The Book of Pain

By Roger Lawrence

after being cursed to live forever, tom fletcher thinks that's as bad as it could get. when he discovers that he will spend eternity in unspeakable agony, never to sleep or eat, and that madness is denied him, he truly begins to understand the meaning of hopelessness.
after two hundred years of mind numbing pain he discovers that there is a way for him to escape the punishment. that opportunity arrives another century later, but has his mind been so warped by pain and misery that he could ever commit the awful crime required to free himself?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roger Lawrence
• Release date: Jan 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311466495

Roger Lawrence

With eight books already on sale I have three more to be published this year. Old Geezers 3 (undecided subtitle as yet), Progeny of Kongomato, the final in my monster trilogy and Three Hoodies Save the World 3. I've also begun my newest project: an end-of-the-world novel with a topical twist. No details or spoilers since so far, I'm the only writer to have done it.

Book preview

Prologue

In three hundred years of roaming the world not a single day had passed without his thoughts returning to this evil place of the damned. For it was here that a single act of lust had bequeathed him a life of hideous pain and unspeakable torment which would last until the end of time.

Above him the remains of the ancient abbey cowered beneath a gloomy canopy of oaks all softly groaning under the relentless advance of mottled ivy. The once mighty branches were now all but consumed by the parasite’s choking embrace, leaving just a weary congregation of deformed and strangulated sentinels patiently waiting for death in a place long stripped of life. Peering up he frowned at the fading but still hideous griffins snarling their anger at his impudence in returning to the portals of this forsaken tomb.

With a grim smile he recalled his youthful terror and hurried crossing of a feverishly beating heart every time he’d summoned the courage to enter this place, convinced they’d laid bare his soul and spied his unconsciously evil intentions. That notion had never entirely passed and still, after all this time, they retained their menace.

Now further inside his dismal past he stumbled over the rubble strewn ground, shivering as the memories hurtled back, the stench of carbolic, the coppery taste of blood and crackling of flames. He could still smell the smoke and even after all these centuries the livid scorch marks on the ancient oak beams remained as if the great fire had been but days ago.

From the ruined belfry he could almost hear the mournful clanging of the bell, his habitual summons by the Abbot, preceding the ever hateful glares of the monks, as if his very unworthiness were deemed an affront to the god they worshipped and idolised with fanatical zeal. Surely theirs was not the same as his mother’s, all-knowing and benevolent, watching over them with bemused tolerance of their many vices. She had never forced him to beat his own back with a sharp switch, to revel in the blood coursing down torn skin as the monks so often did, groaning, eyes closed in masochistic rapture. And even as sickness claimed her dying body, just as it had his father and five brothers, still she’d asserted his beneficence to the agonising end.

Yet if the chance to divest himself of his hated immortality, and the transference of its evil curse to someone else was finally to be afforded him, then he knew that it would have to be in the place where it had first been given.

‘Given!’

The echo of his derisive snort echoed dully within the barren interior. Even the previously thick walls were now buckling and beneath the ancient lime, rotting wooden spars protruded as if the skeletal remains of a long dead animal. Of the aberrantly caricatured windows, there were no sign. They must have been the first things to go with the ferocious heat of the blaze. It had taken many years before discovering the demonic figure pictured in the largest had not been an awful image of the Devil, but Moses and the result of yet another translational error in the bible, substituting sunbeams from heaven for demonic horns.

Before him only a brighter patch on the cracked floor betrayed the marks of the old pews, their remnants long since rotted or devoured. In fact nothing organic survived save a small portion of the enormous slab of sturdy oak formally supporting the heavily brocaded altar at the end of the nave. All was long gone and good riddance to it, too.

He’d found his way to this awful spot unerringly despite the years and the complete absence of signs or barriers guarding what had to be an important historical relic of the past. Nonetheless he was unsurprised. Perhaps the abbey did not want to be found. Maybe the land on which it malignantly squatted felt guilty. And if so it was right to feel such a responsibility. The moral and physical crimes perpetrated in this filthy place were such that if any god truly existed he would surely have obliterated it long ago with no clue to its former presence left on the face of the planet.

