Paul Moorcraft - The Anchoress of Shere

Naked, except for the towel, he slumped into the rocker near the wood-burning stove. Although he rarely drank spirits, he swallowed his second double brandy in one gulp and turned back to the beginning of Gould’s version of the life of the Anchoress of Shere. He read it carefully through to the end while drinking another brandy. He read it again. Disbelief and scorn turned to enraged despair as Gould piled up the documentary evidence, the irrefutable records. The American’s research had been rigorous, with little conjecture. Gould had apparently proven that the anchoress had not chosen to return to the enclosure. He even suggested, quite convincingly, that the entombment had been forced on her-Christine had witnessed a murder involving a cleric in Vachery Manor, and the Church had connived at her enclosure to shut her up. She was compelled to undertake a vow of silence and enclosure, or her father would be exiled. As an extra inducement, her family was bought off with money and a small parcel of land. Poor Christine was no more than a victim of a conspiracy. She was never a visionary. Such was Gould’s interpretation from the evidence of the French archives. It made a mockery of Duval’s life work, and vindicated Gould’s remark that he would make the priest eat his words. Duval’s whole world collapsed around him.

Bobby came up and licked his hand, but the priest pushed the animal away. He opened the door of the wood stove, ready to project the offending article into the fire, but at the last moment hesitated and instead forced himself to read it again, much more slowly this time, stopping only to throw on a few dirty clothes that were piled on a kitchen chair.

Then he started to read it yet again, as though utter concentration on the text could transform its content. This time, after he had finished the first page, he started to chew at the end of the A4 sheet and then to bite it. “This is C-R-A-P,” he said bitterly, instinctively conforming to his habit of spelling out expletives. Then, with a manic laugh, he said, “And I’ll make it into C-R-A-P, too.”

Eventually, he masticated the whole page into a pulp that he swallowed. After another long swig of the brandy, from the bottle this time, he did the same with the second page. Then the third. On the fifth page, he started to choke. He tried to retch, but could not, because the sticky pulp had jammed in his windpipe. He coughed and retched, but it would not budge. He tried to reach into his throat with his fingers. Struggling for air, his eyes felt as if they would explode, but he could not scream. He retched again and then nearly collapsed, but he stretched out to the door, desperate for fresh air. He managed to stagger blindly into the garden. In his frenzy to breathe, and without any light, he fell headlong into the large hole he had dug; a grave not designed for its own creator. Duval’s collie stood guard on the edge of the hole, whining to the moon.

In the cellar Marda did everything she could to help her brother. She gave him water and tried to make him take some of the food she had held back from her own meagre supplies. He was unable to eat anything, but the water helped to ease the parched agony in his throat.

In a while his eyes opened and he moaned, and she tried to soothe him: “Help will come soon. Hold on, Mark.”

His eyes closed again. She made sure that he was covered by her blankets before going into the corridor to check the cellar door. It was locked, but she had light and the freedom to roam in the corridor. Some freedom, she thought.

Then she noticed that water was running into the corridor from the vents near the staircase. Soon an inch or so covered the floor of the corridor. It seemed to be a natural reservoir for wherever the water was coming from, on the other side of the vent. She stood on the stool to try to block the vent with the curtain material which Duval had used to veil his diabolical attempt to crucify her brother, but the force of the water made all her attempts useless. Then it hit her: My God, he’s going to drown us!

Time had become elastic for Marda. For a few seconds it seemed interminable, but then it became shockingly brief as she measured her lifespan in hours. The monster had taken Mark’s watch: she estimated that probably twenty-four hours had passed since Duval’s escape, but in her state of emotional distress she could have been wildly inaccurate. Her brother, though, was still alive; she cradled him in her arms to give him extra warmth, but the water was rising in her cell. It seemed to be rising more rapidly, as though, perhaps, the pressure of the escaping water had damaged other water pipes in the house. The water was cold. And it was now about eighteen inches deep. Soon it would flow over the bench, and she did not want her brother to suffer any more.

Eventually, with the very last reserves of strength, she dragged him to the stairs that led to the trapdoor. It was uncomfortable, but it was the highest point in the cellar. Somehow she managed to pull him to the top steps, where she held him, breathing erratically but swathed in blankets, like two marooned sailors together on a tiny raft.

Very soon, or so it seemed to Marda, the water was about four feet deep in a cellar transformed into a large underground cistern. Bizarrely, she recalled the poem that Churchill had quoted during the darkest days of the Second World War, the words her father had so loved to repeat.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking

Seem here no painful inch to gain

Far back through creeks and inlets making

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

It seemed a sick joke now.

Soon the water would reach the top of the stairs. She could not believe that after all they had gone through they would die by drowning, in the middle of winter in landlocked Shere; especially in a cellar where she had so often been short of water to drink. She tried with every ounce of her being to push up the trapdoor, but she knew it was double locked. She couldn’t understand why Duval had decided to kill them by drowning. Marda wondered whether he had recovered from the extremes of his mania and so perhaps did not want to murder them with his own hands. But why damage one’s own house? She could not see the logic, but logic was a stupid thing to expect from a homicidal madman.

Before the flood fused the cellar lights, she saw the pages of the final chapter of Duval’s crazy book floating in the corridor. She tasted again the dread of his anger.

As they huddled in the cold darkness waiting for death, Marda kept telling her brother how much she loved him. Every now and then he groaned in response to words he could no longer hear properly.

She would not die alone, as she had feared for so long, but that would have been preferable to making her brother die with her. Mark would have been alive and well in Germany if he had not searched for her. It was her fault, she told herself. Why had they both been deserted by the world, she wondered? She thought of Christ’s final words on the Cross. With all his faith, even He had felt forsaken.

Three days before, Professor Gould had dutifully phoned Germany, but was told that Captain Stewart was still in England. Delayed flights or something, he said to himself. He phoned two days later and got the same answer.

Now worried, he left his lodgings and walked across the square, past the war memorial and through the lych-gate. As he traversed the graveyard, Gould marvelled again at the instant changeability of the British weather: within seconds an overcast sky was sundered by a desperate winter sun, and yet despite the brief sunshine a stiff breeze arose. At its crescendo the wind’s piping in the trees prompted the erratic shadows to launch into a jig, focusing a rustic son et lumiere on the western porch of the ancient building. This was almost a divine invitation into the sanctuary of St. James’s church. For the umpteenth time the professor peered into what remained of Christine’s cell. As he looked into the black hole that was the quatrefoil, he wondered if he had been rather slow, too lost in the Middle Ages to realise what was happening around him in the present day. He resolved immediately to visit the police station, where he was told that the car belonging to Mark Stewart had been found abandoned.