Craddock

by Paul Finch

  Her expression became stony. “I’m mistress here. We have no servants in this house.”

  “Madam Godhigfu?”

  She stood the fork in the earth, and approached the latch-gate, beating soil from her hands and apron. “And you are?”

  Hendricks had been wrong; the woman might be elderly – fifty or so, but, by appearances at least, she was far from infirm.

  “James Craddock, Major,” he replied. “Chief inspector of police.”

  She surveyed him carefully before opening the gate. “You’d better come inside, major. You look cold.”

  They entered a small parlour. The remnants of logs glowed in the hearth, while rugs covered the floorboards, so it was pleasantly warm. A large armchair, worn on the arms, but overlaid with a pristine mantle of what looked like woven flax, was drawn in front of the grate. There was also a bookcase, its shelves packed with cracking, leather-bound volumes, and a bureau with a vase of dried flowers on top of it. As the afternoon was drawing in, the light was poor, but Madam Godhigfu now lit several candles: two on the mantel over the fire, and one in a tiny cove of space on a shelf.

  She bade Craddock make himself comfortable, then withdrew through a narrow door and down a couple of steps into a stone scullery, from where he heard a clattering of pots and the wheeze and creak of a pump handle.

  He loosened his muffler and removed his hat and gloves. As Madam Godhigfu seemed to be in no rush to attend to him, he made a brief reconnaissance of the bookshelves. The majority of their contents seemed to be historical tomes, many in reference to this very region. Geld And Hammer: Viking Settlement in the Leagh, read one; The Five Boroughs: A Study of Eastern England and its Great Forts, read another. Wolves of Wotan: When the English Came, read the third. The fourth one, he actually picked up. It was dated 1784 and bore the name of a certain Helmut Mendelssen. Its title was: The Weeping in the Witch Hours: Lower England, 1066-1071.

  Craddock flicked it open:

  Being the preface to a certain work concerning the wars of King William the Conqueror in our eastern fenlands.

  The English thegnhood fell en masse in the two great battles of 1066, against the Viking army of Harald Haadrada at Stamford Bridge in September, and in October during the final stand of Harold Godwinsson on Senlac Hill, at the place now called Hastings. In the first of these mighty battles, the English were victorious, but in the second the tired earldormen were slain to a man, and, afterwards, the Norman duke was able to impose his iron will.

  Yet rebellion waited in the wings: in the north of the country, where it was greeted with a fury of fire and sword, but, more alarming for the new royal house, in those great flooded tracts of lowland around Cambridge and Peterborough, described by those who know them as “marsh, broad and fen”. Here, in the year 1070, all Saxon rebels were called, and a fortified camp named ‘the Refuge’ set up on the Isle of Ely, where it was surrounded by deep bogs and defended with passion by patriots and hunted men. The earls Edwin and Morkar brought their war-bands, and soon a great host was assembled, its ranks swollen by Norse warriors pursued by the Normans from their hearths in the once-settled land of the Danelaw.

  Most prominent among these wolf-heads was the one called Hereward the Wake, or ‘Hereward the Wary’, second son of Earl Leofric of Bourne.

  Banished by King Edward the Confessor for his warlike ways, Hereward was in exile in 1066, and missed the great battles of that year. But on hearing that his father’s estates had been despoiled, he returned and, finding his brother’s head transfixed to the door of their mead-hall, he slew the Norman knights ensconced there. For this crime, Hereward was declared outlaw, so he retreated to the fens, where the tortured and disinherited would gather about his banner and plot their vengeance.

  Soon, the scant tracks of those eastern marshes became a perilous place for the Normans and their friends. Even great episcopal princes went about at risk of being robbed, though worse punishments were reserved for the Norman knightly stock, who felt the headsman’s axe, and for their mercenary hirelings, who often were found hanged and flayed. Above all this carnage towered Hereward, a traitor in the eyes of the new king, but to the English a hero of the oppressed. Goaded to wrath, the Conqueror led a great force into the fens, but too many to count were swallowed in the bogs. Horses were lost too, along with supplies and vast stores of weaponry. Bullish to the last, the Conqueror persisted, and in 1071 he located the Camp of Refuge on the Isle of Ely. The monks of that place refused his demands to hand over the rebels, so a siege commenced that would sully the meres with blood.

