Wakenhyrst Page 4

  One night she heard a high thin cry and glimpsed a shadowy creature slipping through the reeds. Another time she spotted a man skating the frozen Lode with long sure strides. When next she saw him he was walking under the moon with a spear over his shoulder and a knot of black eels wriggling at the end. Maud shivered with awe. This must be Jubal Rede, the wild man who lived in the fen.

  According to Cook, Jubal had webbed feet. ‘Though I never seen en,’ she chuckled. ‘Old Jubal never wash without he fall in a dyke.’

  ‘He’m not old,’ said Daisy. ‘Why, they say he were boot-boy here at the Hall when Master were a lad.’

  ‘I never seed a better man arter snipe,’ remarked Cole.

  ‘Got a mouth on him, though,’ sniggered Jessop. ‘Blister the tar off a barn, can Jubal.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ snapped Nurse, who’d spotted Maud. ‘Jubal Rede is a wicked bad man and you mun’t nivver go near en!’

  So of course Maud was desperate to do just that.

  Summer came and still Father remained abroad. Richard caught scarlet fever, which kept the grown-ups busy. Maman had never been so well, and Maud knew that this was due to the fen. She swore on the viper skin that before she turned ten, she would cross the foot-bridge and thank it in person.

  The day before her tenth birthday, she kept her word.

  Her heart hammered in her chest as she crashed through a tunnel of sedge as sharp as knives. She was inside the fen, inhaling its swampy green breath. Gnats whined in her ears. She heard the squawk and splash of moorhens. She was running barefoot at the edge of the Lode. If she fell in, she would drown.

  The fen was nothing like what she’d expected. It didn’t care about her. It didn’t want her. She knew that. But still she ran.

  The Mere wasn’t quite two miles from the house, but the path to it seemed endless. Then suddenly she was out in the glare and there it was, a reedy wilderness of water glinting wickedly in the sun. The scent of meadowsweet was dizzyingly strong. Reeds hissed and swayed, swifts screamed overhead. Their village name was develin, and that’s what they sounded like, devils.

  The Mere was utterly forbidden, the haunt of ferishes and will-o’-the-wisps that dragged you to a miry death. And yet Maud felt drawn to the edge. She leaned over. Fish fled her shadow. In the deep green murk she saw the skeletons of drowned weeds.

  ‘Git away from thar!’ roared a voice, and strong hands yanked her off her feet.

  Squirming out of his grip, Maud fell backwards. A shaggy red dog trotted over and sniffed her toes. Its master spat a stream of brown liquid into the Mere and glared at Maud.

  ‘Frit me half to death you did. Din’t nobody nivver tell you to stay away from the Mere?’

  Jubal Rede was small and wiry and he stank of the fen. His skin was as brown as if he’d been cured in peat-water and his hands were tougher than bog oak. His beard was clotted like a sheep’s behind and his hair grew through the rents in his cap, which he never took off. He dressed in layers of grimy sacking tied on with eelskins to ward off the rheumatics. Maud never found out if he had webbed feet, as he kept his boots on day and night.

  From a wary distance she watched him wedge his punt in the reeds, unwrap a leathery dried fish from a filthy handkerchief, and share it with the dog. Maud forgot to be scared. She was face to face with the fabled denizen of the fen.

  ‘How do you do,’ she said politely. ‘My name is—’

  ‘I know who you are,’ growled Jubal. His eyes were black and fierce and swimming in red. They took in the whole of her at a glance.

  She sucked in her lips. ‘What’s your dog’s name?’

  ‘Nellie.’

  ‘May I stroke her?’

  ‘I an’t stopping you.’

  Nellie was friendlier than her master. Soon she was licking Maud’s feet and letting her fondle her matted ears. ‘Is she your faithful companion? said Maud. ‘Like in Robinson Crusoe?’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  She told him, but Jubal was unimpressed. ‘So you’m a scholard, like the Master.’ From under his sacking he drew a pigskin flask and took a long pull.

  ‘What are you drinking?’ asked Maud.

  ‘Ager mixter,’ he gasped, baring a foetid ruin of yellow stumps. ‘For the shakes.’

