Sabrina & The Secret of The Severn Sea

by Guy Sheppard

  He was awake again in bed in the vicarage; he was wheezing and retching before he suffocated.

  He was struggling like a diver to regain the surface. Was back in that moment when Slim Jim blew out the lamp in the dark boatshed.

  A tattooed hand sealed his mouth to stifle all protest while into his ears came those never to be forgotten words:

  ‘Remember Luke, if anyone asks, you know nothing about me. It’s our secret.’

  *

  Luke dressed hurriedly and stood trembling at his bedroom window. The sun had yet to penetrate all the shadows across the vicarage’s lawn, but there was no going back to sleep now, as he watched mist rise from the river.

  He thought he saw for a moment one particular patch of ground fog separate from another, as if some visitor or other would approach the house…

  He could afford to peer at the baffling absence of something so basic as a human figure, since there was none, but braced himself even so.

  …waited to hear their peremptory knocking on the glass doors overlooking the stone terrace, like a revenant?

  Next minute he set off along the landing in a hurry.

  The ship’s figurehead, the pride of his collection, was all dark presence outside Reverend Winter’s former office.

  The red-haired effigy’s chiselled eyes stared in the direction he was going, her head appeared to move for an instant as he brushed against her.

  As did her silvery, sea-green irises.

  Suddenly from downstairs there came the sound of frantic barking.

  ‘Whatever is it, Sash?’

  She had already reached the bottom of the stairs ahead of him.

  It was a shock to see how she stood so still like that, just inside the front door, in the hallway.

  Between her paws lay an envelope.

  ‘Can it be true?’ said Luke. ‘Look here, it’s addressed to Olivia Lyons.’

  34

  To follow a diet was to feed himself special food akin to a medical regimen or punishment, but to end one was to feel even worse, thought Jorge.

  Right now he could have been a prisoner out on bail.

  He had to promise himself that he would refrain from eating chocolates in bed for the foreseeable future. He had to give his solemn word of honour.

  So why did there come into his head an inordinate need for marinated kipper fillets, as he cycled briskly into Berkeley?

  Even all-green miso soup with brown rice seemed like a good idea this morning.

  He had found the bicycle when rooting about in the shed in the grounds of the vicarage and already he was attracting strange looks from local people, as if he were some sort of reincarnation of its previous owner.

  He dismounted outside the tearooms and an invisible vulture immediately perched on his shoulder – told him to go inside in search of all the honey and almond macaroons that were on offer on the colourful cake-stand in the window.

  Instead he turned heroically on his heels to push his bicycle as far as the Pumpkin Bridal Shop.

  A brunette in her thirties looked up the second he entered. She was dressed all in black, which made her appearance somewhat ominous among so many antique white wedding dresses and accessories.

  Her heavy eyelids blinked quickly, defying her pain, until she greeted him with a face that was pale and drawn.

  ‘Oh shit.’

  The sight of his black peaked cap with its blue and white-diced band startled her.

  ‘Forgive me, I’m Inspector Jorge Winter from Gloucester Cathedral police force. I’m investigating the disappearance of Reverend Luke Lyons on behalf of the Church.’

  ‘For a moment I thought you were just another cop come to give me bad news.’

  He took off his cap to appear less formal.

  ‘You Ros? You Ian Grey’s daughter?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I just read about the recovery of your father’s body from the River Severn. May I say how sorry I am for your loss.’

  ‘There’ll have to be an inquest, of course,’ began Ros, but then hastily broke off to rearrange several yards of Brussels applique lace flounce on the counter – seemed to take heart from its pretty floral design of forget-me-nots and daisies at her fingertips. ‘It’s a dreadful, dreadful business…’

  He shut the door carefully behind him to silence its jangling bell.

  ‘A strange one, certainly.’

  Ros sniffed loudly.

  ‘Of course, in my heart of hearts I was convinced my dad was alive. We all were, even though he’s been missing for months.’

  ‘How many, exactly?’

