He put his hand flat on Lovely’s belly and she sighed.
“As you know, Mally,” he said, right quiet.
He was talking about the wiggynagh Northmen. The snakeboats hissing up the Sands. The stolen people and the weeping.
“But they don’t come any more, Mr Cooley,” I reminded him. “That time’s gone. Remember?”
“Do you remember?” he asked me soft, cool as snow.
“No,” I said.
I got up and went to the pot. Lovely followed close. I stirred the broth.
“There’s worse things than scaan and hauntings,” Mr Cooley said. Sharp. “There’s forgetting.”
He brushed his feet clear of sand and witchweed, and gave a deep wet cough.
“Was the thing you saw sad?” he asked on the wheeze.
“I don’t think so,” I said, tapping the stick on the pot and thinking on the face of the scaan when it turned and looked at me. “More wanting than sad. More frighted.”
“Of you?” said Mr Cooley in high-tones.
“All right,” I said, somewhat insulted. “I know it’s unlikely. But it’s not impossible.”
“Well,” he said. “There’s no accounting for what brings it on. Some folk are frighted by their own faces.”
I remembered my own face in the scaaney.
“I think I’m frighted by everything now,” I sighed.
I scratched Lovelypig’s snout. It was following some thread that made her bristle and drool. Her whole face was lost to the smell; her whole self trembling with pleasure.
“It’ll be all right,” said Mr Cooley.
“I don’t think it’ll ever be all right with me,” I said and all of a sudden I was angry. “I just want to be like everybody else.”
Shenn Cooley grabbed both his knees with flat hands and pushed himself upright. His legs creaked and he made a noise as he stood up. I tried to help, but he waved me away. He took the stick off me and banged it around in the boiling pot with a temper on him. I’d never seen him angry before. I’d never even seen him with the irrits. The most he ever did was get quiet and disappointed and start talking to himself.
“That’s all she wants,” he told the pot, loud.
He stopped talking to the broth to taste it. As I knew he would, he added salt from his piggin. He added salt to saltcakes.
“Nobody wants to be frighted,” he told the salt piggin. “Everybody wants to fall in love. And everybody wants to be happy. Want. Want. Want.”
When he started up talking to the pot and the piggin, I knew the old man was downcast. He thought I didn’t understand. About the difference between scaan and hauntings.
He was right.
“What’s the matter, Mr Cooley?” I asked.
I never wanted to fret him like that. I just thought he might have an answer for me. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t.
“It’s all right,” he said then, petting my pig to show me he wasn’t angry any more. “It’s just that being frighted is no good reason.”
“No good reason for what?” I asked him.
“Anything,” he said. “Being frighted doesn’t stop anything happening. And it doesn’t stop it from not happening either. Which one are you frighted of? Something happening – or something not happening?”
“What’s that got to do with my scaan?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said in a child’s tone, and turned an empty face to me. I thought he’d forgotten what we were talking about already. For a long while he stirred and I sat, and then he spat in the fire.
“It seems to me that nowadays everybody wants a lot of things that can’t be got,” Shenn Cooley said at last. “Without getting off their arses to go get them.”
“I do too get off my arse!” I told him straight. “I get off it and I try. I try every day.”
“You do, Mally Crowal,” he said. “You try the same thing over-and-over. Now then, here’s a question. Is it working?”
I shook my head.
“Maybe,” Mr Cooley said, “you should try something different.”
He rapped me on the head with a spoon and handed it to me.
The spoon was sour in my mouth but the broth was good. It was salty; it was warm; it was full with the sea. I hooked fat limpets out into their weedy water and shoveled as many as I could into my mouth, without being entirely disgustful to Mr Cooley. My body curled around the bowl.
My hunger, the belly-stone I live with, softened. It would stay soft for a few hours and then it would set again. I lifted the bowl and poured the rest of the broth into myself and felt it washing down, spreading through all the pipes before it settled over the coldstone ache in a blanket, deep and warm.
