Mist Over the Water

EIGHT

We made Sibert as unmemorable as we could next morning. I fashioned a cap for him out of the woven scarf he was wearing round his neck, pulling it forwards to conceal his forehead and brows. His tunic was muddy from his trip across the fens, and I resisted the urge to brush it clean; cleanliness stood out more than dirt among a hard-working population, and it would be better if nobody remembered any details about the man who had come looking for the pale-haired monk. Just in case.

I didn’t let myself think too much about just in case.

As we ate our breakfast we concocted a story: Sibert would say his name was Faol and he worked with his father, who was a rat catcher, and did the monks have any areas of the abbey that were infested? If they said no, then Sibert was to pretend to have seen ominous signs, upon which we hoped the monks would be alarmed into inviting him to have a good look round. Once inside, it ought to be easy. This was, after all, an abbey that at present was in the throes of a major redevelopment, with a huge, new cathedral rising in place of the little Saxon church. Workmen were going in and out all day, no doubt swarming all over the building site. Indeed, our first idea had been to have Sibert pretend to be one of them. We had, however, realized that this disguise would not give him the excuse to venture into the abbey’s private areas; hence the rat-catching plan.

I saw him off with a hug and an encouraging word. I watched him as he hurried off up the alley. Then I went back inside and started to pray.

The pale-haired boy lay on his hard bed. He knew he could not stay alone there for long. One of the worst things about this new life into which he had been so abruptly thrust was the almost total lack of privacy. Not that he’d ever had much of that in his humble village home, but what he had always sought — and quite frequently managed to achieve — was solitude. Now every instant of the day and the night was spent in the close company of other people. Those people were monks, moreover, and to the last man senior to him in the religious life, which meant they were entitled to tell him what to do and make sure he did it. He had never in his life felt so many pairs of eyes studying his every move, and it unnerved him so badly that he barely knew himself.

As if that were not bad enough, he was terrified.

There was something quite dreadful within the abbey. He knew that without a shadow of a doubt. He had seen it. It had seen him, or it would have done if it had- No. He forced himself to arrest the thought. Wasn’t it enough that the fearful spectre haunted his brief snatches of uneasy sleep, without imagining it in his waking hours?

They called him Brother Ailred, but that was not his name. He was not sure that he ought to be called brother, for he was quite certain he had not taken any vows in the short time he’d been at Ely. But to whom could he protest? The other monks barely let him speak, and he was quite sure that if he tried nobody would listen.

As far as the pale-haired youth was concerned, his name was Gewis. He was fifteen years old, and he had been born and bred in a small village called Fulbourn, on the edge of the fens some five miles to the south-east of Cambridge. His home had been out to the south of the village, close to where the Gog Magog hills rose up. His father had died four years ago when Gewis was eleven. Gewis wished he had fonder memories of him, but the truth was that his father had been an embittered man, self-absorbed with little time and few kind words to spare for his young wife and son. His name was Edulf and he was a carpenter, or so he claimed, although Gewis had rarely seen a man less handy with the tools of his trade. As Gewis grew towards maturity and began to think about his childhood he realized that his mother Asfrior must have had an income of some sort, for otherwise the little family would surely not have survived. As soon as he was old enough, Gewis had picked up sufficient skill to take on carpentry jobs, at first only the simplest work that other men rejected as beneath them, then gradually progressing to more demanding tasks. The fact that the household depended on the young son and not the father for its income must, Gewis thought, have served only to increase Edulf’s anger with the world and resentment at his place within it.

Life at home with his mother had been in some ways easier without his father’s gloomy presence, although his mother had grieved long for her husband and, to Gewis’s dismay, now appeared to be as resentful as Edulf had been at her lowly lot. Gewis did not understand; it was as if both of them, first his father and now his mother, were angry about something. What it was, Gewis had no idea. All the thoughts he had wasted on trying to puzzle out the mystery led nowhere, and in the end he’d concluded only that at some time someone had somehow cheated his father out of some possession that would have made the family’s life easier, although what this possession might be he had no idea. He guessed that his father must have passed on this secret to his wife as he lay on his death bed, so that now she, too, was soured by constantly dwelling on what might have been.

