Under Lynden Church

By Lindsay Jacob

When the body of a murdered woman, surrounded by jewels and weapons, is discovered beneath a village church, Adam Newport thinks he has made the find of a lifetime but murder and grave robbery take him to the edge of sanity. 1100 years earlier, Emma joins the desperate struggle against Viking invasion only to find that treachery and a clash of beliefs are a greater enemy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781682227961

Lindsay Jacob

Lindsay Jacob was born in Cambridge but moved to Australia where he followed a career of speech-writing for senior figures. His skills as a creative thinker and writer were employed in imagining the future, but his passion was for the past. Through research he has built up a thorough understanding of Anglo-Saxon history.

Book preview

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE: THE MORNING LIFE CHANGED

Damp mould. Long after they’ve left their smell lingers; musty like old hymnbooks in a country church. Last night I heard them again – extinct words, an odd dialect. Sometimes my visitors are drunk; dancing round the room, shouting, joking, laughing; or slumped weeping in the shadows. Sometimes they talk to me. In the middle of the night I hear them - the ghosts of Lynden.

In the early light, a young woman stands in the fields above her village about to start the day’s work. Her singing stops; she screams her mother’s name. A hand points towards her. Ugly, vicious, foreign voices ring out. She begins to run.

She knows the track and stoops; the low branch grazing her head. A sharp crack; a howl; the pagan’s nose shatters as it smashes against the wood and he falls, but the laboured gasps continue behind her.

Reaching for her chest, she grabs a short dagger from a leather sheath around her neck. When the fingers brush her shoulder, she turns. His eyes bulge as they see the blade coming towards them. She feels his breath when he screams. The point pierces his cheek then slides upwards tearing flesh and momentum drives the metal into his eye.

It is still there when, with hands locked together, the two bodies tumble together down the slope, snow exploding into the air, until they collide with a tree trunk. Before he can extract the tormenting weapon the woman pounces, using her weight to push the blade deeper, then she twists it, left and right, mincing his eye, until his hold gives way. The kick to her head sends her flying.

Where are they? The third pursuer yells.

She screeches and struggles against the weight holding her down, until a fist slams into her cheek.

Spitting, coughing, drawing deep breaths, the man sits astride her, pinning her arms into the snow.

Whore. Talk. Where are they. He can barely breathe. He shakes her hard, gasping more profanities. His elbows buckle slightly; his shaven head falls forward. He’d hit her too hard. His body shakes from a prolonged, hacking cough.

He moans, as much from frustration as exertion. He shakes her again – nothing. He feels like finishing her off there and then but she could know where the East Angles are mustering and there is no-one else left to question. They’d all been slaughtered.

The houses had taken some time to ignite, given the dampness of the season, but in the chaos of the early morning attack, those villagers who had escaped the pungent smoke had been cut down. The raiding band had no time for the decrepit old bags of bone, who stumbled from their homes, or the women and children. They wanted the warriors – men who knew of the battle preparations. Men who would know where the East Angles were massing; how many there were; their quality and who led them.

The Northman found himself rehearsing the story he would tell to the clan head. The houses should have been filled with sleeping warriors. How could they have known that the men had already gone?

When they saw the woman, he, his brother and his mother’s brother’s youngest son pursued through instinct.

He couldn’t go back to camp empty-handed; the thought sickened him. Yet more derision from the other kin groups. The great families looking down their noses at another failure; the malicious jokes; past failures dragged up again. The raid had been a cock-up but he wasn’t going to admit it.

He looked across to the twitching body of his kinsman. It was a bad end; a hard one to tell the youngster’s parents.

His gaze returned to the woman pinioned beneath him. Cautiously, he moved her head from side to side. She was a long way from being conscious and his tension began to ease. He felt her warmth against his thighs.

Helm, he shouted. At last, some reward for the months of hardship. No glory, no plunder, no women - until now. He deserved this.

Helm. Come here. Look what we’ve got. But his brother was staggering back to the burning village, clutching a blood-drenched cloth to his smashed nose.

Well, she was all his. The Northman gripped the top of his captive’s dress with both hands.

