Wakenhyrst

by Michelle Paver

  She hesitated. ‘When shall I say you need the items by?’

  ‘Oh, no particular date. If they can’t give them to you at once, just tell them to send them as soon as they can.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  From the doorway she watched him fold his newspaper with his usual precision. He sat in a shaft of sunlight, and his face was as handsome and serene as the alabaster knight in church.

  It came to Maud suddenly that this was all an act: that he was straining every sinew to appear normal, so as not to give himself away.

  She remembered something he’d told her once: that the female, being the weaker vessel, was more susceptible to demonic possession. Was that what he believed? That the demon had taken female form?

  He raised his head and his pale eyes met hers. ‘Run along, there’s a good girl.’

  She felt as if she was falling. It’s me, she thought. Dear God he thinks it’s me.

  MAUD nearly made Clem drive her to Ely. But even if he wanted to help her, what could he do?

  Instead she had the boot-boy drive her. Billy was new to Wake’s End, and slightly simple. He would do what she told him without asking questions.

  They set off in the dog-cart shortly after ten, but by then the sun was relentless. Blossom was already drooping, so as they started up the slope towards the Common, Maud got out and walked.

  She knew there was a train station at Ely; perhaps she could escape to London, or Norwich, or Edinburgh. She had a sovereign and three shillings in her purse; would that be enough? She’d never travelled on her own. She didn’t even know how to buy a ticket. Besides, wherever she went, Father would find her.

  She glanced back at Wake’s End shimmering in the heat. She had always loved this view from the Common. From up here one could see how the fen wrapped its arms around the old house to protect it. But who would protect the fen?

  I can’t run away, she thought. If I do, he’ll destroy it. He is right. I am his adversary. It’s either him or me.

  Tuthill the blacksmith didn’t have the hammer or the ice-pick, but he said he could send them in a few days. He asked what Dr Stearne wanted them for, and Maud replied that she had no idea.

  After giving Billy sixpence to buy himself something to eat, she told him to meet her on the corner of the Market Place and the High Street at half past three. Then she found a bench on St Mary’s Green and sat down to think.

  She knew no one in Ely who would help her. Priests, aldermen, physicians, attorneys: to a man, they would declare that she was ill and send her back to Father. The police were also out of the question. Maud had only the vaguest notion of what policemen actually did, but she knew that her sort of people never had anything to do with them.

  Besides, who would believe her without the ledger? Without it, all she had was some wild story about devils which no one would believe. Especially not from a girl.

  Despite her sun-umbrella, the heat was unbearable. She was covered in dust and her underclothes were soaked. Her new long corset made sitting uncomfortable, and as it reached almost to her knees, it impeded walking. Her damp stockings chafed her thighs and her button boots pinched her feet. Everything she was wearing seemed designed to prevent escape.

  To her surprise, she discovered that she was ravenous. She decided to do what she always did when she was in Ely: she went and had luncheon at the White Hart. Mrs Palmer put her in the private dining-room, where Maud ordered asparagus soup, roast lamb with watercress and new peas, ginger beer, and gooseberry tart with cream. She demolished the lot, and felt a little clearer in her mind.

  There was something she could do. Those books Father had bought at New Year: if she knew the titles, she might be able to find them when she got home. They might tell her how and when he intended to kill the ‘demon’.

  Phrasing it like that reduced it to a puzzle she had to solve. Her mind shied away from the fact that Father was planning to kill her.

  Mr Hibble was proud of his record-keeping, and delighted to be of service to the daughter of his most valued customer. He insisted on personally copying the details on a sheet of notepaper: Late Mediæval Art and Iconography by A.J. Stanbury; and Rituale Romanum, revised by Pope Benedict XIV in 1752.

  Neither title meant anything to Maud, but at least she knew what to look for when she got home. She felt a little stronger. Instead of simply watching and waiting, she had something to do.

  During her absence, Wake’s End had undergone a startling transformation. Since the heat wave had begun, many of the windows and doors had stood open, but now Father had ordered the servants to drape them with bedsheets soaked in lime-water to keep out the bad air.

