by Geoff Smith
‘But soon, in their midst, I saw a figure far taller than the rest, whose disgusting form I could not mistake. It was he – my hated adversary. I froze, and shook in the grip of rage and triumph as I watched him move among those others, who seemed to give way to him as if they regarded his sheer size with a kind of primitive awe or deference. In a moment I watched him descend beneath the earth, and the rest quickly followed.
‘Catia and I remained silent, locked together in our close embrace, not daring to move out from our place of concealment until the sun was fully risen and the valley below had long grown still. Finally we emerged and crept away together from that accursed place, while my mind sought to assess the situation.
‘Feared and rejected by men, my enemy had incredibly found his place among a company of monsters. But how might I reach him there? His companions looked strong and dangerous, and would doubtless seek to protect him. I cared little for my own life, but I feared that if I launched an attack I would die before I could kill him. And so he would triumph.
‘At a safe distance, I turned to Catia and smiled at her. I felt towards her now a warmth and affection, indeed a kinship, deeper than any I had known in my life. So I told her that she was wise and clever and very brave, and now she must consider that her debt to me was fully discharged. But she did not seem convinced of this, and she looked deep into my eyes as she reached out to take my hand.
‘ “You come with me?” she said. “Live with my people? Be with me?”
‘Tears sprang into my eyes as I looked down at her. She too had felt it, this powerful unspoken bond between us. And to her, a feral child of the woods, I appeared neither wild nor frightening. I might never have imagined this. For long years I had considered nothing beyond the destruction of my detested sibling. It had filled my mind and driven me onward through unendurable hardship and privation. I had long ago accepted that no other life was possible for me. But now, as if by some miracle, I saw that one was offered. A light broke into my darkness. It seemed at last I had discovered my enemy only to find that he had placed himself beyond my reach. And I was tired… so very tired. Yet even as I saw this, there reached out to me the hand of freedom. Might it be so? Could it be that the Fates would finally release me from my dismal burden and grant me a new life, among foreign people, where the shadow of my past could not touch me? I reached out to Catia and held her, brushing my face against her hair, gathering her warmth and softness to me. And in that moment I dared to imagine that I might become human again. That I might be once more a man, and live in the company of others, with a wife at my hearth, and children…
‘A spear of ice seemed to pierce my heart. I had long told myself bitterly that my mission of retribution was my father’s only legacy to me. But I saw now this was not so. There was also his blood – his tainted blood. How could I take a wife and visit this blight upon her? To contaminate her body, her community, her descendants with the blood of monsters. For we had all become freaks and monsters: my father, my brother, and me. I flung her from me, and cried out:
‘ “Go back to your people. I cannot go with you. I am cursed. I am cursed!”
‘I turned and ran blindly until I was far away. Then I fell to the ground and screamed out my desolation into the empty skies. I was condemned to be forever alone – the Fates had decreed it so. Then my cries turned into mad laughter as I thought of that despicable wretch who was my brother and saw again the grim and tragic joke: that truly we had grown to become much alike. Twin souls, Urta had said. But he had always been the dominant one. He had stolen my life and afterwards governed my existence: forever in front, leading me and taunting me. But now there had grown a great disparity between us. For he had found companionship of his own monstrous sort. He had achieved fellowship and belonging, while I could have none! And my hatred for him swelled beyond reason.
‘Now I saw what I must do to reach him. I must somehow enlist the aid of others. Armed and prepared, we must enter that hellish underground place to destroy a nest of monsters.
‘I rose up, and as I made my way through the forest, I cut at intervals signs upon the trees. I went for many hours, marking my route in this way, until I came to a wide track where the woods had been cleared. I followed this until I reached the edge of the forest. Soon I came to the hall of the local lord, an old Roman fort surrounded by a decayed defensive wall: a square-shaped structure built from crumbling stone, shored and supported all over with pieces of wooden framework.
