The Water Devil (7 page)

“Title indeed. There's no title if the land was not for sale, and it's NOT! Those oaks have been in the family since the first of us was listed in the Domesday book. I tell you, a de Vilers does not sell old oaks to the highest bidder! My grandfather, I say, my very grandfather, tithed six of them for the cathedral roof, and was never the same afterward. Do you think I'd ever see them SOLD to MERCHANTS for their despicable WAREHOUSES? If that shady friar hadn't cast doubts on the title, I swear that LAWYER would not have DARED—”

“Oh, look yonder, isn't that Old Peter I see?” said Sir William,
putting a restraining hand on his friend's shoulder. Sure enough, the figure striding from a coppice planted thick with hazel and young oaks was indeed Old Peter, who was not in fact old at all, but merely older than Young Peter, his son, who held a half-dozen greyhounds at the side of the assistant huntsman.

“The stag, by God, he's found him! Humph, this stag, I've been saving him for you. A noble beast. Would that he and the lawyer could change places. THEN we'd have a HUNT!”

THEY APPROACHED THE HERD
upwind, but the sound of the dogs sent the deer scattering for the forest. Urged on by their groom, the loosed greyhounds cut off the stag, sending him bounding across the scrub wasteland and into the rolling, newly plowed and seeded fields of the tiny village of Hamsby, the farthest outpost of the Lord of Brokesford's demesne. At the sight of the stag, the little boys posted to keep away the birds fled. Followed by the yelping hounds, the stag darted across the plowed strips, followed by galloping horses that sent the dirt clods flying. Then as quickly as it had come, the traveling disaster passed, save for stragglers called across the wreckage by the horns in the distance. A flock of rooks settled in the churned up dirt, and the little boys ran again to the fields to throw stones at them.

Among the beeches at the edge of the forest, the stag splashed up the stream for a distance to throw the dogs off the scent. The hunt paused until Old Peter's horn from deep among the trees told them the scent had been found again. In the van, the old lord and Sir William crashed through the underbrush and into the deep woods behind Bruno. For centuries here the foresters had culled the lesser trees; in this place nothing but the twisted limbs of ancient oak trees scratched the sky. But the horses had easy footing; beneath the budding, new leafed branches, the ground had been picked clear of every twig and fallen branch by peasants in search of fuel, though it was death to touch the trees themselves. They passed a clearing, cut in two by the stream, here only a brook, and Bruno lost the scent again. Still on the trail of the stag, they rode up the brook and into
the forest depths again, while Bruno searched the banks for the lost scent.

“What is this place?” asked Sir William. They had reached the head of the brook, a spring like a deep rocky pond, save at the center, where from an unknowable depth, green water roiled and bubbled as if in a boiling cauldron. Beside the spring, an immense rock stood, with a cord wrapped around it several times. From the cord, bits of rag hung, some bleached white with age. But strangest of all, the spring was located at the end of a kind of house created entirely of the thick, dark trunks of living yew trees planted in two rows the same distance apart as pillars that would support the nave of a great cathedral. The vast age of these dark pillars was unguessable. Their interwoven, eternally green tops formed a heavy, hedge-like roof, denser than thatch. The strange tree-building cast a heavy black shadow that seemed even more eerie among the airy branches and dappled shade of the surrounding oaks. For some reason, it reminded Sir William of a graveyard, and a cold chill went up his spine.

“They say there's a spirit here in the water,” said Sir Hubert, lifting his horn to call the rest of the hunt. “Some old nixie called Hretha, who grants wishes. But it also makes excellent beer.” From the forest behind them, the calling horns and baying hounds responded, and the first riders crashed out of the woods into the strange clearing.

“Where's Old Peter?”

“We've lost the scent.”

“Trust the beast to hide here, of all places,” said the Lord of Brokesford manor.

“New rags, new rags, in spite of all I tell them,” Sir Roger announced in a disgusted voice, riding his bay cob around the big rock.

“And just what is that?” asked Sir William, his curiosity aroused.

