Wakenhyrst

by Michelle Paver

  ‘Oh Clem, I do think you’re most fearfully mean!’ But she was laughing, and so was he.

  Hibble had muddled the order and Father was vexed.

  ‘But this volume is Anglo-Saxon!’ he exclaimed. ‘Really, Maud, I don’t expect Hibble to know these things, but surely you’re aware that I’ve no interest whatsoever in the eighth century?’

  ‘It wasn’t Mr Hibble who made up the parcel,’ said Maud. ‘It was his assistant. Ought I to send it back?’

  With a frown Father flicked through the offending volume. ‘No, we’ll leave it for now. It may not be completely useless. But I shan’t pay for it, and I shall dictate a stiff note.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’ She bit back a smile. Her two novels and the new corset were safely hidden in her room, and the bookseller’s error had proved a godsend, as it had made Father forget his displeasure at seeing her in the dog-cart with Clem.

  She was in such high spirits that she astonished Nurse by taking Felix for a walk in the grounds.

  Because Maud never cooed over her brother, the four-year-old regarded her with awe. Sometimes when she set off for a walk she caught him staring after her wistfully.

  Now he walked obediently at her side with his small damp hand in hers. To her surprise he seemed fascinated by the waterweed in the Lode. He gazed in rapt silence, breathing through his mouth.

  An emerald dragonfly darted past. Felix laughed and pointed a chubby finger.

  The insect disappeared among the reeds. Felix turned his golden head and peered after it. It came back and hovered before him. He pointed again and cast Maud a questioning glance.

  ‘It’s a dragonfly,’ she told him.

  He clapped his hands and crowed with delight: ‘Agonfly!’

  Maud repressed a twinge of guilt. Poor little scrap. None of this was his fault.

  After depositing him back in the nursery, she dressed hurriedly for dinner. She had begun to hatch another plan and she was impatient for bedtime.

  This plan was shockingly risky, but for that very reason she knew that she had to do it. And it had to be tonight: a warm, still night with a southerly breeze and a waning crescent moon that wouldn’t rise until long after midnight.

  It was also the 24th of June. That was the Feast of St John, although Maud preferred the old name, Midsummer’s Night. A powerful night for love charms, and a propitious one to venture on to the fen and go eel-babbing with Clem.

  THE night was so dark that if it hadn’t been for Clem’s fair hair, Maud would have lost him.

  The villagers always went babbing in North Fen on the other side of the church, but Clem was one of the few who ventured into Guthlaf’s Fen. Being part of the household, he was allowed to use the foot-bridge, which was where Maud lay in wait for him behind an elder tree. Her plan was to follow him till he reached his babbing spot, and only then declare herself. He would be horrified, but by then it would be too late.

  At first he took the path along the Lode, as if he was making for the Mere, but halfway there he turned left and headed along Slape Dyke, into the heart of the fen. Maud was relieved. Being out here at night was alarming enough without going near the place where an unknown woman had drowned thirty years before.

  The fen was much quieter at Midsummer than it was in the spring. Maud was glad that she’d decided to go barefoot. The frogs and owls had fallen silent, and the breeze scarcely stirred the sedge. The silence was broken only by the song of a marsh warbler and the occasional whirr of a duck’s wings.

  As it was a warm night, she’d left her coat at home and wore only a light lawn blouse and her gored skirt that she’d shortened to ankle length. The new corset remained in its wrappings in her room.

  Darkness gave her a sense of ease and freedom she’d never known before. She was no longer Maud, the plain, clumsy fifteen-year-old whom nobody liked. She was a creature of the fen, slipping gracefully through the reeds with her long hair flowing free.

  A moorhen flew up with a clatter of wings and she nearly cried out. Briefly, Clem turned. By now her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and she saw the pail he carried and his canvas bag. His eel glave was balanced over one shoulder.

  He hadn’t gone far when he stopped at a clump of trees and set down his things. Maud crept closer and crouched behind a willow. She watched him take off his jacket and hang it on a branch, then roll up his shirtsleeves and amble downstream. She heard water hit the dyke. She stifled a jittery giggle. Clem came back buttoning his trousers.

