The Essex Serpent Read online

  Coming onto the street they called High Lane in deference to its slight elevation above sea level, Will bore left where it passed through common ground. A few sheep grazed listlessly under the Aldwinter oak, said to have once sheltered troops loyal to the traitor Charles, and which appeared so black it might have been burned to charcoal. Its lower branches had sunk beneath their own weight, and curving down thrust into the earth and after a while up again, so that in the spring the tree appeared surrounded by saplings. The down-curved branches formed seats where in summer lovers sat, and as Will passed a woman spread her red skirts and tossed out a few scraps for the birds. Beyond the oak, set back from the road behind a mossy wall, All Saints with its modest tower made its usual call on him: he ought, really, to sit there awhile on a bare cold pew and wait for a cooling of his temper, but someone might be waiting in the shadows for blessing or censure. In the year past, with the coming of the Essex Serpent (which he took to calling ‘the Trouble’, reluctant to christen a rumour), claims on his time had grown steadily greater. There was a feeling – mostly unspoken, at least in his presence – that they were all under judgment, doubtless well-deserved, from which only he could deliver them; but what comfort could he offer which would not also affirm their sudden fear? He could not do it, any more than he could say to John, who so often woke at night, you and I will go together at midnight and slay the creature that lives under your bed. What was built on deceit, however kindly done, would not withstand the first blow. And time enough for pulpit and pew tomorrow, when the sun rose on the Lord’s Day; for now he felt such an urgent desire to look out on the saltings and fill his self with the empty air that he almost ran.

  On past the White Hare (‘My dear Mansfield, impossible for a man of the cloth, as I think you know!’) and past the neat small cottages with cyclamen on the windowsill (‘She’s very well thank you: the ’flu has gone, praise God …’) to the place where High Lane sloped down to the quay. Hardly that, of course, simply an inlet on the Blackwater bolstered with stonework that only ever seemed to last a season and was re-made each spring out of whatever fell to hand. Henry Banks, who racketed up and down the estuary in his barge, conveying who-knew-what to who-knew-where beneath his sacks of corn and barley, sat cross-legged on the deck mending his sails, his cold hands livid as the cloth. Seeing Will, he beckoned him over, saying ‘Still no sign of her, Reverend: still no sign,’ pulling dolefully at a hipflask. Some months had passed since Banks had lost a rowing-boat, and been refused his insurance on the grounds that he’d failed to make it fast to the quay, being probably drunk at the time. Banks felt the grievance deeply, and told anyone who’d listen that it had been stolen away in the night by oystermen from over Mersea way, and that he’d always been a truthful man, as Gracie would’ve witnessed, had she still been living, God rest her. ‘No? I’m sorry for it, Banks,’ said Will sincerely: ‘Nothing’s harder to bear than injustice. I’ll keep a lookout, mind.’ He refused a nip of rum, gesturing ruefully at his collar, and moved on – past the quay, the low water always to his right, where up ahead on a slight incline a row of bare ash trees were like so many grey feathers stuck in the ground. Beyond the ashes was the last Aldwinter house, which for as long as he could remember they’d called World’s End. Its bowed walls were bound together with moss and lichen, and over the years it had been added to so that by degrees of lean-to and annex it had doubled in size, and seemed a living thing feasting on the hard earth. The portion of land around it was fenced off on three sides; the fourth gave directly onto the grasses of the salt-marsh, and from there down to the pale stretch of mud riddled with creeks that glistened in the weak sun.

  As Will approached World’s End, its sole resident was so nearly camouflaged against the walls of the house that when he emerged it was as if by a charm. Mr Cracknell seemed made of the same stuff as his home: his coat green as moss and quite as damp, and his beard reddish as the clay tiles that fell from the roof. He held in his right hand the small grey body of a mole, and in his left a folded knife. ‘Stand back a little, Reverend, for the good of your coat,’ he said, and Will obeyed, seeing that strung all along the fence were a dozen moles or more; but these were skinned, and their hides hung from their hindquarters like a shadow. Their pale paws, so like the hands of children, reached blindly for the earth. Will inspected the body nearest. ‘Quite a haul; and a penny apiece?’ Man’s dominion over animals notwithstanding, he’d never been able to shake a fondness for the little gentlemen in their velvet jackets, and wished the farmers’ war of attrition could be ended by kinder means.

