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Authors: Paul Finch,Neil Jackson

BOOK: Craddock
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“
Granted. But someone came in here and killed Reverend Allgood and his deacon. There must have been a reason.”
“
Try as I may, I can’t disassociate the murders from these ghostly sounds.” Hendricks shuddered at the mere memory of them. His face was ash-pale. “That’s what terrifies me the most.”
“
You need to tell me
everything
, Hendricks,” Craddock said. “I won’t be shocked. On several occasions I’ve investigated crimes where the perpetrators appeared to be of supernatural origin.”
Hendricks glanced round at him. “Appeared … or
were
?”
“
There’s no need to go into detail. But ask yourself this. Why do you think they sent
me
? I’m first and foremost a police officer … I investigate crime in all its routine forms. But, whether I like it or not, I’m also regarded as having a certain
expertise
.”
A brief silence passed, and then Hendricks sighed. “In which case, I can tell you about the Spectre of St. Brae’s?”
Side by side, they strode out through the great west door. At once, the sea-wind, thick with the scents of salt and loam, came at them over the bleak waste of the fens.
“
It’s supposed to roam these marshes,” Hendricks added, as they stood on the step.
“
All of them?” Craddock asked. As far as he was aware, the fens covered at least a hundred square-miles, maybe more.
“
Just the ones around here. The ones in the vicinity of the cathedral. No-one knows why … no-one even knows what it is for sure. It appears as a … well,
something
. It’s reputedly grotesque.”
“
Reputedly?”
“
No-one’s ever seen it and lived to tell the tale. At least, that’s the story.”
Craddock considered. “And you think it may have been responsible for the deaths of your predecessors?”
“
Given the unusual circumstances of those deaths, don’t you?”
“
I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. But in the majority of murders I’ve investigated, the heinous act has been the work of mortal hands. It strikes me that this
spectre
might serve as a convenient smokescreen.”
“
I don’t follow.”
“
A story to keep people away, a deterrent so to speak. In the case of your Reverend Allgood, it didn’t work, so sterner methods were employed.”
Hendricks gave this some thought.
“
Is there any reason at all why someone might prefer St. Brae’s to be left a ruin?” Craddock wondered.
“
None. What purpose would that serve?”
“
If this cathedral is re-opened, it will attract visitors. Tourists as well as pilgrims. Won’t the peace of King’s Fen be disturbed?”
Hendricks almost laughed. “With all respect, major, King’s Fen clings to a way of life that expired everywhere else long before our glorious Industrial Revolution even began. It could do with having its peace disturbed. It needs new commerce, new occupations.”
“
And does everyone round here share that opinion?”
“
The bulk of them don’t care. Like peasants throughout history, they accept whatever they are landed with as God’s will … whether it be to the benefit or the detriment.”
Craddock strode to the southern corner of the cathedral. Hendricks followed him. From there, they could make out the distant thatched roof of the homestead the major had spied from the door to the vicarage.
“
Who lives over there?” he asked.
“
That’s Madam Godhigfu’s house,” Hendricks said. “She’s a local eccentric … a recluse. She might fit your bill were she thirty years younger. She’s quite elderly and infirm now. She’s also very respectable in her simple rustic way. I doubt she’d stoop to murder.”
“
All the same, I’d like to speak with her. As a potential witness, if nothing else.”
“
It’s quite a slog to get there. The path’s even worse than our causeway. You don’t want me to accompany you, do you?”
“
No.” Craddock was quite firm on that, but not because he was sparing the curate a stiff afternoon’s exercise. Because firstly because he didn’t want one potential witness to contaminate another; and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, because he had other plans for Hendricks.
“
I suggest you use the rest of today to get some sleep,” Craddock said. “You’ll need it. I intend to stay up tonight, to watch the crypt. And I
will
require your assistance for that.”

 

