Whiter than the Lily

by Alys Clare

  As he settled for sleep – under a darkening sky still entirely innocent of cloud – he went over in his mind the plan for tomorrow. Now that he was nearing his goal, the directions that Audra had provided were beginning to seem a little paltry. The Saxon Shore, she had said – well, that was relatively easy. As a military man, Josse had been taught about the Romans and the line of forts they had built to defend England’s east coast from marauding bands coming over the seas from the north and the east; those forts had been known as the Forts of the Saxon Shore. Audra had mentioned a place where men of old had built a fort, and Josse was almost sure she must have referred to one of the Saxon Shore forts. She had said that Deadfall lay beneath an inland cliff, in a place that used to be sea but was now marshland.

  It had sounded so simple when she said it, he reflected as he twisted and wriggled on the hard ground, trying to find a comfortable spot. And, indeed, he had found the line of the inland cliff, or thought he had; for the latter part of the evening he had been riding along the top of a ridge that overlooked the marsh below. With a little imagination, he could see that the mysterious, shadowy land that spread out at the foot of the cliffs could once have been under the sea. Sometimes, indeed, as he had stared down half-hypnotised at the secret land below, the lowering sun painted images and fleeting patterns on the salt flats and he had almost thought he could see the ripple of water …

  Turning his mind deliberately from that strange, seductive and vaguely disturbing memory, he made up his mind that all he had to do in the morning was ride along the cliff top until he saw below him the ruins of the old fort. Then, somewhere on the marsh below, he would surely find Deadfall.

  There! Now he had a plan; he had made up his mind. All he had to do now was to go to sleep.

  But sleep did not come. He lay first on his right side, then on his left, then on his back, hands linked behind his head and eyes wide open staring up at the stars. Finally, after what seemed hours, he drifted into a doze.

  He dreamed he saw a giant hand upraised before him. It was dense black against the navy blue sky and its wrist was the width of a tree trunk. It had seven fingers and they were curled menacingly towards him as if they wanted to grab him, choke the life out of him, feed him into some unimaginably vast and terrible mouth that shone with fresh red blood and had teeth as sharp as knife blades …

  His eyes flew open and he shot upright.

  As the terrified beating of his heart began to subside, he told himself, it was a dream. Just a dream.

  Then he saw the tree. It was dead and its skeletal branches reached up into the sky like a grasping hand.

  Smiling at his own fear, he deliberately turned his back on the dead tree, closed his eyes and went to sleep.

  In the early morning of the next day, there was a freshness in the air that encouraged him to get up and be on his way. He ate a hunk of bread standing up; then, having checked one final time that his fire was properly dead, covered the cooling ashes with the hearthstones. He packed up his blankets and his cooking pot, tacked up Horace, tied the smelly cloth in its sack once more behind the saddle – only his reluctance to hurt Sister Martha’s feelings prevented him from chucking the wretched thing away – then mounted and rode off along the cliff top.

  He followed the track for some time. In places it turned away from the edge of the cliff and appeared to join a wider, better-built road, cobbled, regular in width and bordered with stones. He would have preferred to follow this more sophisticated road, if only because it was not nearly as dusty as the narrow track, but he feared that if he strayed too far from the cliff top he would miss his destination.

  After a time the track wound its way to the north around a low hill. Then, on the far side of the hill, the track branched, one fork heading off eastwards, the other descending a steep slope that led southwards towards the marsh.

  Logic said to proceed on the cliff-top track. But instinct said otherwise; clucking to Horace, Josse turned the horse’s head to the right and began carefully to descend the hill.

  Halfway down a large bird got up out of the undergrowth and flapped noisily over Josse’s head and away over the marsh. Unreasonably startled, Josse told himself not to be stupid; it was only a heron.

  But Horace was alarmed too. Most unusually, the big horse was sweating and clearly uneasy.

