Time of the Beast (21 page)

‘In moments I turn and rush back into the night, for I know that the night is mine, and I feel my spirit exult in wicked triumph at the death and destruction I have wrought, as the darkness closes upon me and the dream slowly fades…’

He paused for a moment, his head sinking down as he gave a deep sigh. Then he went on: ‘The dreams started as I heard whispers out in the fens that a murderous demon had risen to stalk this land. Then I learned that a man called Cadroc had come to use Christian magic against this dark one – and I knew at once what the Fates had decreed. So I set out to follow your path. Now you know my story. And you must guide my steps from here.’

He looked at Cadroc with expectation, but the monk barely seemed to have heard his last words, yet appeared to be lost deep in his thoughts, until at last he turned to Cynewulf uneasily while he began to shake his head.

‘Lord Cynewulf,’ he said, ‘your tale is most remarkable. But what you have told me greatly disturbs me. These long years I have never once doubted that what you confronted in that cave was a demonic thing from Hell. It has been the very bedrock of my faith. But now you tell me it was really just a man? That those devils we fought were only degraded examples of humanity?’

‘Yes!’ Cynewulf answered. ‘But do not doubt that what we face now is something much worse.’

Cadroc looked back at him in confusion, but at once I understood the import of these grim words, and I said:

‘Lord Cynewulf suggests that his twin has become a vengeful spirit.’ It was clear to me this was his heathen belief. Yet even as my mind tried to dismiss the notion, my heart shuddered at it.

‘Twin souls?’ Cynewulf whispered. ‘Or a single soul torn and divided? The spirits of those monsters are trapped forever inside the cave which became their tomb. Only he among them remains connected to the living world, and he carries within him the power of all their rage. This connection between us is powerful, our life-force shared. I took his life, but he returned to haunt my mind and infest my soul, until finally in death he has become the implacable enemy I supposed him to be in life. Truly he has become my dark
fetch.
He draws on my vital energy to take earthly form and revenge himself upon the world of men. He sends to me a challenge, and there must be a last reckoning between us. Once more I must confront him and dispatch him into the realm of the dead. But how? How may a man fight a dark spirit? A wrathful ghost? I do not fear any mortal foe, but
this
…’ At once a great terror seemed to overcome him, and he struggled visibly to contain it. Then he said to Cadroc: ‘This is why I come to you. I saw inside that cave the power of your Christian magic, which brought great rocks crashing down onto the heads of our enemies to consign them to the underworld. From here on I go with you. Our paths are made one, and once more we must stand and fight him together.’

‘The power of my God is great,’ Cadroc answered distantly. ‘But your story has made me doubt my own power. I am no longer certain of the truth of these things!’

It was clear to me now as I looked at Cadroc how deeply Cynewulf’s revelations had shaken his self-confidence and perhaps even his faith. That ironically he had begun to doubt his own certainty of a supernatural agency at work even as Cynewulf came entirely to believe in one. New seeds of doubt were growing in my own mind. What we faced was something brutal and deadly, but if it were a thing entirely of the physical world, then might mere words and symbols – however holy – prevail against it? I saw now that from the start it had been Cadroc’s great faith, his unflinching zeal and courage in his cause, which had carried me with him. It was upon him I had fixed my own hope of salvation in my struggle against the darkness. But now Cadroc’s doubts became also mine, as I began to consider the awful possibility that we were not here as the spiritual warriors of God, but only as men who were filled hopelessly with false pride and self-deceit. And the dismal expanse of the wilderness all around seemed at once to overshadow us, to reduce us to insignificance and grow more hostile and threatening with each passing moment.

There was also within me an unnerving feeling that there were aspects of Cynewulf’s story which held some strange significance or parallel to my own, but it was all unclear, and somehow I could not find the sense of it. But something else troubled me. I remembered Aelfric’s words to me earlier suggesting that Cynewulf himself might be the murderer. While I did not suspect Cynewulf’s integrity, I wholly doubted his mental fortitude as I saw how his old obsession still entirely dominated him, his mind even now fixated upon his dead brother. I had once heard a story from a visitor to the monastery about a man who suffered a head wound, and then became afflicted by dark moods and fits of rage which afterwards he could not recall – as if two separate spirits or personalities had come incredibly to coexist inside him. The older monks had hastened to assure me the story was merely fanciful, but I was beginning to question whether the Church was always right about the things it lightly dismissed – like the existence of the wild men. In this place it became easier to believe such tales. I was suddenly shocked by the possibility that a man as disturbed and inwardly conflicted as Cynewulf could be a killer without having any memory or consciousness of it. My mind was a cloud of confusion, and I no longer knew what to think or believe about anything.