It was a thin, unsatisfactory conclusion, and Gewis had never really been happy with it. There was something else, something he tried hard not to think about, especially now when he was away from his home and could not look after his mother. The unwelcome fact was that both of them, first Edulf and now Asfrior, had grown very, very afraid.

Given the underlying mystery that lay hidden in his past and the very evident fear of both his parents, Gewis had hardly been surprised when they had come to Fulbourn to seek him out. His mother’s reaction had been strange; it had almost been as if she’d expected the visitors. There were four of them, dressed in the robes of Benedictine monks, and all were broad, strongly built men. Even had Gewis thought to refuse the request that sounded like an order — that he accompany them there and then to the abbey at Ely — he would have stood no chance of evading or escaping them. They provided him with a garment that looked very much like a monk’s habit, similar to the robes they wore. He was given a moment to bid his mother farewell — she seemed to be encouraging him to go with the monks, so presumably it was all right — then they’d set off.

For most of the journey north to Ely he had felt too stunned to speak, and the presence of the four men who stationed themselves around him as they walked had been powerful enough that he’d dared not pose any of the dozens of questions that had flown to and fro in his mind like gnats over a summer meadow. It was only after they’d crossed the water to the island and were on the point of entering, through a gate in a shadowy alley, into the abbey itself that he’d managed to protest. His moment of rebellion had been very brief: one short cry, then the hard hand of the biggest monk had crushed against his lips and they’d bundled him inside.

In the days since then they had kept him very busy as slowly he learned the daily round of the monks. They told him virtually nothing. His only comfort had come when an old monk, with what he fervently hoped he was right in thinking to be a kindly smile, had leaned across to him and whispered, ‘Welcome. You’re safe here.’

Safe? Safe here? That suggested to Gewis that he had not been safe out in the world in his village. Why not? Where, or what, was the threat? Gewis had no idea. But, if he had been asked, he would have bet it had something to do with the oddities of his past. .

Gewis heard footsteps, many of them, pacing steadily along the passage outside the long dormitory. Hastily he got to his feet, straightened his robe, ran a hand over the unfamiliar shaved patch on the crown of his head and went to join the other monks. They were going to pray, as they did several times a day for what felt like hours. It would have been difficult to concentrate anyway for someone like Gewis, here through no wish of his own. As it was, somehow the necessary detachment had to be summoned to ignore the fact that the abbey was now a building site and to fix the heart, mind and soul on God.

Gewis stood in his appointed place. His eyes were not fully closed and carefully, moving as little as possible, he looked around from under his eyelids, trying to assess what progress had been made in the time since he had last been summoned to prayer. What he observed made his heart drop; weary, lonely, sad, he closed his eyes and gave himself to the prayers.

The image, however, stayed right there in his mind. They had almost done it, those hard-working, tough and ruthlessly determined men who took the Norman coin in return for their job of violation. Only a fragile shell remained, and soon that, too, would be gone.

They were building a huge new cathedral on the very spot where the little Saxon church had stood. There was no way that the two structures could coexist and so almost the entire Saxon church must be demolished. Some of its core elements would survive: the south side chapel, it was rumoured, would form the north wall of the new monks’ quire. Within a precious and much-loved building, the south side chapel had been particularly special for it was here that the bones of Ely’s early abbesses and benefactors had been interred, together with the remains of other beloved figures who had been involved in the abbey’s life. Even this little chapel was not immune from the wreckers’ destructive mallets, and the signs of the attack were evident. This onslaught was, according to the whispers, both a disrespectful and a dangerous thing to do; rumours abounded, the most frightening of which was that something had been disturbed that would have been far better left in peace.

Nobody seemed willing to describe what that something was. Gewis’s eyes fluttered open as he recalled what one of the other young monks had said yesterday about a misty shape that had loomed up out of the shadows beneath the abbey wall. Hastily, he tried to crush the memory of those furtive whispered words, but it proved too strong. It was shrouded all in white. . It held out a hand like a claw. . There was something terribly wrong with its face. .

