The Essex Serpent(17)
‘A penny apiece, that’s right, and warm work besides.’ He laid the creature out, and deftly cut a loop at wrist and ankle.
‘Twenty years an Aldwinter man, and still your customs surprise me. Is there no better way of keeping moles from the crops than by scaring them off with their slaughtered brethren?’
Cracknell frowned. ‘Oh, I’ve a purpose in mind, Parson; you know that: you see I have a purpose in mind!’ Delighted, the man slipped a forefinger between flesh and skin and tested the ease with which he could part them. ‘I am aware that in some quarters I am considered not as they say the full shilling, not that I’ve lately seen a shilling, being content with such pence as might now and then come my way’ – and here a pause, and a direct glance at Will’s pockets, then down again to the task at hand – ‘And yet there you stand, God’s own man, and ask if I have a purpose!’
‘I felt it,’ said Will, gravely, ‘as if by instinct.’ The tearing of skin from flesh was like that of paper. Cracknell lifted his handiwork, inspecting it, well pleased with his skill; a ribbon of steam unfurled from the hot bare body in the cold air.
‘Scaring them off, oh yes –’ his jovial mood fractured, he busied himself with a length of wire, which he ran through the animal’s pink nose, nostril to nostril, and looped three times around the fencepost. ‘Scaring them off, says he! Though of what I might be scaring off there mightn’t be knowing now nor later I daresay, when a voice is heard of weeping and lamentation for our children, because they are not, and we will not be comforted …’ His hand on the wire trembled a little, and Will was appalled to see that so also did his lower lip. His first impulse, which came as much from training as from instinct, was to offer a word of comfort – but hard on its heels came a flash of irritation. So the old man too had succumbed to whatever trick of the light had the whole village taken in! He thought of his daughter running home weeping in terror at what might be creeping upriver towards them, and of notes slipped in the collection box urging he preach repentance of whatever sins had brought judgment to their door.
‘Mr Cracknell’ – briskly, with a little humour perhaps; let him see that there was nothing to fear but a long winter and a tardy spring – ‘Mr Cracknell, I may not quite be episcopal material, but I know misquoted scripture when I hear it. Our children are in no more danger now than they have ever been! Where are your wits? What have you done with them?’ Reaching out, he made a show of patting the other man’s pockets. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you’ve strung up these poor beasts to fend off some – some rumoured sea-serpent in the Blackwater!’
Cracknell was coaxed into a smile. ‘Gentlemanly of you to allude to my wits at all, Parson, on account of the general disbelief that I ever was in possession of such a thing as wits.’ He patted the mole on its stripped back with a fond gesture. ‘For all that, though, I do say and always have said that caution is the side best erred on; and if man or creature were minded to make their approaches here at World’s End my little scarebeasts here would give them pause.’ He jerked his thumb towards the rear of his dwelling, where a pair of tethered goats industriously cropped a circle of grass. ‘I’ve Gog and Magog here for companionship, you understand, in addition to providing the milks and the cheeses which Mrs Ransome is so kind as to enjoy, and I’ll not risk their loss! Not I! I’ll not be left alone!’ There was the trembling again, but here Will felt on firmer ground: three times in three years he’d stood with Cracknell at the graveside: first wife, then sister, then son.
He clasped the old man by the shoulder: ‘Nor shall you; I have my flock, and you have yours, and the same Shepherd has their care.’
‘That’s as maybe, and I thank you for it; but I’ll not be darking your church door tomorrow all the same. I made my stand, Parson: take Mrs Cracknell and the Almighty will have to make do without me, you recall were my words; and I’ll not be dissuaded come high or low water.’
He wore now the mulish expression of a stubborn child, which was so greatly preferable to the threat of tears that it took Will an effort not to laugh, and instead to say, quite gravely, and conscious of the cost of a bargain struck with God: ‘You made your stand, and I’ve no right to come between a man and his word.’
Out on the saltings water crept towards the house and the lowering sun was cold. Beyond the marsh Aldwinter’s outlook was not of some other village on the far bank of the Blackwater, but of a broad horizon where the estuary met the North Sea. Will saw the lights of a fishing vessel headed home, and thought of Stella – tired by now, her small hands busy with the children – drawing back the curtain to look past Traitor’s Oak and see him coming. Longing for her, and for the sound of children at his study door, gave him a sudden distaste for the mossy house sinking into its patch of land; then he remembered Cracknell at the graveyard throwing a clod of earth onto a small pine coffin, and stood a while longer at the gate. ‘A minute more, Reverend,’ said Cracknell, ‘I have something for you.’ He was absorbed again into the side of the house, then emerged a moment later with a brace of handsome bright-eyed rabbits, newly caught, and thrust them at Will. ‘With my compliments to Mrs Ransome, who needs her strength, on account of the child-bearing years, which as Mrs Cracknell said tends to a thinning of the blood.’