The Essex Serpent (7 page)

When she turned back the man was regarding her above his sleeve, which he had pressed to the cut on his cheek. He had put on a knitted hat, which was so poorly made he might well have put it together himself from scarlet scraps, and pulled it to his eyebrows, which were thick with mud and almost obscured his eyes. He said, ‘Thanks,’ a little curtly, again with that flattening of the vowels that marked him out as a country man.
A farmer then
, she thought, and without accepting the gratitude so grudgingly given she said, gesturing to the exhausted sheep: ‘Is it going to be all right?’ It mouthed at the air, and rolled its eyes again.

He shrugged. ‘Should think so.’

‘One of yours?’

‘Ha! No. Not my flock.’ The idea evidently struck some chord of slow humour in him, and he began to chuckle.

A vagrant, then, poor soul! It was in her nature to think well of folk until they gave her cause to do otherwise, and besides: she’d shortly be home to Martha and their clean white sheets, and who knew but that he might be making his bed in the bracken with nothing but a half-drowned beast for company. Smiling, she decided to bring good London manners to their conversation. ‘Well: I must be home. It was very nice to meet you.’ She gestured towards the dripping oaks, and the pond where little eddies from their struggle still moved, and wishing to be generous said: ‘Essex. Nice part of the world.’

‘Is it?’ His voice was dampened by the sleeve still pressed against his cheek, on which she could see blood mixed in with dirty water. She wanted to ask if he would be all right, if he’d make it safely home, if there was anything she could do; but it was his territory, not hers. It occurred to her, as she saw the first thickening of the shadows at dusk, that of the pair of them she was most at a loss, miles from her bed and with only a vague sense of where she stood. With a fair attempt at maintaining what she felt was the upper hand, she said: ‘Tell me: am I far from Colchester? Where can I fetch a cab home?’

The man lacked the wit to be surprised. He nodded towards the further bank, where she could make out a breach in the line of oaks, and behind it an open stretch of land. ‘Out onto the road – bear left, five hundred yards. There’s a pub: they’ll fetch it for you.’ Then, with a motion extraordinarily like that of a man dismissing an inferior, he turned and trudged away through the mud. His shoulders were so stooped against the cold that the weight of his filthy coat made him seem very like a hunchback. Always more easily moved to mirth than rage, Cora could not prevent herself from laughing: perhaps he heard, because he paused on the path, half-turned towards her, then thought better of it and went on his way.

Cora tugged her coat closer, and heard all around her the gathering of birds for evensong. The sheep had dragged itself a yard or two further onto the bank; it had raised itself into a kneeling position and was nudging the earth in search of a blade of grass. The light was fading, and a fine white mist rose up from the cold earth and spilled over the rim of her boots. Beyond the last of the oaks a grass verge dropped a little to the roadside, and in the near distance a half-timbered pub with bright-lit windows beckoned to passing travellers. The sight of the gleaming panes, and the thought that she was still so far from home, and that she did not know the way, brought on a weariness so sudden it struck her like a blow. When she reached the threshold and saw a woman leaning on the bar and smiling a welcome beneath a high coil of bright hair, Cora paused to adjust her clothes. Smoothing her coat, she found in the buckle of her belt a little scrap of white wool, and on it – gleaming in the lamplight as though it were fresh – a smear of blood.

5

Joanna Ransome, not quite thirteen, tall as her father and wrapped in his newest coat, held her hand over flames. She brought her palm as near the flicker as she could, then withdrew it slow enough to preserve her pride. Her brother John watched solemnly, and would’ve liked to have thrust his own hands into his pockets, but had been instructed to leave them to grow as cold as he could bear. ‘We are making a sacrifice,’ she’d said, leading him to the stretch of land just beyond World’s End, where the marshes gave way to the Blackwater estuary, and beyond that, the sea: ‘And for there to be a sacrifice, we must suffer.’

