The Water Devil (32 page)

‘Condition the second: If Cecily Kendall is so changed in body as to be unsuitable to be wed, she will not be married.

‘Condition the third: Cecily Kendall will only be wed to one who loves her above all others.’ You must admit, Dame Margaret, these are very sensible conditions.” Oh, Brother Malachi, you wretch, I thought. What have you planted in her mind? I know Cecily.
She thinks sixteen is unspeakably ancient, and will never come. And she fully expects to be turned into a boy long before then, and she can wriggle out of marriage. That's why she was willing to tell Sir Hubert she'd consent.

“Cecily, is this really what you want?”

“I don't like embroidering altar cloths very much, mother. So I'm giving up on being a nun. And if I'm not changed by sixteen, I'll be too old to get the good of it, so I might as well be married. Denys is better than Walter or Peter Wengrave.”

“I
want to be betrothed, too!” wailed her sister.

“Be quiet!” I said, “or you'll get your wish—” But I was halted by an unearthly scream from the solar. Before anyone could rush up the stairs, Mother Sarah, her face pale with horror, came running into the hall. “It's Lady Petronilla,” she cried. “She's stolen the baby!”

L
ADY PETRONILLA COULD FEEL THE GOOD thing coming, the quickness, the mind that flashed a thousand thoughts at once. So much better than the slow time, the despondent time, like swimming in heavy syrup, when she curled up in a ball, craving only death. Now lights flashed, ideas flashed, and strength poured into her. Ah! She could hear downstairs, ponderous arguments, women weeping. She could hear outside, people, horses. She could hear the birds in the orchard. Ah! She was inside them, looking for worms in the bad fruit, then she was a worm, looking out of her hole at a great black eye and pecking beak. Now back in a flash, her own body. What was that rippling, murmuring sound? The spring, always the spring. A woman green with pond slime, the white of her eyes flashing from deep sockets, her mouth a cavern whispering secret things. Hear her singing, singing. She is calling.

The old woman was asleep. Yes, there he was, the little idol, pushing a little wooden horse on wheels and singing tunelessly. Would you like to visit the green lady, little boy? The green lady with watery toes? he answers, and the old dog tries to bite her but she kicks him away with a powerful blow. But before his yelping can rouse the old woman, she has thrown her black cloak over the dirty little manling and scooped him up like a bundle. Someone far away is shouting, but the swift time has come, and many voices sing whirling songs in her mind, and with great strength she scurries down the tower stairs bearing the squirming, howling bundle slung over her shoulder. There, almost at the stable door, she sees
the saddled horses of the visiting dignitaries waiting. Meant to be, meant to be, sing the voices, and she flings the bundle across the nearest saddle bow and grabs up the reins. Oh, wonderful, wonderful, to feel the wind in your face and blood pouring through your body like molten light. The world sparkled and glistened, and the green lady beckoned with her sweet, rippling voice.

“WHERE DID SHE GO
, where did she go?” Margaret cried, shaking the nurse by the shoulders as Sir Hubert and his grooms rushed upstairs to the solar.

“Oh, forgive me, I didn't see her!” wept the old nurse, “She was so fast!”A dreadful thought filled Margaret. Petronilla had not come through the hall. She could only have fled down the outer tower stair. If she hasn't killed him by dropping him from the tower, then there's only one other place a person as crazy as that would go.

“The spring,” said Margaret, as she flew past the screen and down the front steps without further thought. Behind her came Gilbert, and even as the others, slow to comprehend, were searching the solar and tower rooms, they had taken two of the clerks' little saddled cobs that stood in the courtyard and were off at full gallop through the gate, past the fields and into the meadow at the edge of the oak wood. There they thought they saw a figure in a flying gown on the magistrate's big bay gelding vanishing among the trees, and they followed, slower now, their little horses, no match for the bay, dripping sweat and breathing hard. By this time the hue and cry had been taken up at the manor, and the rest of the grooms and manor folk were in pursuit.

But as Margaret's horse crashed through the underbrush into the clearing, she saw she was too late. Petronilla had ridden directly into the spring, the black, wailing bundle still thrown in front of her saddle. Green, bubbling water flowed around her knees and the horse's belly. The crackling aura of high madness came from her, her eyes were bright and lunatic, and her smile a crazed grimace.

