by A. W. Exley
The screaming cut through the afternoon silence like a horde of banshees from Hell, descending on the house with fiery bayonets at the ready. For the first time in my memory, Cossimo startled in the stalls and kicked out at the wall. That set off the other horses, and soon panicked whinnying accompanied the high-pitched wail.
Figuring I needed to stop the nerve-racking noise before I had any hope of calming the horses, I hurried out of the barn and across the yard. It wasn't a horde of banshees, but Alice running down the road yelling for attention.
Her breath finally ran out as she made the yard and she bent double, winded, as Magda and Steward emerged from the house.
"Ella. Arrested. But he was dead." She pointed down the empty road with a waggling finger and also tried to wail again, but didn't have the energy.
Magda pulled the young maid to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Deep breaths, Alice, then start from the beginning. Where is Ella?"
Panic washed down my spine and I peered down the drive, hoping to see Ella not far away. The two women had walked into town, enjoying the quiet that had descended after the flu pandemic had burned out. Now, only a hysterical Alice had returned. The noise even made the others venture outside to investigate.
Lady Jeffrey stood with hands on her hips and glared at the maid. "What is this confounded noise about? And where is Ella? She has chores to do."
Alice swallowed her screams and tears but the effort made her break out into hiccups. Magda rubbed her back as Alice tried to answer.
"Ella has been arrested, ma'am," she managed to say with only minimal interruptions from the hiccups.
I shook my head. It couldn't be true. What on earth could Ella have done to warrant arrest? The girls had gone to take Ella's sword to Father Mason to try and translate the symbols on the blade. No imaginable chain of events would lead to Ella committing a crime. We only had one local bobby and he was the easiest going of characters. He operated a gentleman's agreement with the locals and if we did anything illegal or untoward, he expected us to hand ourselves in. Most of the time he let us off our tomfoolery with a warning and a stern lecture.
"Arrested? For what?" Lady Jeffrey advanced. Her rich velvet housecoat billowed behind her in the wind and she appeared a vulture about to descend on poor Alice.
The maid's amber eyes widened and tears trickled down one side of her face. "Murder."
One word silenced us all. How could a walk to the village turn into murder? I wanted to grab Alice by the shoulders and shake events loose from her head, but I would have to rely on others to ask the questions.
"What?" Lady Jeffrey enunciated the single syllable loud and clear and it did a perfect job of posing the thousand questions stuck in my throat.
Magda drew Alice closer, to protect the maid as she spilled out her story. "There was a man. He attacked us and then the other men who came to protect us. Ella had that sword and she struck his head from his body."
Louise screamed and clutched at her breast. "A cold murderess, and to think we harboured her here all these years! I told you she had the look about her."
Alice's head shook back and forth so fast I'm surprised it didn't unscrew. "You don't understand. It was Tim Matthews."
Lady Jeffrey frowned. "Who is he? And how does knowing his identity condone Ella's actions? Let her rot in jail if she has turned to filthy acts of murder."
The name was ice thrust down the back of my shirt. A shiver ran over my skin as I began to grasp a small portion of Alice's terror. The name had meaning to me. He had returned from the war with a horrid chest wound and then contracted the influenza. Once he had lain in the ballroom of Serenity House as he tossed and turned on a small cot. His name had passed through my hands inscribed on a tag sewn into a shroud that I had delivered to the army tent on the village green.
Tim Matthews had died some six weeks before.
Stewart narrowed his gaze at me—he too knew the name. I had discovered something about the old retainer over the last couple of months. He didn't talk much but he was an excellent lip reader. I mouthed the words to him. Died of the flu weeks ago.
Stewart drew in a sharp breath and then swallowed. "Tim Matthews died of influenza some weeks ago, ma'am."
Magda pulled a hipflask from her apron pocket and gave Alice a big swig. The hit of the cook's secret formula fortified the younger woman and she calmed.
"He still had the big hole in his chest he got in the war. And his eye dangled out of the socket. Three big men couldn't stop him, and he chewed one fellow's nose off. Then he came for me, but Ella stepped in his path and stopped him."
