Time of the Beast

by Geoff Smith

  ‘Ah!’ He gave a chilling smile. ‘But the Devil has his purpose, ordained by God. How might the Church prosper without him? How else might filthy heathen savages be controlled except by fear? But why do I debate with you? An outcast monk who doubts his faith. Your death will be pleasing to God’s eyes.’

  Now Cynewulf spoke, while he stared at Cadroc with a terrible realisation.

  ‘My enemy is inside you!’ he said. ‘When my twin died… the true demon… the blind spirit of rage and vengeance in me… it passed into you!’

  Suddenly he unleashed a roar of wild anger and charged at Cadroc, his sword raised ready to strike. Cadroc did not move, but only looked on coldly as the beast – his dreadful familiar spirit – sprang forward, aberrant and terrible as it burst out from the rushes and gave an awesome shriek of maniacal fury, its club meeting Cynewulf’s blade. Again their weapons clashed together, Cynewulf gripping the hilt of his sword with both hands. But while he matched his opponent’s blows, it was clear he could not equal its sheer strength, and its brute force was unstoppable as it drove Cynewulf back, their two giant shapes moving away into the depths of the marshes. I stumbled after them, desperate to see what was happening, but fearful that this was a battle Cynewulf could not win as I looked upon the malformed horror of the beast’s face and heard the throaty grunting of its breath as it rained down sweeping blows. Cynewulf could only fall back and struggle to maintain his weakening defence while his adversary sought to pound him into exhausted submission. Cadroc was moving behind me now, holding his torch aloft to shed an eerie light through the drifting mist, his sword held ready for when he should choose to move upon me for the kill. As I stumbled before him I felt my feet sink ever further down into the soft mud, but Cadroc’s advance would not allow me to stop or turn back, yet drove me relentlessly onward into the deepening mire.

  But now came the end of Cynewulf’s armed resistance, as I saw the beast land a final crashing blow, and Cynewulf’s sword was wrenched from his grip and sent spinning away into the dark. Yet even before the beast could swing its arm back, Cynewulf sprang forward to clamp his hands about its wrist, hurling his full weight and strength against its vast frame as he strained with every sinew to keep its fearful weapon from him. The monster stood, solid and immovable, as the iron grip of its great hand closed around Cynewulf’s throat. But then, as they grappled, I saw the beast’s injured leg suddenly buckle, and they staggered backwards, locked together as they fell, plunging downward into a deep mud pool. The beast sank beneath Cynewulf’s weight and was at once entirely submerged, while Cynewulf sank to his chest before he reached out to halt himself by grabbing at a tussock of thick grass that grew at the pool’s edge. But as I gazed below him into the pit of inky blackness, I saw the mud around him begin to shift and stir, and somehow I knew what must come next. Then in a moment it burst up, that mud-soaked horror, screeching out as it broke through the bog’s surface, its hands clinging to Cynewulf, climbing forward as it used his body to gain purchase, struggling against him and pushing him deeper down into the mire as it clawed and scrambled its way upward, and I knew that within moments it would fight its way free from the clutch of the morass.

  At once the glimmer of torchlight grew brighter, and I looked around to see Cadroc move behind me, looking on with satisfaction as he saw the beast begin to rise up from out of the bog. Then he turned his eyes to me.

  ‘Nowhere left to run,’ he told me coldly. I stood upon the edge of the bog, and could retreat no further. So I came about to face him, holding up Aelfric’s knife to point it at him. He glanced at it as he raised his sword, and his eyes met mine as his face filled with a look of scorn. And as I stared back at him my heart burned suddenly with pure anger and defiance.

  Then I did something he could not have expected. I cried ‘Cynewulf!’ and looked out to see that by now only the old warrior’s face was still visible above the bog’s surface as I threw the knife so that it slid and skittered across the mud, and as it came to rest I saw a grimy hand reach up to grasp it. Then with a bellow Cynewulf was striking out at the struggling thing above him, driving the knife’s blade again and again into the body of the beast as he let go of his hold upon the bank to clasp his arm around it and drag it down. The air was filled with its terrible shrieks of pain and Cynewulf’s rising roars of triumph. Within moments, they began to sink, and as they fought, they were gone, the mud rising to smother their faces and fill their gaping mouths as they were swallowed together into the devouring darkness – the last two scions of their cursed blood.

