The Old Knowledge and Other Strange Tales

by Rosalie Parker

  I’m not sure how long I stayed like that, utterly despondent, throbbing head in hands. After what seemed like an inordinate amount of time, I gradually became aware of a distant rushing sound. It took me a little while to recognise it—it was traffic! It was difficult to judge how far away it was, but the noise was becoming more distinct. I sprang to my feet, grabbed the basket, and headed in its general direction.

  It’s hard to describe the utter relief, the heartfelt joy of walking down the path and meeting the road! I still didn’t know where I was, but I headed in the direction I thought most likely to lead me back to my car. Soon I came across a track branching off from the road and a name—Muntham Farm—was painted on a small wooden plaque affixed to a fence. I took out my map and located the farm—I was about two kilometres south of the lay-by where my car was parked. Although my arms were aching with the effort of carrying the basket, it was with a renewed spring in my step that I walked back to the car.

  I very thankfully unlocked the door, put the basket on the back seat and began the slow drive through the fog back towards Brighton. It would be difficult to exaggerate the relief I felt. But it only lasted a short while because after a few miles the baby woke up and began to cry. It was a piercing, harrowing sound, really disturbing, as I suppose it is designed to be, and made me even more aware of my headache. It must be either hungry or needing its nappy changing, I reasoned. We had just about reached Steyning, so I stopped there and found a chemist that sold made-up baby formula, bottles, nappies and wipes. When I got back to the car, the baby was still crying. It cried all the way back to the flat.

  Fumbling in my haste, I took the supplies into the kitchen and followed the heating instructions on the formula packet. When the milk was ready I poured it into the bottle, then took the baby out of the basket and fed it. It had some trouble with the teat at first, but was soon sucking contentedly—it was obviously very hungry. It was wearing the most extraordinary outfit, a sort of dress made out of little more than sacking, and there appeared to be no nappy, just a pad of mossy material which was soaked through. Pity for the girl-mother welled up in me. After the baby had finished the bottle, I removed the pad and flushed it down the loo, then replaced it with a nappy. It took me some time to get it on, and I could see that I had bought too big a size, but it would do as a temporary measure.

  It may sound stupid, but what happened next changed everything. When I picked him up he (as I had determined during the nappy change) smiled at me. It lit up his little face, his apple cheeks bulged upwards and his green eyes sparkled with merriment. I suddenly felt that caring for him, making him happy again, was a real achievement, more real than much else in my life. All the worry and pain since being presented with him seemed worthwhile.

  I was in danger of forgetting what I had to do. I put the baby back in his basket and went in search of the telephone directory. Soon I had found the number for social services and was speaking to a duty social worker called Mia Simons. She didn’t seem at all surprised by my story, in fact she took it completely in her stride. (Pride prevented me from telling her about getting lost.) She took down my details and said that someone from the crisis team would be with me within the next few hours—she couldn’t say exactly when because it had been a busy day, and everyone was out on call at the moment. She said I’d done the right thing in taking the baby home and feeding and changing it. I should keep it warm and feed it again if it needed it before the social worker could get to me.

  ‘They’ll need to ask you some pretty specific questions about exactly where and how you found him, so be prepared. Just keep looking after him for a bit longer, please.’

  The baby seemed fairly happy in his basket, so I went into the kitchen and made myself some rather late lunch. I was absolutely starving. After I had washed up and tidied everything away, I went back into the living room and found the baby making discontented grizzling noises. I picked him up and bounced him up and down and he soon started smiling again. I carried him around with me as I unpacked my rucksack, and he sat on my knee at the computer as I inputted my notes from the monuments I had been able to survey that morning. After a while he began to look sleepy, so I laid him back down in his basket and wrapped the check blanket around him. Soon he was asleep. He seemed a pretty contented baby, on the whole.

  Despite having taken a couple of paracetemol tablets with my lunch, my head was still aching. I was feeling weary and lay down on the sofa and closed my eyes. I must have gone to sleep almost immediately, because the next thing I knew Stella was shaking me by the shoulder.

