The priest and the gardener squinted at the side of the Abbey. Blood and leaves and bits of muck clung to the side of the usually white walls, the latter dripping down in slow, sloppy chunks.

"How is it gettin' in?" Father Bele put his forehead in his hands and began to knead the skin.

"Do not ask me, good man," he replied in a low voice, "else I would plug whatever hole the damned thing slithered in from and cease his entries altogether." Father Bele was not, in his most humble of opinions, feeling very well. The greyhound he had spotted over the recent months, leering from betwixt the trees and spying from the shadows, was relentless in its desire to drive him mad. Remnants of its kills had decorated the grounds for weeks now, leaving behind a trail of ever-growing rot where it went, a trail he and the gardener, Rodebret Stevonsen, were solely responsible for.

The worst part of the dog's interference was that Father Bele could not kill the source. It was a wild dog, unfettered by chains or collars, but still one of Lord Van Wyk's hunting companions. Essentially, the dog was as good as immortal - nothing short of disease would be permitted to end the beast's life. Essentially, the priest thought without humor, he was not permitted a moment of peace for the rest of his hopefully short life.

"Well," the gardener said gruffly, rubbing the stubble that had begun to grow on his chin and neck, "shoot me dead. The bastard's never goin' a leave." He walked up to the wall afflicted with filth and bent down to squint at the damage. Reaching a finger out, he flicked away a clot of what looked like blood and dirt.

Father Bele heaved another sigh and shook his head.

"Let us investigate the rest of the damage," he said in response to the look the gardener gave him. The gardener stood up and smacked his hand against his legs.

"I tell you," he confided in the priest, as they started their trek around the estate, "I'm not givin' up leave for me family, to allow somethin' so crude its way with the grounds." He lifted his chin and made a half-growl in his throat, as though he was challenging the absent dog.

"Calm yourself, Stevonsen. We'll be rid of it yet, no sense in throwing yourself blindly in harm's way." The gardener made a noncommittal grunt and stepped on a heavy branch that the frost had broken.

Their gazes followed the branch, which, leaning as it did against its separated tree, made a crude ramp from the ground to a height nearly as tall as the roof.

"Oh, we can't have that," the priest moaned, and he struggled to tug the branch out of the way. As high as it went, the tree guaranteed that somebody in the window above could easily slip out and make their way to the ground below. Only one such person lived the room the window lead to, and Father Bele certainly did not trust the inhabitant enough to loose him so easily upon Kelfordshire.

Having made little effect on the branch, the priest threw a pleading look the gardner's way, and Rodebret shuffled forward, soon moving the branch on its knotted side, towards the base of the house. Once this was done, they rested for a moment, the effort hard enough to dispel the cold and make them breathless and hot.

They continued around the castle, but found no more remains or evidence of the dog. The path leading to the front gate revealed peculiar scratches and droppings, but those were scarce, and hardly worth another look. Pulling his habit uselessly around his frail body, Father Bele shivered miserably. His head throbbed, the echoing clacks and crashes of the sculptor's tools sending fresh waves of pain through him.

Oh, how the priest would have loved to rid the once-beautiful Estate of both the vile dog, and that most disgusting sculptor! He grit his teeth together and stepped around a chisel, carelessly thrown against the dirt. The closer he and the gardener invariably drew to the sculptor, in their roundabout attempt to scour the Estate, the more the priest's head swelled, until he was quite certain it would burst apart.

The gardener was the first to round the corner and spy Severin, for which the priest was very grateful. He would need the extra second out of view to calm himself; it would do no good to fuel the fires of antagonism the sculptor seemed to enjoy so much when speaking with him.

"Ah, Mr. Stevonsen, but what a pleasure!"

"Yeah, alright. We don't mean to bother ya, just looking around for that old dog."

"Oh, dear me. I haven't seen the likes of it, not yet. I am most envious, I admit!" The priest, from his position behind a hedge, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. The sculptor insisted on speaking so forcibly in a manner that was wholly unlike how anyone else did, he ensured his status of being a foreigner, as though this made him unique or better than those around him. His flowery words only grated on the priest's ears, but, the sculptor was a guest, and a favoured one at that, so he really had no other choice.

He stepped out from around the hedge, and Severin opened his mouth to reveal his sharp, crooked teeth.

"Bele! I thought our friend here was alone - I'm glad to be surprised!" Father Bele merely scowled - these airs of pleasure were nothing more, as nearly fifty years of experience had taught him. Soon, these exclamations of joy would turn to horrid utterances of anger and hatred, and to expect otherwise would be foolish. It annoyed him that the sculptor pretended at all.

"Enough of that," he interrupted, pressing his knuckles under his arms, digging the bones into his upper ribs. He would have bruises later, but bruises were better than whatever punishment insulting the Lord's most prized guest would buy. "Have you seen any signs of this odious dog?" The sculptor raised his eyebrows and cocked his head to the side.

"To that, I repeat: a firm and regretful no." He turned around and peered at the shapeless lump of stone and clay before him. "I should like to, mind you, but the darling creature has his sights set on someone else."