A gentle rustling beneath a pile of windblown leaves several feet away suggested that something did live here. Perhaps some brave rodent had made a home for itself. Or could it be some kind of guardian? He dismissed the idea, but not because it was fanciful. Such evil dangers were, and had been common throughout his long life, but whatever their threat they could no longer frighten or hurt him. His folly was complete and the price for which he had paid dearly. A glance up at what dull, cloudy sky he could see through the near impenetrable foliage suggested about three more hours until dusk. He never used a wristwatch for it simply reminded him of that which he had in abundance: endless time for futile repentance. And repent he had for over six lifetimes of normal humans, among whose number he had long since ceased to include himself.

With a grimace he extracted a small stone lodged inside his shoe. It was almost amusing and something to which he’d never entirely become accustomed. Despite the living, relentless torture of so many years, even something as innocuous as a bee sting, or in this case a small stone piercing his foot was still capable of inflicting pain over and above the onset which had immediately sent him into writhing hysteria for unknown years deep within the bowels of this awful place. Until finally, a low, patient voice in his head whispered that he could spent the next hundred, or thousand years squirming pointlessly if he so chose. It would make no difference. He was to endure this torment until the end of time. Two days later he’d fled this house of hell and never returned until now.

Backing onto a wall, Fletcher slid down, unmindful of the flaking filth pattering his shoulders. It was time to think. He knew sleep was out of the question but perhaps it might possible once more when the decision was made. His eyes closed as his mind cleared and he began to think.

Chapter One

Some called it the Black Death. Others, more enlightened, named it the Bubonic Plague. However such fine distinctions were lost on Little Tom Fletcher. Until the terrible disease crept unnoticed into the village, carried some said later, by wandering tinkers, few had ever heard of the terrible illness which was to cause so much misery and havoc across Europe.

Tom Fletcher was a small child, the sixth son of a poor family scratching an existence from the meagre soil, and paying a heavy tithe for the privilege of using the bovate, a field of approximately fifteen acres, owned by the local abbey. As a result there never seemed enough food for everyone and certainly not for an unwanted son too young to make a valued contribution to the family or its industry. Nevertheless, by his own natural ingenuity and quick intelligence he’d learned enough from local farmers and the few other boys in the village to roam the fens and find food enough of his own. Bright, inquisitive eyes and a ready humour made him a popular figure in the small community where the business of living rarely allowed time for such sentiment as the needs of a puny boy.

High Marten was little more than a hamlet comprising several dozen crude dwellings of clay-daubed reed huts clustered around a shallow but wide river descending from the hills several miles to the north. It probably would have had no name at all were it not for the abbey clinging to the side of a hill half a mile away and sheltered from the sometimes brisk winds behind the stout oaks planted by the monks some thirty years before Tom’s birth.

Contrary to the ancient custom of assuming names reflecting their profession, Tom’s father did not produce arrows. His trade was that of ale maker, a much more useful venture in a village far too small to provide soldiers for a king none had ever seen. An accident with a heavy cask dropped from the back of a wagon in his childhood had left him with a permanent hobble and ill-humour to match. The man was not unkind but a secret loathing of the god who’d burdened him with a profession he hated; coupled to a family he’d never wanted, caused him to seek enduring refuge in drunkenness. As a consequence of this his five sons worked long hard hours in the sometimes barren fields, wresting the barley and hops needed for the ale they produced and at the same time attempting, usually without success, to prevent their father drinking away any profit from their labours. After the meagre harvest had been reaped and stored in the deep covered pit they all ceaselessly drained of winter rain, they could sometimes produce fifty gallons per month if the level of the river maintained itself.

This permanent state of drunkenness had been the cause of constant verbal and sometimes physical abuse at Tom’s inability to add to the wealth of the family business despite his willingness to forage the countryside for anything to help increase their slim resources. For this reason he rarely spent much time at home during the warm months; preferring to wander the local fields seeking diversion with his friends on the rare occasions they were allowed the luxury of play.

Tom’s mother, a thin and permanently tired woman after so many pregnancies throughout her thirty years of life, was never abusive. When she could afford the time she was always ready with a kind word or a damp rag to wipe away the blood which so often accompanies childhood accidents. He loved his mother and secretly Tom was her favourite. His bright smile could light up the dim hovel they all shared, its walls forever covered by soot from the badly built and misaligned chimney and the constant odour of human waste from the cesspit her husband had been promising to replace for more years than she could remember.