I still couldn't reconcile the picture in my head. Tim Matthews was a tall chap, well over six feet. I would always see Ella as a slim, slight girl. Certainly one who would defend a friend, but what madness drove Ella to decapitate someone? Did Hell toy with us, allowing a temporary reprieve, so we thought the worst of events was over before plunging us all into madness?
I couldn't stand there any longer. I tapped Stewart's arm and then gestured over my shoulder to the barn. I needed to find out for myself what happened. The others could interrogate Alice but I needed to make sure Ella was all right.
And Hazel. I promised to help her to freedom once the pandemic passed, but it seemed insanity had followed the plague. Would we all turn on each other?
In the barn was our own little war secret, a Triumph motorbike that Sir Jeffrey had somehow detoured from the war effort and sent to Somerset. I wheeled the bike out and around the gaggle of people. One swift boot kicked it to life, and I zoomed down the drive before Lady Jeffrey could stop me. She could go whistle before I would do her bidding. My friend needed me and I would not fail.
The trip to the village passed in a blur. Questions overwhelmed my mind. Thoughts galloped off in different directions, each pulled by a different horse. Surely Alice was mistaken. The man Ella attacked was someone else and not a man I last saw sewn into a shroud. But that left the enormity of her actions. What made my lifelong friend become a killer?
I eased back on the throttle as I reached the village. The forest turned to open green and picturesque stone houses with thatched roofs. I passed the smithy with the constant smoke from its chimney. Horses stood in yards and stared at a motorcar parked where they normally stood to be shod. The hood up on the vehicle, but the blacksmith nowhere to be seen.
In the middle of our short main road stood our jail, a relic of a bygone era. Now that I had been to war, the squat building reminded me of buried bunkers built to withstand artillery fire. Except someone had dug this one up. Made of rough-hewn stones, it was roughly rectangular and divided into two. One half was the cell. The other half used as an office by the local policeman. At some stage the policeman's wife had tried to soften its appearance and planted lavender around the base of the building and lined the short path to the door with all sorts of flowers and shrubs.
I had seen inside the cell only once, when I had been exceptionally naughty and my mother thought a brief visit would cure me. The cold brick wall only contained one narrow view on the outside world. Even though it was too small to fit even a child's body, the window was nonetheless barred.
Perhaps drawn by the distinctive sound of the motorcycle, Ella's face appeared at the slit. Her hands wrapped around the bars, and her gaze lit on me. "Henry!"
I dropped the kickstand and leaned the bike to one side. She must have been standing on the bed to see out; I had to crane my neck to look up at her.
She pointed as far as she could out the window and down the road. "They are still there with his body. Go, I have to know if he was already dead or not. Did I really murder him, Henry?"
Her words made no sense. Either Alice was mistaken in her identification, or Tim Matthews hadn't stayed in his grave. The fact that he rose and returned to the village suggested we buried a living man. Would the sextant be charged with attempted murder? Perhaps others breathed soil through their shrouds and struggled to be free.
Quest
ions drove me mad, and I needed answers before I started cackling or running around pretending to be a duck. I trotted toward the crowd of people farther down the street. Amazing how a gruesome crime lures people out of doors despite the cold.
Several villagers stood around a long shape covered by a hastily thrown striped blanket. Except the shape didn't look right. Under the covering, a mound like a ball rested next to what I assumed was the torso. But not at the top where you would expect a head; this was tucked under the arm. Another low shape in the blanket seemed to be a limb, but it wasn't attached to anything judging by the way the blanket lay flat between the two objects.
Two men sat on the grass that ran to the footpath. One moaned continuously and held his face. Blood covered his hands. Women hovered and offered freshly torn bandages. Another had a bowl of water and a cloth and tried to clean his exposed skin.
The policeman had his notebook out, scribbling over the page as he tried to keep up with the stream of chatter around him. Three people at once tried to tell him what had unfolded. It seemed Alice only stayed long enough to see Ella thrown in jail and then scarpered before they could collar her for a statement. No wonder she was out of breath—she must have run all the way back to the house.
