The masons, hard at work on the magnificent new building, had no use at all for a flint knapper. However, there was work to be had on the island for any man willing to do it, for the monks of Ely were paying their brethren at Peterborough for the stone in eels. Thousands of eels: some said more than 8,000 per year. The rich waters around the island offered a constant, generous supply of eels, and it was the obvious thing to do. Morcar had heard tell that in one year, an incredible 52,000 eels had been caught, but this fact had been related to him by a loose-mouthed drunkard, and he was quite sure it was an exaggeration.
Morcar had to earn money, for his own well-being and that of his mother depended on it. The poor and the hungry could not afford to be proud, so he bowed his head, stowed the tools of his trade safely away in his lodgings and offered himself as an eel catcher. It looked easy and as he watched and listened to the other men, his confidence rose. The eel were caught in a variety of ways, they told him, depending on the season. When the water was warm in spring and summer traps were set, but in autumn and winter the eels retreated down into the deep mud of the stream bed, where they could only be caught with the long eel gleeves. ‘Them eels are made out of that mud, see,’ an older man had informed Morcar. ‘They disappear deep down there as the year fails, then in springtime out pop a whole lot more of them, fresh-made out of the guts of the very earth.’
Morcar, lacking the knowledge to agree or dispute, had merely grunted. Then he had taken his gleeve and set off to catch some of the huge population of eels that the dark fen waters provided in such abundance. Or so he had hoped; in five days, his total was eight, and he had only caught those because a kindly and more experienced man had helped him. In despair, he was on the point of giving up.
Morcar was nothing if not determined, however. Taciturn, slow to lower his habitual guard sufficiently to make friends, he was by nature a solitary man and, other than to his mother, rarely spoke more than a handful of words to anyone. Silence concealed not weakness but stubborn strength; now he ground his teeth till his jaw ached as he made up his mind.
I will try once more
, he decided,
and then I will call it a day
.
Perhaps his luck would change if he moved upstream a few paces . . . Eager now, filled with a sudden, unreasoned hope, he hurried up the track, away from the abbey and the confusion of the building site, at last quiet as evening approached. Once again he took up his pose on the very edge of the high bank. Then he stared down into the water.
He waited.
What was that? Movement? Did his eyes play tricks, or was there really a dark, sinuous shape moving silkily through the water?
There was no time to think. Raising his gleeve, staring fixedly at the faint ripple just beneath the surface, he drew back his right arm. Using his left arm as a pointer, he sighted along it and then with all his strength hurled the gleeve into the water.
He knew immediately that at last he had done it; the heavy weight on the end of the gleeve told him so. Hurriedly, hand over hand, he drew the pole back to the bank, laughing aloud as he saw what was wriggling and struggling on the barbs. Quickly he reached for the eel – it was a large one, almost the length of his arm, black and shiny in the faint light – and, releasing it from the barbs, he dispatched it swiftly as he had been taught and flung it down on the ground.
In his jubilation he forgot to be cautious. Eager to collect his gear, his eel and at last head for his lodgings, he forgot the perils of the steep bank and the narrow track that ran along the top of it, slippery from the incessant rain and the many feet that had trudged up and down it. He turned too fast, missed his footing and tumbled down towards the water.
If he fell in he would probably die. Nobody was there to hear him cry out, he could not swim, the water was deep and the sides of the stream so steep that he would not be able to climb them unaided. Acting instinctively – there was no time for thought – he thrust his gleeve into the bank.
It stuck securely into the earth and brought him to a shuddering, trembling halt. It undoubtedly saved his life. Unfortunately, in his panic he had managed to drive its sharp points through his right foot.
He lay there shaking with shock. The pain had not started yet – he knew it was only a matter of time – and before it did he edged himself up over the lip of the bank so that his shoulders and chest were safe on the track. Then he gritted his teeth and worked away at the gleeve until, with a nauseating squelching sound and a horrible grating as the metal spikes ground against bone, it ripped free of his foot. Before the agony really took hold, he gathered the last of his strength and swung his legs up on to the track.
He risked a quick look at his right foot. The leather of his boot bore two long, tattered tears – it seemed he had only speared himself with two of the three points – and he could see his pale flesh already dark with blood. A wave of dizziness washed through him, and he put his head on the wet ground.
I can’t stay here
, he told himself.
I must find shelter. Help. Clean water and cleansing herbs
.
With a huge effort he stood up. Using the gleeve as a staff, he picked up his eel and his pack and began to hobble back along the track.
Morcar pulled the hood of his new cloak forward in a futile effort to shield his head from the biting cold. The cloak was quite short, its hem reaching scarcely to his hips, and it did not keep the wet out nearly as efficiently as the merchant who had sold it had promised. Moreover, it stank of whatever animal fat had been rubbed into it. The rain had at long last eased and now was no more than a misty dampness in the chilly air. Tendrils of white mist were swirling up from the sodden ground, twirling around his feet and ankles.
He hunched his shoulders and pressed on. He was close to the abbey walls now, and the flares set high up to light the track illuminated the puddles. He was still beside water, but now it was a stinking, dirty ditch, all but stagnant, and he doubted there would be anything living beneath the scummy surface.
Something caught his eye. An eel? Surely not. But if it were, he ought to have a try at spearing it, for he had suffered so much that day and two eels instead of one would be a more cheering result for all the hardship. His foot was throbbing, each throb so painful that he all but swooned. Forcing himself to ignore both the agony and the sensible voice in his head urging him to get back to his lodgings immediately and stop being such a fool, he put down his pack and the dead eel and once more raised his pole.
Whatever was down there under the water did not seem to be moving very much. The light from the flares caught it now and then; Morcar waited a moment and then took aim. The points of the gleeve struck, there was a clatter, as if metal had hit metal, and then something huge seemed to roll over in the dark water, sending up great bubbles of gas that burst as they surfaced, emitting a stench so foul that Morcar gagged.