Her husband suspected her favouritism and in his drunken states often worsened the treatment of his youngest son, leading to more than one back-handed cuff to the ear which Tom always bore with stoic silence. His brothers, ranging from thirteen to eighteen years, on their return from a long day at the small brewery would usually ignore him, demanding food before falling asleep, often in their clothes as their mother tried, usually in vain to keep the small structure clean.

The only book she had ever owned and kept safe from the grime and grease was an old, finely made but desiccated bible acquired in her youth and from which she would eagerly point out important tracts. Neither she nor anyone else in the family could read, but still remembered the beautiful stories she had been told as a child; from the injunctions of Moses to the essential lessons it carried for everyday life. Tom had never been interested in the bible or its teachings but simply loved to hear her speak, the fatigue dropping away as her eyes lit up at the mention of the god who cared deeply for them all. And who, on the day of their deaths would welcome them into his heavenly abode.

This more or less innocent life came to an end one day just a few months after a short but confusing period following a sore throat which had been hurting without respite for nearly a week. There were other changes to his young body, but ephemera like this were never mentioned within the rowdy household in which he lived. Hair began to sprout in places that it had never been before. He’d more or less come to terms with the change in pitch of his voice and even his father, in one of his more lucid moments, noticed the difference in his son and gleefully informed him that his childhood was nearing its end and soon would have to start pulling his weight. Tom doubted he could pull any weight since his muscles hurt in strange ways and even stranger places.

Upon running fearfully to his mother she gently told him that he was growing and that his pains could safely be ignored. But for the first time in his life her voice was unsteady. Tom had an idea that she was lying to him. There was no obvious proof of this but odd things had been occurring in the village of late, and small snippets of frightening news seeping into their small community. It was told that people were becoming ill. But then people were always becoming ill. Hardly a week passed past without someone in the area succumbing to any one of a wide variety of afflictions. Sometimes the monks would come to help, although what assistance they gave was debatable since it mostly consisted of praying to God and forcing the ill to drink revolting potions or wear even more revolting poultices. But this time it was different.

A few days before, the strange atmosphere had been broken by a group of ragged tinkers wandering into the village. Usually such visits were a cause for celebration. Strangers always brought items to be bought or bartered for. And in the case of Tom’s family it meant plenty of new thirsts to quench, affording some precious coins to sustain them through the long winter months. It had not rained for two weeks so that people and even small carts could traverse the rutted quagmire which held High Marten in isolation for so much of the year. These random visits from outsiders also brought something even more important. It brought news; sometimes of distant wars. But often, and more importantly, of events occurring nearby, sometimes as close as a week’s travel; an incredible distance of which Tom could barely conceive.

However this time, the tinkers’ chatter was of but one thing. A great sickness was sweeping the land. Nobody knew from where it came but people were dying in droves. Some said it was God’s wrath, while others scoffed that it could just as easily have been from birds dropping the deadly sickness as they flew past. After the initial thrill of horror, especially since none of them seemed to have the disease, Tom’s father was happy. There was nothing more guaranteed to make people gulp ale than bad news, and for the first time in months he actually stopped drinking himself and worked even harder to prepare the new batch of heady brew.

It was a week after the departure of the tinkers when ominous wailings were first heard in the middle of the night. For a couple of days the normally busy market place had been unusually quiet. Even those turning up to sell or barter their wares seemed silent and listless. Not a single minstrel had ventured out to earn a farthing. Some of those who had braved the chill coughed with an alarming severity, though winter colds were common enough and few people paid them much heed at first. Yet these symptoms worsened and a few days later became great hacking coughs producing blood from the mouths of those afflicted. Still people did nothing but keep a distance from those stricken for none wanted to be exiled from the village and told to come back only when they were well, as was the custom. But even more curiously, for the first time the monks, many of whom attended the twice weekly market, would not be persuaded to attend the sickly. The monks had never been particularly friendly being learned and always slightly superior in their attitude to the ignorant peasants surrounding them, but they, like the tinkers, usually had a few pieces of copper or silver to spend.

