The villagers had gathered at either side of the clearing in two long rows, none of them daring to step forward into the mudslide's path.

Alfred stood alone, ankle deep in the mud. Looking back, he could see only the crowd's horrified faces. The stonemason stood among them, his great hands covering his mouth in shock. As Alfred watched, he turned and and started to run, pounding his way up the hill. Terrified, Alfred turned slowly to face the centre of the clearing. There was the prior's body. Mud and blood soaking his clothes, he was lying bent over backwards, held up clear of the ground by a huge lump of rock.

But it was not a rock.

At the bottom of the mass of stone, the shape of a vast empty eye-socket was visible above the mud. Higher up, the stone tapered to form a blunt snout, lined with curved, serrated teeth. The massive mouth was frozen, gaping open, and the whole skull was embedded in grey rock as though the earth had grown around it like flesh and muscle. The terrifying jaws formed a deep crevice in the boulder on which the prior had landed, his fragile body impaled on its terrible sharp teeth.

It seemed as though a dragon had reared out of the ground in the night, grabbed the prior in its teeth, and then been turned to stone by the first rays of the dawn sun.

She had claimed her first victim in a hundred million years.

Scattered around the bloodied stone were the contents of the bag the prior always carried with him. Rough scraps covered in unreadable symbols and sketched drawings of strange creatures. Alfred recognised them as practice scribbles for the great book, but the villagers saw only mysterious and dangerous incantations.

Suddenly, Nash's harsh voice burst out. ‘Witch!' he cried. ‘Witch!' His captors had released their grip
on him and he lurched into the clearing. ‘Witch!' he shouted again.

Slowly, the villagers' eyes started to turn away from the prior's body and towards Alfred. Whispers started to hiss through the air. Alfred heard the word again from somewhere else in the crowd. ‘Witch! Witch!'

Then again, louder this time, from the other side of the clearing. ‘Witch! Sorcerer!'

The faces before Alfred were hardening like the terrible stone creature behind him. ‘Witch! Witch!' The chorus grew, getting louder and louder. Children were shouting, the men pounding their sticks against the trees.

Alfred tried to protest, but he could barely hear his own voice above the repeated shouts. Two of the men who had been restraining Nash stepped forward and grabbed him by the shoulders. In a panic, he tried to struggle, but their fingers dug deep into his flesh, pinning him to the spot. He looked wildly around. Even if he managed to break free, he was surrounded by the whole village. Everyone here wanted him dead. He didn't stand a chance.

Nash stepped out in front of him. He was holding a rusty knife, and it was raised above his head. He was about to bring it down.

Suddenly, Nash froze, and looked up the hillside. The crowd's chanting died away, and behind it, a quieter, more melodic chant rose up.

Alfred looked up. Along the top of the hill, dark, shapes were emerging. The monks. He could just make out the stonemason pointing down towards the prior's body as he led them towards Alfred and the villagers.

The abbot stopped the procession in the middle of the clearing. He raised his hands high and waited for the crowd to fall silent. ‘We will take the boy with us,' he announced.

Alfred had been digging for weeks under the instruction of the new prior and the stonemason, but there was so much still to do. He had flattened out the ground around the dragon's skull, so that the side of the hill now had a huge, solid step carved into it.

Over the following years, Alfred would dig foundations as the stonemason taught him his craft. He would learn how to hew stone into blocks, and around the skull, he would build a tomb.

The monks understood it as his education – learning a craft. The villagers understood it as a
penance. A punishment for his crime, although what his exact crime was, no one would say.

For Alfred, building the tomb was part of the deal that the monks had struck with the villagers to allow him to live. He had gone to stay with them in the monastery that fateful day, and as the prior had promised, he was also learning to read and write.

Day after day, week after week, Alfred returned to the skull's resting place. As he stared into the huge empty eye socket of the creature, it was almost as if the monster was looking right back at him, asking him questions he could never answer in his lifetime. As he worked in its gaze, he felt as though it was somehow shaping him. Filling him with a desire for knowledge that he would pass on to his children, and his children's children…

The tomb stood solid while centuries passed. The village was destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed and rebuilt again. Softened by wind, rain and moss, Alfred's stonework remained unchanged as the woods grew back around it, while the fierce creature buried in its depths lay forgotten.