As these things ran through my thoughts, I felt something deep and fearful begin to stir in me. Then my eyes fell shut as it seemed I recalled once more my vision during the shaman’s ritual: that in my mind I stood in the glow of firelight, returned to the night-land beyond my hermitage, looking upward as I witnessed the stealthy approach of that terrible giant figure. Once again I saw it step out of the shadows and into the flickering light, and I was seized by the fearful knowledge that in moments my memory of it would be restored, and I would look upon its face…

It stood before me, and as its features found form I felt its eyes upon me. I froze with the terrible certainty that now
I knew what it was…

My eyes opened and I gave a gasp, struggling in my mind to keep hold of the image. But already it was gone, slipping away like sand between my fingers, and again I could remember only the form of a thing huge and swathed in darkness. Aelfric had noticed my disturbed state and came at once to my side to lay a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

‘My memory of the marauder!’ I told him. ‘It started to return. For a moment it seemed to grow clear. But now it is lost again.’

‘It was perhaps not a memory but a foreseeing,’ he said gravely – his resilient cheerfulness was now a thing of the past. ‘All will soon be revealed to us. We are passing now into the most deep and remote parts of the Fenlands. It is a secret place of great mystery and power, which is said to stand as a gateway to the spirit world itself. Here our reckoning with this dark one must surely come.’

Whatever the truth of this, it was plainly true that –
like Cynewulf
– something haunted me from within, which struggled to rise up and break free: a thing blacker than night, that followed me ‘as a demon in the dark’, and it felt strangely as if I were fleeing from it even as we pursued it. It seemed suddenly that the whole grim saga of Cynewulf and Cadroc had risen like a monster to swallow me whole – to join the threads of all our stories into one.

As we moved on, our pace slowed, while the day grew heavy and humid, and the clouds gathered and glowered overhead colouring the sky with deep vibrant hues of purplish grey. The marshes grew ever more wild and dispiriting, and our progress became increasingly laborious. While we trudged along a pathway around a wide stinking stretch of sunken ground filled with foul stagnant water, where great swarms of gnats formed a floating haze above its surface, I looked before me at the compact figure of Aelfric as he walked beside the towering one of the old warrior.

‘I wish I had been born into the warrior’s caste,’ I heard Aelfric say with feeling. ‘It is the life I would have chosen.’

‘You have a brave soul, young friend,’ Cynewulf answered. ‘It shines in you. But do not confuse your ideals with reality. Warriors are not as you imagine them. They are only men who condition themselves to be what they are by a code of swagger and bluster. Many spend their lives so drunk that much of the time they can barely tell one end of a sword from another. It is fear that rules such men. And all their vows of duty are only the words they speak to hide from the truth of themselves – justifications for doing things which in their hearts they know to be wrong.’

For some reason as we journeyed onward these words remained with me, as I felt an ever-growing sense of disquiet.

Later in the afternoon Aelfric informed us that we were approaching one of the few settlements in this sparsely inhabited region. It was part of his and Cadroc’s duty to visit all the local villages to check upon their safety and warn of the danger – for these places were so isolated and remote that it was possible the people had not yet heard news of it – and since it was growing late Aelfric proposed we should pass the night there. I supposed it was Cadroc’s intention to move about among the few local settlements in the expectation that our presence would soon coincide with a new attack. But I did not ask him this, for his manner had grown most distant and withdrawn.

Soon we came to the village – the place was called Sceaf’s ford – standing upon small elevations of fertile land close to a wide stream in the middle of the marsh: a group of dilapidated huts which crouched almost hidden behind the trees. On its outskirts Cynewulf held back, sitting down suddenly to conceal himself among the high reeds.

