The Ely Testament

by Philip Gooden

  He turned back towards the lychgate. He said nothing to Davey about what he had seen by Martha’s grave, and the boy averted his gaze from his father. They trundled the handcart up to the church itself. Gabriel stopped by the porch and, with his son’s help, deposited the headstone, still wrapped in cloth, against the porch wall. He opened the inner door and walked inside. The interior was simple to the point of bareness. Large windows, mostly plain, let in quantities of light and sky, as well as rain in places. There was some panelling in the chancel but otherwise the walls of the church were unadorned plaster, streaked with green. It was damp and the cold rose up from the flagged floor.

  Gabriel reminded himself to light the brazier for tomorrow’s service. It would be placed in the aisle near the back and the villagers would, as if by chance, choose the nearest pews. Parson Eames did not altogether approve of the brazier, believing that a brisk coldness encouraged more attention to his sermons. But Gabriel told him that its use had been permitted, even encouraged, by his predecessor, and that it helped to keep at bay rheumatic aches and the fen ague. Eames was not a local man so he was not qualified to judge the accuracy of what the sexton told him.

  Davey waited in the shelter of the north porch. He was used to waiting, and did not mind being left to himself. He glanced at Ada Baxter’s headstone, swaddled in sacking, leaning against the wall. This made him think of his mother’s grave and the visit he had paid to her a few days earlier.

  It was not the first time that Davey had left some small tribute at his mother’s burial place. His memories of his mother – she had died three years before – varied. Sometimes they were as sharp as if she had just finished speaking to him; at others he struggled to recall the features of her face. Until now, his offerings had an accidental air, as it were. A little mound of pebbles or a swag of blossom left at the foot of the stone, or a trail of ivy draped over the top of it, things which might have fetched up there by chance. But the jam jar with its ox-eye daisies was a more deliberate gesture. Davey didn’t know what had prompted him to do it, any more than he knew the meaning of what had occurred just after he placed the flowers next to the headstone and while he was standing there in contemplation.

  It was almost dark. The weather had been fine and the sky to the west still glimmered with some streaks of day. In the distance an owl hooted and, with the evening breeze strengthening, the weathervane cockerel on a corner of the tower creaked as it shifted round. Davey had picked this unoccupied moment to visit the graveyard, expecting not to see or to be seen by anyone. He ran his fingers over his mother’s name, MARTHA PARR, and her dates, 1825-71. It was his mother who had taught him to read and write and how to do his sums. He had grown used to seeing his father’s name alongside hers, and the oddity of it – that his father was still alive – did not trouble him.

  He stood up. A flickering movement at the corner of his eye caught his attention. He turned towards it. Directly in front of him to the east was the drystone wall which marked the end of the graveyard. Beyond it lay the grounds of Phoenix House, whose boundary was delineated by trees and shrubs. In the fading light these were no more than blocks and irregular shapes.

  Over the wall there came a scrambling figure, the outline of a short man. As he topped the wall, he dislodged several fragments of stone. Ignoring whatever damage he’d done, he tumbled on to the grass, started to his feet and set off in Davey’s direction, clasping one hand to his hat to keep it in place. Yet, while Davey watched, too astounded to move himself, he detected something odd about the man’s motion. It was more of a glide than a run. At several points where there were obstacles in his way – gravestones, low earthen mounds, simple crosses – the moving man did not appear to weave his way around them or to stumble but simply to ignore them.

  The fear that had seized the boy slackened for long enough to make him aware of his exposed position. He ducked down behind his mother’s headstone. And at that instant the man drew level with him, paused in his flight and looked back as if he expected to see pursuers. In the uncertain light, Davey had the impression of a bearded fellow, dressed in clothes and a hat, which were quite unfamiliar in their style. Not only unfamiliar clothes but grand ones, rich garments. The very ‘finery’ which he’d mention to Tom Ansell several days later. The fleeing man’s mouth was open and he was breathing hard, yet Davey, huddled in the shadow of his mother’s headstone, could hear not a sound.

