The willow trailed its leaves in the water like verdant tears. Its branches stirred restlessly as the horse and cart struggled past, headed for the village guest house.
‘Splendid!’ remarked Henry, looking in the direction of the lake. Dan followed his gaze, expecting to spy some new marvel amidst the stunning rural landscape, but instead saw two local girls, one with long brown hair plaited down her back and the other wearing a traditional flowery headscarf. Henry waved at them, and they waved back, giggling. He turned to his companion. ‘I think we’re in there, old man,’ he informed Dan with a grin.
‘Right,’ Dan was unconvinced. Then again, the ladies seemed to go for Henry’s ex public school charms, and, the two of them being exotic foreigners, even Dan was getting a bit of female attention.
‘Aren’t you glad we didn’t take a cab after all!’ It was a statement rather than a question, but Dan felt that a response was expected nonetheless.
‘Right,’ he agreed uncertainly and tightened his grip on the side of the cart, his eyes glued to the peasant’s back and the horse’s rump beyond. Dan came from a stalwart middle class family in Birmingham, and horses were not something he’d ever planned on getting this close to. But Henry was evidently loving the whole Eastern European thing. Dan couldn’t help but wonder how strange it was that Henry of all people—Henry who, despite his foreign surname, was to all intents and purposes more English than the Queen—should go haring around Poland, looking for traces of his ancestors. Still and all, perhaps it was less un-PC than exploring the colonialist past on his mother’s side. In any case, Dan enjoyed Henry’s company and was happy to tag along.
Eventually the road led away from the lake and uphill a little. The horse snorted and strained onwards, foamy sweat dripping from its sides. Dan sighed with relief as the cart rolled to a halt outside the quaint old building that served as the local guesthouse.
‘Good evening,’ the receptionist smiled at Henry in a manner that Dan was beginning to find a little annoying.
Several hours and a considerable number of vodkas later, Dan turned up the Polish sitcom on his TV in a vain attempt to drown out the sounds of Henry entertaining the receptionist in the room next door. Henry and Dan had dined together, then sat at the hotel bar, where the receptionist doubled as barmaid. The two Brits seemed to be the only visitors at the small guesthouse, and Henry had taken advantage of the lack of other customers to persuade the Polish girl to join them in a few drinks. Eventually Dan had made his excuses and gone up to his room, leaving Henry and the girl to their own devices. It hadn’t been long, however, before he’d heard them entering Henry’s room.
Dan flicked through the channels, trying to find something he could actually watch, but even the American blockbusters had a lector reading the Polish translation over the English dialogue in a way that rendered both languages less than audible. He turned off the TV. Dan became aware of the wind sighing outside his window. He opened it wide and leaned out. From his vantage point on the top floor he could see the lake along which they had travelled on their way to the hotel. From what Dan had worked out, it formed part of an extensive complex of lakes and waterways, stretching for miles, many of them hidden among the dense forest that still covered this part of the country. The lake was surrounded by trees—willows by the looks of them—which glowed a pale silver in the moonlight and rustled in the wind that animated their branches. Dan shivered and closed the window. When he finally fell asleep, his dreams were disturbing, alien.
The girl’s beauty was spoken of even beyond the village boundaries. She could have had any of the local youths, but she chose the blacksmith’s son. Her mother’s bakery stood opposite the smithy, and she had frequently watched the young man helping his father shoe horses. While the blacksmith nailed on the iron shoes, his son tended the beasts, rubbing their tired legs and speaking to them gently. The couple fell in love, and their parents saw no reason to stand in the way of their happiness. Their wedding was not grand, but the whole village turned out, and the sun shone brightly for the bride and groom. But their joy was not to last long.
As was the custom, the lord of the manor had been invited to the wedding feast. As was his custom, the lord had failed to turn up. Then, just as the sun was beginning to dip behind the trees, and the newlyweds were starting to wonder when they would be able to slip away from the festivities, the assembled villagers heard excited shouts and the sound of horses’ hooves approaching rapidly.
