The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  "No, John," Collins said quietly. "I can't hear any of those things."

  "Above all of that," Heaney continued in reverent tones as though Collins had not spoken, "I can hear my boy's innocent voice, singing out to guide me to him. I'M COMING, ANDY!" Heaney bellowed into the tunnel causing Collins to start.

  "John-" Collins began but, to his amazement, Heaney began to sing. The sound of a child's innocent song echoing of the walls of madness that enclosed them disturbed the detective deeply; this was the stuff of nightmares.

  "Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream-" Heaney reached down and took Collins by the elbow. The older policeman struggled to his feet, grimacing at a flash of pain in his wound. It sent jagged shards of agony into the centre of his brain.

  "Merrily, merrily, merrily-"

  "John, I can't-"

  "Life is but a dream-"

  "John! Listen to me! I can't do this! I have to go-"

  "Row, row, row-"

  Collins grabbed Heaney by the shoulder and turned him around. He stopped singing mid-merrily. The smile that had lit upon his face as he sang with his son had faded. He looked at Collins coldly. All at once, Collins felt uneasy.

  "Give me the torch, sir," Heaney said quietly.

  "What? Why? Listen, John-" Collins stammered. Heaney locked his hand over Collins' bullet wound and squeezed. The older man screamed and the tunnel blurred behind his watering eyes. A harsh buzzing filled his head- so loud he almost passed out. He dropped the torch to the floor and staggered against the curvature of the wall to his left. He opened his eyes and blinked at the shadow before him as it bent and picked up the flashlight. Heaney looked at Collins solemnly.

  "I'm sorry sir," he said and headed into the tunnel. "I have to," he called back and began to jog. Collins staggered after the man but could not keep up the momentum. Again the fury in his shoulder washed over him threatening to take him down. He summoned what strength he had left and shouted after the retreating light source.

  "Heaney! You can't do this to me! Wait for me! John, please!"

  There was no response; the light dwindled to a pinprick and was gone.

  Collins was left in absolute darkness.

  *

  Interlude (4)

  The Witch

  Er she woke the other was ther

  Er she slept the other was ther

  'T al tymes t'other was ther.

  The Great Belle rang out to the green and grey vale. Ther wer tymes wen its peals sumoned from fer across the vale to places thet she had seen not, places from the stories of minstrels and the old but today it sent them away. The peasant girl watched the proceedings from the hovel. The feri-man pulled his punt to and fro, river boats and coracles al about. Much had changed around the Holie Playce since the Priests had started to leave. They had herde that they were to Pilgrimage to the faraway Holie Place in Canterburie. The girl kenned none of it. She kenned little more than the warmth and dryness that she needed to be well. Her father had not bean well and she marked the dai of him by scratching a' the ground with her bare hands. The hovel had filled with water and soon he had the racking cough in his chest that she kenned and- er long when yet he knew himself, er he preched of Devils- he knew that er long he would die. But her father would not be burned on a pile of corpses like the others, so she had dragged him out into the fields under the cloak of a moonless night and buryed him, even remembering some of the hooded priest's words as she knelt over his garret, the earth she had buryed him in staining her arms and thick under her fingernails as well as matted in her hair. She had done her best to give him a Cristen biriel but fer fro the monkgarth with its appel trese and fro the blasfemie o th' monks. It was a sinne to graven the dai without Godde's magick or by falsely saying his magick. The abbote alone had the power of the abbeie. Al being thinges ken their treue part here fader preched (The dead woman looked through the eyes of the peasant girl and onto the drizzling hillside of an unknown green land. The stinking smoke of burning sods rose from the low dwellings at the river's edge and in the field to either side of the winding track that led to (Teddy? No.) the ferry man. At the bottom of the hill, a river coiled its course away into the mist and a fleet of sturdy rowing boats, some laden with possessions others crowded with dark robed Holy Men cut a direct line across to the fer bank. Beyond that, a procession of carts trundled uphill and away from the river, the mules straining in the slick, rain-filled potholes and braying in indignation. All living things know their true place, her father had preached) and he were as treue as stele. She watched as the monks followed the abbote away from their Holie Churche and smyled. Er the thingse the monks did (The dead woman saw herself being defiled at the pale hands of robed figures) fader sait it were a smyle of beauty blest. Er the monks and their blasfemie (ghostly white flesh in vivid contrast to the shadow black robes in the flickering candlelight on the walls above the bestial beds, horses farting and chuffing in the stalls) the thunderclappes marking their bestial sinne perfectus. Er she was grown, a part of she was graven an' buryed wi' fader.

