His Vampyrrhic Bride (28 page)

Perhaps that training had imposed a calming influence. Yes, he now knew that Helsvir was real. So he hadn’t been hallucinating after all when he’d seen the brute attack Bolter’s gang at Mull-Rigg Hall. What’s more, he really had seen those stark, white figures on the hill that Mrs Bekk had declared were her vampiric children.

Then, in a day of bizarre events, came an equally bizarre moment. It could have been a symptom of the enormity of what he’d experienced tonight screwing up his emotions, but Tom felt almost happy.
Maybe love really is a type of madness. Here I am with Nicola, and everything feels alright with the world, even though it clearly isn’t. There’s the flood, and there’s a monster out there – and I don’t care. I don’t care one bit. It’s like I’ve been searching all my life for something that’s incredibly important, only I never knew what it was. But I’ve found it now. And it’s Nicola Bekk.

A sense of tranquillity settled over the flooded homes. He wondered if the shock of nearly being killed had driven him insane after all, yet it felt so beautifully peaceful to be sat here with his arm around Nicola. A warm bubble of security enfolded them.

They remained like that for almost an hour, Nicola resting against him in a drowsy state that seemed closer to sleep than being awake. Then something changed. The sounds of the water were different. Instead of random lapping sounds, or the soft gurgle of liquid swirling around walls, there came a rhythmic splashing.

Tom instantly recognized the sound.
Oars. Definitely oars. Somebody rowing a boat.

What he saw quickly bore this out. For, coming round the corner of the flooded road, was a small boat. A figure sat there; the head rose and fell as the figure steadily rowed by street lights and the tops of road signs. A lantern hung from the boat’s prow, creating the effect of a vessel drifting along in its own pool of amber light.

Without any fuss or sense of urgency, the boat drew closer to the building.

Then a man Tom had never seen before turned to look up at him. His skin was a smooth ebony black. He wore white-rimmed glasses. There was the white collar of a priest around his neck, and both the bone-white glasses and priest’s collar shone brilliantly in the dark.

He gazed at Tom for a moment. ‘I am collecting lost souls,’ the man declared. ‘I will collect the pair of you.’

‘We’re OK here.’ For Tom, sitting with his arm around Nicola, even in this bizarre setting, was a slice of pure heaven. ‘We’ll wait for the waters to go down.’

‘The flood is getting higher,’ announced the man. ‘Even though the rain has stopped, water is still decanting from the hills. Therefore, I invite you to step into my little ship. I have a place of safety for lost souls such as you . . . and I.’ He smiled. ‘Please come along. Otherwise I cannot guarantee your safety. In other words, you and your friend will die, sir. You will die.’

A
ncient Greeks believed that after they died a ferryman took them across the River Styx to the afterlife. Tom Westonby sat in the back of the small boat with his arm around Nicola; she rested her head against his chest as she slept. Without much of a mental stretch, he could imagine that this dark-skinned man was that ferryman – and they were crossing over to meet the Greek god of death.

The priest applied the oars to the water with a slow, rhythmic action. The village that had been drowned by the Lepping looked so tranquil in the moonlight. The upper parts of houses were mirrored by the floodwater. As the boat drifted through a surreal, half-submerged landscape this could have been the final journey from the world of the living to the realm of the dead.

The priest regarded Tom through those white-rimmed glasses. ‘You keep looking at my head.’ His deep voice was as relaxed as his work with the oars. ‘You know, when I started shaving off all my hair my wife said to me, “Joshua, your head now looks like a bowling ball. If your head should ever fall off those shoulders of yours, someone could stick a finger up each nostril, then pick up your head, and roll it at a set of bowling pins.”’

That was an extraordinary statement to make to a stranger. Tom found himself staring at the dark, round head of the priest.

‘So I am the man with the bowling ball head,’ declared the man. ‘I am also the parish priest for Danby-Mask. That makes me the Reverend Joshua Gordon Squires, though I’d like you to call me Joshua. Not Josh, however. Josh is the local dialect word for “joke”. For example, “Dear God in Heaven, is this a josh? You have flooded the village that I love. If you are joshing then I don’t think it is very funny.”’ He shot Tom a sharp-eyed glance. ‘So, stranger, what’s your name?’

‘I’m Tom. Tom Westonby.’

