Time of the Beast

by Geoff Smith

  We reached the coast that morning, located a boat and loaded it with our items, and stabled our horse. We then set sail when the high waters came, and the boatmen rowed us inland to a place where the river diverged, navigating us along a winding tributary which meandered deep into the brooding marshes. Along the banks were the dirty huts and smallholdings of the sedge-men and reed gatherers, where we bartered to procure our materials for thatching.

  At last we approached the dense woodlands which were the territory of the Crowland, and the boatmen leapt down into the water to steer the vessel onto the bank. From here we must drag our heavy cart across the marshes into the nearby woods. It was a gruelling task, and evening was upon us when finally we set up our camp among the trees close to my island. We ate our provisions in weary silence, then slept soundly in the open air, wrapped in our blankets as we lay around the fire.

  The next day the two workmen – their names were Aelfwin and Ecfrith – cut down several tall trees and constructed from these a crude but functional log-bridge across the stream to carry our tools over onto the island, digging into the ground on either side and laying bases to make the structure secure.

  Our work progressed quickly, and within days a simple dwelling took shape against one side of the solid burial mound. The two men at first seemed averse to using this old monument for their building foundation. I had expected this, for common men, even Christians, still carry in them the remnants of pagan superstition with regard to these mouldering barrows. But they soon became so absorbed in their work, and in overcoming the various difficulties which arose, that they seemed to forget about this.

  My new habitation consisted of one main room, with the uneven protrusion of the mound as its far wall. Adjoined to this was the small room: my chapel, where I planned to spend most of my days, a plain cubicle with only a simple wooden cross fixed to its wall. For my furniture I had just a stool, and a palliasse and blanket in one corner as well as a spare robe, a wooden plate and cup, an iron pot to boil water and a knife, along with pumice stones to maintain my tonsure. These were my worldly goods.

  We dug a hole into the mound and rearranged several of the heavy stones which lay upon it to construct a rough fireplace and a flue. We excavated nearby to create a covered pit, a cellar in which to store my supplies of grain.

  One evening at sundown, when the dwelling was almost complete, I was sitting inside it when there came a sudden loud cry, a scrambling noise from above, then the sound of something outside striking the ground hard. I ran out to find it was Aelfwin, lying winded and dazed on the grass. He had been attending to some fault with the thatching when he slipped and fell. He was not hurt, but he was clearly frightened and distressed. As I helped him to his feet, he told me that from his vantage point on the roof he had looked across to the bank beyond the far side of the island and had seen there in the fading daylight, amidst the trees and the rising mist, a face that stared back at him, whose eyes, he said, had seemed to pierce his soul. He was white and trembling as he spoke.

  I did not doubt that the isolation of this place and its gloominess, along with any irrational fears he might still harbour about disturbing the tumulus and angering the dead, were combining to work on his mind. So I attempted to reason with him.

  ‘How can you be so certain of what you saw, in the darkness of the woods and in the mist?’ I said. ‘And I suppose even here we are not completely alone. There must be some others living on the fen, and I am sure our activities must have aroused their curiosity.’

  ‘No, Brother, no!’ He spoke as if I failed to understand. ‘I tell you this was not like a man’s face. It was something old. Something evil. And it is watching us!’

  I could talk no sense into him. And I do not think he slept at all that night, for when I woke for my night-time prayers, I found him sitting upright and shivering in the dark.

  The next morning the men started their labours even before I awoke, and they finished their outstanding tasks with great haste. Before noon they informed me their work was completed, gathered up their tools and wishing me God’s blessing departed, heading back towards the river.

  So now at last I was truly alone.

  My first consideration, I supposed, should be my bodily sustenance. So I decided to make bread. To grind grain, make dough and bake bread is a laborious task, and not one I wished to repeat often, since it would distract me from my other concerns. So that day I made many loaves, but took only one to eat before sundown – I determined to allow myself no more than one loaf each day – storing the rest away. It would not bother me to eat stale bread.

