cross. What could Aldith have possibly seen to make her doubt her son was in there? The poor woman had been deranged by grief. She must surely have gone to the wrong grave.
As I hurried towards the church I could see a group of men standing in the doorway under the obscene carving of the naked old hag, which the villagers call Black Anu. Martin the sexton, the blacksmith John, and two other villagers were deep in conversation. They stopped talking and nudged one another as I approached, as if they’d been discussing me.
“Martin, Mistress Aldith has just come to me with some tale about her son’s grave. She told me…” I felt foolish even saying it, “… that it has been disturbed. There is no truth in this, I take it.”
“Grave’s empty,” Martin said tersely.
“Show me,” I demanded.
The men glanced at one another.
“Your memory going, is it, Father?” The sexton coughed and spat a gob of phlegm onto the church step. “You know where the grave is, Father; you buried the lad in it.”
“I can still remember who pays your wages. This churchyard is your responsibility. Your job is to ensure that the dead are allowed to rest in peace. So if you’ve been negligent in carrying out your duties, I want to see.”
Martin at least had the grace to look uncomfortable. With another glance at his companions, he led the four of us reluctantly around the side of the church.
The grave was tucked away beneath an overhanging oak in the far corner of the churchyard. It had not been dug deep; the sexton had complained that tree roots and icy ground had made it hard to go down as far as usual, though I suspected it was because Aldith hadn’t given the man an extra coin, which he seemed to expect as his right.
Even as we approached I saw that the earth was not heaped over the grave as it should have been, but piled on either side of it. I stared down into the narrow pit. The outline in the wet earth where the small body had lain was plainly visible, but the body itself had vanished.
An icy shiver crawled up my back. Could Oliver have risen as Aldith said, not as our Lord rose, but as one of the revenant dead, the corpses which clamber from their graves and feast on the living? I crossed myself. “God have mercy on us,” I murmured.
There’d been such a case when I lived in Norwich. A man, newly buried, had risen from the churchyard and wandered through the streets throttling anyone he encountered. He had been followed by a pack of yellow-eyed cats whose savage yowling terrified all who heard them. In the end Bishop Salmon had commanded the grave be opened and the head of the corpse cut off with the spade that had been used to bury him. When they dug the dead man up, they’d found his corpse as fat and bloated as a leech and when they severed his head, a great scarlet spurt had gushed from his neck until the grave was filled with blood.
Was it possible this boy too had become a revenant? He’d had the simplest of burials, it was true enough, but I had been diligent in giving him all due rites of the Holy Church. And the sins of a child that young could surely not have been as grievous as to make him unworthy of a Christian burial.
“Do you think…” I stammered. “Is it…is it possible that the corpse has walked?”
The sexton coughed again and spat into the dark hole. “He’d not be able to leave his grave. I made sure of that myself. I opened it up after his mam had left and hammered iron nails into the soles of the lad’s feet, so he couldn’t walk.”
I didn’t know whether I was relieved or angry. “You violated a grave after he’d been given a Christian burial?”
Martin shrugged. “That weren’t the ague that killed him. Bairn died from witchcraft, plain as day. Crosses and holy water wouldn’t be enough to hold him in the grave, not if he was killed by witchery.”
The other men nodded.
Blacksmith John exchanged a look with the sexton, then cleared his throat. “Thing is, Father, if the corpse didn’t clamber out of the grave by itself, then someone must have taken it.”
I gaped at him. “But why? Who could possibly want to steal a corpse?”
John scratched at a scab on his huge muscular arm. “The way I see it, Father, is the one who killed him is the one that’s taken his corpse. Why else would she want to put the evil eye on a little lad? She needed his body for her black arts.”
“She? You think a woman in Ulewic, one of my own flock, would-”
John gave a great mirthless bellow of laughter. “She’s not one of your flock, Father. That old witch would never set foot in a church. Her soul’s so black, if one drop of holy water was to touch her withered old hide, she’d likely burn to ashes on the spot.”
“Old Gwenith, he means.” Martin explained. “She never sets foot in the village in daylight, except for the fairs and then only when she’s something to buy or sell. But at night…” He glanced at the other men. “At night it’s a different story, that’s when she comes down from her lair to make mischief.” There were murmurs of agreement from the others.
John stared down again at the tiny grave. “A bairn as small as Oliver would be light enough even for an old woman to carry away with her. Happen that’s why she chose him as her victim. And you know what Eve it is tonight, Father.”
I nodded grimly. I knew only too well. It was the night the Church prayed for the souls of the dead, but I knew that others in the village would not have their minds on the rites of the Church, but on the heathen practices of the feast they called Samhain. Aldith had already told me she had come to lay food and drink on the grave. The other villagers would do the same for their dead, however much I preached against it. But that was not all. This was the night when the witches did their worst. God alone knew what this Gwenith intended with the body of that poor child, but whatever devilish rites she was bent on, I swore I would put a stop to her mischief, even if I had to fight the hordes of Hell to do it.
