“One of the boys touched me then, but I’d already heard the sounds. We had found our jimpegwe. Something big had begun browsing at our reed pad, splashing and making the whole island tremble. It was downwind of us and only a few hundred yards away, though I wasn’t particularly worried. No hippo on earth could plow straight through a mat of papyrus. No matter how irascible the jimpegwe was, it had to approach us by open water where I’d have a clear shot.
“The jimpegwe scented us, all right. There was a loud splash and a bellow the like of which I never heard before or since. The reed mat began to shiver. To my horror, I realized that the sound I heard was that of a heavy body tearing its way through the four-foot thick pad of interlaced vegetation to get to us. The boys and I both knew then that whatever the jimpegwe was, it was no hippo.
“The boys panicked and tried to run back down the path we had cut that morning. They were too blind with fear to choose their footing. Their legs stabbed down into the mat as deep as their hips, and as soon as they struggled free, covered with squirming red leeches, they did the same thing again.
“I stood my ground, though all I could see were the swaying reeds a foot in front of my face. Sixty is no age to begin running through swamps. Besides, the noise told me that the jimpegwe was crashing through the pad much faster than I could have run anyway.
“The papyrus shuddered and I caught a glimpse of the jimpegwe through the tufted bracts: a great, broad head of gray-green, cocked so that the one red eye glittered full on me. The beast dropped back almost at once, with a loud splash that rocked the mat again. The brute had managed to heave itself up onto the pad for only a moment before its weight tore through. The flash I had seen told me only one thing about the jimpegwe: it stood higher than the papyrus bracts, fifteen feet in the air.
“Though there was too little time for running, it seemed far too long to wait. My eight-bore was ready, as it had been all day. After slipping the noses of the next two bullets between the fingers of my left hand, I had nothing to do but to stand with my rifle ported, trusting the beast would rise again when it was close enough for a shot. If it came low through the stalks at me, there would be no chance of placing a bullet. By then, I was under no illusions of being able to stop the jimpegwe with anything but a perfect shot.
“At scarcely fifty yards distance, the jimpegwe pitched upright a second time. I leveled at the head, but again the appearance was only momentary. The sloping skull gave little hope for penetration at that angle. Even so, I could see that the jimpegwe was reptilian. The head was not unlike that of a monitor lizard save in size, though it joined the neck at right angles as if the beast went two-legged much of the time.
“The reeds were bucking like a ship’s deck now as the jimpegwe ripped through the last few yards of matted vegetation separating us. The screams of my boys, still floundering on the path behind me, were drowned by the sound of the beast’s approach as it frothed reeds and water alike into the air. I watched the whipping stalks, waiting for a patch of gray-green hide to flash among them. I was afraid to chance a shot, more afraid of being pulped without firing. I even considered loosing at the blank, swaying mass before me and then trying to follow my boys.
“When it was within twenty feet—and I still had no fair sight of the beast—the jimpegwe made a wheezing sound and lurched into full view. Its forefeet were upraised. I could see each webbed foot was armed with a horny spike where a man’s thumb would be. I squeezed the front trigger when my muzzle steadied a hand’s breadth behind the glaring eye, then followed with the left barrel into the red-wattled throat.
“Even as the head snapped back, I broke the rifle. Strange. I remember clearly that one of the empty cases clinked against the stock when it ejected, while the other fell to the reeds without a sound. The swamp had stilled momentarily at the blast of my shots. Now it thundered with bellows and splashing as the jimpegwe thrashed just out of sight. When it raised again, broadside to me as its mouth spewed rage and black blood, I slammed both shots high into its neck. One bullet must have broken the spine, for the jimpegwe arched like a bow and hurled backwards into the water. A great hind leg clawed at the sky, but the beast was down for good.”
Randall had stood entranced beside the fireplace all the time the older man was speaking. Now he said, “That’s wonderful, Uncle John! But why did you keep it a secret? It’s been almost fifteen years.”