It was so good I wanted to cry.
Shenn Cooley watched me over his bowl while he sucked a little of the broth. He didn’t eat much himself lately. He said he didn’t see the point. He looked to be living on salt and what I could bring him.
Outside, the tide was returning. The sea-cave would be under water and everything unfolding. Inside, Mr Cooley was filling my bowl again.
I had three helpings and did cry. A bit. Just quietly.
I wasn’t sure why.
Chapter Five
Redtide
“GENERATIONS AGO,” SHENN COOLEY told me as I ate, “when everywhere new things were coming and old things leaving, a mob of new men came in boats and moved into the eastern woods. They were shaved up the back of their heads and all bones on whatever they fed them, and they talked big about their god but they were all right.”
I snorted.
“Not all bones now,” I said, thinking on Brother Olloo’s tub of a belly and the Father’s many chins.
“No,” he said, spitting into the hearth. “Their bones are well-hid now. But I heard from my grandmother who heard it from hers and who was told by her great-uncle, that at first folk were hopeful of the new men, even if they did sermonise somewhat. They worked hard and talked soft, and had a story-hoard deep as pits. Their stories were mostly about whales and Romans but also about their god, which showed them to be worshipping sorts. Folk with no worship in them at all are not to be trusted.
“Some people said we shouldn’t encourage them. That a new god always meant trouble, even a small one. But others said the Brothers only had the one god and He wouldn’t need much. Most folk said there’s always room for one more at the tables, so why not in the temples? And that was that; the Brothers set themselves up just past the eastern wood and started building.
“But then the Brothers slashed the groves of the tree-women and burned the wood. They didn’t save a twig for winter. They tore down their circles and the altars, and took the stones. They smashed the wells and left the waters to foul. The freshwater-folk were fished from the waters with hook and wire and hurled into the sea.
“The Old-ones flew but the Brothers gave chase. They dragged them from their dubs and barrows, clouted them beyond the palings, and sent them howling away. A few older people protested but it was too late.
“The rivers stopped talking. The woods shut their gobs. Now the songs of the small birds were louder alone than water and earth and air had been altogether.
“Time passed. People forgot. That new god was smart as a poet and the young ones went over to him in herds.
“At last even the Brothers forgot.
“But then the hauntings started up.
“Monks on the Night-Stair were followed by angry voices. Monks at the fire in the Warming-House were spat on by unexpected salamanders in the fire. And the Cellarium rang with rude jokes. The left over Old-ones were hiding wherever they could, even in the chapel right under the Prior’s nose. Even in the new altar and in their holy wine. Brothers taking that wine were filled with heathen spirits and laughed and sang and hugged one another.
“Everywhere, generations of Brothers were haunted by the leftovers of the Old-ones.
“Then one day, a small boy from outside the palings came down the Upward. He came alone and asked if
they’d let him take the robe. The Brothers gave the boy a fine welcome. They knocked him about with all their back-slapping. And the new Brother took to the doctrines and observances like a sprat to salt. He was a great one for vigils; his hard mortifications left him pale and wrung-out. His genuflections were many and heartfelt, and his meditations deep as wells. He was a good worker. He scoured the soil-place without a sigh. He scrubbed the pavers, burnished the bronzes, and stacked wood without the wisp of a sulk.
“The Prior of the day named him Collect because when he came to the monkhouse, he had brought a collection with him, of shell-shaped stones and bones in a sack. When he tipped it all out in his cell the collection covered half the floor. He ran a low bench round his wall and then another above, and then another. His collection grew as he grew, until he was a tall young man, all shanks and Adam’s apple, and his collection was up to the roof.
“There was only one problem. In spite of loving the new god, Brother Collect had never learned to hate the Old-ones. He didn’t praise them but he could never quite pile up the disgust for them that was expected of a Little Brother. This was contrary and sorrowful to his Prior, who was forced to give Brother Collect particular penances intended to righten his heart.