  Suddenly, Maud was terrified. What was she doing, crouching in the dark, watching an under-gardener urinate in the dyke?

  A nocturnal jaunt on Midsummer’s Night had seemed a marvellous idea when she was getting ready in her room. What a thrill to unpin her braids and brush her hair till it hung glossy and thick past her waist! ‘Oh, Father, if only you knew,’ she’d told her reflection in the looking-glass. The face that stared back had been wide-eyed and eager.

  Yes, it had seemed the height of daring. Now it was merely embarrassing. Pranks were for pretty girls, not for her. What if Clem was annoyed that she’d spoiled his babbing? What if he didn’t like her as much as she liked him? She ought to slink off home before he found out she was here. But she was too scared and she didn’t know the way.

  Clem knelt on the bank, hunched over something he’d taken from his bag. Mustering her courage, Maud emerged from the willows and cleared her throat.

  With a cry he sprang to his feet. ‘Who’s there!’ he hissed. ‘Jubal? That you?’

  ‘Clem it’s me,’ whispered Maud.

  ‘Miss Maud?’ He sounded horrified.

  ‘D-don’t fret thyseln,’ she stammered, unthinkingly lapsing into village talk. ‘I told thee I wanted to go babbing—’

  ‘Oh no, Miss Maud, this’ll nivver do! What if Master finds out?’

  ‘He won’t.’

  ‘He might—’

  ‘He won’t! I won’t tell and neither will you!’

  He scratched his head. ‘I spose thass so. Old Jubal’s down by the Mere. ’Sides, he’d nivver tell.’

  ‘Well then. Sit down and learn me how to bab.’

  He was silent. Then he snorted a laugh. ‘Give me a reglar turnup you done, an no mistake.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He was shaking his head. ‘The night’s as dark as black hogs an she follows me into the fen! There nivver was a one like you, Miss Maud, thass the truth.’

  Her heart leapt. ‘Don’t call me Miss Maud,’ she chided happily. ‘Tonight I’m simply Maud.’

  The best place for babbing is a stretch of water about four foot deep and as close to the bank as you can find. Eels want a sandy or gravelly bottom with willows on the bank, as they like to clean themselves among the roots that grow in bunches like chimney-sweep brushes.

  To make your bab, you take your can of big fat earthworms that you dug up before and that you set to soak in a mess of cowpiss and muck-juice. Then, using a piece of wire that you’ve filed sharp for a needle, you thread your worms on a yard or so of worsted – it needs to be red, to keep away witches – and you tie the two ends together, coiling your worms into a clump the size of your fist and weighting it with a scrap of lead. And that’s your bab.

  Next you tie your bab to a piece of strong cord five foot long, and you tie that to a hazel stick about the same length. Now you’re ready to go babbing.

  You sit yourself down on the bank and dangle your bab in the water, just letting it touch the bottom now and then – but gently, so you’ll feel when an eel bites. And soon enough it’ll bite, and snag its teeth in the wool. That’s when you’ve got to give your stick a good strong swing, to land your eel in the pail you’ve set ready on the bank.

  ‘Thass the tricky bit,’ said Clem, deftly executing this manoeuvre yet again. ‘You need just the right swing to land your eel – for as soon as he’s out the water he’ll get hisself loose of that bab, and if he an’t in your pail he’ll be back in the dyke quick as a lamplighter. Now you try,’ he sa
id when he had five fat black eels squirming in his pail.

  Nervously, Maud grasped the hazel stick. ‘How will I know if he’s biting?’

  ‘You’ll feel it. No, hold it in both hands. So.’

  ‘I wish you’d let me prepare my own bab.’

  He snorted. ‘An get your hands all mucky?’

  ‘Can I do it next time?’

  ‘No. T’aint no manner o’ use you arstin.’

  ‘Nothing’s happening.’

  ‘Do you have a bit of patience!’

  She smiled to hear the smile in his voice.

  They sat shoulder to shoulder on the bank, Clem with one hand on the hazel stick, his fingers close but not touching hers. Normally that would have sent Maud into paroxysms of embarrassment over her eczema, but not here in the dark. Clem had washed his hands downstream, so as not to offend her with the stink of cow-dung, but she could still smell it on him. She loved it because it was part of him.