“You say this Gwenith lives somewhere beyond the village. Can you take me there?”
The four men as one took a step backwards.
“No, Father, you’ll not catch me going up there.” John held up his great broad hands as if to ward off the very suggestion. “Only a man in Holy Orders, like yourself, would dare set foot near the cottage without fear of her hex. But you know the Latin words and holy prayers to defend yourself.”
“Besides, you’ll not need us to guide you,” Martin grunted. “River’ll take you to her. Follow the river upstream. They say her cottage is right by the water’s edge, near the top of the hill. You’ll not mistake it.”
“You will go, Father, for the sake of the village?” John asked.
I found my mouth was so dry I could not answer him. In my anger, I’d sworn to myself that I’d fight the demons of Hell to stop the witch. It was easy enough to swear, but as it hit me that I might actually have to do it, I felt as if I’d been doused in iced water. If these strapping men were too terrified of her even to show me the way to her cottage, what kind of satanic powers could this fiend conjure?
I’d watched men who were trained in such matters perform exorcisms and unmask sorcerers. I’d heard the howls and screams of the possessed, seen objects fly about the room and great black streams of filth burst from their mouths. But the exorcists had done their work surrounded by clergy and holy symbols. I couldn’t do it alone and unprotected. No one could expect me to… I needed books, holy relics… I couldn’t do it… I wouldn’t-
“It’ll be a long walk and a steep climb. You must hurry if you want to get there before she’s time to do her worst. If she conjures up the Evil One…” John crossed himself.
The blacksmith was right; there wasn’t time to send for help. If I didn’t stop her, then God alone knew what the hag would unleash on these defenceless people. I was a priest. I had the power of God on my side. She was merely a woman, an ignorant old woman; she could not stand against the power of the Holy Church.
In a daze, I found myself nodding. The men glanced at one another, relief washing over their faces.
“God go with you, Father.”
IT WAS A LONGER AND STEEPER CLIMB even than I had anticipated. I was forced to stop many times to catch my breath, although I dared not linger until I had fully recovered, for the sun had already disappeared behind the hill. Only a grey ghost light still hovered in the sky, the last whisper of the sun’s dying rays.
The tiny bubble of confidence I’d felt down in the churchyard had long since burst. With each step the pain in my chest grew worse. What would I find if I did reach her cottage? Suppose she had already summoned up the hounds of Satan, how would I fight them alone? I glanced fearfully up at the black rocks rising like devils’ horns around me. My body was drenched in cold sweat. Only the knowledge of what evil she might be preparing to do with the body of an innocent child prevented me from fleeing back the way I’d come. I couldn’t face the villagers and tell them I’d failed. God knows they had little enough respect for me as it was.
Now the path was nothing more than a sheep’s track strewn with stones and rocks. It was so perilously narrow in places that several times I lost my footing and came close to plunging into the raging river below. I cursed myself for having neglected to bring a lantern. How could I have been so foolish as to embark on such a climb without any means of lighting my way? Maybe I’d already passed the cottage in the gloom. Surely not even a witch could find anywhere to nest among these rocks. The path vanished beneath my feet and I found myself walking over a flat stretch of grass. The rocks and the hillside rose all around me like the walls of a fortress, blocking what little light remained in the sky.
Then out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed something moving in the darkness. I turned. A human skull was hanging upside down, suspended in midair. As I stared aghast, the hollow eye sockets suddenly blazed with flame. I screamed and staggered backwards, slipping and crashing down with such force that I rolled over. The ground disappeared from beneath my head and shoulders.
I had tumbled right to the edge of the bank. I was lying on my back, suspended over the river. I felt the icy spray on my neck and heard the deafening roar of the water crashing over the rocks below. I flailed about, trying to find a handhold on the bank to pull myself back, but the grass I clutched at came away in my hands and I found myself slipping further over the river.
Then I felt someone grasp my arm. I clung to the outstretched hand and inched myself back on the bank until I was crouching on all fours on the solid earth, gasping, my limbs shaking beneath me. I raised my head. I was staring into the stinking, filthy skirts of a woman. I scrambled to my feet. The old witch was standing in front of me, holding the skull with its blazing eyes. Now that I was close to it, I could see that inside the upturned skull was a mound of burning tinder. Red and orange flames licked around the yellowed teeth.
I dared not move for fear I would step backwards into the river. Every word, every prayer that should have protected me, had vanished from my head. I pulled my iron crucifix from about my neck and grasping it tightly in my fist pushed it towards her face.