‘As I approached the entrance the guards came out to surround me. They did not understand me, but regarded me fearfully as they jabbered at me in Celtic and pointed their spears at me. But I submitted myself to them, laying down my sword, and at last they took me inside, shutting me in a dark cell in a dungeon below the ground. They gave me food and water, looking upon me as a great curiosity, and I languished there for a time before the lord himself came to view this oddity, this wodewose from the forest. There also came with him his son, a boy upon the brink of manhood. A youth named Cadroc.’
Chapter Fifteen
The man called Cynewulf fell silent and fixed his eyes on Brother Cadroc. Yet the monk did not return his look, but only gazed far out into the distance, while his face appeared much troubled. At last Cynewulf turned to Aelfric and me, and said:
‘So it was that we set out to pursue those devils, to corner them in their lair, where the chanting of the monks defeated them, and I came at last to face my hated foe and take my longed-for revenge upon him as the cave collapsed and I drove my blade deep into his heart. Perhaps you have heard these things related by Cadroc? But this is not the end of my story.
‘When I emerged from out of the cave, I departed immediately from the company of Cadroc and the others, slipping away easily amidst all the uproar and confusion. I needed to be alone with my thoughts, to come to terms with the great complexity of my emotions. At first there resided in me only a kind of numbness, a sense of disbelief that finally it was over. But this gave way gradually to feelings I could not have anticipated. There grew in my heart no swell of triumph or exultation, but rather a deep melancholy, almost a sensation of grief akin to what I had felt at the loss of my old life. I imagined I understood this: that the singular compulsion which for years had ruled my existence was suddenly gone, as if I had awoken from a long and incredible dream. But in all those years I had never paused to think beyond its accomplishment. Now that it was done, and my arch-enemy dead, I must come to terms with the realisation that I was finally and utterly alone in the world, without direction or purpose. What I felt was indeed a sense of loss. Yet I soon began to understand that it was something far more.
‘For he began to haunt me. Wherever I went I could not escape him. In death his ghost pursued me as in life I pursued him. I started to sense his presence, and the feeling of him grew ever more powerful as I began to hear his footsteps following mine like an echo; and I would turn to see nothing but know he was there. I would hear his sighs upon the wind and the sound of him as he crept beyond my sight among the trees and rushes. Then I began to see him! At dawn or dusk, standing far out in the mist, waiting and watching, his image at first only a blur that almost imperceptibly grew stronger and more distinct until finally the clear vision of him took form before me, exactly as I saw him in his last living moments before I struck the fatal blow. Because in that instant I had seen in his eyes only a look of rage, fear and confusion. It was then I understood that he did not recognise or remember me – that he did not know me at all, that I meant exactly nothing to him. He did not understand the reason for his death. There was only a dull glare of brute incomprehension. But over the years he had grown in my mind to become my consummate enemy. I came to see in him every aspect of malice and cunning as he outwitted and eluded me in our duel to the death. I saw a monster of iniquity, my mortal foe, motivated by devilish spite. Yet I realised at the end that in truth he was none of these things, but only a desperate, wretched and despised outcast – a victim who had sought simply t
o survive. Finally I understood him and that all the hate and vindictiveness I came to see in him had all along been truly my own. Now I remembered the last words that Urta spoke as she saw her vision of a monster: “Beware it, for it is yourself, and your hatred will make it deadly!”
‘So finally I saw the reality of it – how my father’s madness had likewise come to be my own. But now there came also my father’s demon of self-horror and despair. I came to the Fens as an outcast, and since then I have existed here alone… and yet never alone. He has been forever with me like a distorted mirror image, his outward deformity the perfect reflection of my inward corruption.
‘But then, a short time ago, I began to have the dream. It is the same vision I suffered on the battlefield in my youth. It has returned to me. Each night the crows come, flocking obscenely upon me, covering me with their crawling horror. I seem to feel myself rise from my bed, yet I cannot wake or break free. And I imagine I stumble far out onto the fen, and still the birds swarm about me and cling to me, cloaking me with their blackness as I draw my sword and strike at them in desperate fury. Until suddenly I understand that they are his creatures – that his time has come, and now it is he who moves against me. This is surely what the dream portends.