"—Seamus there pulled his arm off and he kept on attacking. How is that possible? I saw it with my own two eyes. Yanked his arm right out of the socket and then used it to beat him over the head and he kept on savaging John." One local waved his arms in the air as he relayed events. "Horrible noise. I'll never forget it. Tim there chewed poor John's nose right off."
John's moans got louder but the wounded man didn't remove his hands. Not that I wanted to see the exposed gristle in the middle of his face. I saw enough of the innards of men in Europe. Had time in the mass grave driven Matthews mad? Perhaps he thought the other man was a lump of steak, and hunger drove him to attack.
The older man continued his narration. "Then he lunged for young Alice. Ella Jeffrey had a sword, she drew it and chopped his head off. Then do you know what happened next? Do you?"
"No, Fred, you tell me what happened next." All credit to the bobby; he showed remarkable disinterest and patience as he wrote everything down in his leather bound notebook.
"He kept walking! Then he kind of dropped to his knees and felt around with the one arm he had left, like he was looking for his head. How is that possible? You tell me, how?" Fred kept shaking his head as though even he didn't believe what he had witnesses.
"Poor lad, we buried him last month. How did he last all that time underground?" someone behind me muttered.
There was a thought to fuel all our nightmares. How many had we buried alive under six feet of damp earth in our haste to cover any trace of the disease? Tim would first have had to claw out of his shroud, then dig his way out of the mass grave past the rotting bodies of those who had died. He was one of the first to die, one of the first to be interred, so how did he manage to return?
"She'll hang you know," another voice whispered. "Such a lovely family too and so terrible what happened to Sir Jeffrey."
Murmurs of agreement rippled over the bystanders. I couldn't tear my gaze from the strange collection of lumps under the blanket. Part of me needed to lift one corner and stare at Tim Matthews. Would I be able to tell when he died? The idea was so preposterous I couldn't even comprehend that I was entertaining the idea that a corpse had risen, returned to the village and attacked the men and Alice.
As horrible or incomprehensible as the truth was, Matthews had to have been a survivor. He had risen from the grave and returned from his nightmare to warn the village of his fate, only to be murdered by my best friend.
Yet something bothered me. An itch in my mind clamoured to be scratched. Pushing my way forward and digging deep inside for a shred of bravery, I grabbed the blanket and lifted the corner to reveal the sad form of a fellow soldier. People gasped, the policeman yelled, and someone hauled me back from behind.
The blanket fell from my grasp but I had seen enough.
The constable wagged his pencil in my face. "Come on, Henry, you should know better. That's interfering with police business. I can throw you in jail alongside her, you know."
Seizing the presented opportunity, I grabbed his pencil and notebook and scribbled a quick note before he could take them back.
If he was alive when Ella beheaded him, why isn't there any blood?
He read my hasty words, looked from notebook to body, and I swear the colour drained from his face faster than a rabbit running from the hounds.
10
The policeman and I stared at each other for a long, quiet minute trying to figure out where the blood went. A decapitated man should have bled profusely. There should have been rivulets of blood running down the road. There wasn't. Not a drop. And neither of us could explain it.
Eventually he blinked, waved his arms, and began issuing orders to clear up the scene. The body was to be moved to the house of the local doctor, the injured helped to their homes, and I was barred from seeing Ella. The bobby told me in no uncertain terms the accused murderer was not allowed any visitors.
Lucky the cell had a window, but I had no answers for her. I shook my head and mouthed that the doctor would investigate further. That one word, investigate, caused us both a few headaches as Ella tried to lip read from a strange angle and I became frustrated that my throat wouldn't make the noises.
I clasped her outstretched hand, and with a hollow feeling in my stomach, promised to return. Then I reclaimed the motorcycle. I had little to report when I returned to the house. The others bombarded me with questions, but I knew no more than they did. Alice shuddered when asked to recollect everything about Matthews. We could only wait for the official outcome.