The hunter’s lips tightened. “The scientific chaps have their own notions as to what can be real in Africa, lad,” he said. “Remember how many kinds of fool they called Harry Johnston when all he wanted them to believe in was an okapi, a stunted giraffe in the Ituri Forest? And what sort of proof could I have brought out of that swamp alone?”
Snorting, Sir John walked over to a writing desk. After rummaging among a litter of papers, he handed an object to the boy. “There. D’ye know what that is?”
Randall handled the object gingerly. It was a cone of black horn about a foot long. At the base clung wrinkled shreds of skin that might have been reptilian.
“The thumb spike!” the boy blurted. “You cut it off the jimpegwe!”
“Between the two of us, lad, that’s just what I did,” the old man said. “But when I showed this to a very clever chap at Cambridge, he told me it was the horn from a deformed antelope—and he’s the one people will believe, you know.”
But for all the bitterness of his words, the hunter’s face had the look of a man whose life has found fulfillment.
THE WALL-PAINTING by Roger Johnson
The August Derleth connection once again manifests itself with Roger Johnson, who (along with David Drake) published sonnets in The Arkham Collector—a little magazine that Derleth edited during the last four years of his life. Unlike several of Derleth’s young discoveries, Johnson did not pursue a career in horror fantasy writing—regrettable, since “The Wall-Painting,” Johnson’s first published fiction, is a particularly frightening entry in the classic tradition of the English ghost story. Born in 1947, Johnson has lived his entire life in Chelmsford, Essex. A follower of the Great Detective, he writes a regular column for the journal of the London Sherlock Holmes Society.
“The Wall-Painting” was first published in Rosemary Pardoe’s Saints and Relics, a Christmas chapbook of ghostly tales brought out as a companion to her annual M.R. James-oriented magazine, Ghosts & Scholars. She is to be congratulated for bringing Roger Johnson back to the genre, and I for one hope he won’t make us wait another dozen years for his next work.
“You must understand,” said Harry Foster, “that this isn’t my own story.” He looked at us with some concern. “I say, I hope you don’t think I’m here under false pretenses!”
He was a large, tweedy, red-faced man, giving something of the impression of a corpulent and amiable fox. I had been surprised to learn that he was—as he still is—an antiquarian bookseller, with premises in the West End and a house in Upper Norwood.
“That’s all right,” said George Cobbett. “It’s the story itself that we’re interested in.” He began to fill his pipe, waiting for our visitor to justify his journey into Essex.
“Good, good. Well, it came into my hands after a house-clearance. I specialise, as you know, in sporting books, but I keep a fair amount of general material on the shelves, which usually comes from auctions and clearances. This particular item was among a job-lot that came from a house in Surrey. The owner had died, and the heirs—distant relatives—simply sold up the house and the entire contents. They couldn’t tell me anything about the book, and I’ve been quite unable to learn how it came into the old man’s possession. Maybe we’ll never know. At all events, here it is.”
He placed on the table a large notebook or diary, rather battered, with dark blue covers that were fading to grey. It had probably come from a cheap stationer’s some seventy or eighty years ago.
“The name inside the cover,” said Harry, “is the Reverend Stephen Gifford, Vicar of Welford St Paul in Essex. I used to know the
place fairly well—a friend of mine had a cottage nearby—and that’s what persuaded me to read the thing. It’s—well—unusual, you know.”
He put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and began to read to us in a slightly hoarse, fruity voice.
This Parish of Welford St Paul is large in area and small in numbers. Visitors are often surprised to learn that the church is dedicated to St Lawrence, and I am obliged to tell them that the village, like so many in Essex, was named for the Lords of the Manor—in this case, the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral. They owned, and still own, a good deal of land in the county. Indeed, they may well constitute the oldest landed family in England!