  ‘A penny apiece, that’s right, and warm work besides.’ He laid the creature out, and deftly cut a loop at wrist and ankle.

  ‘Twenty years an Aldwinter man, and still your customs surprise me. Is there no better way of keeping moles from the crops than by scaring them off with their slaughtered brethren?’

  Cracknell frowned. ‘Oh, I’ve a purpose in mind, Parson; you know that: you see I have a purpose in mind!’ Delighted, the man slipped a forefinger between flesh and skin and tested the ease with which he could part them. ‘I am aware that in some quarters I am considered not as they say the full shilling, not that I’ve lately seen a shilling, being content with such pence as might now and then come my way’ – and here a pause, and a direct glance at Will’s pockets, then down again to the task at hand – ‘And yet there you stand, God’s own man, and ask if I have a purpose!’

  ‘I felt it,’ said Will, gravely, ‘as if by instinct.’ The tearing of skin from flesh was like that of paper. Cracknell lifted his handiwork, inspecting it, well pleased with his skill; a ribbon of steam unfurled from the hot bare body in the cold air.

  ‘Scaring them off, oh yes –’ his jovial mood fractured, he busied himself with a length of wire, which he ran through the animal’s pink nose, nostril to nostril, and looped three times around the fencepost. ‘Scaring them off, says he! Though of what I might be scaring off there mightn’t be knowing now nor later I daresay, when a voice is heard of weeping and lamentation for our children, because they are not, and we will not be comforted …’ His hand on the wire trembled a little, and Will was appalled to see that so also did his lower lip. His first impulse, which came as much from training as from instinct, was to offer a word of comfort – but hard on its heels came a flash of irritation. So the old man too had succumbed to whatever trick of the light had the whole village taken in! He thought of his daughter running home weeping in terror at what might be creeping upriver towards them, and of notes slipped in the collection box urging he preach repentance of whatever sins had brought judgment to their door.

  ‘Mr Cracknell’ – briskly, with a little humour perhaps; let him see that there was nothing to fear but a long winter and a tardy spring – ‘Mr Cracknell, I may not quite be episcopal material, but I know misquoted scripture when I hear it. Our children are in no more danger now than they have ever been! Where are your wits? What have you done with them?’ Reaching out, he made a show of patting the other man’s pockets. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you’ve strung up these poor beasts to fend off some – some rumoured sea-serpent in the Blackwater!’

  Cracknell was coaxed into a smile. ‘Gentlemanly of you to allude to my wits at all, Parson, on account of the general disbelief that I ever was in possession of such a thing as wits.’ He patted the mole on its stripped back with a fond gesture. ‘For all that, though, I do say and always have said that caution is the side best erred on; and if man or creature were minded to make their approaches here at World’s End my little scarebeasts here would give them pause.’ He jerked his thumb towards the rear of his dwelling, where a pair of tethered goats industriously cropped a circle of grass. ‘I’ve Gog and Magog here for companionship, you understand, in addition to providing the milks and the cheeses which Mrs Ransome is so kind as to enjoy, and I’ll not risk their loss! Not I! I’ll not be left alone!’ There was the trembling again, but here Will felt on firmer ground: three times in three years he’d stood wi
th Cracknell at the graveside: first wife, then sister, then son.

  He clasped the old man by the shoulder: ‘Nor shall you; I have my flock, and you have yours, and the same Shepherd has their care.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, and I thank you for it; but I’ll not be darking your church door tomorrow all the same. I made my stand, Parson: take Mrs Cracknell and the Almighty will have to make do without me, you recall were my words; and I’ll not be dissuaded come high or low water.’

  He wore now the mulish expression of a stubborn child, which was so greatly preferable to the threat of tears that it took Will an effort not to laugh, and instead to say, quite gravely, and conscious of the cost of a bargain struck with God: ‘You made your stand, and I’ve no right to come between a man and his word.’