A day later his father became even more morose than usual. Returning home early one day he complained of a stiffening in his arms and legs. He had no strength and declared his intention of lying down until he felt well once more. This rest also required the house to be kept dark since the light hurt his eyes; something Tom’s mother was loathe to do since only the windows allowed the combined smell of their bodies to dissipate. The next day, two of his brothers, perhaps as a way of escaping the back breaking work, had similarly complained.

By the third day the house was full of groaning, swearing people. Now his entire family were all suffering the same condition. Their home had never been large but, if possible seemed to have shrunk giving them barely enough room to move. But worse than that, his father’s arms were beginning to exhibit lumps. They had also appeared on and between his legs, or so he claimed, but Tom felt no desire to see them and fled as his father made to disrobe. On his return the next morning after a comfortable night in the empty brewery, the house was a nightmare. Being too weak to stand, his family had taken to urinating in the chamber pot. That in itself was not unusual since it was Tom’s daily task to take the chipped clay dish outside and empty it. On this day what came out he flung away in disgust for it was red. It almost seemed like blood. He could stand it no longer and despite the weak threats of his family he fled once more, sleeping that night in a field lest one of them come looking for him, and not returning until the next morning when everything would surely be well.

All was not well. After taking a deep breath to ward of the disgusting stench emanating from behind the sack curtains, Tom entered the house to a scene of hell just as his mother had so happily described. All about him were bodies. They had forsworn their beds and now similarly reeked of urine, bodily waste and blood which seemed to have been sprayed over the walls by a madman. His family were alive, but only just. All his brothers had flung off their clothes despite the customary modesty prevailing in their community. Now instead of hard lumps of skin everyone, including his father, was covered in large black spots, some actually bleeding. And, for the first time in years he cried in alarm as he saw his mother lying, gently groaning in the corner. He could see no spots because she had retained her clothes yet Tom could see that she was in a bad way. Her beautiful but mottled face dripped perspiration, pooling and soaking her clothing. She seemed barely capable of rising and beckoned Tom over with a frail hand.

They were all going to die, she told him in a whisper. She didn’t know why but was sure of it. With a fading voice she told Tom to go into the fens and hide. He knew how to find his own food so would not starve. But with firmness she mustered from deep reserves ordered him not to go to the next village a short three days walk away. If they did not know already they very soon would that the village was full of sickness. If he went there they would probably kill him.

He was to wait for two weeks and then go to the Abbey. God, in the more human form of the monks would preserve him. She muttered more instructions before her strength deserted her. Tom did not want to leave the only person he’d ever loved, but she shoved him away with palsied hands, repeating her orders. If he loved her he would do as he was bid. Crying openly he left the house and its stench and groans of pain. Once he turned back but then remembered her words. Never in his life had he disobeyed her and reluctantly turned to the fens, not going through the deathly silent village, but to the place he loved.

He never saw any of his family again.

Chapter Two

Tom spent the next three weeks cowering in the fens several miles from the village. He did not starve for he knew exactly where the small creatures slept the long winter away, and catching careless rabbits was a skill he’d learned years before. He constantly thought about returning home, the image of his mother painfully firmly engraved into his mind. But he had promised and as badly as he wanted to see her he could not go against his word.

During the second week a great cloud of thick smoke enveloped the countryside for miles around. At first he thought he might be burned alive but there was enough water to protect him and within a few days it was gone. It only occurred to him even more days later that the smoke had originated from the direction of High Marten. One of the hovels had probably burned down and set fire to another close to it, he reassured himself. Soon it would be safe to go home. His family were probably well and missing him. The monks could always be relied on to take care of the sick, if only to maintain the exorbitant rents they charged; something his father never ceased carping about. He would wait for another week then he would return and all would be well. His life would be just the same as it had been before.

The time spent away from home had been good for him for he’d eaten well and finally his throat stopped hurting. Even his muscles had taken pity of him, or he’d become so used to his aches and pains that he barely felt them anymore. In fact he was now healthier than he’d ever been in his life. It might have been a trick but he even felt taller.

