The Standing Water

by David Castleton

  ‘And, if I do not, let the ghosts of this knight and his lady who rest here, and the ghosts of all those who rest under the church and in the churchyard rise up and haunt me for the rest of my days. So help me God, amen.’

  Now we’d made our final oath, we were ready to take the gauntlet.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  That glove hung on its heavy chain, lit by dusty beams from the windows at both sides, its thumb and fingers bent slightly. We approached it with awe, creeping on our stocking feet, the cold of the stone – the cold of long ages – rising through our soles. Soon we were near enough to see the scorch marks on the metal.

  ‘Remember what happened to the knight who owned that glove?’ I said.

  Jonathon nodded; my eyes flitted to the altar in its railed-off space. It was so quiet now, but I knew what would happen if we placed a foot beyond that barrier.

  ‘Of course, I’ve heard the legend,’ Jonathon said, ‘but my mum says that during the church services, they all come up to the altar and the vicar gives them a sip of holy wine. They don’t get destroyed.’

  I thought for a moment.

  ‘That’s different,’ I said, ‘because the vicar tells them they can come. And the holy wine must protect them. Know what that wine is?’

  ‘No.’ Jonathon wagged his head.

  ‘It’s the blood of Jesus Christ!’

  ‘Wow!’ he said. ‘But, hang on a minute – how can it be Jesus’s blood if he isn’t even there?’

  ‘It’s magic, of course,’ I said. ‘With his magic, he can turn wine into his own blood anywhere in the world!’

  ‘Wow!’ Jonathon repeated.

  I was sure that sacred fluid would protect anyone against the knight’s fate. Yet that day we had no vicar, no wine to guard us should we go beyond that rail. Instead, ensuring no fingertip, no tiny piece of skin slipped across that border, we reached for the gauntlet. Of course, it hung way out of our grasp. Though we stretched our arms, our fingers strained hopelessly below it. We tried jumping, but our hands were still separated from our prize by a good length of air.

  ‘There’s only one thing for it,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to go up on my shoulders.’

  Jonathon gulped, but he nodded and didn’t complain. I knelt down, lowered my shoulders; he straddled them, and I stumbled up from the floor, my friend swaying as I staggered under his – surprising – weight. I stayed still for a moment – until we steadied – then tottered closer to the railings.

  ‘Careful!’ Jonathon shouted. ‘Don’t make any part of me go further than the rails, or you know what’ll happen!’

  I tried my best, but it was hard to control the burden that swayed on my shoulders, that I bore on my wobbling, already aching legs. I managed to position us right under the gauntlet yet Jonathon kept threatening to unbalance me as he dodged and twisted, pulling his body back from where he thought the invisible line that marked altar’s sacred space was. His fear trembled through him; those trembles shuddered into my shoulders, making it even harder to keep us stable.

  ‘What can you see?’ I called up.

  ‘On the end of the chain’ – Jonathon’s voice, high with panic, echoed through the church – ‘there’s a hook, which goes through a loop that sticks out of the glove. So we should be able to lift it off.’

  ‘OK,’ I stammered, struggling under his heaviness, ‘let’s do it.’

  I tilted my neck back, watched as Jonathon lifted his arms. Though he reached and strained, his hands couldn’t even brush the glove’s fingertips.

  ‘Damn!’ I said. ‘Still not close enough! Guess they hung it so high for a good reason. I’ll put you down.’

  I manoeuvred myself into a squat, as Jonathon squealed and protested about being lurched too close to the altar rail. When I was near enough to the floor, he scrabbled off my shoulders. He was still trembling, his face white.

  ‘Suppose that’s it then,’ he said. ‘Just can’t reach the glove.’

  ‘Maybe there’s something we can stand on –’ I glanced around the church ‘– a chair or stool.’

  But the only seats were the pews, and those ancient benches were firmly fixed in place. An idea dawned in my mind.

  ‘Hey, what about those cushion things people kneel on? They’re quite thick.’

  I ran to the nearest pew, hauled one from under it, causing cords of long-settled dust to whirl. ‘Dust devils’ my mum called them – most inappropriate in a church. I held that oblong cushion up to show Jonathon.