  ‘It was not long after Reverend Lyons arrived in Berkeley last spring. My father’s spade was found dug into the bank by the Severn. His cigarette lighter lay at the foot of the seawall. He was taken while searching for something, it seems.’

  Jorge shivered. Again there was that word taken.

  ‘Please. Tell me more.’

  Ros lifted a corner of a fifteen-inch square, hand-embroidered wedding handkerchief. She started to fold and refold its scalloped edges.

  ‘Fact is, Inspector, the sanctity of the river has been violated and its goddess is angry. It’s up to us to pay her greater respect and tribute. You should join us one night at the tin tabernacle.’

  ‘Would that be the Goddess Sabrina by any chance?’

  ‘We go to the River Severn to honour the ancient ways of the Celts and the Romans. At our next gathering I will scatter my father’s ashes to the currents and ask her for forgiveness, I will give him back to her World of the Waters to be reborn.’

  ‘Huh?’

  Ros shot him a stern look.

  ‘Ever read Milton, Inspector? Then know that Sabrina is a sea nymph not just of the waves but of the fishes, caves, sandbanks, rocks and shores. More particularly, she is a Naiad who guides the freshwater Severn through the deepest oceans to the other side of the world. Born of the local river, she is like the daughters of the Earth-encircling river Oceanus on which the glass eels ride to and from the Sargasso Sea every year. She can walk on land but she’ll die if she ever falls in love with a man.’

  ‘Yeah, well, but…’

  ‘Milton best tells her story in his Masque ‘Comus’:

  The water-nymphs, that in the bottom played,

  Held up their pearled wrists, and took her in,

  Bearing her straight to aged Nereus’ hall;

  Who, piteous of her woes, reared her lank head,

  And gave her to his daughters to imbathe

  In nectared lavers strewed with asphodel,

  And through the porch and inlet of every sense

  Dropped in ambrosial oils, till she revived,

  And underwent a quick immortal change,

  Made Goddess of the river.’

  ‘I know the poem. Whenever my father considered me bad, which was quite often, he locked me in his office and insisted that I read Milton for hours on end to improve my mind. It was his idea of mental torture.’

  ‘Then you’ll know that it should be the hall of Nodens, not Nereus. Nereus is the name for the Old Man of the Sea before Poseidon, whereas Nodens is the Celtic name for the king of the Severn Sea.’

  This was pagan superstition of the worst kind, thought Jorge or the grief-stricken Ros was raving.

  His eyes followed her nervous hands, step by step, while she drew tight the string on a pretty bag decorated with Irish crochet lace trim.

  She would break it if she pulled any harder.

  ‘Did Reverend Lyons participate in these so-called rituals?’

  ‘Oh no, Inspector, he was vehemently opposed to them.’

  ‘In his capacity as local vicar he tried to interfere?’

  ‘As such, he felt it was his duty.’

  ‘Did it earn him any enemies, at all?’

  ‘Let’s face it, ancient pagan spirits and religious absolutes can make strange bedfellows. He and Reverend Anne Buck had a great argument about what constitutes belief in the 21st century.’r />
  ‘Who is Reverend Buck?’

  ‘She preaches in the Church of St. Mary The Virgin at Shepperdine, though I can see you set no great store by the funny ways of us locals?’

  ‘On the contrary, I very much want to speak to you all.’

  ‘Truth is, Inspector, Reverend Lyons was a threat,’ said Ros. ‘The more political among us didn’t have much time for him.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘You must have heard that we’re against the building of Oldbury B station on the River Severn.’

  ‘I have it on record that Reverend Lyons’s grandmother owned Chapel Cottage, which is just outside Shepperdine? Am I right?’

  ‘The nuclear power company still needs it to complete a jigsaw of land to build its new power station.’

  ‘And Reverend Lyons was willing to sell it to them?’

  ‘Now that the existing reactors have been decommissioned at Berkeley and Oldbury-on-Severn, many people hoped that they had seen the back of them forever. Reverend Lyons’s sudden arrival changed all that.’