His timekeeping was always uncannily accurate despite the lack of a time piece. Indeed such magical things were the preserve of the monks. Yet his awareness of it was always with him. The birds awoke at more or less the same hour each day and roosted just as punctually in the evening. It was mid morning towards the end of the third week when he decided to go home. Time for the new batch of foul smelling sludge to begin its transformation into money earning ale, and despite his father’s constant complaints about his uselessness there would be work for him to do. Tom had enjoyed his long rest and were it not for the constant worries about his family, despite his father’s incessant browbeating and the blows of his brothers as they wolfed their meagre meals - he missed his mother.

A low sun struggled to rise above the horizon and a smell of snow wafted in the air for the first time as he prepared to leave. Yet the weather had been kind and the last few weeks sleeping in a hayrick covered with the remnants of a ships’ sail, or so the farmer had claimed, had been comfortable. The journey would take but a couple of hours and he quickly neared the glassily sluggish river. It was as he approached the village, happy to be back and eagerly awaiting the smile of his mother, when he stiffened and instinctively threw himself into a ditch at the side of the rough track. In its depths the dark fan of horsetail fern concealed him but at a price. His most hated job was of collecting its rough strands for scouring the great vats in the brewery. Now those same ferns cruelly gouged his neck as he quivered.

There was no obvious cause for his sudden fear. He’d seen and heard nothing, though the time in the stillness of the fields had accentuated his already keen senses. He ordered himself to wait and look before standing. Carefully, he parted the dark strands, ignoring the cloying smell he so hated. Still he saw nothing. No lurking vagabonds or soldiers were in sight. He’d never actually seen a soldier even though tinkers’ tales told of them being twice the height of a man and wielding swords sharp enough to cut cows in half. Cursing himself for his foolishness he began to rise but in an instant dropped once more, covering his mouth to prevent the sneeze as something wet and foul flew into his nose. After a moment of silent gagging, he looked again. Still nothing. What was happening? But then he realised what had alerted him. It was the stench; a rank odour of putrefaction. During his short life he’d often found the occasional dead animal in the woods. Indeed he’d taken such poor creatures home for his grateful mother to cook. Though a few times the animal had been dead too long and had to be buried far away from the house. This was what he smelt now, rotting meat. If he had been older he would have known just what kind of rotting meat. All he knew was that something had died – something big.

Carefully he rose and after scouting the track once more, set off keeping to the side of the fields, his sure feet avoiding the worst of the scattered stones and thorny branches as he ran. It was in this manner that he arrived, over the final small hill and around the corner of the large copse, its middle aged oaks, stripped bare for the coming winter. He had finally come home.

Every day of his life, there had always been someone in sight. Even on Sundays when the monks enforced their Sabbath with sometimes painful injunctions not to work. Yet there had always been someone to talk to, or avoid. Today not a single soul was to be seen. Not the delighted chatter of small children playing in the stream, or the constant chatting of the women as they smashed their clothes against the rocks to clean them. Tom looked on, puzzled. As he rounded the final corner his eyes opened wide in horror. The village was gone.

Or rather the village was still there but entirely destroyed. Not a single dwelling remained standing. The earthen bricks so proudly made by the local artisans lay in jumbled heaps all over the square. The straw and reeds used for the roofs, blackened and destroyed. But the smell, it was worse. Blindly he ran, tears streaming from his eyes as he called for his mother. He tripped once, then again over the rubble strewn about what had once been his world. For perhaps a hundred paces he ran his mind blank save the urge to find his mother. Then he was home. He knew it to be so because of the withered ash tree upon which he’d once carved his mark. Still no sound permeated the stillness. Even the birds had forsaken the village and its destruction.

There was his house. Or what was left of it. Part of the door surround had escaped the awful destruction visited on the only home he’d ever known. There, the rough wooden planks his father had once fixed together in a rare bout of sobriety had been flung to its side, and on its face a large red X. Whether it was paint or blood Tom neither knew nor cared to investigate. It hardly seemed to matter. The rest of the hovel was completely destroyed; fire scorched timbers and bricks all that remained. In the corner of what must have been the large and only bedroom he spotted something protruding from the ash and frosty air drifting solemnly over the floor. He approached it carefully. It seemed to be a stick, bleached white and snapped in half leaving just starkly sharp edges. Close to it now he peered down, carefully parting the mist and vile smelling cinders. In an instant he turned, screaming at the top of his small lungs as he sought to escape the remains of his house and the eyeless skulls of his entire family.