Waiting.

That was the problem, Thomas Marchant thought, as he watched his father argue with a stallholder. When you came to buy provisions for the monastery, everyone always assumed you had plenty of money. The stallholder could see their horse was a good one, and he could see the empty cart it pulled. It didn't take much to work out they'd come to town to stock up for the monks. That, in most people's eyes, meant you could afford to pay twice what everyone else paid for the same food.

Unfortunately, things had changed. Henry VIII was no friend of the monks, nor of the libraries they protected. He had been slowly choking them for years; now things were getting worse by the week.
The few monks who tried to keep the monasteries and libraries going were forced to lead the king's men in a desperate dance, trying to hide anything of value from the constant inspections, surveys and taxes. Thomas knew his father could earn twice what the monks paid him as a stonemason anywhere else, but for some reason he seemed determined to stay, working constantly to stop the crumbling monastery from finally falling down. Nobody ever said out loud that the king's death was the only thing that could save them, but there was constant talk about his wounded leg, his open sores, and the fact that he needed servants to carry him from his bed to his chair.

Thomas' father held out his purse. ‘Look,' he said, in desperation. ‘This is all I have. There is no more. This should buy me everything you have here.'

The stallholder didn't flinch. ‘You can have half of what's here,' he said. ‘That's my price. You can always go somewhere else.'

‘Somewhere else' was at least three hours' ride away, and it was already starting to get dark. They would have to buy from him or go home with nothing, and the stallholder knew it.

Just then, Thomas noticed something odd out of the corner of his eye. On the other side of the square,
another cart had arrived. Its contents had hay strewn over them, and the driver looked anxious and jumpy, but he had stopped next to the other market stalls, so he clearly had something to sell. A small crowd was gathering, rummaging in the cart.

The man in the cart looked around nervously, then held something up for everyone to see. It was a book. Not a printed book – an old book. Leather bound. Inlaid with intricate designs. The sort of book that only nobles or monasteries owned. But the man was clearly neither a noble nor a monk.

Thomas' father had given up arguing. He had opened the purse and was just about to tip the contents into the stallholder's waiting hands when Thomas grabbed his father's arm and pointed across the square.

Instantly, his father closed the purse and started to run towards the bookseller with Thomas close behind.

By the time Thomas reached the cart, his father had pushed the covering of hay aside. Underneath, dozens of books lay in piles. Some were modern block-print books, but others were church books – handwritten and painstakingly bound. They did not belong here.

‘Where did these come from?' Thomas' father demanded. The answer was obvious. There was only one place they could have come from – a monastery.

The bookseller looked harried. ‘A place up north,' he said vaguely. ‘The king's men had already been and gone with anything worth having. There was nobody there. Just gangs of looters wrecking the place.'

‘And you,' said Thomas' father, dryly.

‘I could either take the books or leave them to burn,' snapped the man.

Thomas looked at his father. ‘We're here to buy food,' he reminded him.

‘I know,' said his father slowly, fingering the purse in his hands. ‘But…' He turned to the man. ‘I'll give you everything here for the lot.' He opened the purse.

The man blinked at the money. Thomas could tell he wanted to get rid of his wares as quickly as possible, but he was hesitating. The bookseller was no fool, and knew what the old books were worth. Thomas looked at the mangy old drayhorse that dragged the man's rickety cart, then back at their strong workhorse. He'd known her as long as he could remember. He swallowed hard. ‘And we'll take your horse and cart for ours,' he heard himself say.

The man grabbed the purse and took off across the square. Thomas' father stared at him. He shrugged.

‘Come on.' His father smiled grimly. ‘We've got to warn the monks. It's starting.'

Thomas shuffled on the hard wooden planks of the cart as it bumped and rocked slowly along the rough track. He'd shoved a pile of straw underneath him, but it wasn't making much difference. The sun had gone down and Mars was bright in the sky, arcing slowly over their heads in the opposite direction to the rest of the stars. It didn't light their way, but they followed it towards home. His father kept urging the old horse on, but didn't say much as they started to climb the hill into the wood.