Then she fell silent and was consumed. I felt hot ashes in my nostrils.
Of all the divers ways in which man may quit his wretched life, the flame is like to be the worst of all. I am mortally afeared of …
I found his body in the wasteland. It might have been nothing more than a heap of wet rags blowing in the wind by the side of the creek. There was blood on those tattered clothes and around his mouth and in his hair, but I did not come too near, for I could see he had been a leper.
I sent away the parish women who prepare our deceased brethren for burial, so they would be spared the touching of him. The sexton’s men came with the rough wooden box they had quickly put together, longer by far than the coffin of any man I had known. In fear and haste, they hammered down the lid upon his unwashed corpse. We did not know whose blood it was upon him. Which one of us was man enough to search his body? Who would risk such a death — and such a life?
But the people would not let me rest until I had the box opened and had Lankin hung in the gibbet. I paid the sexton and the gravediggers two sovereigns to hang him up, for they would not do it for less. Such was the length of his body that only with great trouble did they fit it inside, and for three days he swung there, out in the lane on the brow of the hill, for all to see, though none would draw near the place.
An unnatural tempest blew over the land, and my man, Moses, came to tell me that corpse-lights had been seen among the graves in the churchyard.
A great shaft of lightning, like a thunderbolt from Jove himself, struck the steeple of the church, the very place in which Aphra Rushes had been confined, and as we worked to quench the flames, I felt in my heart that it was a sign unto us from the very throne of God. We had convicted an innocent man, a man who had died alone and in desolation, without any proof, and therefore he must be accorded Christian burial.
As the people had accused him, so now they turned their ire upon me.
When, at further great expense to my purse, the sexton removed him from the cage on the third day, the rot that had consumed Lankin’s diseased body in life seemed to have made no further progress upon him after death. He was unchanged since I had discovered him on the marshes. I could not look upon that hideous corpse for longer than it took to sign the cross over him before they hammered down the lid once more.
Still the people plagued me to bury him out of sanctuary, where four roads meet, pinned to the earth, but I could not believe that Aphra Rushes could have suffered so, under torture and by the flame, and not laid blame against another. Still I refused to judge Cain Lankin a guilty man.
Alone but for the poor simpleton, Shem, who daily gathered grass for my horse, to assist me, as I had no more sovereigns to give to the sexton or his men, I dragged the wretched box that held Lankin’s body, under the shadow of darkness, across the threshold of the lychgate. It lay upon the earth, on the midway unto hallowed ground, and holding my lantern aloft to read the text, I began to recite the prayer of commission.
At that moment a terrible sense of foreboding came upon me, and I felt almost that my very soul was being wrenched from my body and was gazing upon me from some other place, outside the confines of the lychgate, beyond the world itself. I could hear noises and lamentations in mine own head, screeching and wailing, causing me grievous pain. In this feverish stupor, I glimpsed Shem with his hands grasping his temples, moaning in affliction like to mine.
I sent up a desperate entreaty unto the Lord, and sensing some answer from heaven, prevailed upon Shem to aid me in drawing the rude coffin through the gate into the churchyard. I was obliged to seize the good soul’s hands and place them steady on the box, and together we heaved it unto sacred ground.
The tumult ceased. I gave thanks unto my maker, but with my eyelids yet sealed in prayer, I felt a pull upon my arm. Shem, his face wild and distracted, pointed to the wooden box with a trembling hand. I swear upon my oath that it had shifted at the least half a foot to the side from the spot where we had placed it. As we watched, it rocked back and forth, without human aid. I felt cold blood course through my body and was overcome with a dread such as I had never before felt.
Shem would have departed the place forthwith, but I was afeared to be left with the corpse alone and in darkness, save for my lantern, and persuaded the poor lad to assist me in moving the box farther into the churchyard.
I would have made a resting place for the box on the far side, to the north, but we were both consumed so with misgiving and fear that we could not make the passage thereunto. I brought to mind the cavity that Cain Lankin himself had laboured to dig close by the church wall, which no man had filled, in the vain hope he had entertained of drawing forth the woman Aphra Rushes.
For long hours, in utter weariness, with black dust and ashes from the charred timbers of the stricken steeple darkening our moistened skin, we laboured to dig farther into the earth in this place. Lankin’s coffin lay upon the path, and as we toiled, we saw it move thrice more. Shem was agitated and consumed with terror, but carried out my bidding as his priest.
At last we had made an opening sufficient deep to take the rude casket. With great difficulty, we interred the frightful remains and covered over all with earth.
Shem fled from the church in a great disturbance. After that night, I never beheld the poor wretch again. To this very day, I know not whither he went.
I am a man of God, but I do not understand many of those things of which our world is made. I believe now that even while he had lived, Cain Lankin was already half in death, in some manner a part of the very fabric of that wilderness which he had made his dwelling place.
I am a man of God, but I am weak, and now my foolishness and my failure have caused a curse so terrible to fall upon these people of the marshes that I, and I alone, must find the means to save them. It is a curse no less terrible than that which Aphra Rushes brought down upon the heads of the Guerdons. I know in my soul that my life is forfeit. I have condemned myself to that hell I sought to spare Cain Lankin.
