Paul Moorcraft - The Anchoress of Shere

Shere, Surrey

England

1 January 2002

It seemed at first mere eccentricity, as with all such things in England. Soon it became a murderous obsession that would span more than six hundred years, and inflict on its victims a terrible fate.

The key to understanding the tragedy was an innocent visit to the village of Shere in the summer of 1967. The season was warm and gentle. The rains had caressed the Surrey woodlands, where the ash, oak and cherry flaunted their freedom in the fertile hollows.

Marda Stewart stopped and impulsively plucked a stalk of honeysuckle, savouring its fragrance before tucking it behind her ear, perhaps because wearing flowers in your hair was considered fashionable. After an eight-mile hike she realised she was thirsty-until then she had been much too engrossed in her thoughts to consider food or drink. The energetic young woman marched along the last leg of the footpath etched in the sandstone escarpment, heading towards a seventeenth-century free house. She stood a little self-consciously in the bar, quickly drank a glass of white wine, and left the pub. Marda had not noticed, sitting in a corner seat, a powerfully built man, in his late forties, who had scrutinised her every movement.

Heading back through the woods, Marda walked briskly; when she had hiked there regularly with her brother, their intense conversations necessitated taking a slower pace. Nowadays Mark was too busy affecting the role of fashionable subaltern in Her Majesty’s armed forces. He had left the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and his sister, far behind.

So she was alone on her walk, and to her the woods were a retreat. True, in the deeper parts of the Hurtwood she would sometimes sense, or imagine she felt, a frisson of fear, but that afternoon the combination of sun, exertion and now wine made her light-headed. Humming the tune of “Turn, Turn, Turn,” she tried not to dwell on the last volcanic argument with Mark, or to decipher its origins. There was no real substance to their recent antagonism; it had sprung from a clash of moods, perhaps from some subtle shift in their temperaments, but its intangibility made it no less disturbing. Marda resolved to put the acrimony aside, willing herself to luxuriate in the last heat of the day. From the long sloping hill that spilled into the water-meadows of the Tillingbourne river, she surveyed the village which she tried to visit at least once a month in the summer.

Shere was green and wet, brooding in antique loveliness. From its heart, the spire of St. James’s church peeped above the tree cover, forbidding and yet enticing at the same time. The church had been built of wood when the Normans undertook the laborious survey of their new lands; a hundred years after the Conquest, stone had replaced humble timber.

Marda was instinctively drawn to this ancient shrine which hung back from the bustle of the village square and the worldliness of the small shops. Assuming an air of conscious modesty, she walked through the lych-gate and then paused to admire the intricate play of shadows and sunlight which stroked the stonework.

Marda pressed her ear against the large oak door to confirm that she was not interrupting a service. Hearing no sound from the inside, she lifted the stiff latch, pushed the door open a few inches, and slipped inside.

For a moment she trembled as the dankness assailed her nostrils and the cool air swept across her bare arms and legs. A handful of curious tourists were whispering their way along the aisle, but they ignored her. To the left of the entrance, framed in the door of the vestry, an elderly man nodded a restrained greeting. She assumed he was the verger. She was inclined to apologise to the man for her casual attire, but it was a hot summer, and if her clothing was not correct, at least her demeanour and intentions were.

The elderly man did not miss her hesitation. He intuitively knew that, despite her T-shirt and shorts, the girl had deliberately chosen a place of worship. Despite himself, he observed the unmuscled athleticism of her body, particularly the strength of her lightly tanned legs, but her obvious sensuality also reminded him of his age, and of his position. With an audible sigh of regret, he returned to stacking the prayer books.

Marda felt the man’s admiring gaze on her back as she walked carefully into the chancel, adorned by the twin apertures of a cell that once belonged to a fourteenth-century anchoress. She peered into the quatrefoil and the squint, even though she knew that the interior of the cell had been blocked for decades, maybe even centuries, but this timelessness helped her regain a better perspective on her own inner turmoil.

She sat in the second pew, bowing her head slightly. Marda was not religious in the conventional sense. She would sometimes announce, “I am an atheist, thank God”; but the ensuing tinge of doubt suggested an altogether different kind of spiritual sensitivity.

Marda considered herself modern, a child of the sexual emancipation of the sixties. Like her peers she had adopted the Pill as a symbol of the new libertarianism, but she had not dissipated this freedom in bouts of casual sex: she had chosen her two lovers with care, while ensuring a respectable distance of time between the relationships. Her mind spiralled back to the most recent lover in France. The emotions had been too intense, because she had loved him with her mind as much as her body. Perhaps that was too much to give to one man. With all the brittle wisdom of her twenty-three years, Marda appreciated that she was attractive to men, but she rarely allowed her friendliness to descend into blatant flirtation.

And now her thoughts were focused again on her brother, a man who was, in this case, impervious to such devices. His anger had troubled her on the walk, and had brought her to the church in Shere. It was her anger too: she both loved and hated Mark. In their childhood, just eighteen months apart in age, they had never inflicted the customary sibling rivalry on each other. They had bonded in defiance of their parents’ polite distance. But recently, from nowhere, their amity had been ripped apart. Mark had apparently been transformed by military life. Yet Marda was prepared to concede that she, too, had changed. She wondered whether her recent relationship in France had affected her more than she had realised-perhaps some of her frustrations with the Frenchman had been transferred to her brother.

She hoped that the tranquillity of the church would soothe her anger and hurt, that she would recall something of the near-telepathic rapport that she and her brother had once enjoyed. With an inner eye she perceived that this church could become part of the resolution. Fleeting visions impinged on her consciousness. In one tableau she pictured Mark attending her wedding, dressed in all his regimental finery. Maybe they would sing a hymn in French. She imagined Mark struggling his way through the words.

A bud of a smile came over her face. In that moment she experienced an epiphany, although a full understanding of the revelation would take many years. Then and there Marda made a small vow to herself, and she said it aloud, albeit softly: “Some day-no, soon -I will live in Shere.” Vocalising the intention transformed the wish into a commitment. The next month she moved into Shere, adopting a tiny flat with high Gothic windows and a leafy view of the Tillingbourne.

No one could know that this decision would savagely transform both her own life and that of the entire village.