  ‘Martin, wake up sleepy head! Wake up! Why’s there a load of baby stuff in the kitchen?’

  I prised myself off the sofa, rubbing my eyes. My head felt a lot better.

  ‘You’ll never guess what happened to me today! But you only have to look at him. He’s really cute.’

  I motioned towards the floor where I had put the basket. It wasn’t there.

  ‘Stella, what have you done with him? Have you put him in the bedroom?’

  She frowned. ‘What are you talking about? I’ve only just this minute come in.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Where is he? This isn’t a joke, Stella.’

  I got up and looked around the room. There was no sign of the baby. I went into the bedroom and there was no trace of him there either. I was just re-entering the living room to have it out with Stella when the doorbell rang. Stella opened the door to a large West Indian woman who said that she was called Wendy Jones. She looked tired and harassed.

  ‘Sorry it’s taken so long for me to get to you, but it’s been a pig of a day. Now, where’s this baby you’ve found?’

  ‘Stella,’ I said, now beginning to be annoyed, ‘where’ve you put him?’

  ‘I told you, I haven’t seen any baby,’ she said in a puzzled voice. ‘What’s all this about, Martin?’

  I looked in the kitchen and the bathroom—there weren’t any other rooms in our small flat. Wendy Jones had sat down on the sofa.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘someone must have taken him while I was asleep. Perhaps his mother. No—someone must have broken in from the street …’

  ‘The door was locked when I came home,’ said Stella.

  ‘You’d better tell me all about it,’ sighed Wendy. ‘Start from the beginning, when you first found him.’

  ‘Well,’ I began, ‘I didn’t exactly find him …’

  When Wendy Jones left, after hearing a confused, edited version of the story and telling me that as there didn’t seem to be a baby there wasn’t much she could do, I refused to calm down. I spent most of the evening and night looking for the girl and her baby. In my muddled thinking I reasoned that they must be out on the streets somewhere. Stella waited up for me and was tearful when I came home, pleading with me to go and see a doctor. I suppose I wasn’t acting normally, but I felt I’d let the girl down and hadn’t looked after her baby properly. I didn’t have a headache any more, but I felt hyped up—I desperately needed to sleep, but couldn’t. I was not even able to sit down, but kept pacing up and down the living room, trying to think of what to do. When I asked Stella point blank, she admitted that she didn’t believe there had ever been a baby. It was at that point that I started shouting at her.

  Now I’ve had more time to think about it, it seems to me that maybe I did look after the baby as his mother would have wished, that he had only needed me for a short time. The girl had been desperate, that much was certain. She sacrificed her baby somewhere out of her own time to save it from a worse fate. I only hope that they’re reunited now, wherever they are. I hope they’re out of danger.

  As for me, I’ve tried to explain all of this to Stella, but she can’t accept any of it. I couldn’t concentrate on work, so I’ve taken some leave and I’ve been camped out here, just below Chanctonbury Ring, in the trees, hoping to see the girl and her baby again. I’d like to know that they’re all right.

  Maurice Farthington, the estate manager, and his assistant visite
d me this morning. Although he was friendly enough, he looked at me a bit strangely. He says he will have to get the police to evict me if I don’t leave of my own accord. I don’t know what will happen, so I’ve written this account to ensure that there is a record of the truth. You could say it’s my official report.

  I’ll leave it here in the tent. Who knows what might happen if I find the girl again. Maybe I can visit her world this time.

  The Supply Teacher

  ‘Today, class,’ said Miss Flanders, surveying the room full of Year Ten students seated around the somewhat battered tables, ‘we will be looking at the circulatory system. Please open your books at page fifteen.’

  There were the scrapings and scufflings of chairs being pushed back and bags being opened, and the slap of textbooks hitting the table-tops.

  ‘Now, who can tell me something about human circulation?’

  The silence threatened to stretch ever onwards.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me that none of you know anything about something so important, so vital to life? Aubrey, what about you?’

