The Water Devil (11 page)

“You, girl, put your foot down on my shoulder,” Cecily could hear a voice beneath her and behind her, but couldn't see the source.

“My Christian name is Cecily,” she said, not moving.

“And my Christian name is Denys. Put your left foot down behind you and feel for my shoulder. You won't fall if you hold on.” Carefully, carefully, he could feel a bony bare foot brush his shoulder. “Set it down hard. Then the other foot. Yes, that's it. Now keep holding on and work your hands down the branch until you can sit on my shoulders.” The boy's voice was calm, as if he knew exactly what to say. “You don't need to be afraid. I'm much bigger than you. I'm holding on tight. If you grab onto me, you won't fall. No, not the neck, don't strangle me. Hold still. I'm finding the branch.”

“You're not on the ladder?” whispered Cecily in terror, clutching at the stranger's shoulders, her head resting on his black hair.

“Almost,” he answered. “Don't wiggle.” Some portion of Cecily's fear had spread from her hard-beating heart to his. Carefully he felt beneath him for the ladder. He could hear a sort of gust from below, a sigh from dozens of throats. He'd never climbed with a living burden before. He could feel her heavy weight shift on him. He had lied to her. He wasn't that much larger, and she was hard to carry. Clinging to the branch, he felt for the next rung, moved his foot
down—then a hand, carefully, carefully, lean against the tree, he repeated to himself. Keep the weight forward. The next step. Take time. The next. Now he was entirely on the ladder. Don't get cocky, he coached himself. Take each step carefully, you're still a long way from the ground. The girl's legs were bony and sharp, and her hands were clutched in a death grip around his neck. Rung by rung, he worked his way down. Now one foot felt the hard ground, and many hands relieved him of his burden, and he could feel people slapping him on the back and cheering.

“A hero! A hero!” they cried, and from the back of the crowd a voice that cried, “Someone should give that girl a good birching!” and in front of him a sharp little voice said, “You're not that much bigger than me after all. You lied.”

He looked at the bedraggled, barefoot little figure in front of him and said, “Of course I did. You wouldn't have climbed down otherwise. Besides, I was big enough to get you down, wasn't I?” But the curious red-headed creature had burst into tears.

“Cecily,” said Margaret firmly, “you must thank Master Denys for saving you.”

“Th-thank you,” sobbed Cecily.

“Whatever made you want a magpie's eggs?” asked the boy.

“N-not the eggs. The pie stole Madame's silver button and flew away with it, and she was so grieved—”

“Madame your mother?”

“N-no, Madame who is teaching me to be a lady.” Denys the rescuer couldn't help it, he threw back his head and laughed until the tears came. Laughter rippled outward. The apprentices and journeymen laughed, Mistress Wengrave laughed, and even Margaret laughed, though she didn't want to. “A lady, haw!” snorted the boy's father. But Cecily had turned as red as a beet beneath her freckles. She stamped her bare foot and shouted, “I am
so
a lady, I shall be a great lady someday, a
ver
-ry great lady!” and everyone laughed even harder, except Master Denys, the magistrate's son.

I
T WAS NOT LONG BEFORE MIDSUMMER'S eve, on the purported date of the blessed Saint Edburga's martyrdom, when Sir Roger led the villagers in procession to her namesake spring, to lay forever at rest the idea that Hretha or any other pagan being was the source of the rushing waters. Ahead of him marched a boy in white bearing the silver cross from the altar itself. Beside him walked Sir Hubert's own chaplain, only semi-drunk, swinging an incense censor. Behind him were the bravely embroidered banners of Saint George and Saint Mark, and behind that, carried on a wooden pallet laden with half-burned candles, the brightly painted wooden statue of Our Lady of the Sorrows, who was reputed to weep on Good Friday, if one were virtuous enough to see it. Behind the six sturdy fellows with the pallet rode the folk of Brokesford Manor, dressed as for Sunday. A foolish venture, thought Sir Hubert, who liked things quiet. But in this, the village priest, though appointed by him, took precedence. It was a religious matter. Folks who disagree on religious matters get reported to the Inquisition. The man certainly has a bee in his bonnet on this one, thought Sir Hubert. Best to go along and let him set up his shrine by the water. What harm could it do? Edburga or nixies, they were all the same. God, now, was different. God was like Sir Hubert and tolerated many things for the sake of peace.

