Alys Clare - Mist Over the Water

I wasn’t going to put up with someone trying to scare me out of my wits. ‘I suppose it must have been near here that the Conqueror built his causeway,’ I interrupted, trying to make my tone nonchalant.

The boatman looked surprised that I should know that but quickly he rallied. ‘This here were Hereward’s stronghold, see,’ he said proudly, ‘the place he chose to set up his standard when he came home to find his lands forfeited and his own brother’s head on a spike over the door.’ I had heard the tale many times but it was still shocking. I imagined returning to my own home and finding my dear Haward’s head on a pole. Quickly, I turned my attention back to the boatman.

‘The Conqueror made many attempts to get over the fen but each time he was thwarted,’ the man was saying, puffing slightly as he pulled on the oars, ‘and finally he gave orders for a fleet of wooden rafts to be built and formed up into a causeway. Right here.’ He nodded at the water beneath the keel. ‘Not content with that, he got hold of a local witch and set her up in a high tower, from where she hurled down terrible curses on everyone on the island. Seemingly, he thought she’d undermine our resolve, but she fell and broke her neck and that was the end of that.’ He cackled, coughed, then leaned over the side and spat. I had noted our resolve . Intentionally or not, the boatman had just told us plainly on which side his loyalties lay. It was as well for him that Sibert and I were not Norman spies.

‘What happened then?’ Sibert’s eyes were wide.

The boatman looked gratified at having such an absorbed listener. ‘Well, Hereward knew all about the Conqueror’s causeway, see, and according to some he disguised himself and went out to lend a hand in the building of it. Then when the army was halfway across, too late to order them back, at last the Conqueror realized what Hereward had done.’ He chuckled again. ‘He’d set traps, see,’ he explained before we could ask. ‘He’d made weak spots at intervals all along that long causeway, and when the moment was right he made the planks collapse under the weight, then he set fire to what was left. Most of the soldiers drowned,’ he added in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘and those who didn’t ran away for fear of the deadly, sucking stickiness of the black marsh and what lay hidden beneath.’ He leered again, rolling his eyes for added effect.

‘I understand that the monks revealed the secret ways across,’ I said calmly. I guessed this must have been the next chapter in the boatman’s story, for he looked quite cross. ‘Some of them were not wholly behind Hereward’s revolt, or so I am told.’

‘You’re told right then, lass,’ the boatman agreed sullenly. ‘Not that it did them much good in the end, either their disapproval of Hereward or their treachery, because, far from being grateful that they’d told him what he wanted to know, the Conqueror was angry with them for not telling him sooner. There’s kings for you,’ he added softly, almost to himself, with a world-weary inflection, as if he had known dozens of kings and was all too familiar with their little foibles.

‘What did the Conqueror do?’ Sibert asked.

The boatman smiled grimly. ‘He made the Ely monks travel halfway across England to seek him out, and then he told them coldly what he wanted from them, to make it up to him.’ Again, his eyes flicked from me to Sibert. ‘Only a thousand pounds!’ he hissed.

Sibert and I both gasped. It was an unheard-of sum. ‘How did they possibly manage that?’ I whispered.

‘Sold or melted down every bit of gold and silver they possessed,’ the boatman said, not without a certain air of satisfaction. It appeared he had little more time for monks than for kings. ‘Crosses, altar pieces, chalices, basins, goblets and all, as well as jewels aplenty and a beautiful statue of the Virgin and the Holy Child.’ He sighed. ‘Now that — that was a hard loss.’

We were approaching the island now and, abruptly, the boatman fell silent, his attention on the other craft now bobbing about all around us. I turned away and stared over the side at the water hurrying past. It was so dark, so sinister, and I was overcome with a sense of the unnamed, unnumbered dead down there. I shivered, neither from the cold nor from the boatman’s macabre story.

It was the place itself that frightened me, and my visit was only just beginning.

Sibert and I set off from the waterside, jostled by people hurrying to complete the day’s business before the light faded into night. One or two boats were still setting off across the water but it was clear that ferrying operations were winding down. We passed one of the barges, half of its cargo of stone already unloaded. A gang of men were quitting work for the day, laughing and calling out to each other as they set off for their own hearths. Their garments were coated so thickly with stone dust that they looked like moving statues.

We could see the abbey walls, rising sheer and uncompromising ahead of us. I increased my pace, grabbing hold of Sibert’s sleeve and dragging him with me. The monks must surely be on the point of shutting the gates for the night, if they hadn’t done so already, and if Morcar were inside then I had to get to him before I was shut out. I heard Edild’s voice in my head: if he dies, it will be because you got to him too late . The sensible inner core of me told me that wasn’t exactly what she had said but, all the same, it was the last thing I wanted to think about just then.

Sibert had moved ahead of me, thrusting a way through the hurrying crowds and, with me a few paces behind, we reached a gatehouse. The gates were still open, but a frowning monk was waiting, tapping a foot in impatience, while an old woman and an even older man shuffled out of the abbey. He had a bunch of huge keys in his hand and he was jangling them against his leg.

I pushed past Sibert and said, ‘Please, brother, may I speak with you?’

The monk’s eyes swivelled round to look at me. He did not seem to like what he saw. His face went vinegary and he sniffed, drawing back. ‘No women, not without permission,’ he snapped.

I could have pointed out that the person hobbling along next to the very old man was a woman but I thought better of it. ‘I understand,’ I said meekly, bowing my head so that I was not staring at him. I have been told (by Edild; who else?) that some men in holy orders take exception to women purely because of their sex, taking the view that the forbidden stirrings they feel in their groins at the sight of a woman are all the woman’s fault simply for existing and nothing to do with their own lustful urges. Surreptitiously, I drew my hood forward, hoping to conceal most of my face. ‘I have come to aid a sick kinsman,’ I went on quickly — the keys were making even more noise now and I knew the monk was just itching to boot Sibert and me out of his gateway and lock up — ‘and I was hoping that you might be able to give me news of him?’

I risked a glance at the monk. His expression had thawed imperceptibly. Perhaps the fact that I had come on a mission of mercy and wasn’t just a flighty little piece of nonsense after his virtue had affected him. ‘What’s his name?’ he snapped out.

‘Morcar,’ I said eagerly. ‘Morcar of the Breckland. He’s a flint knapper,’ I added, ‘but-’

‘We’ve no use for flint knappers here,’ the monk said dismissively. ‘ Our abbey’s new cathedral’s being built of Barnack stone, best that money can buy.’

‘He was injured,’ I hurried on, ‘and he has a deep wound in his foot. He also has a high fever. I have brought medicaments and I-’ Too late I realized my mistake. This monk, so proud of his abbey, so obviously viewing himself and his brethren as rarefied beings several levels above the rest of us, would not be happy at the implication that some slip of a girl thought she was a better healer than the Ely infirmarer.