Alys Clare - The Way Between the Worlds

Hrype nodded. Then, drawing himself up so that he stood tall and strong, he said, ‘We do not know your name, but we know you are not Father Clement, whose body lies at Cambridge. You sacrificed him as a victim to the Threefold Death, giving his body to the water and securing it in the old way, with honeysuckle ropes and hazel stakes. You took his identity, and you came here to the abbey, where you killed the young novice, Herleva, because she had witnessed your accomplice raising the storm that drowned the king’s ship-army.’ He paused. I could sense even from where I stood, a pace or two away, that some huge force was aimed at him and he was countering it. He was shaking with the effort.

I tried to turn to Rollo, to see if he, too, felt that strange, paralysing power, but found I could not move.

Then the man who was posing as Father Clement began to speak.

‘I may look like a priest of the church and the servant of a Norman king and his bishop,’ he said. His voice was quiet, his tone kindly. It did not match up in the least with the power that I felt blazing through him. He glanced down at his black robes, running a hand over his clean-shaven jaw. ‘This is a guise I can readily adopt, and in addition the ways of a priest are very familiar.’ He paused, and a look of pain crossed his face. ‘I was a wild child, for I lost my close family when I was very young and I was angry with the whole world. The remainder of my relatives could not deal with me and so they put me in with the monks, who tried to beat the spirit out of me and turn me into one of them. They did not succeed. I remain what I am: a son of the north, whose allegiance is exclusively to the old ways and the old kings.’

We were right! I wanted to shoot a glance at Hrype, but I could not move my eyes that far.

‘I learned last autumn that King Malcolm had advanced into the north of England,’ the black-robed man was saying. ‘He has edgy neighbours, has Malcolm, for his own lands are only in the south and the east of Scotland. The north and west are ruled by the Scandinavians and the wild people he refers to as the godless Gaels. We are not godless,’ he added vehemently. ‘Our gods are numerous, and a man like Malcolm ignores and derides them at his peril. But his time will come.’

For the first time, emotion had crept into his voice. He waited — getting himself under control, I guessed — then spoke again.

‘He made a mistake when he married that wife of his. Margaret changed the land, and for a small woman, she has made a dramatic impact. The Roman Church now takes dominance over the Celtic, and Benedictine monks swarm in her wake. Even the eight children she gave her king are called by English and not Gaelic names.’

There was a short pause, as if he were giving us time to assimilate the various sins of Queen Margaret.

Then he said coolly, ‘I hate everything English, even as I hate the Church of Rome. My allies in the north-west told me of Malcolm’s advance into Lothian. There would be a counter-invasion force; that was obvious. I watched and I waited, and as the snippets of knowledge came in one by one, slowly and steadily I began to see the whole picture. I knew what must be done.

‘There is a skill, possessed by members of some families and passed down through the generations, back into the mists of the past and the dawn of the line. It is a perilous skill, hard-learned, and its practice drains a man until he is all but dead.

‘On the twenty-fifth of September last year, a man with this skill stood ready. The ships bearing King William’s army sailed right past him as he stood in the place of power, and the storm that he raised destroyed them utterly.’

His eyes went from one to the other of us, along the line that we formed as we stood before him. Then he spoke again, and he sounded as if he were chanting. ‘I will tell you of the place of power. It was once revered and honoured by all of the people who understood the force of the natural world and the huge reserves of might that lie bound up in the crossing places, the margins, the half-and-half worlds of daybreak and twilight, river fords and marshland.

‘I will tell you of the circle as it once was, with tall timber uprights and, inside it, an upturned oak stump, its trunk deep in the ground, its roots in the free, open air. Here an ancient people made a sacred place. The wide-spreading roots of the mighty oak were the platform where they laid the body of their greatest magician, giving it up to the sea, the shore. A huge fire was lit. The four elements were all there, and their spirits, summoned by the men of magic, came readily: air, fire, water, earth.’

He spoke as if he had been there. As if he had seen with his own eyes that body on its strange bier, the encircling wooden walls and the fire that surrounded them.

‘The body was not that of a man,’ he said, his voice barely more than a breath. ‘The greatest magician of the people was a woman.’

The echoes of his words seemed to twist and float around us. Then, as if he had waited deliberately so as to gain the maximum impact, he picked up his tale.

‘The man who raised the storm believed himself to be alone that day, but someone saw him. She was just a young girl, with a round face and a sweet smile. She was very afraid.’ Briefly, he closed his eyes, as if remembering something. ‘The man wore a cloak and carried a staff. His hair was long and uncombed, and his beard reached his chest. The power was on him, in him, and he scarcely appeared human.

‘She knew the terrain better than he did, and she evaded him. But he followed her. He had diminished into human form, and he trailed her without her noticing him. She led him to Chatteris, to this abbey, where to his dismay she announced to the nuns that she wished to join them. Now you probably do not know that for the first few months, a young postulant is all but walled up here, having no contact whatsoever with the outside world. The only man she encounters is the priest. The magician knew that he had to reach her: he had to find out if she had indeed witnessed his storm-raising and whether she would tell anyone.’

He frowned, as if recalling the dreadful problem he and the storm-raiser had been faced with. Then he said, ‘There had to be a way. I prayed, begged my guardian spirits and my ancestors for help, and they heard me. I learned that the elderly priest at Chatteris had just died and was to be replaced by a certain Father Clement, lately the priest at Crowland Abbey, which you may or may not know burned down last year. No,’ he said, glancing at Hrype, ‘I had nothing to do with that.’ Then, with a swift grin, ‘You don’t care much for religious foundations, do you, cunning man?’

He knew. He understood what Hrype was. .

‘I went to Crowland,’ the impostor said. ‘Father Clement had already left. He had been summoned by his bishop, to speak to him before he took up his new appointment. Accordingly, he had gone to Bishop’s Lynn, where I followed him. He stayed with the bishop for a day and a night, and the following morning he set out for Chatteris.

‘He did not get far. I waited until we were well away from the little town, with the last of the dwellings far behind us. I waited until the track ran down close to the water; we had not long crossed the Nar, and the great Ouse meandered along to our right. I caught up with Father Clement and, in the guise of a lonely traveller eager for a chat and a bit of human company, I engaged him in conversation. We walked for some miles, and then I suggested we share my pot of gruel while it was still warm.’

Even if I could have spoken, I do not think I had words to say. I stood spellbound, unable to look away from the black-robed figure before us.

‘He died easily. There was no pain, for the draught I gave him rendered him drowsy. He was smiling as I killed him. I tethered his limbs to hazel stakes and gave him to the salt marsh. Then I came to Chatteris. I discovered quite soon that the little nun was called Herleva, that she was a chatty soul who loved to giggle. Not very bright, but affectionate and popular. She had a friend, a slightly older girl who was also a white-veiled novice. The two spent as much time together as they were allowed, and it was clear that there was a deep friendship between them.