The church is very old. Much of the fabric is Norman work, but the chancel walls and the north wall of the sanctuary were clearly built by the Anglo-Saxons and cannot be less than one thousand years old. It is a respectable age, even for this ancient county. The building is small and plain, with no really distinctive features, and consists of sanctuary, chancel and nave, with a squat western tower. There are no aisles, and the unpretentious southern porch was erected by one of my predecessors early in the last century. Inside, the walls are coated with a solution of lime, whose whiteness gives the small building a surprisingly light and spacious appearance.
Upon my first visit, however, I noticed a number of cracks in this whitewash, and experience suggested to me that I should call in a building surveyor. The result was as I had feared: the northern walls of both nave and chancel were in a very sad state. With the subsequent arrival of the builders began a period of activity and disruption such as this little church had not known for centuries.
It was on the afternoon of the fourth day that the cautious, patient work of the repairers uncovered a small patch of startlingly bright colour beneath the whiteness of the north wall of the sanctuary. I took upon myself the responsibility of sealing off that wall and calling in a specialist. Fortunately I knew just the man. His name was Howard Faragher, and I had met him some months previously at the London Library, when I had called in to visit my friend the sub-librarian. I did not have his address, but my friend was able to put me in touch with him. He arrived at Welford St Paul two days later, a tall rangy man in his middle thirties, with untidy yellow hair and an amiably eager expression.
“Well,” said he, after he had examined the little patch of green and red, “it’s certainly a medieval painting, and from the colours and the way they’re applied I’d say it’s an early one—possibly late twelfth century.”
“But it’s all so fresh!” I protested. “I thought that in fresco ...”
He interrupted me. “Not all wall-painting is fresco, you know, though all fresco is wall-painting. The technique is really only suitable in a warm dry climate, so it’s hardly known in this country. No, this is what’s called secco. The paints were mostly compounded of oxides and applied to a lime-wash surface that had been fixed with casein—simple skimmed milk. The colours do remain quite bright. Now, Gifford, I’m going to need several days to remove the rest of this covering—no doubt it was put on during the Reformation—and I daren’t attempt to make up my mind about the picture until I’ve finished, so please leave any questions until then.”
He worked for nearly a week, with meticulous care, fending off with cheerful patience my eager curiosity. Each evening he would hang a cloth over the painting and return with me to the vicarage. My impatient attempts to draw him out met with a polite but firm refusal, and our conversation over dinner turned mostly to history and music. After dinner on the fifth day, he folded his napkin and said abruptly, “Well, I’ve finished. No, don’t go rushing out to look at it just yet. I’d rather you saw the thing by daylight, and besides, I want a word with you before you see it. I suggest that we go down the road to the Axe and Compasses and chat over a pint of beer. I think I deserve a drink.”
He would not say any more until we were comfortably settled in the parlour of our local inn. Then, after taking a deep draught of his beer, he looked at me rather quizzically and said, “I think we’ve found St Tosti.”
Frankly, I did not know what to make of this. The name was unfamiliar to me. “Tosti?” I said. “An Italian?”
Faragher chuckled at this. “You’re thinking of the composer,” he said. “No, no, the saint was as English as you or I—more so, I suppose, since he was an Anglo-Saxon, with no Norman blood in his veins. He was never, I think, very widely known, but he flourished in the early decades of the eleventh century.”
I began to understand. “He lived too late, then, to be mentioned in Bede’s history.”
“Just so, and too early to have encountered the Norman invaders. But really, you know, you should be telling me about him.” Again that sardonic smile.
“I? But ...” I was lost for words.
“You really don’t know, do you? The fact is that your church was once dedicated to St Tosti. Oh, there’s no doubt about it. When we met at the London Library, I was actually researching the ecclesiastical history of Tendring Hundred for a client, and that was one of the facts that came to my attention. But as to Tosti himself, information is not plentiful: a few scraps in the Library, a little more among the London Diocesan Archives—that’s all. The name is certainly Anglo-Saxon. You may recall that King Harold Godwinson had a brother called Tosti or Tostig, who treacherously allied himself with Harold Hardrada.”