  He listened to Ros’s voice turn shrill. It was rash, fanatical, inspired and idealistic. She really did not want the river blighted by something which she considered a threat to its spiritual environment.

  ‘So did someone go out of their way to ‘stop’ Reverend Lyons, or what?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘He probably didn’t even consider the power plant a threat, he probably saw it as a desperately needed necessity for the future production of electricity. He may, as a man of God, have considered it outside his remit?’

  ‘The point is, Inspector, he lost sight of his mission. He changed. You ask his sister Ellie at Floodgates Farm. She’ll tell you the same.’

  Again there came that other crucial word, thought Jorge. Changed.

  A delivery man entered the shop carrying two rolls of silk.

  Jorge was about to follow him out when Sasha’s presence on the pavement recalled his other reason for being there.

  ‘You found Mary Brenner’s dog, didn’t you, Ros, on the night she drowned?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Barbara Jennings.’

  ‘Since when does she care?’

  ‘Ever since she became aware of some preternatural presence in the river?’

  ‘You sceptical?’

  ‘Shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Then know this, Inspector. When I came across Mary’s black and white pointer on the riverbank, it wouldn’t move. It behaved as though it were scenting game as all pointers do. It raised its front paw at the slithery footprints on the mudflats and looked straight towards their slimy trail.’

  ‘Are you saying that Mary met something coming or going from the river?’

  There came no answer or none that made any sense. During the sudden lull, Ros unrolled the new delivery of lace in the same way she might unravel a mystery.

  ‘I really don’t know much more about it than you do, Inspector. I can only assume that she ventured too far from the shore in a frantic search for her drowning pet, because I found him all wet and muddy.’

  ‘Or the loyal pointer went into the water after her.’

  ‘It was too late to tell. The tide was rushing in and obscuring all the tracks. What does Mary Brenner’s death have to do with Reverend Lyons, anyway? Or my father, for that matter?’

  His smile was impeccable, his posture relaxed and friendly, the reassurance he gave her sincere, plausible and without a trace of subterfuge.

  ‘Absolutely nothing, yet.’

  ‘Then please go now, Inspector.’

  ‘Unless, that is, the worshipping of your river goddess requires regular, ritual sacrifices of the human kind?’

  He left without further explanation but secretly wondered the wildest thing. Had Sabrina taken Luke?

  35

  Luke tore open the envelope in Hill House’s dirty hallway and recited aloud the letter’s hastily written words:

  ‘My darling Olivia, I have found a way to keep my promise to you. Soon I will let you know time and place. Must lie low until then, as faraway as possible from Berkeley. There will be no more unhappiness. I’ll explain everything the moment it is safe to resurface. Your loving husband, Sean.’

  The letter was dated: October 31st 1960.

  It was enough to make anyone’s head spin.

  An address in Scotland lay at the top of the page.

  For his grandfather to send a message six days after the River Severn’s Railway Bridge had crashed in pieces defied the logic of his death.

  As to Olivia’s identity, that, too, was just plain wrong. Was Sean not married to Gwendolen?

  If asked, he had to say that only his grandfather could answer, but he should have been food for the fishes.

  The vicarage suddenly felt terribly altered. His collection of maritime relics proved a timely reminder: what he most needed to do now was to redouble his efforts to investigate, via authentic, empirical evidence all the dead men and women who had ever washed up along the shores of the Severn Sea. He must find out how anyone could disappear and come back to life again. Must discover their secret.

  That meant discovering where the treacherous currents usually deposited their remains?

  Sasha placed a paw on his knee and whined.

  ‘What is it?’ Luke asked irritably.

  Next moment he saw the page spill red in his hand in the hall.

  It was his bloody nose again.

  He should listen to Ellie. Should see a doctor.

  He was bleeding in the house of the drowned.

  36

  The sun had almost set when Jorge left the vicarage to take Sasha for a walk in the evening rain.