  ‘How many eels do you catch in a night?’ she said, scowling with concentration.

  ‘Ten, twenty. Depends how long till the moon’s up. When I gets no more bites, I come away home. But if it’s warm, then instead of going back up-village I sleeps out here an goes straight to work in the morning.’

  ‘Sleeping in the fen. That must be wonderful.’

  ‘Proper damp it can be, an midges summat awful.’

  Something rustled in the reeds. Maud gave a start. ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘Only a hedgepig. Lift it a bit, you’re on the bottom.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She loved that they’d swapped rôles, and he was the one giving orders.

  The breeze had dropped, and a faint white band of mist lay along the dyke.

  ‘I din’t rekkinize you with your hair down,’ Clem said quietly. ‘Thought you was a witch.’

  Maud’s face grew hot. ‘I hate having long hair,’ she said abruptly. ‘I asked Father if I could have it bobbed. You should’ve seen his face. “My dear Maud, bobbed hair is unbecoming to a pretty woman; on you it would be hideous.”’

  Clem made a movement of protest. ‘Nivver hidjus! But I don’t hold with you cutting it, it’s rare pretty.’

  Pretty. He said it was pretty.

  ‘Your hair’s nice too,’ she said shakily. ‘It’s golden. As if it’s made of the sun.’

  He’d left off his neck-kerchief and undone the top button of his shirt, and in the gloom she made out the dark column of his throat and the line at the base where the sunburn ended and the paler skin began. Tears pricked her eyes. She fought the urge to press her face to his chest.

  In the distance, something shrieked. ‘What’s that?’ she whispered.

  Clem chuckled. ‘Stoat on a coney. We’re not the only ones out hunting.’

  The mist was rising. Soon it would be above their heads. Maud loved it, she felt as if she was floating. ‘What sound do eels make?’ she said dreamily.

  ‘They don’t. ’Cept on warm wet nights when they’re on the move. If you sits quiet by the dyke, you can hear em in the reeds. Hundreds of em with their heads just above the water, making little soft sucking noises.’

  ‘What does that sound like?’

  Bending close to her ear, he made soft rapid smacking noises with his lips. His breath tickled her skin, and she shivered deliciously. ‘Now you try.’

  She tried, then broke off with a giggle. She saw the glint of his teeth, very close. She stopped smiling. Suddenly their lips were touching, brushing, pressing against each other. Maud had never felt anything so wonderful as his mouth. Dropping the hazel stick, she put her arms around his neck. She felt his arms about her waist, holding her against his chest. She was making little high mewing noises as if she was crying – only she wasn’t, she was the happiest she’d ever been. She wasn’t embarrassed or awkward, she had never felt so confident or so sure.

  Clem’s arms tightened about her so that she couldn’t breathe, and for a moment she was frightened.

  But only for a moment.

  From the Private Notebook of Edmund Stearne

  25th July 1912

  This morning I had an idea which frightened me.

  I was in church, musing on something Miss Broadstairs had put into my mind. She has recently conceived an interest in matters Anglo-Saxon, particularly in ‘our own dear St Guthlaf’. As I was making my way into the porch she babbled something about a ‘patronal feast’ which she is planning for his ‘saint’s day’, complete with ‘wake pudding’ and other folkloric delights.

  That reminded me of the volume which Hibble sent in error last month. It’s a translation of The Life of St Guthlaf; I think I read it years ago at Cambridge, but haven’t since. A few weeks ago when I found it in my parcel of books I glanced through it and was disagreeably struck by certain parallels that suggested themselves. However, I put the volume aside and gave it no further thought until this morning, when I was reminded of it by the wretched Miss B. I couldn’t concentrate on the service. My thoughts kept returning to The Life of St Guthlaf. I kept remembering that St Guthlaf had been plagued by demons.

  Involuntarily my gaze drifted upwards to the grotesques on the corbels, and I was startled to notice something I never have before. They all possess rather similar physiognomies, with repulsive toad-like mouths and bulging eyes. What struck me even more forcibly was that it is the very same physiognomy as the devil in the Doom.

  Of course, I soon realised why this should be. It’s because the men who carved these grotesques and the man who painted the Doom were all local artisans, and since they doubtless shared the unoriginal turn of mind common to men in that station of life, they naturally imitated each other’s work.

