Long Lankin (30 page)

PIERS HILLYARD

I tremble in my deepest heart when I think what I have done. I write this in my chamber, and it is late into the night. I fear my candle will soon burn out, and who knows now what lurks in the darkness beyond these walls? I write this in mortal dread of the thing I have unwittingly . . . [illegible section, scorched] . . . I must write, for I know that somehow my life is forfeit. I must pay the price of my folly.

I know my mind is leaving me, and while I still have some wits left me, by the grace of God, I must write. I must write. . . .

I know Cain Lankin had threatened the Guerdons with mischief and had confronted Sir Edmund on two occasions, so that when Sir Edmund was summoned to attend the Privy Council by Our Most Gracious Majesty Queene Elizabeth, and would therefore be absent from home for some time, he did exhort his household to beware him.

But there was no proof that Lankin was in Guerdon Hall on that lamentable night when Lady Ygurne and her child were killed, may God grant their poor souls rest and mercy. Surely I could not refuse to inter his body in consecrated ground on rumour and hearsay alone.

The witch, Aphra Rushes, never said he had been there, even when they lowered her into the pitch barrel, even when she was dragged forth, lifted up, and chained to the stake. Even when they held the torch to the wood, she never spoke. Miles Fortyce, having come hither with the condemned woman from the Assizes at Lokswood, did endeavour to persuade her to repent her wickedness, but she said nothing. She did not utter a single cry, even when the flames began to take the wood. There are those who said she smiled, and that they saw the black shadow of Lucifer embrace her in the fire, but I saw nothing, only the dark cloud of smoke from the burning pitch. Even the stake itself began to take the fire. I turned my head away and covered my face. The smoke came over me, and the stench of broiling flesh overwhelmed me. Only then, in her death agony, did Aphra Rushes let forth a scream that pierced the hearts of all who stood there, and a hush came upon the crowd. In that hoarse cry were words that rent the choking air. Aphra Rushes cursed all those that bore the name of Guerdon, in every age that was to come.

Then she fell silent and was consumed. I felt hot ashes in my nostrils.

Of all the divers ways in which man may quit his wretched life, the flame is like to be the worst of all. I am mortally afeared of . . .

I found his body in the wasteland. It might have been nothing more than a heap of wet rags blowing in the wind by the side of the creek. There was blood on those tattered clothes and around his mouth and in his hair, but I did not come too near, for I could see he had been a leper.

I sent away the parish women who prepare our deceased brethren for burial, so they would be spared the touching of him. The sexton’s men came with the rough wooden box they had quickly put together, longer by far than the coffin of any man I had known. In fear and haste, they hammered down the lid upon his unwashed corpse. We did not know whose blood it was upon him. Which one of us was man enough to search his body? Who would risk such a death — and such a life?

But the people would not let me rest until I had the box opened and had Lankin hung in the gibbet. I paid the sexton and the gravediggers two sovereigns to hang him up, for they would not do it for less. Such was the length of his body that only with great trouble did they fit it inside, and for three days he swung there, out in the lane on the brow of the hill, for all to see, though none would draw near the place.

An unnatural tempest blew over the land, and my man, Moses, came to tell me that corpse-lights had been seen among the graves in the churchyard.

A great shaft of lightning, like a thunderbolt from Jove himself, struck the steeple of the church, the very place in which Aphra Rushes had been confined, and as we worked to quench the flames, I felt in my heart that it was a sign unto us from the very throne of God. We had convicted an innocent man, a man who had died alone and in desolation, without any proof, and therefore he must be accorded Christian burial.

As the people had accused him, so now they turned their ire upon me.

When, at further great expense to my purse, the sexton removed him from the cage on the third day, the rot that had consumed Lankin’s diseased body in life seemed to have made no further progress upon him after death. He was unchanged since I had discovered him on the marshes. I could not look upon that hideous corpse for longer than it took to sign the cross over him before they hammered down the lid once more.

Still the people plagued me to bury him out of sanctuary, where four roads meet, pinned to the earth, but I could not believe that Aphra Rushes could have suffered so, under torture and by the flame, and not laid blame against another. Still I refused to judge Cain Lankin a guilty man.

Alone but for the poor simpleton, Shem, who daily gathered grass for my horse, to assist me, as I had no more sovereigns to give to the sexton or his men, I dragged the wretched box that held Lankin’s body, under the shadow of darkness, across the threshold of the lychgate. It lay upon the earth, on the midway unto hallowed ground, and holding my lantern aloft to read the text, I began to recite the prayer of commission.

