Bone Harvest

by James Brogden

  Bill returned for the next two nights, but not again afterwards. It never occurred to the deserter that it might have been a hallucination. The bloody footprints that his old friend had left were real enough, though the deserter made sure that he cleaned them away so that the doctors didn’t see them and think that he was up to anything unusual. Bill had simply, for whatever reasons of his own, chosen to visit him from the No Man’s Land between life and death.

  Time and again he dreamed of that conversation in the cellar, Bill drawing a neat scar across his forearm, and the boar-tusk bracelet on his wrist, while his cough grew steadily worse. He searched county maps of Shropshire for a village called Swinley, and found it hidden in a narrow valley amongst the tumbled folds of hills right on the border with Wales.

  The locks and bars of Scholes Farm Asylum were no more effective as barriers against him than the barbed wire and craters of the Western Front had been. He stole clothes, money, and identity papers from the other inmates, who didn’t need them and probably wouldn’t notice their absence anyway. It was January, the worst possible month for a man with a lung condition to be travelling, but instead of convalescing by a warm fire he travelled by train out through Wolverhampton and the Black Country, enduring a series of draughty third-class railway carriages and long waits in damp station waiting rooms until he reached the market town of Church Stretton, which huddled below the sombre bulk of a hill called the Long Mynd. Despite being the low season, it was impossible to find a guest house vacancy for the night, since at the first sign of his cough the proprietors would close their doors to him, terrified of the disease he carried. It also meant that there were no brakes to be hired and he was forced to walk up the hill road and onto the unsheltered moorland plateau of the Mynd. It was not especially steep but with his lungs the going was strenuous. For a place that billed itself to summer day-trippers as ‘Little Switzerland’, he saw no majestic snow-capped peaks, just a succession of grey slopes looming out of the drizzle like waves of a cheerless sea, and the closest he got to a buxom blonde milkmaid was a fat dairy farmer called Jones who let him sit in the back of his cart amongst the rattling milk churns.

  The countryside on the other side of the Mynd was a tangle of narrow lanes and high hedgerows running between farms and small villages, mostly without signposts since presumably the locals knew where everything was, but if he’d been alone and on foot he’d have soon become hopelessly lost. As it was, Jones the farmer deposited him at a junction with an even smaller road – little more than a track between close-crowded trees – assured him that it was the road to Swinley, and continued on his way.

  * * *

  It was cold under the trees. They pressed close on either side and tangled heavy limbs overhead like the fingers of hands steepled in dark rumination, while the undergrowth filled the space between their trunks, holly and hawthorn as thick with barbs as any coil of barbed wire. There was no wind, and yet he fancied that he heard faint rustlings, either of the trees themselves or something moving stealthily amongst them, keeping pace with him.

  At a turn in the track he saw, blocking his way, an animal that he at first took to be a pig, covered in a dark, bristling hide with stiff hackles, and tusks curved both up and down either side of its snout. A boar, then. But surely extinct in Britain? It was statue-still in the middle of the path, staring at him, daring him to dispute its existence. There seemed no point in trying to hide his purpose, so he said, ‘I’m looking for the followers of Moccus.’

  The boar regarded him, almost as if it understood, then uttered a rattling, full-throated squeal and dashed back into the undergrowth. The deserter waited for any further reaction from the surrounding woods, but none came, so he took that as encouragement and pressed on.

  Bill had called Swinley a village, but it was really more of a large farmstead surrounded by a cluster of satellite cottages and outbuildings hidden behind tall hedgerows and the coats of their own ivy, and separated from each other by a patchwork of small fields. There was even a church steeple rising from the midst. Beyond and above it reared the slope of another steep hill, wooded for the most part but bare where trees gave way to heather and the tumbled mass of a granite outcrop. Swinley appeared to be perfectly ordinary, probably unchanged since the time of Shakespeare, except that as he wandered its narrow lanes looking for someone to whom he could present himself, he saw no sign of people at all. Even in winter there should have been someone working the fields. He decided to make for the church: if the village had a centre it would be there, though if Bill had been telling the truth that the inhabitants of this place worshipped something other than a Christian god, he did wonder what kind of a church it would be.