‘Good evening!’ It was the lord of the manor and a rowdy party of his companions. He jumped off his horse and his fellows followed suit. The villagers rose from the tables around which they were seated, bowing and curtsying to the newcomers. ‘We shan’t be staying,’ informed the lord, ‘we’ve just come for the bride.’ A stunned silence fell on the wedding party, broken only by the drunken guffaws of the lord’s companions. The girl’s already pale face turned as white as her bridal gown, and she looked to her husband for protection. The blacksmith’s son stood rooted to the spot, and the lord addressed the girl. ‘Don’t look so frightened, my dear; I daresay we shan’t do anything you haven’t done before!’
‘Please, my lord,’ a woman’s voice rose from the crowd. ‘She’s a good girl . . . a virgin.’ The lord was caught off guard for a moment, then spotted the girl’s mother, and laughed.
‘A virgin?’
‘Yes, my lord.’ The nobleman exchanged amused glances with his companions, then turned his attention back to the girl’s mother.
‘All the better, woman. I’ll teach her everything she needs to know to please her husband . . . tomorrow night.’ The lord glanced at his cronies again, and they obliged with peels of raucous laughter.
‘Please, my love,’ the girl took her husband’s hand and whispered urgently to him as the young lord toyed with her mother. ‘Let’s slip out the back. They’re drunk. We’ll take a horse and ride away. By tomorrow he’ll have lost interest.’ Her husband looked at her sadly, but made no response. ‘Please, let’s go. You are my only one. I’d rather die than lie with another.’
‘It is his right,’ the blacksmith’s son finally replied. Those quietly spoken words shattered the girl’s world. Tears welling up in her eyes, she pulled her hand from her husband’s and fled from her wedding table. It took a moment for the lord to notice that his prize was gone.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ he shouted to his companions, angry and amused in equal measure. ‘Bring her back!’
The following morning, armed with a map and directions from the somewhat embarrassed receptionist, Henry and Dan set off in search of Henry’s ancestral home. Henry seemed uncannily refreshed, considering how much vodka and how little sleep he’d had, and it was Dan who felt tired and uneasy. He still had vague memories of a bizarre dream he’d had—of the weeping willows that grew along the lake coming alive and forming a circle around him, trapping him and closing in on him. It was all he could do to keep up with his energetic friend.
The guesthouse that Henry had chosen—not that there was much choosing to do, it being the only one in the area—was not far from the manor house that had once belonged to Henry’s ancestors. So the two young men set off on foot, following the road along the large lake. Dan avoided looking at the willows, gazing instead at the open fields on the opposite side of the road.
Eventually the lake curved away to the right. Henry and Dan kept to the road, and carried on straight ahead until they came across a large dilapidated stone gatepost to their left. A couple of metres away, obscured by brambles, stood a second gatepost.
‘This is it,’ Henry grinned at Dan and turned off the road. As they passed between the two posts, they paused in wonder. Ahead of them stretched an avenue of ancient linden trees, seeming to go on forever. The friends exchanged awed glances, then headed up the avenue. Eventually they could make out a large grassy area with a circular grey stone structure in the distance, and beyond that the red bricks of a building. As Henry and Dan approached the end of the avenu
e, their excitement grew. Finally they were out of the shade of the trees and in the open: in what had once been a large courtyard. Even now, overgrown with grass on which a cow was grazing, the courtyard was impressive. The circular stone structure in the centre of it was an old fountain—cracked and drained of water, the dry leaves inside it crackling in a breeze that stirred as the young men walked past. Something about the broken, empty structure unnerved Dan. Beyond the fountain and the courtyard stood the manor house. The render had long since fallen off, revealing the red brick that Henry and Dan had seen from the avenue. But the manor was still a thing of beauty. The main building was a vast rectangular block. On either side of it a curved colonnade led to a smaller, cube-like building. Together, the central block with its two wings formed a perfect horseshoe.
