The Sins of Scrivel

Matthew McConkey

Everyone agreed: Scrivel was a sorry creature.

I knew him, all the servants of the Manor did, as the Old Master’s servant, his final sin, the last withered weed in a garden pruned and shriven. A grey, diminutive fellow, he had a talent for lurking, loitering, and skulking, as well as the various other unsavory disciplines that the Old Master cultivated in his folk. Dogs and other amiable creatures fell silent and shrank away at his passing.

I made the mistake of pitying him, in the beginning. When all others fled after the Old Master’s death, only Scrivel remained behind. He was huddled, ragged, beneath the stairs when they found him and dragged him before Master Twofour for judgement—it was me that cried out: “Mercy! Mercy, Master, he’s an old man with barely a shiver of life left to him. Don’t turn him out to spend his last days cold.”

Twofour laughed. “Greta and her pets—the collection grows! Well, I’m not eager for more killing today. Let the woman have him, if she can keep him.” He fixed me with that stare, half quirked-eyebrow jocularity, half hard intensity. “Keep him well, Greta. I won’t have any part of this place wavering back to its Old Master’s ways.”

Oh Twofour! Such a noble fellow. I took on that responsibility with a gravity that ever provoked his bright, wide smile. Perhaps he recalled my own rescue from the sinful ways of the Low Arts and smiled to see me working the same on Scrivel. I brought my new ward to the washhouse and bade him bathe while I sorted new clothes for him. I sent him three times to the bath before he was clean to my satisfaction, and he never thanked me for the kindness, the soap, nor the velvet livery I found for him, all royal in Twofour’s crimsons. Rather, he gauntly glared at his reflection as I held the mirror for him.

I grant, my Master’s colors did not suit Scrivel well. He was much more a man for thin, dark tatters; the bright merriness of the new raiments washed his skin wan in contrast, and the outfit hung off him, too wide for his ghostly frame. Those long, lank locks of his mostly came away when I brushed them, and he always refused to let me near enough to shave him. Nonetheless, when I squinted at him to consider my handiwork, I found it a near complete transformation. From the foul creature that had cowered before Twofour I had pulled a hawkish, rather skinny, and eminently pitiable man.

If I sinned, then, it was in that fashioning. I made from Scrivel a blurry reflection of a man that might have been. All could see, now, the old, shaky fellow that I had so pitied. And he wore that like a cloak as he tore us all down.

•   •   •

The first sin I never proved was his. But I know it.

It was in the early days, spring still beaming brisk and cool on the Manor. That morning, Twofour had declared the winter’s wild chases and skirmishing finally concluded, and called for a celebratory feast. We house-servants kept busy with preparations all the long day, and we set to, infused with the cheer of our betters. All, that is, but Scrivel, who went about his tasks like a man condemned.

“Wash this pan,” Cook might tell him, or, “fetch more firewood,” and Scrivel would sneer, and slink to the task with glacial slowness. He always needed telling twice before anything could acceptably be considered done, and if he slipped notice he was sure to be found hunkered over a mouse trap in the drafty maze of the high corridors. Perhaps it was foolish that I did not press him, but I considered that what is but a developing willfulness in a boy may be well bred into a man, if he has long gone uncorrected, and Scrivel’s store of years was so great that I quailed to break him of it.

Despite that, I was sure to have him brushed clean and by my side when we stood in the dining hall to watch Twofour speak. My good Master never cut so fine a figure as then, with all the flighty vibrance of youth in his step, and the wisdom and nobility of age in his words. He strode up and down in front of the fire, and caught around him that burning orange light in a passionate corona.

“My friends,” he said, “today all our struggle becomes justified. Today we cast down the last of the Old Master’s wytches and won back his book of the Low Arts, that all men may be kept from those shadowed paths he explored.” He motioned to his men, and Master Harkiss, who rode out with the hounds, stepped forwards, brandishing a book. I am ashamed to say that I looked aside—I had heard the Old Master bound all his books with human skin, and I have no stomach for such things.

“Aye!” Harkiss boomed, “The end of magery, wytching, hexes, and shape-changing. Let the twilight of this foul knowledge warm our feasting tonight as it burns.”

Beside me, Scrivel let out an animal cry, and leapt forwards snarling like a beast to claw at Master Harkiss. One of Twofour’s armsmen grabbed for him, but he slipped aside with goatish nimbleness and scrabbled for the book. Harkiss struck him a gauntleted backhand and he fell, crying plaintively.

