Wakenhyrst

by Michelle Paver

14th June

  I know now that Ivy has been causing this business with the window. This evening on retiring I found the same sash raised, although I’d made a point of ensuring that it was securely shut before I went down to dinner. That’s when it came to me. As with that affair of the eel, Ivy has been seeking to unsettle me by playing tricks with the window, thereby hoping to enhance her usefulness and importance.

  I taxed her about it and of course she denied everything, but I know she’s lying. Any more of this nonsense and she shall go.

  Later

  Odd how a memory can pop into one’s head, even though one hasn’t thought of it in decades.

  This evening I’d scarcely put out my candle and composed myself for sleep when I recalled an incident from my boyhood. Nurse Thrushie grabbing my hand and spreading my fingers to display what she maintained was webbing; although like so much of what she told me, this was a malicious fabrication. ‘See that?’ she hissed. ‘’Tis the bad blood showing through. I know you, Master Eddie. I know what you did.’

  The memory is so vivid that I can feel her cold rough hand squeezing mine. And yet it happened when I was a boy.

  Did that dream about the Mere somehow cause me to remember this? It hardly matters. I know what brought it to the surface. I’ve been sleeping in a badly aired room that smells of rotting weeds. I shall have words with Daisy in the morning.

  15th June

  It isn’t Ivy who has been opening my bedroom window, it can’t be. It happened again last night, when she wasn’t in the house: she was in Wakenhyrst for her mother’s latest confinement and only returns tomorrow.

  How then do I account for the fact that this morning I woke to find the window once again half-open? That marshy smell was even stronger than before, and one corner of the curtain was hanging out. When I pulled it in, it was wet.

  How did this happen? It didn’t rain last night, and no matter how heavy the dew, it could not have rendered that curtain soaking wet.

  Later

  Re-reading Pyett has brought me to my senses. In her time, fear of Satan was at its peak; her Book teems with demons and evil spirits. It is this which has unsettled me. Why, every time I sit down to my work, I am forcibly reminded of that wretched Doom – and of the devil in the corner.

  Do be sensible, Edmund. Nightmares and monsters are all very well for women and children, but not for historians! And while you’re about it, you might also remember your Shakespeare: ‘’tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.’

  16th June

  Quite unaccountably, another memory has surfaced from my boyhood. It seeped into my mind this afternoon as I was working.

  At the time, Daisy was outside scrubbing the front steps. She must have accidentally overturned the pail, for I heard a clatter and the sound of water. Suddenly I was a boy again, watching water dripping on to the scullery flags as they carried her in from the Mere.

  She was brought in horribly changed. Her mouth and eyes were netted with weeds and her hair was tinged with green. Her body was bluish-grey and obscenely swollen. In places her flesh hung in shreds, like india-rubber, and there was a tattered hole where her belly had been, for the eels had eaten her from the inside.

  It’s too much. I can’t write any more.

  I know what you did.

  17th June

  But is it a memory? Or is it only what I think I remember? Is it perhaps what I merely overheard the servants say? After all, I was only twelve years old at the time, I wouldn’t have been allowed to witness such horror as that.

  No, it’s far more likely that I heard the servants gossiping, and that over the years my brain has transmuted their tittle-tattle into the semblance of a memory. It is this which came to me so disturbingly in my study when Daisy knocked over her pail. It is this which last night deprived me of my rest.

  Later

  Something else occurs to me too. What did the servants actually see? We all know how the lower orders exaggerate. Why, they may even have made up the whole thing! There may be no foundation whatsoever to my so-called ‘memory’. Of course the death itself occurred, that is established fact; but in all probability she was brought in from the fen essentially intact. Nothing remotely like that dreadful mutilated corpse.

  19th June

  It’s no use. For the past two days I’ve been deceiving myself. That memory is real. It comes to me at odd times of the day and night, and the details are such that no servant would be capable of imagining – or indeed could possibly have known. That yellow ribbon still tangled in her long fair hair. The scratch on her thigh which happened as she climbed naked into the boat.