Earlier that day she’d explained to him, whispering in cold corners, that something was rotten in the village of Aldwinter. There was the drowned man, for one thing (naked, they said, and with five deep scratches on his thigh!), and the sickness at Fettlewell, and the way they all woke from dreams of wet black wings. And there was more: the nights should’ve grown lighter by now – there should be snowdrops in the garden – their mother should not still have a cough that woke her at night. There should be birdsong in the mornings. They should not still shiver in their beds. It was all because of something they’d done and forgotten and never repented, or was because the Essex earthquake had let something loose in the Blackwater, or perhaps it was because their father had lied (‘He said he’s not afraid, and there’s nothing there – but why won’t he go down to the sea after dark anymore? Why won’t he let us play out on the boats? Why does he look tired?’). Whatever the cause and wherever the blame, they were going to do something about it. Long ago in other lands they’d cut out hearts to bring the sun up: surely it wasn’t too much to ask that they try out a little spell for the sake of the village? ‘I have it all worked out,’ she’d said: ‘You trust me, don’t you?’

They stood between the ribs of a clipper which had pitched up there a decade ago and never shifted from the shore. In the harshness of the weather it had worn down to little more than a dozen black curved posts that looked so much like the opened chest cavity of a drowned beast that visitors took to calling it Leviathan. It was near enough to the village for the children to reach it without censure, and far enough out of sight for no-one to notice what they did there. In summer they hung their clothes from its bones, and in winter they lit small fires in its shelter, always afraid the hulk would burn, and dismayed when it didn’t. Love notes and curses were cut in the wood with penknives; pennies were stacked on the posts and were never spent. Joanna’s little fire was set some distance away from the wreck in a circle of stones, and had taken hold nicely. She’d looped it with lengths of bladderwrack, which gave off a clean scent, and pressed into the coarse sand seven of her best shells.

‘I’m
hungry
.’ John looked up at his sister and immediately regretted his lack of resolve. He’d turn seven before summer, and felt firmly that it was high time he matched his increasing years with increasing courage. ‘I don’t mind though,’ he said, and capered twice around the fire.

‘We have to be hungry because tonight’s the night of the Hunger Moon, isn’t that right, Jo?’ Red-haired Naomi Banks crouched with her back to Leviathan and looked beseechingly at her friend. As far as she was concerned, Reverend Ransome’s daughter had the Queen’s authority and God’s wisdom, and she’d cheerfully have stepped barefoot in the flames if the other girl had commanded it.

‘That’s right: the Hunger Moon, and the last full moon before spring.’ Conscious of the need to be both stern and benevolent, Joanna imagined her father in his pulpit, and mimicked his stance. In the absence of a lectern, she raised both her arms and said in a chanting voice which had taken some weeks to perfect: ‘We are gathered here on the day of the Hunger Moon to beseech Persephone to break the chains of Hades and bring spring to our beloved land.’ Wondering if she’d struck quite the right note, and a little concerned that she was playing fast and loose with the education her father insisted upon, she glanced quickly at Naomi. Her friend’s cheek was flushed, and her eyes were bright: she pressed a hand to her throat and Joanna, bolstered, went on: ‘Too long have we suffered winter winds! Too long have the dark nights concealed the river’s terrors!’ John, whose determination to be brave was unequal to his dread of the beast probably lurking not a hundred yards away in the water, squealed. His sister frowned, and raised her voice a little. ‘Goddess Persephone, hear us!’ She nodded briskly at her companions, who chorused: ‘Goddess Persephone, hear us!’ They made their supplications to numerous gods, genuflecting deeply at each name; Naomi, whose mother had been of the old religion, crossed herself fervently. ‘And now,’ said Joanna, ‘we have to make a sacrifice,’ and John – who’d never forgotten the story of how Abraham had tethered his son to an altar and got out his carving knife – squealed again, and bolted twice round the fire.

‘Come back, stupid boy,’ said Joanna. ‘Nobody’s going to hurt you.’

‘The Essex Serpent might,’ said Naomi, coming at the child with claws, and receiving a look of such censure in return that she flushed, and took John’s hand in hers.

