His Vampyrrhic Bride (6 page)

‘Just over a thousand years.’

He laughed. ‘Sometimes it feels that long to me. There’s no cinemas, no night clubs. And I only came here a couple of months ago.’

‘No. Really.’ She took the stone from Tom and skimmed it. ‘Our family have lived here for more than a thousand years.’

He whistled. ‘That’s what I call commitment to location.’

After that, she told him about how she grew up in this remote valley. If anything, her memories weren’t of school, or about the people she’d met. Instead, she pointed out trees that she’d seen struck by lightning, or reminisced about the time the river flooded and the flow of water was so powerful she could lie in bed at night listening to boulders rolling along the river bed. ‘It sounded like angry men grumbling all night. When we woke in the morning the boulders had built up into a dam that threatened to flood the valley. The army had to blow it apart with explosives to let the water out.’

He liked the sound of her voice, so he was content to listen to her stories of rescuing wounded animals from traps, or the time archaeologists came looking for the Viking village that once stood at the bend in the river. ‘My mother knew where the site of the village was.’

‘So she showed the archaeologists where to dig?’

‘No way.’

‘Why?’

‘Would you want archaeologists pawing through your house?’

‘No, but surely—’

‘Thorpe Lepping is where my ancestors lived. It’s our land.’

Our land? He guessed that Nicola’s family were claiming moral ownership, rather than legal possession. He decided not to quibble over such things. Because he realized this surprising fact:
Nicola’s becoming more attractive by the moment.

In his imagination, the old schoolteacher whispered into his ear, ‘Tom Westonby. The woman has glamour – you know what that means? Witchcraft. The woman is casting a spell over you.’

When Tom picked up more stones, the teacher’s voice in his head faded away. Nicola skimmed pebbles, too. She bettered his number of skips. He suspected that she’d grown up making those stones dance across the water. He admired the curve of her back as she threw; the swish of her white skirt, and the flick of her wrist that caused the stones to bounce across the stream to the far bank.

Kiss her.

Tom was twenty-three. At twenty-three you rush in where angels fear to even dip their toes.

Kiss her now.

‘Nicola. We’ve only known each other for a couple of days. But I really like—’

‘There’s my mother!’ She waved to a white-haired woman along the path. ‘We’ll be right there!’

The woman didn’t answer. She simply retreated into the shadows as if the sunlight wasn’t to her liking.

Nicola paused. ‘What’s that you were saying, Tom?’

‘Uh . . . nothing much. Come on, we’d best not keep your mother waiting.’

Nice timing, Mrs Bekk
.

They headed in the direction of where the woman had stood. Soon they were immersed in a deep lagoon of shadow beneath the trees. Meanwhile, Nicola’s mother had already reached a cottage that seemed to bulge with the weight of red tiles on its roof. The place looked ancient.

Welcome to the Witch House . . .

Perhaps the most imposing part of the property was the stone archway set in the garden wall. The structure must have been ten feet tall.

Tom Westonby gazed up at the yellow stonework that arched over the path. An image had been engraved into one of the huge blocks. The thing was so old that the carving had been eroded to the point that whatever was depicted there consisted of seemingly random, curving lines. There were a dozen or so circles within the image. If anything, the carving resembled a whale (or some kind of bulky creature, anyway) with lots of legs – part whale, part crab? Strange.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘The family dragon. You’ll meet him later.’

Nicola took his arm and drew him under the archway as if afraid that he’d suddenly change his mind about entering the eerie house in the wood.

N
icola made the introduction. ‘Tom, meet Helsvir. Helsvir, this is Tom.’

He looked in the direction she pointed. Above the front door of the ancient house, which seemed to be on the brink of ruin, was an oblong tablet of stone. This bore another engraving of the creature. The tablet must have been protected by the overhang of the roof, because this image hadn’t been so badly weathered.

‘Hello, Helsvir. How you doing?’ He didn’t mind Nicola’s little bit of whimsy about meeting the family dragon. In fact, her subtle wit made her even more likeable.

Substitute ‘likeable’ with ‘desirable’.
He desired the curves of her body beneath that clingy orange T-shirt.

‘Helsvir is an old Viking word,’ she was saying. ‘It means “eternally protecting the favourites of the gods”.’

He smiled. ‘Helsvir means all that?’