  The man looked to one side and down at the point where Davey was. He stared at the boy for several seconds, apparently without being aware of him. Perhaps his eyes were not yet accustomed to the gloom. Then he swung out his arm as if about to use Martha Parr’s gravestone for support. Davey huddled even further into himself. He sensed, rather than saw, the man’s hand move rapidly above him, move through the area occupied by the headstone. He noticed that the man’s hand was bandaged. There was no sound of a hand striking stone, no cry of pain. Nothing.

  Davey looked up. The man was looking intently in the direction from which he had just come. The boy peered round the edge of the grave. Now a whole pack of men was tumbling over the wall, knocking down more stones and as heedless and excited as dogs in a hunt. The spectacle was frightening, but almost more frightening was the absence of noise from the pursuit. It was as if he had suddenly been struck with absolute deafness.

  Yet Davey was not deaf. He heard again the cry of the owl in the distance, not once but twice. It was as if he were able to hear some sounds but not others. By now, the man was moving away from Davey’s hiding place and heading towards the lychgate and the path which led from the churchyard. He never reached it. Two or three other shapes suddenly appeared on that side, so that his escape route was blocked. In the indistinct light Davey saw a scuffle – saw, not heard – before the runaway broke from the milling group and turned back in Davey’s direction. His hat had been knocked off. By this stage the other band, the ones who’d scrambled over the wall, had rushed silently past the headstone so that they too arrived to form a ragged circle around the man.

  One of the pursuers, more hot-headed or violent than the others, was carrying some kind of stave and he struck at the runaway behind the knees. The man buckled and fell forward, and the other first thrashed him with the stave, then treated it like a spear, making repeated jabbing motions at the figure on the ground. There must have been noises to accompany this: the thud of the blows, the cries and gasps of breath. But no sound was audible to Davey.

  The man who’d been stabbing at the other on the ground moved back as if to admire his handiwork. Davey had a clear sight of his profile, of long straight hair beneath his hat. The other pursuers started to close in, but the fugitive was not so badly injured that he did not make one final effort to get away. Like huntsmen watching a fatally wounded stag, the ring of men allowed him to stumble to his feet and stagger towards the church, where he seemed to become absorbed by the shadows of the porch. Then, Davey supposed, the man entered the church itself. The pursuers stood for a while, undecided what to do next, before the one with the stave made a sweeping motion with his free arm. They all clustered towards the porch and then shoved their way inside.

  Davey looked back towards the wall between the churchyard and the big house. He saw two more figures standing there, not men, not women either, he thought. They looked almost like children. They stared, unmoving as statues, at the scene which had just unfolded. Perhaps they shared Davey’s horror. He turned his attention back towards the church. If the wounded man believed that holy ground would provide sanctuary then he was wrong. For many minutes Davey stood watching the church porch and waiting for someone to emerge, for something to happen. He listened for blows, for cries and screams from within, but no sounds came apart from the creaking of the cockerel on top of the church tower and the sighing of the wind.

  Curiously, Davey was not so afraid now, or not so very afraid. He thought he knew what was happening even if he could not begin to understand it. Then he heard the sound of the church door opening.
A figure walked out from the shelter of the porch. It was holding a lantern. Davey’s heart beat faster and his mouth was dry. The figure traced a path across the churchyard towards the beech hedge which screened it from the parsonage. A circle of light flowed over the straggling grass and the stone monuments. Davey heard the sound of a man humming fragments of a hymn tune. He recognized the source of the humming. It was Parson Eames. He was making his way home. There was the sound of another gate opening and closing, the one set in the hedge which gave on to the parson’s garden.

  Davey stood and thought. The parson must have been inside the church all the while that he was gazing at his mother’s headstone. He must have been inside the church even while the injured man took sanctuary and his pursuers burst in and did whatever it was they did in that sanctified place. Yet Mr Eames showed no sign of having witnessed anything terrible. The parson’s humming was good-humoured – especially good-humoured considering it was Mr Eames – and he was not running in fear. He had seen nothing because nothing had happened while he was inside the church.