  The Normans built causeways, and attacked with towers and throwing-machines, but always they were repulsed. King William had soon lost so many of his best men, that he despaired of his ability to hold the subject nation, now simmering with news of Hereward’s victories. Even a Celtic witch was hired, to scream curses in the name of the original island race, but the English captured her and put her to the flame as a pagan. Only treachery, it seemed, could seal the rebels’ doom. But treachery was in the wind. A certain monk of Ely was so fearful of the Conqueror’s retribution that he showed Norman spies a path through the marsh and, under cover of night, they infiltrated the Refuge. A horrible slaughter followed. The English fought well, but were outnumbered and overwhelmed. Many fell, and of those who surrendered, ceorl and noble alike, a prodigious number were taken and executed.

  Yet Hereward was not among their ranks.

  His death has never been recorded, and from this point he passes from history into legend. Rumours tell that he was wounded and died in the marsh; or that he was followed by a handful of Norman knights and after a desperate fight, finally put to the sword; or even that he made his peace with the king on the understanding that fairer laws would be imposed on England. In all probability, the truth lies between these fanciful tales. Most likely, Hereward died in obscurity, a survivor of the war but broken by his failure to liberate his beloved country …

  “If you’re still cold, I can make a pot of tea,” Madam Godhigfu said.

  She had entered the small room without Craddock realising, and now stood beside the hearth, holding a rusted kettle.

  He closed the book with a thump. “Tea would be very welcome, thank you.”

  She hung the kettle on a hook over the fire, and used a poker to revive the wilting flames.

  Forgive me if I seemed brusque when you first arrived,” she said. “I have little to do with the outside world. Anyone comes here, and I instinctively suspect mischief.”

  Craddock was careful to re-insert the book into the gap from where he’d originally taken it. “I fear there’s more than mischief afoot in these marshes, Madam Godhigfu.”

  She was interested by that, but not overly concerned. “Please … tell me more.”

  So he did. He told her about the planned re-opening of St. Brae’s Cathedral, and the apparent murder of the two clergymen. He made no mention of Hendricks’s mysterious phantom, or the supposed manifestations in the crypt, but he did suggest that the perpetrator might still be in the district. By the time he’d finished, the kettle was boiling, and Madam Godhigfu brewed them a pot of tea in a cast-iron caddy. She poured two generous measures in chipped mugs, adding ice-cold milk from a pitcher she’d brought from the scullery. The tale of murder and mayhem had not disconcerted her.

  “So you’re here to unmask the criminal?” she asked.

  Craddock nodded, sipped at his drink – and drew back in surprise. It had a pleasing, slightly minty flavour.

  Madam Godhigfu half-smiled. “I hope you approve … it’s my own concoction. I grow the herbs here in my garden. I pride myself on being entirely self-sufficient.”

  “I absolutely do.”

  “Then allow me to find further approval,” she said. “I know who the murderer is. His name is Brithnoth.”

  Craddock eyed her closely. “Brithnoth?”

  “Brithnoth the Saxon. Brithnoth the Lost, Brithnoth the Stalker … call him what you will.” She paused briefly
. “He’s the reason St. Brae’s was abandoned in the first place.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  She nodded towards the bookshelves. “You were reading Hereward, were you not … The Weeping? As a police officer, Major Craddock, you surely can put two and two together? About ancient evils and avenging spirits, and all that?”

  “You’re telling me this Brithnoth is some kind of ghost?”

  Again she smiled. For all her grime and wrinkles, she was actually a rather handsome woman.

  “Not a ghost,” she said. “Far from that.”

  “So what … who is he?”

  She laid her tea down and moved to the armchair. “I’ll sit, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course.”

