The Standing Water (21 page)

Two columns of grey
stone thrust up – topped by two weather-beaten sculptures of lions, waving their
front paws. Between those columns hung gates formed from spiked iron poles. The
gates were grand – at least four times my height, but the stone was pitted,
lichen-dappled, moss-patched; the iron rusting genteelly. The gates were open,
permanently swung back. The lower part of their grid rested on the verge – stems
of grass weaved between the iron uprights, around which weeds spiralled.

‘OK, everybody,’ Weirton
boomed, flinging his arm towards the gates, ‘when Salton used to be a wealthy,
aristocratic estate, these gates marked the start of its territory. That house
there’ – his finger thrust at a nearby dwelling – ‘was the lodge house. The
Salton family were so rich they could pay a man just to guard the gate. It’s a
private home now.’

I liked it when Mr
Weirton told us stuff; it was interesting; I wished he’d do it more. But now he
led us across that dilapidated threshold. Walking through there always seemed
like passing into another realm – we were passing out of Emberfield, yes, but
somehow the whole feel of the air changed: an atmosphere converged on us that
was more ancient, spookier, more magical, as if the thinnest of barriers
separated that place from the otherworld. Yet just after those gates was a
copse of trees and I felt my first twinge of disappointment. What I’d
remembered from perhaps a year ago as a substantial wood was little more than a
thicket. Jonathon had tagged along with us that day; we’d explored that jungle
of hazardous creepers, vast moss-bearded trunks: a whole dark world into which
the already meek light had to find its way down through a matted roof of plump
leaves and thick branches. We’d imagined ourselves soldiers, tying bits of
string between saplings – tripwires to booby-trap our enemies. Now that
daunting wood, where you could have got lost for a day, seemed as if it could
be stridden through in one minute.

We walked on – on
one side was a cropped bumpy field dotted with patiently munching sheep where
Weirton said you could see the lines of medieval furrows. There they were –
dips and ridges now covered with their pelt of damp grass. Mr Weirton made it
sound like they’d been made so long ago – definitely in the Olden Days, perhaps
even before his granddad was born. On our other side was a wood – a real one
this time; one it’d take at least three minutes to run through. It was less
tangled than the first – a track meandered through somewhat sickly-looking
trees, lichen-speckled, raising their pallid leaves to Emberfield’s weak sun.
I’d have loved to have gambled through that grove, but Weirton insisted we
stick to our stony path. After squeezing to the side of it to make way for a
tractor – the plough behind it dripping with sludgy black earth – we passed by
the wood and came to a small river. We stood on a little bridge – no railings, the
stumpy remains of its sides suggesting the rest of its walls had crumbled long
ago. We gazed down. Dirty water ran between steep densely-nettled banks. My
eyes soon picked out objects in the flow. A child’s ball – painted in bright
slashes of purple, yellow, red – rotated on the water. Maybe due to some
strange magic, it didn’t move downstream but just spun its colours enticingly.
I was tempted to brave the nettles, clamber down those banks and pluck it from
the river, but I knew how Weirton would reward such rashness. Near the ball
bobbed a dead fish: a trout, Weirton said. Even in our dull light, its silver
side shone; a rainbow of colours flashed along its flank. I watched those
shades flicker and change as the water buoyed and dropped that body, without
moving it downriver. I couldn’t pull my gaze from that play of colour until
another discovery jolted it away. I gasped; my eyes swelled. A knight’s
breastplate of the type worn by King Arthur lay a little downstream. Maybe some
ancient warrior had dropped it a hundred or more years before. I could see how
it would mould itself around some brave soldier’s chest. My heart beat as I saw
that, beneath its thick coat of rust and dirt, it was encrusted with jewels –
with a large ruby studding its centre. If only I could have hauled that piece
of armour from the stream, sold it to make my fortune – I wouldn’t have to go
to school, or even work when I was older like Dad did. Maybe I could have
bought a mansion far, far from Emberfield. But I knew how Weirton’s hand would
react to such a venture.

‘Please, Sir –’
Stubbs was pointing ‘– what’s that metal thing in the river?’

‘I don’t know
exactly, Dennis,’ Weirton said. ‘Maybe it’s a part of an old car or tractor or
motorbike.’