The stone struck his left temple, knocking him sideways. Before the Northman could recover, she had swung the sharp flint again, this time full into her assailant’s face. She took her chance and rolled away. His axe lay in front of her and with one sweeping blow to the side of his head, it was over.

Emma began shaking uncontrollably and vomited. She knew she had to move quickly but her limbs were leaden. Her head ached.

With deep breaths she began to regain control of her body and started to run.

Half an hour later, and far from any track that was familiar, she fell to the ground and burst into tears.

Forgive me, she cried softly. She stared up at the racing clouds. I should have defended you. Please forgive me.

She would never see her mother again in this life. She could have saved her if she had not run. God would have given her the strength. Her father would have gone back, had he been there. He would have raged among the invaders.

It was never meant to be like this. The cockerel had heard the coop door creak but before he could give the warning, his head was falling to the ground. The defences the village had practiced had come to nought.

Her father should have been there. He should have died the way he always wanted and not left them defenceless.

He had talked to her often about his own death, since the time she had first witnessed the killing of men. She was around nine at the time; long before her father had become the village headman.

A band of Mercians had descended on their village after slaves, weapons and food. But Hildericstow was well prepared. The village was known within the Kingdom of the East Angles for its fighting spirit – indispensible to survival in the border region. The women shepherded the crying children into the wood, while the men engaged the war party.

Emma, as usual, had been on her own, this time gathering firewood, and had crept back to watch the fighting from behind one of the huts. She watched her father and the other men of the village. It was a hard fought struggle and the sights were grim. Although she bit her fingers until they bled, Emma did not shield her eyes.

The first to die was one of the Mercians. He was slashed across the throat - not fatally - but enough to make him drop his guard and back away. In an instant, Emma’s father had driven his sword under the man’s raised arm. Her eyes stayed on her father. He was strong and skilled; the brightest star in the heavens.

The raiders realised their error. They were pushed back and surrounded. It was over quickly. Five Mercians lay dead; the other two disarmed; and only one of the villagers had died.

She watched as the dead villager was carried back to his house, his wife weeping, cradling his head, with her children running after her, screaming, trying to catch up.

The bodies of the Mercians were stripped, thrown onto a cart and covered with straw, while the surviving attackers were stripped and bound. The villagers looked over the weapons and other things they had captured. Whatever they found angered them and they dragged the survivors behind one of the huts.

Emma scurried through the wood until she could see what was happening. The Mercians’ responses to the headman’s questions didn’t seem to satisfy him or the other village men, who kicked and hit the captives until they begged for mercy in their stupid language. Their mouths were bound to stop their noise.

The headman nodded.

Siward the blacksmith stepped in front of the first captive and wrenched his head in a quick, almost invisible, move. Emma heard the bones snap, even from a distance. She winced; holding her hand to her neck. Then Siward moved forward to do the same to the other captive. The Mercian put up a struggle that enraged Siward, who swore and walking to the side of the kneeling man, held his body fast between his legs, locked his arms around the Mercian’s head and forced it around slowly but inevitably. The bodies were piled onto the others. More straw was added and the cart led from the village.

Later in the day, from beyond the village pastures, the billowing thick, oily smoke told of the final disposal of the dead Mercians.

That night, when she lay down to sleep, Emma questioned her father about the fight. What would happen to the widow and children of the dead villager; was her father scared when he saw the Mercians coming; and why did Siward kill the captives like chickens? He bound her bleeding fingers and answered as best he could, chiding her for going off on her own, and demanding she swear on the Holy Bible of the Lord God never to do it again. He loved her deeply, having no other living child, since Emma’s younger sister had died within a few days of tasting life.

Even at this age, Emma’s father thought of her almost as an adult.

He found he would answer most of her questions truthfully and keep little from her. For her part, Emma thought her father was a better man than the ealdorman himself; strong, fearless and clever.

Don’t be sad girl if I die in a just fight. There’s no better way for a man to go. We leave nothing behind us other than – should the Lord God grant us – our children and the memory of our deeds. If we have earnt glory then our names will live on. Three of your uncles have gone before me and on their anniversaries our village thanks them and tells of their fights and scraps - and if I join them in God’s war band, feel happy for me. Listen to the stories about me and tell them it’s all true, he grinned.