  Everything that Davey Parr saw of the pursuit had occurred not as darkness fell during an October evening in 1874. It had taken place here in the graveyard of St Ethelwine’s and inside the church during another time, another century, and it involved people that Davey did not know and performing actions whose purpose he could only guess at. Who was the fleeing man? Who were his pursuers? Did they want him, or did they want to take something from him?

  Similar things to this had happened to Davey before. Once he had seen a troop of men moving in line and on foot towards the village, all wearing fighting gear and carrying old swords and spears like those in an illustration to a children’s history book which his mother used in his reading lessons. The men moved with the same queer gait that Davey observed in the fleeing individual in the churchyard, and they moved in complete silence. On that occasion, too, Davey’s fear had swiftly been replaced by a confused curiosity. He was not in danger, his village was not in danger. Indeed the armed men passed by the cottages as if they didn’t exist.

  He realized that whatever he was witnessing was not happening now, in the present, but happening in the past, happening then. Though when the then was he had no idea. The strangely fluid motion of the armed men was explained by tiny alterations in the level of the land. They were walking on the ground as it had been many years earlier, slightly lower, slightly higher. In the same way, the fleeing man had been running through the graveyard when it wasn’t so full of graves and memorials and so his path was clearer.

  At this moment, while Davey waited in the church porch for his father to come out, he puzzled again over the running man with the hat and over his pursuers. He had not mentioned the vision in the churchyard to his father. He had not mentioned it to anyone apart from the gentleman he had been instructed to collect from Ely Station. He did not know why he’d told Mr Ansell. Perhaps it was because he had never seen him before and did not expect to see him again.

  He was startled by the creak of the church door. It was his father. Gabriel Parr noticed the way Davey’s head jerked round, he observed the alarmed expression on his white face.

  ‘Are you all right, Davey? You look as though you’ve . . .’

  He’d been about to say ‘seen a ghost’, but the thought of how the lad had been secretly visiting his mother’s grave made him pause and his voice tailed off.

  They left the churchyard, Davey pushing the cart. Gabriel wondered at his son’s startled and distracted manner. Perhaps the boy really was seeing ghosts.

  The Perpetual Curate

  From the upper floor of the parsonage, the Reverend George Eames watched the Parrs, the son wheeling the handcart through the churchyard and out of the lychgate. He was not in a good mood. There were two immediate reasons why he was not in a good mood, both of them to do with the parsonage and its occupants. And there was another deeper reason why he was out of sorts, but he pushed that to the back of his mind and concentrated on domestic discontents.

  His housekeeper had insisted that he inspect some water damage to two of the upstairs rooms, damage caused by a leaking roof. His inclination might have been to shut up the dank, mouldy chambers and leave them to their own devices, since they were never used, but Mrs Walters was insistent not only that Mr Eames should examine them for himself but that something must be done. This request – no, this peremptory demand – from the housekeeper had come straight after an unpleasant scene involving Hannah, the maid-of-all-work and the only other servant employed in the parsonage.

  Earlier that morning, Eames had entered his study to see the ignorant girl standing near the fire, which she had just lit, and, idly and carelessly, feeding sheets of paper on to the tiny flames. It took him an instant to realize that the sheets were his sermon notes. In a moment of laxness the previous evening he had taken the notes from his desk across to the armchair near the fire so that he might ponder the outline of what he was going to say on Sunday, ponder it in slightly more comfort. He had neglected to return the notes to the desktop, placing them on the floor instead, and now here was Hannah distributing them to the flames.

  ‘What are you doing, girl!’

  He spoke loudly and the girl froze, in fear or confusion. A single further sheet fluttered from her grasp and settled into the back of the fireplace as if that was its inevitable destination. Eames strode across the room and snatched the remaining pieces of paper from her grasp.