Behind the gentlefolk came a cart accompanied by carpenters, with all that was needful to build a little housed shrine to the blessed memory of the saint. Lovingly carved and painted, the little house stood among the lumber for its foundation, at
its center a flat and ugly painting of Saint Edburga in the clothing of a nun. Crowding behind the cart on the narrow path were the villagers, carrying flowers. As the front of the procession entered the forest, the priests began to chant a psalm,
Dominus regnavit.
Deeper and deeper they went, into the green, moss-carpeted summer forest, until they had reached the fearful temple of ancient trees. There beneath the arch bubbled the green spring, source of water and life for the entire demesne. There lay the great rock, dappled with forest light and covered with the flapping, ghostly white remnants of old rags. There the priest took up the aspergillum and sprinkled holy water into the spring, onto the rock, and onto the sunny spot by the water where the shrine would stand.

Village men and lords alike took off their hats and all bowed their heads as the two priests chanted prayers in Latin, prayers, endless prayers. Workmen dug the foundation and the village carpenter supervised the mounting of the little shrine on its new foundation. Hammers rang through the forest, but the people were curiously silent. Sir Roger looked at them, the horsemen, their hats off, the ladies, quiet in the saddle, the villagers, shifting from one foot to another.

“Now shout for Saint Edburga!” cried the priest. The feeble cry from the crowd seemed to anger him.“Shout louder! What's wrong with you?” He stood at the place where the round, light-speckled pond of the spring turned into the stream that watered the manor, filled the moat, gave drink to man and beast. The villagers were looking past him. What was it that was drawing their attention? Suddenly the priest turned, filled with new suspicion. Behind him was the huge stone, all draped and decorated with the faded rags. “The stone is Saint Edburga's stone! She scorns pagan offerings!” he cried, and turned to tear down the strings of rags that wrapped the rock.

The village people seemed to move back in horror; the horses twitched and threw their heads. “It all goes!” he cried. “Every bit of it!” Stripping the lowest strings from the rock, he threw the rags into the pond, where they seemed to be sucked away without a trace. Above his head, the breeze made the pallid rags flutter impudently,
just beyond his reach. The highest string seemed anchored at the top of the rock, on the water side. Without hesitation, Sir Roger the priest began to climb the rock. Unerringly, his booted toes and grasping fingers found the narrow handholds that let him climb to the top. The highest string seemed to be fastened down tight by something—a bolt, a nail. He pulled hard to snap the weathered white cord. He pulled again, bracing himself against the rock. Suddenly, without warning, the cord and fastening came loose so fast that he lost his balance and fell backward.

With a cry, still clutching the string of rags, the priest flailed in the air. Women screamed. Then there was a terrible splash, and the crowd saw him scrambling there in the shallows for a foothold, slipping on the mud and mossy rocks at the bottom of the pond. His hand was still tight on the cord, and the wet rags flapped about him as he struggled. Something, an invisible current, seemed to be pulling him.

“You men, get poles, do something!” cried the Lord of Brokes- ford, but the people were still, huddled together, their eyes wide. Without hesitation, Sir Hubert spurred his big sorrel mare into the shallow water and leaned down to grab the floundering priest's arm. At the very moment that he was unbalanced, arm outstretched, the old mare, normally so placid, shied sideways, sending Sir Hubert into the water. He crawled up sputtering, greenish with algae, his white hair all wet in his eyes. He could feel the thing drawing, sucking him into the depths. Blindly, he reached for the mare's stirrup, and clung tight. Spluttering, filthy, he was pulled from the pond by the terrified mare, and lay gasping at the water's edge. As hands took him up, and tried to brush his clothes and wring out his hat, he turned to look at the pond. There was nothing at the center but a few floating white rags linked by a bit of whitened string. Then there was a bubbling, like a cauldron on the boil, and the last of the rags disappeared. The priest had vanished utterly.

“Get hooks,” said the old lord, who was always at his best in a crisis. “Get the long pikes from the manor. Get poles. We'll drag this pond for him if it takes all night.” Strong men went scurrying
while women and children clung to one another. All afternoon, beneath the sorrowful eyes of the painted Virgin, who stood abandoned on her pallet beside the shrine, they prodded and dragged. At last someone thought to fetch a rope to sound the depths of the spring. It was a very long rope, which they weighted with a rock at the end. They found no bottom to the spring, and the rope itself was pulled so hard that it had to be abandoned, where it vanished with an odd slurping sound. At this, the entire company knew that Sir Roger could never be retrieved. Cart and horses, statue and banners, silver cross and Sunday clothes, they walked mournfully back to the village in the purple dusk.

