Wakenhyrst

by Michelle Paver

  ‘Shall I walk you home, Miss—’

  ‘No I’m fine,’ she croaked. ‘Thank you, Walker.’

  Somehow, she found her way back to Wake’s End and up to her room. Her face in the looking-glass was bright-eyed and almost pretty, a different girl from the one who’d trudged to church with Father. This Maud had brutally despatched Miss Broadstairs and had stood chest to chest with Clem. This Maud had wanted to kiss his throat and clamp her mouth to his.

  She repressed a spurt of jittery laughter. This is impossible. You’re only fourteen.

  But the new Maud, the one who wanted to touch and be touched by a handsome young man, replied calmly: Yes, but that’s the same age as Alice Pyett when she was wed.

  Maud pictured Miss Broadstairs’ horror if she ever found out. And Lady Clevedon’s, and Father’s.

  ‘Your daughter’s in love with the under-gardener,’ she said aloud. ‘How do you like that, Father?’

  THE 29th of January was St Agnes’ Eve, an auspicious night for love charms. All the female servants believed in them and Maud had grown up knowing how to read the name of one’s future husband in a curl of apple peel, and how to count the years till the wedding by the number of times a cuckoo called.

  Last Midsummer’s Eve, Ivy had plucked an ivy leaf from outside Father’s study and tucked it in her bodice. ‘Ivy, ivy, I pluck thee,’ she’d chanted with her sly smile. ‘In my bosom I lay thee.’ According to the charm, the first man she encountered would be her husband. She later admitted with a grin that she had indeed met a man, but she wasn’t saying who.

  Midnight approached and Maud waited, wrapped in her coverlet. The fire had gone out and her room was glacial. Outside, the fen lay frozen beneath a thin crescent moon.

  Moonshine, she thought wryly. If Jubal had known what she was doing he would have spat his contempt in a stream of tobacco juice – and he’d be right. Maud knew very well that all this was nonsense, but she still wanted to do it. No doubt Father would attribute such inconsistency to the fact that she was female.

  On the bed lay the penny knife she’d bribed Daisy to buy in Wakenhyrst. She picked it up, enjoying its weight in her hand.

  The clock downstairs chimed midnight. Tightening her grip on the knife, Maud jabbed its tip with all her strength into the bedpost. ‘’Tis not this post alone I stick,’ she whispered, ‘But Clem’s heart I wish to prick. Whether he sleep or whether he wake, I’d have him come to me and speak.’

  Her voice didn’t sound like her, and the words of the old charm – or was it the knife? – gave her a heady feeling of power.

  She did not for one moment believe that this would have any real effect, but for the first time in her life she understood how wisewomen felt. And witches.

  ‘Miss Broadstairs thinks you must be ill,’ Father told Maud at dinner the following week. ‘You don’t look ill.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m perfectly well,’ replied Maud, taking a second cutlet from the dish Ivy was holding.

  ‘She says in her note that I oughtn’t to let you type my work. She says it’s giving you “odd ideas”. Can that be true?’

  ‘Of course not. I never pay any attention to what I type.’

  ‘Well, in future you’d better keep what ideas you have to yourself. You appear to have upset her.’

  ‘I’m sorry for that, Father. Is she up and about yet?’

  ‘In a day or so, I gather. We’ll say no more about it.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  It was nearly a week since the ‘quiet word’ in the vestry, after which Miss Broadstairs had suffered a nervous attack and taken to her bed. As Maud helped herself to potatoes, she was struck by the fact that she felt neither guilt nor remorse at having caused the rector’s daughter to fall ill.

  It’s her own fault, Maud decided as she spooned mustard on her plate. She got in my way.

  From The Book of Alice Pyett,

  transl. & exegesis by E.A.M. Stearne

  After bearing her fourteenth child in great bodily pain, this creature tried to hang herself, for she longed to be out of this sinful world. Her husband’s manservant cut the rope, so she ran to the river and threw herself in; but her gown kept her afloat and she could not drown. She fled to the house of her sister, who put her to bed and went to fetch this creature’s husband. While this creature was alone, she tried to stab herself with a blade, but her husband and sister returned and took it from her. After that she was locked in a chamber and tied up day and night…

  The front door slammed. Maud stopped typing and went out into the passage.

