The Standing Water

by David Castleton

  ‘And that land over there,’ he said, ‘was owned by the Knights Templars. Does anybody know who the Knights Templars were?’

  Knights! So I’d been right about that breastplate! Of course, I knew what a knight was; I was just unsure about the Templar bit. Weirton’s pink face scanned the throng of pupils; no one offered a reply.

  ‘The Knights Templars,’ he said, ‘were an order of crusading knights. They were good Christians who went to the Holy Land to fight the Muslims, who were preventing pilgrims visiting Jerusalem. There’s a local legend that one knight loved a woman who lived in Emberfield, and before he went to fight she promised she’d wait for him and not marry anyone else. But she LIED!’ Weirton’s sudden yell caused the children to flinch, jump back a few centimetres. ‘When the knight got back from years of sacrifice spent fighting the Turks, he found she’d wed another. Of course, he was angry and upset. Do you know what he did?’

  The sixty heads of the children wagged. Then Dennis Stubbs piped up:

  ‘Did he chop her head off, Sir, like King Henry did to his wives? That’s what I’d have done!’

  Weirton laughed; this gave us permission to chuckle too.

  ‘No Dennis,’ Weirton said, ‘he didn’t quite do that. He …’

  Weirton tilted his head; his eyes glanced at the moody sky; he brought a pondering hand to his chin.

  ‘The Knights Templars knew a lot about God; some even knew a kind of magic – how to ask God to do things for them. So this knight put a curse on his former lover. And do you know what happened?’

  Faces lit with intrigue, we shook our heads.

  ‘Well, she soon became ill – and died!’

  The children gasped. I resolved never to offend a Knight Templar. I hardly dared look at what had been their land – in case any of that hex lingered. Perhaps that evil energy still floated above the accursed soil. But Weirton soon made things clearer.

  ‘He cursed the house she lived in,’ he said, face darkening, eyebrows slanted, ‘and even today if any woman tries to live there, she gets sick or bad things happen to her. At least –’ Weirton smiled ‘– that’s according to the old gossips of Emberfield.’

  Now I thought about it, I’d heard whispers of that legend. Maybe the essence of that bad spell seeped beyond that house – maybe it hung and drifted in the air around our town. Perhaps it explained the spooky silence that floated with the mist over the houses and fields, the melancholy that hovered in our atmosphere. We walked on; a barbed wire fence marked the end of the Templar’s territory. Weirton stopped; we bunched around him, eager for more tales.

  ‘Some of you may know,’ Weirton said, ‘there was a great battle in the Middle Ages, which happened on these very fields.’

  Weirton’s arms swept to take in the surrounding flatlands.

  ‘Does anyone know who it was between?’

  There was silence then Stubbs’s hand inched up.

  ‘The English and the Scots, Sir?’

  ‘That’s right, Dennis,’ said Weirton. ‘The Scots had invaded the north of England and behaved terribly – burning, looting, killing the defenceless and innocent. They were so bad that a local bishop prayed to God to rid England of the Scottish curse. And that bishop assembled a group of local lords, and they gathered all their knights and soldiers and confronted the Scots right here!’

  Weirton’s hands pointed down to the track.

  ‘Can you imagine it?’ Weirton said. ‘Two huge armies lined up ready to meet – knights on horseback with their shields and lances, foot soldiers with their axes, daggers, swords.’

  I could picture those eager regiments – the thousands of men brandishing their weapons on our damp plains. I wondered why such exciting things didn’t happen any more in Emberfield.

  ‘And in the midst of the English army’ – Weirton’s arm flung itself over to where their midst would have been – ‘was the bishop. He rode on a cart from which holy flags and banners fluttered – letting the English know God was on their side.’

  ‘And God ensured we prevailed! The Scots were beaten, many were massacred, the survivors cut down as they fled north. And after the battle – as the dead lay piled high and the English prowled the field to finish off the groaning wounded – the bishop dropped down on his knees and thanked God for his great kindness.’

  ‘What happened to all the dead people?’ Stubbs piped up.