  So now I know. The vision is real. Which means the rest of it is real too: the grey shreds of india-rubber flesh, the slimy green weeds befouling her face. The eels.

  But why should all this return to me now? What’s the use of my brain resurrecting the past, when all it can do is horrify? It is this which I find most disturbing: the fact that the vision has the power to come and go at will, despite all my efforts to keep it out.

  ‘At will’, that’s an odd phrase to have used. But it is how it feels. As if some malevolent will were acting against me: forcing me to remember, for some occult reason of its own.

  From The Book of Alice Pyett,

  transl. & exegesis by E.A.M. Stearne

  This creature’s first crying came about in this wise.

  A week after Our Lord Jesus first sat on her bed and delivered her from her sickness, he came to her again, this time at night as she lay beside her husband. And Jesus said: Daughter, you must give up eating meat and eat instead of my flesh and blood. For I take you, Alice, for my wedded wife. And I must be intimate with you and lie in bed with you, and you shall lick my wounds and suck my blood.

  And this creature gladly did as she was bidden, and Jesus so ravished her spirit with sweetness that she heard a rushing sound as of bellows, and a blackbird sang loudly in her right ear.

  The next morning was Trinity Sunday, and as usual this creature went to church with her husband. But when she beheld the blessed rood, she felt such a fever of love for Our Lord that she burst into violent sobs. To the consternation of those around her she fell down and wept as if her heart would break, roaring and writhing and making remarkable faces. She cried all day and she did not stop until evening. And this was her first crying.

  After that she could not behold a crucifix or even think of Christ’s Passion without bursting into uncontrollable tears and sobbing for hours on end. Her husband scolded her. But Jesus said: Be not afraid, Daughter, for your crying is a special gift that God has given you because he loves you above all others, and praises your devotion.

  20th June

  I was more correct than I knew when I noted that Pyett’s recovery from her illness mirrors my own. The parallels are striking. Indeed they are more than merely parallels, for they provide a key to my sufferings – and enormous comfort.

  Pyett once committed a grievous sin, which for many years she concealed even from herself; and when that memory finally returned to her awareness, it proved so painful that it gave her hellish visions of demons and the tortures of the damned. So too has it been with me.

  BUT – and this is the point – Pyett’s awareness of her sin proved her special virtue. She knew she had sinned, and Jesus blessed her for that; it is why he bestowed the gift of sacred tears. This has been my epiphany. One can only be saved if one is aware of one’s sin. Therefore it follows that if one is aware of one’s sin, one is saved.

  So it is with me. Like Pyett, I have been reminded of my sin. Therefore like Pyett, I too am saved.

  From The Book of Alice Pyett,

  transl. & exegesis by E.A.M. Stearne

  This creature’s cryings now came every day and lasted five or six hours, so that she turned the colour of lead. People spat on her and said she must be drunk, or that she could leave off weeping if she wanted and only wept to be thought godly. Many wished her at sea in a bottomless boat.


  This creature’s husband said: What is wrong with you, woman? You must be quiet as other wives are, and card wool and spin. And the priest said: Christ’s own mother did not cry as much as you. Get out of my church, for you are annoying people.

  In time, some said that this creature must be troubled by evil spirits. But others said that she had the Holy Ghost in her, and they listened to her speak of the Gospel, and begged her to pray for them at their dying.

  For this she was taken before a great cleric in a furred hood, who said: Woman, you must not speak of God to the people. Then this creature said: But my lord, I think the Gospel gives me leave to speak of God. And the cleric said: Ah now we know she has a devil in her! For Saint Paul himself has written that no woman may preach – so that if a woman should try, it follows that she must be possessed by a devil.

  Then the cleric ordered this creature to stop speaking of God, or else she would be burned as a heretic and a Lollard. And the cleric showed her a cartful of thorns which had been laid ready to burn her.

  ‘Father, do you think Pyett may simply have been mad?’

  ‘Whatever do you mean, Maud?’

  ‘Well, she had seventeen children, so perhaps it was some sort of hysterical illness. Or maybe she was deranged by the memory of her sin – whatever it was.’