  She sat, and took a moment or two to compose herself. The firelight flickered over her in red and orange phantasms. When she looked up again, her eyes were hard, sharp and blue as sapphire. Craddock had a sudden impression of Madam Godhigfu as she might have been in her youth: tall, beautiful, with flowing tawny locks. He remembered lavish descriptions given by his old history master of the Anglo-Saxon women; how greatly they’d been prized by Viking slavers for their fair skin and fairer hair; and how they’d been ravished and abused by the Normans, and finally thrown as booty to their rabble of dog-like, mercenary followers.

  “The Isle of Ely is only a day’s march from here,” she began. “Brithnoth was a monk there, in the abbey chapter, during the besiegement of Hereward and his rebels.”

  Craddock listened in silence. It was already an incredible tale, but the woman spoke with power and conviction. Very quickly he was absorbed in it.

  “During this dark time, Brithnoth became very conscious that England was festooned … festooned with gibbets, all laden with the bodies of those who’d opposed Duke William’s invasion. Tattered, crow-picked figures swung at every crossroads, on the ridge of every hill. To Brithnoth’s mind, this fate awaited them all if they continued to resist. He was a realist, you see … a career cleric. God hadn’t called him; he’d gone to the cloth of his own volition. He was of good family stock; he was educated. He stood to make a lucrative career in the Church, whoever imposed the Rule, be he Norman or English. Brithnoth didn’t want that thrown away simply because his abbot had backed the wrong horse.”

  She paused to let her words sink in.

  “And you’re telling me this Brithnoth is … still alive?” Craddock said.

  “Not alive in any way you or I would understand. But he still roams these marshes. Eternally. Repenting for what he did.”

  “And how is this possible?”

  “I’m only reciting a legend, major. Not explaining it. Once the Normans broke the Refuge, Abbot Thurstan, Bishop Aethelwine and other English churchmen were seized alongside those surviving rebels. As Aethelwine was led to prison, where he would eventually be starved to death, he is alleged to have turned and cursed Brithnoth that he was now ‘a man without a people, a man without a race, a man without a bloodline or even an identity to call his own’. He told Brithnoth that, though he might spend the rest of time seeking to reclaim that which he’d lost, the arms of his ancestors would always be closed against him.”

  “And this has kept Brithnoth alive all these centuries?” Craddock asked dubiously. “A curse?”

  “Please don’t scoff, major. Curses are no joking matter … you must take my word on that.”

  The major took her word, without question. Madam Godhigfu was a witch, he realised. A white witch in all probability, but still a witch. Though he was a modern man, he’d spent most of his adult life on the Indian sub-continent, where seers and oracles abounded, and where no-one dared mock their mysterious ways – and for good reason.

  “A curse can wound a person very deeply, if he believes he has reason to be cursed,” Madam Godhigfu added. “And it’s truly a cursed thing to be the one responsible for your nation’s downfall. In this age of wealth and progress, it is perhaps easy to forget the facts of history. Consider what you’ve learned here …”

  She indicated the wall of historical tomes.

  “The Scots have their William Wallace, the Welsh their Owain Glyndwr … warrior-statesmen who achieved fame through their opposition to foreign tyranny. Though both ultimately failed, it was through their efforts that their people were able to retain their culture and heritage. We English, however – we true original Saxon-English – were destroyed when our hero was betrayed. We lost everything to rapacious men, who would then go on, and in our name … our name!, persecute those others I have mentioned. If it hadn’t been for the Norman yoke, England would now be an outpost of Scandinavia. We would look to the Baltic, rather than the Mediterranean. Like our Saxon ancestors, we’d be an introspective but inherently peaceful nation.”

  She smiled a tired, rather sad smile.

  “It’s true that, without our Frankish-Norman blood, we would lack the ambition necessary to have created this dazzling British Empire of ours. But tell me … is it an empire of the righteous and pious, or of the cruel and exploitative? In generations to come, will other nations not decry us for our empire-building?”

  It was rare for Craddock to hear such disloyalty, especially when uttered by a woman, but something about the way she said it affected him. As a long-serving soldier, he’d never doubted his cause to civilise the primitive world in the name of Queen Victoria, even though he’d oftentimes shaken his head at the intolerance and buffoonery of some of Britain’s ruling elite. But could it really be that this land he loved, this crucible of industrial might, this epicentre of light and learning in an untamed world, was a lie – an offshoot of rape and destruction? Cradock wasn’t given to over-dramatising things, but fleetingly he couldn’t contain a shudder.