“But this is remarkable!” I exclaimed. “There’s no mention of it in the Parish Records. I take it that Tosti was what you might call a local saint—not recognised by the Vatican.” It was certainly true that the Pontiff did not reserve to himself the right of canonisation until the thirteenth century. Before then there had been all sorts of irregularities, which the new decree swiftly crushed. The cult of St Tosti, like many others, must have found itself regarded quite suddenly as an unorthodox and unacceptable excrescence upon the body of the Church. “That would explain why I had never heard of him. And yet many of these local saints were eventually accepted and granted canonisation. What was there about this man?”
Faragher shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I really don’t know. He just seems to have been—well—dubious. Records are scarce, as I told you, and I didn’t take any particular note of them, but I can recall nothing that suggested sanctity in the man’s life. One account, written, I think, in the late twelfth century, did lay particular stress upon his celibate life, but where you would expect some suggestion that the saint was following the example of Our Lord, or was wedded to the Church, there was nothing. Just the bald statement. In fact, he doesn’t seem to have had much to do with the Church at all.”
“How very interesting. Then what was it that caused people to regard him as a saint?”
“There are the vaguest references to miracles. For the moment, Gifford, you will have to be satisfied with that. You see, all the records that I’ve come across date from long after Tosti’s supposed death.” Faragher’s long face brightened suddenly. “Ah, yes. That is an interesting matter. A clerk who wrote in about the year 1120 says that Tosti was actually in the midst of an address or sermon to his brothers—that’s the word he uses—when he simply disappeared. The statement is quite unequivocal: he did not die, he disappeared. That is the only surviving account of the end of St Tosti, and our clerk says that he had the story from an eye-witness. Curious, eh?”
“Very curious,” I said. “And why do you think that the wall-painting depicts this rather dubious saint?”
My companion stifled a yawn, and I suddenly realised how tired he looked. “I think,” he replied, “that I’ll answer that question tomorrow, when you see the picture. Afterwards, perhaps, the two of us could make the journey into Colchester and investigate the Archdeaconry Records. Now, if you don’t mind, we’ll change the subject. I should like just one more drink, and then I’ll be ready for a good night’s sleep.”
My first duty on the next day was to conduct a short Eucharist. This weekday service was rarely well-attended, and I was gratified that Fara
gher elected to join the congregation. Indeed, his presence actually increased the attendance by fifty per centum. The simple and moving words of the ritual, hallowed both by the Spirit of God and by the spirit of our fathers, absorbed my attention throughout, so that it was not until after I had pronounced the Benediction that my curiosity about the wall-painting returned. Howard Faragher was waiting for me outside the vestry when I had slipped off my surplice and cassock. His eagerness to show me the painting was quite as great as mine to see it. We crossed the sanctuary to where a sheet of dark cloth, some seven feet by four, covered this unexpected treasure. Faragher raised his hand and, with an almost theatrical gesture, whipped the cloth from the wall.
I am sure that I gasped. My first reaction was of astonishment at the sheer beauty of this hidden jewel of the church, but it was followed closely by another feeling—of unease, engendered by something too subtle to define. Was it the proud, ascetic expression of the man who stood, fully life-size, before us? Was it the extraordinarily bright eyes with which he regarded us? Was it the strangely uncertain figure, as it might be the shadow of a dog or a wolf, that lurked at his feet, half-hidden by the folds of his robe?
The whole painting measured about six feet high by two and a half wide. There was a border, painted in remarkably clever imitation of a romanesque arch, the pillars no more than two inches wide. Within it, against a grey background and upon a floor of green, stood the saint. I could not doubt that he was regarded as a saint—why else would his likeness have been enshrined in a Christian church?—but there was that about his calm and arrogant expression which suggested something other. The figure was tall and thin, with hairless and rather nutcracker jaws and the most remarkable eyes. At first I had taken these piercing orbs to be blue, but a closer look showed that the colour was actually a curiously indeterminate grey. I was pondering upon this when Faragher spoke.
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