Louise seemed gleeful at the prospect of Ella being hanged, and I overheard her asking her mother what one wore to a trial. She pondered whether the crime was salacious enough to appear in a national newspaper. If I live a thousand lifetimes I still won’t understand women.
Questions kept clawing at the soft surface of my mind, trying to break free. We all needed to know the truth about Tim Matthews. Was he alive or dead in the moments before Ella removed his head?
Stewart embarked on his own investigative process. He went to the local pub, the source of all local gossip and speculation. He returned with a titbit of information: a group of men and Father Mason were going to investigate where Matthews had been buried.
There was no way in Hell I wanted to go digging around in a mass grave looking for more people not dead under the ground. But I had to, for Ella. Plus Alice did those puppy eyes that melt your innards and make you agree to do just about anything. I pity the fellow she fixes those amber eyes on. He won't stand a chance.
The next day, after dawn flushed the sky and as the sparrows rose from the hedges, I set off for the expanse of paddock behind the church. I didn't make it far down the road before another rider approached from the opposite direction.
With a nudge, I steered Cossimo to one side and out of the way of the faster horse so we didn't get barrelled. But on seeing us, he slowed to a trot and then a halt. A frigid snake slithered down my spine and raised goose bumps along my flesh.
Mr Morris.
And he didn't look happy to see me.
He glared at me from under black brows and pinned me to the spot as effectively as if he wielded a lance and caught me on the tip. He pointed a finger and jabbed holes in the air while I waited for him to speak.
"Rachel said I was not to find you until I calmed down."
He should have waited longer. Perhaps a year might be sufficient. Rage rolled off the man like heat from a bonfire. If this was calm, I pitied Hazel for the inferno that must have blanketed her when she finally returned to the tower on Guy Fawkes night. It also worried me that three weeks had passed and he still didn't have a grip on his temper. I hoped Cossimo was poised for a quick exit.
Mr Morris pushed the brim of his hat up with a finger and then
scowled at me. "You'll not go near my daughter again, you understand?"
By the way his jowls worked back and forth, he wanted to say a lot more than made it out. Or was he imagining my skinny neck under those massive hands strangling the reins? I may have been at a loss on the battlefield, but I would stand tall for Hazel and help her escape the suffocating grasp of her parents.
If I could muster the courage, now would be the ideal time to ask him what happened to our letters. I would question him about what damage had he thought our correspondence would do to his daughter's immortal soul. It weighed down my heart to think that this father deprived his daughter of the one outside contact she had, cut her off from the one person who wanted to give her a glimpse of the wider world.
"Do you understand, Henry? She is ours to protect, not yours to take, and Hazel will never leave the enclosure again." He controlled his voice but spittle fired with every word. Deadly shots of poison, hurled to terrify me into compliance.
But I wouldn't comply. For once in my life I fully intended to disobey a direct order. I made Hazel a promise. It would be a far bigger sin to break my promise to the girl who held my full allegiance. I would serve her until the day my heart stopped pumping blood through my body.
Thinking of blood and bodies reminded me of my current mission. I needed to get moving. I nodded my head. Mr Morris could interpret that as whatever answer he wanted.
"Good. Don't come near our property again or I'll not be held responsible for the consequences." He booted his horse and the poor gelding grunted and then jumped into a canter.
Cossimo snorted and shook, dispelling the bad mood lingering like a cloud in Mr Morris' absence. Reaching down, I scratched the cob. I shared his sentiment and was glad the interview was brief and to the point. And a wasted journey for Mr Morris, who had no idea how desperate his daughter was to escape her tower.
I would work to undermine the stones and see the tower tumble down.
A fog descended over my mind and I gave the horse his head. He knew the way and it allowed me time to wander the maze of jumbled thoughts. Amongst questions about Hazel, her father, and what punishments he might have imposed, swirled images of war. Charging men, roars of anger, the cries of the wounded. And layered over all that, the stench of rotting flesh and the foetid odour of overflowing latrines that would make you gag as you hurried around the camp.