Sabrina Fludde

For David

 

‘The ancients had river gods; we too have them in our minds and feel their qualities. For rivers are things of life and personality, of soul and character.'

A.G. Bradley,
The Book of the Severn
 (Methuen, 1920)

Part One: River Mist

A body on the water

A boy on the street

The sweetest music

Hallowe'en

Part Two: River Fortress

Abren

St Chad's crypt

No questions asked

Bentley's carol

Part Three: Dark River

Red

Old Sabrina

Millennium night

Remembering

Football fever

Part Four: River Secrets

Compass House

Guinness Railwaybridge

The comfort blanket

What swans do

In the library

Part Five: River Source

Blaen Hafren

The mountain man

Calling the corph candle

No photographs

Old Hall

St Curig's bees

C
ŵ
n y Wbir

The source

Part Six: River in Flood

Able-bodied men

Abren in flood

Effrildis

The Palace of Pengwern

Part Seven: Queen of Rivers

A pinch of dust

The upriver trow

Elvers

Under angels' wings

Also by Pauline Fisk for Bloomsbury

When the day began the body was there. The night mist parted and it floated slowly on the silent river like a tree snapped at the root. Its hair spread across the water like a halo of little branches. Its face was deathly white. Its eyes stared like knots of wood, shiny and unseeing as a town approached.

The flourishing market town of Pengwern; when it was a city and a fortress, its watchmen would have noticed anything that came rolling downriver from the Welsh mountains. But its modern skyline looked down upon the body without seeing it. Even when the early morning mist began to melt, it made no difference.

The body floated towards the town and nobody saw a thing. It floated past water meadows where early morning walkers exercised their dogs. Past the water tower which marked the approach to the town. Past steep-gardened houses where curtains were drawn back for the new day, toasters popping, kettles boiling, radios and television sets blaring out the morning news. But nobody paused to look down from their windows and see anything unusual in the river.

Even the wildfowl on the water failed to see anything amiss – moorhens dabbling in the shallows as if the body weren't there, and swans floating past, stately and unperturbed. A heron swooped low, casting a ghostly shadow over the body, and a white gull landed on its shoulder, hitching a ride, its eyes peeled for fish.

But as if it didn't know or care what happened to it, the body floated on, carried by the river until the town rose overhead. It stood like an island in a horseshoe loop in the river – a jumble of towers and spires, castle walls and new shopping malls, medieval mansions, and train and bus stations. The river carried the body past them all – and nobody saw anything! Not on the main road, packed full of morning traffic. Not on the Welsh Bridge, where cars inched nose to bumper into town.

Even when the body passed beneath the bridge and swept on to the Quarry Park, nobody noticed anything. Here, cyclists pedalled beneath avenues of trees and mothers pushed babies. Leaves fell like snowflakes into the river, and everybody turned to watch. But no one saw a body floating through the leaves.

It was as if the body weren't there, floating on its way without caring what happened or knowing where it was. It floated past a school with girls out on the hockey pitch, but never waved to them for help. Floated past a boat club, but never called to its rowers on the water. Floated past a row of tennis courts, but never tried to attract its players as it flowed on round the town.

Finally the castle appeared, viewed from the English Bridge on the east side of Pengwern. By now the morning rush hour was easing off and there were fewer people about to see a body drifting along. But a policeman leant over the bridge, and he didn't notice anything. And a lone cyclist took the river path on the far side of the bridge, and he never once glanced at the body which was starting down the straight stretch to the town's last bridge.

The old, iron-girdered railway bridge
.

Here, caught beneath the shadows of the castle, the river began to change. A thin wind blew up it, scuffing the water into rows of sharp waves which ran between the high fence of a football pitch and a treeless path beneath the old town walls. The body started down this gloomy stretch of water, and the waves broke over it, knocking it about.

No longer did it float serenely, like a dead queen on her funeral journey. It shook like a rag doll, bobbed like a plastic bottle, took in water like a sinking ship. It went under water and came up again. Went down again –
and started struggling at long last
.

The body wasn't dead, after all.
It was alive
. Its eyes blinked out water, and its shoulders hunched against the waves. Its hands rose in a plea for help, and its head turned, revealing a face.

It was a child's face.
A little girl's
.

She let out a cry, as thin as the wind. But nobody heard. The paths were deserted on either side of the river, with no more cyclists in sight. There was not a figure on the castle walls, and even the policeman had gone from the English Bridge. Only the pigeons looked down from the fast-approaching railway bridge. But whether they saw the girl, it was impossible to tell.

She bobbed towards them, drawing closer all the time, swept along on a white-water ride. Just as the darkness of the bridge was about to fall on her, a woman with a push-chair suddenly emerged from the tunnel which ran under the bridge. The girl saw her and fluttered her hands, trying to attract attention. But the woman didn't see her. She just hurried on. Even
the child in her push-chair didn't see anything.