At that moment a terrible sense of foreboding came upon me, and I felt almost that my very soul was being wrenched from my body and was gazing upon me from some other place, outside the confines of the lychgate, beyond the world itself. I could hear noises and lamentations in mine own head, screeching and wailing, causing me grievous pain. In this feverish stupor, I glimpsed Shem with his hands grasping his temples, moaning in affliction like to mine.

I sent up a desperate entreaty unto the Lord, and sensing some answer from heaven, prevailed upon Shem to aid me in drawing the rude coffin through the gate into the churchyard. I was obliged to seize the good soul’s hands and place them steady on the box, and together we heaved it unto sacred ground.

The tumult ceased. I gave thanks unto my maker, but with my eyelids yet sealed in prayer, I felt a pull upon my arm. Shem, his face wild and distracted, pointed to the wooden box with a trembling hand. I swear upon my oath that it had shifted at the least half a foot to the side from the spot where we had placed it. As we watched, it rocked back and forth, without human aid. I felt cold blood course through my body and was overcome with a dread such as I had never before felt.

Shem would have departed the place forthwith, but I was afeared to be left with the corpse alone and in darkness, save for my lantern, and persuaded the poor lad to assist me in moving the box farther into the churchyard.

I would have made a resting place for the box on the far side, to the north, but we were both consumed so with misgiving and fear that we could not make the passage thereunto. I brought to mind the cavity that Cain Lankin himself had laboured to dig close by the church wall, which no man had filled, in the vain hope he had entertained of drawing forth the woman Aphra Rushes.

For long hours, in utter weariness, with black dust and ashes from the charred timbers of the stricken steeple darkening our moistened skin, we laboured to dig farther into the earth in this place. Lankin’s coffin lay upon the path, and as we toiled, we saw it move thrice more. Shem was agitated and consumed with terror, but carried out my bidding as his priest.

At last we had made an opening sufficient deep to take the rude casket. With great difficulty, we interred the frightful remains and covered over all with earth.

Shem fled from the church in a great disturbance. After that night, I never beheld the poor wretch again. To this very day, I know not whither he went.

I am a man of God, but I do not understand many of those things of which our world is made. I believe now that even while he had lived, Cain Lankin was already half in death, in some manner a part of the very fabric of that wilderness which he had made his dwelling place.

I am a man of God, but I am weak, and now my foolishness and my failure have caused a curse so terrible to fall upon these people of the marshes that I, and I alone, must find the means to save them. It is a curse no less terrible than that which Aphra Rushes brought down upon the heads of the Guerdons. I know in my soul that my life is forfeit. I have condemned myself to that hell I sought to spare Cain Lankin.

It did not end with the unnatural deaths of Lady Ygurne and her baby son. Merciful God, it has only just begun. Two more young ones . . . The people are moving away from the marshlands with their cattle to make new lives on the high lands beyond the . . .

I fear for my own household. A washer girl, Kittie Wicken, has come up to this house from Guerdon Hall and has been safely delivered of a son, thanks be to God. Kittie would not remain in the Hall in her travail, but struggled up the hill alone and at the eleventh hour. She is a strange young woman, somewhat afflicted in the mind, I believe, or consumed by dark secrets that disturb her peace. She will not leave her infant alone by day nor by night and sings constantly to the babe, always the same vile tortured melody, scarcely fit for the ears of a child. I do not linger to attend to the words, for Kittie’s voice has the power to pierce the soul. It fills my head and will cause me to lose whatever reason still remains to me. Before much longer, we shall all be mad here.

Kittie must go back to the Hall, for she is bound in duty to the Guerdons, though she pleads to remain here. I hear her fearful sobbing and wailing in the night.

One of her secrets she has confided to my keeping, which grieves me most sorely and is a burden to me. Kittie has confessed that Sir Edmund Guerdon is the father of her child. She informs me also that other maidservants in Guerdon Hall are fearful of his appetites.

I can keep Kittie here no longer, though we may all be beyond help now.

Here, and in Daneflete, Hilsey, and Faring, I can find no carpenter who will repair the damage to the steeple. Maybe beyond Lokswood . . .

They cried out against me, but I allowed the body of a murderer to pass through the lychgate to burial in consecrated ground. In that moment, Cain Lankin passed into the half-world between the heavens and the earth.

Who can undo the terrible deed I have done?