The Crowfield Curse Read Free Page B

into the cloister alley. Through one of the large arched openings overlooking the cloister garth, he saw Brother Snail, digging in an herb bed below the bare branches of a walnut tree. He was thirty-one years old and the youngest monk at the abbey, though at first glance he did not look it. He was small and thin, with pale skin stretched tightly across his bones and a hunched back. His real name was Thomas, but he had been known as Snail ever since his spine had begun to curve and set like stone when he was fourteen years old, the same age William was now. He worked slowly, using the light wooden shovel Edgar, the carpenter in Yagleah, had made especially for him.
    William watched the little monk for a couple of moments and could almost feel his pain with each slow stab of the shovel. If William had time later, in between his other daily tasks, he would help with the digging. What would take Brother Snail most of the day to do, William could finish in an hour.
    William glanced around. Two monks sat at their desks in the north walk of the cloister, close to the door into the church. In spite of the cold numbing their fingers, they were engrossed in their work, copying the psalter loaned to them for the purpose by Sir Robert de Tovei of Weforde, and they took no notice of William.
    He made his way over to Brother Snail, his feet crunching on the gravel brought up from the river to cover the narrow pathways between the herb beds.
    â€œWill,” the monk said, looking sideways and up at him with a smile. “Shouldn’t you be busy in the kitchen?”
    â€œI’ll go there soon,” William said, “but first I need your help with something.”
    Brother Snail looked a little surprised, but he leaned on the handle of his shovel and nodded. “Very well. What is it?”
    William hesitated for a moment. “I rescued a creature from a trap in Foxwist Wood. He’s badly injured. Can you come look at him?”
    The monk frowned and wiped the earth from his hands on his faded and much-patched black habit. “A trap!” he said angrily. “Not again! I will speak to Abbot Simon about this.” He stopped and his mouth hardened into a straight line. He had spoken without thinking.
    William knew Brother Snail would not talk to the abbot about the trap. What would be the use? Everybody knew Abbot Simon was hanging on to life by a thread and he no longer knew where or who he was. Traps in Foxwist would mean nothing to him.
    â€œI will speak to Prior Ardo,” Snail said quietly. Ardo might be sour and humorless, but he had taken over the running of the abbey and was doing his best to keep it on the right side of hunger and poverty. “Where is it, this animal of yours? And what is it? A hare? A fox?”
    William took a deep breath and said, “Neither. It’s not any kind of animal; it’s a hob.”
    The monk stared at him for several moments, a startled expression on his face. “A hob?” he said at last. “Are you sure, Will? A hob ?”
    William nodded and watched the monk anxiously. Had he made a mistake in trusting Brother Snail? Would he consider the hob to be a creature of the devil, not to be tolerated on holy ground?
    â€œAnd how do you know that it’s a hob?”
    â€œBecause he told me he was,” William said cautiously.
    â€œI see.” There was a thoughtful expression in Brother Snail’s light blue eyes. “There used to be hobmen in Foxwist and up on Gremanhil, according to the old stories,” the monk said, keeping his voice low and glancing over at the two monks busy at their desks, “but I thought they had long since gone. What are his injuries?”
    William felt a surge of relief. Brother Snail believed him, and more important, he was not crossing himself and calling down the wrath of God on William’s head for daring to bring such a creature to the abbey. That was definitely a good sign. “A broken leg, a