  As the echoes of their cries died away, a deep silence fell. Then Cadroc began to rave and howl with demented grief and fury, and his eyes were fixed on me with venomous hate. He came at me raging, and I tripped backwards until the earth beneath me was gone, then I was submerged deep within the soft mud. As it closed around me, I helplessly watched Cadroc advance, his eyes blazing and his legs sinking into the swampy ground as he strove to reach me, and I saw that he must either kill me himself or drive me to my death farther out in the bog. But at the end I knew my life had been well spent. So I tore my arm free and pointed a finger at him as I cried out:

  ‘A man may be what he chooses to be. But that miserable creature had no choice. You chose for it – and see what you chose! God sees you and knows you. And I curse you. May the flames of Hell take you!’

  He thrust out his torch and drew back his blade to strike. Yet even as he did so there arose from the mud a great bubbling and gurgling, then the bog gave an obscene belch, and I felt it suck me downward as there came from out of its unsettled depths a reeking miasma, a great stench of rotting matter which filled the air and rippled visibly like a haze within the mist. It was so suffocating and foul that I could not breathe it in, and my head spun and sank down as my sight grew dim. And in a moment, the air around Cadroc simply burst into flame, his torch igniting into a howling blaze that was like the fires of Hell roaring up from out of the earth – or like the rising of a furious giant phantom of the marsh. Cadroc was stuck screaming in its midst, his flesh burning and shrivelling, his eyes blinded, his robe alight. I turned my face away as I felt the raging heat scorch my skin, and as it subsided I looked back to see the blaze was shrinking into ripples of blue flame that streaked and danced across the surface of the bog.

  Now Cadroc toppled forward onto the mud, lying facedown before me, and I began to move steadily, grasping at him to pull myself forward and crawl over him, using his body in an effort to free myself from the deadly grip of the mire. I felt him stir weakly beneath me, and I was half free when he began to thrash and struggle, and started to sink into the depths. I was being pulled with him into the endless dark as I kicked out and lunged forward, grabbing desperately at the half solid earth and clumps of grass in front with slipping scrabbling fingers, even as I felt frantic hands claw at me from beneath to pull me down. Cadroc’s body twisted as his head rose out of the swamp beside me, and I looked around into the grisly ruin of his face, blackened by mud and flame, his hair burned away and his skin hanging in blistered lumps as his withered eyes still seemed to glare at me with insane hatred. I smashed out with my fist, striking at him desperately to drive him down as he gripped me with frenzied strength to drag me with him. Exhaustion and hopelessness were overcoming me as I sank into the mud, and its blackness entombed me and felt finally inescapable as it held me suspended, beyond the power to struggle further as my strength failed and I surrendered myself to that graveyard of lost souls where lonely things of rage, despair and madness lay newly buried.

  But now I grew dimly aware that somewhere far above me my fingers had clutched at something firm, and it felt like another hand had grasped mine to draw me upward. In a moment my body was stirring back into life, slipping free from the weakening grip of the horror that clung to me below, moving up through the suffocating darkness with new determination as my head burst back into the night air, my lungs gulping as I fought tortuously to drag myself onto firmer ground.

  Fr
eed at last, I lay exhausted and unable even to think what kind of wonder had just occurred, as the full weight of all my terrors finally bore down on me. But even as I drifted towards oblivion, I looked up in the dull glimmer of Cadroc’s torch, which lay fallen at the bog’s edge, to see vaguely a figure standing over me. I could only suppose that it must be Taeppa, but I could not see its face or form clearly, only sense its eyes upon me as my head sank wearily to the ground. But it seemed then I knew a strange vision – that for a moment it was I who stood above myself, looking down at my own body as it emerged from out of the yawning darkness, wet and slithering and crying into the night as it gasped and struggled to draw breath. It looked to me like a thing newly born.

  Once more my head jerked upwards, but now I saw no sign there of any figure. I lay quite alone. But there came the overpowering certainty that Taeppa needed me.