Chapter Three

‘What do you want, verminous boy?’

With the horror of his dead family in his eyes, Tom fled the remains of the village and sought solace in the only place he knew. For days he cowered, skulking below an overgrown hawthorn bush for protection. There was no desire to eat for every time the image of his family returned he vomited until bile scoured his throat raw. He had never particularly loved his father or brothers but they were all he knew, and now they were gone. The image of his mother came often to him; her gentle eyes, her wide mouth always a just moment from laughter. He would never see her again and the notion plunged him into a pit of misery from which he never thought to escape.

For almost two days lethargy robbed him of energy or the will to do anything but cry until finally the pangs of his rumbling stomach forced him to stone a wounded rabbit limping carelessly past his makeshift shelter. He ate it raw, not even disgusted by the sickly smell from its corpse. Nature also took that opportunity to remind him of what season it was and within moments the heavens opened and it rained. Not the gentle patter of timid drops on the few remaining leaves but great glutinous boulders of icy water pounding his unprotected head, reducing him to a shivering wreck curled into a small ball within the shallow trench under the spiky bush. It continued to rain for another day and night plunging him even deeper into misery until it finally stopped, abruptly as if by some unseen demon compounding its torment with a sudden plunge in temperature. Within hours the ground turned solid and by the next day a light pattering of snow degenerated into a full scale blizzard. By this time Tom had retreated to his hideout, a rough hole burrowed by a long absent boar. Inside he threw the rough sail from the field over his shivering body, the images he’d left behind no less agonising now, so many days later. The next morning, colder than he’d even been in his short life, he realised that if he was not to join his family then he would have to move. A listless idea forced him to his feet. Since the village was gone, then surely the farmer would not mind him sheltering in his barn.

He waited until dark then crept furtively, eyes and ears constantly on the alert for someone, anyone. Perhaps the fire and its destruction had been natural - God’s way of cleansing the ground. This was something of which his mother would have approved. Then again, it might have been soldiers, their enormous swords crashing down from equally huge horses, sent by the king, perhaps angered by the death and destruction. Though Tom gave this notion little credence since he’d never seen a soldier, and any king or queen had carefully stayed away from his village.

Without too much surprise he discovered the only barn in the village, and all its animals had also been razed. By now Tom barely raised a sigh at the destruction and charred remains of the farm animals. After so many days there was little salvageable meat left so he wandered off in search of other shelter. This was when he finally remembered the Abbey. Perhaps they would take him in. They were people of God and so surely they must do His bidding. With nothing else to lose he decided to try.

‘Please, Father.’ Well aware of his place in the order of life, if he appeared timid they might have mercy on him. If it failed then he knew not what he would do. Already his vision had begun to blur from hunger and his painfully constricted throat croaked after so much time without speaking.

‘Please Father,’ he entreated to the portly monk who finally appeared at his fifth knock of the hideous bronze monster hanging from a rope on the back door of the abbey. He had not wanted to do this. Even his young mind told him that there were things here he shouldn’t see, and perhaps didn’t want to know. ‘I’m the only one left from the village, Father. I’m hungry and could I have some food, please? I’ll work for it. Look, I’m strong.’ He raised a scrawny arm to display his bicep. A raucous laugh greeted his demonstration of strength.

‘You? We have more meat on the abbey’s rats. What could you do for us?’ The man’s voice carried a slight inflection. Perhaps he originated from another village, although Tom gave it little credence; his hunger was far too advanced for such fancies. With his great gut pressing tightly against a hessian tunic, the monk, perhaps in his fifties and a miraculously ancient age in those times, laughed uproariously. His juddering vibrations caused the cowl to fall from the back of his head, revealing a gleaming dome surrounded by a tiny fringe of red hair.

‘How do we know you do not carry the sickness?’ The man’s lazy smile vanished, replaced just as quickly by a furious snarl. With amazing speed he leaned forward, his face quivering less than a hair’s breadth from a cowering Tom, but careful not to touch the animal he obviously considered the small boy to be. His breath reeked of some herb, and ale. Tom remembered that particular odour very well. The recollection brought tears to his eyes.