  To her astonishment, both pairs of study doors stood open and the room was empty. How extraordinary. Father never left his desk exposed to prying eyes.

  Having made sure there was no one about, Maud swiftly checked the drawer where he kept his notebook. It was gone. It had been gone since the day of Lady Clevedon’s visit. Maud suspected that Father had taken it to his bedroom, but so far she hadn’t dared look.

  Glancing up, she was startled to see him through the window. He was in the garden, in the corner where the yew hedge met the Lode. It was freezing, the lawn was white with frost; but he stood hatless and coatless, staring down at the Lode.

  What was he doing? Surely there was nothing to see but dead reeds poking through ice.

  And he’d left his desk in disarray. His pen lay where he’d flung it, ink spattered across the page. Had something in Pyett upset him?

  Keeping an eye on him in case he turned round, Maud scanned the paragraph he’d just written.

  Then this creature was very ill and people said she would die, so her husband sent for a priest, that she might confess her sins. But this creature had a thing on her conscience that she had never revealed in all her life. And now not even to her confessor would she reveal it, even though she knew that for this sin she would be damned, and would suffer the torments of hell for eternity.

  From the Private Notebook of Edmund Stearne

  9th February 1912

  I admit it, that passage in Pyett was a shock. But the shock has worn off and I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself. How melodramatic to have rushed from the house – and in the middle of winter! I’m lucky I didn’t catch a chill.

  What did I imagine I was doing out there? I really can’t say. All I know is that as I stood staring at the Lode, I experienced the strangest sensations of guilt and fear – especially fear – even though I had no idea of what I was afraid. Then an image came to me of something submerged: I think it was hair – or perhaps weeds. I had a powerful conviction that there was something under the ice. Something alive, fighting to get out. I didn’t know what it was, I only knew that I was frightened and intensely desirous that the thing should remain trapped, so that it couldn’t reach me.

  The cold brought me to my senses. The whole experience can’t have lasted more than ten seconds – and yet it remains with me still.

  What tricks the mind plays! Until I read that paragraph in Pyett about her ‘unconfessed sin’, I had never imagined her as being capable of any kind of sin, let alone sin of such gravity that it would weigh on her conscience for years. It is this that shook me. That’s why I experienced such an intense reaction today. I’ve become so engrossed in my translation that in some unaccountable way I seem to have associated her sin with myself. That’s why I felt guilty and ashamed – when in fact the guilt is hers.

  I must guard against becoming excessively involved with my work, it can’t be healthy. And it doesn’t help that I’ve been sleeping poorly for the past week. That can’t be for lack of connection, that side of things is quite satisfactory.

  Perhaps it’s all the fuss about the Doom. Miss B. and the rector talk of little else. They’re preparing what they’re now calling ‘the west gallery’, i.e. the room in the tower, for the thing’s arrival. All this hardly conduces to peace.

  Cum Ivy, stans. Sed non bene.

  Later

  It occurs to me that the image of something submerged which came to me this
afternoon at the Lode was the same that I had in the churchyard when I saw the eye in the grass – that is, when I found the Doom. An odd coincidence. Although perhaps not so coincidental. In both instances I was near water. No doubt that is what caused it.

  12th February

  This morning I found it devilishly hard to concentrate in church. I have been worshipping in St Guthlaf’s since I was old enough to hold a hymn book, and I know every inch of its appointments. Why then should it have taken me until today to notice quite how much of a flavour of the fen it has about it?

  Of course I’ve long been familiar with those toads on the chest near our pew, but I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that the green man at the base of the font is peering from a clump of bulrushes; or that so many of the grotesques on the corbels are carrying eel glaves.

  I suppose such features are hardly surprising, given that the stonemasons who built this church would have been local men. At that time the fen stretched from here to the Wash. Naturally they incorporated it into their carvings. It’s simply odd that I’ve never noticed until now.