  ‘They buried them in certain fields around the town,’ Weirton said. ‘The farmers and the families who’ve lived here for a long time, they know which fields they are. And there’s an interesting local legend …’

  Weirton paused.

  ‘It says that if those fields are ever ploughed or built upon, the ghosts of those long-dead Scots will rise up and haunt the town. And to this day, those fields have just been left as grazing land. Look – there’s one there!’

  Weirton pointed to a field – the ground had remained respectfully unturned: just a few sheep reverently cropped the grass. I thought of what lay beneath it – the jumbled bones of hundreds of Scots soldiers, skeletal arms still sporting shields, legs clothed in the rags of mouldering kilts. What would happen if some farmer arrogantly ignored our legends and decided to rip the earth with a plough or start digging the foundations of a house? We’d have untold problems when those hordes rose up, with spectres rampaging through our gardens, burning our houses with phantom fire. What a nuisance those ghostly clans would be – I doubted their natural Scottish boorishness would have been snuffed by death. Better to let them lie where they were – their thousands of corpses sending up their rotten fumes through the black earth, sending them up along the roots and stems of grass. Better let those fumes form another doleful cloud to float around Emberfield; better let decay’s breath hover, add to the mournful mix that made up Emberfield’s air.

  Weirton led us on. He worked himself up to quite a stride so we shorter-legged kids soon found ourselves at the back of a thinning procession. As I pondered how Mr Weirton knew so much about that battle – surely his granddad was too young to have fought in it, but maybe his great-granddad had – we approached another wood: a modest oblong of pines, barbed-wire sealed. I wondered what had happened to the vast forests of Salton that had lived in my mind. Had they all been chopped down since my last visit? If they had, the land had been cleansed of them well. There was no mess of roots, no stumps. I turned to Jonathon.

  ‘I’m sure this wood used to be bigger. I remember it spreading further than I could see.’

  ‘Yeah –’ Jonathon shrugged ‘– me too.’

  Disappointed at that drab rectangle of trees, we walked on. But soon we came upon something that made our hearts beat, our mouths gape. At the edge of the track, by the knocked-down column of another noble gate – which had once marked the other end of the grounds, Mr Weirton told us – was a pile of white stones. About five feet high, the mound gleamed and glimmered in the weak light.

  ‘Diamonds!’ Stubbs exclaimed.

  ‘Wow!’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure!?’ Jonathon asked, voice pitched high.

  ‘Course!’ said Stubbs. ‘They’re white shiny stones – what else could they be?’

  This was even better than the breastplate. No need to scrabble down that stinging bank to capture my fortune – I could just cram my bag and pockets right there. Then no more school, none of my dad’s dreary work when I got older; maybe I could even escape from Emberfield. I could draw, play, relax always. Jonathon, Stubbs and I approached that heap. Now closer, I could see how light refracted through the inner chambers of those stones – almost an infinity, a maze of compartments. Admittedly, the rocks didn’t have the clear sparkle of diamonds; they were rather a dullish white, but surely when cleaned up they’d have that perfect lustre. After telling us about the column of that gate, Weirton had resumed his striding and was some way ahead. Dennis and I both reached out a hand. My heart knocked, but its boom was tempered by Weirton being so far away. Surely the trudging line of pupils would shiel
d us from him. My hand closed around a rough chalky stone. I gripped; its edges pricked my palm pleasingly. I withdrew it from the mound as my shoulders shrugged off my satchel. My whole future lay in that gem – its endless caverns and chambers infinite possibilities, its light the rays of my life’s hope. I unbuckled the two straps of my satchel, flung its flap back to reveal the hole into which I’d drop my treasure. The voice blasted.

  ‘Ryan Watson! Dennis Stubbs! What on earth are you doing!?’

  My heart jumped into my throat; Weirton marched back along the parade, arms sweeping aside any children who’d not scrambled from his path. Perhaps five metres from us, he stopped and – with a fling of his pointing finger – yelled:

  ‘Leave those stones alone and get a move on! I can’t think why you find them so fascinating. And no more dawdling – the last thing we need is for you to be lost and roaming over the fields!’