  He looked at her. ‘I’m afraid, Maud, that being female, you lack the imagination to understand a visionary like Pyett. May I trouble you for the marmalade?’

  ‘Oh I’m sorry, Father, here it is. But if women lack imagination, then why did God choose Pyett to be a mystic?’

  He sighed. ‘Precisely because she lacked imagination. She was merely a vessel into which He poured His grace. For the same reason, women were believed to be more prone to demonic possession, being weaker and therefore more prone to sin.’

  ‘Oh I see. But then—’

  ‘Maud, if you can’t curb your curiosity, go and read my translation of Pyett’s Preface, wherein she states that God’s purpose in choosing her was “to comfort other sinners by revealing His unspeakable mercy”. Now kindly allow me to finish my breakfast in peace.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’ She helped herself to another slice of toast.

  When he saw that she wasn’t leaving, he shook out his Times with a frown. She smiled to herself. Her hopes of unsettling him with the eel had come to nothing, and he hadn’t written anything in his notebook after declaring himself saved two days ago; but she was not downhearted. That eel had got Ivy into serious trouble. And thanks to the notebook, Maud had learned a little more about Father’s sin.

  She’d been startled to discover that it had involved a drowning, particularly as he had only been twelve years old at the time. That was the same age as Maud’s brother Richard, an obnoxious lump who spouted schoolboy slang on the rare occasions he came home and tormented the servants with practical ‘jokes’. She couldn’t imagine Richard committing a mortal sin. And yet apparently, Father had.

  It made sense of the fact that on the death of his father, he’d taken the unusual step of sacking the entire staff. He hadn’t wanted anyone in his household to remind him of his boyhood.

  But what had he done? Surely he hadn’t drowned whoever it was himself? Could ‘connection’ have had anything to do with it? But how would that lead to a drowning? And was connection even feasible for a boy of twelve?

  Thoughtfully, she dabbed quince jelly on a morsel of toast.

  It would take time, but she would find out what Father had done. Then she would devise some way to punish him. She would not rest until Chatterpie was avenged.

  A rabbit sped across the road and Blossom shied, making Maud clutch the dog-cart with one hand and Clem’s sleeve with the other.

  ‘Coom oop, yer old divil!’ Clem told the mare. He cleared his throat. ‘Beg pardon, Miss.’

  She beamed at him. ‘Oh that’s all right.’

  Shortly after breakfast, Father had told her to go to Ely and collect a parcel of books from Hibble’s. He’d been so absorbed in his work that he’d merely grunted when she’d told him that as Jessop was busy cleaning out the feed bins, Walker would drive her instead.

  A whole morning with Clem, she thought blissfully as they clopped along in the dappled sunlight of Prickwillow Lane. This is the best day of my life. I don’t ever want it to end.

  Everything was perfect. The weather was fine but not oppressively hot. High-flung clouds drifted in a sky of tender blue, and as they crossed the bridge over Harrow Dyke, Maud spotted the cobalt flash of a kingfisher.

  The labourers in the fields were too busy cutting hay to notice a boy and a girl in a dog-cart. Maud rationed her glances at Clem’s face, but she found that she could feast her eyes on his hands without even turning her head.

  Halfway to Ely, he said he was warm and asked if he might take off his jacket. When he rolled up his shirtsleeves, the sight of his brown forearms made Maud feel faint.

  She hadn’t touched him since the harness-room, or called him Clem to his face; but earlier as he was helping her into the dog-cart, she’d guessed from his grave expression that things had changed for him too.

  She wondered if he thought about her at night, as she did about him. She would lie for hours, imagining putting her hands on his shoulders and pushing back his hair from his forehead. In her most daring fantasies she never went further than undoing the top button of his shirt and kissing the base of his throat; but she thought of that endlessly. She told herself that this had nothing to do with dogs copulating in the mud, or what Father did to Ivy. This was different because it was love.

  The willows were left behind and Ely cathedral rose into view above the fields.