  Maud had read of such measures in Maman’s book of household management, but they’d never been employed at Wake’s End. First Father had stripped the house of its protective ivy. Now he had blinded it.

  To her intense relief, Lawson told her that the Master was upstairs lying down, and intended to remain in his room for the rest of the day. So at least it won’t be today, she thought.

  This gave her the courage to look for the volumes on Hibble’s list. She started in the study. The servants had already covered the windows, and she found herself in a shrouded dimness amid the eye-stinging smell of lime.

  She found both books almost at once in the bookshelf and bore them off to the library. The windows in here hadn’t been done, but no sooner had she settled in an armchair than Ivy bustled in with a basket of damp sheets.

  ‘Not now,’ said Maud.

  ‘Master’s orders,’ snapped Ivy.

  ‘I said not now! And don’t talk back. You might think your position is secure, but you’re a servant. One day I’ll be mistress of this house.’

  Ivy snorted. ‘You’re just jealous ’cos I got Clem.’

  ‘You’re not exactly shouting it from the rooftops, though, are you?’

  Ivy climbed on a chair and hung a sheet over the curtain rail. ‘Thass up to me and Clem,’ she smirked. ‘Next week he’s buying me a ring at the Fair.’

  Maud stared at the housemaid’s hourglass figure. That’s what men want, she thought.

  As never before she felt the corrosive force of jealousy. She wanted Ivy dead. Preferably from some painful disease that destroyed her looks slowly, while she was still alive. Smallpox would be ideal.

  And she realised too that if by some miracle she was wrong and Father didn’t believe she was possessed, but instead thought it was Ivy – then she, Maud, wouldn’t lift a finger to help. If Father ‘exorcised’ Ivy, she would be glad.

  It would solve both her problems at one stroke, because then both Ivy and Father would be out of the way. It would kill two birds with one stone.

  The Rituale Romanum contained certain rites of the Catholic Church, including the rite of exorcism. It was in Latin, and Father had marked several passages: Exorcizamus te, omnis immundis spiritus, omni satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica…

  It went on for pages and it told Maud nothing about how he intended to destroy the demon – although she was pretty sure that he meant to do a lot more than pray.

  Tucked inside the volume was a pamphlet containing a comprehensive list of Catholic saints’ days; Maud guessed that this was where he’d looked up the feast days for St Bartholomew and St Michael. Unfortunately, he hadn’t marked any other dates. And since there were dozens of saints for practically every day of the year, again it told her nothing.

  The text of Late Mediæval Art and Iconography contained only glancing references to devils, but plate after plate depicted Hell with a sadistic inventiveness that made the tortures in the Doom seem positively humane. In picture after picture, an entire demonic fauna inflicted endless torments on the damned. Bird-headed monsters stuffed naked sinners into meat-grinders, and skewered them on spits over burning coals. Men had red-hot horseshoes nailed to their feet. Women were sawn in half between their legs, or thrust like pallid moths into giant blazing la
nterns.

  Maud was familiar with such images from Father’s books on medieval art, but she was unable to determine in what way this book was different. Why did he regard it as so important?

  Her final lead was the reference in his notebook to Milton. She’d never heard the name before, but Mr Hibble had told her that Milton had been a poet. The bookseller had sold her two weighty volumes, Samson Agonistes and Paradise Lost. She started with the latter because she liked the title, but soon gave up in despair.

  How could she find anything when she didn’t know what she was looking for?

  Even after sunset, the heat did not abate. Maud tied back the lime-soaked sheets that Daisy had draped across her bedroom windows, and raised the sashes as far as they would go. She’d already locked her door and put her knife under her pillow. That was all she could do to protect herself.

  Lying on her side with her knees to her chest, she waited for the moon to rise. Images of torture flitted before her eyes.

  Sleeping in moonlight was supposed to turn you mad. Was Father mad? In his speech and general demeanour he did not appear deranged. And he had found reasons for everything he did.