  I lurched to my feet, snatching up the dying torch, and stumbled away into the mist and darkness until I came to the place where he lay. He had not moved and seemed to be dead, but then I found he was still breathing faintly. With a strength beyond any I knew remained in me, I grasped him under his arms and raised him, dragging him back onto the island where I found our bonfire still smouldering. I rebuilt it until it began to blaze again. In its light, I examined the wound on the back of Taeppa’s head: a hideous gash which still gushed blood from beneath the matted tangle of his hair. There was clean water in his canteen, so I washed the blood away, but as I did so there came a deep feeling of hesitation and doubt within me, for it seemed that two sides of my being were even now locked in conflict. As I looked at Taeppa I seemed to know with a desperate sense of urgency what it was I must do, but still in some fearful part of me I held back from it. Yet beyond this there came to me a feeling of resolution and clarity, with a growing certainty that my doubts were only the echo of old beliefs which no longer served me and must in turn give way to something greater.

  I took Taeppa’s bone-handled knife from his belt, then thrust its blade deep into the heart of the fire. And when I drew it hot from the flames, I summoned all my strength, faith and conviction as the words of the pagan spell came from inside me, deep and clear and unfaltering:

  ‘I entreat the great ones, keepers of the heavens,

  Earth I ask, and sky; and the gods’ high hall,

  And the fair holy goddess, to grant this gift of healing.’

  Then I laid the burning knife, again and again, onto the gaping wound, and watched in wonder as the seared flesh was knitted together to staunch the blood, while the sight of it seemed to reflect a great joining and healing of something inside me: the profound sense of a numinous power and wisdom that felt truly like the ancient spirit of all my people, reaching out to welcome me home.

  Now I took Taeppa’s leather bag and found inside it his jar of salve, which I applied to his wound while I recited more of the half remembered words of his charms. But the sheer intensity of all these things finally overcame me, and I must have fallen exhausted into a deep sleep.

  I awoke with the dawn and looked about me in growing wonder at the silvery strands of shining mist that shone in the waking light as it gently suffused the darkness, and the Isle of the Dead appeared to become suddenly transformed and imbued with a subtle and mystical beauty which seemed astounding and unworldly to my eyes. And in those few moments I imagined something remarkable – that perhaps light and darkness were themselves things that existed as one beneath a greater reality, and the purpose of their eternal struggle was not to gain victory, but something far deeper. It was to achieve harmony, balance and growth. I turned to look out into the fog-shrouded marshes, then remembered how I had fallen deep into the pit, and stared into the face of death, and cried out that a man might be whatever he chose to be. Then my life had been saved by a miracle. It had been given back to me.

  Now I looked again in Taeppa’s bag and found some linen bandages inside it. As I began to bind his head, Taeppa started to stir and finally opened his eyes to look up at me.

  ‘What has happened?’ he said, as he flinched with pain.

  ‘Be still,’ I told him. ‘All is well. The enemy is dead.’

  ‘What was the enemy?’ he murmured, his wits confused. ‘A man or a monster?’

  ‘A man and a monster!’ I answered. ‘But in truth I cannot say which one was which.’

  When the mist began to clear, the island was deeply tranquil, and already it was hard to believe that in the night such horrors could have occurred there. At Taeppa’s insistence I took his cloak to spread over poor Aelfric’s body to leave him as decently as we could. I spoke a prayer over him, not a liturgy of the Church but words which came from my own heart. Then we set off.

  Taeppa was still weak and disoriented, and badly needed rest and care. He clung to me for support as I retraced the safe path of our own tracks through the marsh from the previous day, and then onward. At last I saw the sign of smoke spiralling into the cloudy sky in the distance, and after hours of slow and wearisome progress I stumbled back into the village at Sceaf’s ford, where women cried out in alarm, as the savage-looking men rushed up thrusting their knives and axes towards us. We must have been a dreadful sight, soaked in mud and blood. But in anger and exhaustion I swept out my arm at them and shouted:

  ‘Put down your weapons! The monster is dead. But this man is injured.’

  They backed away and lowered their blades as they recognised that we were indeed only men.

  Taeppa was taken at once and put to bed, while I stood outside and with relief pulled off my mud-encrusted robe for the women to take and clean, while buckets of water were brought for me to bathe myself as the villagers crowded about me to hear my news. The Fenland monster was a creature controlled by a mad Christian, I told them – a terror created so the Church might then be seen to contain it. But both of them now lay buried beneath the marshes.

