River of Destiny

by Barbara Erskine

  He ducked back into full shadow and retraced his steps into the woods; from there he took a narrow path through the undergrowth, heading round the village to the east. Once well out of sight of village and hall he cut back up through the paddocks with grazing oxen, and the strip fields, their parallel turf divisions exaggerated in the half-light. He moved along the headlands and across a horse enclosure, making for the little church. Father Wulfric would help him.

  He pushed open the door, wincing as it creaked loudly on its hinges. Father Wulfric was kneeling before the altar, deep in prayer.

  ‘Father?’ Eric’s voice was hoarse after the night out in the damp woods.

  The old priest paused, ended his prayer and crossed himself. He rose to his feet with a groan as his aching knees protested at the sudden movement. ‘I thought you might come to see me, my son.’

  ‘What shall I do, father?’ Eric knelt before him.

  ‘You have the sword safe?’

  Eric nodded.

  ‘I have prayed for an answer to your question since the Lady Hilda came to see me this morning. As soon as they found the sword had been replaced there was an outcry. The heathen sorcerer says that the runes you carved at his command dedicated the sword to his gods of war, but that it was for our Lord Egbert to carry the sword to the Otherworld.’ The old man shuddered.

  ‘I don’t want my sword committed to the flames on an old man’s bier.’

  The priest shook his head. ‘Nor to the earth. I know not yet what plans they have for the disposal of his body. The Lady Hilda, it appears, has no say in the matter.’

  ‘So it would be best to pass the sword on to Oswy as Lord Egbert’s heir, or to his brother?’

  Father Wulfric nodded. He had no intention of telling the swordsmith of the threats that had been made against him. No doubt the man could guess as much himself. The entire village was dividing. Hidden allegiances and jealousies were surfacing. He knew the swordsmith had changed his beliefs and followed the old religion, but now he was wavering. Others who were openly Christian had harboured secret longings for the old ways. Whilst some dithered, the Christian majority was ranging itself against a hothead bunch who, attracted to the ideas of the old religion, as tradition demanded followed the leadership of their lord. If Egbert worshipped in the old religion then so did they. Peace against war. Why was it always thus? He glanced up at the small round-topped window behind the altar and sighed. This small precious house of God was so frail a refuge, for Eric or for himself. He shivered, his old bones protesting against the cold damp heart of this place. ‘Go, my son, and fetch the sword and bring it here just after dark tonight. I will see to it that Oswald is here. He has sworn to protect the rights of his brother’s sons until they are old enough to bear a sword themselves. Once he has it the responsibility is passed on and you can rest more easily.’ He hesitated. ‘Do not trust too much, Eric. There are those you might consider friends who conspire against you.’

  Eric frowned. ‘Who?’

  Wulfric shook his head. ‘Walls have ears. I dare not speak names out loud.’

  ‘And yet you tell me to come here, out loud. And you tell me to give the sword to Oswald, out loud!’ Eric was staring round, suddenly very afraid. ‘Who is here?’

  ‘No one but God, my son,’ Wulfric said equably. ‘I watch; I listen. People don’t always even notice I’m there. They talk unrestrainedly in the hall and in the village.’ He sighed. ‘They plan to bury him in the tumulus down in the field on the river’s edge, where his ancestors were buried before him.’ He sighed again. ‘They would deny him any hope of heaven. But then he rejected that himself when he refused baptism. The heathen belief is that he will lie there, his soul anchored to his body, ready to talk to whoever asks if they placate him with offerings. An ancestor to whom all will turn when they are in need.’

  Eric shuddered. He crossed himself again, astonished to find how naturally the comforting gesture returned to him. ‘It seems I did all I could to help him, by inscribing the sword with runes which the sorcerer prescribed.’