  Maud had heard of the shakes. Her people called it malaria. It was rife among the villagers, who called it the ague. Desperate to keep Jubal talking, she asked what the mixture was made of.

  ‘Paigle tea, poppyheads and frogskin wine.’

  She blinked. ‘Surely you don’t make wine out of frogs?’

  He barked a laugh. ‘Dyke water, you lummock!’

  ‘Oh. May I try some?’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t want you seeing things, now do we?’ Tucking the flask back in his sacking, he pulled out a large clasp-knife and a lump of tobacco.

  ‘I think you’re frightfully brave to live in the fen,’ said Maud.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Most of the villagers daren’t go in after dark.’ She stood on one leg. ‘Have you ever seen the hobby-lanterns?’

  With a scowl he cut a chunk of tobacco.

  ‘Have you?’ she persisted.

  ‘Once or twice,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘Flyen up and down.’

  ‘What about ghosts?’

  ‘What about en?’

  ‘Have you seen one?’

  He hesitated. ‘I seen lots of rum things in the fen.’

  ‘Father says that when you die your soul goes straight to Heaven or Hell and there’s nothing in between, so ghosts can’t possibly exist and it’s wicked to say that they do.’

  ‘Well he oughter know about sin,’ snarled Jubal with startling savagery. ‘Master’s a great one for godly doings, an’t he? Me, I don’t hold by none of it. There’s many a wrong thing done by godly folk.’

  Maud was fascinated. No one had ever spoken to her like this. ‘What about witches? Don’t you believe in them either?’

  ‘Moonshine,’ he spat. ‘When I were a lad, a woman lernt me the old charms. Most of en don’t work. You’re better off without.’ He squinted at the sun. ‘Sky’s greasin up. We shall have a downfall soon, an you with no covering. Best run along home.’

  ‘Oh. Please may I come again?’

  He hesitated. Then he bared his rotten stumps in a grin. ‘Can’t hardly stop you, now can I?’

  It didn’t occur to Maud to wonder why he’d answered her questions so readily, but years later she remembered the way he’d looked at her: those sharp, appraising stares. Perhaps even at that first meeting he’d been wondering how much to tell her, and when.

  She didn’t have time for a proper wash, so she got a thrashing. It was worth it. After that she slipped off to see Jubal almost every day.

  He showed her how to burn leeches off her skin, and he let her watch him spear the giant pike in the Mere. He taught her to know the fen as it truly was. She had been right when she’d sensed that it didn’t care about her. The fen didn’t care about anything human. It wasn’t some enchanted realm full of magical creatures. It was wild, and she loved it all the more.

  Jubal lived in a hut on an islet in a clump of chattering poplars. It had a sedge roof with a hole to let out the smoke, and its peat walls were two feet thick, with a tiny window made of horn and a door so low that even Maud had to stoop.

  Inside, she found herself in a fishy-smelling gloom amid an upside-down forest of dangling eels and tench. Jubal slept on a trestle of grimy sheepskins with Nellie underneath, and his peat fire had been smouldering since he was a lad, and had run away to live in the fen. He’d been here ever since. He never went up-village except twice a year to barter eelskins for tobacco and laudanum. ‘Out here I’m my own master,’ he growled. ‘Thass how I likes it.’

  When he needed to, he sold a puntful of reeds to a thatcher, or did a day’s mole-catching for a farmer. And if some cottager’s pig strayed into the fen, well then of course it never came out. For the rest, Jubal lived by his gu
n, his nets and his eel glave, a seven-foot spear with vicious hooked tines. He knew the fen like nobody else, and he knew every creature that haunted it. He knew more than Maud ever imagined – and some of it turned out to be lethal.

  But in his way he was kind to her, and without knowing it he helped her find a path through those twin banks of thorns, the rules of the village and those of the Church. Above all, he showed her it was possible to be free.

  But that was after the coming of Chatterpie, when at last she had something to show Jubal.

  IT was a warm afternoon in October and Maud was reading under a pear tree where she couldn’t be seen from the house. Suddenly she heard a strange echoing splashing coming from somewhere nearby. It sounded as if some creature was drowning.

  Flinging down her book, she raced to the horse-trough. Nothing there. The splashing went on, panicky and trapped.