‘And a heck of a lot more. Vikings were very good at cramming plenty of meaning into single words, or even into a carved symbol.’

‘Your Helsvir looks pretty awesome.’ He studied the carving. The vertical lines at the bottom of the bulky body were legs. The circles had pairs of dots inside. Some kind of wings? Or fins? ‘I’ve never seen a dragon like this one. All those legs? It must have scuttled round like a crab or a beetle – or at least it would have done in your ancestors’ imaginations.’

‘Our family are very proud of our dragon.’

‘And why not? All I had for a pet was a boring goldfish.’

She caught hold of his arm; her expression was serious. ‘When you meet my mother, don’t make fun of Helsvir. In fact, it’s best not to even mention it.’

‘Oh . . . kay,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘If that’s what you want.’

Her grip tightened on his arm. Suddenly, she looked uneasy. ‘Tom.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘My mother gets anxious when she meets strangers. Sometimes she comes across as being a bit, well . . . odd.’ She sighed. ‘My mother’s crazy, really. Cuckoo. Oddball. Sorry to be so blunt. It’s better that you know she’s nuts from the start.’

‘OK.’ He wasn’t really sure how to respond to a statement like that. He glanced at the cottage, expecting to see the woman’s face rammed up against the glass, her mad, staring eyes blazing at him. Of course, there was no one there. ‘I’m sorry to hear that she’s not well.’
Does that sound sympathetic, or crass? But what do you say in a situation like this, when the girl you really, really fancy has just confessed that her mother’s a nut-job?

Nicola gave his arm a friendly squeeze. ‘Don’t worry. Maybe I exaggerated the part about her being crazy. She doesn’t swing from trees. And she’s never chewed the table legs, or gargled with frog-spawn.’ She gave a shy smile. ‘I didn’t want to say anything about my mother earlier because I was afraid you wouldn’t come over tonight.’

‘I’m sure it’ll be fine.’
Being with you is fine,
he thought. ‘I won’t mention the dragon.’ He drew his finger across his lips as if zipping them shut.

‘Good. Anyway, now I’ve introduced you to the family dragon, it’s time to meet my mother. There’s no symbolic link, by the way.’

Nicola kept her arm linked with his. Instead of entering the house through the front door, she guided him to the back. The building was so old it had a magical quality. As if it had slowly grown out of the earth. The walls were of local stone, so the cottage resembled the craggy outcrops in the woods. The weathered roof tiles were an evocative mottling of reds and mossy greens. They had a striking, organic appearance: something like reptile scales. Tom found himself thinking that those tiles could have been the skin of the family’s legendary dragon. Part house, part monster. A dwelling from a child’s fairy tale.

The windows were small and very deep-set in the thick stone walls. Hardly any paint remained on window frames or doors: years of hard, driving rain had stripped everything down to bare wood. This cottage needed far more restoration than Mull-Rigg Hall.
The Bekk family might have one hell of a funky dragon,
he thought,
but they haven’t got any money. They’re living in a wreck.

He glanced round the overgrown flower-beds. Some of the plants had been trampled flat.
The Mad Mother’s doing?
He pictured her rolling about the garden, eyeballs bulging, while furiously chewing nettles. The image was a cruel one. Even so . . . he couldn’t help but wonder if it might be accurate.

‘Don’t you get lonely out here in the forest?’ he asked.

‘We like living far away from other people,’ she replied in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘We’re safe here.’

‘Safe from what?’

Instead of replying, she opened the door to a rustic kitchen. ‘I’ll introduce you to my mother. If she says anything that seems strange, don’t worry. It’s just her way.’

Tom followed Nicola into the eerie old house. His gut feeling told him that things were about to get extremely interesting.

T
hey sat in the living room. This had the same rustic charm as the kitchen. All the walls were a pristine white. Tom noticed that not a single one of those walls was straight. The ancient stonework bulged outwards as if fists were being pushed into a soft material from the other side. Rather than being any sign of collapse, though, those bulges in the masonry appeared to be part of the construction. The massive thickness of stonework suggested that the place might have served as a fortified dwelling hundreds of years ago.

The kitchen and living room were scrupulously clean. There were bunches of yellow and blue flowers in vases on the window sills. Even better for Tom, a delicious aroma of freshly baked bread drifted on the air. He liked the homely feel of the place.