‘Yet now the dream changes, and I find myself stalking through the dark, creeping with silent intent upon a lonely cottage which stands in the distance ahead, somewhere on the border of the marshes. Pale moonlight shines behind me as I move ever more swiftly and feel within me the gathering of both a monstrous rage and a terrible joy. I come to stand at the shadowed doorway of the hut, then smash at it so the timber breaks and splinters, and I see inside the faint glowing embers of the hearth and the dark huddled shapes which rise from sleep in alarm and terror. And my heart burns with sheer hate at the sight of the warmth and life and kinship they share. I move in among them, see dimly their faces, male and female, young and old, and my fury grows as I see the horror in their eyes when they look upon me. And I breathe in their helpless fear to make me stronger as I strike at them and feel the tear of flesh, the spatter of blood and the crunch of bone as they fall. And still I strike, pounding and crushing them into the dust until their screams and sobs are silenced forever.
‘In moments I turn and rush back into the night, for I know that the night is mine, and I feel my spirit exult in wicked triumph at the death and destruction I have wrought, as the darkness closes upon me and the dream slowly fades…’
He paused for a moment, his head sinking down as he gave a deep sigh. Then he went on: ‘The dreams started as I heard whispers out in the fens that a murderous demon had risen to stalk this land. Then I learned that a man called Cadroc had come to use Christian magic against this dark one – and I knew at once what the Fates had decreed. So I set out to follow your path. Now you know my story. And you must guide my steps from here.’
He looked at Cadroc with expectation, but the monk barely seemed to have heard his last words, yet appeared to be lost deep in his thoughts, until at last he turned to Cynewulf uneasily while he began to shake his head.
‘Lord Cynewulf,’ he said, ‘your tale is most remarkable. But what you have told me greatly disturbs me. These long years I have never once doubted that what you confronted in that cave was a demonic thing from Hell. It has been the very bedrock of my faith. But now you tell me it was really just a man? That those devils we fought were only degraded examples of humanity?’
‘Yes!’ Cynewulf answered. ‘But do not doubt that what we face now is something much worse.’
Cadroc looked back at him in confusion, but at once I understood the import of these grim words, and I said:
‘Lord Cynewulf suggests that his twin has become a vengeful spirit.’ It was clear to me this was his heathen belief. Yet even as my mind tried to dismiss the notion, my heart shuddered at it.
‘Twin souls?’ Cynewulf whispered. ‘Or a single soul torn and divided? The spirits of those monsters are trapped forever inside the cave which became their tomb. Only he among them remains connected to the living world, and he carries within him the power of all their rage. This connection between us is powerful, our life-force shared. I took his life, but he returned to haunt my mind and infest my soul, until finally in death he has become the implacable enemy I supposed him to be in life. Truly he has become my dark fetch. He draws on my vital energy to take earthly form and revenge himself upon the world of men. He sends to me a challenge, and there must be a last reckoning between us. Once more I must confront him and dispatch him into the realm of the dead. But how? How may a man fight a dark spirit? A wrathful ghost? I do not fear any mortal foe, but this…’ At once a great terror seemed to overcome him, and he struggled visibly to contain it. Then he said to Cadroc: ‘This is why I come to you. I saw inside that cave the power of your Christian magic, which brought great rocks crashing down onto the heads of our enemies to consign them to the underworld. From here on I go with you. Our paths are made one, and once more we must stand and fight him together.’
‘The power of my God is great,’ Cadroc answered distantly. ‘But your story has made me doubt my own power. I am no longer certain of the truth of these things!’