  ‘Come on, old friend,’ Josse said encouragingly. ‘We’ve seen worse things, you and I, and lived to tell the tale!’

  But on the steep, shadowed track, bordered as it was by encroaching trees and tangled undergrowth, there was no air and Josse’s words died away echoless.

  It was almost as though some invisible, malign presence were aware of him. Aware and unwelcoming.

  Desperate suddenly to get out into the open, Josse ignored the steepness of the gradient and kicked Horace into a trot. The horse, eagerly responding as if he too could not wait to see sky and open land again, managed to keep his feet and soon they were stepping out of the dimness and into the hot sunlight.

  There was another track down there, Josse saw, that seemed to lead off to the east along the base of the cliff. A narrow stream ran alongside it. Peering that way, Josse could at first see no sign either of any ruined building on the side of the slope or of any dwelling down on the marshland. He kicked Horace and they set off along the track, keeping the stream on their right. After a short while a clutch of low, ruined buildings came into view on the opposite bank and, with a word of encouragement, Josse put the horse at the slight obstacle of the stream and they jumped across.

  The ruins, such as they were, were deserted and appeared to have been so for some time. Little remained except some stunted walls and a sole lonely doorway, with no door on the hinges and no inviting view of some cosy room beyond. Nothing could be seen through its gaping space, in fact, but more marshland.

  Josse sat for a moment, thinking. He remembered being told that, of old, men extracted salt from the creeks that ran from the sea inland into the marsh. Perhaps that was what had gone on here; with a little imagination he could picture the narrow stream as a wide creek, regularly filled by the tides so that the precious salt could be taken from the ever-generous sea. Only the land had encroached, the creek had dried up to this meagre trickle and, with no salt to extract, the men had gone away.

  Suddenly depressed, swiftly Josse turned Horace and set off at a canter back the way they had come.

  Passing the place where they had emerged from the slope leading down the hillside, he rode on westwards along the track beneath the cliffs. Then, once more drawing rein, he stopped to look ahead.

  But it was difficult to focus on the marshland, for it seemed to shimmer in the light and hide itself beneath wavering mirages, as if it shied from close scrutiny. Holding Horace quite still, Josse stared out across the flat expanse before him. There were few trees – only the occasional clump of stunted willows that looked as if they were on the point of giving up the struggle against winter winds and brackish water – and little else to break up the monotony of the creek-crossed salt flats. Perhaps it was that very monotony that made the eyes play tricks, for one moment he would think he saw something – a low dwelling, the gentle rise of smoke from someone’s morning cooking fire – but, when he looked more closely, it would be gone.

  He tried not to think about how he was ever going to find Deadfall. It did not do to be discouraged before he had properly started.

  He turned back to the cliff and stared along the slope that ran away westwards. The streamlet seemed to come from that direction and so, with no other plan suggesting itself, he set off to follow it.

  He had not gone far when, through the trees, he caught sight of stonework. Dismounting, he pushed his way through the branches of alder and willow and peered out at the hillside.

  Scattered across it, as if some vast building erected in antiquity had finally given up and allowed itself to be borne away down the slope, were huge clumps of masonry. They were of pale stone, into which had been inserted cour
ses of reddish tiles.

  And, understanding the aptness of the name now that he had seen the place, he said out loud, ‘Deadfall.’

  If he had found the right place – and he was sure that he had – then the house he was searching for must lie under the cliff, behind him to the south. Mounting again, he crossed the track and set out across the marsh.

  He searched for most of the day. He found nothing.

  The light began to fail early and at first he did not understand why, unless his fruitless and increasingly frustrating search had gone on for longer than he realised.

  Then he glanced up at the sky.

  His intention had simply been to see how low the sun was. But he could not see the sun, for it was covered by a huge bank of thick, dark, menacing cloud that had steadily been creeping across the sky from the south-west.

  The temperature had dropped alarmingly; Josse realised that both he and his horse were shivering.