“Ho!” Twofour said, “Oh ho! Greta’s pet—now we see his colors. Hand me the book, Harkiss, and I’ll hide it from Greta’s poor lamb, lest he upset the feast.” And he slipped it into his coat, out of sight.

I blushed red as a cardinal’s hat and hurried forwards to help Scrivel to his feet, bowing first to Twofour. “I’m dreadful sorry, Master,” I stumbled, “I’ll keep him better in hand.”

“As well you should,” Twofour said with a chuckle, “he’s not yet old enough to be off apron strings, it seems.” The armsmen and servants laughed with him—I pulled Scrivel away, hoping Twofour had not marked the simmering hatred in those flat, sunken eyes.

For the rest of the night, I confined him under Cook in the low, steamy heat of the kitchen.

“It’s the New Master’s rules now,” I chastised him, “and that means you must let go of your sympathies for the Low Arts, if you hope to stay on.”

“Any who burns a book of the Art is cursed, and twice cursed,” Scrivel muttered. “Any who laughs in the face of the Master’s folk ought be cursed, too.”

My heart cracked a little to see him sullenly nurse the bruise Harkiss had given him. It had been Twofour’s compassion, I recalled, and not his strictures, that drew me out of the grimy wytch’s maid I had once been and set me straight. I brought out a salve and gently daubed it on the rot-brown blossom of bruise on Scrivel’s cheek, though the man hissed and flinched, then I gave him a roll of bread and bade him keep to himself.

I did not trust him to stay in the kitchens, so I set one of Harkiss’ boldest hounds by the door, the only dog that would growl and snap at Scrivel if he should try to pass. The rest of that night I passed serving in the dining hall, put back in good spirits by Twofour’s boundless merriment. The night drew long and warm, and the hall smelled of woodsmoke and wine. It was late when I had eaten in the low kitchen and found my bed, and I fear that I failed in my duties, for I did not keep track of Scrivel.

The next day brought gloomy clouds and a lingering damp chill. Halfway into the afternoon, I was dusting up the grand oaken staircase when I learned that Master Harkiss had been taken ill. I hastened to the kitchens, where Yarrow the dog-boy was at the tables, crying.

“The best hound,” he said, when he could stop sobbing enough to speak, “Master Harkiss’s favourite. He was sprawled out this morning, all black and bloated about the middle.”

A thrill of cold surety rushed over me. I knew at once that my laxity with my aged ward was the cause. With a deep concern that I did not have to feign, I begged Cook to allow me to bring Master Harkiss his luncheon. A salted gruel and chamomile tea was all he had requested, and I stumbled up the uneven staircase to his rooms. Outside the door, I paused, at the muffled sound of voices.

“—nothing whatsoever you can do?” Master Twofour asked. “You’re sure?”

I did not mean to eavesdrop. I was better raised than that. But the reply froze me, hand halfway raised to knock.

“You had better call a wizard than a healer.” I had not heard the voice before. “This has the look of a curse to me. I know of no malady that could be this far advanced in such a short time.”

“You claimed it was food poisoning,” Twofour said.

“That was my initial assessment when you fetched me up this morning,” the healer replied, “but the darkness and swelling has more the look of an advanced infection, as if his gut had rotted overnight. I fear only a counter-magic might save him now.”

“I have no truck with the Low Arts,” Twofour replied severely.

I knocked. There was a building horror within me that drew me towards Master Harkiss in the vain hope that my imaginings might be worse than the reality. The voices within fell silent for a moment, then Twofour called, “Enter.”

I bobbed my head as I entered. Twofour paced up and down before the built-up fire, brow drawn down dark with concern. The other speaker was a meticulously-suited healer who hovered at the side of the bed, fidgeting with his starched cuffs. Both watched silently as I set the tray down by the bedside—then I had my first sight of Master Harkiss.

He lay on the bed, twitching and sweating feverishly, giving little groans of pain. He lay atop the sheets, and his stomach protruded from his shirt, dreadfully distended and shot with veins of hateful black. I gave a little cry of disgust and fell back—Master Twofour had leapt to my side in a moment, and held me up by the elbow.