It was as if the girl weren't there, out in the middle of the river. A race walker emerged from the tunnel, too, shoulders tight, buttocks swinging. The girl tried again, but it was just the same. The race walker swung on, leaving the river to drive the girl under the bridge.

Now its black stone arches loomed overhead, and its gun-grey girders bent down like an iron mouth to eat her up. Waves ran ahead of her, disappearing out of sight, and the girl followed without a choice. There was nobody to help her. The treeless path stood empty. The cobbled tunnel stood empty. The girl was all alone. Whirlpools swirled around her.
There was no escaping
.

The waves dragged her down. Down and out, down and under, one minute there; and the next gone! The waves broke over her and the riverbed reached for her. Soft and silty, its tendrils of weed drew her down to where she'd never see the railway bridge again. Never have to cry for help again, nor cry for all the things she wouldn't see or do or be. All the things she wouldn't know – like who she was, and where she'd come from in the first place, and why she was ending up in the dark like this. Ending her story on chapter one.

‘I want to live!'
the girl cried out. ‘It's just not fair! Give me a chance – that's all I ask!'

Just a chance
.

Suddenly – as if the wanting it changed everything – the girl was up again. Nothing could keep her down, not even a silty riverbed, thick with weed. Stronger than whirlpools and stronger than waves, stronger than the railway bridge and stronger than anything, she was up like an arrow. She was reaching through
the water, and in a seamless motion which saw her break its surface and head for the shore, she was fighting for her life. The iron girders, looming overhead, held no fears for her. And neither did the river. She knew that she could beat it. Every stroke was easy.

The bridge fell behind and the town drew close. The girl swam into the lee of a stone wharf where, amid a flotsam of old twigs and plastic bottles, her arms and legs finally gave out. The river deposited her on a small beach where she lay unable to move, her burst of energy gone as quickly as it had come.

She had landed at last
. The girl looked down at herself. She wore a cotton shift-dress which clung, soaking wet, to her body, and a woollen blanket-thing, tied in a dripping knot under her chin. Her feet were blue, throbbing with the cold. Her hair was plastered over her eyes, but she didn't even have the energy to raise a hand and wipe it away.

She lay a long time without the energy to do anything. A walker looked down on her from the top of the wharf, then hurried on, tutting to himself at the antics of some people's children. The girl watched him disappear. He passed through an archway in the old town wall and started up a steep lane. Once he half-turned back, as if having second thoughts about leaving a child on the water's edge like that. Then he carried on – much to her relief.

He'd done what was needed, after all. Done all that
she
needed, at least! It means I can't be dreaming, the girl thought. This must be really happening. Someone's seen me at last!

Phaze II walked through the town without anybody seeing him. He had the knack. He had it down to a fine art. He was a tall boy, and painfully thin, but nobody ever said, ‘Who's that boy?' or, ‘Shouldn't he be in school?' With his big black coat wrapped around him and his head kept down, nobody ever noticed him.

It was a cold day, winter on the way. Phaze II turned up his collar and cut through Old St Chad's Square on his way to the warmth and brightness of the shops on Pride Hill. Old St Chad's was a quiet square, where the town's colonels and bank managers lived out their retirements in tall town houses behind iron gates. In the centre of the square stood a grassy mound, and upon the mound stood the crumbling remains of an old church, its ruined walls open to the sky and to the crows which circled over it, waiting for the Chadman to feed them.

He was coming along now – an old man with matted hair, gnarled hands, torn clothes and bursting boots, settling on his usual bench with his bags of food around him. Phaze II passed him, and the crows came swooping down. They settled on the Chadman's head, shoulders, hands and lap. It was always like this with him, day in, day out, rain or shine. Phaze II carried on and the Chadman didn't see him. He never noticed anybody, preferring birds to human company.

Phaze II knew just how he felt. Leaving the Chadman whistling to the birds through his long parchment-yellow teeth, he slipped into an alley and started rummaging among the dustbins. In no time at all he'd found a couple of apples, a piece of cheese – which would be fine once the mould was scraped off – and half a jar of fermenting jam. These he tucked into the voluminous pockets of his coat, ready to move on for fresh pickings on Pride Hill. But a woman appeared, driving him back into the shadows.

She was dressed in a camel-coloured coat, and had a newspaper tucked under her arm like a weapon. For a moment Phaze II thought that she was coming for him, but she carried on without seeing him. She had something else in her sights.

The Chadman.

Phaze II watched the woman emerge into the square, heading straight for the old man, who was breaking up sandwiches for the birds. He hadn't seen her yet – but he soon would! She crossed the square, passed the old wall which held up the grassy mound and started up the path which ran across the top of it.