  Biting down the fear that, out of nowhere and for no apparent cause, began coursing through him, he tried to think. Be practical, he told himself sternly. If there is a storm coming – and only someone with a totally unrealistically optimistic outlook could believe there was not – then we must have shelter.

  He thought of the massive ruins he had seen earlier up on the hillside. He thought some more, but could think of nothing better. So, kicking Horace into a canter, he headed back towards the cliff as fast as the marshy, uneven ground would allow.

  They took the stream in a soaring leap and then had to slow down to pass under the trees that lined the track. Finding a way through the undergrowth and out on to the hillside took precious time – Josse was aware of the approaching storm now almost as of something terrifying and alive that was steadily stalking him – but finally he discovered a place where the brambles grew less thickly, and bodily he and Horace forced an opening through them. He felt his skin tear as a sharp thorn dug into the back of his hand and, sucking at it, tasted his own blood.

  The slope was steeper than it had appeared from below and soon Josse dismounted, leading Horace, trying to run over the uneven grass, the breath rasping in his throat and chest as he urged the horse on towards the ruins.

  There was not much time. Now the black cloud covered almost all of the sky.

  Looking frantically around, Josse sought out the best place. There, where a tall pile of stones stands alone? No, not wise. There, in that shallow dell? No, not enough shelter.

  Then he saw it. Aye, over there, he thought, where two massive walls meet and there are the vestiges of a roof. Pulling at Horace’s reins, he ran to the shelter. Cold hands fumbling with buckles and straps, he got the saddle and bridle off the horse and stowed them under the walls. He put on Horace’s rope head collar and fastened the end around the corner of a very heavy stone lying on the ground. Horace was still sweating and hastily Josse rubbed him down, covering him with the piece of sacking that had held Sister Martha’s greased cloth. Then, blessing the sister for her weather lore, he stretched out the cloth and, using stones to weigh it down, fastened it across the angle between the two walls of his shelter so that it was supported by the struts that had once held up the roof. He set it so as to form a slight downward slope that led out and away from the walls; with any luck, the rain ought to run off it and drip harmlessly at the perimeter of Josse’s inadequate camp.

  That was his hope. For there could no longer be any doubt at all that there was going to be rain, a great deal of it; the first drops had already begun to fall and they were as heavy as if it were their intention to compensate for several months of drought in a matter of hours.

  He wrapped himself up in his blankets. Then, with Horace beside him, his head hung in misery, Josse settled down to watch the storm.

  The thunder came with a ferocious opening salvo that took Josse entirely by surprise and set his heart pounding. Then there was a sudden flash of lightning that seemed to plunge a trident of brilliance down into the marshland below and, a little later, another crash of thunder. Despite the discomfort and his increasing sense of unease, for a time Josse lost himself in wonder at the spectacle. Peering out for a brief instant from his shelter, he saw that the black clouds now covered the entire sky, as if some sorcerer’s cauldron had made smoke enough to plunge the whole world into premature night. And the cloud seemed to be lying low, just over his head, as if, with only a small effort, he could reach up and grasp some of that deep darkness and hold it in his hand.

  Shivering, he withdrew his head inside the shelter, shook the worst of the water from his hair and sat down again. Horace, a shadowy bulk beside him, lowered his head and blew soft, warm breath against Josse’s neck; it was very comforting.

  The storm was getting closer. Now the gap between lightning and thunder was steadily lessening and soon the two were virtually synonymous: the fury of the heavens was right overhead.

  It was the moment of greatest danger, or so Josse believed at the time. Into his mind poured images of tall towers made by proud men being struck by vivid forks of light and tumbling to ruins. He saw again a scene he had once witnessed, where a fellow soldier standing on guard on an elevation had been thrown twice his own height into the air by a lightning strike. He remembered, against his will, the smell of singeing hair and flesh.

  I am safe here, he told himself firmly. I deliberately chose to shelter beneath stonework that was well down the slope and that did not stand up in relief on the top of the high ground. These old walls have stood here solidly for a thousand years and they are not going to tumble down tonight.