“When the blessed Saint Edburga rested here, this spring opened up in the ground at the very place her head lay. Do you see the ruins of that holy hermitage there? Look closely at the stones, and you will see the representation of her holy martyrdom.” Sir William noticed tumbled rocks, cut square, beyond the strange green, tree
columned hall. From one of the rocks, the badly worn image of a skull peered back at him. This was no holy hermitage, thought Sir William, taking a deep breath. Something ancient was here. Something pagan. He shuddered and crossed himself. “The hermitage was dedicated to the blessed head of Saint Edburga, but as you see, it has fallen into decay.”

“Yes, indeed, that I see. What a pity,” said Sir William.

“Only in church will prayers to God almighty and to Saint Edburga be answered, but they persist in making offerings here to some ridiculous pagan water devil, and deny the saint her candles. Folk superstition! Nothing good will come of it!” The hunting priest was indignant. The hounds were busy smelling the ground around the spring. The horses and riders milled about, waiting for the dogs to pick up the stag's trail again.

“What do they want?” asked the visitor. Lady Petronilla had pushed her gray mare closer to the conversation. She, too, knew little of local traditions, for her father's estates were in the south, and she used every excuse possible to avoid long residence at Brokesford.

“Wishes, vain wishes. The rock, they say, is alive. As for the spring, there's an evil spirit there that grants unholy desires. Barren women, especially, come here, though I have threatened them with excommunication. Walk three times around the spring sunwards, and make an offering.” Petronilla leaned forward for a better view of the green, boiling depths, her heavily ringed hand clutched deep into her mare's mane. Her breath was hard, and her blue eyes glittered like chips of ice.

“And in what way is the rock alive?” asked Sir William.

“Oh, once a year on Midsummer Night it is said to wade into the water to drink, though no one has ever seen it. Also, it weeps. If it's chipped, they say, it will bleed, but there's a curse on anyone who tries it, so they leave it alone. Those rags are offerings.”

“Why, it's nothing but an oversized wishing well. I've half a mind to try it out. Besides, a man can't have too much good luck,” said Sir William, half relieved by the explanation. “Sir Hubert, watch this.” He fished in the bag at his belt and came up with a quarter farthing.

“Find us that scent; I crave venison tonight,” he said, and flipped the shining quarter circle into the water. From the distance, Old Peter's horn sounded. The hounds that had crowded around the horses ran off, yelping, around the fallen stones and into the woods. The first to follow them was Petronilla, spurring her horse away from the water- side as if scalded. Sir Hubert paused only to signal any stragglers with his own horn, then followed the fast vanishing hunt into the forest.

It was not more than an hour before the “mort” was ringing in the afternoon air. One long, three shorts, pause, one long, three shorts again to mark the stag coughing blood from a mortal swordthrust. As the apprentice huntsmen cut a pole to carry home the stag's quarters, the grooms butchered the creature according to unchanging traditional ritual, first cutting off the testicles and tongue, then cutting away the shoulders, then emptying out the liver and entrails. Hounds gobbled the scraps that were fed to them; a new apprentice was “blooded,” marked in the stag's gore. Dame Petronilla looked on with glowing eyes, her hand tight on the hilt of her little knife. Red puddled into the earth, red stained the butchers' hands and arms. At last the quarters, strung to the pole, were taken up for the return to the manor kitchen.

Far from the bloody ground, the green water bubbled mindlessly, alone beneath the sheltering arch of the ancient yews, where the birds were silent.

I
N THE MONTH OF MAY, BIRDS SING AND SO do all the street sellers and beggars: the hot pie man sings “hot pies, hot PIES, so fine,” right up and down the street, and the blind woman by the church sings, “for the LOVE of CHRIST, a FAR-thing only, have PI-ty” as she rocks back and forth, and wandering down the back alleys where he can be heard by housewives hanging out their wash, the man with the string of dead rats tied by the tail sings the most tunefully of all: “I'm the RAT catcher, I'm the RA-A-A-T catcher.” Then there's baaing and the clank of milk pails as the goat woman comes with her goats and calls out at our kitchen door for our order, and the singing of the woman who bears duck eggs on her head in a basket, who does a good custom in this neighborhood. I tell you, you can hardly even hear the birds for all the noise. The fine day had brought them all out, birds and human singers and dogs and grunting pigs, and the cacophony all came floating in through the open kitchen shutters, mingling with the busy chicken sound from our little henyard and the sound of Master Wengrave's big sorrel mule braying.