  Out on the saltings water crept towards the house and the lowering sun was cold. Beyond the marsh Aldwinter’s outlook was not of some other village on the far bank of the Blackwater, but of a broad horizon where the estuary met the North Sea. Will saw the lights of a fishing vessel headed home, and thought of Stella – tired by now, her small hands busy with the children – drawing back the curtain to look past Traitor’s Oak and see him coming. Longing for her, and for the sound of children at his study door, gave him a sudden distaste for the mossy house sinking into its patch of land; then he remembered Cracknell at the graveyard throwing a clod of earth onto a small pine coffin, and stood a while longer at the gate. ‘A minute more, Reverend,’ said Cracknell, ‘I have something for you.’ He was absorbed again into the side of the house, then emerged a moment later with a brace of handsome bright-eyed rabbits, newly caught, and thrust them at Will. ‘With my compliments to Mrs Ransome, who needs her strength, on account of the child-bearing years, which as Mrs Cracknell said tends to a thinning of the blood.’

  The pleasure of giving illuminated him, and Will took them graciously, feeling a restriction in his throat. Quite a pie they’d make, he said; and Johnny’s favourite, as it happened – then, as if he wanted to give something in return, he hung the rabbits from his belt, in the farmer’s fashion, and said: ‘Mr Cracknell, tell me what you’ve seen, because I cannot think whom to believe, or when. A poor man drowned: but after all drowning’s not so rare in winter. A sheep was gutted I’m told, but foxes must make their living too, and the child they said was lost overnight was found in the morning in a linen cupboard eating her mother’s sweets. Banks brings strange news on his barge from St Osyth and Maldon, but you and I know him for a liar, do we not? Then there are whisperings in doorways and outside the Inn, and they say a baby was snatched from a boat at Point Clear, but whoever took an infant to sea when the days are short and cold? Tell me you have yourself witnessed something to fear, and then perhaps I’ll believe it.’ He fixed his gaze on the old man’s eyes, which could not quite seem to meet his; they slid over his shoulder to the empty horizon behind.

  Knowing the value of silence, Will refused to speak, and in a moment Cracknell – sighing, shrugging, busying himself with his knife – said, ‘The point is not what I see, but what I feel; I cannot see the ether, yet I feel it enter and depart, and depend upon it. I feel that something is coming; sooner or later, my words be marked. It has been before, as well you know, and it will come again, if not in my lifetime in yours, or in your children’s, or in your children’s children’s, and so I will gird my loins up, Parson, and if I might make bold a moment, I would recommend that you do similar.’ Will thought of the church with its carved remnant of the old legend, and wished (not for the first time) that he’d taken hammer and chisel to it on the morning of his arrival.

  ‘I have always put great store on you, Mr Cracknell, and will continue to do so; perhaps you can consider yourself the Aldwinter watchman, out here at World’s End, and set a beacon in your garden for a warning. – The Lord make his face to shine upon you, whether you want it or not!’ said Will, and on this light blessing turned and left for home.

  He imagined himself walking just a little faster than the night, so that he might arrive at the door a moment before darkness. Cracknell’s scarebeasts and his visible fear had given him pause, not because he thought some aberration lay waiting in the Blackwater biding its time, but because he felt it a failing of his that his parish could have succumbed to such godless superstition. No-one could agree on its size, form or origins, but there seemed a consensus that it favoured the river and the dawn. There had been no witness to any attack, but in the weeks since the end of summer the unseen thing had been blamed for every mislaid child and every broken limb. He’d even heard it said that its urine poisoned the water-pump down at Fettlewell, and caused the sickness which had left three dead on New Year’s Eve. Resisting Stella’s gentle suggestion that he speak directly from the pulpit, he’d instead chosen a brisk refusal to acknowledge the Trouble, not even when he discovered that each Sunday morning the congregation – with unspeaking unity – would not sit in the pew with the serpent carving, as if being near it put flesh and bones on their terror.

