The Devil's Hunt

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‘Brutal, sudden death!’ Father Ambrose, Parson of Iffley church, had proclaimed, ‘Shall be sprung like a trap upon every man living upon the face of God’s earth.’

Piers the plough boy, leaning against a pillar of the parish church, had listened to the sermon half dozing or casting lustful, hot-eyed stares at Edigha, the blacksmith’s daughter. Now, later that same Sunday, Piers was to have his heart’s desire. He’d met flaxen-haired Edigha beside the village well. They’d stolen out of the village, down the beaten track, past the gallows and into the field of ripe corn. Edigha had giggled and pulled at Piers’s hand.

‘I shouldn’t really go!’ she whispered, her blue eyes bright with merriment. ‘Father will expect me!’

‘Your father’s damping the ashes down in his forge,’ Piers retorted, grinning with a display of cracked teeth. ‘Whilst, Edigha my love, the flames in my belly burn hot for you.’ He said the words proudly, repeating what he’d heard the travelling minstrels say to a tavern wench in the Goat’s Head tavern after he’d come from ploughing the previous Monday. Piers’s short but eloquent speech had the desired effect. Edigha giggled again and trotted along beside him. Keeping their heads bowed, they moved through the sea of waving corn. Rabbits and mice, alarmed by their approach, scuttled for shelter, whilst above them wood pigeons fled like darts from the shadow of a hovering hawk. Piers stopped and looked up at them. For some strange reason he recalled Father Ambrose’s words: the hawk hung against the blue sky, motionless, waiting, watching, before its killing plunge. Piers shivered.

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