Nicola’s mother sat in an armchair. Of slim build, with a pleasant face and white hair that fell about her shoulders, she didn’t look like the demented crone that Tom’s imagination had supplied. She wore a cream blouse and black skirt that wouldn’t be out of place in any home or office. There was nothing obviously oddball about her.

Nicola pushed back a strand of her pale, blonde hair. ‘Mother. This is Tom.’

‘Oh?’

‘Tom Westonby,’ Tom added. ‘From Mull-Rigg Hall. Pleased to meet you.’ He held out his hand.

Mrs Bekk stiffened in the chair. Her features tightened as if she’d experienced a stab of pain. She didn’t hold out her own hand. In fact, she pushed her fists down by her side against the chair cushion.

‘Mother, this is Tom Westonby. You asked to meet him.’

Mrs Bekk hissed, ‘There’s no food. Your friend should go home now.’ She shuddered as if Tom’s presence in the room revolted her. ‘Send him away.’

‘Mother. There is food. You baked bread this afternoon. I got the cheese from the farmer’s market, remember? The Wensleydale?’

‘It’s gone mouldy . . . There’s green mould all over it.’

‘There isn’t any mould.’ Nicola spoke with loving patience. ‘It’s a gorgeous piece of cheese.’

During this, Tom found his eye drawn to the fireplace. With it being a warm evening, there was no fire. What he did notice, engraved there in the stones at the back of the cavernous fireplace, was another picture of Helsvir. The Bekk family obviously loved their family dragon. There were pictures of the creature everywhere. Tom knew a diver who wouldn’t go into the water if he didn’t have his lucky shamrock with him. Tom guessed the dragon picture operated as a good luck charm for the family. He glanced round the old, worn out furniture. Pity the dragon’s stash of magic had all been used up. Nicola must live with her mother out here in near poverty.

At this point Nicola crouched down to hold her mother’s hand. She murmured reassurances.

At last, the older woman nodded. ‘We don’t get visitors, Mr Westonby.’

‘Tom . . . Please call me Tom, Mrs Bekk.’

‘Seeing a stranger in the house gets me het up.’

‘Het means hot and bothered,’ Nicola explained. ‘In this part of Yorkshire we still use a lot of old Viking words.’

Mrs Bekk’s shoulders drooped as she began to relax. Her daughter had managed to calm her. ‘I baked bread,’ the woman said. ‘We have wild strawberries, too. Nicola picked them.’ Without putting any knowing emphasis on the words, she added, ‘Nicola was excited that you were coming tonight.’

‘
Mother.
’ Nicola pretended to gently scold her mother. ‘Don’t be giving Tom the wrong idea.’

‘You were singing in the bathroom. You never sing in the bathroom.’ Mrs Bekk turned to Tom. ‘So you’re Barbara Gibson’s nephew.’

‘That’s right. My mother’s her sister.’

‘Owen? The boy Owen . . . Barbara’s son?’

‘Yes?’

‘Is he still alive?’

Tom masked his surprise at the question. ‘Yes. Owen lives with my parents, Mrs Bekk. It was his tenth birthday recently. Owen inherits Mull-Rigg Hall when he’s an adult. Until then, my parents plan to live there. That way Owen grows up in a place he knows, and he can still go to school with his friends.’

‘I find myself thinking about Barbara a lot. She died so young . . . and to leave a child without parents? Tragic . . .’ Mrs Bekk’s voice tailed off, and she lapsed into brooding silence.

Nicola gently steered the conversation away from bereavement to another topic. ‘I was telling Tom that our family has lived here for over a thousand years.’

This must be a favourite subject of the mother’s, Tom thought, because she started talking quite happily about the Bekk family history.

‘The cottage is called Skanderberg. That’s the name of the town in Denmark from where our family came. You’ve heard of the Viking Gods Odin and Thor?’

He nodded.

She patted the arm of the chair beside her, inviting him to sit. ‘And so you should know them. Certain days of the week are named after Viking gods. Wednesday is Odin’s Day. Thursday – Thor’s Day. Well, Tom, twelve hundred years ago, Thor picked up my ancestor Guthrum Bekk and carried him through the sky all the way from Denmark to this valley in England. Thor showed him that the fertile land here would produce so much food that mortal children would never starve. So the god ordered Guthrum Bekk to bring his family to the Lepping Valley and build a farm.’