The Essex Serpent(102)

They walked on past Leviathan, feeling the air damp against their cheeks; the fog on the banks of the Blackwater was thick, particulate, full of pearly grains. A little distance away a watchman must’ve set a fire burning and later left his post: its embers gave off a yellowish haze that shifted as the wind moved the mist.

‘It’s gone,’ said Joanna, ‘and there was nothing to be afraid of after all, but all the same my heart is beating – I can hear it! Are you afraid? Shall we go on?’

‘Yes,’ said Naomi, ‘and yes.’ It was necessary to be afraid in order to have courage: this is what her father taught her out on the desk of his barge. ‘Let’s go on – mind there, it gets deep.’ She knew the saltings well, and all its creeks and high tufts of marsh-grass: ‘Hold onto my arm and trust me,’ she said, ‘the tide turned an hour ago. We’re safe.’ It pleased her to be there again with her friend, only with everything altered: she was not poor Naomi, slow to read, biddable, in awe of the rector’s daughter – these were her elements, and she felt in command. All the same, it was a dim, uneasy evening. The sea-fog disclosed the marsh in small portions (it parted and there was an egret waiting out the mist) then closed and they were all alone. Once there was a moment where the sun beat through the fog, and they discovered they were surrounded on all sides by dabchicks whinnying and diving. ‘As lost as we are,’ said Joanna, laughing, and wishing she were at home. ‘Let’s go back now,’ she said. ‘What if we can’t find the way?’ She clung to Naomi, despising her just a little for taking charge, stumbling against the rotting posts of an oyster bed and crying out.

‘What if it’s still here,’ said Naomi, only half-teasing: ‘What if it’s still here after all and has come back for us?’ Out of a shameful desire for revenge she withdrew her arm and stepped backward into the mist, and cupping her hands to her mouth gave a kind of beckoning call. ‘I’ll summon it, shall I?’ she said, frightening herself, but not wanting to stop. ‘Watch out! Here it comes!’

‘Stop,’ said Joanna, fighting unwomanly tears: ‘Stop it! Come back – I can’t find the path …’ When Naomi appeared again, a little ashamed of herself, she struck her on the shoulders: ‘You’re horrible, horrible, I could’ve walked out into the estuary and drowned and it would have been your fault … What? What is it? Nomi – stop playing games, when you know full well it was just a great big fish …’ Beside her, Naomi had gone very still, and put out a restraining hand. It was not towards the estuary she looked, where the Blackwater rolled out to join the waters of the Colne, but back towards the shore, where the fire still glowed coral-coloured through the fog. ‘What?’ said Joanna, on her tongue the copper-penny taste of fear: ‘What have you seen, what is it?’

Naomi’s hand on her sleeve flexed and tightened – she drew her friend nearer and put her mouth close to her ear: ‘Shh …’ she said, ‘shh now … look, up by Leviathan, can’t you see? Can’t you hear?’ Joanna heard, or thought she did: a kind of groaning or grinding, coming in fits and starts, without reason or pattern. It fell silent, then struck up again, seeming nearer; from scalp to fingertips she felt a dreadful chill that left her fixed in place. It was there – it had been there all along, waiting, waiting – it was almost a relief, to think they’d not been duped after all.

Then the pale pall lifted, and there it was – fifty yards distant, no more: black, snub-nosed, bulkier than either had imagined; wingless or sleeping, blunt-tailed, with an ugly lumpish surface, not the sleek lapping scales of fish or serpent. Naomi half-screamed, half-laughed, turning to bury her face in Joanna’s shoulder: ‘I told you!’ she whispered, hissing: ‘Didn’t I tell everyone?’ Joanna took a step towards it, curiously unafraid – then it shifted, and there was that grinding again, almost of great teeth moving against each other in hunger, and she shrieked, and leapt back. The fog closed about it, and they saw nothing but a shadow biding its time.

‘We have to go,’ said Joanna, forcing down a yell of fear: ‘Can you get us back – look, the fire’s burning there on the bank – go towards it, Nomi, keep your eyes on it and don’t make a sound …’ But the fire’s embers dampened, and the light faded, and for a while they stumbled helpless and blind on the shingle, each keeping back tears only for the sake of pride. ‘Ready or not – ready or not –’ muttered Naomi for consolation; then the low sun pierced the fog-bank and they found they’d come hard up against it, had almost stumbled on its wet black flank. Joanna yelped, and pressed her hand to her mouth: there it was, there, after all this time only an arm’s length away – blind, slumbering perhaps, impossibly ungainly on the bank – was it sleek in water, in its native element? Did it go beneath the waves and grow slick and gleaming? What of the wings, outspread like umbrellas, someone had said: had they been clipped and who had clipped them? And there was something else – some bluish marking on its belly: something she half-recognised, could almost make out in the thinning mist.

Beside her, Naomi stood bolt upright, hands flung up, on the verge of the laughter that drove the schoolgirls mad. She was pointing at the markings, mouthing at the air; there was the grinding again, and she flinched, but all the same drew closer. ‘Mummy,’ she said: ‘Mummy …’ and for a moment Joanna thought she was calling for her mother, who lay in the churchyard under the cheapest headstone to be had. ‘Look,’ said Naomi, whispering, ‘Look there: I know those letters, even upside down – Gracie it says – Gracie, my mum’s name, the first one I ever wrote down and I never forgot it, not for ten years –’ Forward she ran on the shingle, in the lifting mist, and Joanna tried to call her back. But all the fear had left her friend, and took with it her own terror, so that she too moved towards the dark shape shifting on the marsh.