Curate Hendricks hadn’t taken well to the notion that he would be spending the entire night next to the room that had caused him so much terror, but the thought that he’d have a solid fellow like Craddock at his shoulder was of some reassurance. After a brief discussion of plans, he withdrew to the vicarage and his bed, but not before generously sharing the cold luncheon left by his housekeeper.
By two o’clock that afternoon, Craddock was plodding alone through the marshes. He headed east along narrow trails. A mist was rising over the meres and reed-beds. At one point, he came to the ruins of a windmill. The mist seemed to be spilling out from it, as if some monstrous machine inside the hollow shell was producing the vapour. The major was not given to credulousness, but fleetingly he was unnerved. Such was the atmosphere in this forlorn place that he supposed all sorts of hallucinations were possible. He hurried on without looking back.
At length – at considerable length it seemed – he finally reached the cottage. This too stood utterly alone, the mist ebbing around it. By the look of the house, it was over a century old, and probably hadn’t seen a lick of paint since first constructed. The steep thatched roof looked damp and rotten. The orange walls, made from blocks of clay and straw cast in moulds, leaned so alarmingly that most of the small windows were distorted in their frames. The front entrance had such a crazy angle that it was difficult to see how the door could either be opened or closed. To one side of the cottage, a low wall hemmed a small garden, which had been given over entirely to vegetables. A tall woman was working in this, using a fork to turn the black, peaty soil.
“
Hello there,” Craddock said.
The woman glanced up. Immediately, she reminded him of the pit-brow lasses he’d seen back in the coalfields of Lancashire. She had a strong but wizened face, and wore a woolen shawl and layers of darned, patched skirts over thick stockings and heavy work-boots. Dirty whitish locks hung from under her headscarf. Her hands were brown and knotted, as though cut from wood. Old scars crossed and re-crossed them. She seemed surprised to see him – to see anyone in fact – but evidently she wasn’t intimidated.
“
What can I do for you?” she asked curtly
“
I’m looking for Madam Godhigfu.”
“
And what might your business be?”
“
I’ll discuss that with your mistress, if you don’t mind.”
Her expression became stony. “I’m mistress here. We have no servants in this house.”
“
Madam Godhigfu?”
She stood the fork in the earth, and approached the latch-gate, beating soil from her hands and apron. “And you are?”
Hendricks had been wrong; the woman might be elderly – fifty or so, but, by appearances at least, she was far from infirm.
“
James Craddock, Major,” he replied. “Chief inspector of police.”
She surveyed him carefully before opening the gate. “You’d better come inside, major. You look cold.”
They entered a small parlour. The remnants of logs glowed in the hearth, while rugs covered the floorboards, so it was pleasantly warm. A large armchair, worn on the arms, but overlaid with a pristine mantle of what looked like woven flax, was drawn in front of the grate. There was also a bookcase, its shelves packed with cracking, leather-bound volumes, and a bureau with a vase of dried flowers on top of it. As the afternoon was drawing in, the light was poor, but Madam Godhigfu now lit several candles: two on the mantel over the fire, and one in a tiny cove of space on a shelf.
She bade Craddock make himself comfortable, then withdrew through a narrow door and down a couple of steps into a stone scullery, from where he heard a clattering of pots and the wheeze and creak of a pump handle.
He loosened his muffler and removed his hat and gloves. As Madam Godhigfu seemed to be in no rush to attend to him, he made a brief reconnaissance of the bookshelves. The majority of their contents seemed to be historical tomes, many in reference to this very region.
Geld And Hammer: Viking Settlement in the Leagh
, read one;
The Five Boroughs: A Study of Eastern England and its Great Forts
,
read another.
Wolves of Wotan: When the English Came
, read the third. The fourth one, he actually picked up. It was dated 1784 and bore the name of a certain Helmut Mendelssen. Its title was:
The Weeping in the Witch Hours: Lower England, 1066-1071.
Craddock flicked it open:

 

Being the preface to a certain work concerning the wars of King William the Conqueror in our eastern fenlands.
The English thegnhood fell en masse in the two great battles of 1066, against the Viking army of Harald Haadrada at Stamford Bridge in September, and in October during the final stand of Harold Godwinsson on Senlac Hill, at the place now called Hastings. In the first of these mighty battles, the English were victorious, but in the second the tired earldormen were slain to a man, and, afterwards, the Norman duke was able to impose his iron will.
Yet rebellion waited in the wings: in the north of the country, where it was greeted with a fury of fire and sword, but, more alarming for the new royal house, in those great flooded tracts of lowland around Cambridge and Peterborough, described by those who know them as “marsh, broad and fen”. Here, in the year 1070, all Saxon rebels were called, and a fortified camp named ‘the Refuge’ set up on the Isle of Ely, where it was surrounded by deep bogs and defended with passion by patriots and hunted men. The earls Edwin and Morkar brought their war-bands, and soon a great host was assembled, its ranks swollen by Norse warriors pursued by the Normans from their hearths in the once-settled land of the Danelaw.
Most prominent among these wolf-heads was the one called Hereward the Wake, or ‘Hereward the Wary’, second son of Earl Leofric of Bourne.
Banished by King Edward the Confessor for his warlike ways, Hereward was in exile in 1066, and missed the great battles of that year. But on hearing that his father’s estates had been despoiled, he returned and, finding his brother’s head transfixed to the door of their mead-hall, he slew the Norman knights ensconced there. For this crime, Hereward was declared outlaw, so he retreated to the fens, where the tortured and disinherited would gather about his banner and plot their vengeance.
Soon, the scant tracks of those eastern marshes became a perilous place for the Normans and their friends. Even great episcopal princes went about at risk of being robbed, though worse punishments were reserved for the Norman knightly stock, who felt the headsman’s axe, and for their mercenary hirelings, who often were found hanged and flayed. Above all this carnage towered Hereward, a traitor in the eyes of the new king, but to the English a hero of the oppressed. Goaded to wrath, the Conqueror led a great force into the fens, but too many to count were swallowed in the bogs. Horses were lost too, along with supplies and vast stores of weaponry. Bullish to the last, the Conqueror persisted, and in 1071 he located the Camp of Refuge on the Isle of Ely. The monks of that place refused his demands to hand over the rebels, so a siege commenced that would sully the meres with blood.
The Normans built causeways, and attacked with towers and throwing-machines, but always they were repulsed. King William had soon lost so many of his best men, that he despaired of his ability to hold the subject nation, now simmering with news of Hereward’s victories. Even a Celtic witch was hired, to scream curses in the name of the original island race, but the English captured her and put her to the flame as a pagan. Only treachery, it seemed, could seal the rebels’ doom. But treachery was in the wind. A certain monk of Ely was so fearful of the Conqueror’s retribution that he showed Norman spies a path through the marsh and, under cover of night, they infiltrated the Refuge. A horrible slaughter followed. The English fought well, but were outnumbered and overwhelmed. Many fell, and of those who surrendered, ceorl and noble alike, a prodigious number were taken and executed.
Yet Hereward was not among their ranks.
His death has never been recorded, and from this point he passes from history into legend. Rumours tell that he was wounded and died in the marsh; or that he was followed by a handful of Norman knights and after a desperate fight, finally put to the sword; or even that he made his peace with the king on the understanding that fairer laws would be imposed on England. In all probability, the truth lies between these fanciful tales. Most likely, Hereward died in obscurity, a survivor of the war but broken by his failure to liberate his beloved country …

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