“Now, Greta, that is all.” He turned me about and forced a smile. “You must forget what you saw and not trouble yourself with it. Master Harkiss is not well.” He paused, and regarded me. “Bless you—you have gone quite pale. Tell Cook to give you a hearty glass of brandy and take the rest of the afternoon to rest.”

“Thank you, Master,” I said, the words spilling from me. In my haste to leave, I did not notice the block that weighed down one side of Twofour’s jacket until I was out of that room. Then I realized that he still carried the Old Master’s book.

I met Scrivel halfway down the stairs, grinning luridly. His presence set me to an even higher state of excitation.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

He drew out a feather duster from behind his back and shook it at me, sprinkling the air with a thin grey film of grime. “Dusting,” he drawled.

I swept past him and down to the kitchens, plagued with the terrible notion that I was failing my ward.

Master Harkiss died late that night. I was nearly sure of Scrivel’s guilt, and desperate to break that sin from him as Twofour had broken mine from me. Now, I believe the greater calamity of that event was inducing Twofour to keep that book.

•   •   •

For the second sin, I blame myself. I should have thought earlier to roust Scrivel out of his old room in the attic.

The summer had drawn on long and hot, and all Twofour’s household had feasted and drunk itself into a moody somnolence. The grass about the Manor slowly receded from dark summer green to brown to parched skeletal white, and the constant baleful gaze of the sun ate away at my Master’s patience. I kept Scrivel as busy as I could, deciding it was the best way to keep him from dwelling on dark things. Some part of me still believed that I might call brightness back to his watery eyes, or bring about some redemptive change in him by dint of good, hard work.

When harvest-time arrived, the crops were low and shriveled. Cook did her best with the sorry fare she was given, but grumbling nonetheless proliferated among the armsmen. One night, served a particularly withered batch of parsnip, Twofour sprang up from his place at the head of the table.

“This is not to be borne! Someone fetch the cook.”

Cook was called for, and she waddled into the kitchen and dropped a plump curtsy. “M’Lord.”

“Do you see what is on my plate?” Twofour asked, pointing to his parsnips. “Do I treat you so ill that you serve me pigswill?”

Cook was a stolid woman, and she shrugged off his words, used to such exaggeration from the Master. “I only cook what is brought to me, sir. There’s barely a scrap of meat or an onion that’s not shrunken and dry in my whole pantry.”

Twofour glared at her, then at his armsmen. “Is this truly the best our farms can produce? I tell you, there is some black will that sets itself against me in this place. It is as if the very walls of the Manor, even the lands on which it stands, are steeped in their Old Master’s evil.”

He strode from the room without eating, and left all to mutter over his words.

It was hardly the most disquieting event of that lethargic season. One day, as I polished the brass on the staircase, I caught sight of Scrivel from one of the windows, out on the bluff. He sat hunched and cross-legged, as if folded up, all bones and sharp corners. As I watched, he raised a wooden flute to his mouth and played, but no sound came forth. At first, I wondered if he might simply be miming, until I saw a crow alight on the ground next to him in a rush of navy feathers, and watch speculatively. Another crow joined the first, and soon it was as if Scrivel played a silent concert to a rapt audience of carrion-birds.

“Your waif is quite mad, it would seem,” Twofour said from beside me.

I jumped in fright—I had not noticed his approach. There was a time when my Master would have laughed at my flightiness, but the failure of the harvest still weighed on his mind, and his temper was short of late.

“You should take that from him,” he continued, gesturing to the flute. His jaw tightened of determination as he watched the man. “It recalls too much of the Old Master’s ways. I would strip this place of him completely.” 

“I apologize, Master. I will keep him closer to heel.”

“Good,” he said shortly. He paused, and a distracted look came into his eyes. “I thought I had defeated him, Greta. Now I wonder if some dark part of him lingers on still. I wonder what I might have to do to rid us of it.”

“Master?” I prompted. This talk made unease squirm in my belly.

“I have had holy men bestow every known benediction upon this place,” he went on, “and still everything is mired in magery and evil. I swore to my King that I would snuff it out like the hound snuffs out the fox.”

“And you have,” I assured him.

“Not yet, Greta, not yet. But I will trouble myself with that.” He stretched the shadow of a smile across his face. “After all, were you not matted and muddy when we found you, all twined up with the dark fetishes of wytching? Now you are the most diligent servant of the house. You work on your Scrivel, Greta, and I will work on my Manor. I will call back the bright days, by whatever means.” And he walked on to his room, leaving me sick with an odd premonition.