  But it wasn’t only that. I kept catching whiffs of the fen itself: a swampy rottenness that seemed to come and go, making it doubly distracting. Marsh gas in the middle of winter? How can that be?

  No one else seemed to perceive it. Certainly not Maud, who sang as loudly and unmusically as ever. Though I daresay that’s to be expected. Her organism is less finely tuned than mine, her perceptions not nearly as keen.

  13th February

  Awful dream, awful. It cast a pall over the whole day. I write this after dinner, and am still not fully recovered.

  I dreamed that it was summer and I was standing at the edge of the Mere – which in itself is remarkable as I haven’t been near it since I was a boy. In the dream I was horribly reluctant to look into the water, and yet at the same time I felt a strong compulsion to do precisely that. I tried to pull back, but I could not. Some unseen will was battling my own, forcing me closer to the edge. As I approached, I became aware that something was rising from the deep. I could not – I would not – lean over to see what it was; but I knew, with the perception one has in dreams and which doesn’t require sight, that the thing was rising inexorably towards me. Nearer and nearer it came. I tried to scream, but what came out was a wheezing cry. Dread squeezed my chest. If the thing broke the surface…

  I woke. It was morning, and some bird was pecking at the window. As I lay panting and shuddering, I saw writing printed on the ceiling in angry black letters: WAKE.

  With a cry I awoke – this time, for real. The bird was still pecking at the window. Tumbling out of bed, I flung aside the curtains and raised the blind – and that wretched magpie of Maud’s flew off with its clattering cry.

  Insupportable. I shall speak to her about this.

  14th February

  The whole parish is in a state of high excitement, for tomorrow the Doom will be unveiled. It arrived yesterday, the ghastly Jacobs having allowed ample time. He took it upon himself to accompany it from London, so of course he’ll be attending its unveiling – which rather casts a damper on the whole affair. I gather that all went well in transit, and it is now safely installed in the chamber at the foot of the tower. No one has yet been allowed to see it except the rector and Miss B. It remains shrouded, and the door to the tower is locked. A sensible idea, I think.

  This morning, even though there was nothing to see, the congregation was distracted, people whispering and craning their necks at the locked door. There has been so much interest among the lower orders that Broadstairs has arranged a second, public ‘viewing’, to be held the day after our more select gathering. Concerning the latter, Miss B. has been making herself a nuisance. Her housemaid being indisposed, she has asked if she may ‘borrow’ Ivy to help serve the refreshments. Why must the wretched female trouble me with such trivia?

  The moment the service ended, she trotted up and offered to vouchsafe me an advance ‘peep’ at the painting. I declined, saying that I didn’t wish to spoil the suspense of her soirée (nor do I want to be beholden to her!).

  I wish now that I’d taken up her offer. It would have been a relief to have seen the thing in private, and got it over with. Why this apprehension? I ought to find the painting of particular interest, not least because Pyett herself must have seen this scared work many times.

  15th February

  In the previous entry, instead of writing ‘sacred’, I wrote ‘scared’. An odd mistake to have made. I think I shall ask old Grayson for a nerve tonic.

  I write this at five o’clock in the morning, having slept poorly. I didn’t imagine that smell in church the other day, it was there again yesterday, even though all the windows were shut. Moreover the weather was windless: no breeze to waft a miasma from the fen. And oddly enough, I couldn’t smell the fen at all when I went out into the churchyard. So why could I smell it inside the church?

  Doubtless the stink is coming from below. I shall speak to Farrow about the drains.

  Later

  It took ages for the sky to lighten, but at last dawn has broken. A black frost, and strangely still. An important day for the parish – or so some would have us believe. Tonight I shall behold our Doom.

  ‘I CAN’T say that I care for that hat,’ said Father as they walked home under the stars.

  ‘Don’t you, Father? It’s only my old one with a new ribbon. Are you feeling any better?’

  ‘I told you, it was only a momentary indisposition. I can’t be the first man with whom Miss Broadstairs’ “refreshments” have disagreed.’