  He almost believed himself.

  He fell into a light doze. The storm had eased and, in the calm that followed, his sleep deepened. He began to dream.

  He saw a figure in white holding a tall staff, from the head of which gleamed a mighty jewel that caught the light and magnified it, sending back brighter flashes to the black sky from which the lightning came. A deep voice called on the ancient gods and the dreaming Josse knew that Thor the Mighty walked the earth. Then the scene changed and fair-haired men dragged a long ship down the foreshore towards the waiting sea. But there were cries and screams of agonising pain and terror, for the ship’s keel ran over human flesh.

  Moaning in his sleep, Josse twisted his head as if to turn his eyes away from what he was seeing. But the screams went on, accompanied by the sound of the rasping shingle as the hungry waves reached out for the new ship.

  Then there was the smell of burning and, on another shore – or perhaps the same one under a different light – a long ship set out across the smooth water with smoke pouring from its deck. Josse was in the water helping the craft on her way and then, with the magical, all-seeing vision given to dreamers, he was high above, looking down on to the ship. He saw the tall, broad-shouldered body of a king, pale hair bound beneath a helmet with cheek pieces and nose guard, deep eyes closed in death. His belt was fastened with a great buckle, decorated with interlaced running lines in which were twined the graceful, stylised shapes of snakes, birds, bears and wolves. The warrior’s spear and battleaxe lay beside him and his shield was at his head. To his left was a giant whetstone, the mask of the god and strange runic inscriptions etched into the stone and the delicate figure of a stag standing proudly on the circle of bronze that topped the stone. Laid on his body, his long hands clasped on its hilt, was his broadsword, decorated with garnet-studded gold. From the shore came chanting as the king’s people honoured his passing.

  And, in time, there came the stench of burning flesh.

  Josse woke with horror in his mind. Sweating, breathing as hard as if he had just run up the slope again, he sat up, eyes wide, trying to see into the night.

  Behind him Horace gave an uneasy nicker. Josse reached out a hand and gave the horse a pat. It was meant to reassure but Josse was not sure he had reassurance to give.

  The darkness was so total that he could not see a thing. He sat quite still, listening. There was scarcely a sound except for the steady drip as ra
inwater fell from the eaves of his shelter. Drip, drip, drip.

  But then there was another sound: somewhere out there a stone had been disturbed.

  He listened.

  Nothing.

  But there had been a sound, he thought, feeling the goose bumps of fear start on his flesh. And stones do not move by themselves …

  Some small animal, he told himself. Now that the rain has eased, the little creatures of the night will be about their business. The concept was quite comforting and he began to imagine some stoat or weasel nosing around in the wet grass.

  Then he heard breathing.

  He shot backwards until he was pressed up into the corner formed by the walls of his shelter. He eased his dagger out of its sheath on his belt and, with his other hand, felt across to where he had placed his sword. Then, quite still again, he listened.

  Nothing.

  His heartbeat gradually slowed down. He took a steadying breath, then another. The ears play tricks, he thought. Just as fear can make a man see things that are not there, so the same can happen to the sense of hearing. There was no breathing, he told himself firmly. It would be quite impossible.

  After quite a long time, he wrapped himself up in his blankets again and lay down.

  The rain had stopped. But in the distance, from the south-west out across the marsh, thunder growled menacingly over the sea.

  Josse lay, eyes staring out blindly into the blackness, waiting.

  He had not been asleep. He knew he hadn’t, afterwards; despite the suggestions that it had been a dream, that the very real dangers of his situation had sent him a fear-induced nightmare, he knew it was not so. He had been wide awake.

  His senses alert, he sat listening, skin prickling with apprehension. The disturbed stone and the breathing he thought he had heard earlier had not recurred; the night was silent and, for the moment, the sky gods were resting and even the thunder had abated.