  A dark, lanky youth at the back of the class turned beetroot.

  ‘Err, is it about blood or something?’

  ‘Yes, Aubrey,’ a smile stretched over Miss Flanders’ gaunt, handsome face, ‘it is about blood or something. We mammals have evolved a closed circulatory system made up of the heart, which is a kind of muscular pump that moves the blood around the body; blood itself, which strictly speaking is a connective tissue made up of liquid plasma and cells. And vessels—the arteries, capillaries and veins that deliver the blood to the body.’

  Miss Flanders peered over her spectacles at the class.

  ‘Or am I losing you?’

  Silence reigned once more.

  ‘Well, I’m sure at your age you are beginning to be aware of the mysteries of the human heart …’ Miss Flanders looked keenly around the class but there was no response, not even a sycophantic titter, ‘… so we will concentrate today on blood. Now, can anyone give me a fact about blood? Come on now, you know you want to!’

  Natasha Pinner raised her hand.

  ‘Miss, it’s red. And if you cut yourself, you bleed.’

  ‘Thank you, Natasha, you’re not an advocate of self-harm, I hope. Anyone else? Jonathan?’

  ‘Um, if you cut an artery you bleed a lot.’

  ‘Yes, that is a fact, if a somewhat ghoulish one, Jonathan. And do you know why you bleed so much if you cut an artery? No? Well, arteries carry oxygenated blood from the heart, and the heart pumps the blood along the artery, and it continues pumping even if you are cut, with the result that the blood spurts out rhythmically. When the human body loses a little blood through a minor wound, the platelets cause the blood to clot so that the bleeding stops. Because new blood is always being made inside your bones, the body can replace lost blood.

  ‘Every adult has around five litres of blood in their body, coursing continuously through their vessels, delivering essential elements, removing harmful wastes. Without blood, the body would simply stop working.

  ‘Yes, I can see your eyes glazing over, but this is information you will need for your exams, and for the rest of your lives, although you may not understand that yet.’

  Miss Flanders hitched her leg and perched on the edge of the desk.

  ‘Blood is molten red gold, the fluid of life, transporting oxygen from the lungs to tissue and carbon dioxide from tissue to the lungs. Blood is the fluid of growth, delivering nourishment from the digestive system and hormones from glands around the body. Blood is the fluid of health, transporting disease-fighting substances to the tissue and waste to the kidneys. Blood is alive, it contains living red and white blood cells that nourish and cleanse the body. To lose too much blood is to lose consciousness, breath, and eventually, our very lives. If a person already dead is cut open, blood does not flow. Only the living have blood that flows.

  ‘Blood has been used throughout the ages in ceremonial ritual. In pagan times our forebears placated and importuned their gods with blood sacrifice. And today, indeed, we are not so very different. In our churches there are those taking communion—drinking the wine that symbolises Christ’s red blood.

  ‘Blood is the precious balm that sanctifies life—it is the means by which we can, through donation and transfusion, heal the sick. Its hue is the colour of warning, of danger, of arousal … ahem. Now, can anyone else come up with some more blood-related facts? Yes, Carmilla?’

  ‘Miss, it’s red because of haemoglobin. And vampires drink it.’

  There were a few giggles, and Miss Flanders raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘We must be careful, Carmilla, to distinguish the facts from myth. But it is nevertheless true that myths can tell us something about the beliefs that surround a subject and the important place it occupies in society. And perhaps because the importance of blood has been recognised in most societies, vampires have been documented and described in many different times and places, from the Ancient Greeks onwards.

  ‘For the vampire, the drinking of blood is its life, its sustenance, and the single thing that makes it identifiable all around the world, the one constant in all the shadowless, reflectionless, garlic and crucifix mumbo-jumbo. This creature, which is the antithesis of both death and life, gains its strength from feeding from the life’s blood of humans.

  ‘But in so doing, it transgresses some of the fundamental tenets of human society. The Bible, for example, specifically warns against the drinking of blood:

  ‘ “Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the life; and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh.” Deuteronomy 12:23.’