  ‘Won’t be enough,’ he said.

  ‘I know, but if we make a stack of maybe three and I stand on that with you on my shoulders, bet you could unhook that gauntlet.’

  ‘No way! It was dangerous enough before! It’ll be even worse with you standing on them!’

  I grabbed another two cushions, stacked all three under the glove. I got into a squat on that tower of well-stuffed wool. Without any more protests, Jonathon, with a couple of hops and a jump, launched himself so his legs straddled my shoulders. My feet sank into our stack, but I reckoned we still had the extra height we needed. I straightened my legs, inching into a standing posture on our sagging shifting base. Now upright, trying to keep balanced as the cushions wobbled below me and Jonathon swayed above, I craned my neck to gaze at him.

  ‘You’re near enough!’ I shouted. ‘Just reach up your hands.’

  Jonathon was trembling again; he hesitated for some seconds, long seconds for my legs. A violent shudder jerked through those limbs; my thighs bulged and ached. I couldn’t let us fall – I thought of how hard the floor had been when Darren had bashed my head on it, how much worse it would feel if we plummeted from a height. Jonathon stretched up his arms and grasped the glove.

  ‘How does it feel?’ I asked.

  ‘Ancient,’ he said, ‘and very, very cold.’

  Jonathon lifted the gauntlet, began to slide it around the curve of the hook. My heart banged as a scraping sound echoed through the church.

  ‘The ghost of the knight!’ I hissed. ‘He doesn’t like it!’

  ‘It’s just the metal!’ Jonathon whispered

  The sound scraped again. Fear made my legs buckle, sway. I wobbled and teetered on those cushions. Jonathon was rolled and jerked; his hands gripped my head, his fingers covering my eyes.

  ‘I can’t see, you idiot!’ I hissed.

  Now the church door creaked, footsteps rapped from the porch.

  ‘Someone’s coming – we have to get down!’ came Jonathon’s urgent whisper.

  But he didn’t move his hands. More footsteps echoed. We lurched and reeled; I struggled to keep us balanced on those shifting cushions. I tried to yank Jonathon’s fingers from my eyes, but he gripped my face with astounding strength. I wrenched them away – the force of that action toppled us. The cushions slid from beneath us; we flew back, plummeted. Luckily, the cushions landed in such a way that they partly broke our fall, but still my elbow banged the floor hard. Dull pain pulsed through my arm – I’d no time to worry about it. Now the doors dividing the church’s main part from the porch were creaking open. I kicked the cushions across the floor – my aim was good: they slipped under the first row of pews. I sprinted – dragging Jonathon behind me. We hurled ourselves onto the flags, diving, then skidding under that same line of benches. We scrabbled up into a squat; I peered above the pew and saw the door was now ajar. Weirton stepped from behind it, began to stride down the aisle. We were hidden from him, but if he went on walking to our end of the church, he’d easily spot us. Under the cover of the pew, we scuttled on hands and knees across the dusty floor, though I’d no idea where we should hide. At the pew’s end was the tomb of the knight and his lady – there was a gap between it and the wall, just about big enough for us to squeeze into. We crawled into that space as Weirton paced towards the altar, the bash of his heavy tread reverberating in the church’s hollowness. We got ourselves into a squat, and found we could peep over the lady’s effigy: see a section of the church framed by her sombre
face, her praying hands, her hair and gown below, and the straight line of her husband’s tomb above. Weirton stopped; glanced around; his face twitched; he looked – I thought – uneasy. He then resumed his march and seated himself on the very row of pews we’d crawled along.