I resolved to take the flute from Scrivel at once, hoping that without the trinkets and trappings of his old life, he might finally be turned from the Low Arts. When I went out onto the windswept bluff, he was gone. I searched vainly for him until at last I ascended the narrow servants’ staircase to the attic. None had ventured into the pitiable man’s little room before—it was barely a loft, and sure to be as sparse of cheer as Scrivel himself. No one answered to my knock, and though the door was stiff it gave way before a harsh shove.

The room was as I expected it—cramped, musty, lit by dusty light from one small dormer window. It contained only a bedroll and a great iron chest, which I opened, hoping to find the flute. As soon as the lid was open a crack, I fell back, assailed by the vilest smell of fetid rot. I steeled myself and levered it up fully.

Inside it was stacked with yellowing pages, all splotched and stained with I dared not guess what. Atop them, sprawled in gristly attitudes of agony, were the broken bodies of mice, all mangled with marks of chewing, and the flute. I slammed the chest shut and called at once for Twofour and his men.

They came up the stairs in a great cacophony of excitement, and Scrivel in their wake. The little man had gone white and was screaming at them to keep away, that they could not take it from him. Master Reubens put a stop to that with a swift fist to his gut, and he writhed about sobbing on the floor to the great amusement of the men.

Twofour wrinkled his nose as I showed him the contents of the chest. “Close it, Greta. You have made a very ill choice this time, I fear. Your Scrivel is a most disgusting and pitiful man. I suppose, having none of his Old Master’s Art, that he clings to these pages as the last vestiges of that power. Have the mice removed, and then bring this up to my room. I would see these writings before I destroy them.”

Scrivel stared after him with that same simmering hatred. I rushed to him with my salves and compassionate words, but his face remained fixed in an angry sneer. I knew it could not long wait until that hatred boiled over.

•   •   •

Winter gripped the Manor tight. That dark month was well suited to Scrivel’s final sin.

I made good on my word to keep him closer to heel; I was forever shadowed by that ghoulish man. Even abed, I made sure he was well watched by the armsmen, and I am sure these precautions frustrated him, for I feared his revenge would follow swift on the heels of the loss of his flute. Our constant companionship was a weight upon me, for no one wished to pause and exchange amiable words while Scrivel was present, leering from some dark corner.

But if I was sourly disposed that winter, I fit in well with the others of the Manor. Frost stiffened us all, then snow packed deep upon that, and flattened the vista of the Manor’s lands to a uniform grey. Only Scrivel, kin to that landscape in clammy blandness, seemed pleased. But even he was disturbed by the scarcity of food.

As for Twofour, my Master was sadly reduced. All through the damp late autumn, when veils of brown rain poured into the old house’s cracks and crannies, he cloistered himself up in his rooms. My suspicion is that he was studying that book, and the pages from Scrivel’s chest. Often, I would see crows alighting at his window, peering curiously in. I made sure to check the mousetraps and dispose of the vermin myself.

I was unable to confirm my suspicions, as Twofour became increasingly reclusive. He took most meals in his rooms and would allow no one in, even to set a fire. When I brought him his tray one blue-dark evening, he answered my knock by opening the door only a crack.

“Leave it,” he commanded.

“Yes, Master.”

His body blocked my view of the room beyond, but his aspect struck me powerfully enough that I did not wish to see any further. His beard was a dark shadow on his face, his cheeks sunken, his clothes stained and unruly. His lips were strangely blistered, and a line of dreadful black ran down his throat. All the youth and ardor was fled from him. He squinted behind me to where Scrivel skulked, a long phantom.

“How did you play the silent flute?” he asked.

Scrivel unfurled that ghostly grin. “Musn’t speak of such things. Good Greta forbids it.”

Twofour scowled at me, and retreated without thought for his meal. I laid the plate down outside his door.

It was not until midwinter that I next saw my Master. In the intervening time, things worsened in the Manor. First Cook, then a good crop of other servants took ill with a strange cough. Black veins started to rise in their necks. I brought my concerns to Master Reubens, and he sent for the healer, who prescribed honey and ginger-root but could do no more. We all withered under the weight of winter.