When I go, Ealdorman Leofric and our neighbours will care for you both in memory of me. That would be a good end, girl. I ain’t never seen myself bent over with age, wetting myself and dribbling. That ain’t me. Then Tonbert’s face tightened.

There was something her father feared above all else; something they all feared that he could barely voice - an enemy attack on their defenceless village. It was a tactic employed by armies fighting on enemy soil - threaten the villages and the fighting men think twice before leaving their women and children; wipe out a few settlements and others will try to avoid their obligation to muster for a distant battle.

Hildericstow had been fortunate so far, despite its precarious position. A broad, fast-flowing river ran beside it that afforded protection, as well as a fruitful harvest of fish, eels and waterfowl. There was fertile land that supported strong families. Its sons and daughters were sought after in marriage. Traders visited regularly, bringing tools, domestic utensils and sometimes jewels. In return, the villagers traded weapons and their hallmark – fine linen cloth made from flax that grew in the meadows. Hildericstow had developed as the key village in the defence of the south-western corner of the kingdom and received the king’s favour. Generations had passed with intermittent raiding and skirmishing but Hildericstow had never sustained a mortal blow.

That was before the Northmen came.

The pagans had no understanding of the land and no need to know anything deeper than how it could advantage them. In their shoes the East Angles would have behaved no differently but that was little consolation to people whose lives were lived in a few square miles of land that they knew intimately and that sustained them physically and in every other way. Where all who they loved lived in a dozen or more houses congregated together in a settlement where their forebears had lived for generations since they had made the journey across the Northern Sea.

But Emma’s father was seldom downcast. She remembered his words well.

Be brave. Sharp in your wits. Follow God’s word. Laugh whenever you can for life can be hard. Be cautious of who you trust but once you know your friends, trust and protect them until your life’s end. Always protect your lord, your kin and your chosen companions. Honour your parents. Fight hard for what you believe.

Live like this, he told Emma, and your life and death will be a victory. This was how he lived and she loved him dearly for it.

If Tonbert did transgress from these ideals, Emma was disbelieving. When she heard once that the raiding band he had led, had raped women younger than her, she knew it was a lie. Perhaps the other men but not her father. When a girl from a neighbouring village told her once that they shared the same father, she broke her nose. And as Emma grew older and learned more of what men were like, she knew her father had been bewitched at times and the spells had tried to separate him from his family, but they had failed.

Her father had instilled in Emma her understanding that she was special.

I know this, Emma, though I ain’t near as clever as our priest; this is as clear as an Easter bell. The Lord God has breathed life into you for a great purpose. How many times had he reminded her of this? The message, he said, had been spoken to him over and over, as if from someone standing next to him.

His words weighed her down now; they were so at odds with what she had done - or failed to do. Tonbert had never run from battle. Yet when his precious daughter had faced the first big challenge of her life alone, she had failed.

No-one believes he shames his forefathers. Emma had heard their priest say. We can all excuse our actions. We can hide our sins in so many dark places, we cannot even find them ourselves. But the Lord God sees us as we are, and knows all our sins. There is no hiding from his eye.

Emma didn’t want it to end here, freezing to death like a helpless child with the weight of guilt stopping her soul from taking the path God had surely intended. She needed to explain to her father; to tell him that she had wanted to take on the three Northmen when they first saw her but a woman with a hoe could not beat three armed warriors in open battle. Emma had to find the massing forces of the East Angles – her people. She walked over and pulled her dagger from the oozing eye socket, cleaned it well in the snow and kissed the blade.

Little blade, you were my father’s gift to me when I was young. Thank you for my life, I shall never forget your deed. She returned it to the sheath around her neck.