  She thought about that time last year when he kept finding his bedroom windows open. She had always believed that he must have done it himself, in his sleep; or perhaps it had been Ivy, playing tricks. But what about the waterweed on his windowsill, and on his pillow? He couldn’t have done that in his sleep. And it didn’t sound like Ivy. Besides, Ivy didn’t know about Lily, so she couldn’t know how profoundly waterweed would affect him.

  The night was airless, with not a breath of wind. Maud longed for the barn owl to come and perch on her windowsill, as it had done when she was little, before everything went wrong.

  She woke to stifling heat and a smell of meadowsweet.

  Drowsily, she became aware that someone had untied the sheets across the windows. They hung motionless and faintly aglow.

  Something was moving on the ceiling above her head. Through half-closed lids she made out shifting bands, like waterlight.

  It can’t be waterlight, she thought. Not unless the fen has crept up to the walls. But that’s in Father’s dream, not mine.

  Her nightgown stuck to her back. Rucking it up around her waist, she moved to a cooler patch of the bed. The smell of meadowsweet grew stronger.

  As she lay panting on her side, a small grey shadow appeared in the middle of the sheet that covered the left-hand window. The shadow grew steadily larger and darker.

  It’s a head, Maud thought with a jolt.

  She sat up. The head pressed against the linen. Maud made out a face with mouth agape and blind, sheeted eyes.

  A cry rang out. Now Maud was truly awake, standing in the middle of the room. The sheets were tied back from the windows, as they had been before. The cries were coming from next door, where Felix slept.

  Fumbling to unlock her door, Maud lurched into the passage and collided with Nurse. Maud felt the heat off the woman’s solid flesh and inhaled the sour smell of her scalp.

  ‘He’s hot, poor lamb,’ muttered Nurse. ‘Go back to bed, I’ll see to him.’

  Maud locked herself in and padded to the window. The dream had shaken her. It had felt so real.

  The fen lay still and silent in the moonlight. She loved it for its starlings and dragonflies, its rustling reeds and glinting pools – but these things were all on the surface. She’d never thought about what lay beneath.

  The fen was deep: people said that there were places where you could never touch the bottom. The fen was old: it had endured for thousands of years. Who knew what had haunted it since long before the coming of men?

  Despite the heat, Maud felt cold. For the first time since Father had found the Doom, it occurred to her that his wild imaginings might be true.

  NEXT day dawned hotter than ever. Maud dressed in her lightest combinations and muslin day-frock and slipped her knife in her pocket. She hadn’t worn her corset since Ely. She wanted nothing to impede her movements.

  Lawson was waiting for her in the breakfast-room. She told Maud that Father had spent an uncomfortable night and would be keeping to his room all day. Maud took this in silence. Either it meant that today was not ‘the Day’, or else he was trying to put her off her guard.

  It was hard to believe in demons with Daisy grumbling about her heat-rash, but by now Maud was used to living in parallel worlds. Having cancelled morning prayers, she ate a substantial breakfast of a veal cutlet with two coddled eggs, two slices of thickly buttered toast and marmalade, and three cups of tea with plenty of cream. She hadn’t forgotten how much sharper she’d felt after luncheon at the White Hart.

  And there was something else she could do to protect herself. Cramming on her hat, she headed out into the grounds.

  The heat was intense, not a breath of wind. Beyond the Lode the reeds stood motionless. The buzz of crickets was very loud.

  She found the Solomon’s Seal in the flowerbed outside the library doors. It was a large, vigorous plant with greenish-white, bell-shaped flowers. She remembered a medieval woodcut in which a monk clutched a single arching stem like a shepherd’s crook. The leaves were a vivid glossy green, and as she stuffed them in her pockets her fingers became sticky with sap. She didn’t believe they had magical powers, but Father did. It might help her fight him off.

  Clem appeared on the path with a wheelbarrow. When he saw her he stopped. Let him stare, she thought savagely.

