The Crowfield Curse by Pat Walsh

Author:Pat Walsh [Walsh, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2011-11-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

The track left the trees and crested a low hill overlooking Weforde village and its three huge fields. They spread across the valley floor, the smaller individual strips showing as patches of green and brown. The village was a scatter of thatched buildings set squarely in their crofts on either side of the main village street. At the far end of the village, beyond the large square green with its duck pond and pinfold, stood Sir Robert de Tovei’s stone manor house, with the newly built stone church beside it.

“Where does the Old Red Man live?” William asked, lifting the hob down from his shoulders.

The hob looked away and it was several moments before he answered. “In the house of the woman with the white crow, but I do not know where that is.”

William stared at him in astonishment. “He lives in Dame Alys’s house?”

The hob nodded.

“Why didn’t you mention this before?” William asked, an uneasy feeling prickling across the back of his neck. There was something not quite right here, but he could not put his finger on what it was. “Surely that means Dame Alys knows about the angel? The hob must have told her, if only to explain what happened to his tail.”

The hob, keeping his back turned, just shrugged. Again, William had the distinct feeling that there was something the hob was not telling him about Dame Alys.

“What does it matter?” Shadlok said with a frown. His patience, what little there was of it, was wearing very thin indeed.

“She has no love for the monks at Crowfield,” William said slowly, “so why, if she knew they’d buried the angel’s body in the wood, didn’t she tell anyone? She must have known what trouble it would have caused for them. Why did she keep their secret when she hates them so much? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Then stop wasting time worrying about it,” Shadlok said. “Ask her for yourself when we find her.”

William looked at the two fays and a problem presented itself. Shadlok looked passably human, but the hob would not fool anybody.

“We can’t risk anyone seeing you,” he said to the hob.

“They will only see me if they have the Sight,” the hob said, “and very few humans do.”

“Even so, it’s not worth taking the chance,” William said.

“Then they will not see him,” Shadlok said.

William watched in disbelief as the air around the hob shimmered and the hob faded away.

“What have you done with him?” he asked in alarm.

“I am still here,” the hob said.

William reached down and felt the hob, still standing where he had last seen him, as warm and solid as ever.

“Satisfied?” Shadlok asked, with a trace of sarcasm.

William nodded. To see such magic so effortlessly performed left him feeling breathless and a little fearful.

They followed the track as it curved down from the hill and cut across the West Field. In some of the strips, the rise and fall of furrows and ridges were showing the first green haze of winter wheat.

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