  *

  A feste of mete and ale folowed their exodus. The peasants had kenned the kepen secrete ways through the walls er her remembring and had found the prestigiously stocked larders, an insult to the starving children that had wasted away in the hovels that surrounded the abbeie. She had watched a woman, old before her years having felt her child shrivel in her arms, her own milk not enough to sustain the boy's feeble life force, collapse in front of the salted joints and potted preserves. The woman had proffered the dying child to the shaven headed holy men as they had entered The Great Gates but most had turned away from her pleading while some had stared at her in sheer disgust as though she should be ashamed of her parental despair, as though her very child was an insult to them and their God. They brushed aside the kneeling woman as they pushed forward into the high walled larder, shelved from floor to ceiling with ceramic pots, each half-a-man high. She heard the gibbering joy of her people as blackened hands scooped preserves from the jars into toothless mouths and mete was peled from the bones and pushed into cavernous mouths. She stood back and remembered the gifts she had received for her part in the holy men's perversions, gifts that she had seen taken from the stockroom that her people now invaded. Old Alyson, a woman of her dead mother's age, held a pot of honey towards her but she shook her head and moved away, back through the courtyard and to the gap in the wall that she had been pulled through night after night by the men in dark robes in exchange for enough food to prolong the life of her father, leaving by the same way, cold seed on her inner thighs. She returned to the home that her father had fashioned er she was born beneath an outcrop of rock in the hillside below The Great Gates, an ideal location to fight for the vegetable peelings and stale crusts from the Abbot's table. Exhausted, she lay on the bundle of rags that cushioned her hip, ribs and shoulder from the jagged edges of the stony ground and slept.

  *

  The girl awoke with strange foreign sounding words in her ears. In her dream she had been in the water, freezing and fighting for her life as she was pushed into the water by a thick limbed enemy intent upon her destruction and leven for ded in the ryver. It was the sound of screaming that had awoken her and, at first, it seemed as though she was still dreaming; in the dream she had screamed soundlessly beneath the water and, as she broke the surface of consciousness, it had surely followed her into wakefulness. But the cries were not hers. She pulled the skins to the side and saw her people shuffling down the slope towards the river. She stepped out into the grey dampness and looked back up to the monkgarth. The prematurely aged woman who had recently buryed her babe was thrown from The Great Gates onto the slick gradient of the hillside. She turned and tumbled until her head came to a jarring halt against a lethal rock that pierced the verdant curve of the land. The girl knew that the woman was surely dead. Three dark robed figures looked down on the scattered peasants before returning to the abbeie. Not all of the priests had departed. She watched her kinde v
anish into the earth and heard the dark gates close, the heavy wood resonating around the valley.

  *

  handsinthewaterpullingatherhairshecouldnotmoveshewasdeadnotdeadbutunconsciouscomeonbitchyouwantedtodothissofightyoubitchfightthedeadwomanpeasantgirlwatched the movements of the remaining abbots from her secrete places, secrete places that the abbots themselves had taught her. Now she could study them; she watched them scuttle to and fro to the well carrying their precious things -some of them heavy enough to warrant two men, some three. Heve ook trunks covered with sackcloth to hide the contents as though even the skye could not see what they putt in their secrete places carried to the place fro' wher they drew water. Rope was tied around the trunks and they were lowerd in to the water, a voice echoing up from its depths to the priests above. She saw two dozen and one more of them by her reckoning The men in black robes looked to the far hills as they worked, ascairt of what they mite see there. Wither their manner made the girl feel as though she was also being watched she did not ken but withal being thinges secrete and fer fro her she felt the presence of t'other.