  But now my time of darkness truly began. In the weeks that followed I passed my hours in relentless contemplation and prayer, seeking to understand what it was that God asked of me. I knelt day after day in the confinement of my tiny chapel as the grim reality of a life of absolute solitude became clear to me. For now there were no others about me to be blamed for what I saw in myself, as I sank ever deeper into the agonies of inward terror and self-doubt. I was gone from the monastery, but its turmoil yet remained in me. I sought in my mind to balance the sins of anger and pride against the virtues of honesty and justice, and I asked myself what my true nature was. Was I at heart a man of goodness and inner strength, or just a weak, base creature of rage and resentment? But increasingly I could see only a blur, and I did not know. I did not know. Every certainty I had ever held was unravelling within me, and entirely alone I was losing all sense of myself. I only knew that if I could not tell the difference between virtue and sin, then I was truly damned.

  Often I would fall to the ground in the midst of my devotions, beating my head there again and again, attempting to still the raging chaos within. But it seemed that God had abandoned me, and my demons were winning the battle, as I came to realise I was becoming a thing almost insane.

  Once I reflected long upon those last words Abbot Adelard had spoken to me: that some monks concealed fleshly cravings behind their cries of love for God and deceived even themselves. Then I remembered my own confused feelings when Wecca had pulled me into his embrace. Filled with horror, I stripped off my robe and went to tear off a sapling branch, scourging my wicked flesh into the night.

  I guessed it to be about the time of midsummer, when there came one of those occasional days when the mists cleared, the gloom lifted, and the sun shone. Shortly before sundown I emerged from my chapel after a day of torment, feeling so weary that I had become dull in my senses and almost calm. I took my daily repast of one dry loaf and a cup of water to sit and consume them by the bank of the stream. But as I settled there I became aware of the sound of a vigorous splashing somewhere in the water nearby. This was the first sign of any life I had encountered since coming here.

  Curious, I began to walk along the bank, looking out into the stream. But I saw nothing until suddenly a human head burst up out of the water. I stared in startled astonishment, for I saw then the face of a dark-haired and pretty young woman, perhaps seventeen, who smiled over at me unexpectedly. Without thinking I smiled back – the first time I had smiled at anyone for as long as I could remember. Her eyes sparkled at mine for several moments, then she plunged back under the water, and I glimpsed her bare white skin as she dived. After a few moments she resurfaced, now closer to me. I reached forward, holding out my loaf of bread to her, for this seemed a friendly gesture, and the bread was good and fresh that day. She stared for a few moments at my offering, then swam towards the bank, and for an instant she pulled herself up out of the stream to take the bread from me. I felt a sudden sense of shock, then a fluttering sensation in my stomach and a quickening of my heart as she rose naked before me, her breasts small and firm, her body lithe and glistening with the droplets of water running down it. Then she slid back under the surface.

  I stood feeling restless and awkward as she crouched in the stream and grinned at me between mouthfuls of the bread. When she had finished, she spoke a few words to me in a light, almost laughing voice, in a language I di
d not understand, yet which sounded somehow familiar. I felt then that I must try to communicate with her, to tell her and make her see that it was not proper for her to show herself to me in this way. But in that moment it did not seem to me so very wrong, but only a natural lack of inhibition and self-consciousness that suggested no awareness in her that it could be wrong. Perhaps I was simply too exhausted to respond as I felt I should. And anyway I could think of no innocent way for me to try to make her aware of her own natural state. But my casual attitude surprised me, for I had been taught to regard young women – even fully clothed ones – as the Devil’s temptresses. Yet this girl appeared simply wild and innocent, and her presence charmed me. There definitely seemed to be nothing of the Devil about her.

  She giggled slightly, then gestured to herself and said ‘Ailisa’. This was clearly her name, so I tapped my own chest and answered ‘Athwold’; and she repeated it back to me. We remained there for a time, simply seeming to enjoy each other’s presence. Then, too soon, she waved her hand at me, swam back out into the stream, and was gone.

