The Essex Serpent(18)
The pleasure of giving illuminated him, and Will took them graciously, feeling a restriction in his throat. Quite a pie they’d make, he said; and Johnny’s favourite, as it happened – then, as if he wanted to give something in return, he hung the rabbits from his belt, in the farmer’s fashion, and said: ‘Mr Cracknell, tell me what you’ve seen, because I cannot think whom to believe, or when. A poor man drowned: but after all drowning’s not so rare in winter. A sheep was gutted I’m told, but foxes must make their living too, and the child they said was lost overnight was found in the morning in a linen cupboard eating her mother’s sweets. Banks brings strange news on his barge from St Osyth and Maldon, but you and I know him for a liar, do we not? Then there are whisperings in doorways and outside the Inn, and they say a baby was snatched from a boat at Point Clear, but whoever took an infant to sea when the days are short and cold? Tell me you have yourself witnessed something to fear, and then perhaps I’ll believe it.’ He fixed his gaze on the old man’s eyes, which could not quite seem to meet his; they slid over his shoulder to the empty horizon behind.
Knowing the value of silence, Will refused to speak, and in a moment Cracknell – sighing, shrugging, busying himself with his knife – said, ‘The point is not what I see, but what I feel; I cannot see the ether, yet I feel it enter and depart, and depend upon it. I feel that something is coming; sooner or later, my words be marked. It has been before, as well you know, and it will come again, if not in my lifetime in yours, or in your children’s, or in your children’s children’s, and so I will gird my loins up, Parson, and if I might make bold a moment, I would recommend that you do similar.’ Will thought of the church with its carved remnant of the old legend, and wished (not for the first time) that he’d taken hammer and chisel to it on the morning of his arrival.
‘I have always put great store on you, Mr Cracknell, and will continue to do so; perhaps you can consider yourself the Aldwinter watchman, out here at World’s End, and set a beacon in your garden for a warning. – The Lord make his face to shine upon you, whether you want it or not!’ said Will, and on this light blessing turned and left for home.
He imagined himself walking just a little faster than the night, so that he might arrive at the door a moment before darkness. Cracknell’s scarebeasts and his visible fear had given him pause, not because he thought some aberration lay waiting in the Blackwater biding its time, but because he felt it a failing of his that his parish could have succumbed to such godless superstition. No-one could agree on its size, form or origins, but there seemed a consensus that it favoured the river and the dawn. There had been no witness to any attack, but in the weeks since the end of summer the unseen thing had been blamed for every mislaid child and every broken limb. He’d even heard it said that its urine poisoned the water-pump down at Fettlewell, and caused the sickness which had left three dead on New Year’s Eve. Resisting Stella’s gentle suggestion that he speak directly from the pulpit, he’d instead chosen a brisk refusal to acknowledge the Trouble, not even when he discovered that each Sunday morning the congregation – with unspeaking unity – would not sit in the pew with the serpent carving, as if being near it put flesh and bones on their terror.
The night at his heels, he walked on, turning once to see the white moon rising with its marred face. The wind strengthened in the reeds, which gave out a single mournful note, and Will felt a quickening just behind his ribs that was very like fear, and laughed: there – how easy it was to turn your face from nothing more than a shadow. And perhaps it would be wise to make use of the Trouble, if it proved impossible to ignore – few things turned the heart to eternity more surely than fear. The Aldwinter lights appeared up ahead, and somewhere among them his family waited – their bodies solid, warm, soap-scented, each with the fine fair down on their cheeks he’d carried as a boy; wholly real, impossible to deny, never for a moment quiet or still, so that no shadow could contain them – and he felt such a rush of joy that he gave a quiet shout (and was it also one of warning or challenge, in case there was after all a wild dog loose?), and ran the half-mile home. John was waiting, standing one-footed on the gatepost in his white nightclothes. Seeing Will he roared, ‘By the pricking of my thumbs!’ and buried his face in his father’s coat. Feeling the rabbit fur on his neck, he said: ‘You’ve done it! You’ve brought me a pet!’
Cora Seaborne
c/o The Red Lion Inn
Colchester 14th February My dear Imp!
How are you? Are you keeping warm? Are you eating properly? How’s your cut – have you healed? I’d’ve liked to have seen it. Did it go very deep? You must keep your scalpels sharp and your wits sharper. Oh dear: I do miss you!
We are well, and Martha sends her – oh, you won’t believe that, will you? Francis doesn’t send his love at all, but I don’t think he’d mind seeing you again, if you were to come down, and that’s as much as any of us can hope for. WILL you come down? It’s cold, but the sea air is good, and Essex nowhere near as bad as they say.
I’ve been over to Walton-on-the-Naze and out to St Osyth and I haven’t found my sea-dragon yet – not even a bit of crinoid sea-lily! – but you know I don’t give in easily. The man who owns the hardware store here thinks me mad as a hatter, and has sold me two new hammers and a kind of suede belt to hang them from. Martha says I never looked odder or uglier, but you know I’ve always thought beauty a curse and am more than happy to dispense with it completely. Sometimes I forget that I’m a woman – at least – I forget to THINK OF MYSELF AS A WOMAN. All the obligations and comforts of womanhood seem to have nothing to do with me now. I’m not sure how I am supposed to behave and I’m not sure I would, if I knew.