I knew Weirton was trying
to put us off the dangerous clamber down the banks, discourage us from wading
into those treacherous currents. I promised myself that later I’d pull that
breastplate from those waters. As we stood on the bridge, Weirton gave a little
lecture. The stream’s name was the Bunt; it was vital for the farmers for
bringing water to their crops in the summer, draining away the wetness the rest
of the year. As I looked at the Bunt’s sullen ripples weaving between the
bricks and stones that stuck up from its bed, navigating the metal island of
the breastplate, I wondered about that stream. I glanced around me, trying to
work out where that valuable river came from. The fields that stretched off in
each direction gave no clue. Perhaps the Bunt simply tipped into the world at
some magical point: God’s mysterious bounty given to quench and water
Emberfield.

I’d had strange
recurring dreams of following that river, of trudging along its course. I’d
begin by scrabbling along its nettle-stinging sides as it led me away from
Emberfield. The stream would slowly swell as it wound through farmland until it
was a decent-sized river. It led me underground, through dusky caverns both
natural and manmade. Its force was sometimes tamed in reservoirs then allowed
to gush down dams with ferocity. On I followed, my patient tramp lasting days
then weeks as the Bunt grew to a huge girth: that little stream now like the
massive rivers of Egypt and India I’d heard of in legends. On the Bunt led me
through the landscapes of the night; on it led me with each step away from my
hometown. In my dreams, I never stopped, never turned, never glanced back.

We crossed the
bridge and carried on. Now our path led between two barbed-wire fences beyond which
spread ploughed fields. The odd crow flapped over that black melancholy earth.
The land began to yield its legends. After a few moments of his striding,
Weirton stopped; we gathered round him, bunching in the little space the track
granted us between those spiked fences, those forbidden fields.

‘If you look over
there –’ Weirton flung his pointing finger ‘– you can see some farm buildings.
The farmhouse is very old – one of the oldest structures round here. Legend has
it that King Henry VIII would stay there on his journeys north …’

Henry VIII – he was
the one who’d had six wives: who was fond of lopping the heads of those wives
off!

‘According to some
local stories,’ Weirton went on, ‘you can see his ghost, roaming around the
house, still thanking people for their hospitality …’

‘His ghost has an
axe – if it sees you, it’ll cut off your head!’ Stubbs whispered in my ear.

‘Course it won’t –
idiot!’ I hissed. ‘Mr Weirton said the ghost only says thank you!’

Despite my words, a
shiver shook my torso. I tried to look away from the farm so I wouldn’t see the
ghost. But my eyes were drawn back to that dwelling. It all looked normal
enough – the barns and outbuildings, the stacks of bales. The curtains of the
farmhouse were open; despite my struggles, curiosity sucked my eyes into the
rooms. I just saw tables, chairs, a clock on one wall. But my heart gave deep
thuds; my chest tightened as I expected to see the broad body of that king,
transparent in its jewelled tunic, wide-brimmed hat. Would he step from behind
a door wielding his see-through yet deadly axe? Thankfully, Weirton changed the
topic, thrust his finger and our eyes to the other side of the path.

‘And that land over
there,’ he said, ‘was owned by the Knights Templars. Does anybody know who the
Knights Templars were?’

Knights! So I’d
been right about that breastplate! Of course, I knew what a knight was; I was
just unsure about the Templar bit. Weirton’s pink face scanned the throng of
pupils; no one offered a reply.

‘The Knights
Templars,’ he said, ‘were an order of crusading knights. They were good
Christians who went to the Holy Land to fight the Muslims, who were preventing
pilgrims visiting Jerusalem. There’s a local legend that one knight loved a
woman who lived in Emberfield, and before he went to fight she promised she’d
wait for him and not marry anyone else. But she LIED!’ Weirton’s sudden yell caused
the children to flinch, jump back a few centimetres. ‘When the knight got back
from years of sacrifice spent fighting the Turks, he found she’d wed another.
Of course, he was angry and upset. Do you know what he did?’

The sixty heads of
the children wagged. Then Dennis Stubbs piped up:

‘Did he chop her
head off, Sir, like King Henry did to his wives? That’s what
I
’
d
have done!’

Weirton laughed;
this gave us permission to chuckle too.