‘We give you the sacrifice of our hunger,’ said Joanna, whose stomach burbled shamefully (she’d concealed breakfast in a napkin and fed it later to the dog, and pleading a headache avoided lunch). ‘We give you the sacrifice of our cold.’ Theatrical, Naomi shivered. ‘We give you the sacrifice of our burning. We give you the sacrifice of our names.’ Joanna paused, forgetting for a moment the ritual she’d prepared, then putting her hand in her pocket took out three pieces of paper. Earlier that day she’d dipped the corner of each sheet in the font of her father’s church, alert to the possibility he’d find her there, and with several lies prepared in her defence. The damp corners had dried in ripples, and as she handed them to her fellow celebrants they crackled audibly. ‘It is necessary for us to commit to the spells,’ she said, sombrely, ‘to give a part of our own nature. We must write our names, and in writing them vow to whichever gods hear us that we give of our own being, in the hope that winter will be gone from the village.’ She examined her words as she said them, and pleased with her phrasing, was struck by a new thought. Stooping to pick up a broken twig, she put it in the fire and let it burn a while, then blowing out the flame scrawled her name on the paper with the charcoal. It was not quite extinguished, and the paper scorched and tore, and the goddesses would need celestial vision to make out more than her initials from so great a distance, but the effect was gratifying. She handed the stick to Naomi, who scored her paper with a capital N, and helped James make his mark. The boy was proud of his handwriting, and scuffled and elbowed at the girl, determined to manage on his own.

‘Now,’ said Joanna, collecting up the pieces of paper and tearing them into fragments: ‘Come to the fire with me. Are your hands cold? Are they full of winter?’
Full of winter
, she thought:
what a line!
Perhaps she’d be a vicar like her father when she grew up. John looked at the tips of his fingers and wondered whether he might soon see the first black flecks of frostbite. ‘I can’t feel anything.’

‘Oh, you will,’ said Naomi, grinning. Her hair was red and so was her coat, and John had never liked her. ‘You’ll feel something all right.’ She tugged him to his feet, and they joined Joanna by the flames. Someone stood on a string of bladderwrack and made it pop, and some distance away the tide was turning.

‘Now,’ said Joanna. ‘You’re going to have to be brave, John, because this is going to hurt.’ She tossed the scraps of paper into the fire, and followed them with a scattering of salt from her mother’s silver shaker. The flames burned briefly blue. Then holding out her hands to the fire, with an imperious nod that her companions should do the same, she closed her eyes and held them, palm down, above the fire. A damp log spat sparks and scorched her father’s sleeve; she flinched, and fretting for the white skin on her brother’s wrist tugged his hands upward an inch or more. ‘We don’t need to hurt ourselves badly,’ she said hastily, ‘we just have to let our hands warm up quickly and it’ll burn like it does when you come in from the snow.’

Naomi, chewing a coil of hair, said, ‘Look: you can see my veins.’ And it was true: she had a little webbing of flesh set deep between each of her fingers, and was proud of her defect, having once heard that Anne Boleyn had had something similar and caught herself a king, nonetheless. In the firelight a ruddy glow passed through the thin flesh and threw into blue relief a vein or two. Joanna – impressed, but conscious of the need to maintain the upper hand – said: ‘We have come here to mortify our flesh, Nomi, not take pride in it.’ She used the nickname of their babyhood to show that the girl was not in disgrace, and in response Naomi flexed her fingers and said, very seriously, ‘Oh, it really hurts, I can tell you that. It’s prickling like nettles.’

The girls looked at John, whose hands wavered with his courage. Something was evidently going on, since his fingers were a vivid red and even, Joanna thought, swollen at the tips. Either the low-hanging smoke the fire gave out had stung his eyes, or he was trying not to cry. Torn between her certainty that the gods would look kindly on a sacrifice from so small a celebrant, and equal certainty that her mother would be justifiably outraged, she nudged the boy and said, ‘Higher, silly boy, higher: d’you want to burn yourself to stumps?’ At this, his held-back tears overspilled, and just at that moment (or so Joanna later told it, huddled under a school table with Naomi nodding at her side and an audience awestruck at her feet), the full moon passed out of a low blue cloud. All around them the pebble-specked sand took on a sickly cast, and the sea – creeping at them over the salt-marsh as their backs were turned – glistened.