Gewis felt fear churn in his bowels. Dear God, he prayed silently, help me! Save me!

But help did not come.

For the morning’s work he was sent to sweep the many passages that wound through the abbey. Building sites made a lot of dust and dirt, and the monks spent many hours every day trying to keep their living quarters as clean as they could. Gewis was sent with two other monks to the maze of apartments to the south side of the new cathedral. Presently, he found himself alone, sweeping the length of a narrow corridor between high walls. There was a little door at the other end, and he was aiming to deposit his growing pile of sweepings on the far side of it.

He heard footsteps. Turning, expecting to see one of his brethren, he found himself face to face with a young man perhaps a couple of years older than himself. The newcomer was tall and slim, with fair hair styled quite long and blue-green eyes that held a wary expression. He wore a shabby, shapeless cap pulled forward over his forehead.

He wasn’t a monk and this alone was sufficient to make Gewis approach him eagerly. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

The stranger was staring at him intently. Then, taking Gewis totally by surprise, he grinned and said, ‘Yes, I think you can.’

Gewis had no idea what the young man meant and, before he could ask, there was the sound of running feet and three older monks came hurrying along the corridor. The one in the lead drew to a halt, composed his face into a smile and said, ‘Thank you, Brother — er, Brother Ailred, we will deal with this.’ His two companions had hastened to take up positions either side of the stranger and, so subtly that Gewis wondered how they had achieved it, they had swiftly turned him round and were ushering him back along the passage.

‘You say you saw a rat scuttling away down here?’ the first monk said to the stranger as he followed the group back up the corridor. The young man muttered something in reply and the monk said, ‘That is most helpful and we shall take steps immediately to deal with the problem. Now, if you would be so kind, let us explore this way. .’

Gewis stared after them, his broom hanging from his limp hand. He tried to fight the thought, but he was fairly sure he had just seen a helping hand from the outside world smoothly and efficiently snatched away.

The morning seemed endless and as the hours crept by I had to fight the increasingly horrible scenes that my imagination threw up. Sibert can look after himself, I kept saying to myself. He is in no danger. He has gone into an abbey full of monks — God’s men, for heaven’s sake! — and he will come to no harm.

That was all very well, but the logic and the good common sense were having a hard job holding their own against images of eel fishers in hooded cloaks lying dead on the sodden ground, murdered in ways too brutal to contemplate. .

Frustrated, anxious and sick of the sight of the four walls that enclosed me in that small room, I drew my shawl around me and went outside, quickly walking the short distance down to the waterside at the end of the alley. It was not exactly raining this morning, but moisture made the air heavy and already hundreds of tiny droplets had settled on my shawl. I clutched my fingers into the fine wool, remembering my beloved sister Elfritha, who had made it for me. The thought was reassuring, and just for an instant it was as if she stood beside me, hugging me close. I wondered if she was thinking of me just then, even as I thought of her. Love is God’s miracle, the men of the church tell us, and I have often thought that if it is indeed miraculous then it probably can unite people across distance.

I went on standing there, barely aware of the brownish water slipping by just below my feet. It was only gradually that I realized I was no longer worrying about Sibert. I was, in fact, quite calm.

It was perhaps the absence of that anxiety that made me appreciate something I should have thought of ages ago, something which, as soon as it had occurred to me, drove out the calm. Oh, I thought, oh. How could I have missed that?

Morcar had witnessed the pale-haired monk being bundled into the abbey, and for that the men with the young monk had tried to kill my cousin, making two more attempts when somehow they found out that he had survived. They had killed two men whom they had mistaken for Morcar. Did they know that their true victim still lived? I had feared they would find out, which was why it had been imperative to get Morcar off the island and divert his would-be killers by pretending he was still here, being nursed by Sibert and me. So far, so good, but what would they do when they started to wonder if Morcar had told anyone — Sibert and me, for example — what he had seen?

Morcar’s life was in danger because he had seen something he shouldn’t have seen. This perilous secret was now also known to Sibert and to me. Try as I might, I could see no way that the two of us did not also now share the danger.

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.’