“Ah, I wanted you here,” she cried. “The water devil has sent you here at my command so that you will know what I have done. See
my sacrifice! Everything that was yours now is mine!” And before they could reach her, she flung off the bundle into the center of the bubbling pool and then whipped the bay so hard that he lept in a single bound to the muddy margin of the pond, scrambled up the bank, and then headed back into the woods. Before Gilbert could drive his horse to the center of the pool, the black bundle had vanished utterly.

By this time, the rest of the household had caught up with them, and what they saw was a terrible sight. Gilbert on horseback, circling the bubbling center of the pool, searching for any sign of the child, and Margaret, dismounted, fetching a long stick to try to probe the depths. The Lord of Brokesford gave a terrible cry, a cry so great that the birds stopped their song and the trees themselves trembled. “Look, look,” said one of the grooms to the magistrate, and as they stared, they saw the great stone by the side of the pool was oozing red blood.

“She's thrown him into the center,” said Gilbert, his voice cracking. “I can't even see him. He's gone.” But the Lord of Brokesford was no longer there; he was off in pursuit, and all they could hear was the crashing of his horse through the underbrush.

The magistrate and the grooms had dismounted, milling about looking for something, a pole, a hook, anything. Even though they knew it was hopeless, they couldn't give up the idea of doing something, not just standing about like fools. But Margaret had waded out into the pool, carrying her long stick, her eyes blank and unseeing. “For God's sake, Margaret, stop! Don't go any closer, I can't lose you, too!” cried Gilbert.

But it was then that everyone saw the strangest thing, the secret talked about over peasant hearths on winter nights, the awful thing that no one who saw it could ever forget, or ever speak of aloud. There was a strange sound from the center of the spring. It went, ‘glorp, gulp.'And then the waters ceased to rise, and the pond was deadly still. In the eerie silence, Margaret cried,“By the holy mother, I charge you, give me back my child!” The sound of it echoed
through the woods, and then there came a strange rustling, like a breeze in the yew temple. Down in the green, still depths, something moved and floated. A bit of black, unwinding, down in the shadows. No one on the bank moved a muscle. Gilbert's horse stood stock still in the shallows. Something was drifting, drifting softly below the green. A bit of red, a child's smock, too far to reach. Then a face. Was it a face? Bloated, white, silent, the eyes closed, it drifted peacefully in the green depths, then turned away, as if to descend again.

Margaret was on it like a flash. She waded deep, too deep, past her waist, past her shoulders, and grabbed at the drifting red of her baby's smock. Now she was too deep to recover, but Gilbert had ridden out and grabbed her by the hair, beneath her kerchief, pulling her through the water as she clutched at her baby's smock. As they reached the shallows, he grabbed at her shoulders to set her on her feet, but she said in a harsh, alien voice, “Don't touch me.” Her eyes were glassy as she strode from the pond, her clothes and hair wet and every inch of her dripping with green pond slime, her kerchief lost, drifting in the water.

She held her child by the foot, and water gushed from his mouth and nose. She squeezed him by the middle, and more came out. No one dared touch her. Something crackling, like light, like the bright shine that reflects from water, was moving all about her face and hands. She laid the baby out on the ground, and leaned over it. What was she doing? No one could see, no one dared speak. They could hear her gasping horribly, then saw her fall over the child as if struck dead. Gilbert grabbed at her and turned her over. She was sheet white, as if her heart had stopped beating.

“Margaret, Margaret!” he cried. “Oh, God, she has been struck dead with grief. Why did you spare me?”

“No, no, my lord. Look. Look at the baby.” Gilbert looked, and saw the strangest sight he had ever seen, though he had seen much. A faint pink color was creeping into the still, white face. He put his hand on the little chest. It was moving up and down. He put his hand on Margaret's chest. It was moving up and down, too.

“Is she alive?” asked the magistrate, kneeling down beside them, his face twisted with concern.

“Something, something,” mumbled Gilbert, “she's done something.” Then he heard a sound, a soft sound. Margaret moaning.

“Mother Hilde,” she said. “Where is she?”

“She's not here. I'm here,” said Gilbert.

“Get my ladies, get my ladies. I'm losing the child I carried,” she said, and tears squeezed silently from her eyes, tracking through the green slime to find their way to the ground. Tenderly, Gilbert wiped her face.

“Don't cry,” he said,“oh, please don't cry. Peregrine is breathing.” “I thought so,” she answered, her voice barely a whisper. “I have given birth to him twice. Lord keep him, I think I can never do it again.”

