The Essex Serpent(92)
No, there was no reason to continue – let the curtain fall when he chose it. He looked up at the branches of the oak, and they were sturdy enough for a gallows.
Just a moment longer there on the earth with the mist rising, then – since there was neither a hell to shun nor a heaven to gain he’d go out with the Essex clay under his nails and filled with the scent of morning. He drew in a breath and all the seasons were in it: spring greenness in the grass, and somewhere a dog-rose blooming; the secretive scent of fungus clinging to the oak, and underneath it all something sharper waiting in a promise of winter.
A vixen drew near and turned her gaslight eyes upon him, then drew back and sat surveying him a while. She cocked her head – considered his position on her territory – concluded he might stay, and losing interest nosed at the white plume on her breast. Then she grew avid and merry with hunger, and went down the hill in little leaps – sometimes spying something in the grass, jack-knifing with her forepaws crooked – and vanished down the incline with her bright brush held high. Luke felt a love for her then which almost made him cry out, and knew that no man ever had a better farewell.
7
At about the time Luke was choosing his own gallows from among the Essex oaks, Banks sat beside a fire high up the shingle, near the black bones of Leviathan, making marks in the logbook: Visibility, poor; wind, north-easterly; high tide 6.23am. For all that he’d witnessed the great silver fish lying beached on the saltings with its belly splitting open, Banks knew – with a certainty which had begun to obliterate all others – that the Essex Serpent had not been found. How could it, when he woke each night with its breath on his cheek – expected to wake and see himself enfolded in its wet black wing? When all of Aldwinter had celebrated, rolling out the cider-barrels and draining them dry, he’d sat at a distance, alone, thinking of his poor lost daughter and her coral-coloured hair. ‘All alone out there with the flotsam and jetsam,’ he’d said, ‘and the mark of the Serpent on her.’ Oh, there was something out there all right – he’d seen it, he’d marked it: black it was and ridged in places and its appetite unsatisfied. He drowned his sorrows in bad gin; it fended off the worst of the images that came in the night, but out there with his face to the rising tide they came vividly at him: the serpent in the Blackwater with a livid eye, its blunt snout, how it pawed at his daughter as she rolled dumbly in the shallows.
‘Did what I could to keep her dry,’ said Banks, growing tearful, looking about for a witness and finding none: she’d been born with a caul, had Naomi, and killed her mother coming out; and he’d done as any good sailor would and put a bit of caul in a pewter locket and she’d worn it every day to fend off water-sprites. ‘I did what I could,’ he said, and the fog rolled in, and dawdled by the fire.
He took a bottle from his pocket and drained it dry; the spirit stung his throat, and he doubled over coughing, and when he raised his head he saw surveying him placidly across the fire the black-haired son of that London woman who’d taken up with the rector.
‘Bit early for you, isn’t it?’ he said. The child had always unnerved him, with his steady gaze and his habit of patting his pockets over and over. If the beast was to take any child it ought to’ve been this one, whose presence raised all the hairs on his neck’s nape – who he’d once seen steal five blue sweets from behind the counter in the village store!
‘But isn’t it the same time for me as it is for you?’ said Francis Seaborne. ‘Did you see it?’
‘What are you on about – what do you want?’ said Banks, choosing to deny the serpent. ‘Nothing out there, lad, nothing to see.’
‘I don’t think you think that,’ said Francis, coming closer. ‘Because if you did, why would you be here and what are you writing in your book? Stands to reason.’
‘Visibility poor,’ said Banks, flapping the logbook at the boy. ‘And getting worse: I can hardly see you, never mind the Blackwater.’
‘I can,’ said the boy, and took a hand from his pocket to gesture out east where the fog banked up above the salt marsh. ‘My eyes are good. Over there. Can’t you see?’
‘Where’s your mother? Doesn’t she keep you indoors – keep back, won’t you – where did you go?’
Francis stepped away from the fire into the white air, and for a time Banks was alone again; then a slender figure appeared from a little away to his left, saying again, ‘Didn’t you see it then? Can’t you hear?’
‘No – no, there’s nothing there,’ said Banks, coming to his feet, kicking salt shingle over the fire: ‘There’s nothing there and I’m going home – let go of my hand! Only one child ever held it and she’s gone and won’t be coming back!’
The cold hand in his had a strength out of all proportion to its fingers; the boy tugged at him, trying to draw him near the incoming tide, saying, ‘Look harder, look better, don’t you see it?’
Banks shook him off, growing afraid, not of what lay out there on the wet mud but of the child, who stared so implacably back at him. ‘I’m going home now,’ said Banks, and turned away – then there came from close by the sound of something moving. It was a curious, low, muffled sound, deadened by the thickening fog; it was like the slow grinding of a jawbone, or of something scrabbling for purchase on the shore. Then there was a groan – rather high-pitched, and ending on something like a squeal – and the thick pale air lifted in the wind, and Banks saw the long low curve of something dark, hunched, in places glistening smooth and in others uneven and rough. It shifted against the shingle, and there was the groaning again; Banks called out to the boy, but the fog enclosed him in a pale shroud and he saw nothing. The glowing embers of the fire beckoned him, and he ran towards it, stumbling in the mud and the high tussocks of marsh-grass; once he fell, and felt his kneecap shift under his skin; then he half-hobbled home. As he went, his heart lifted, despite the terror: I was right – oh, but I was right!