“‘It’s for his own good,’ the Prior told the Dean, as Brother Collect lay in a cross on the stone floor of the chapel. ‘They’ll worship a brew-pot if you let them.’
“By the time Collect was full-grown his benches sagged under ten years of gathering; there were stones, bones and feathers as always, but dried out sea-lace, great conches too, and driftwood broken to silver spars slowly filled his cell. Over the years the collection gritted the floor in salt and sand. When the winds blew, the feathers took to flying again. In storms the cell looked to be turning back into the seashore. He lived in-and-out of the mazy rows of his collection, with just enough room to curl up small inside it and sleep.
“And he collected all through the old forest newly called Midwood, because it was halfway between Market-Shipton and the monkhouse.
“But collecting is not all he did there.
“In the middle of Midwood lies Midwoodpool. It’s off the Woodward somewhat and down a slip-path, through the stands of hazel and hawthorn, sycamore and silver birch. Midwoodpool was hidden deep in the wood and because of that, it held fast an overlooked thing. Brother Collect just knew this cool, green place as his own secret comfort. The other Brothers didn’t ramble so they wouldn’t ramble off the path. Nor would they find their young Brother slugging about on its green banks by himself. The older Brothers didn’t approve of young monks being by themselves too much. They thought it left room for the Old Enemy to slip into a young man’s heart.
“Anyway, most every morning Brother Collect came to the pool straight from Prime. The pool called him all through the prayers and the chants. Sunrise at Midwoodpool was for him another, an older prayer, though he couldn’t have said what sort.
“He tiptoed out before first light into the monkhouse plots and through their herds with his lamp. Even winter didn’t stop him. Then he ran from steaming cowpat to cowpat in the thin light, pushing his icy feet into the warm dung before running to the next. Crackling through the undergrowth with the foxes still going home stirred something in him. Something good, he was sure, but something beyond the Rule.
“And every time he was being closely watched and didn’t know it.
“At the bottom of Midwoodpool the overlooked Old-one called Pond-Averick lay flat as a flounder, and quiet. She didn’t know where everybody had gone so she gathered the great patience of the water-folk and waited. Every morning she watched the boy come to the pool. She’d watched him come as a child, then as a gawky lad and now as this new and beautiful thing.
“Brother Collect gazed down into her waters. He saw only mottled stones and dark silt. He did not see Pond-Averick lying on the mudbottom watching him.
“But she saw the way his hair fell over his brow in one thick soft curl.
“She saw his eyes like heavy storm clouds, shot with lightning as he gazed down into her pool.
“He had broken into her grove, and he had disturbed her peace.
“Straightways, as is the way with such things, she fell in love with him.
“One morning Brother Collect looked down into Midwoodpool and was more-than-somewhat frighted to see the smooth mottled stones gather and stir. They clattered and rose before him, dripping, in the shape of a woman. Then the naiad’s long, lovely whole self came up, dappled in water-lights and lit by the new rays of a fresh morning.
“Poor Brother Collect.
“His collection was nothing to him now.
“He turned the face of worship to her.
“Pond-Averick was freckled all over in the mottling of pebbles and waterworts. Her hair rippled to her ankles in the colours of her pool: green, brown, gold. And orange. The fine blue veins threaded through her white skin. Brother Collect stood and looked on her. She watched him out of the deep dubs of her eyes, and was plainly waiting for him to talk.
“‘Um. Morning,’ he said and almost bowed but didn’t just in time. She was a dappled heathenish maid, and very likely wild. She wouldn’t notice his lack of bowing. She came up out of the pool and took his hand just like that.
“‘Hello,’ she said.
“They sat together until the Terce bells rang and he had to go pray.
“‘Tomorrow?’ he said as he went, and Pond-Averick nodded. Words were not the point between them.
