The Crowfield Demon by Pat Walsh

Author:Pat Walsh [Walsh, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

CHAPTER

TWENTY

William peered around the corner of the barn. The yard was deserted. It was late afternoon and the monks were in either the vegetable garden or the cloister. The stonemasons were working in the church.

“There’s nobody about,” William said. “Run!”

The hob scampered across the yard ahead of William, heading for the rubble heap. William pushed aside any lingering feelings of guilt and ran after him. Prior Ardo hadn’t actually forbidden them to search for the statue, so if he and the hob just happened to be near the rubble heap and just happened to see the statue . . .

The mound of broken stones rose like a small white hill in the far corner of the yard. William stared at it and his spirits sank. He didn’t even know what the statue had looked like, so how was he going to find bits of it amongst all this?

A patch of ground beside an elder tree was covered with stone chippings and dust. Beside it was a pile of stones and damaged statues waiting to be smashed into smaller pieces with one of the heavy hammers propped up against the tree. William started to search through the stones and found fragments of several statues: a face with smooth cheeks and wide blue-painted eyes whose nose had been sheared away; two stone hands, pressed together in prayer; part of a foot . . .

“Do you recognize any of these?” he asked, holding them up for the hob to see.

“They are too big,” the hob said. “The holy man was smaller than me.”

For a while, they searched in silence. William was beginning to think they were wasting their time when the hob suddenly saw something.

“There! Look!” the hob said, waving a paw at a stone by William’s foot. It was St. Christopher’s neck and chest, with the remains of the holy child on one shoulder and part of the tree staff at his side.

“The rest of him has to be here somewhere,” William said, hauling the larger pieces of stone aside. The hob watched in a fever of excitement, jigging up and down and chittering. Every now and then, he darted between William’s legs to grab some bit of stone.

“Will you stop getting under my feet!” William said in exasperation after he nearly tripped over the hob. “Just stand over there, out of the way.”

The hob did as he was told with obvious reluctance, but it wasn’t long before he was pointing to stones and telling William where to look next.

William leaned down to lift a large piece of broken tracery from the chancel screen.

“There! There!” the hob gibbered, almost bursting with impatience as he pointed to something William had just uncovered.

William worked the stone free and held it up. It was a statue base with two legs, the hem of a robe, and the lower part of a tree staff. Crudely carved waves curled beneath the saint’s bare feet. William turned the statue over to examine it. If he hadn’t been looking

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