  Soon I rested, but that evening I was brought to the village hall, where a feast had been prepared in my honour. When I entered the hall, the men rose from their benches out of respect and were not seated again until I was escorted into the chair of the high guest. Indeed it was much like the first evening I had spent on my journey into the Fens. But I was entirely a different man. That night I felt truly alive. I laughed and danced with the village women, and rejoiced among those people, and sang with them their old songs of gods and heroes and monsters. I knew a sense of freedom and fellowship in their company that previously I could not have imagined. I drank beer until my head was spinning, and when the great joints of meat were served up, I grew suddenly aware as I smelt them that I felt more hungry than I had ever been before. I was simply ravenous. And as I gorged myself happily, I understood that I was breaking the fast which had been my whole life.

  Epilogue

  The dawn is almost here, and with it our companionship must end. There is little more to tell, only to say that I soon journeyed back across the Fens to the place of my hermitage. And when next Ailisa came, much concerned by my sudden departure, I took her for the first time into my arms. And when later I broke my vows, I did so gladly, knowing at last that my reconciliation with God was complete. Thus it was that I returned from my long exile to become human again – to be a man at long last. For I have looked deep into the abyss and seen there what may become of those who are cast out and driven to exclusion. So it was also that the bleak swampland which had once been the place of my penance became instead my beloved sanctuary and home. My whole world was transformed about me, for I saw it now with the true vision of the soul. Ailisa became my wife, and mother to our children, and our lives together have been blessed, for the outside world could not touch us there. You will see that I still wear the symbol of the Cross, but I wear it now upon the robe of a shaman, for I found in Taeppa a willing teacher and true friend. Since I passed through the fire, I have been the servant of no doctrine or creed save that of my own will and conscience. For the Church has given up its search for knowledge and truth in the pursuit of wo
rldly power. It now exists principally to serve the interests and ambitions of those within it, and has become so dominant that even kings have been known to lay down their authority for the greater prize of an abbotship or bishopric. Entranced by the baubles of today, our world has cast aside the wisdom of the ages. But it may not always be so, for who can see clearly into the future? I must hope that to the enlightened men of posterity, the turmoil of these times will seem like only the petty squabbling of children. I hold fast to my faith that tomorrow will be better, and mankind will be drawn stumbling onward towards the light. For I know that light may be found in unlikely ways, and that it shines most brightly within the darkness.

  Historical Note

  The pagan Anglo-Saxon culture was oral, not written, so what information we possess about it comes from the works of Christian monks who were basically hostile to their subject. However, a wealth of information survives from medieval Scandinavia – and in particular Iceland – which was converted to Christianity much later than the rest of Europe, in the numerous sagas and works of men like Snorri Sturlusson, who in the 13th century had a clear sense of nostalgic affection for the traditions of the pre-Christian past.

  It is not possible to provide a very accurate map of seventh-century England, given that my story is set at different times during that century, since the boundaries of the lands were constantly changing as kingdoms competed for territory and power, and smaller lands were absorbed into larger ones. The land of Elmet gives a good example of the vicissitudes of the times. At the beginning of the seventh-century Elmet occupied an area roughly equivalent to the later West Riding of Yorkshire. It was an independent Romano-British frontier state, bordered by the Anglian lands of Deira (eastern Yorkshire), Lindsey (Lincolnshire), and Mercia (the Midlands), and the Brythonic land of South Rheged (approximately Lancashire). In around 604, King Athelfrith of Bernicia (an Anglian kingdom in the North-East located between the River Tees and the Firth of Forth) invaded Deira to the south, and drove out its ruling dynasty, joining both lands into what would become the kingdom of Northumbria. A Deiran prince, Edwin (whose later and somewhat tortuous conversion to Christianity is recounted at length in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People) was forced into exile and for years became a fugitive from the agents of Athelfrith, who sought to exterminate him as a dangerous rival. Another Deiran prince, Edwin’s nephew Hereric, took refuge with the King of Elmet, Ceredig, who then betrayed and murdered him at Athelfrith’s instigation.