Mist Over the Water

ONE

It was raining. It had been raining all day and most of the day before. Now the temperature was dropping as light faded on the short, late October day and the incessant raindrops were turning into hard, spiteful little pellets of ice.

The man stared wistfully up the muddy, puddly track along which the last of his companions had lately disappeared. He wished more than anything that he could down tools and follow. The lodgings might be bare, basic, chilly and mean, but anything was better than standing hopelessly out in the cold rain. He sighed and once again hefted the long pole, noticing how the light of a flare up on the abbey wall caught the vicious, hooked barbs of the trident on its end. Then, for what felt like the thousandth time that day, he stood right on the edge of the steep bank above the stream and, focusing his mind, tried to seek out the dark, secret place where the eels lay burrowed deep in the black mud.

He waited. He lunged, thrusting the gleeve — the locals had taught him the new word — down into the slow-moving water. He felt the cruel points go down, down into the sludge of the stream bed. He muttered a swift prayer.

He drew the gleeve out of the water. The three points dripped diamond-bright droplets back into the stream. They were empty; for the thousandth time he had failed.

He knew he was asking too much of himself, for this was a new skill and even the experienced eel men had remarked that conditions were tough today, as the drop in temperature had sent the eels deep down into the mud where they were undoubtedly going to remain. Nevertheless, all the other men had caught something; only he would return empty handed. It was a depressing thought.

His name was Morcar, he was about twenty-five or twenty-six — he was not sure — and he was a flint knapper. He lived in the Breckland with his widowed mother, Alvela, and such was his skill at his work that normally the two of them wanted for little. He could strike the flint by instinct and from his quick hands the flat-faced, glittering black stones fell in neat, regular shapes, all ready for building or facing walls. He was reliable and he was honest. By the standards of their particular stratum of society, he and his mother were considered quite comfortably off. But times were hard and everybody from lord to serf had to make economies. Nobody was building anything new; few men sought out the services of a flint knapper — even a very good one — when they were struggling to put bread on the table.

In this the third year of his reign, King William was proving to be an exacting monarch. He had held England safe from the attempt made two years ago by his brother, Duke Robert of Normandy, to seize it from him, which his dubious people were informed was something to be celebrated. However, Duke Robert’s aim had been to unite England and Normandy under one ruler, as had been the case in the time of the brothers’ great father, William the Conqueror — an aim both brothers shared. Duke Robert had failed to win England. Now it was King William’s turn to make his attempt on Normandy.

The campaign had got off to a good start and Robert, alarmed at the speed with which his dukedom seemed to be slipping away from him, had desperately appealed to his overlord, King Philip of France, for help, who obliged with an ostentatious show of force. The wily William, however, had swiftly sent his French counterpart a huge bribe, which had sent Philip’s army scuttling back to his own realm.

The bribe had to be paid for, just as did every single man, horse, weapon, wagon and its contents in King William’s army, and the payment came from the taxes extracted from the people of England. It would have been hard enough in times of plenty, but the last two years had seen an unprecedented succession of natural disasters. It had rained in spring, summer, autumn and winter. In late summer a year ago, there had been a terrifying earthquake that had had the priests moaning and tearing their hair, crying out that God was furious with his sinful people and the only way to appease his wrath was for every man to give as much as he could and more to the church. The earthquake had seemed to be the natural expression of a climate gone mad; it had been so cold that the crops hadn’t ripened until well into the autumn, and the meagre harvest had continued into November.

And all the time there was the constant, ongoing worry of taxation. The king is waging this campaign against his brother on the people’s behalf, the men of power said. Pay up, it’ll be worth it in the end!

As if there were any choice.

People paid up. Then they scrimped and saved and tried to replace what they’d just had to stump up, only to have a further demand.

It was no wonder nobody had much use for a flint knapper.

Morcar had heard of the wonderful new cathedral that the Normans had commanded to be built on the Island of the Eels. The new rulers of England were building, even if nobody else was; they were busy stamping the land with their big, brash constructions that shouted out for all to hear that the old ways were gone for ever and a harsher order now held sway.

There had been a monastery on the Isle of Ely for more than 400 years, since the time of the beloved St Etheldreda who, despite being twice married, had maintained her maiden state and had finally been allowed to flee to the island, the gift of her second husband. There she had founded a double community for monks and nuns, becoming its first abbess. She died of a tumour on the throat and her grieving community had buried her in the monastery grounds, later moving her body into the little monastery church. The removal revealed a miracle: despite having been under the earth for sixteen years, St Etheldreda’s body was sweetly fragrant and perfectly preserved, the tumour magically healed.

