The Serpents of Harbledown

PROLOGUE

The search began at dawn. It was led by Alwin, the distraught father of the missing girl, a big, brawny man with a dark beard fringing his weathered face. No sleep had relieved his anxiety that night. He simply stood at the open shutters and gazed up at the heavens in mute supplication. Alwin was an experienced sailor.

He had endured hostile elements a hundred times in his small vessel and shown the routine bravery of his occupation. But he also had the strange fatalism of the seafaring man.

“She is gone, Brother Martin. I know it.”

“Do not believe that,” said the monk with a consoling hand on his arm. “Have faith, Alwin. We will find her.”

“Alive or dead?”

“Alive-God willing!”

“Why did she not come home last night?”

“We will chide her with that very question.”

“It can only be that she was prevented by force.”

“No, my son.”

“Bertha met with some terrible accident. I sense it.”

“Be calm. There may yet be another explanation for her disappearance. The girl is young and sometimes headstrong.

Adventure may have directed her feet farther than she intended to go. Finding herself lost, Bertha sheltered for the night and is even now taking her bearings.”

Alwin was beyond comfort. “She is gone,” he said with a shudder of resignation. “My daughter is dead.”

They left Canterbury as the first faint beams of light were being heralded by cockcrow. Alwin strode purposefully along but the ancient monk kept pace without difficulty. Time had robbed Brother Martin of many things but it had left his vigour untouched.

Beneath the black cowl of the Benedictine Order, his sinewy legs had a tireless rhythm. It was in the wrinkled benevolence of his face that sixty years had scrawled a larger signature.

He sought in vain to soothe his companion with words.

“She may have spent the night with friends.”

“Bertha made no mention of it to me,” grunted Alwin.

“What if she met someone on her way home?”

“That is my fear, Brother Martin.”

“Someone she knew,” said the monk. “A chance encounter with a close acquaintance. They fell into conversation, time raced by, the friend’s house was nearer than yours …”

“No,” insisted Alwin. “Bertha would have sent word.”

“Has she stayed out before?”

“Only once.”

“With whom, pray?”

“Her aunt. In Faversham.”

“Then that is where she is now,” decided Martin with a surge of hope. “Instead of returning to Canterbury, she first went on to visit her aunt. Bertha is in Faversham. Even for legs as brisk as hers, it is a tidy walk and left her no time to get home before dark. Is this not possible, Alwin?”

“Possible,” conceded the other. “But unlikely.”

“Why?”

The question hung unanswered in the air. Alwin’s gaze had been distracted by a group of figures conjured out of the gloom.

They were waiting at the base of the hill and stiffened at the approach of the two men. A voice rang out.

“We are ready, Brother Martin.”

“God bless you, Bartholomew!”

“Tell us what we must do.”

“First, we will offer up a prayer.”

“Who are they?” whispered Alwin, looking around the faces that now took on shape and character.

“Friends,” said Martin.

“But I do not recognise any of them. Do they know Bertha?”

“They know that she has gone astray. It is enough.”

Alwin was touched. There were over a dozen of them. Three monks, two novices, a priest, a woodcutter, a shepherd, a couple of yawning boys, a blacksmith and three men with vacant grins, whose distinctive garb and pungent smell identified them as swineherds. All had heard and all had come to help in the search, asking for no reward beyond that of finding the girl safe and well.

Brother Martin led them in a short prayer. Brother Bartholomew, a square-jawed monk in his thirties, gave Alwin an encouraging smile.

“Take heart, my friend,” he said. “We are with you.”

“I thank you all.”

“Brother Martin will teach us where to look but you must lend some guidance. We know your daughter by name but not by sight.

Describe her to us that we may recognise Bertha, if and when we find her.”

“As assuredly we will,” added Martin. “Alwin?”

They waited a full minute as the tormented father wrestled with his tongue. It was ironic. In the midst of biting rain and howling tempest, Alwin never lacked voice. When his boat was tossed helplessly on the waves, he would rant and curse for hours on end. Put his own life in danger and his defiance was ear-splitting. Yet now that his daughter was at risk, now that he was caught up in another crisis, now that he had equal cause to hurl profanities at a malign twist of destiny, he was numbed into silence. Shrugging his shoulders, he threw a helpless glance at Brother Martin and the monk came to his aid.