  Again, perfectly ordinary, as it turned out. According to a noticeboard by the lychgate this was The Church of St Mark’s in the Parish of Swinley. Mark’s, he thought. Moccus. Now more than ever he suspected that this whole affair was nothing more than the brain-fever of a man no saner than the rest of the madmen. He saw weathered stone, lichen-spotted headstones, and a stout oak door standing open to the church’s porch. From inside he heard a woman’s voice singing – not a hymn, but something with lilt and sparkle, something about a sailor and his bonnie bride.

  The deserter entered. In the porch a waxed jacket hung above a pair of muddy wellingtons, and the singing, soft though it was, was picked up by the building’s vaulted interior so that it seemed to come out of the very stones. As he opened the inner door the coolness of stone and the warm smell of furniture polish and old carpet folded around him. He saw ranks of darkly gleaming oak pews and a pulpit, a paraffin heater doing its best against the chill, stained-glass windows, and the singer, in the process of polishing the pulpit’s brass fittings, turning in surprise.

  She was young, with dark hair wound up in a chignon, and wearing a pair of bib overalls like a munitionette. Cool blue eyes regarded him with the kind of still, silent appraisal that reminded him oddly of how the boar on the path had watched him. He could well imagine how he must look to her: a scarecrow of a man, dripping wet, in a threadbare suit. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘What do you want?’

  Before he could reply, a fit of coughing wracked him, and when he could catch his breath replied, ‘My name is Everett. I’m looking for the followers of Moccus. The, uh, the Farrow.’

  She at least did him the courtesy of not feigning ignorance. ‘Oh are you, now? And what makes you think you’ll find them here?’

  He told her a highly selective tale of how he had met Bill and what the other man had shown him. ‘He must have been from here,’ the deserter finished. ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Come with me,’ was all she said. She bundled her cleaning things into a bucket and edged past him down the aisle to the door, where she looked back to see that he hadn’t moved. He’d just noticed that there was something very odd about the images depicted by the stained-glass windows. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Are you coming or not?’

  ‘Sorry, yes.’ He shook himself and followed.

  ‘You look like you could do with a cup of tea and a hot meal, if nothing else. My name is Ardwyn.’

  She led him out through the churchyard and to a neighbouring cottage – an ancient and rambling building with a humpbacked thatch roof and a chimney of granite. In the yard outside they passed an absolutely huge man with a slab of a jaw chopping wood, with whom Ardwyn stopped to have a few quiet words before leading the deserter on. The wood-chopper watched him pass with a frown of distrust.

  ‘Afternoon, chum,’ the deserter nodded.

  The big man responded by baring his teeth in what could never have been mistaken for a smile. For a start, he had far too many of them; they crowded his mouth like headstones and looked more like tusks than human teeth.

  ‘That’s Gar,’ said Ardwyn. ‘He doesn’t speak much.’

  ‘I can see why.’

  Everett was ushered into a kitchen with a ceiling so low that for a moment he was in the cellar again and Potch the cook was at the tabl
e with his knife, taking the meat off a man’s shoulder, and the deserter swallowed against the sudden rolling hunger in his guts and clenched his eyes shut, and when he opened them again Potch was gone, replaced by a middle-aged woman in an apron, chopping nothing more contentious than parsnips.

  ‘This is Mother,’ said Ardwyn. ‘Tell her what you told me.’ So while Ardwyn busied about pouring tea and setting a plate of bread, cheese and, cold ham before him, he told the older woman the same story. She quizzed him closely on his description of Bill, nodded and said, ‘Now tell me the rest of it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Yes you do. You’ve just described my son and told me that he died bravely and honourably in the trenches, but Bill wasn’t his name. His real name was Michael.’ Ardwyn was weeping with her arms tightly crossed but her mother’s eyes were dry, her voice calm and steady. She might weep for her dead son but not now, not in front of him, a stranger. ‘Why would Michael lie about who he was, especially if you were so close with him that he told you about his faith?’