Late that night, when stars had come out in the midnight sky, and a silvery sliver of a moon had risen to light the way, Sir Hubert wandered sleepless from his tower bedroom to the wide chamber beneath his in the tower, where Sir Hugo and his wife slept in a big, straw filled bed separated only by curtains from the squires, servants, and hounds of his retinue.

“Hugo, get up,” whispered the old lord, pulling aside the moth- eaten wool bed curtains. Hugo was feeling content with himself, sure he had sired a son that very evening. Lady Petronilla was turned on her side, spine to him, snoring.

“What is it, father?” said Hugo, irritated by this intrusion on his thoughts.

“I have something I need to do. Get up and ride with me.” Sir Hubert had two unlit horn lanterns in his hand. Hugo reached his shirt and doublet off the bar over his bed, where they hung beside his favorite falcon, who perched, asleep, on the same bar. As he slipped them on, he heard his father go through the solar, filled with more hounds and sleeping retainers, down the circular stone staircase to the hall. There, the old man tiptoed past the slumbering bodies on the floor and lit the lanterns from the sheltered embers of the great fire at the center. Above him, hams hung smoking in the dark beneath the roof. Even the chickens were asleep, roosting in various likely spots above the reach of the cats and dogs.

Puzzled, Hugo followed his father to the stable, where they
nimbly stepped over the sleeping bodies of the stableboys in the straw and saddled two horses. Quietly, quietly, they led the horses out of the manor gate.

“Where are you going, father?” asked the younger man.

“Hugo, if you ever had a brain in your head, you'd know,” he answered.

Across the meadow in the dark, the two little sparks of lanterns bobbed unevenly, but there was no one there to hear the dull sound of hooves in grass. The sparks progressed under the thin, white moon until they vanished into the forest. Beneath the leafy cover, they rode slowly, softly, on the alert. Beasts were out at night, and not the willing beasts that gave up blood and dinner. At last, they reached the darkest place, and then the clearing. The pond was black at night, but the bubbling sounded louder than ever in the night quiet.

“Hugo, hold my horse,” said the old lord. Dismounted, hat in one hand, flickering lantern in the other, he stood at the edge of the pond. Signs of the attempted rescue were all around, layer after layer of muddy foot and hoofprints, leafy poles newly cut and abandoned. A spot of moonlight managed to penetrate the forest cover, and shone, moving and white, like a living thing, in the center of the black, bubbling spring.

“Listen, you, whoever you are,” said the old lord. “You've just swallowed up the only priest I could ever find who approved of hunting on a Sunday. Do you know how much trouble I'm in? The Brokesford Stud is dead—the only stallion I brought home is Urgan, and even he's looking sick from that godawful French fodder. Everybody owes me money, and nobody pays. The wheat hasn't come up, the rye's got a blight, and the fruit's all small and has worms. There's a murrain at the other end of the shire and that may just finish me off. On top of that, the plague's come back into Bristol, they say, and if we're not here, you're finished, do you know that? This family is all that stands between you and the merchants. That pushy lawyer has his eyes on your oak trees and I haven't a farthing to pay court fees, let alone bribes. You things that live in the
woods, what do you know about lawyers? But they'll have you. These oaks will go, and the yews, too, just to buy peacock feathers for some dandy's hat. It was wrong of you to go swallowing up that priest, but since done is done, the least you can do is give me something back. I need prosperity, I need crops, I need good horses to sell for ready cash to hire some lawyers of my own. Hear that, priest swallower? Pull me out, and I pledge that my heirs 'til I don't have any more will keep your trees. I may need you, but let me tell you, the way things are these days, you need me, too. Nobody else gives a rat's fart, that I can tell you.”

“Father, you can't make deals with a thing.” Hugo had dismounted to come closer and hear, and he had led the horses up behind his father.

“You heard me, Hugo. If it comes through, you're sworn to keep the trees.” Hugo thought a bit. Cash was so handy, and trees—well, so tree-like. They just sat there doing nothing. “Promise, Hugo. Swear by Our Lord.” Hugo looked upset. He'd had to make a very long and unpleasant pilgrimage just to get off the last bad oath he'd sworn. “HUGO, you UNGRATEFUL WORM, if you don't swear this INSTANT, I'll DISOWN you!” The old lord's voice rang through the dark forest. Sleeping birds fluttered awake in their nests. Hugo felt his father's big hand pushing him down to his knees. He swore. “AND your heirs,” prompted his father.