  As I shivered, as my heart boomed, questions were thrown up by my panicking mind. What on earth was the teacher doing here? It was always weird to see him outside school – like the times I’d bumped into him with my parents in Goldhill. It was as if God had picked him up and thrown him down somewhere my brain knew he shouldn’t be. But seeing him here – on the day we’d begun enacting our plot to kill him! My heart banged harder as I wondered if he’d been tracking us, if at any moment he might leap from his pew, start scouring the church, haul us from behind the tomb and thrash us – a thrashing that might not stop till we reached the state of Marcus or Lucy. I shivered harder. The cold of the tomb and the cold rising through my socks along with my nerves meant I shook so violently I had to clench my mouth shut so my teeth wouldn’t rattle. The teacher glanced around more, some kind of distaste seemed to be screwing his features, crinkling his eyes, making him frown. I wasn’t sure why he should be uncomfortable in God’s holy house, unless – of course – what he’d done to Marcus and Lucy, and who knew how many other kids, made him feel anxious before the Lord. Weirton swung his gaze over to the church’s other side – he stared at those rows of red crosses he’d pointed out to me: perhaps he was desperate to scare some demons off. As my elbow throbbed to remind me of the bang it had received, he moved his eyes back to the altar and glimpsed the gauntlet. He sucked breath; his face jerked back; his eyes swelled. I hadn’t given this any thought, but – of course – after our attempt, the gauntlet must have been swinging on its chain. Its movement had now settled into small sways, but that motion was still more than could be explained by something like a breeze. Weirton stared at that rocking glove. Jonathon and I clutched each other – surely this was the proof he’d know our presence by! But Weirton just gawped at the gauntlet before hauling his gaze away and sinking his face into his hands. His eyes covered by his palms, he stayed hunched like that for a minute or so. When he looked up again, the gauntlet’s swaying had stopped.

  He shook his face, wiped his sleeve – the sleeve of a chunky blue jumper rather than one of his usual smart jackets – across his forehead, and let go a long breath of what I suspected was relief. Weirton then clasped his hands, bowed his head and started to pray, his lips twitching frantically as he mumbled words I couldn’t make out. He’d just finished his prayer and was again staring at the altar and glove when more footsteps came from the porch – footsteps far lighter than Weirton’s. The door creaked – a slower, more cautious creak than the teacher’s had been, a creak that sounded like some effort had been needed to make it. The tap of those gentle footsteps now echoed from the aisle and the grey bobbing head of the vicar came into view.

  ‘Hello, James,’ he said, as he made his stooped way towards Weirton.

  He sat down on the teacher’s bench and slid himself along it, pausing a couple of times as his feet stumbled over the cushions I’d kicked down there. Despite my fear, I had to push down the sniggers that welled up from hearing Weirton called by his first name. His middle name – Ronald – was even more hilarious, and there were plenty of sly chuckles whenever kids saw it at the bottom of official letters. But we had to make sure those sniggers stayed secret. Once Weirton had heard the brother and Darren Hill making fun of his middle name and had given both boys such a battering I thought they’d never sit down till the next year’s Christmas.

  ‘Hello, Reverent,’ Weirton said.

  ‘Oh Rodney, please,’ replied the vicar, causing fresh giggles to surge in me.

  ‘Rodney, sorry for taking up your time, thank you so much for coming.’

  ‘That’s quite all right, James. Sorry we had to meet here – got a sense you felt some reluctance about the venue. Perhaps not the most convenient of places, but I’ve a wedding rehearsal booked here for eleven.’

  Any amusement died as I wondered how long we’d have to crouch there. My legs were aching; pins and needles were running in my feet – all in addition to my throbbing elbow.

  ‘Well, it is a bit out of the way, living in Goldhill, and it’s a good old hike across that muddy field, but I’m just grateful you could see me at all.’

  ‘Oh, you should have come from the road. There’s a little carpark on that side, just down from the railway crossing, a gravel track …’

  The two men waffled like this for some minutes before the vicar said, ‘James, time’s ticking on so I suppose we should get down to business. What was it you wished to talk about?’

  Weirton shifted and fidgeted in his pew, wriggling and fiddling in the exact way he yelled at kids for. A tooth clamped his lip; he looked sheepish and finally said, ‘Vicar, as a man of God, I’m sure you understand the concept of duty.’

  ‘Of course,’ the vicar nodded.

  ‘And sacrifice, self-sacrifice …’

  ‘Yes, it forms the whole basis of our religion.’

  This made Weirton look even more uneasy. The teacher continued.

  ‘Well, what should a person, a Christian person, do when he’s in a situation where he … where he knows he has a certain duty, but everything within him – right from his peace of mind to his physical health – revolts against performing that duty day-after-day!’