‘Ah, the famous Westonby family from Mull-Rigg Hall?’

Tom nodded, then asked the question he should have asked before boarding this little craft on its night-time voyage, ‘Joshua, where are you taking us?’

‘To safety. I don’t know what you were doing with the lady on the cottage roof, but this is a dangerous place tonight.’

Tom thought about Helsvir. Instead of raising spectres about a monster that might be lurking under the boat at this very moment, he said, ‘This is Nicola Bekk. I came into the village to find her.’

‘Ah, the equally famous Bekk family. Yes, I’ve heard a lot about them.’

‘Any of it good?’

‘You challenge me, Tom. I respect that. Because you suspect I believe any toxic gossip that comes my way. However, my job, and my nature, demands that I see good in people – until they prove otherwise. I am also open-minded. Absolutely open-minded.’

‘So where are you taking us?’

‘It’s the river that’s doing the taking. I can’t row against such a powerful current, so we’ll head for the parish church.’

‘It’s surrounded by water. We’ll be trapped.’

‘Think of it as a safe island. A sanctuary. What’s happened to your girlfriend?’

‘She’s exhausted. She might be in shock, too. Her house is gone.’

‘Ah, the demon flood.’

‘No, some lunatic burnt it down this morning.’

‘Flood
and
fire. Dare I say it? We have disasters of a Biblical nature.’

Nicola stirred sleepily. ‘Tom? Have we just made love?’

Joshua diplomatically glanced back over his shoulder as he rowed, as if to be sure of the way.

Tom gently tightened his arm around her. ‘Joshua is taking us to where we’ll be safe.’ Even as he spoke, he remembered what Nicola had told him. That as a little girl she’d been terrified of the Christian church. She’d even believed that the carving of Christ being crucified on the Cross was a warning of what the villagers would inflict on her. That she’d be nailed to the wood, too. Tom wondered what her reaction would be when she entered the building that had been the seat of Christian power in the village for the last thousand years: the Church of St George – the slayer of the dragon.

Just a hundred yards away stood the church. Its white stonework evoked a ghostly aura in the moonlight. Tom saw that the floodwater had stopped just a dozen feet from its walls. The church had been spared because it had been built on a mound of earth. However, the churchyard hadn’t been so lucky; that had become part of the new lake.

Joshua sat facing Tom and Nicola as he worked the oars. ‘You could help by guiding me in,’ Joshua said. ‘The water only just covers the gravestones. Some are pretty sharp – I don’t want any of those blessed things puncturing the bottom of our little ship.’

Tom gently laid Nicola down on the seat plank in the stern, then carefully made his way forward to the prow.

‘You move well on a boat, my friend.’ Joshua’s large, round head nodded in approval. ‘You are a seasoned boatman?’

‘I’m used to working on small dive boats.’ He found himself smiling at the man. ‘The first thing you learn is not to tip the thing over.’

‘Ah, then we will work well together . . . we lost souls of Danby-Mask.’

Tom found himself liking this quirky character with the deep, rumbling voice. Now that he’d moved to the front, where an old-style lantern was giving off its soft, amber light, he could see Joshua better. He judged the man to be anywhere between forty and seventy. The round, smiling face didn’t have any lines. No wrinkles at all. While the dark eyes behind the white-rimmed glasses suggested that here was someone of gentle wisdom. Yes, he liked the Reverend Joshua Gordon Squires. Tom decided he could trust the man.

Tom said, ‘Take her in slowly over the churchyard wall. It’s only a few inches under the surface.’

‘Ah, take
her
in. All boats are female, aren’t they?’ Joshua grinned, displaying an astonishing set of teeth. ‘If we treat her well, she might be kind to us.’ His hand patted the woodwork. ‘But, like a woman, we must never take her for granted.’ He laughed softly. ‘OK, Tom Westonby. Be my guide.’

Tom leaned out over the boat’s prow. Just a couple of feet below him was the floodwater. Beneath its surface were submerged gravestones. And beneath those lay hundreds of the Danby-Mask dead. They’d been collected into this hallowed ground for centuries.

‘Keep moving forward, Joshua. Slowly does it.’

The priest dipped the oars, gently propelling the boat towards dry ground.

‘Just pull with your left oar.’ Tom had spotted the stone hand of an angel, thrusting upwards above the surface. ‘Now straight ahead.’