  ‘I doubt if you knew the implications of what you were doing,’ Wulfric reassured him. ‘Or of the magical practices that have been going on openly in Lord Egbert’s house. He claimed many years ago that it was his devotion to the goddess Frige which enabled the Lady Hilda to conceive three sons when she had been feared barren. She denies this. She has come to me in anguish and contrition, afraid that what they had done under the blessing of heathen idols had caused her to give birth to three healthy sons and for that she would be damned for ever to the deepest of hells. As you know, the Lord saw fit to take one of those sons at birth and it was the shock of that which showed her the error of her ways in allowing her marriage bed to be defiled by these idols, but, for all her repentance and prayer, there has been much to displease Our Lord since in her household.’

  Eric said nothing. He didn’t know what to say. It was he who had made the idols for her, at the thegn’s insistence, the eggs, the fertile hare, the small slender statue of Frige, but also and most powerfully of all, the figure of the mother goddess with her swollen stomach and pendulous breasts.

  Hilda’s payment to the gods had been made in full, poor woman, and Eric had taken them home and there one day Edith had found them in the bag he had carried them in as, if he was honest with himself, he had hoped she might. She knew at once what they were and assumed he had made them for her. Christian though she was, she had put them in a basket on the cottage hearth and from time to time he suspected they were secreted in their bed. Her barrenness ended. She conceived at once, but the baby died. Again and again her babies were born before time and lived only a few hours or they were born dead. He begged her to let him melt down the idols but she refused and he had no heart to insist. Even now they sat on his hearth at home and now at last once again they had worked and his wife was with child.

  Wulfric put his hand on the other man’s forehead, sensing this new pain as the memory hit Eric fully, but not understanding it. ‘Bless you, my son,’ he murmured. ‘I sense your repentance. God will listen to your prayers. Now go and stay hidden until tonight, and then do as I say. Bring the sword here to the house of God.’

  Stooping to pick up the broken harness pieces, Dan glanced up at the empty stall where Bella had so recently stood. He had grown used to hearing her friendly greetings as he walked in and seeing her excitement as the time for her to be turned into the orchard came near. He bit his lip and bent, scooping the chain into his arms from the dusty floor. He heard the movement behind him too late. A shadow seemed to envelop him, he felt arms around his neck and then the choking cut of the wire around his throat. He fought for only a few seconds, grasping desperately to get a purchase on the wire before it cut too deep, but he couldn’t free himself. The man behind him was too strong. As the world went black he felt the warmth of his own blood as it flowed from his neck. His hands fell away from the wire, his frantic struggles stopped at last and he fell to the floor.

  He never saw who it was who killed him.

  Zeph stood looking down at the body for several seconds with a smile of grim satisfaction and only then did he remember the instructions to make it clear to Dan why he had to die. He gave a sneer. ‘I reckon you knew why, my friend!’ he murmured. He bent and got hold of the body under the arms and dragged it to one side. It would be clear enough to anyone who looked that the man had been killed but he would at least make a show of pretending that this was a suicide. He groped in his pocket for the note Mr Henry had given him and slid it into the dead man’s pocket, then he looked round. He had been in the old barn often enough to know that George and Robert kept all sorts of tools and harness hanging from lines of old nails on the walls. He grabbed a coil of rope and tossed one end up over a beam. At the other end he made a noose which he put around Dan’s neck. For a moment it almost hid the deep cut left when he pulled away the wire. Sweating profusely, he dragged Dan up onto a pile of hay bales, secured the end of the rope, then kicked away
the top bale. The body fell and hung for a moment, the feet only inches from the ground, swinging gently against the wall. It was enough.

  He slid out of the shadows into the bright sunlight outside and round the back of the yard, seen only by the hens scratching in the dust. In the barn the rope creaked once or twice as it tightened further round the beam, then all was still.

  Jade was sitting cross-legged on her bed staring down at something lying in front of her on the pink bedcover. She was sucking her thumb, something she only did now when she was sure no one could see, fitting her front teeth comfortably into the groove below her nail. The item lying on the bedspread was a squat rounded figure, some three inches high and two inches across which, if one screwed up one’s eyes and defocused, could look like the torso of a woman with a fat stomach and huge breasts. She had found this ages ago when searching the hedge near Leo’s house for a cricket ball which the boys had lost. They had promised her ten pence if she found the ball. Which she did. She had promptly threatened to throw it in the river unless her prize money was increased to fifty pence, and she still regarded that as one of her first successful business deals.