It did not end with the unnatural deaths of Lady Ygurne and her baby son. Merciful God, it has only just begun. Two more young ones … The people are moving away from the marshlands with their cattle to make new lives on the high lands beyond the …
I fear for my own household. A washer girl, Kittie Wicken, has come up to this house from Guerdon Hall and has been safely delivered of a son, thanks be to God. Kittie would not remain in the Hall in her travail, but struggled up the hill alone and at the eleventh hour. She is a strange young woman, somewhat afflicted in the mind, I believe, or consumed by dark secrets that disturb her peace. She will not leave her infant alone by day nor by night and sings constantly to the babe, always the same vile tortured melody, scarcely fit for the ears of a child. I do not linger to attend to the words, for Kittie’s voice has the power to pierce the soul. It fills my head and will cause me to lose whatever reason still remains to me. Before much longer, we shall all be mad here.
Kittie must go back to the Hall, for she is bound in duty to the Guerdons, though she pleads to remain here. I hear her fearful sobbing and wailing in the night.
One of her secrets she has confided to my keeping, which grieves me most sorely and is a burden to me. Kittie has confessed that Sir Edmund Guerdon is the father of her child. She informs me also that other maidservants in Guerdon Hall are fearful of his appetites.
I can keep Kittie here no longer, though we may all be beyond help now.
Here, and in Daneflete, Hilsey, and Faring, I can find no carpenter who will repair the damage to the steeple. Maybe beyond Lokswood …
They cried out against me, but I allowed the body of a murderer to pass through the lychgate to burial in consecrated ground. In that moment, Cain Lankin passed into the half-world between the heavens and the earth.
Who can undo the terrible deed I have done?
I felt tired, numb.
“I don’t know what to say,” I told Cora. “There’s so much… .”
Aft
er a few moments she spoke quietly. “That’s my Kittie — Kittie Wicken. She is still singing that song, but not in the old rectory, in — in Guerdon Hall.”
We stood at the top of the hill. I held Mimi’s hand. It felt sweaty.
“What we waiting for?” she said, pulling at my arm.
The sides of my head began to press in. I felt a dull ache in my shoulders and knees.
For three days he swung there, out in the lane on the brow of the hill, for all to see… .
The gibbet must have hung here.
“Come on, Sis,” I murmured. “I don’t like it here. Let’s run.”
“Can’t run. Feel sick,” she said, swallowing.
“I hope you ain’t got what Baby Pamela’s got.”
I tried to hurry her, but she pulled back.
“Mimi, I want to get off this hill. You’ve got to run. Hold my hand tight.”
“I can’t,” she whined. “My tummy feels bad.”
“You’ve got to — you’ve just got to,” I said, pulling her roughly. I dragged her faster and faster, until her little feet slapped up and down on the road behind me.
“Don’t do that,” she sobbed. “Don’t like you. Sid! Sid’s dropped!”
She dug in her heels. I had to stop. In the second that it took for her to pick Sid up, I looked back and noticed a tall, dark figure moving swiftly down the hill behind us.
Swaying, dizzy, I swept Mimi up in my arms and started to run, staggering under her weight. She was too heavy for me.
“Please come, Auntie Ida,” I breathed. “Please come.”
Mimi wailed, her head bobbing from side to side. I tottered into the Chase, tripping in and out of the ruts.
A man was shouting. “Cora! Cora! What’s the matter? Stop!”
Still running, I turned my head back. Father Mansell was puffing along the track. I stopped, exhausted. Mimi fell out of my arms. My stomach churned. I swayed, turned away, and was sick in the grass by the side of the road.
“Dear girl,” said the rector, trying to catch his breath. “Dear, dear, dear. Is that everything? Dear, dear, let’s get you home.”
I stumbled down the Chase.
“I came down,” Father Mansell was saying, still breathlessly, “to apologize to your aunt Ida for not picking her up in Daneflete yesterday. It was a terrible thing to do, and I’ve had the deuce of a headache today, so I’m paying for it.”
I just wanted to lie down, right there, and sleep on the cool, hard earth.
“Not far now,” Father Mansell droned on, his hand under my elbow. “As I was visiting Mrs. Pembroke in Bryers Guerdon this evening, your aunt asked if I could pick you up from the Jotmans’ and walk you home, but by the time I got there, you’d already left.”
I lurched towards the verge, then was aware of standing in the hall, with Auntie Ida, in a misty haze, holding me gently by the shoulders and peering into my eyes. I turned away, and the wooden floorboards came rushing up towards my face.
The bread in the bread bin was going mouldy.
Mrs. Lester, next door to the Wickerbys, brought round a couple of cans of tomato soup for me to heat up in a pan if anyone was well enough for dinner. Then she bundled Pamela up and said I was to take her for a walk. I went up Back Lane because there’s only one broken-down old house there and nobody would see me pushing the pram.
I thought Cora must have been ill or she would have come.
The day becomes the night, but I don’t know when it happens. My throat and my tongue taste bitter. My stomach aches. Mimi isn’t here. I spread myself out over the big bed. Sometimes I am so hot, I push the eiderdown and blankets away with my feet. At other times, I shiver with cold and reach for them, wrapping myself up uselessly in a tight cocoon, unable to still my chattering teeth.