We were baking bread that day, cook, the girls and I, and the kitchen was smelling all fine and yeasty as we uncovered the starter. The girls had big aprons on, rolled over at the top several times and tied up high under their arms; to keep hair out of the baking, they each had their hair rebraided in a single long braid down the back, Alison's smooth, and Cecily's fuzzy. They stood over the big wooden bread troughs, their sleeves rolled up, waiting for cook to turn out the dough into them.

“Alison, don't taste the starter. It will grow inside you, and you'll split.”

“Did you ever know anyone who split like that, mama?” asked Alison, who is too fond of ghoulish things for my taste.

“From eating the starter? I'm sure there are lots of greedy girls who've done that. Just look at how it grows in the pan—you wouldn't want that to happen inside you, would you?”

“Then you don't know anyone, do you, mama?” said Cecily, who is horribly hard-headed.

“Don't we have raisins? I want to bake a cake, a sweeeeet one,” announced Alison.

“No raisins, no cinnamon, no pepper until father comes home. They're too expensive.” The sharp cry of a magpie came in on the breeze from the tree outside the window, followed by a sound almost like a human voice, “treat, treat, treat, treat.”

“Oh, there's my wicked pie who flew away when the cage was broken. And he spoke so clearly, too! Now he's learning calls from those bad birds outside. I swear, he's living in the tree just to taunt me.” Cook leaned her head out the window and called, “Come to mama. See? I've put out your treat for you. Treat, treat!” Amid a handful of crumbs on the windowsill she laid a tiny sliver of bacon fat. There was a flash of black and white feathers, and the bird settled on the windowsill, strutting up and down and inspecting the company inside with one beady black eye. We held very still, so that he wouldn't think we were going to try to catch him. First he tilted his head, one bright eye on the treat, then he gobbled it up in a flash. “Treat, treat, treat,” he called, as he flew up into the green branches outside.

“We has an understanding, that bird and me,” said Cook, “he won't come in and I won't catch him. But he's gone to the bad, I say. He lives in that tree like a pirate, flying down to steal anything he wants. He's shameless.”

“He has my hair ribbon that I took off in the garden. I just laid it on the bench, and, swish, it was gone like that,” said Alison.

“So
that's
where it went,” I said. “I thought I told you not to take it off.”

“It
fell
off when I was playing ball with Peter Wengrave,” said Alison.

“He took it straight up to weave into his nest, I saw it,” said Cecily. “That's not a nest, it's a pile of trash,” announced Cook. “Don't have the men pull it down,” said Cecily. “Maybe he's got a family in it.”

“A world of wicked magpies hatching up there, what else should we expect these days? The day of the Lord is coming,” said Cook, stirring the last batch of dough with her strong right arm. Outside, we could hear a new song being sung in the street by some drunken rowdies. “The King rode out in noble company, a crown for to win—” it began, before it floated away. The news from France, all done into a song. My, the word of the defeat had certainly traveled fast.

“HALT, you mindless sots! Have you contemplated your SINS? Vain singing in place of godly and sober conversation, all is VANITY—” Goodness, spring had even brought out Will the street preacher. And there was only one reason he'd be in our neighborhood. I'll be seeing him at the kitchen door asking for a loan. Sure enough, there were footsteps in the alley and a voice at the open window. The magpie had perched on a branch above him, and was inspecting Will's long, rusty black gown and moth-eaten hat with the ear flaps turned up.

“Ha, bird. You dress in black and white like a Dominican. And like the Dominicans, you are here begging ahead of me. I know you for the vulgar jester you are, bird. Ah, it's a wicked world when lords and burgesses reward jugglers and mountebanks ahead of men of learning.” I poked my head out of the window. We'd inherited Will and his endless manuscript on the sins and corruption of the worldly folk of London from Master Kendall, who said it was good to have someone around to keep his head clear by reminding him how others saw him.

“How goes the writing, Master Will?”

“Well enough, well enough. I am revising. I have been too light on lawyers, flatterers, fawners, gossips, and givers of bribes. In the meanwhile, I found myself short of fourpence for ink.”

“Come in, come in at the door, Master Will. We're relieved of the burden of vile Mammon these days, but if you've brought your inkhorn, you can pour some out of the inkwell in my husband's office.”