For 200 years, Etheldreda’s community flourished around the sacred burial place of its beloved founder. Then the Vikings came. In the wake of destruction came resurrection; a Benedictine community settled on the island and the focus of their love and devotion was St Etheldreda’s shrine.

It seemed to those who cherished and honoured the old ways that the Norman newcomers must be blind and deaf, totally insensitive to the precious, fragile atmosphere of Etheldreda’s little church, where not only her bones but those of other worthy figures were safely interred. Showing scant respect, the Normans were knocking it down, and now a new, grand, showy cathedral was slowly rising up where once it had stood.

Cathedrals were built from flint, Morcar had thought when first he had learned about what was going on at Ely; from flint and stone. There was no work at all back at home so he had carefully wrapped his tools, shouldered his pack, kissed his mother goodbye and headed off, out across the heathland and then down into the Fens and over the water to the island. There, however, he had met with stunning, bitter disappointment; the new cathedral was being built not of flint but solely of stone, purchased from Peterborough Abbey and ferried from the quarry to Ely on barges that wound their way through the inland waterways.

The masons, hard at work on the magnificent new building, had no use at all for a flint knapper. However, there was work to be had on the island for any man willing to do it, for the monks of Ely were paying their brethren at Peterborough for the stone in eels. Thousands of eels: some said more than 8,000 per year. The rich waters around the island offered a constant, generous supply of eels, and it was the obvious thing to do. Morcar had heard tell that in one year, an incredible 52,000 eels had been caught, but this fact had been related to him by a loose-mouthed drunkard, and he was quite sure it was an exaggeration.

Morcar had to earn money, for his own well-being and that of his mother depended on it. The poor and the hungry could not afford to be proud, so he bowed his head, stowed the tools of his trade safely away in his lodgings and offered himself as an eel catcher. It looked easy and as he watched and listened to the other men, his confidence rose. The eel were caught in a variety of ways, they told him, depending on the season. When the water was warm in spring and summer traps were set, but in autumn and winter the eels retreated down into the deep mud of the stream bed, where they could only be caught with the long eel gleeves. ‘Them eels are made out of that mud, see,’ an older man had informed Morcar. ‘They disappear deep down there as the year fails, then in springtime out pop a whole lot more of them, fresh-made out of the guts of the very earth.’

Morcar, lacking the knowledge to agree or dispute, had merely grunted. Then he had taken his gleeve and set off to catch some of the huge population of eels that the dark fen waters provided in such abundance. Or so he had hoped; in five days, his total was eight, and he had only caught those because a kindly and more experienced man had helped him. In despair, he was on the point of giving up.

Morcar was nothing if not determined, however. Taciturn, slow to lower his habitual guard sufficiently to make friends, he was by nature a solitary man and, other than to his mother, rarely spoke more than a handful of words to anyone. Silence concealed not weakness but stubborn strength; now he ground his teeth till his jaw ached as he made up his mind. I will try once more, he decided, and then I will call it a day.

Perhaps his luck would change if he moved upstream a few paces. . Eager now, filled with a sudden, unreasoned hope, he hurried up the track, away from the abbey and the confusion of the building site, at last quiet as evening approached. Once again he took up his pose on the very edge of the high bank. Then he stared down into the water.

He waited.

What was that? Movement? Did his eyes play tricks, or was there really a dark, sinuous shape moving silkily through the water?

There was no time to think. Raising his gleeve, staring fixedly at the faint ripple just beneath the surface, he drew back his right arm. Using his left arm as a pointer, he sighted along it and then with all his strength hurled the gleeve into the water.

He knew immediately that at last he had done it; the heavy weight on the end of the gleeve told him so. Hurriedly, hand over hand, he drew the pole back to the bank, laughing aloud as he saw what was wriggling and struggling on the barbs. Quickly he reached for the eel — it was a large one, almost the length of his arm, black and shiny in the faint light — and, releasing it from the barbs, he dispatched it swiftly as he had been taught and flung it down on the ground.

In his jubilation he forgot to be cautious. Eager to collect his gear, his eel and at last head for his lodgings, he forgot the perils of the steep bank and the narrow track that ran along the top of it, slippery from the incessant rain and the many feet that had trudged up and down it. He turned too fast, missed his footing and tumbled down towards the water.

If he fell in he would probably die. Nobody was there to hear him cry out, he could not swim, the water was deep and the sides of the stream so steep that he would not be able to climb them unaided. Acting instinctively — there was no time for thought — he thrust his gleeve into the bank.