  ‘The Wild Deserters weren’t exactly the sort of chaps you used your real name with,’ he replied. ‘I’m sure he meant to tell me eventually – probably here, when it was all over. But then artillery barrages have a tendency to be a nuisance to one’s long-term plans, don’t you know.’

  She came around the table, wiping her hands on her apron and perched on the corner, fixing him with the same blue eyes as her daughter. ‘So, what name did he know you by?’ she asked. ‘Who are you? If he told you such things he must have seen something in you that would flourish here, in our particular situation. But I hear nothing of that in the story you’ve told. If you want to enjoy the favour of He Who Eats the Moon, tell me who you are, really.’

  The deserter pushed his plate away. ‘All right, then. My name might as well be Everett, for all I know. As for the rest…’ He shrugged, and told her all of it. He had nothing to lose; if they were revolted and threw him out, then so be it. It was a relief, in the end, not having to maintain a façade of respectability to protect the sensibilities of people who could not possibly comprehend what had been done to him and what he had done in return, in order to survive.

  When he was done they did not throw him out, nor did they look particularly revolted. Mother nodded slowly. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t seem to be too surprised by any of this,’ he commented.

  ‘You’ll find that our particular circumstances here mean that we have to be a bit more open-minded than most. When you’re washed and presentable I’ll show you what I mean.’ To her daughter, she added, ‘Show him to Michael’s room. His things should just about fit.’

  ‘We’re taking him in, then?’ Ardwyn looked him up and down with evident distaste.

  ‘You disagree, I take it.’

  ‘He’s scrawny, and sickly. And a liar.’

  ‘Thanks,’ the deserter muttered.

  ‘And for all we know he could have murdered Michael himself. We’ve only got his word for any of this.’

  ‘Now wait a moment…’

  But the women carried on talking over him as if he wasn’t there.

  ‘That is true,’ said Mother. ‘But even if it were, so much the better that he take on the responsibilities that Michael abandoned when he left us.’

  ‘But he—’

  ‘Enough! We will give him the benefit of the doubt, for Michael’s sake. If he proves incapable of living up to it, well then the Recklings can have him for their sport.’

  ‘Wait,’ the deserter repeated in sudden alarm. ‘Recklings? Who are the Recklings? What do you mean, sport?’

  Ardwyn was looking at him now with something approaching a smile, but he was not altogether comfortable with what it implied. ‘Do you know what?’ he said. ‘I’ve been very rude. Thank you for your kind hospitality and for your food.’ He got up from his chair and backed towards the kitchen door. ‘I feel that I’ve imposed too much on your time already. You have a charming village. Utterly charming.’ He was retreating towards the back door, and they were making no move to stop him. ‘I would love nothing more than to stay longer but I must be getting back or I’ll miss the last train.’ He turned, opened the back door, and found himself face to face with Gar, who was cradling his axe casually across his great barrel of a chest. His eyes were entirely without whites, the tawny brown of his irises filling their orbits completely. ‘Steady now, chum,’ said the deserter. ‘I don’t want any trouble.’

  Gar shook his head, and his mouth worked slowly, trying to fit the immensity of those teeth around the shapes of human speech. ‘No truh-bull,’ he growled.

  ‘Gar is one of the Recklings,’ said Mother from behind him. ‘The children of Moccus. The servants of the Farrow. He’s very helpful to us – does a lot of the heavier jobs around the village and looks after us. For example, if there are people who need keeping out, he keeps them out.’

  ‘And if they need keeping in too,’ added Ardwyn. He felt her hand slip into the crook of his elbow. ‘Come on. When was the last time you had a decent bath?’