‘If you still live in two weeks you may come back. We might find something for you to do.’ With a burp and a long flatulent bellow the monk turned, slamming the heavy wooden door shut, leaving Tom sinking slowly to his knees. For an unknown time he knelt, his misery complete. He had nowhere to go and no one to turn for sanctuary. Even for a boy used to hardship, this was a new and terrifying feeling. His life, as he understood it seemed destined to be very short. Now forcibly acclimatised to the notion of death he huddled, waiting for it to come, almost welcoming the idea. At least he might see his mother once more.

Finally the wind and flecks of snow swirling about his head and the creeping cold in his knees forced him to stand. Unbidden, a new emotion began to grow within and he marvelled at the power and strange warmth it afforded him. For the first time since his family’s awful death Tom felt the embers of anger begin to flare. A previously un-experienced stirring in his young chest forced him to a decision. He determined there and then that he would survive.

After glaring once more at the locked door he moved away. At first he started back along the path he had come until, from another direction, behind a stand of evergreens a short distance from the abbey, he was attracted by a raucous noise. Surely they were slaughtering people down there. From the high pitched squeals of pure agony, it seemed so. Natural curiosity overcame his fear since there seemed little point in remaining at the entrance to the abbey. Beyond it lay heat and food, but not yet. He set off, hobbling as his joints slowly warmed up, to meet the creatures with whom he was to become intimately accustomed for the next fifteen years.

Tom had little experience of pigs. Of course he had seen some grovelling in the muck and filth, both of which they seemed to use bedding and sustenance. He was soon to learn that they were not only intelligent but also vindictive.

There in a fenced pen he discovered twenty of these pink, fat laden creatures wallowing in their own excrement, their raucous peals not of pain but excitement and eagerness to devour the food being thrown at them by a miserable and cursing monk. Protected only by a wet and threadbare tunic the young man shook miserably beneath the sleety rain alternating with the snow. After one last furious tirade at the uncaring animals the man and his two wooden pales were gone, swigging deeply from the leather bottle he plucked from a rope sash. Hiding behind a bush Tom watched fascinated at the surge of porcine fury descending on the swill in a voracious tide.

Remembering his decision, Tom picked up a heavy switch and leapt nimbly amongst them, avoiding the snapping of furious teeth he swatted left and right provoking even more noise from the surprised and angry pigs as he flung handfuls of what seemed to be cabbage leaves, rotting turnips and mildewed potatoes back over the fence. At one stage it seemed as if the enraged animals would corner and eat him. Indeed the tusks of the largest pig, razor sharp and gleaming brightly in the light, jutted perilously close to his groin. But with a cry of defiance, Tom jumped over the fence and with the frenzied squeals of the animals diminishing, dragged his haul of food away to the fens and a fire that a, presumably dead, friend had once taught him to build regardless of any weather conditions - something that in his misery of the past days he had completely forgotten to do.

Much later in the sanctuary of the wild boar’s cave Tom leant back, eyes stinging from the smoke but caring little as his stomach was full for the first time in days. The vegetables had indeed been almost rotten but rare words of advice from his father served him well. The open fire rid the putrid vegetables of all their evil, and even though they had tasted awful, enough of the vegetables remained to fill his stomach and still the raging hunger.

It was in this fashion that he spent the next two weeks. He was always careful not to be seen as he made his forays into the filthy pen and during that time saw not a living person save the miserable monk whose sole job it seemed was to feed and abuse the screeching, insatiable animals. Though there was one fewer now. Three days after he began foraging, the sour faced returned, not with a bucket but a rope and large knife. After binding the legs of one indignant porker he hauled it off. Moments after the great door slammed shut muffled screams of the poor animal ceased abruptly, but far from pitying the creature, Tom’s mouth watered at the mental image of the fresh meat. In fact he’d considered doing the same to one of the piglets, but luckily common sense prevailed. What were a few days of full stomach in comparison to furious rejection and possible injury from the monks?

He supplemented his meagre diet with the occasional rabbit and on one occasion a large rat speared with a sharpened hawthorn branch. His family was dead and he was sure God wouldn’t mind since according to his mother, Jesus had often partaken of slaughtered animals so it stood to reason that a rat would have numbered amongst them at some point.