  “Little wonder Brithnoth can’t rest?” Madam Godhigfu said.

  “But what has all this got to do with St. Brae’s?”

  “Oh … I imagine the treasure.”

  Craddock stared at her.

  “The fabled treasure of St. Brae’s,” she added. “Has nobody mentioned this to you?”

  “No.”

  “I can understand why. It’s a fairy tale … based on the loosest of local tradition. But it’s a tale that won’t die. You see, major, in early England, these remote churches and abbeys were great storehouses of wealth. In places like Ely, Cambridge and Peterborough, there was a bounty of silver plate, precious vessels, icons and ornaments, magnificent gospels, vestments woven from gold thread. The Normans coveted all of it … all. But in many cases Hereward got there first. Where he stowed it, we can only surmise. One oft-reputed spot is St. Brae’s. According to myth, an immense hoard waits there to be found. In the light of this, would it surprise you if the atoning Brithnoth had striven first to drive the Normans from that place, then to jealously guard it down the centuries … to keep it an isolated ruin?”

  “Unfortunately,” Craddock said, “I can’t arrest an eight-hundred-year-old monk.”

  “You’d be lucky to get near him. Brithnoth is a walking malediction. Physical contact with him is said to be fatal. One touch from his cursed finger, and human flesh withers like fruit on the vine …”

  Craddock’s thoughts strayed back to Reverend Allgood and his deacon.

  “Both men seemed to have died from natural causes,” Hendricks had said. “Their hearts had simply stopped beating.”

  “As representatives of Church, and therefore Crown, your murdered clerics are without doubt the work of Brithnoth,” Madam Godhigfu said, peering into the. “But don’t think of him as a ghost or devil, major. He’s much worse than that. He is implacable rather than evil, unrelenting rather than cruel. But he attacks us from within. He invokes our conscience, our self-loathing, our ultimate self-immolation.” She glanced up, a frown creasing her brow. “He won’t be easily stopped.”

  Craddock tramped back through the fens, deep in thought.

  The mythical treasure of St. Brae’s was an interesting development, but nothing was clear to h
im yet. True, a promise of wealth might provide a motive for murder, but, outside this isolated community, scarcely anyone had heard of it. In any case, that didn’t answer the main questions. Two men had died, by the expressions on their faces with violence and horror, yet there wasn’t a mark upon either body. Not only that, there were no suspects – apart from an Old English version of Judas Iscariot, who’d surely been dead for the best part of a millennium.

  Craddock was discomforted as he walked. Dusk was falling like a curtain. The mist was now deeper, thicker and a greenish-white in colour. It lay flat over the marshland at roughly thigh-depth. The major was following the path as best he could, though it was difficult to identify what he was standing on. With each step, the ground squelched. The church of St. Brae – previously the one distinguishing feature on the landscape – was now hidden. Madam Godhigfu’s cottage had dropped behind him and vanished. Even the wetland wildlife appeared to have fallen silent. He felt oddly relieved when, five minutes later, the sagging outline of the windmill came up on his right.

  Windmills had been utilised throughout the eighteenth century for drainage, but, in this age of the steam engine, they were little more than relics. This one was a gutted hulk, only fragments of rusted mechanism visible through the apertures in its moss-coated brickwork. Its sails were skeletal frames; tarpaulin hung off them in shreds. The major eyed it as he passed, but, only as it dwindled behind him, did he realise that there was someone standing on the other side of it. He only glimpsed the figure from the corner of his eye, but its back was turned and it appeared to be staring out into the mist. It had a pale, bald head and wore some heavy, coarse material, almost like sackcloth. Craddock would have stopped and looked properly, but something now propelled him onwards – something urgent. A cold that was colder than anything he’d experienced before began to seep through him. He sensed rather than saw the bizarre figure wheel about, circle the windmill and come out onto the footpath to his rear.