  She rushed to the well – and there he was at the bottom, flapping his wings and so covered in muck that she could hardly tell he was a magpie. Another minute and he would drown.

  Frantically, Maud cranked the handle to let down the bucket. She managed to scoop him up, then tore off her pinafore and flung it over him. The magpie didn’t struggle. He froze. All she could see was his big dagger-like beak.

  Clutching her precious bundle in her arms, she stumbled through the orchard to Cole’s cottage. The magpie was alarmingly light and he wasn’t moving. She was terrified that she’d squeezed him too tight. ‘You’re safe now,’ she told him, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘I’ll look after you!’

  She found Cole smoking his pipe on his doorstep. ‘Promise you won’t tell on me,’ she panted.

  The gardener scratched his whiskers. ‘Now what be you wanting with a chatterpie, Miss Maud?’ Like all villagers, he hated magpies.

  ‘Swear you won’t hurt him,’ she commanded.

  He snorted. ‘What, an bring bad luck to me an mine?’

  She pestered him into giving her a pail of water and a trug to house her treasure. Tenderly, she dabbed slime off the magpie and patted him dry with a scrap of sacking. Throughout this ordeal, Chatterpie – as she’d already named him – kept rigidly still, clutching her pinafore tight in his claws.

  Even after she’d finished, he clung on grimly. His grip was like iron, though his legs were as thin as matchsticks. They looked so dreadfully fragile, and one was oozing blood where he’d scratched it down the well. Maud tried to tug her pinafore free, but Chatterpie wouldn’t let go. She let him keep it. She would make up some story about dropping it in the Lode.

  Putting Chatterpie in the trug with the sacking over the top, she staggered with him to the compost heap. She found a piece of wood for a lid and headed back to Cole’s cottage, where she set the trug in the sun.

  ‘I’ll be back at once,’ she told Chatterpie. Magpies ate fruit, didn’t they? She would find worms for him later.

  When she raised the lid and slipped an apple in the trug, Chatterpie flattened himself on the bottom and tried to peck her hand. She made to replace the lid and he stared up at her with eyes as bright as blackberries. Something twisted in her chest. It was love. Pure, fierce, obliterating love. She would do anything for him. She would kill to keep him safe.

  ‘I’ll look after you,’ she whispered, trembling with elation and fear. Where to hide him? She thought of cats, rats and servants. She swore she would never let them harm him.

  She would never let anyone hurt Chatterpie.

  Maud hid him in the hayloft for three days. Three days of terror, adoration and feverish deception.

  He always knew when she was coming. As she climbed the ladder she would hear the scratch of his claws in the trug, and her heart would clench with love.

  He treated her offerings of fruit and worms with lordly disdain and he never ate while she was watching. But that was his right, because he was wild.

  Everything about him was perfect. He had a cape of dazzling white, and his wingtips were deepest black with glints of amethyst and sapphire, like Maman’s shot-silk evening gown. His stiff black tail was sheened with emerald and bronze, and his breast was brighter than the brightest snow.

  At night Maud lay awake, worrying. Chatterpie had recovered. The only trace of his ordeal was a grey scar on his leg. But in the hayloft he was at risk. She couldn’t keep him much longer – and yet she couldn’t bear the thought of letting him go. She didn’t know what to do.

  She took him to Jubal.

  ‘A young un,’ he muttered.

  Chatterpie gave a hoarse squeak, like a rusty gate.

  ‘How d’you know he’s young?’ Maud said crossly. Chatterpie never made any noise with her.

  ‘Short tail,’ said Jubal. ‘Brownish cast to un.’

  Nellie was sniffing the trug. Maud pushed her muzzle aside. ‘Nurse says magpies are cursed by God because they didn’t put on full mourning for Jesus. But that can’t be right, or why wouldn’t geese be cursed too?’

  Jubal spat. ‘Some say if you meets a chatterpie you’ve to bow down and tell it a greeting. Moonshine. Only thing I opinion true about chatterpies is they’re sharp as vinegar, and if one chatters at you from a treetop, you’ll see a stranger by and by.’ He unfolded his clasp-knife. ‘D’you want I should clip his wings so he can’t fly off?’