  4

  DE-TUSKING

  MOTHER LED HIM OUT TO THE WOODS ON THE OTHER side of the village, which were even thicker, if that were possible, then along the entrance road. Here there was no road, just a well-worn footpath twisting uphill between ancient elms and oaks, their trunks moss-muffled and many times wider than a human armspan. Here and there outcrops of the granite bedrock erupted like half-glimpsed ruins. Birdsong was muted, and the light was dim. He knew that it was only a few hundred yards before woodland gave way to the heath and towering height of the peak known locally as Edric’s Seat, but for the moment it felt like the forest spread unbroken and untrodden for hundreds of miles, if not forever.

  ‘This wood hasn’t been touched by human hands for over two thousand years,’ said Mother as she led the way deeper. ‘This was once part of the tribal lands of the Cornovii people – that’s what the Romans called them, anyway, and even that word might be overstating it. They were more like a loose confederation of tribes who shared a similar language and beliefs. They revered Moccus, and when the Romans invaded the local Cornovii called on him to protect them. And he did.’

  They came to a wide clearing, empty except for a single tall stone set at the centre. Although the clearing was grassy, the ground immediately surrounding the stone was bare and black, and the stone was carved with elaborate curvilinear knotwork and tableaux that he couldn’t quite make out yet from this distance.

  ‘Moccus is a protector of hunters and warriors,’ she continued, leading him towards the stone. ‘Especially hunters of boar, which was a sacred animal to those people, and still is. A cohort of soldiers from the Fourteenth Legion was sent here to suppress the locals, who led them to this spot, from which the Romans never returned. Moccus tore them apart – five hundred fully armed legionnaires.’

  ‘You mean this clearing is one whole mass grave?’

  She nodded. ‘Their blood sanctifies this soil. It is a hallowed place for us. I take it that doesn’t disturb you?’

  He looked around at the green, level grass and the black soil surrounding the stone. ‘I’ve seen worse.’

  They were at the stone now. It reared ten feet high, carved on all sides with scenes of battle and slaughter in which one figure dominated repeatedly: a man of towering stature with the head and tusks of a boar. One image on the battle tableau showed a Cornovii warrior holding something that looked like a war-horn to his mouth, except that it was extremely tall, rising in an elongated S-shape like a striking cobra – if any cobra had the head of a boar.

  ‘That is a carnyx,’ Mother explained, when he pointed it out. ‘The horn that summons Moccus.’

  ‘Pretty useful god if he can just be summoned like that. Does he do tricks too? Roll over? Play dead?’

  ‘He will heal your body and give you a lifespan many times that of a normal man – will that do for a trick?’

 
Bordering the scenes of carnage were images of crops and copulation: sheaves of wheat and vines entwined with phalluses and figures fucking in every conceivable position, some surely beyond the flexibility of human physiology.

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying so,’ he said, ‘Bill I understand, but you don’t seem to be a village of Celtic hunter-warriors to me.’

  ‘I was speaking simplistically, in terms that you would understand,’ she replied, and he felt a dull flare of resentment at being patronised. ‘Moccus is the hunter because he is the boar, which is the oldest of all sacred animals. His tusks are the crescent horns of the moon, which he holds between his jaws, and so like the moon he is both eater and renewer, death-bringer and life-giver. His favour brings us fertility, bountiful harvests, and good health—’

  ‘That,’ the deserter interrupted. ‘I want that. You want blood – well, I’ve shed enough of that for other people so it’s about time I spilled some of it for myself. You want my soul…’ He laughed at the sky. ‘You’re welcome to it. I’ve no use for the wretched thing any more. My lungs are full of holes – the doctors say I’ll be dead in a year, eighteen months at best.’

  ‘In that case for your sake I hope that you’re able to hang on until September.’

  ‘Why’s that? What happens in September?’

  ‘The autumnal solstice. That is when, if you’re worthy, you will meet him.’

  ‘Meet him?’

  ‘Unlike the Christian god, who defers his rewards until his worshippers are dead and unable to enjoy them, Moccus delivers his favour here, on earth. In the flesh.’ She indicated the surrounding woodland. ‘He’s out there now, walking his domain. He populates the woods with his children, got sometimes on the wild boar that are still hereabouts, sometimes on the women of the neighbouring villages. You’ve already met one of them.’