On the appointed day, after quickly washing in a freezing stream, he presented himself at the rear door of the abbey. He was cold, but his relatively varied diet had retained his health and he no longer looked the miserable figure he’d been before. Hopefully this would impress the monk enough to allow him entry. Three knocks to the door produced no effect but remembering his decision to live at all cost, he picked up the hideous bronze creature he was later to discover a gargoyle, and prepared to announce himself once more. Without warning the door flew open and the metal creature torn from his fingers. There was the monk. His face, in complete contrast to the pig keeper, seemed even fatter than before. Black beady eyes glared malevolently at Tom, feverishly attempting not to cower.

‘Oh, ‘tis you.’ He examined Tom standing tall but barely level with the enormous man’s girdle. With a frown he bent forward to examine him perhaps searching for the black sores displayed by his family, and apparently satisfied that this wretch was not the carrier of whatever had seen off the village stood once more. ‘You may come in. We have things for you to do. You will work off all the free food of which you have partaken.’ Tom stepped back aghast.

‘Didst thou imagine you could eat all the swine food without us knowing? Well we, and Him above,’ a thick greasy finger jutted upwards, ‘see and know everything. Get in here.’ The door opened wider and with a vicious slap to the back of his head, Tom entered his new home, the one he would not leave for over forty years.

Chapter Four

For the rest of his life, no matter how long that lasted, Tom would remember the stinking aroma of pigs and their swill. It seemed to permeate his every pore. Even his hair reeked of its slightly sweet and all-pervading stench.

Every day he would rise before dawn, even in the summer and that was usually about four thirty; not that Tom was aware of the time. All he knew was that if the pigs weren’t fed and content when the sun peered above the horizon, and the worst of the excrement removed then a sharp blow would be the result; usually administered by Father Emmanuel.

The obese monk revelled in his work. Shouting, thundering about the dark corridors and striking every younger member of the abbey, sometimes simply for the offense of straying too close. Whether he went about his religious duties with the same piety, Tom did not discover for years. Yet his penchant for pain was something Tom learnt immediately upon his admittance to the abbey. If the huge piles of filthy pans were not gleaming when the man finally rolled out of bed; had the long draughty corridors between the cells been swept, or even if the rank and often disgusting tunics worn by the thirty or so monks not removed to the wash room to be scrubbed until his fingers bled, then all Tom knew was a kick or heavy punch to the kidneys.

Yet at times, especially before Tom had reached his approximately tenth birthday, the revolting man would sometimes be nice to him. A gentle tousle of the hair or a friendly pat on his backside. At first Tom delighted in these displays of, if not affection, then at least a softening of his cruelty. However, one night about three months after beginning his slavery, for that’s what it was, the monk staggered drunkenly into the washroom. Daylight had long fled as Tom laboured with the heavy hessian tunics, their combined smells of ale and urine causing him to gag. Unfortunately the monk had been too tall for the small doorway as his head connected smartly with the low frame. He burped loudly and after a slurred demand as to Tom’s welfare, prepared to come closer. For the first time in his life Tom felt uneasy in a way he could not understand. There was something about those small black eyes which disturbed him. By then he was accustomed to the constant abuse and physical violence, but never before had he seen that particular look in another’s eyes. Or perhaps he had. Occasionally, if his father had not drunk himself to the point of unconsciousness, the children would sometimes be ushered from the house after a similar gleam directed towards his mother.

Luckily, the monk had consumed even more ale or wine, or both than usual, and after slipping in a pool of water, dripped by Tom’s nervous hands, lurched backwards and after smacking his head sharply against the enormous metal tub, fell noisily onto his back. At first Tom cringed, preparing himself for God’s torment after the other monks discovered the corpse of Father Emmanuel. Was it a sin to drop water? He would surely find out. But moments later a deep congested snore from the man caused him to retch in relief. With a speed born of terror, Tom finished the laundry and cleared out of the room in ten minutes. He never heard any more of the matter.

Tom’s duties were not just confined to the abbey. Apart from the desolate remains of the village the monks still retained an enormous parcel of farmland. Depending on the season, Tom’s other job was to work there. Any farmers within the abbey’s sphere of