  He sighed, turned to Perkins.

  ‘Mrs Perkins, will you please bring up the rear. And any more shenanigans from these lads, just let me know, and I’ll come down on them with more weight than all those stones combined!’

  With an irritated swivel, Weirton turned his great body and strode to the line’s front. With much tutting and fussing, Perkins pursued us at the back.

  ‘Ooh, you’d better look sharp now! Better get a move on and don’t dawdle, or he’ll give you the walloping of your life! Won’t be able to sit down for a week, you know, so you’d better hurry …’

  Propelled by her rhythmic puffs of nagging, we picked up the pace. The track took us between fields then we entered some more woods which – though thin – managed to darken our path. There was a twist in the track and a moment’s euphoria bubbled from my belly at the sight of a tower poking from the trees – tip scratching the sky just as I’d remembered. A Victorian water tower, Weirton said. I wondered what a water tower was – where did that redbrick sharp-roofed building get its water from? Maybe its point punctured the clouds, maybe it then sucked the moisture down as through a straw to keep it in its long stomach. There was certainly enough water up there, but I didn’t see why we needed to store it when so much lay around us in the ponds and swamps and ditches of Emberfield. Perhaps the tower syphoned some rain from those black clouds to prevent our town being soaked by endless downpours, stopping Emberfield being drowned like in Noah’s Flood. Anyway, we trudged on. Soon we were out of that slither of forest, into open fields again.

  ‘Look!’ Jonathon said.

  Once more, Salton didn’t disappoint. A castle rose from the flatlands – four storeys of thick stone, grey battlements, thrusting turrets.

  ‘Wow!’ Stubbs and I said.

  ‘Bet it’s haunted!’ Jonathon said.

  ‘Must be,’ I replied, ‘must be loads of ghosts in the dungeons – people who were tortured to death!’

  ‘Yeah!’ said Stubbs.

  The castle certainly commanded the swampy plains. Weirton stopped, went into a speech, flinging his arms. He hurled a hand towards the castle as he explained it had once been just a noble mansion which had to be fortified due to the – and now he flung his finger north – raids of the dastardly Scots. He told us there was rumoured to be a tunnel between the castle and church. His arm now thrust across the marshlands to where the church sat, bordered by the wall of its graveyard, above which peeped the tops of headstones. The church had a hefty tower crowned with battlements because – Weirton said – the Scots were so depraved they’d even stoop to ransacking places of worship.

  ‘Anyway,’ the teacher’s sombre voice boomed, ‘one day some curious locals wanted to see if there really was a tunnel. They took a little drummer boy – probably about the age of the lads in my class – into the castle dungeons and sent him off down what seemed a dark passageway. The idea was he would drum and the adults would follow his beats from above ground until he hopefully came up in the church crypts.’

  Crypts – weren’t they underground vaults filled with coffins and skeletons! I thought of how awful it must have been for the Drummer Boy: forced to stumble along that black tunnel – probably full of cobwebs, massive spiders – and then, even worse, to come up in such a place. I reckoned all the adults who’d sent him down there would have been too scared to do it.

  ‘They traced the rattle of his drum across the fields until’ – Weirton allowed a long pause – ‘it suddenly … stopped!’

  We gasped. Weirton let more seconds pass before he went on.

  ‘They waited for him to restart yet only silence came from below. The Drummer Boy was never found, but – on dark quiet nights – it’s said you can still hear his taps and rolls echoing from beneath the ground.’

  I gasped again; my heart started to bash. I knew this legend must be true – I’d often lain in bed in the black spaces that stretched between bouts of sleep, and heard an eerie clatter floating over the fields. It’d go on for five minutes, maybe ten as – heart banging, limbs stiff – I’d hide, shivering, under my blankets. I’d pray for it to end, but the patter would grimly go on. I’d only stop shaking long after the last echoes had faded into the night. My parents had tried to tell me it was probably just a tractor rumbling by, but I now saw through their well-meaning attempts to calm me. Weirton ushered us on, towards a gate at the path’s side – a gate leading to the fields we’d tramp over to get to the church. Just before we came to it, Stubbs hissed, ‘Look!’