‘A sign, you see!’ said Joanna, removing her hands from above the fire then hastily replacing them at Naomi’s raised eyebrow: ‘A portent! It is the goddess’ – she cast about for the name – ‘The goddess Phoebe, come to acknowledge our petition!’

John and Naomi turned towards the moon, and looked a long while on its downcast face. Each of them saw, in the high mottled disc, the melancholy eyes and curved mouth of a woman sunk in sadness.

‘D’you think it worked?’ Naomi could not believe that her friend might have been mistaken in so serious a matter as the summoning of spring, and besides: she’d felt the pain in her hands and she had not eaten since bread-and-cheese the night before; and had she not also seen her own name on its christened piece of paper go up in a shower of sparks? She buttoned her coat a little higher, and looked out over the salt-marsh and the sea, half-expecting to see an early sunrise, and with it a flock of swifts.

‘Oh Nomi, I don’t know.’ Kicking aimlessly at the sand, Joanna found herself already a little ashamed of her display. All that waving of her arms about and chanting! Really, she was much too old for all this. ‘Don’t ask
me
,’ she said, forestalling further query: ‘Not done it before, have I?’ Pricked with guilt, she knelt beside her brother and said gruffly, ‘You were very brave. If it doesn’t work it won’t be your fault.’

‘I want to go home. We’ll be late and there’ll trouble and there won’t be dinner left and it was going to be my favourite.’

‘We won’t be late,’ said Joanna. ‘We said we’d be home before dark, and it’s not dark, is it? It’s not dark yet.’ But it was almost dark, and it seemed to be coming, she thought, from across the sea beyond the estuary, which had taken on the appearance of a black and solid substance across which she might walk, if she cared to try. She’d lived all her life here at the margin of the world, and never once thought to mistrust its changing territory: the seeping of salt water up through the marshes, and the changing patterns of its muddy banks and creeks, and the estuary tides which she checked almost daily against her father’s almanac, were all as untroublesome as the patterns of her family life. Before she could ever have recognised them on paper she could sit on her father’s shoulders and point, and proudly name Foulness and Point Clear, St Osyth and Mersea, and the direction of St Peter’s-on-the-Wall. It was a family trick to spin her a dozen times and say: ‘She’ll always come out facing east, to the mouth of the sea.’

But something had changed in the course of their ritual: she had a curious impulse to glance backward over her shoulder as if she might catch out the tide in reversing its direction, or see the waters split open as once they had for Moses. She’d heard, of course, the rumours that something lived now in the estuary depths, and was responsible for the taking of a lamb and the breaking of a limb, but thought little of it: childhood was so rife with terrors that it was useless giving more credence to one thing than to another. Wanting to see again the sad pale face of the lady in the moon, she looked up, and there was only the gathering of dense clouds stacking up above the marsh. The wind had dropped, as it often did at dusk, and up on the road above them the earth would be hardening with frost. John, evidently feeling his own unease, forgot his increasing years and put his hand in hers; and even Naomi, who’d never once been seen to look afraid, sucked fretfully at her coil of hair and drew closer to her friend. As they made their silent way past the dying embers of their fire, and past Leviathan as it shored itself deeper for the night, they glanced repeatedly over their shoulders at the black water creeping closer across the mud. ‘
Girls and boys come out to play
,’ sang Naomi, not quite managing to keep a tremor from her voice: ‘
The moon does shine as bright as day …
’

Much later – and only when pressed, since it had all seemed to be a part of a ritual of which the children felt strangely ashamed – each claimed to have seen a curious thickening and rising of the water in a particular place, just where the salt-marsh ended and the riverbed shelved steeply down. There’d been no sound, and nothing as comfortingly frightening as a long limb or rolling eye; only a movement that was too swift and directionless to be the casting of a wave. John claimed that it had had about it a whitish look, but Joanna thought that was only the moon peering out and brightening the surface with her gaze. Naomi, the first to speak up, embellished the event with such a flourish of wing and snout that it was generally accepted she’d seen nothing at all, and her testimony was discarded.