  I thought I saw the briefest of smiles flicker over the vicar’s face, but then that face locked back into its serious expression.

  ‘A man tries his best!’ Weirton’s fist bashed into his palm, causing the vicar to jump. ‘A man has the best of intentions, but still … that man can get no peace! Not at work, not at home, not even at night! Vicar, sorry Rodney, recently I haven’t even had the peace of blessed darkness when I close my eyes! I’m being plagued by bad dreams!’

  The vicar nodded, mumbled comfortingly.

  ‘I’m not the selfish type who’d simply throw it all up and just take off, like so many pathetic excuses for men do in this blasted modern world! I know I’ve got responsibilities – to my wife, my son, my aged father who’s in poor health: though none of them would ever think to thank me for what I do for them. Then there are the kids in the school – I know it’s my duty to mould them into shape, to make them aware of where their place is in life and what’s expected of them, to instil them with the discipline that will stand them in good stead. At least their parents appreciate what I do, at least I get some thanks from someone, but still … it’s exhausting dealing day-in-day-out with the likes of Dennis Stubbs, Craig Browning, Richard Johnson! Even the bright lads like Ryan Watson and Craig’s brother can be a right handful. And, I’m telling you Vicar, that Marcus Jones … before we got rid of him, I think I was that close to being pushed over the edge!’

  Weirton made a tiny space with his thumb and forefinger; the vicar nodded, went on murmuring. Did the priest know about Marcus!? I hadn’t understood much of what Weirton had said, but he’d talked clearly about ‘getting rid of’ that boy. I readied my ears to catch more about Marcus’s fate, but Weirton didn’t mention him again.

  ‘I’m a man who’s faced down bears, Vicar, slaughtered massive bulls, but sometimes those lads are harder work than wild animals! I just wonder, Vicar, where the line is. At what point can a man who’s laboured for years to do his duty say, “That’s it! Enough! I can do no more!”? Especially a Christian man who looks to the shining example of Jesus and his great sacrifice!’

  I was sure a smile twitched over the vicar’s face again, but – voice weighted with sympathy – he said, ‘Well James, of course we should try to imitate Christ, but – at the same time – we need to remember that – unlike him – we’re only human, all too human. Human beings aren’t perfect; humans can make mistakes, easily take wrong paths. We need to forgive ourselves for our errors just as we forgive others. Perhaps teaching just isn’t the right profession for you, perhaps Emberfield
and Goldhill aren’t the right places for you to be, and your body and mind are trying to tell you this. Maybe you should consider …’

  ‘But, with all due respect, Rodney!’ Weirton’s voice was beginning to boom through the church. ‘I can’t just give it all up! Think of my duties to this community – if I resign, what might happen to the school, the kids? There aren’t many left like me! I’m one of the last of the old guard! My position could be taken by some modern trendy and …’

  Weirton’s face was reddening over the lady’s praying hands, her cheeks of white. I didn’t know what to do. Any movement could alert the increasingly animated teacher, but I couldn’t stay there. The ache in my legs had got worse; those limbs were tortured by a thousand needle pricks and pin jabs. Hopefully, Weirton – so wrapped up in his speech – wouldn’t notice us sneaking away; hopefully, the vicar wouldn’t hear us now the church echoed to the teacher’s voice. I silently thanked the lady for shielding us, pleaded with her ghost to forgive any disturbance and gestured to Jonathon we should get away. We crawled along the space between the wall and the edge of the pews. I begged God I wouldn’t sneeze from any dust we’d stir up, that the men wouldn’t hear the shuffling of our jeans on the floor. I glanced back at the teacher. His fist was waving – somehow in time with the words gushing from his gob. He seemed completely caught up in his oratory.

  ‘… I have to be honest, the place depresses me,’ he was shouting. ‘Those endless boggy fields, the fog that weighs upon them just as it does on the spirit …’

  The vicar’s head nodded, bobbing the grey curls that surrounded his bare scalp, as if each nod gave Weirton permission to pour out more complaints. We quickened our crawl, got past the final row of pews and were just about to scuttle for the doors when Weirton said, ‘What’s that?’