  Er she woke the other was ther, er she slept the other was ther, 't al tymes she was watched as she watched the holie ones like a childe watching the machinations of ants in their nest.

  It was apt comparison: like the insects they worked tirelessly towards a common goal. The girl watched and bade her tyme while t'other watched with her.

  *

  The sonne sank o'er the hills and returned four tymes er the Kinge's men rode down the track to the feri-man's abode. It bifel the cas that fro' her place under the Monksgarth wall she saw equally well the ryver and felds that stretched fer away and were now divided by a dark line of soldiers- the first on horseback er them on foot- over the horizon. Inside the abbeie ther was panic as the priests went bresick. At that moment the girl and t'other kenned that 'twas this that the priests had feard with each hunted glance towards the place wher the lan mette the skye. Fro her secrete place she herde the Kinge's man sumon the Feri-man. She saw the afeard olde man step out in front of soldier, his head deep sunk into his shoulders, his eyes downcast. She hered the other soldiers shouting derision at the olde man and then he was beten down to th' groon like a cur. The girl herde his pleas but the soldiers jeered at him and struck him with thikke sticks hewn from the forest to the west. A harsh grating made her look in at the priests once more. A makerie stone had been pushed to one side. She let her mooth fel agape at the priests' blasfamie; even she kenned the sinne of waking the graven. But ther was no ded in the tomb. The priests stept in to the tomb and went down into the secrete erthe. When the laste was within the erthe the makerie was restored with the tombstone once more in place.

  Another way in!

  T'other's voice mad her afeard. Then t' other sank back into her own secrete place. The girl looked from the false grave and down to the soldiers beginning their crossing o' th' ryver. She smyled revealing her herte’s secrete blacknesse.

  *

  The soldiers' furie reverberated around the high walls of the courtyard; it had been two days since their arrival at the abbeie and they had ransacked the building destroying everything in their way that was of no value to them. It was gold that they wanted. Works of art and statues were tossed through the stained glass windows of the gallery at the uppermost level of the abbeie- frames splintering and breaking on the cloisters, statues shattering into countless shards. Illuminated books were systematically burned, vividly coloured scripture floating high above the abbeie walls. A smouldering fragment drifted before the girl, close enough for her to see the bloody hand of Christ, a nail protruding his palm, the edge of his halo turning black and crumbling on the breeze.

  The leader of this small army stayed in his tent for the most part leaving the abandoned abbeie to his minions; she had caught glimpses of the dark-haired Duke whenever the entrance to his abode flapped in the wind or through the entrance or exit of one of his commanders. She herd a pair of foot soldiers talking about the Duke: one had asked the other wherefore the Duke remained tented when he could have easily taken the grandest chambre in the whole abbeie. The other man had told him that being a man of belief and afeard of the wrath bestowed on the blasphemous, it was enough that the Duke should take God's chattels in the name of the Kinge but he would dai er he would commit sacrilege on hallowed erthe. He layed his head on the ground afore The Great Gates. It was he that she must see when the tyme came.

  *

  On the third day, the peasants were rounded up at spear point and prodded towards The Great Gates. Once within the walls they were tortured one by one.

  *

  Twas the boy Ham that tol her the gist of the soldiers' demands; they lusted after gold, lusted wyth such fervour it was mekking devils of each. She tended the boy's lashes with herbs that she kenned balmed the pain o' th' strap er tyme remembred. Ham's cries abated er lang. The girl herde his tale. T'other sat forward in her hertes like a bairn a' the advent o' a nitetyme ballad.