  The night at his heels, he walked on, turning once to see the white moon rising with its marred face. The wind strengthened in the reeds, which gave out a single mournful note, and Will felt a quickening just behind his ribs that was very like fear, and laughed: there – how easy it was to turn your face from nothing more than a shadow. And perhaps it would be wise to make use of the Trouble, if it proved impossible to ignore – few things turned the heart to eternity more surely than fear. The Aldwinter lights appeared up ahead, and somewhere among them his family waited – their bodies solid, warm, soap-scented, each with the fine fair down on their cheeks he’d carried as a boy; wholly real, impossible to deny, never for a moment quiet or still, so that no shadow could contain them – and he felt such a rush of joy that he gave a quiet shout (and was it also one of warning or challenge, in case there was after all a wild dog loose?), and ran the half-mile home. John was waiting, standing one-footed on the gatepost in his white nightclothes. Seeing Will he roared, ‘By the pricking of my thumbs!’ and buried his face in his father’s coat. Feeling the rabbit fur on his neck, he said: ‘You’ve done it! You’ve brought me a pet!’

  Cora Seaborne

  c/o The Red Lion Inn

  Colchester

  14th February

  My dear Imp!

  How are you? Are you keeping warm? Are you eating properly? How’s your cut – have you healed? I’d’ve liked to have seen it. Did it go very deep? You must keep your scalpels sharp and your wits sharper. Oh dear: I do miss you!

  We are well, and Martha sends her – oh, you won’t believe that, will you? Francis doesn’t send his love at all, but I don’t think he’d mind seeing you again, if you were to come down, and that’s as much as any of us can hope for. WILL you come down? It’s cold, but the sea air is good, and Essex nowhere near as bad as they say.

  I’ve been over to Walton-on-the-Naze and out to St Osyth and I haven’t found my sea-dragon yet – not even a bit of crinoid sea-lily! – but you know I don’t give in easily. The man who owns the hardware store here thinks me mad as a hatter, and has sold me two new hammers and a kind of suede belt to hang them from. Martha says I never looked odder or uglier, but you know I’ve always thought beauty a curse and am more than happy to dispense with it completely. Sometimes I forget that I’m a woman – at least – I forget to THINK OF MYSELF AS A WOMAN. All the obligations and comforts of womanhood seem to have nothing to do with me now. I’m not sure how I am supposed to behave and I’m not sure I would, if I knew.

  Talking of distinguished: you’ll never GUESS who accosted us in the High St just as we were looking for a civilised place to wait out the rain? Charles Ambrose, looking just like a parrot in a flock of pigeons, bustling about in his velvet coat! He’s adamant I need an Essex friend, to keep me from broken limbs out on the mudflats or worse (he tells me the River Blackwater is menaced by a beast, but I will tell you all about it when I see you next). He has threatened to put me in touch with some rural vicar, and tho
ugh I’m half tempted to take him up on the offer purely for the pleasure of shocking whatever poor old fellow he has in mind, I really would rather be left to my own devices. WON’T YOU COME DOWN, DEAR? I miss you. I don’t like to do without you. I don’t see why I should.

  Love,

  CORA

  Luke Garrett MD

  Pentonville Rd

  N1

  15th February

  CORA –

  Hand better, thanks. The infection was useful – I tested out my new Petri dishes and made some bacterial cultures. I thought you would have liked them. They were blue and green.

  Coming down with Spencer probably next week. See you then. Hold off the rain if you can.

  LUKE

  PS: Technically, that was a Valentine. Don’t deny it.

  4

  Five miles east of Colchester, Cora walked in fine rain. She’d set out with no destination in mind and no thought to how she’d come home, only wanting to get out of the cold room in the Red Lion where Francis had cut his pillow to retrieve and count the feathers. Neither she nor Martha had been able to explain why it was that he ought not to have done it (‘Yes but you can pay for it, and then it will all be mine …’), and rather than listen to her son’s patient totting up – one hundred and seventy-three as the door had closed – she’d belted up her coat and run downstairs. Martha heard her call ‘I’ll be home before it’s dark – I have money with me – I’ll find someone to bring me back,’ and sighing had returned to the boy.