  He had to maintain a brisk pace for thirty minutes in order to lose 150 calories per day – to lose a pound a week he had to shed 500.

  While he very much wished to strengthen his bones and muscles, no one should ever overdo it. It was all very well saying that regular exercise alone helped to stave off high blood pressure, heart disease and type 2 diabetes, but everyone had to be reasonable. Should not risk burnout, as he trotted along.

  Sasha, forever alert and inquisitive, was remarkably excited despite the worsening weather. She soon set so rapid a pace that he could hardly keep up with her.

  It was his fault for not having yet bought a lead for her collar. She ran straight to the river despite each high-voltage electrical discharge between cloud and ground while he grew wetter and wetter.

  He had not intended to go so far on such a night.

  ‘Sasha, slow down, damn it.’

  To come upon the river at high tide in the gathering darkness was to feel his heart begin to race.

  Such was the expanse of water travelling fast upstream that land and sky seemed to slide apart.

  He could not wholly dismiss its serpentine sense of peril, even if he was not yet actually imperilled. He looked into dark water. Was Luke down there? Was he dissolving in tides that were even now carrying his remains out to sea? Carrying him to the far side of the globe on some secret current?

  Sasha stood atop the seawall, insensible to the icy spray and savage gusts of wind that blew off the briny water. She barked a single bark. Let the water know she was there. She listened very intensely.

  Not to any voice but to its silence.

  Jorge seized hold of her collar and uttered dire imprecations as they both peered harder into the gloom.

  Sure enough, a ship lit up in the next flash of lightning.

  It steered between the shore and Lydney Sand in order to avoid sunken islands at Hills Flats and Hayward Rock, all the time coming nearer and nearer to where they waited in the rain.

  A thin stream of smoke trailed from its funnel while ragged sails helped propel it towards the open gates of the ship canal at Sharpness.

  The vessel’s not unfamiliar black-painted hull with its imitation gun ports sailed so close that Sasha began to yelp excitedly.

  Already
they heard rigging, chains and lanyards creak and groan while the masts flexed slightly in the wind. The vessel could have been steering itself since no one appeared to be resetting yards and sails.

  Unwelcome words formed on his frozen lips: The Devil never sent a wind out of hell, but he would sail with it.

  The rain-lashed figurehead at the vessel’s bow rattled its skeletal body. It proffered them its drinking cup at the end of its claw-like arm. The skull’s gibbering grin celebrated its awful toast while on the doomster’s back danced three bony children.

  No lamps showed in the vessel’s cabin windows, but from her unseen helm the clear resonant notes of her bell reached his ears to proclaim her passing.

  For hers was a TRUE course, with no need to adjust it for magnetic variation or change in compass.

  The next zigzag of lightning lit letters of gold as the ship dissolved again into clouds of mist and rain.

  In that brief and awful illumination he read the name painted on the stern.

  It was Amatheia.

  37

  If he made the mistake of trying to sail beyond Narlwood Rocks he might yet go aground on Oldbury Sands, Luke calculated.

  The tide would soon come storming towards him past Whirls End and Slimeroad Sand.

  With his mud-encrusted spade lodged in the bottom of his boat, he scanned the shore with his torch. He had to be quick if he wanted to go ashore and dig at the next place marked on his map.

  Lights suddenly flashed on land. He was not alone. People were leaving their cars at the ruins of the Windbound Inn to make their way past Chapel Cottage as far as the seawall.

  He was inclined to sail quietly past when, from the riverbank, there came a scream. It was a ferocious, protracted shriek as of some poor lost soul at the edge of the water. It might also have been an owl.

  Luke’s hand tightened on the tiller. He was, for a moment, a boy again on Slim Jim Jackson’s boat – he was trawling illegally for glass eels in defiance of licensed fishermen on their ‘stumps’.

  Already he was expecting to see those familiar buckets that counterbalanced poles on each fisherman’s shoulder; he strained to make out the dipping nets that reminded him of oversized butterfly bags by the glow of their lanterns.