  The figure was metal and had been a rather nasty corroded green colour when she had found it near the old well. She had washed it and then cleaned it using some old Brasso she had found under the sink. It cleaned up remarkably well, but there was something intensely unpleasant about it. It was ugly. It had a nasty feel. She reached out with her fingertip and then withdrew it without actually touching it. Normally she kept it in a box in the bottom drawer of her bedside cabinet, swathed in bubble wrap. She was pretty sure it was something a witch had once used to curse people. Once or twice she had been on the point of asking Leo about it; she was sure it was the sort of thing he would know, but as quickly she had reached the conclusion that like all adults when confronted with one of her finds, he would have immediately decided that she was not the person to keep it. If it was valuable he would insist it was given to the museum; if it was just a mass of old metal he would probably chuck it in the river. If it was truly evil, he would – what would he do? She chewed her thumbnail. She had been right not to show it to him because now, at last, she had a use for it. If it was used to curse people, why didn’t she try it out and see if it still worked. She smiled to herself. The thing was, where to put it to maximum effect?

  She cocked her head to one side, listening. Mike Turtill was there downstairs with Jackson. She wondered suddenly what they were planning. Scooping the figure back into its wrapping and putting it carefully into its box so that she didn’t actually have to touch it, she slid off the bed and returned it to its drawer. Then she crept to the door and opened it. A little eavesdropping would help to pass the time before she went downstairs and demanded that they provide her with something to eat.

  What she heard made her smile.

  ‘Dad is going to plough the field in the next day or so. That will make her wild!’ Mike was saying.

  The boys were in the kitchen. The fridge door was open and Jackson was rummaging through the contents. He was assembling enough butter and cheese and eggs and bacon on the worktop to feed an army. ‘When is her next walkies with her friends?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t know. I thought we might delegate that bit of undercover work to the child.’

  Jade closed her eyes and squirmed with fury. She hated Mike Turtill, but for the moment she was prepared to shelve her resentment and go with this idea. It proved they appreciated her skills.

  ‘He’s going to leave it as rough as possible,’ Mike went on with a chuckle. He leaned towards Sharon’s fruit bowl and grabbed a banana. ‘We can only hope she breaks her ankle.’

  ‘Or her bloody neck! There must be other things we can do. Scare her away altogether. What about some more haunting? I don’t think it’s worked with the new people in The Old Barn but we can leave that for now. They sussed us out pretty quickly anyway. And I reckon they don’t much like our Rosemary either.’

  ‘They were helped by the weirdo.’ Mike stretched over and dipped the end of the banana in the open jar of mayonnaise.

  ‘Jade thinks he’s having an affair with Mrs Old Barn,’ Jackson commented. He was slapping piles of cheese and ham onto squares of white bread.

  Jade frowned. She hadn’t said a word to her brother about what she had discovered. Then she remembered, she had mentioned her suspicions long before she had had any proof. That had been what her friend, Holly, called her intuition. She was astounded to realise that Jackson had obviously listened to what she had said, and taken it on board. Mentally she awarded him a mark for his acuity.

  Jackson was anointing his masterpiece with mayonnaise. ‘Yuk! How could she let him touch her? He looks completely gross with all those scars.’

  ‘Perhaps she likes mingers.’

  That was too much for Jade. ‘Don’t you call my friend a minger!’ She burst into the kitchen and glared at both boys. ‘He’s a really nice person.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ Jackson was unfazed by her sudden appearance. ‘Here. You’d better eat something.’ Suddenly remembering his loco-parental responsibilities, he sawed his enormous sandwich in half and pushed a bit towards her. She gazed at it for a moment, tempted to reject it on principle, then overwhelmed with hunger, grabbed it. She took a huge bite. The boys watched her chew.