Dear God in heaven, what was it?
Morcar stepped closer.
Beneath his horrified eyes, bobbing gently in the foul water, lay what had once been a man. A warrior, for the remnants of his rusting armour still clung to the skeletal remains. Morcar, his heart beating fast from the shock, wrenched his gaze away from the macabre apparition and turned his face to the sanctuary of the walls.
Then the lights went out.
He cried out in terror for, in the instant before the darkness came, he saw – or thought he saw – a pale shape rising up out of the mist, which now lay like a soft, slowly billowing blanket across the ground. His eyes wide, he stared, quite incapable of looking away, and the horror of the image that still seemed to burn into his eyes brought a long, low moan of dread from his parted lips. Then he saw more figures – a group of them, shadowy, vague – and he heard a sharp cry, quickly suppressed.
He sought frantically for a rational explanation, but panic gripped him and sense had flown.
From some resource deep within him he found the strength to pull himself out of his horrified trance. His wound hurt so much that he all but retched as he hurried up the track, heading almost blindly for the bulk of the abbey walls rising up before him.
I must find the gate
, he thought, fighting the abject fear that threatened to turn his bowels and his bones to water.
I must find the gate, for within the walls there is light and company and safety
.
Running – trying to run – had screwed tight the pain in his foot until it was all but intolerable, making him weak and faint. Leaning heavily on his gleeve, he forced his legs to move. One step. Two steps. Three. Four.
They came at him out of the impenetrable darkness of the shadows beneath the walls, and he had no warning of their presence. One of them took his gleeve out of his hand, and without its support he fell heavily, into the arms of the other one. He tried to wriggle free, tried to leap away, but his foot would not let him – and, anyway, they were too strong. One went on holding him and the other backed off. But only for an instant; then something hit Morcar with the force of a charging bull and suddenly he was in the air, flying in a smooth arc out over the bank. Then he fell into the filthy ditch and foul, black water closed over his head.
TWO
W
hen I started work this morning, I had not the tiniest inkling that today was going to be the start of something so extraordinary. So much for the skill at reading the future on which I pride myself. I can do piddling little things like saying when it’s going to rain (easy when someone’s taught you how), when a ewe is going to deliver her lambs (again, relatively easy, and pretty much a matter of observation and experience) and reading the sex of an unborn baby (quite tricky, that one, but then I don’t always get it right). But if something really big is looming, I’m as blissfully oblivious as everyone else.
I live with my aunt Edild, who is a herbalist and a healer. I’ve been living with her since my sixteenth birthday back in the summer, mainly because I’m now officially her assistant and there’s so much work to do that it would waste time having to go home to my parents’ house late at night and then return early in the morning. Living with Edild means I get a little extra time in my bed in the morning, and that’s reason enough for me. In fact I love sharing the house with her, anyway, and it’s certainly not because I was unhappy under my parents’ roof. Far from it; I love my family dearly and, once my elder sister Goda had married and left home three years ago, I have nothing but happy memories of life with my clever and efficient mother Essa, my dreamy, precious father Wymond, my stammering brother Haward, my mischievous younger brother Squeak, my baby brother Leir and my Granny Cordeilla, who is a bard and the most wonderful story teller. I love my sister Elfritha, too, although like Goda and me she no longer lives at home. Ever since she was a small child she has wanted to be a nun and last year she got her wish. Now she’s a novice with the Benedictine nuns at Chatteris and, as far as any of us can tell from the few short visits any of us have made, she’s as blissfully happy as if she were already in heaven. The last time I saw her was just after I’d moved in permanently with Edild and we shared a big, silent and slightly self-congratulatory hug because both of us were living the life we wanted.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a nun. It is a hard road, I know. I have looked into my sister’s face, pale, thin and tense inside the unfamiliar white wimple that covers her throat and her bright hair, framing her forehead, temples and chin. I have seen the haunted look in her wide eyes and taken in the dark grey circles around them. I have seen her bite her lip and mutter as she strives to commit to memory the words of new and unfamiliar prayers. I am in no doubt that learning to be a nun is not easy. I had expected all that, and when first I saw my sister in her new life I tried not to let it dismay me. What I had not expected was the laughter. Despite the rigours of the life, despite the huge challenge of living up to vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and of spending all your waking hours either praying or working as hard as the lowliest slave, Chatteris rang with laughter. Whatever else they may be, I have had to accept that, in the main, nuns have a light-heartedness and an endearing jollity that make them laugh like children.
I don’t think anyone at home misses me. If they do, I’m only a short walk away. I go back to see them all at least once every week but already they seem to have expanded to fill up the space I left. It makes me sad if I think about it so I try not to.
Life with Edild is hard work but I enjoy it very much. Well, most of the time I do, although it’s only fair to say that there are moments of extreme discomfort. The worst thing is when I have to perform intimate examinations; when, in order to determine what’s wrong with a patient, I have to inspect bits of the human body – male as well as female – that decent folk normally keep well hidden. Edild is relentless, however, and deaf to my protests.
‘There is nothing to be ashamed of in a human body,’ she tells me sternly, ‘and you will never be a healer until you can control yourself sufficiently to look without embarrassment or false modesty at the most secret and private of its parts.’
So I am compelled to take my turn with my aunt when someone comes creeping in, red in the face and trying to pretend they are anywhere but in a healer’s house. In fact it is the shame and the distress of the patient that usually helps me get over my diffidence.
This poor soul is in pain
, I tell myself,
and the nature of the complaint means they probably haven’t had even the small comfort of talking it over with someone else
. Then the compassion takes over and I just want to help them feel better.