From what Henry had managed to find out while researching for their trip, the stately home was the work of an Italian architect—an unsung genius—who had been brought to Poland by a wealthy Polish count for the sole purpose of building him a palace fit for a king. The Italian had subsequently returned to Italy, where he was killed in a bar brawl in a village inn. The manor had since withstood attacks by Cossacks, Tartars and a variety of other hostile foreigners, before finally falling victim—in 1945—to the Polish Communist Security Agency, whose officers set fire to the main building on account of a unit of anti-Communist Polish Home Army partisans hiding within its walls. The partially burnt-out shell of the manor remained and, in a humorously symbolic act of class-war—the intentionality of which would never be known for sure—local representatives of the Polish People’s Workers’ Party used it to house pigs. By the 1980s the porkers too were gone, and the manor remained in the derelict state in which the two young Brits now found it. The roof had caved in—in places, and here and there a shattered roof-tile lay upon the ground.
‘So this belonged to your great grandfather?’ asked Dan, impressed.
‘And to his great grandfather before him,’ grinned Henry. ‘You never know, with the Commies gone, maybe my dad can claim it back or something!’ Henry moved towards the main entrance. ‘Come on!’
The front door was gone without a trace, and the two friends entered slowly, careful not to fall down a hole—of which there were many. There were piles of rubble lying around, the obligatory quasi-Satanist graffiti on the walls, and two vast, symmetrically positioned spiral staircases, but no banisters. After an inspection of the ground-floor rooms, which revealed the odd partially standing chimney-breast and more graffiti, the two friends headed cautiously up the stairs. The first floor was equally devastated, with bird droppings beneath the gaping holes that had once been the windows. Dan was already slowly mounting the stairs to the second floor, when Henry spotted a doorway to a room that he hadn’t noticed before.
‘Go on up,’ he told Dan. ‘I’ll be along in a minute. Just be careful.’
‘Okay. You too.’
The second floor laid bare the full extent of the damage to the roof. It was dark here, despite the daylight outside, and, the ceiling long being gone, shafts of light fell through the many holes and cracks in the roof. Motes of dust danced and glistened in the shafts, mesmerising Dan for a moment. Then, feeling uneasy alone in the vast dark space, he moved cautiously to one of the windows and peered out. He caught sight of movement and panicked on seeing figures in the park at the back of the building. He moved back a step—out of the light—but, on looking out again, realised that they were willow trees, hunched over like people. Unnerved, Dan called out to Henry, then went back down to the first floor to look for him.
‘Henry?’ No answer. Not finding him on the first floor, Dan carefully descended the less damaged spiral staircase. ‘Henry!’ Dan figured that his friend must have gone back out—perhaps to explore the two wings of the palace—although Dan couldn’t understand why he hadn’t said anything.
But the buildings on either side of the main house were locked, and Henry was nowhere to be seen. There was only one place left to check, and that was the park behind the palace.
‘Henry!’ But there was no sign of Henry in the park either. As Dan turned back towards the manor, he thought he saw movement in one of the windows. ‘Oh, for God’s sake . . . Henry!’ Maybe his friend hadn’t left the building after all, but then why hadn’t he answered Dan’s calls?
Dan walked quickly back to the house. There was no sign of anyone in the window now, but Dan was determined to go in for another look. As he reached the back of the house and started to head towards the colonnade, planning to cut through under its arches and go back into the house, he felt a sudden rush of air, then a sharp pain on the side of his head, and he was out cold.
Her heart was broken even before the dark waters closed over her head. She didn’t struggle as her heavy garments took on water and pulled her down to the muddy bottom of the deep lake. She sank slowly—like a thousand broken-hearted maidens before her —and the willows wept beside her watery bed.
A brief moment of panic, as the girl’s last breath escaped her; then a blissful stillness enveloped her, and a profound sense of serenity and peace.