  *

  The dead woman watched the bearded soldiers force the boy to his knees. In the candlelight that flickered in the canvas walls of the marquee, the boy's struggling form sent tall, shadowy creatures racing over head. He had already been beaten. Blood ran freely from his almost toothless mouth and he had soiled himself with fear. She could actually smell his foul odour, along with the stench of the alcohol that the soldiers had imbibed continuously since they had found the stock of wine and mead lining the cool cellar walls below the refectory on the morning of their arrival. The older of the soldiers pulled the boy called Ham- she knew his name because the peasant girl knew his name (she found herself thinking the other woman's thoughts and at the same time felt the warmth of another beside her in her own thoughts)- by his hair until he knelt- panting heavily and oozing bloody mucus from his face- before the richly robed figure that dominated the centre of the marquee. Through Ham's blurred vision, the dead woman saw the garish jewelry that adorned the nobleman's hands and followed Ham's gaze up the mans green and white velvet robed arm, saw the ornate brooch depicting a triangle and a single eye at the Duke's lily white neck and saw the weak jaw and small chin that the noble had tried in vain to cover with a smattering of beard. His pale face was dominated by an aqualine nose and coal dark eyebrows that met through a finely meshed line of hair. The dead woman saw that the Duke was little more than a boy. Ham yammered in desperation for mercy and the boy noble nodded curtly at the soldier that held him by the scalp. The soldier immediately drew back a gloved fist and smashed it into Ham's back winding the peasant painfully. The questions followed soon after.

  Where were the abbots? Where was the gold?

  Upon denying knowledge, Ham was whipped. He had fully expected to die (like me, the dead woman thought, I'm dead- and she felt the peasant girl shudder at the thought) but the Duke had ordered Ham's release; he was to tell all that dwelt on the hillside that all would be killed unless the answers to their questions were forthcoming. The Duke considered for a moment and added that the first to die would be the youngest that they could find. Ham had staggered away from The Great Gates and fell face down in the mire created by a combination of the rain and the many horses. The other peasants, those that had survived the brutality of the Duke's soldiers- many of the elderly had shriveled at the mere sight of the whip- had been released with the assurance that there was no way of escaping the clutches of the army. After all, the encampment on the other side of the river stretched back over the far hillside and smoke from camp fires were clearly evident well into the distance. The feri-man was dead and only the soldiers controlled the crossing now. To pass by the Great Gates in order to circumnavigate the abbeie was suicide; a constant watch stood at all gateways to the holy edifice and at each corner of the outer perimeter wall. The peasant stock was trapped.

  *

  The tyme had come.

  She stept fro the shadows of the wall surrounding the Monksgarth and er she kenned the substance of what she wod sait to the D
uc the girl was discoveren.

  The dead woman withdrew to a safe distance in the girl's psyche; like the girl. she had found a safe haven from where she could witness all that took place; she too had her secrete places.

  They pusht her into the Duc's tent wi' roughe hands.

  The girl knelt before the weak featured young man and dared to look him in the eye. The intuition that she had been born with- an intuition that her father had forever hidden from the others and had brought her up to do the same for fear of what happened to those that had the ability to see beyond that which most could see- informed her immediately that this was a mistake. Madness shone in the boy's dark eyes, one of which drifted off to the side of the tent, the product of first degree incest. At that moment she knew why the soldiers that held her before him stank of alcohol; they were terrified of this child, in fear of what he might order them to do or what he would order others to do to them. Drunkenness was an aid to courage. The Duke boy hissed a command at the soldiers and hard hands tore the rags from her body. The dead woman felt the girl's shame as the boy's deformed eyes greedily took in her nakedness and at the same time shared the dawning of realization that this was a mistake. The girl's desire for revenge over the priests had blinded her to the possibilities of what could happen to her at the hands of these drunken soldiers; her single-minded plan to reveal the monks' whereabouts had caused her to break the one cardinal law that her father had taught her regarding the nobility: don't be seen, better to be invisible. The dead woman tried to withdraw to the darkness once more but the frightened girl held onto her with desperate clutching fingers in her mind. The soldier threw the girl to her knees and held her roughly by her hair in accordance with the noble boy's commands. They watched in disgust as the Duc unclasped his loinclothing to reveal his penis. The girl looked away repulsed by what he pushed towards her face. The soldier forced grabbed her by the jaw and forcibly made her turn to confront the Duc’s infected erection. It was ravaged by the disease that had infected his brain with insanity as it had eaten at his outer flesh, a sister to the leprosy of the Dark Ages. He pushed his diseased member against her tightly closed lips and the soldier jammed a thumb deep into her ear, the excruciating pain an encouragement to accept the Duc's gift to her. The dead woman tried to retreat from the girl's consciousness once more. Mercifully, at that point, the girl let her go.