  I sat for a short while and felt lighter in spirit than I believed I had been since I was a child. And I realised now that Ailisa’s speech had seemed recognisable to me because it had resembled a dialect of the Celtic tongue that I had occasionally heard spoken in my younger days. But of course this confirmed my idea that native Britons still inhabited these Fenlands in small groups, descendants of hidden tribes or perhaps runaway slaves. I was happy to see that Ailisa did not seem to fear me or bear me any animosity, since normally the Britons show much hatred towards the Angles and Saxons. I was also relieved to have seen at first hand that these people were certainly in no way monstrous or deformed, as Wecca’s fearful ramblings had seemed to suggest.

  But soon the darkness returned to blot out this brief ray of light. Each day I continued with my struggle, as my torments grew worse, and slowly I felt the demons of my doubts gnaw ever deeper into my soul, while God continued to turn the light of His countenance from me. Yet now, late each afternoon, I would emerge from my chapel and go with my daily loaf to sit beside the stream, hoping she would return. Until one day soon, as I rested on my spot by the water’s edge, I heard her voice somewhere distant, calling out my name. I saw her on the opposite bank, dressed now in a garment of animal hide, and she carried over her shoulder a stick, from which there hung by its mouth a good-sized fish. I smiled as I walked along level with her, the stream between us, until she came to my bridge, crossing over it and coming to stand before me, while she held out the fish as an offering.

  She sought to make me a gift in return for the bread I had given her. I made an extravagant gesture of thanks, then gave her another poor offering of my bread; and we sat together for a while, attempting to communicate as we exchanged shy glances. I was much touched by her gift and had not the heart to refuse it, although I was sworn to eat only plain bread here, and I buried the fish untouched later that night.

  After this she began to visit me often, always around the same time, and together we devised a game in which we would exchange our different words for all the things we pointed to around us; and soon a kind of rudimentary language, a jumble of words from both our tongues, started to develop between us. I began to like Ailisa more than I could say – not just for her pale skin, dark eyes and her ready laugh, but also for her quickness to learn, as in our games she soon proved sharper than me. I knew well that my masters in the Church would have denounced my friendship with her and doubtless suspected my motives for it. But I truly could see nothing wrong in it, innocent as I knew it to be. I was aware by now that this distraction and respite from the gloom of my solitary existence could only be beneficial for me. And also for Ailisa, living somewhere nearby with her small family of exiles, as I suspected her own life could be barely less lonely than mine. In fact I knew now that Ailisa had become the single spark of light in all my darkness, and I did not care even to imagine existing there without her.

  But the day quickly came when I grew troubled by our companionship. It was as we played and laughed together at our word game that our eyes met, and there was a moment of sudden intensity between us, as she moved closer to me, and I was stricken by an overpowering urge to reach out and take her in my arms. In that instant I could feel that love was growing between us. But I held back with a sense of shock as I knew this could not and must not be. I was a monk vowed to celibacy, who stood upon the brink of damnation, locked in a daily struggle to redeem my soul. Yet how could I explain these things to Ailisa? How would I ever make her understand them? I saw then that the admonishments of the Church were wise. How might I tell her I could never be her mate, nor offer her that love which is natural between woman and man?

  In the nights that followed I began to suffer the onslaught of oppressive dreams, which came upon me in suffocating waves of sensual horror: the secret creeping urges of restless and illicit desires, the imagined intimacy of soft and sultry flesh, of something faceless in the dark, and hands which stroked and clung to me, and gave thrilling caresses which overcame all my strength and resistance, to draw me helplessly into their deeper embrace. And I would awake with such a burning in my flesh tormenting me that it was as if I were already lost within the fires of Hell. Once I dreamed a vision of Ailisa, as I had first seen her, rising up naked and gleaming from out of the water; but here it seemed she was subtly transformed into something unlike herself – something lustful, and brazen in her nakedness, her mouth soft and wet as she ran her tongue lazily over her full lips, her dark eyes provocative and coldly wanton as she stared at me. And in the daytime, when next she came to me, and I looked into her face – sweet, smiling and wholly ingenuous – I knew that her image in my dream was only a wild phantasm from the wicked depths of my own imagination, a corrupt and unwholesome inversion of all that was real and true. Then I began to fear that perhaps after all Ailisa was unwittingly one of the Devil’s subtlest snares.