  Maud turned her head to hide a smile. It was a cold, clear night and the stars were astonishingly bright. She was in an excellent mood.

  She had thoroughly enjoyed the unveiling of the Doom. The room at the foot of St Guthlaf’s tower had lent a fitting air of medieval discomfort to Miss Broadstairs’ soirée. Its thick stone walls had glinted forbiddingly in the glare of the gas-jets, and the ambience of a dungeon had persisted despite the warmth from two paraffin heaters and the press of bodies.

  The Doom itself was far larger than Maud had expected, a giant wooden semi-circle that occupied the whole of the west wall. It was covered in dustsheets until the rector called for silence and Lady Clevedon pulled the cord to a smattering of applause.

  There followed a startled silence. Someone gasped. Someone else cleared their throat.

  Dr Jacobs, being the most familiar with the painting, took it upon himself to speak. ‘Isn’t it splendid? Rustic – naïf, one might almost say – yet with undeniable moral force.’

  ‘Quite so,’ murmured Dr Grayson, ogling a large naked female whose rosy flesh was painted in unflinching detail, with brownish nipples and a slit between her legs.

  ‘Marvellous colours,’ Lady Clevedon said stoutly.

  ‘Wonderful,’ echoed Miss Broadstairs. ‘But – why does Satan have that second face on his, er, lower parts?’

  There was more coughing, and the rector pretended not to have heard.

  ‘It’s a metaphor, dear lady,’ said Dr Jacobs. ‘For the, um, baser appetites.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Miss Broadstairs.

  Dr Jacobs turned to Father. ‘What do you think, Stearne? Fascinating, eh?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Father.

  Maud had watched him closely when Lady Clevedon pulled the cord. Unlike everyone else in the room, he’d ignored the naked sinners in Hell. His eyes had gone straight to Satan. But it wasn’t the Devil’s strangely green face that had held his gaze, nor the repulsive second head that jutted from between Satan’s legs. It was the scroll which the Devil gripped in one scaly fist, with its motto in emphatic black Gothic lettering: This sinner is mine, because of his sin.

  Christ sat on a rainbow at the top of the Doom, presiding over the Day of Judgement. In the background the newly resurrected dead were climbing out of their graves: some still shrouded from head to foot like bolsters, others emerging pinkly naked. Angels led the Saved to a bland gr
een Heaven, while devils dragged the Damned into Hell.

  In the foreground a giant, winged St Michael stared serenely skywards as he weighed a terrified little soul in a pair of scales. Satan, also a giant, confronted the saint with a grin; he clearly intended to claim the soul for his own. In keeping with tradition, the Prince of Darkness had horns, a tail and a pair of large bat-like wings. But his hook-nosed features and scrawny limbs were a swampy green, and in his ragged knee-breeches and sleeveless jerkin he looked for all the world as if he’d just come in from the fen.

  Behind him, between the Jaws of Hell, hordes of lesser demons were gleefully torturing the Damned. Here the painter had outdone himself and fitted each torment to its sin with sadistic attention to detail. One devil had disembowelled a paunchy glutton and was stuffing his entrails down his throat. Another had speared the tongue of a naked female gossip and was swinging her screaming over his shoulder.

  ‘Vivid, ain’t it?’ chuckled Lord Clevedon at Maud’s elbow.

  ‘I think it’s hideous,’ she said.

  ‘Ha ha, very good!’ Having done his duty by her, he shuffled off to raid Ivy’s tray of savouries.

  ‘Not to your taste, Miss Stearne?’ said Dr Jacobs with his mouth full.

  ‘On the contrary, I like it. It’s so remarkably frank. After all,’ she added, catching Miss Broadstairs’ eye, ‘this is what the Bible says. Isn’t it?’

  This is what your faith means, she told Miss Broadstairs silently. You can dress it up with cherubs if you wish, but the man who painted this picture was rather more honest. He knew that it all boils down to a threat to keep people in line. That sketchy promise of Heaven if you do what you’re told – and the certainty of endless torture if you don’t. Take that, peasants. Now back to the fields and don’t even think about improving your lot.