Free By Sylvian Hamilton by Max Gilbert Page A

Osric.'

    'What
did he do?'

    'Nothing.
Said it was too late to do anything. Puked in the bushes.'

    Straccan
sighed. This didn't seem to be getting anywhere. But Pluvis and the
relic must lead to Gregory, and Gregory had Gilla. Thin as the thread
was, he must follow it. It was all he had. 'What then?'

    'Sir
Guy went back home, sent men with a litter. They took the body into
the stable, put it in an empty stall. Sir Guy, Father Osric and me,
and Sir Roger--'

    'Who's
he?'

    'The
lord's son. He was to travel to the wedding with his father.' 'What
wedding?'

    'It
was his wedding day, Sir Roger's! They wanted to be off before noon
to fetch the bride. They're all away now, visiting her manors. So
this nasty business was doubly unwelcome, coming then, with all to
do. Sir Guy was as angry as ever I've seen him! Sir Roger wasn't best
pleased either. They sent me to the inn to see the dead man's
servants. One of them was still asleep, the other was just up and out
back pissing in the cabbages. I asked him where his master was and he
said upstairs. I went up and looked in the room. There was his pack
beside his bolster and his cloak over the foot of the bed, and the
bed had been slept in, and he wasn't there. And he wouldn't've been,
would he, seeing he was dead.' Sir Guy had questioned the two
men-at-arms, the innkeeper, his wife, the scullion and the grubby
serving woman, and no one had seen or heard a thing. The man had gone
upstairs to bed, and then somehow out to his death.

    'So
in the end, to save trouble and fuss, the lord and Father Osric
decided on wolves,' said the reeve. 'And he was buried over by the
hazel wood, away from the ditch where we're stowing everyone else.
You know, until they can have proper burial, when there's no more
Interdict.'

    And
that should have been that, except that two days later the grave was
found open, empty, and the remains were once again at the crossroads.

    'What?'
said Straccan, startled. He shivered slightly; it was damp and very
cold in the hall.

    'They
dug him up,' said the reeve patiently. 'They dug him up, they carted
him back up there, and they dumped him by the stone, right where he'd
been in the first place.'

    'Who
did?'

    'Oh,
the villagers, the buggers. I don't know who, I don't know which
actual ones, but I know and they know and Sir Guy knows, and Father
Osric, we all know! They think it was demons killed him, so they
won't let him lie in earth anywhere at all.'

    'What
did you do then?'

'Father
Osric tried to make them see reason. He preached to them out in the
churchyard and they listened like sheep, and then sexton took and
buried him again. And the very next morning, there he was, gone.'

    'Back
at the crossroads?'

    'Yes.
And none the sweeter.'

    'Then
what?'

    'Sir
Guy ordered a party to take what was left into the forest and bury it
somewhere. Father Osric said that wasn't right, but Sir Guy said he'd
had enough, and he didn't want to hear any more about it, ever'

    The
smith was more than willing to give his waiting customer the creeps
while he dealt with the grey horse's shoe. With a dreadful relish, he
described the corpse, the mutiliations in detail, and speculated
righteously on the probable sinful causes of the stranger's ghastly
end.

    'I
elped carry im down to the stable,' he said. 'All the bits. It was
orrible. I seen dead men a-plenty, but never such a mess as that.' 'I
suppose you have trouble with wolves every year, so near to the
forest,' said Bane.

    'Wolves?
Well, now and then, if winter's ard. Then the lord sends is unters
out. Goes imself sometimes, if e feels like it. Five shillin fer a
wolf, you know, that's what the king pays! Five ole shillin! But that
wasn't wolves. I seen what they do. I seen what they leave of sheep,
and once when I was a boy they got an old woman. What they do ain't
the same. There's demons in the forest!' He looked hard at Bane to
see if he was convinced. Bane looked suitably concerned. He paid the
smith and went and sat on a