  ‘So, how much of what we were saying did you hear?’ Jackson asked nonchalantly when he judged her once more capable of speech.

  ‘Enough.’ She grinned cheekily.

  ‘Price of silence?’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ She saw the surprise and then suspicion in his face and took another bite.

  ‘I heard you were ill,’ Mike said at last. ‘I take it you’re feeling better?’

  She nodded. It was, she realised, true.

  ‘So, are you up for doing a bit of spying for us?’ Jackson asked. ‘Find out when Rosemary is going to take her little band of walkers back to Mike’s field.’

  ‘I’ll try.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s not always easy. They don’t trust me any more.’

  Both boys laughed. ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘In exchange I’m going to want you both to do something for me.’ She shook her head and raised her hand. ‘I don’t know what yet. There is someone I want to fix, big time.’

  Jackson didn’t seem surprised that his scrap of a sister should be waging war; he even guessed who it was she was out to get and why, but he said nothing. ‘I’m sure we can help you there, sis.’

  She beamed at him. ‘Good.’ She turned and headed for the door. ‘That sandwich was disgusting,’ she added as an afterthought over her shoulder. ‘It will give you cholesterol, eating all that fat.’

  Benjamin had used the bellows with gusto, fanning the fire to a white heat. He stopped and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm then he looked round, puzzled. Dan had been gone a long time. At twelve years old Ben was proud of his position as bellows boy to the smith, who was already training him in the trade. He walked over to the door and stood looking out across the yard. The place was deserted except for the hens, as usual scratching happily about amongst the ears of corn which Betsy had thrown them earlier. He turned towards the cottage. Had Dan’s missus called him back there? He would have heard. The door was closed and he could hear nothing coming from inside. He wandered out into the yard and then headed for the old barn.

  He stopped in the doorway, looking inside. Motes of sunlight were slanting across the floor and the place seemed empty. He frowned. He could see the heap of chain lying on the cobbles and beside it a large patch of what looked like blood. The boy froze. ‘Dan?’ he called nervously. ‘Dan, you there?’ He looked fearfully at the blood; it was smeared and there were drag marks on the floor heading towards the side of the aisle. He took a step or two further in, staring round. At first he didn’t see it, then he moved forward again and stopped, immobilised by shock. Dan was hanging from a beam near the side of the barn, his legs trailing on the floor,
a hay bale lying out of place near him. The front of his shirt was soaked in drying blood, his face was contorted, his eyes bulging and sightless. For a long time the world seemed to stand still as the boy stared at the man who was his employer and his friend, then he crumpled to the ground, catatonic with shock.

  For a while he rocked himself to and fro, moaning, then at last he tried to pull himself together and stood up on shaky legs making his way backwards out of the barn, his eyes still fixed on Dan’s face, before he turned and stared round wildly for help. He looked at the cottage and knew instinctively he couldn’t go there. He would probably never go there again. With a sob he realised that there was no one nearby to help him. The men were in the fields. There was nothing for it but to go and find them. With one last look over his shoulder he headed for the gate into the lane and began to run.

  At the Hall Lady Emily was sitting in the morning room with her husband. She glanced at him and then looked away. On her knee lay a piece of embroidery. The fabric was crushed, the stitches messy. She wanted to hurl the whole silly piece of nonsense into the fire but she didn’t dare. Henry’s face was a study of dark anger, and had been for several days. He had barked at her the day she had told him she was going riding and forbidden her to go to the stables; later he had come to her room and forbidden her to go out at all. He had called Molly and told her to sit with her mistress to keep her company and later had come back and dismissed the woman before sitting down himself across the fire from her.

  ‘Is there anything wrong, Henry?’ she had asked timidly.

  ‘Anything wrong?’ he had shouted. ‘You tell me that you have been raped and you ask me if there is anything wrong?’

  ‘What have you done about Daniel?’ she said at last.

  ‘That is none of your business. He is to be punished.’