It stuck securely into the earth and brought him to a shuddering, trembling halt. It undoubtedly saved his life. Unfortunately, in his panic he had managed to drive its sharp points through his right foot.

He lay there shaking with shock. The pain had not started yet — he knew it was only a matter of time — and before it did he edged himself up over the lip of the bank so that his shoulders and chest were safe on the track. Then he gritted his teeth and worked away at the gleeve until, with a nauseating squelching sound and a horrible grating as the metal spikes ground against bone, it ripped free of his foot. Before the agony really took hold, he gathered the last of his strength and swung his legs up on to the track.

He risked a quick look at his right foot. The leather of his boot bore two long, tattered tears — it seemed he had only speared himself with two of the three points — and he could see his pale flesh already dark with blood. A wave of dizziness washed through him, and he put his head on the wet ground.

I can’t stay here, he told himself. I must find shelter. Help. Clean water and cleansing herbs.

With a huge effort he stood up. Using the gleeve as a staff, he picked up his eel and his pack and began to hobble back along the track.

Morcar pulled the hood of his new cloak forward in a futile effort to shield his head from the biting cold. The cloak was quite short, its hem reaching scarcely to his hips, and it did not keep the wet out nearly as efficiently as the merchant who had sold it had promised. Moreover, it stank of whatever animal fat had been rubbed into it. The rain had at long last eased and now was no more than a misty dampness in the chilly air. Tendrils of white mist were swirling up from the sodden ground, twirling around his feet and ankles.

He hunched his shoulders and pressed on. He was close to the abbey walls now, and the flares set high up to light the track illuminated the puddles. He was still beside water, but now it was a stinking, dirty ditch, all but stagnant, and he doubted there would be anything living beneath the scummy surface.

Something caught his eye. An eel? Surely not. But if it were, he ought to have a try at spearing it, for he had suffered so much that day and two eels instead of one would be a more cheering result for all the hardship. His foot was throbbing, each throb so painful that he all but swooned. Forcing himself to ignore both the agony and the sensible voice in his head urging him to get back to his lodgings immediately and stop being such a fool, he put down his pack and the dead eel and once more raised his pole.

Whatever was down there under the water did not seem to be moving very much. The light from the flares caught it now and then; Morcar waited a moment and then took aim. The points of the gleeve struck, there was a clatter, as if metal had hit metal, and then something huge seemed to roll over in the dark water, sending up great bubbles of gas that burst as they surfaced, emitting a stench so foul that Morcar gagged.

Dear God in heaven, what was it?

Morcar stepped closer.

Beneath his horrified eyes, bobbing gently in the foul water, lay what had once been a man. A warrior, for the remnants of his rusting armour still clung to the skeletal remains. Morcar, his heart beating fast from the shock, wrenched his gaze away from the macabre apparition and turned his face to the sanctuary of the walls.

Then the lights went out.

He cried out in terror for, in the instant before the darkness came, he saw — or thought he saw — a pale shape rising up out of the mist, which now lay like a soft, slowly billowing blanket across the ground. His eyes wide, he stared, quite incapable of looking away, and the horror of the image that still seemed to burn into his eyes brought a long, low moan of dread from his parted lips. Then he saw more figures — a group of them, shadowy, vague — and he heard a sharp cry, quickly suppressed.

He sought frantically for a rational explanation, but panic gripped him and sense had flown.

From some resource deep within him he found the strength to pull himself out of his horrified trance. His wound hurt so much that he all but retched as he hurried up the track, heading almost blindly for the bulk of the abbey walls rising up before him. I must find the gate, he thought, fighting the abject fear that threatened to turn his bowels and his bones to water. I must find the gate, for within the walls there is light and company and safety.

Running — trying to run — had screwed tight the pain in his foot until it was all but intolerable, making him weak and faint. Leaning heavily on his gleeve, he forced his legs to move. One step. Two steps. Three. Four.

They came at him out of the impenetrable darkness of the shadows beneath the walls, and he had no warning of their presence. One of them took his gleeve out of his hand, and without its support he fell heavily, into the arms of the other one. He tried to wriggle free, tried to leap away, but his foot would not let him — and, anyway, they were too strong. One went on holding him and the other backed off. But only for an instant; then something hit Morcar with the force of a charging bull and suddenly he was in the air, flying in a smooth arc out over the bank. Then he fell into the filthy ditch and foul, black water closed over his head.