The Devil's Acolyte (2002) Read Online Free PDF

he stopped thieving, he could be maimed, just as Peter was. Augerus had hinted as much, pointing to Peter and asking whether Gerard wanted to look like him. That was the alternative to continuing
his stealing, Augerus meant, and the casual brutality of the threat left Gerard feeling sick.
    Now, with Peter warning him to stop, he felt as though everyone knew about his stealing.
    Earlier on that same grey and overcast Tuesday, Hamelin had been working in the cold mizzle. Groaning, he slowly stood upright and stared out over the moors with the exhausted
gloom of a broken man.
    ‘You all right, Hamelin?’
    ‘Christ’s Ballocks!’ he murmured, leaning on his old spade. ‘How could a man be well in this, Hal?’ His tongue reached up to the sore lump in his gum. It was
painful, hot to the touch, and he couldn’t speak too loudly because the swelling hurt like a cudgel-blow with every movement of his jaw.
    ‘Poor bastard!’ Hal, older and, to Hamelin’s eyes as cragged and tough as one of the dwarf oak trees from Wistman’s Wood, dropped his pick and walked to his side.
‘You’d best get a man to pull that tooth. Your whole cheek’s blown up.’
    Hamelin gave a non-committal grunt. Although he was grateful for the sympathy he had no money for treatment.
    The last tooth he’d had pulled had cost nothing; it had been done by another miner, a brawny man with thick, stubby fingers and no sense. He’d grabbed Hamelin’s jaw and jerked
it down, then shoved the large pliers in and squeezed tightly before trying to drag the tooth out. That tooth and the one next to it had both broken off, leaving Hamelin in agony for weeks until
the abscess which had grown beneath had finally burst, flooding his mouth with foulness. The mere memory of that was enough to put Hamelin off the idea of going to another tooth-butcher.
    ‘That barber, Ellis, he’s supposed to be good,’ Hal said after a while.
    This was true, but Ellis was a professional and wanted money in return for his skill, and Hamelin had nothing. Anything he did have, he should save and give to his wife. Emma needed the money
for food, for her and for their children.
    Hal shrugged his shoulders and returned to his tool. ‘You should pay that Ellis a visit when we go to Tavvie for the coining on Thursday.’
    Hamelin nodded slowly. Gazing about him at the scatterings of soil with the leat tumbling down its narrow way in the middle, he felt the desolation of the place sinking into his soul and
infecting him with despair.
    Hamelin was not born and bred on Dartmoor. His father had been a serf who had run away from his master in Dorsetshire and made his way to Exeter, where he had lived for a year and a day without
being captured, thus securing his freedom. Hamelin had been brought up as a poor freeman with no training, for his father couldn’t afford to apprentice him, and yet he had managed to make
himself a small sum of money by hard work. Then his little shop burned to the ground and he lost almost everything. All his spare money was tied up, but he was lucky, so he thought, that at least
he had loaned cash to a local man who was plainly wealthy enough to repay the debt with a good rate of interest. Except he wasn’t. He had gambled the lot away, and then he went to the Abbey,
so the debt couldn’t be enforced.
    That was why Hamelin had hurried to this desolate place. Cold, wet and grim, he had a loathing for it that bordered on the fanatical. He had come here determined to find a rich lode of tin. From
all he had heard in Exeter, it was easy. You walked about until you saw traces of the tin-bearing ore in a riverbed, and then traced the river back upstream until you found the source. You might
have to dig a few times, exploratory little pits designed to see whether you had the main line of the tin, but that was it. It had seemed incredible to Hamelin that everybody didn’t run to
the moors to harvest the wealth that lay beneath the soil.
    But after six