  ‘What do you think you are doing?’ he said, though less fiercely this time.

  ‘I . . . I’m sorry, sir. I saw these papers on the floor and I thought . . . thought . . .’

  ‘Thought what?’

  ‘That you didn’t need them no more, sir. From the way they was left, all scattered and scrawled . . .’

  George Eames looked at the topmost sheet in his hand. It was true; it did have an unfinished look, with words crossed out and others inserted as afterthoughts. But that did not excuse the girl. How was she capable of judging what he had written? Who was she to judge it, scrawlings or no? She could scarcely read at all. Her signature was as rudimentary as a child’s.

  Hannah realized what she had done wrong. She made a dart at the fire and tried to retrieve the sheet which was lodged, blackening but still intact, at the back of the grate. Even as her fingers closed about it, the paper burst into flame and the maid let go and jumped back with a shriek. She held up her hand, which was all smutted with smoky dust.

  ‘Leave it,’ said George Eames. ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘I . . . I am . . .’

  Hannah was not an attractive girl. She was quite small and her face had a red and raw look to it, emphasized by her black eyebrows. Now, with her smudged hand held up like an admission of guilt, she seemed close to tears. But Eames observed – couldn’t help observing – the momentary curve of her back and the swell of her hips as she bent to get the bit of paper from the fireplace. There was a grace to the movement which he was unable to deny. He had often noted these and other aspects of her figure even though they were masked by the drab, shapeless maid’s outfit she wore. And now, as she stood facing him with her head down, a curl of black hair protruded from beneath her cap. Something about the insolent way the hair curled in on itself as well as its sheer blackness caused him to feel uncomfortable and to look away. This did not matter since she was not looking at him either.

  Mrs Walters came into the room. Perhaps she was alerted by Eames’ shout. Without waiting to find out exactly what was wrong, she shoo-ed Hannah out of the study, tutting and fussing. Then, as if to distract the parson from the foolish behaviour of the maid by bringing up another problem, she started speaking about the rooms on the upper floor, the dilapidated roof, the water which was ruining parts of the house. To quieten her, Eames promised that he’d come up and look. In a moment. First he had things to attend to.

  When Mrs Walters had shut the door, he sank into the armchair by the fire which, by now, was burning cheerfully. He flicked th
rough the sheets of paper that he had saved from the flames. He sighed and replaced the notes on the floor. He struggled to hold back a wave of gloom that threatened to overwhelm him.

  George Eames laboured over his sermons, organizing his material so that he proceeded from points of lesser significance to those of greater importance, but constantly keeping before the minds of the congregation the text about which he was preaching. He strove always to find the right phrase, the exact word, which would strengthen his – or rather, God’s – argument. He wished to be both forceful and fluent, and believed that he sometimes came close to achieving that end. But Eames could not deceive himself that his congregation of tenant-farmers and field-labourers attended to his sermons with a tenth, or even a twentieth, of the care and devotion which he gave to composing them. When he looked down from the pulpit, it was often to see dull, uncomprehending expressions or sidelong glances. The only people who showed a real understanding and appreciation were, as one would expect, Mr and Mrs Lye from Phoenix House.

  Now, as he stood up from the armchair, gathered the sermon notes and deposited them on his desk, he reflected that Hannah’s indifference and ignorance were only too typical of the people of this place. The image of Hannah standing in front of him, dejected, the stray curl escaping from her cap, led him to the thought that was never far from his mind. What he needed to help him in his daily work was not a more capable maid or a less peremptory housekeeper. What he needed was a wife, a helpmeet.

  He needed someone who would attend to the dozen little tasks that had to be attended to around the parsonage. Someone in whose presence he could rehearse his sermons, someone whose love and care for him would ease his pilgrimage through this troubled world. Someone – although he did not dwell for too long on this thought – to lie beside him at night and bring him comfort, spiritual, mental, and physical. Even someone who might bear his children.