  ‘No!’ shrieked Maud.

  He shrugged. ‘You could tame un. Lern un to talk.’

  A tame magpie. Like Robinson Crusoe’s parrot… But it was out of the question, because then Chatterpie would no longer be wild. ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘I’m going to set him free.’

  Again Jubal shrugged. But he was grinning.

  She didn’t free Chatterpie immediately. After leaving Jubal, she headed back along the Lode with the trug in her arms.

  The wind had veered round to the north, and the afternoon was cold. Winter was in the air. The dogwood was beginning to be tinged with red. Maud barely noticed.

  According to Jubal, Chatterpie was of the age when young magpies start learning to live on their own. Nevertheless, she was determined to reunite him with his parents. She thought she’d seen them on the day of the rescue, hopping about on the edge of the well. They’d disappeared into one of the churchyard yews, the one by the lych-gate. Maud decided to free Chatterpie when she was opposite St Guthlaf’s. Then he would only have to fly across the Lode to be home.

  Chatterpie kept very still, as if he knew what was going to happen. Maud drew level with the church and halted under a willow tree that overhung the Lode. The tree would make him feel less exposed; and she hoped – oh, how she hoped – that he might perch on a branch, to thank her.

  It was nearly dusk. She had just enough time to set him free, then race back and wash. She’d become adept at such calculations.

  As she set the trug on the ground, her eyes began to sting. ‘It’s time, Chatterpie,’ she said in a strangled voice. ‘G-goodbye. I’ll always always love you. Remember to stay away from cats.’

  When she raised the lid, the magpie flattened himself on the bottom. His beauty pierced her heart. She longed for one last special look from him, although she was crying so hard she could barely see; but he didn’t hesitate for an instant. No hopping on to the edge of the trug to get his bearings, no perching on a willow branch to chatter his thanks. Like an arrow he shot across the Lode and vanished into the yew tree. He knew exactly where he was going and he didn’t look back.

  From inside the tree came a clamour of magpie voices: Where have you been? Maud gulped and tried to smile, but her mouth was stretched in a howl of grief.

  She stayed there sobbing, hoping against hope that he would return, while the fen hushed and the sky turned a deep, luminous blue.

  She knew Chatterpie didn’t love her, and that was as it should be because he was wild. But she also knew that for three days she had mattered to him – because she had fed him and kept him safe. Now all that was over, and once again she was on her own. Only this time it was worse – because he’d been so close, and now he was g
one.

  Maud couldn’t face returning to the house straight away. Nurse could thrash her as hard as she liked. What did it matter, when Chatterpie was gone?

  The light was dying and the wind had dropped. The fen was utterly still. Maud heard a warbler in the reeds, and from the Common, a dog’s distant barks. In the churchyard, Chatterpie’s yew had fallen silent.

  Something swept over Maud’s head with a soft rush of wings, and she saw a flock of starlings skimming the reeds. Sniffing and wiping her cheeks, she watched them fly off towards the Mere. Her head was throbbing. She felt exhausted and empty.

  The wavering bank of birds swung round and sped back towards her. Again they skimmed the reeds, and this time as they sped skywards, more starlings flew up from the fen to join them.

  Each time Maud thought they were gone, they returned, the flock growing larger with every sweep as it picked up more birds, and always changing shape: now contracting to a dense cloud, now stretching to a long, wavering ribbon.

  Suddenly they were swooping very low over her head, netting the sky with their wings. In that torrent of birds she made out their small black cross-shaped bodies and heard their terse, signalling calls. They were so close she could have touched them, and her pain lifted a little, for she felt as if she too were flying.

  She watched until the first stars came out and the birds finally settled to roost. She felt calmer. The starlings had been a visitation and a reward: the fen’s gift to her for looking after one of its own.

  Dimly, an idea took root: the notion that one day, maybe she too could be free. Like Jubal and Chatterpie and the starlings.

  Jubal was right about magpies foretelling the coming of a stranger.

  The day after Maud freed Chatterpie, she saw him perched on top of his yew tree. The branch was too weak to take his weight, and he was wobbling and dipping his tail to keep his balance. He was also chattering a warning.