“And so they went on like that as winter passed and spring came warm and flowery. The woods bloomed in anemone and herb-Robert. Pond-Averick knew nothing of monks and was charmed by everything about Brother Collect. He knew nothing of water-sprites and was pleased that they hadn’t all been seen off. That this one had stopped where she was. That he had found her.
“He told her new stories about water; he told her about Noah and the rain and the ark.
“She changed into a speckled trout and nibbled his feet, making him laugh.
“He told her about Jonah and the whale in the sea.
“She turned into a spitting frog and spat water at him, making him jump.
“He told her about the man who walked on the lake.
“She became a drift of weed and reached out to wrap him up, making him hers.
“Then he told her as how when folk joined his church, they were dipped in a new sort of water, a holy water that blessed them forever and forever.
“‘Holier than my pool?’ asked Pond-Averick, tickling his face with a fern.
“‘Holier than any water anywhere,’ he said, snatching it from her. He opened her hand and tickled her palm.
“‘What does it do?’ she asked, leaning against him, watching the fern move in her hand.
“‘It makes you a decent person,’ he said, leaning too. ‘A proper person. And afterwards you can mix with other people.’
“‘Can’t folk mix anyway?’ she asked.
“‘Well, you could,’ he said. ‘But you couldn’t do right trade with them, or be rightly wed or anything.’
“He threw the fern away. They stared together at the pool.
“‘I want to be rightly wed with you,’ Pond-Averick said of a sudden.
“‘I can’t be wed at all,’ Brother Collect told her. ‘I’m a monk.’
“‘Oh,’ she said, like she understood.
“‘I shouldn’t even rightly come to see you,’ he said.
“The sun was warm, even in the grove. The crickets were making a din. He got up to leave.
“‘What about the new-water thing?’ Pond-Averick asked him.
“‘What about it?’ he said.
“She stepped down into her waters. Water boatmen skated about her streaky knees. Dragonflies shone in her motley hair.
Pond-Averick wanted to show Brother Collect that she was a person he could rightly mix with. He loved her pool and she wanted to love his god. She wanted to be his friend, for right and for real.
“‘I want to do it,’ she said and she sank down into Midwoodpool.”
Shenn Cooley stopped talking to fill a pipe. He packed the rough smoke into the bowl and lit it with a stick from the hearth. Most of it fell out burning but he just packed it back in with his bare fingers.
“But the Others can’t be baptised,” I said. “Didn’t the Brother tell her?”
Mr Cooley shook his head and went to the threshold.
“He didn’t know,” he said, drawing his hide-door tight against the spindrifts. “People had forgotten all that. He knew Pond-Averick was against the Rule – but that’s all. But he wanted to see her. He wanted to be with her. So he said all right.”
He tipped the leftovers into a dish for Lovelypig, who came drooling. She’d been hankering for them; I’d heard her grumbling since we dished up. She made a churning noise as she ate, and we watched her with cheer and disgust, both.
“She’s a good eater now,” said Shenn Cooley.
“She is,” I said, trying not to sound prideful. “One of the best.”
Lovelypig lifted the face of content to us, stuck with limpet-shell and smeared with weed.
“Tell me how it went with the sprite,” I said though I sort of already knew it wasn’t going to go well.
Mr Cooley started up to finish.
“So Brother Collect came the next morning,” he said. “And Pond-Averick was waiting. She took the red piggin of holy water he’d brought and she smelled it.
“‘It’s just water,’ she said.
“‘The blessing is hidden,’ said Brother Collect, taking the piggin back. ‘You have to go kneel in the pool.’
“She kneeled in her waters where they rippled green in arrows of sunlight. Her face upturned to him in trust and love. He went down into the water full with worshipfulness, for her, for the pool, for his god.
“‘Truly, truly,’ intoned Brother Collect.
“Pond-Averick giggled.
“‘Ssssh,’ he said. ‘These are the words. Truly, truly, I say unto you, unless you are born of water and the Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.’
Secrets of Carrick: Ghostheart Page 4