"Come off it," Rodebret interrupted, crossing his thick arms and frowning, "what's the meanin' of that?" The priest dug his knuckles further against his flesh and thought to himself, Likely nothing! He enjoys firing up the imagination and prodding at the curiosity of sane people. Of course, he would have to keep this to himself, even of he and the gardener were in total privacy. Lord Van Wyk had a peculiar and uncanny knack for detecting opinions and crushing them under his mighty fist. It pained him to see the gardener engage the infuriating sculptor, but Rodebret Stevonsen was a rather new addition to the Estate, and had only met the sculptor for the first time after Caelony's birthday.

He would have to learn, and if the priest could put faith in anything at all, it was most definitely that the sculptor would be back, and would provide countless more examples of being a complete annoyance, best not to be trifled with.

"It means exactly as it sounds, dear sir! Now," the sculptor said, twisting his chest down in an awkward bow, "I would request you grant me leave to continue."

"Very well," replied Father Bele, and before the gardener could provide Severin anything else to cryptically quip about, he had pulled the former along and out of the way.

"What in seven hells was he talkin' about?" Rodebret sniffed as they walked away, and threw a dark look behind him.

"Nothing, as always," the priest mumbled, but he cleared his throat and marched onward with renewed vigour. If they could catch and at least scare away the dog, then the sculptor would have one less source for his antagonism. A roundabout way to shut Severin Quilby up was still a way, and he smiled to himself.

The duo continued, growing steadily more cold and frustrated, until they rounded on the statues of the very last wife of the Lord. There, scattered at the base of the five agonized figures, was something they could use indeed!

Unsure what sort of animal lay in pieces, its limbs ripped apart and placed haphazardly against the statues, Father Bele regardless suspected Caelony at first. Her love of small creatures, especially once they had died, and a blind loyalty to her late mother caused her to react in gruesome ways, some of which resulted in the decoration of these particular statues. Rodebret, however, soon noticed and announced aloud something that changed the priest's mind instantly.

"These are infants, priest," he said darkly, as he squatted down and stared at the mess of remains. "Puppies, it seems." Furrowing his already weathered brow, Father Bele made a sound in the back of his throat and joined the gardener. Indeed, upon closer look, the remains resembled - just barely - those of small, barely born dogs. He turned his head away and closed his eyes. Death had not always affected him so, but watching life after life wither away in the Estate made his tolerance lessen significantly.

"Let us bury them," he said after a moment, and they set to work digging nearby under the roots of a smallish tree. The ground resisted nearly every effort to penetrate it, but with the angry determination of the priest and the simply brutish strength of the gardener, they had soon created a hollow for the dead pups.

"D'you think it was the damned dog, then?" Rodebret reached out for one of the infant corpses and gently set it in the hollow.

"That seems a likely conclusion," he replied, sitting back on his heels when they had finished. "Though, I question why it chose here to desecrate."

"Nothin' would be hid'n in here that would attract the smelly nose of a dog, would it?" Rodebret rapped his fist against the foot of the closest statue, who clutched her skirts with tightened hands.

The priest shuddered and shook his head.

"I should sincerely hope not." In truth, he was unsure about the contents of the statues. Only their creator was privy to their construction, and knowing his fascination with the greyhounds of the country and the Estate, Father Bele would not have been surprised at all to learn that something sinister had been added.

The gardener nodded and leaned his back at the foot of the statue.

"We've got to figure somethin' out," he said after a quiet moment. "Some way to track the bastard down. I'll not have it, not on your life." A crow screamed in the distance and the priest sighed.

"I fear the only way to banish it fully," he began, looking up at the face of the poor wife (who hadn't been all bad, really) that wore such a terrible expression, "is to catch it in the act of its terrorism, and kill it outright, or stay up in all night until we spot it."

Rodebret grunted and rubbed his chin once more.

"Then let's start, tomorrow if you're ready. I'm downright sick of it, I tell you."

The gardener, though not a foreigner like the sculptor, was from a far enough part of the country that he spoke quite unlike anybody else the priest knew. Gruff but sincere, Father Bele immediately took a liking to him. Anybody that could command respect and uphold his self-image without the constant condescension of others was a worthy person in the priest's eyes. That, and he was not of wealth. No matter how educated and supposedly schooled on etiquette and class they were, Father Bele had never known a man or woman given to money, who did not make him wish intensely he'd been born with the confidence to shoot himself in the head.

The two agreed upon a schedule of rotating nights to better catch the destructive dog, and once the details were settled, they parted ways. Rodebret had a vast amount of hedges to maintain, even in the hard fall weather, and the priest needed to prepare the letters to the closest town for supplies. Of course, he grimly contemplated as he walked briskly back to Hatchhanger Abbey, all of the supplies had been requested by none other than the sculptor.

Father Bele ground his teeth together and swore to himself that, if he could rid the world of so many innocent people, he could surely quit the presence of Severin Quilby from the world.