The usual Midwinter feast meant hard work, and this year the work was harder. Strange, that with fewer provisions the work should only expand. But we were hard pressed to stretch out what little we had into anything festive, and it looked to be another sorry day in a long, tattered string of sorry days.

When Twofour sprang into the hall, all bedecked in red velvet, it seemed that might change. He had that old laughter back in his eyes, and though his merry clothes hung limply from a thinner frame, I seized on the hope that my Master had returned. I served him his meal—a stew that Cook had contrived to conceal the poor quality of the ingredients—and he repaid me with a smile.

“Thank you, Greta,” he said. He leaned closer, and spoke eagerly in lowered tones. “I think I have it. We shall finally shake the shadow of the Low Arts once and for all.”

Those words broke the spell of his presence, and the light in his eyes suddenly seemed not merriment, but madness. I fled to the kitchens to keep a close watch on Scrivel, lest he slip away during the feasting. That once, my vigilance was mistaken, for when the feast was ended, Twofour found us together in the low kitchen.

“Ah!” he said. “Greta, I had hoped I might find your Scrivel. He is the key. Bring him up with me, bring him up.”

“Master,” I protested, “surely that is not wise. I have kept him on a tight leash, but I fear that with any loosening he will be back to his old ways.”

Twofour laughed. “The wolf is only tame when he is by the fireside. But that is good, Greta—that is my hope. He knows the language of the crows and the mice. I have heard him speaking it—it is how he plays the silent flute.”

By now I was quite convinced that my master had lost his reason, but there was little I could do to stop him. He motioned to Scrivel, who gleefully leapt after him, and I was forced to trot on behind them up the stairs to Twofour’s rooms. At the last moment, Scrivel grabbed Twofour and scrambled forwards in a mad dash, slamming the door behind them. I hauled at it, but Scrivel was on the other side, cackling, his madman’s strength too much for me.

I rushed to the stairs and down to the dining hall, where the feast was still underway.

“Master Reubens!” I cried, “Master Reubens, come at once! Scrivel will kill Master Twofour!”

Master Reubens bounded to his feet, and with him a company of armsmen, and the stairs thundered and groaned with our passage up to Twofour’s rooms. When we reached the doors, we recoiled at the sounds within—a horrible symphony of squealing and cawing, undercut with screams of ecstasy from Scrivel. The door was locked, but Master Reubens set his shoulder to it and it gave way in a crash—crows poured out past him and down the hall in a storm of wings, and mice like a great river spilled across the floor.

Scrivel came in their wake, willow-spry, he ducked past the men and fled down the stairs. In one hand he clutched the Old Master’s book of the Low Arts, bound in terrible sagging leather, and in the other his silent flute. One of the men set off after him, but the rest of us waded into the room with Master Reubens through the torrent of creatures.

When at last the floor was clear of them, we saw what remained of Twofour. His shirt was torn to reveal a pattern of black tracery on his ribs, and his mouth, with blistered lips, hung open and leaked vile tar. Everywhere, the mice had gnawed at his flesh to the bone, and crows had pecked at his face until his merry eyes were dark crimson pits.

I screamed and stumbled back from that room. I knew then that I had failed—that hatred I had seen in Scrivel’s eyes had finally destroyed my noble Master, and the fault was all mine. My pity for that vile creature had ruined the man and the Manor, twisted them back into something of the Old Master’s Low Arts.

There was but one consolation. Scrivel had fled on horseback, and the horse, more perceptive than I, bore the same hatred that all hounds and noble creatures had for that morbid man. It had thrown him from his back, and the armsmen found him lying twisted in the snow with a broken neck. At last, they burned the Old Master’s book.

But I could not stand to stay another night in that place, the monument of my Master’s doom. I fled those imposing walls, plagued with memories of black wings and Twofour’s maimed face. I took nothing to remind me of my time there, and set out on the road, in search of fairer climes. I have heard folk tell of Twofour’s folly, and his corruption by the Low Arts. But the tellers always exclude the true villains of the tale: the sorry creature that was Scrivel, and, worst of all, me.

Matthew McConkey is a British student who delved too greedily and too deep into forbidden knowledge, and came out the other side with a ravening thirst for strange and fantastic stories. When not seized by the fey spirit of writing, he enjoys tabletop roleplaying, folk music, and reading—le Guin and Susanna Clarke are some of his favorites.

“The Sins of Scrivel” by Matthew McConkey © 2023