Dan awoke to something wet and malodorous brushing against his face. The cow that had been grazing round the front of the manor house had wandered over and—whether for lack of salt in its diet or for some unfathomable bovine reason of its own—was now licking the prostrate young man. Dan jumped up and the startled cow beat a hasty retreat, mooing in alarm. Dan nearly blacked out again, and sat back down, breathing deeply. There was a dull throbbing pain in his temples and a much sharper pain at the side of his head when he touched it. He also had an impressive lump where the tile had struck. Unbeknown to Dan, his luck was in. Had the roof-tile hit him full-on, rather than just skimming the side of his head, he would not be getting up again.
Dan shivered, and realised that the air had grown much colder; indeed—the sun was already going down. Alarmed at how much time must have passed, Dan called out to his friend. He suddenly felt afraid for Henry, but tried to console himself with the thought that Henry must have become carried away exploring somewhere in the house or vast grounds, and that he simply couldn’t hear him calling. Dan got up—slowly this time —and made his way cautiously under the arches of the colonnade and back to the house, staying away from the eaves as much as he could.
Although the sun had not quite set, the shadows inside the manor were profound. Dan had planned to go all around the house again in search of his friend, but remembered the treacherous staircase and damaged floor, and thought better of it. Instead he peered into the darkness from the threshold, and called Henry’s name loudly. No response. Only the slight movement of shifting rubble somewhere in the depths of the building—too soft to be made by a man. Rats perhaps? Or just the house readjusting to the drop in temperature? But there was that feeling of dread in the pit of Dan’s stomach again—fear of being left alone in this strange, abandoned place, but an even stronger fear for his friend.
‘Henry!’ Nothing. Dan touched his aching head gently, winced, then set off through the courtyard, hoping to do a large loop in front of the house before returning to the back and carrying out a thorough search of the gardens while there was still sufficient daylight. But as he walked past the fountain, something didn’t seem right—something on the periphery of his vision. Dan stopped abruptly, and glanced to the right. That’s when he saw the dark shape.
‘Christ!’ Dan’s heart leapt in his chest, and for a moment he thought he might pass out again. He calmed himself as best he could, but the longer he stared at the thing in the fountain, the more details he noticed: the blue jeans, the navy sweatshirt, the dark blonde hair . . . yes, it was hair. There was no doubt now in Dan’s mind. Lying in the cracked old fountain was a body, and the closer he got to it, the more certain he was that it was that of his friend.
A rough, scratching sensation roused the girl from her murky grave. She felt a sharp tug, then another and another. Then coarse limbs were holding her, and gnarled digits curled
around her body. She was being lifted, pulled and dragged—upwards and out and away from the death-bringing, peace-bringing water.
As she felt solid ground beneath her feet once more, the girl’s feet began to crack. On all sides the willow trees that cradled her started to grow over and into and through her body. Roots moved through her legs and feet, shackling her to the earth. Her fingers grew long and brittle; her skin hardened, thickened and erupted in shoots and stems, which shivered in the evening air. The girl tried to move, but her legs were rooted to the spot and her torso trapped in a wooden corset that held her fast. Her eyes became hollow, her throat twisted and dry. She screamed, and her cry froze forever onto the rugged bark of her lips.
All memories fled the girl, bar those of sadness and longing, betrayal and anger, and a need for revenge stronger than hunger or thirst—stronger than the centuries that would come and go.
The minutes and days that followed could only be described as a never-ending nightmare. . . . Touching his friend’s ice-cold neck to check for a pulse; the glazed, milky eye that stared up at him from under Henry’s matted hair; stumbling back to the guesthouse through the dark. Then the uncomprehending, shocked face of the receptionist; the police; the ambulance; the battery of questions and suspicious looks. But the worst thing was seeing Henry’s parents: his mother trembling like a leaf in a gale, his father ashen-faced and trying to be strong for his wife.
‘What happened, Dan?’
‘I don’t know. I . . . don’t . . . know.’
Dan went over the events of that day a hundred times: with Henry’s parents, with the police, when he lay awake at night. But nobody would ever know why it was that Henry’s lungs were filled with water or how it was that a young man could drown in the long-empty shell of a cracked old fountain.
Dark World Page 8