  Beside the track stood a stone, onto which a metal plaque had been hammered. Our eyes flicked over the words engraved on it.

  ‘… and this is the spot at which, according to legend, the beats of the Little Drummer Boy stopped and he was heard and seen no more.’

  ‘It’s true!’ said Stubbs.

  ‘Must be!’ said Jonathon. ‘It’s all here – in writing!’

  ‘My parents lied!’ I said. ‘It was the Drummer’s ghost I heard at night!’

  Weirton was now wheeling open the gate, plodding through the churned mud and hoof prints under it. He beckoned us through and soon we were wading through that slurry, hearing its rasping suck as we pulled up our feet.

  ‘Do you think it’s just mud or is it shit?’ Jonathon said.

  ‘Probably a good mixture,’ replied Stubbs.

  That mixture invaded my far-from-watertight shoes, squelched under the arches of my feet, splurged between my toes. I watched it seep into then gush out of my footwear with my walk’s tread, a rich puree of rainwater and black soil, with a browner tinge from the innards of animals. With the rest of my schoolmates, I hobbled and balanced – arms out – across the field. We came to a second gate, which Weirton swung ajar, then trudged through another bog of grasping earth, trampled dung and stagnant puddles. About halfway across this new field, a path could be made out, leading to the church, which squatted, ringed by its graveyard, on a tiny knoll – Emberfield’s best attempt to raise it towards heaven. On another hillock on the field’s other side stood the stern castle. I gazed at that fortress.

  ‘Be great if we could go inside it,’ I said, ‘get up on its battlements.’

  ‘Yeah!’ said Jonathon. ‘And climb the towers and explore the dungeons!’

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t lads.’ We both jumped at the steady boom of Weirton’s voice. ‘It’s a working farm now – no tourists allowed and certainly no curious schoolchildren.’

  I let my stare slip down those austere walls and saw Weirton was right. Barbed wire encircled the shit-splattered farmyard. Notices rose above that wire’s sharp-toothed tangle: ‘Strictly Private Property – Keep out!’ ‘Beware – Vicious Dogs Kept Here!’

  At least we still had the church, but now even our way to that seemed barred. There were two horses in the field: one brown, one grey, massive muscular beasts, snorting the morning air from their vast nostrils. They trotted and stamped, hooves patterning the damp earth. They were over by the castle as we made our tottering way across the first part of the field, but – on becoming aware of us – the brown larger horse, probably the male, stop
ped and began to stare. The grey drew alongside him and also looked steadily at our doddering parade. Indifferent to the horses, Weirton led us on. The stallion breathed more mist: irritated, angry mist – he thrust a hoof into the soil like a child stamping a foot.

  ‘Do you think it’s safe?’ someone said.

  ‘I’m scared!’ a quivering voice admitted.

  ‘Nothing to be scared of!’ Weirton boomed. ‘Man is the dominant animal, as the Bible says. They’re only a couple of horses – not exactly wild tigers, are they? Keep in line and follow me.’

  The horses were not impressed with Weirton’s rhetoric. As we continued our cautious plod, the male cantered towards us. Though it stopped some way off, its huge eyes swelled – those eyes were fixed on our procession, especially Weirton at its front.

  ‘Go on, shoo!’ Weirton called out, waving his arms at the horse as he stumbled and balanced through the bog.

  The horse did not shoo, but moved a few paces closer. Its mate stood, observing the spectacle, as the stallion gushed out more steam, as it banged its feet into the ground. Its eyes were like dark pools, its liquid stare was now concentrated on Weirton and the first of his students – myself, Jonathon, Stubbs, the brother. I looked over my shoulder and saw our timid line had thinned. Some pupils – and Perkins – trudged laboriously, finding the field full of delaying obstacles. Other kids had stopped – they watched Weirton and the horse with studied interest while staying in dashing distance of the gate. Weirton glared over his shoulder; his eyes and nostrils flared.

  ‘Keep up I say!’ he yelled at the dawdlers before turning to the horse. ‘And you – shoo! Go on – get out of it!’