THE LORD OF BROKESFORD
pursued the faint sound of hooves and the crashing of brush with all the skill he brought to the pursuit of a fleeing stag. At length, at a distance, he saw Petronilla, her horse at full gallop across the scrubby waste at the edge of the woods. His jaw set as grim as death, he pushed his horse through the dead leaves, over ditches and the through the rippling brook itself to cut her off. She was a fleet rider, with the shining brilliance and daring of one who is truly insane, but Sir Hubert was fired with deadly determination that gave him almost a foresight of how she would move. Now she galloped across the meadow, and still he pursued, getting closer. Then seeing that he was closing the distance, she turned, riding hard past the coppices and slowing only to re-enter the woods, where she hoped to lose him. But every secret path she took was known better to the old knight, who had hunted in these woods since childhood. No matter how she tried, she could not shake him off. Branches grabbed at her headdress, tearing it away, and her braids came down, tangling as she doubled back through the underbrush. Her horse was dripping sweat now, and slower. She cut past a formation of strange looking rocks, poking up through the forest floor, and Sir Hubert knew he had her. He turned away,
and she thought she'd lost him, and slowing to a walk, she followed a little deer trail that was strange to her, but looked as if it led to the abbey land. He'd never touch her there, on sacred ground. The abbey, and safety, her voices sang to her.

But the trail led to a damp, brushy spot enclosed on three sides by a stony rise of ground too thickly overgrown to pass through. And as she saw she was enclosed and turned to ride out again, she saw the Lord of Brokesford waiting on the path by which she had come. He sat immobile there, blocking the narrow, overgrown path on his great horse. His eyes were the hard eyes of an executioner.

“Let me pass,” she said.

“You will never pass out of here alive,” said the Lord of Brokesford.

“Oh, you must let me. I carry the only heir. Did you know? I shall bear a son now. The pond has said it. It took my sacrifice. The green woman loves me.”

“I intend to put you down,” said the Lord of Brokesford. “You are no different to me than a rabid dog or a horse with a broken leg.”

“You can't do that. I'm a lady,” said Petronilla.

“You are no lady,” said the old knight, “and no decent woman, either. But you are a human being with a soul, so I will give you leave to say your prayers first.”

“What have I done? Oh, find it in your heart to understand me and my suffering. If you saw things as I do, you would let me pass.”

“I have no heart. I have no eyes. You have stolen them away,” said the old man.

“But surely you're a Christian. You have to forgive. I can repent. Let me go, and I swear I'll enter a convent and pray every day, every hour—”

“Pray now. God knows how to forgive, but He is greater than I. If I could take your life twice, thrice, a hundred times, it would not make up for that little boy.” At that very moment, Petronilla, with that quicksilver perception that comes with madness, saw him weaken at the thought of Peregrine, and his eyes drop. In a flash, she tried to push her horse past his and to freedom. But the old man
was like a cat, who has paused only the better to spring forward, and as her horse leapt past him, he grabbed her by her loose braids and pulled her out of the saddle. In a single swift motion he dropped his reins, pulled the long knife from his belt, and drove it into her heart.“Monster,” he said, looking down at her, where she lay face up against his horse's shoulder, tethered by her long, honey-blonde hair. And as the life's blood oozed from her mouth and down her breast, she rolled her eyes upward to his face.

“No greater than you,” she said. There was no horn to sound the mort.

WHEN SIR HUBERT
re-entered the clearing by the pond, he saw that they were finished cutting branches to make a litter, and he thought that they had guessed what he was about. He was leading the big bay, with his daughter-in-law's corpse thrown face down across the saddle. There was blood everywhere. Blood soaked her gown and flowed down the saddle. Blood stained the front of his garments, his boots, and his sleeves, where he had lifted her up. But then he realized no one was looking at him, and as they tied the litter between two horses, he saw that the litter had not been prepared for Petronilla; it was Margaret they were lifting up. Margaret with Peregrine thrown face down over her pale corpse. And then he saw that he had been right, and cutting down Petronilla a hundred times would never give him back what he had lost. How could he not have known, not have understood, what he had once had? His second son's tall form, hunched over in agony, was silent. We'll never speak again, he thought. Was all of it my fault? He heard from somewhere a dreadful sound, and realized then that it was himself, sobbing. How could it all have come to this? But then Sir Ralph was at his side, his voice concerned. “Sir Hubert, Sir Hubert,” he said. “They're not dead yet. Both are breathing. What is that you've brought?”