“Bertha is seventeen,” he explained. “Tall, fair and as comely as any young maid. Dressed in a blue that matches her eyes and a white wimple. Thus it stands. Bertha gathered herbs for me yesterday and brought them to the hospital of St. Nicholas, as she had done many times before. She talked with me then lingered to speak to my charges, for she is the soul of compassion and her very presence is a medicine to the minds of our poor guests.” He took a deep breath. “At what time she left Harbledown, we do not know but one thing is certain. She did not return to Canterbury by nightfall.”

“We searched,” said Alwin, finding his voice at last and eager to dispel any suspicion of lack of paternal concern. “Brother Martin and I searched in the darkness with a torch but it was hopeless.

We need daylight.”

“You have it,” noted Bartholomew, as the sky slowly cleared above them. “And you have several pairs of eyes to make best use of it. Let us begin.”

Alwin nodded with gratitude. “Spread out,” he urged. “Move forward together. And I beg of you, search thoroughly.”

They fanned out in a line that covered well over a hundred yards then ascended the hill with careful footsteps. Most of them used a stick or a staff to push back the brambles or prod among the bushes.

One of the swineherds had brought a mattock and he sang tunelessly to himself as he hacked a way through thick undergrowth.

A long iron poker was pressed into service by the blacksmith.

Alwin and Brother Martin were at the centre of the search party, moving upward either side of the track which Bertha habitually used on her way home from Harbledown. Trees and shrubs offered countless hiding places but none disclosed any trace of the girl.

Progress was slow and painstaking. A shout of alarm from one of the novices brought them all running but Bertha had not been found. The boy had simply stumbled on the half-eaten remains of a dead dog. When the line formed again, they picked their way steadily on.

Morning dew glistened as the sun took its first full look at the day. Birdsong covered the hillside. Far below them, Canterbury had come noisily to life and carts trundled into the city with produce for the market. Alwin searched on with mounting desperation, his fear now mixed with a scalding guilt. As they got nearer to the crest of the hill, he felt as if his heart were about to burst asunder.

His mind was a furnace of recrimination. Pain forced him to drop down on one knee. Brother Martin came across to the stricken father at once.

“What ails you, my son?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Is the sorrow too heavy to bear?”

“I am well now,” said Alwin, struggling upright again.

“Rest here awhile and leave the search to us.”

“No, Brother Martin. She is my daughter. I must be there.”

The old monk saw the haunted eyes in the grim face.

“Is there something you have not told me?” he said.

Alwin winced then shook his head firmly in denial. He could not share his thoughts even with the kindly Brother Martin.

Remorse was stifled. Using his staff to ease hack some bushes, Alwin continued the search.

Appropriately, it was the leper who found her. Nobody had even noticed him, emerging from the trees like a ghost to join the end of the line. He was a tall, stooping figure in a leper’s cloak with his wooden begging bowl and clapper dangling from the cord at his waist. His head was enveloped by the hood and his face shrouded by a veil. The sound that came from his throat was high and piercing, like that of an animal caught in a snare.

Pointing with horror, the leper was standing beside a clump of holly. His withered hand seemed to feel no pain as it pushed through the sharp leaves. He let out another cry before shuffling away in the direction of the hospital. By the time they reached the holly, the leper had vanished.

Bertha was there. Lying on her back in the moist grass, she looked at first as if she were sleeping peacefully. Her apparel was slightly torn and soiled but there were no marks of violence upon her. The ring of faces watched as Alwin pushed his way through to her. Torn between hope and despair, he crouched beside his beloved daughter.

“Bertha,” he called softly. “Wake up, Bertha.”

He reached out to shake her arm but a sudden movement in the grass made him draw quickly back. Gasps went up from the watching group. A long, thick, gleaming snake darted from the shadow behind the girl’s head to make a bid for freedom. One savage blow from the mattock killed it instantly but its venom had already claimed a victim.

The telltale marks of fangs showed on Bertha’s exposed neck, dark spots of doom on white alabaster innocence. Alwin collapsed in tears beside his daughter. Her young life had been snatched away by one of the serpents of Harbledown.