‘I will remain here and keep watch!’ he declared to us.

‘You mean to stay out here alone all night?’ I said, as renewed feelings of suspicion towards him rose in me.

‘It is the life I have come to know,’ he answered simply. ‘My presence will unsettle those villagers. Do not fear. None shall see me – I will cause no alarm. I will be vigilant and at one with the darkness. I carry food and water with me.’

As we turned to leave him I asked myself: upon whom does he mean to keep watch?

‘I think it is also the presence of others which unsettles him,’ Aelfric whispered to me. ‘And what is wrong with Brother Cadroc?’ I looked back at him and frowned, as I saw that he shared my own uneasy feeling at Cynewulf’s self-imposed presence among us, along with a sense that our company had begun to drift into a state of fearful uncertainty.

‘I will speak with Cadroc,’ I said. ‘Later.’

‘Good!’ he nodded. ‘His task is hardest of all, and for it he must be strong. It is for both of us, in our different ways, to support him and keep his purpose true.’

We came to the village and called out to make our approach known. From amongst the huts and trees curious faces emerged to peer out at us. Several men then approached us, their manner seeming cautious and taciturn, and I saw at once what Cadroc had meant when he said these marsh dwellers were more wild and primitive than the Gyrwas folk we had so far encountered. Their long hair was tied up to stand like plumes on the tops of their heads, and they wore many necklaces made from bones and animal teeth. They openly displayed pagan talismans, including the symbol of Thunor’s hammer, which was like an inverted cross. There was something backward and clannish about these men that made me uncomfortable in their presence, and I did not care at all for the prospect of spending the night here. We were taken to the house of the head-man, whose name was Huda – a bulky, fierce-looking individual whose hard stare I found most intimidating. He listened to our words then nodded to indicate that he was already aware of the terror which threatened the land, then said he would allocate to us a barn in which we might sleep. We were then given food from his hearth – a stew of eels which I felt I must sample as an act of courtesy while I ate some barley-bread – served up to us by a pale-faced girl.

In the corner of the room there sat a boy – perhaps Huda’s son – who paid us little attention but was constantly busy with a knife, carving at a block of wood. While we ate I watched his carving start to take shape as he worked with great dexterity and speed, and it came to depict a kind of hideous scowling face – I presumed a representation of one of their devil-gods. After a time he looked up to notice my interest and gave me a wide grin, saying:

‘It is Tiw, our protector. I carve many such to put up in houses all around our village. To scare away the evil spirit.’

‘It is skilfully done,’ I told him, mindful that it was our mission here to attempt to convert the heathens, ‘but it will give you no protection.’ I reached inside my robe and brought out my cross. ‘Here is the symbol of my God – the one true God – which will defend you against evil. You should carve this image to protect yourselves.’

‘The one God?’ he said with a bewildered look. ‘Our gods are many, but their
spirit
is one – the Great Spirit of which everything in creation is a part. The gods we serve are all born of the Great Spirit. They are His children.’

‘No!’ I tried to explain. ‘There is only one God, who is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit…’

‘So you have three gods who are all of one spirit?’ he replied. ‘Yes – that is like us, except we have more gods. This is what I have said to you.’

With child-like sincerity he spoke to me as if I were a child who failed to understand something very simple, but his words defeated me, for I could find no easy answer to them. He stared at my cross and smiled at me again as he went back to his carving, and I felt then how deeply I had become lost within these lonely wastelands, where all my life’s certainties seemed to slip somewhere far beyond my reach. Dismayed and perplexed, I looked to Cadroc, expecting his help, but none came. He merely sat, evidently preoccupied, silent and absorbed in his thoughts. Then he rose and left us to go to rest. Seeing my chance to speak with him alone, I too excused myself, leaving Aelfric to sit talking with Huda, and the girl led me outside and directed me to our place of lodging. As I walked there I looked beyond the village, out into the gathering darkness, and my thoughts turned to Cynewulf, alone in the night. At once, beyond all my doubtful feelings towards him, it seemed that I understood him better, indeed shared almost an odd kind of kinship with him, as I feared that I too had become like an outsider who was awkward and ill at ease in the society of others. But still Cynewulf’s presence disturbed me.