Auntie Ida tries to make me take a cool drink. As soon as it reaches my stomach, it rushes out again into the bucket by the bed. I hear the swishing of the mop on the floor, again and again.
Somebody sponges my arms and legs with cold water and wipes my face and my hair with a warm flannel. Sometimes I think it is Auntie Ida and sometimes the lady in the uniform at Roger’s house. Other faces appear — an old burned man, a witch with flaming hair screaming, Libera me! Libera me!
The children come.
Cora, save us… . Save us, Cora… .
Kittie bends over me, singing:
“‘The nurse how she slumbers, the nurse how she sleeps.
My little son John how he cries and he weeps.’”
I can smell her warm breath and feel her plaited hair fall across my cheek.
Two people are talking quietly in the room, their soft voices coming and going. My eyes are closed, but I am only half-asleep. I feel a little stick being tucked gently into my armpit. Someone holds on to my wrist lightly.
“I’ve always wondered what this old house was like, Mrs. Eastfield,” a man whispers. “What with living at North End, you know. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. It’s not my place.”
“Oh, it’s all right, Doctor,” murmurs Auntie Ida. “It’s all so long ago now.”
“What were they like, the Eastfields? We only met the daughter, Rosalie, when we bought the house. A charming woman, extremely elegant.”
“Ah, Rosalie was beautiful. But then they all were. It was one of those golden families, Doctor, one of those families that always seemed to be bathed in sunlight.”
“Old Colonel Eastfield was dead, of course, by the time we came,” he said, “but Mrs. Eastfield and Rosalie moved to Sussex. I believe there were relatives there. Strange she never married, a woman like that.”
“Many women were left all alone after the Great War, Dr. Meldrum.”
They fall silent. The man lifts my arm briskly and removes the stick.
“I’m truly sorry, Mrs. Eastfield,” he mutters. “I should never have brought it up.”
Someone tucks the covers in close around me. It seems a long time before Auntie Ida speaks again.
“Well, what difference does it make now? So long ago, it feels I lived another life, yet these days I seem to be thinking of the past more than I have done for a long, long time.” She sighs. “It was the wrong thing to do, Doctor — marry Will, I mean. I only married him because he looked like his brother.”
The man coughs awkwardly.
“Always looking at him and wishing he was someone else, sometimes even pretending he was that other person.”
“I — I think I’d better be off now, Mrs. Eastfield,” the man mumbles.
I don’t think Auntie Ida is really talking to him anymore. I don’t think she is bothered whether he is listening or not. She is in her own place.
“My brother, Roland, and … and … they met at Marlborough. Strange, how they lived so close to each other but only really met when they were away from home. But then we were always isolated from other children. Nobody wanted to come and play here — their parents wouldn’t let them, anyway. And we were never allowed to associate with the children of the labourers in the farm cottages, you understand. We just had each other for company until we went away to school.
“Of course, the tragedy for the Eastfields was that they ever became involved with the Guerdons. Little by little, we drained them of their lustre… .”
The man is uncomfortable. “Yes, well —” he begins.
“It’s a dangerous thing to do, to fall in love with a Guerdon. I should know — my mother did the same thing,” Auntie continues, in her own world. “He knew he was going to have his work cut out persuading the Colonel. The old chap would never have allowed it, and we were so young. He didn’t even approve of his friendship with Roland, so we kept it secret. Then, after the war, the world was changed —”
“The girls are both on the mend now,” the man says quickly. “As I said, this germ has gone through a lot of people in the village, but it doesn’t last long. I haven’t lost anyone yet. By Monday this one will probably be eating like a horse. It might take the younger girl a little longer
, but you’re doing all the right things. Call me back immediately if things don’t improve.”
A bag clicks shut.
“If I might be so bold,” he says, “I do think you should seriously think about getting connected to the telephone. You’re very isolated here. It’s a good job the rector rang to tell me I should come down and take a look at the girls. But what if he hadn’t known? What if it had been something more dangerous? You don’t even have anybody to run a message for you.”
He rests his warm hand on my forehead. I feel peaceful.
The curtains darken. I slumber, I wake, I doze, and my visitors drift in and out of my dreams. I have no way of knowing how real they are.
Suddenly bright sunshine fills the room.
“Cora, try some of this, dear,” says a soothing voice. A hand cradles my head, and I sip sweet water, and a little more. Then it rests me gently back on my pillow.
Auntie says, “I don’t think you need this pail anymore.”
Half in and half out of waking, I see her lift the bucket from the floor. There is a thud, and Auntie cries out in pain. She goes down on her knees, lifts up the edge of the eiderdown, and looks under the bed. I hear her suck in her breath through clenched teeth, scuffle around, then get up quickly, clanging the bucket against something metal. She leaves the room with quick hard footsteps and slams the door behind her.
How dare she! How dare she prowl around my house! Jasper’s box — how the hell did she find out about it? Has she shown anything to the Jotman boy? Prying into things, snooping and prying!
Long Lankin Page 20