  ‘I want to ask you something,’ said Maud, keeping her eyes on the dusty white road. ‘When I first met you, you said your name was Clem, but I’ve noticed that all the other servants call you Walker.’ She shot him a glance. ‘Why is that?’

  Taking off his cap, he wiped his brow on his wrist. The sight of the damp hair on his neck made her dizzy. ‘Only Mam called me Clem, Miss,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Oh. Then did you mind when I did?’

  ‘No no, I likes it.’

  She sucked in her lips. ‘Do you still miss her?’

  He was silent for so long that she thought he hadn’t heard. At last he touched his breastbone. ‘It’s patched up in here. But it’ll nivver be the same.’

  ‘But that’s exactly how I feel about Maman!’ she cried. ‘Dear Clem,’ she added under her breath. This time she was sure he hadn’t heard, because she hadn’t meant him to. She’d just wanted to say it out loud.

  They reached Ely in time for luncheon. Maud had been worrying about this, but Clem solved it for her by dropping her at the White Hart where she always lunched with Father, and taking himself off with a promise to collect her from Hibble’s at three. Lunching together would have been impossible. But as Maud ate her venison pie in the inn’s private dining-room, she cursed her lack of initiative. Couldn’t she have managed a picnic on the way home?

  To console herself, she gobbled her raspberry fool, then made a detour to the haberdashers’, where she treated herself to one of the new long corsets. It was a slightly alarming sheath of india-rubber and clock-spring steel that reached almost to her knees. The girl in the shop said it was very effective at subduing the hips. Maud was too embarrassed to try it on and made her disguise it by wrapping it up twice.

  She reached Hibble’s at a quarter to three, with just enough time to select two promising novels for herself and have them included in Father’s parcel. Clem was waiting outside. He’d shared an apple with the mare. Maud smelled it on his breath when he helped her into the dog-cart.

  Mysteriously, the morning’s carefree mood had turned to constraint. As they headed home, Clem sat in silence. Maud glanced at her gloved hands in her lap. She thought of the eczema beneath the Nottingham lace. I am hideous, she thought. He can’t possibly like me.

  He was taking the other route back, through
Wakenhyrst and over the Common. As they left the village, they came upon a boy relieving himself behind a hedge. Maud pretended not to notice, but the boy sniggered at Clem, who repressed a grin.

  For the first time it occurred to Maud that he too was a village boy. Village boys were coarse and foul-mouthed. They lived for killing things and chasing girls. What if Clem was the same?

  Halfway across the Common, he yawned. ‘Beg pardon, Miss.’

  She blushed. ‘You seem tired. Have you been eel-babbing again?’

  He grinned. ‘Fancy thee knowing that, Miss.’

  She felt a bit better. ‘Why do you always go at night?’

  ‘Why, becorze that’s when they bites, Miss. You needs a warm dark night when the moon rises late and there’s a bit of a wind from the south or south-west.’

  She glanced at him in surprise. It was the most he’d ever said in one go. ‘But aren’t you afraid to be in the fen at night, what with the ferishes and the hobby-lanterns?’

  ‘I don’t take no notice, Miss, long as I’ve my bit of rowan. ’Sides, old Jubal keeps an eye out for me.’

  ‘Is Jubal a friend of yours?’

  ‘Sort of a cousin, Miss.’

  ‘But how extraordinary! I’ve been friends with Jubal since I was little! But that’s a secret, so promise you won’t tell.’

  ‘You, friends with old Jubal?’ He whistled. ‘An’t you the rum un, Miss Maud!’

  She basked in the compliment. ‘Do eels taste nice?’

  ‘Proper good eating. Now dun’t tell me you an’t nivver ate a eel?’

  She giggled. ‘Heavens no, Father won’t allow them in the house!’ Even talking about eels gave her a visceral thrill of transgression. And how appalled Father would be to see her chatting familiarly with the under-gardener, and calling him Clem.

  ‘Clem,’ she said suddenly. ‘Will you take me eel-babbing?’

  He snorted. ‘Not likely, Miss!’

  ‘Oh, please.’

  ‘No!’