It was clear to me now as I looked at Cadroc how deeply Cynewulf’s revelations had shaken his self-confidence and perhaps even his faith. That ironically he had begun to doubt his own certainty of a supernatural agency at work even as Cynewulf came entirely to believe in one. New seeds of doubt were growing in my own mind. What we faced was something brutal and deadly, but if it were a thing entirely of the physical world, then might mere words and symbols – however holy – prevail against it? I saw now that from the start it had been Cadroc’s great faith, his unflinching zeal and courage in his cause, which had carried me with him. It was upon him I had fixed my own hope of salvation in my struggle against the darkness. But now Cadroc’s doubts became also mine, as I began to consider the awful possibility that we were not here as the spiritual warriors of God, but only as men who were filled hopelessly with false pride and self-deceit. And the dismal expanse of the wilderness all around seemed at once to overshadow us, to reduce us to insignificance and grow more hostile and threatening with each passing moment.
There was also within me an unnerving feeling that there were aspects of Cynewulf’s story which held some strange significance or parallel to my own, but it was all unclear, and somehow I could not find the sense of it. But something else troubled me. I remembered Aelfric’s words to me earlier suggesting that Cynewulf himself might be the murderer. While I did not suspect Cynewulf’s integrity, I wholly doubted his mental fortitude as I saw how his old obsession still entirely dominated him, his mind even now fixated upon his dead brother. I had once heard a story from a visitor to the monastery about a man who suffered a head wound, and then became afflicted by dark moods and fits of rage which afterwards he could not recall – as if two separate spirits or personalities had come incredibly to coexist inside him. The older monks had hastened to assure me the story was merely fanciful, but I was beginning to question whether the Church was always right about the things it lightly dismissed – like the existence of the wild men. In this place it became easier to believe such tales. I was suddenly shocked by the possibility that a man as disturbed and inwardly conflicted as Cynewulf could be a killer without having any memory or consciousness of it. My mind was a cloud of confusion, and I no longer knew what to think or believe about anything.
As these things ran through my thoughts, I felt something deep and fearful begin to stir in me. Then my eyes fell shut as it seemed I recalled once more my vision during the shaman’s ritual: that in my mind I stood in the glow of firelight, returned to the night-land beyond my hermitage, looking upward as I witnessed the stealthy approach of that terrible giant figure. Once again I saw it step out of the shadows and into the flickering light, and I was seized by the fearful knowledge that in moments my memory of it would be restored, and I would look upon its face…
It stoo
d before me, and as its features found form I felt its eyes upon me. I froze with the terrible certainty that now I knew what it was…
My eyes opened and I gave a gasp, struggling in my mind to keep hold of the image. But already it was gone, slipping away like sand between my fingers, and again I could remember only the form of a thing huge and swathed in darkness. Aelfric had noticed my disturbed state and came at once to my side to lay a reassuring hand on my shoulder.
‘My memory of the marauder!’ I told him. ‘It started to return. For a moment it seemed to grow clear. But now it is lost again.’
‘It was perhaps not a memory but a foreseeing,’ he said gravely – his resilient cheerfulness was now a thing of the past. ‘All will soon be revealed to us. We are passing now into the most deep and remote parts of the Fenlands. It is a secret place of great mystery and power, which is said to stand as a gateway to the spirit world itself. Here our reckoning with this dark one must surely come.’
Whatever the truth of this, it was plainly true that – like Cynewulf – something haunted me from within, which struggled to rise up and break free: a thing blacker than night, that followed me ‘as a demon in the dark’, and it felt strangely as if I were fleeing from it even as we pursued it. It seemed suddenly that the whole grim saga of Cynewulf and Cadroc had risen like a monster to swallow me whole – to join the threads of all our stories into one.
As we moved on, our pace slowed, while the day grew heavy and humid, and the clouds gathered and glowered overhead colouring the sky with deep vibrant hues of purplish grey. The marshes grew ever more wild and dispiriting, and our progress became increasingly laborious. While we trudged along a pathway around a wide stinking stretch of sunken ground filled with foul stagnant water, where great swarms of gnats formed a floating haze above its surface, I looked before me at the compact figure of Aelfric as he walked beside the towering one of the old warrior.