  I realised now that I must find strength and courage to end our friendship. It would be hard to do. Indeed it would be terrible. But there was no other way, for it would be deleterious to me and unfair to Ailisa to let this matter continue. I wondered if perhaps this was a trial God had set for me as a test of my faith.

  My conduct in all this only gave me further cause to suffer and reproach myself. I had thoughtlessly allowed this situation to occur, and now in seeking to correct it I feared I must hurt Ailisa terribly. It was all as a consequence of my own selfishness. But finally I became reconciled to what must be, and in the late summer I determined that when Ailisa visited me the next day, I must tell her she should come no more.

  It was fittingly a chilly dismal day, and the rain had been falling relentlessly when I stood beside my bridge – soaked and dejected – to await her arrival.

  But that day she did not come.

  Unsettled and frustrated, but secretly relieved, I wandered back to my shelter; and I thought at last to eat my ration of bread. I found that only a few loaves remained in my store and told myself absently that I must make some more. But when I took out a loaf I saw that it had started to spoil from the heavy peculiar dampness which often rises to pollute the atmosphere in the Fens. On the crust there had formed the beginnings of a black mould. I carelessly took my knife and scraped away the worst of this, then softened the bread in my cup of water before eating it. Then I lay on my bed to reflect miserably on my expected meeting with Ailisa the following day and the extinction of my life’s only happiness.

  But instead I fell asleep almost at once. Yet I awoke again soon after in the realisation that something was wrong – that something was happening to me. My head felt light, and I could not think clearly, as the room appeared to spin about me. I wondered vaguely if I might have contracted a marsh fever. But I was suddenly transfixed when I looked across at the dim glow of the dying fire in my hearth. For it seemed to my eyes that the tiny flame assumed a life of its own. Golden and red streaks appeared to rise up from it, waves of vibrant c
olour that shimmered astonishingly in the dark. Then the surrounding blackness itself seemed to join in these wild motions, swirling and weaving into the light to create a myriad of drifting, shifting patterns. I cannot say how long I lay there, entranced by this amazing vision, which seemed to me to be purely angelic, before I drifted back into sleep.

  Chapter Six

  When I awoke the next day I seemed fully restored to my normal state. There were certainly no signs of any fever or sickness in me. Yet I regarded my nocturnal vision – or was it a half-sleeping and half-waking dream? – as an encouraging sign, for its beauty had seemed to be an omen of the light. But then my thoughts turned to Ailisa, and the vision was quickly forgotten. The rain had stopped and the day looked mild, and I knew that later she would come. I found I could not concentrate my mind on anything that day, for I dreaded her coming and what must be our final meeting. And I anticipated with bleak despair the prospect of my future life, spent here alone without ever seeing her again. I could barely imagine what was to become of me.

  At the usual time she arrived, waving her hand to me and smiling in greeting. But as she crossed the bridge and approached me, my troubled state must have been apparent to her, for she began to regard me with concern.

  ‘No bread?’ she said with surprise, for it had been my usual custom since our first meeting to give her such an offering when she came, as my only available token of friendship and welcome. I shook my head dully, and her face grew sad. It seemed she thought I had no food, and must go hungry that day.

  We sat together on the grass, and at once I was at a loss. I did not know how to begin to explain the matter to her. My message would have been a difficult one to convey even to someone who shared my own language and understanding of the world. But to speak it here, to this innocent girl who had spent her whole life in these wild Fens, and in the crude parlance we had barely started to construct together, seemed an impossible and devastating task. Seeing my distress, Ailisa reached out to place a comforting hand upon my arm, and gave a smile to encourage me, utterly disarming me and making all my sorrow and irresolution still worse.