  As she was picking her way out of the flowerbed, he left his wheelbarrow and cut off her retreat. ‘I got to talk to you,’ he said urgently.

  ‘Out of my way, Walker,’ she snapped.

  ‘Just listen, will you? I don’t want her. I don’t even like her!’

  ‘But you’re still going to marry her, aren’t you?’

  With his thumbnail he dug at a cut on his palm. ‘I can’t afford not to.’

  ‘Oh what a hardship, I quite understand.’

  ‘No you don’t. How could you? If I dun’t do as he says, I’ll not get another place. Then what’ll I do? There’s only me and Ned now. What’ll we eat?’

  He was three years older than her, but he looked younger. Young and miserable and out of his depth.

  Cole was coming through the orchard.

  ‘Clem,’ she said suddenly. ‘The Master’s not well. Stay out of his way.’

  ‘What d’you mean? He was all right the other day.’

  ‘He’s not himself. And Clem… It doesn’t matter about Ivy. Do what you have to do. I understand.’

  The day crawled by – and then another. And still Father kept to his room.

  Maud re-read Late Mediæval Art and tried again with Paradise Lost. Once or twice, she felt she was almost on to something, but it slipped away. She redoubled her efforts. If she could find out what he was planning, she might be able to beat him at his own game.

  In the evening she discovered that while she’d been in the library, the ledger and the notebook had been quietly replaced in the study bookshelf. She made herself re-read the final entries in case she’d missed something: ‘I’ve overlooked a crucial aspect of the nature of demons. How could I have forgotten, when it is so familiar? Revelations, Milton; it’s plain for all to see… I have seen it… At last I know what I have to do.’

  Father had written this on the 27th and 28th of May. Today was the 1st of June. The remaining pages were blank.

  Maud pictured him writing one final entry after he had killed her. ‘It is finished. The demon is no more.’

  She woke very early next morning to the certain knowledge of what she had missed.

  ‘It’s all bosh,’ Father had told the rector. Except that wasn’t quite what he’d said.

  It was five o’clock and the household was still sleeping. Flinging on her clothes, Maud went downstairs. The heat was as oppressive as ever, but a strange hot wind was stirring the apple trees beneath an ominous red sky.

  Late Mediæval Art was not in the bookshelf whe
re she’d left it yesterday evening. It was on Father’s desk, on top of a neat stack of medical monographs that bore the Ex Libris stamp of Dr Grayson. Father must have crept downstairs in the night, while everyone was asleep.

  Had he meant her to find these papers? Or perhaps he no longer felt that he needed to conceal what he was doing.

  She took Late Mediæval Art into the library and found what she was looking for almost at once. She was right. Father hadn’t told the rector ‘It’s all bosh’. He’d said: ‘It’s all Bosch.’ Hieronymus Bosch, c.1450–1516, ‘whose minutely realised works with their unique, often nightmarish iconography vividly depict the Seven Deadly Sins and the torments of the damned.’

  But the picture Maud turned up wasn’t one of Bosch’s depictions of Hell. That was why she’d overlooked it before. It was a smaller, quieter work, showing a surgeon in an odd conical cap and a long pink robe drilling into the top of a man’s skull.

  ‘The Stone Operation,’ she read, ‘depicts a procedure to cure seizures &c by excising the stone of folly from the brain. Some historians believe that this operation was actually performed at popular gatherings and country fairs, while others assert that it was only a metaphor. The latter seems more likely. Had it been performed, it would undoubtedly have proved fatal.’

  MAUD heard Daisy clomping downstairs with the servants’ slop-pail. Soon the housemaid would unbolt the back door for Billy, who would empty the pail in the outside water-closet, then set about his morning tasks of trimming the lamps and cleaning the boots.

  Maud waited until she knew Daisy would be in the scullery. Then she tiptoed into the study and retrieved Dr Grayson’s monographs from Father’s desk. There were three of them, all dating from the previous century and all with slips of paper between the pages, bearing neat annotations in Father’s hand.