  ‘But have you ever considered how vulnerable this makes the creature, this dependence upon the blood of others, upon sacrilege and violation, this banishment from belonging, from bright sunshine, from family life, from the pleasures of a plate of food? And what if the blood it drinks is weak or diseased? A good, healthy supply must be continually located and cultivated forever—there is no respite, no rest, for the wicked.’

  Miss Flanders smoothed back her hair. ‘Now, class, while I set up today’s experiment, I’d like you to write in your exercise books five facts about blood. It shouldn’t prove too difficult, even for you, as we’ve covered a lot of ground.’

  Miss Flanders made her way to the cupboard at the back of the room where she busied herself in locating the equipment. A slow-rising hum of conversation emanated from the students, which died away as Miss Flanders emerged from the cupboard. She arranged the paraphernalia on her desk.

  ‘As you know, class, I am only the supply teacher—Mr Rudski is returning from sick leave next week and I shall be gone, summoned to my next port of call. As this is my final lesson with you, I thought we’d do something a little different, something that will give you the opportunity to be altruistic, to do something amazing, as the adverts say. It’s entirely voluntary. There’s no need to worry about hygiene, I have plenty of clean needles, and as well as being a biology teacher, I am a fully trained phlebotomist. I have connections with the blood service. Think about the good you’ll be doing, how you’ll be helping those who really need your blood. Just line up in front of my desk here and roll up your sleeves—that’s right. Oh, thank you, thank you! How wonderful that so many of you are prepared to donate.’

  The Old Knowledge

  Around three and a half thousand years ago, members of a small community of Bronze Age people spent several days away from their usual activities of farming, hunting, weaving and food processing in order to construct a burial mound. For its location they chose a south-facing false crest just to the west of their valley-side settlement and fields. From here the barrow would be visible from their dirt track and the wooden bridge that spanned the fast-flowing, peat-stained river running along the valley-bottom below.

  Over the centuries, the limestone rubble and earth of the central mound became overgrown with weeds and then turf, and the circular ditch that surrounded it gradually
filled with soil and humus until only the subtlest indentation in the turf hinted at its presence. By the Middle Ages, the small round houses of the prehistoric people had been replaced by rectangular, stone-built dwellings straggling either side of the road that ran the length of the dale, part of a route between the important towns of Hopton to the south and Clemond to the north. As the years passed, more woodland and moorland on the slopes and fells were cleared of rocks and timber, enclosed by drystone walls and stocked with the hardy sheep of the Yorkshire Dales. Upon the tumulus was erected a gallows, it being deemed the most fitting place in the township by dint of its half-remembered pagan associations for the hanging of criminals. The field in which it was situated became known as Dead Man’s Garth.

  By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Bronze Age tumulus was situated in the corner of the much-silaged sheep field, a tall drystone boundary wall bisecting the northern part of its ditch, its mound traversed by Land Rover tracks. Most of the inhabitants of the village, comfortably domiciled in their well-built, handsome eighteenth-and nineteenth-century houses, did not even know it was there, despite its proximity to the road and a public footpath that ran from the road past the barrow and down to the river.

  But Maisie, who lived in Fellview Cottage with her mother and had studied for an archaeology GCSE at school, knew it well. She visited it often on the long, rambling walks along the numerous public footpaths and bridleways of the dale in which she had indulged since her early teens, when she was first allowed out on her own. On these walks she had dreamt up a private fantasy, which soon become her talisman, of a tall, handsome warrior honourably slain in battle, buried in a grave under the mound; a hero to his people, with his bronze dagger and maybe a little gold cup, like the famous Rillaton cup found in a barrow in Cornwall by a gentleman antiquary of the nineteenth century. The fantasy, embellished by many earlier episodes in the warrior’s life, including some of a romantic nature in which Maisie projected herself back in time as one of the main protagonists, had sustained her on her walks and on the routine daily drive to and from the public library in Highbeck, where she had worked as a library assistant for the past five years.