Lamplight filtered down through the water, turning it pale yellow. As he gazed down into the murk he found himself expecting to see Helsvir suddenly looming into view. The boat seemed breathtakingly fragile – a little wooden box of a thing floating on this vast lake. The monster could smash it to pieces in a second.

A stark, white face stared up at him. His heart lurched. Then he sighed with relief. This was the marble face of a statue that adorned one of the big old tombs.

To his surprise, his voice remained calm as he talked the priest in closer to the new island that lay in the centre of the village. ‘I can see the footpath now. Just keep on this line. That’s it, nice and easy with the strokes. Nearly there . . . nearly there. OK.’

As the boat’s prow scrunched up on to the grassy slope that rose towards the church, Tom jumped clear. After that, he hauled the boat further up on to dry ground.

‘Here we are,’ declared Joshua, sounding pleased. ‘We are on
higher ground
in more senses than one.’

After the priest had climbed from the boat, Tom tied the line to a tombstone, then he collected Nicola. For now, he didn’t need to worry about her reaction to entering the Church of St George, the dragon killer. She was deeply asleep. As he carried Nicola towards the church door, Joshua walked alongside, carrying the oil lamp.

Joshua paused at the doorway to look back along a street that now resembled a canal. ‘I am expecting another boat soon with more lost souls. You see, some people are reluctant to leave their homes when the flood comes . . . understandably so. They want to fight nature in order to protect their property.’ He regarded Tom with those wise eyes of his. ‘I can tell you are a man who will fight for what he loves, too.’ His gaze settled on Nicola.

‘You’re right. And I’m never going to stop fighting.’

‘I wholeheartedly approve.’ Then the man’s smile was replaced by a deadly serious expression. ‘You know, Tom. There is something else out there in the water: something other than that boat with more of our stranded friends. I’ve seen a leviathan in our village. I don’t know his name . . . but if I chose his name I would call him Death.’ Joshua’s shrewd eyes read Tom’s expression. ‘You know him too, don’t you? You’ve seen Death roaming this place.’

Tom held Joshua’s steady gaze. ‘Yes, I’ve met him. He isn’t Death, though. His name is Helsvir, and he’s worse than Death. Much worse. What’s more, I don’t know if there’s anything on earth that can stop him.’ He glanced down at Nicola’s sleeping face. ‘But, as you rightly say, Joshua, I am a fighter. So I’m going to kill that thing out there. Or die trying.’

He carried Nicola into the church. The moon shone through a striking image on a huge stained-glass window. The significance of the scene depicted wasn’t lost on Tom, because there was St George in golden armour. He was driving the point of his lance into the heart of the dragon.

T
he interior of the church captured the essence of tranquillity. Although Tom Westonby suspected this peaceful interlude would be brief. The final battle was coming. Soon there would be blood.

Whenever Tom entered an English church, which might have stood for over a thousand years, he felt as if he was walking into a storehouse that had gathered a quiet power into itself. This feeling of his didn’t flow from any particular religious faith. For Tom, it seemed as if the ancient stone walls had soaked up the emotions of the people that had worshipped and married under a roof that had weathered many centuries of brutal storms.

Tom watched over Nicola as she slept on a long bench at the back of the church. Meanwhile, Joshua, in his gleaming priest’s collar and white spectacles, quietly lit the candles. These were tall columns of cream-coloured wax that stood in brass-candlesticks as high as his shoulder. He also lit a pair of candles that stood at each end of the altar. Soon a pleasantly soft glow filled the church.

Although Tom hadn’t been inside St George’s before, it still had a familiar air. The building followed the pattern of many a traditional rural church. A central aisle led through bench-style pews to the altar beneath the main stained-glass window. The roof was supported by huge archways of stone. Lining one wall were the medieval tombs; these took the form of oblong sarcophagi, with carvings of their occupants lying on top: lords and ladies in pale marble. The figures lay on their backs, hands pressed together on their chests in prayer.

Tom watched the Reverend Joshua Gordon Squires glide through the church. He lit yet more candles that flanked the aisle. Their light gleamed on the dark skin of his shaved head. The man resembled an ebony angel: one that radiated an aura of protection.

This was a likeable man. A trustworthy and dependable one, too.