  It’s obvious when one thinks about it, and I’m annoyed that I should have allowed such a trifling coincidence to unsettle me. My nerves must be a touch disordered. I shall ask old Grayson for a tonic.

  26th July

  I wish I knew why the Doom alarms me so. I haven’t set eyes on it since it was unveiled, but I can’t seem to forget it. I keep telling myself that it is only a picture. It can’t do me any harm.

  I also wish I hadn’t conceived that ridiculous notion about the carvings on the corbels. Try as I might to concentrate on my prayers, my thoughts keep returning to them. The more I force myself not to look at them, the more I feel compelled to do so. The worst of it is that I can’t rid myself of the impression that, like the devil in the Doom, they are all looking at me.

  27th July

  This morning Ivy gave me some rather unpleasant news. I confess I was shaken, although I quickly surmised that the little chit might be lying, and her news merely a clumsy ruse to achieve her ends.

  Even if it does turn out to be true, it is most definitely not, as she seems to imagine, a reason for me to make her mistress of Wake’s End! There are other ways of dealing with such annoyances.

  1st August

  I’ve been foolish. I should have left well alone. For days I’ve been plagued with nagging doubts: do those grotesques really share the same features as the devil in the Doom, or am I imagining it? This afternoon I could bear it no longer, so I obtained the key from the rector and went to find out.

  I hadn’t been in the room in the tower since the night the Doom was unveiled, and to my relief, the feeling of the place was completely different. Instead of flickering gas-jets and leaping shadows, I was greeted with cheerful yellow sunlight streaming through the window. Moreover, in the same way that bright light betrays every flaw in a woman’s complexion, so the sun revealed the Doom for what it really is: a rustic daub amateurishly painted on rough wooden planks.

  Having no wish to prolong the encounter, I stayed only a moment. It was long enough, however, for the sky to cloud over and the light to change. In an instant the brightness dimmed to a peculiar, unhealthy grey, very lowering to the spirits.

  The devil in the corner does indeed share the same loathsome physiognomy as his fellows on the ceiling. As I left the room, he leered at me and I almost fancie
d that he winked, actually winked. I know what you did, he seemed to say.

  Which simply shows that old G.’s nerve tonic hasn’t yet taken effect. Perhaps a dose of laudanum will help it along.

  The thing to remember is that now I know the worst. I know that the devil in the corner looks the same as those on the ceiling. Therefore I can stop thinking about that wretched painting. I never have to look at it again.

  2nd August

  Miss B.’s ‘patronal feast’ has been and gone, Deo gratias. She insisted on holding it in the nave and even strewed rushes on the floor to evoke an ‘Anglo-Saxon feel’. I was struck by the disagreeably musty smell that the rushes produced. It felt as if the fen had found its way in.

  Maud was sulky and her eyelids were swollen and pink; whether from a head-cold or from weeping over some girlish drama, I neither know nor care. Although I hope it isn’t a cold, as I shouldn’t like Felix to fall ill. The boy is a pretty, biddable child, if a thought too plump and not as bright as I would have wished. Sometimes I wonder at the fact that neither of my sons possesses half Maud’s intelligence. It’s such a waste.

  4th August

  Miss B.’s rushes have been swept from the nave, but the mustiness persists. Of course the weather has been fearfully damp, so the smell must be due to a leak somewhere; although when I raised this with Farrow he denied it indignantly.

  ‘But my hassock feels damp,’ I insisted, pointing to the offending article in my pew. ‘How do you account for that?’ He shook his jowls and insisted that there was no damp in his church, &c &c. The man’s a fool. Does he think I imagined it?

  10th August

  An odd thing happened this afternoon.

  I was taking my usual stroll in the grounds and had reached the lawn outside my study, near where the yew hedge meets the Lode. I was observing the effect of cloud-shadow on the church tower in the distance when I distinctly heard a faint splash behind me. On turning, I saw nothing – except that the reeds on the other side of the Lode were stirring, as from the passing of some creature of the fen. Normally I would have dismissed this as an effect of the wind – only there was no wind. And I distinctly felt watched.