Alys Clare - Mist Over the Water

I wished I could fly away down the waterside path, opening my mind and letting my dowser’s gift seek what I so desperately needed. I wished I could let my feet find the safe paths across the fenland so that, safe in a place that meant death to everyone else, I could evade those who must surely be hunting for me. Had it been just me, I would have done just that. My ancestress had known how to cross the treacherous water; in my heart I knew I could do so too.

It was not just me. There was Sibert, to whom I was bound in some way that I did not really understand. As well as him there was the pale-haired young monk, possibly trapped inside the abbey against his will and without doubt involved in something so serious that men were driven to kill.

I yearned to flee, but I had to stay.

I turned away from the water and walked slowly back to the little room.

I found Sibert waiting for me. It was a relief to see him, and for a moment that drove the greater fear aside. He was tense with excitement and I made him sit down on the straw while I made him a hot drink and tore off a hunk of bread.

‘I found him!’ he said through a mouthful of bread.

‘He’s alive? He’s not hurt?’ I don’t know why I thought they might have harmed him.

‘No, no, he was busy sweeping a passage, and he looked fine.’

‘You’re sure it was the right one, the pale monk who Morcar saw?’

‘I can’t be absolutely certain, naturally,’ Sibert said reasonably, ‘but the boy I saw was pale all right.’

‘Describe him.’ It sounded very curt, and I shot Sibert an apologetic smile.

He grinned in return. ‘He’s quite slight, slimly built and not very tall,’ he began, ‘and he looks sort of insubstantial, as if he might float away. He was sweeping quite slowly and rhythmically, as if he were moving in a trance.’

Interesting. ‘What did he look like? His face, I mean?’

‘His skin is very fine and very white — more like a girl than a boy, really. His eyes are. . I’m not sure. Grey, I think, and very light, without much colour at all. His hair is white.’

‘ White? What, like an old person’s?’

Sibert thought. ‘No, not exactly. Old people’s hair goes dry and straw-like. The boy’s hair is glossy, and it swings when he moves his head.’

‘But it’s white?’ I insisted. I had never heard of a young person with white hair.

Again, Sibert paused to think, this time screwing up his face as he tried to describe what he had seen. ‘White’s wrong,’ he said eventually. ‘The young monk’s hair is cream.’

Cream hair, white skin, eyes with barely any colour at all; what on earth was this boy?

I turned to Sibert to find his eyes — his lovely, familiar, blue-green eyes — on mine. The moment felt heavy with menace. Trying to break the mood, I said flippantly, ‘He sounds more like a ghost than a living person.’

And Sibert gave a shudder so powerful that I saw him tremble.

I felt his fear like a living thing, and it seemed to leap from him to me so that suddenly I, too, was shaking. ‘What is it?’ I managed, my voice barely audible.

‘A ghost,’ Sibert whispered, eyes wide with dread. ‘Oh, dear God, supposing he was a ghost? And I was right beside him. I could have reached out and touched him!’

For a moment we were both frozen with horror. Then I said, forcing a grin, ‘Sibert, whatever else ghosts may or may not do, I don’t think they sweep corridors.’

After several heartbeats, Sibert laughed. An uneasy, nervous laugh, yes, but still a laugh.

I wondered why the very mention of the word ghost should have provoked such a reaction, for I knew from personal experience that Sibert could be brave when danger faced him. There was obviously something he hadn’t told me, and I reckoned there was only one way to find out. ‘Sibert, is the abbey haunted?’

He paled again and, hand like iron on my wrist, said urgently, ‘ Shhhhhhh! ’ Then, recovering, with an attempt at nonchalance that touched me to my core, ‘Yes. They do say so.’

He was obviously so very reluctant to say more, but we both knew he must. I twisted my wrist out from his grasp — I’m sure he didn’t realize it but his fingers were hurting me — and held his hand. ‘Tell me,’ I said simply.

He drew a deep breath, then another. Then: ‘The monks are scared and their superiors try to pretend that it is not so. They say the men are merely unsettled because the building work is so disruptive to their normally tranquil life. They cannot easily hear God’s voice amid the uproar, and this is disturbing them.’

I was quite surprised at the idea of God not being able to make himself heard to one who tried to listen, even above the tumult of a construction site. What were the senior monks trying to cover up? ‘You spoke to some of them?’ I asked.

Sibert nodded. ‘Yes. They are quite approachable, really, or anyway the younger ones are. They’re just like anyone else and they seemed eager to come and chat to me, although I noticed that they kept looking over their shoulders in case the men in charge noticed.’

‘What did they say about the. . the ghost?’

Sibert swallowed nervously. ‘The rumours say that something’s been seen in the area where the old Saxon church stood.’

‘Something-?’ I began, but Sibert shook his head and I stopped. My curiosity burned me, but I would have to let him tell his story in his own way.

‘The new cathedral is much bigger than the old church,’ he went on, ‘but it’s being built on the same spot, so they’re having to demolish most of the church. The shingle roof and the outer walls went ages ago, and the tower was the first thing to be knocked down. The most sacred part was the little chapel in the south aisle, because its walls are full of bones.’

‘Bones?’

‘It’s a place of honour, Lassair, reserved for the remains of people like old abbesses and Saxon lords. They told me that St Etheldreda’s bones are in there.’

I was beginning to suspect what the nature of this rumour might be. ‘And one of these worthies is resenting the disturbance?’ I suggested.

Sibert clearly disliked my light tone. ‘It’s nothing to joke about,’ he said sharply. ‘You didn’t talk to them. You didn’t sense the terror they’re feeling in there.’ He jerked his head towards the abbey.

‘No, that’s true,’ I acknowledged meekly. ‘What have they seen?’

Again, Sibert drew a steadying breath. ‘It’s a shape, clad in white,’ he said, ‘like a corpse in its shroud. Its face is deadly, ashen, and its hair is pale as snow.’ He, too, was pale, and I heard him suppress a couple of wrenching, retching sounds.

Fear, I suddenly understood, was making him physically ill. .

‘And it’s got pale eyes too?’ I asked, trying to bring his attention back to me.

He turned to stare at me, horror all over his face. His mouth worked, but no words emerged. He tried again, this time successfully, and instantly I wished he hadn’t.

Because he said, ‘It hasn’t got any eyes.’

We sat there on the straw, clutching each other’s hands, as the fear flowed around us like a dense, dark cloud. A ghost with no eyes. . Dear Lord, what sort of a creature could it be? What had been done to it, and how terrible would be its wrath now that its uneasy peace had been so violently disrupted? Was it even now plotting its unspeakable vengeance?

I squeezed Sibert’s hand. It was warm, human, living, and it squeezed back. I sensed the fear retreat a little. ‘Sibert, we must leave the island,’ I said. ‘It’s not safe, we-’

‘The ghost has only been seen within the abbey or, at the worse, just outside the walls,’ he said quickly. ‘We’re not in danger out here, or at least I don’t think so.’ He looked uneasily around the little room.