‘No Dennis,’
Weirton said, ‘he didn’t quite do that. He …’

Weirton tilted his
head; his eyes glanced at the moody sky; he brought a pondering hand to his
chin.

‘The Knights
Templars knew a lot about God; some even knew a kind of magic – how to ask God
to do things for them. So this knight put a curse on his former lover. And do
you know what happened?’

Faces lit with
intrigue, we shook our heads.

‘Well, she soon
became ill – and died!’

The children
gasped. I resolved never to offend a Knight Templar. I hardly dared look at
what had been their land – in case any of that hex lingered. Perhaps that evil
energy still floated above the accursed soil. But Weirton soon made things
clearer.

‘He cursed the
house she lived in,’ he said, face darkening, eyebrows slanted, ‘and even today
if any woman tries to live there, she gets sick or bad things happen to her. At
least –’ Weirton smiled ‘– that’s according to the old gossips of Emberfield.’

Now I thought about
it, I’d heard whispers of that legend. Maybe the essence of that bad spell
seeped beyond that house – maybe it hung and drifted in the air around our town.
Perhaps it explained the spooky silence that floated with the mist over the
houses and fields, the melancholy that hovered in our atmosphere. We walked on;
a barbed wire fence marked the end of the Templar’s territory. Weirton stopped;
we bunched around him, eager for more tales.

‘Some of you may
know,’ Weirton said, ‘there was a great battle in the Middle Ages, which
happened on these very fields.’

Weirton’s arms
swept to take in the surrounding flatlands.

‘Does anyone know
who it was between?’

There was silence
then Stubbs’s hand inched up.

‘The English and
the Scots, Sir?’

‘That’s right,
Dennis,’ said Weirton. ‘The Scots had invaded the north of England and behaved
terribly – burning, looting, killing the defenceless and innocent. They were so
bad that a local bishop prayed to God to rid England of the Scottish curse. And
that bishop assembled a group of local lords, and they gathered all their
knights and soldiers and confronted the Scots
right here
!’

Weirton’s hands
pointed down to the track.

‘Can you imagine
it?’ Weirton said. ‘Two huge armies lined up ready to meet – knights on
horseback with their shields and lances, foot soldiers with their axes,
daggers, swords.’

I could picture
those eager regiments – the thousands of men brandishing their weapons on our
damp plains. I wondered why such exciting things didn’t happen any more in
Emberfield.

‘And in the midst
of the English army’ – Weirton’s arm flung itself over to where their midst
would have been – ‘was the bishop. He rode on a cart from which holy flags and banners
fluttered – letting the English know God was on their side.’

‘And God ensured we
prevailed! The Scots were beaten, many were massacred, the survivors cut down
as they fled north. And after the battle – as the dead lay piled high and the
English prowled the field to finish off the groaning wounded – the bishop
dropped down on his knees and thanked God for his great kindness.’

‘What happened to
all the dead people?’ Stubbs piped up.

‘They buried them
in certain fields around the town,’ Weirton said. ‘The farmers and the families
who’ve lived here for a long time, they know which fields they are. And there’s
an interesting local legend …’

Weirton paused.

‘It says that if
those fields are ever ploughed or built upon, the ghosts of those long-dead
Scots will rise up and haunt the town. And to this day, those fields have just
been left as grazing land. Look – there’s one there!’

Weirton pointed to
a field – the ground had remained respectfully unturned: just a few sheep
reverently cropped the grass. I thought of what lay beneath it – the jumbled
bones of hundreds of Scots soldiers, skeletal arms still sporting shields, legs
clothed in the rags of mouldering kilts. What would happen if some farmer
arrogantly ignored our legends and decided to rip the earth with a plough or
start digging the foundations of a house? We’d have untold problems when those hordes
rose up, with spectres rampaging through our gardens, burning our houses with
phantom fire. What a nuisance those ghostly clans would be – I doubted their natural
Scottish boorishness would have been snuffed by death. Better to let them lie
where they were – their thousands of corpses sending up their rotten fumes
through the black earth, sending them up along the roots and stems of grass.
Better let those fumes form another doleful cloud to float around Emberfield;
better let decay’s breath hover, add to the mournful mix that made up
Emberfield’s air.