She took one of the heathens’ cloaks and wrapped it round her shoulders. It stunk but was free of the gore melting into the snow. Emma felt the left side of her face; it was swelling and painful. A search of the pagan corpses yielded a surprise – a sword – and it suited Emma’s size. It was rare for a Northman to possess such a weapon. It looked too familiar and she recognised it as local, even taken from her own village that morning. It was good to win it back. Emma also found a second cloak, some smoked ham and dry leaves. The pain of chewing caused her to wince but the meat tasted good. Still eating, she used the snow to wash away as much blood as possible from the second cloak.

Please hear me, my wonderful mother and forgive me. I pray that your soul was released quickly; your body has been consumed by fire and is beyond violation. I know that you are destined for heaven for the Lord God could not deny such as you. Every day I will remember your face and I will never forget your smile.

Her head returned to a thought that she knew would be an unwelcome intruder in the months or years to come if she lasted that long. Was she, despite her long-held opinion of herself, really a coward, who had failed the test of real courage?

She saw her own body lying in the mud, unwanted, with her family and villagers passing it without a glance, even to recognise it as once human. For to be a coward was to lose that which was most important in being a person - the courage to pit yourself, whoever you were, against whatever comes, win or lose.

It was around midday when the young woman picked up her trophies and started walking. She had no idea where, except that it was away from her village. The snow, in places, lay thigh deep and after a couple of hours of dragging herself forward, Emma felt too tired and ill to continue. She hoped that she had covered enough distance and could stop, and if the dead Northmen had been discovered by their countrymen that they would still feel compelled to move back towards Cambridge to report their findings, rather than follow the obvious tracks she had made.

She pulled a few dead limbs from nearby trees and, after several frustrating attempts, lit a small fire. It didn’t catch well, the wood was damp and smoked - more than enough to attract unwelcome attention but she needed a fire’s warmth. So using her sword and dagger, she cut and ripped pieces from the most threadbare cloak, smeared like the other with animal grease, and placed them carefully onto the smouldering wood. She bent low and blowed steadily. Finally, the greasy smoke gave way to flame. Soon there was a solid heart to the fire, and at last it began to beat of its own accord.

She sat back against a tree, pulled her remaining cloak round her shoulders and sighed from exhaustion and the reassuring heat of the flames. It was a small victory but a good one. The chill inside her began to recede; a few more mouthfuls of meat aiding her recovery and lifting her spirits.

She even smiled, if fleetingly, recalling memories of friendships around the fire. The menacing howl of wolves had not yet bitten the air and she prayed she would be able to fend them off when they were drawn to her smell. The orange sun paled in the west and the demons of night stirred in their lairs. Emma fed more wood onto the fire and though she fought sleep for a while, as darkness spread its fingers around her and transformed the forest into a place for nightmares, her head fell back against the tree and her sword fell from her hand.

Little wonder Emma’s parents were proud of their daughter. In the year of her death, Emma’s mother would have looked upon a woman of eighteen; undoubtedly considered brave to all who knew her, intelligent, spirited, loved by her God, who had given her physical beauty, as well as the heart of a lion. Her face was curiously and appealingly round for an East Angle, with high cheeks; her eyes a piercing grey. She had long, straight, flaxen hair, which fell half way down her back. She was tall - taller than any of the women she knew - straight-limbed, and battle practice with her father had built her naturally slim and robust body.

She thought of her body as a weapon and used it as one, joyfully and successfully. It had, she had learnt since her years of budding adolescence, substantial power over men; and to have power over men, especially the young thegns, was important. How else could the daughter of a freeman lift herself above the filth of everyday life? That she wanted to lift herself - to live more than the life she had been born into - separated her from others of her age group. They, of course, all wanted attention from the warriors but Emma knew she had been born for more than the few trinkets women of her age gained from letting the young bulls of the ruling families poke them.

Emma relished feastdays in the warmer months, when she would tie a band of bright plaited cloth around her head and wear her cool linen dress. She felt as light and carefree as an angel and would wear the wonderful necklace of amber and jet beads that her father had taken from a raid on a Mercian village. It had a single egg-shaped rock crystal, set in a circle of gold, decorated with swirling patterns of red enamel and coloured glass, and it sparkled and bewitched in the candlelight. When she clasped it around her neck, she felt its magic throb through her.

She received many gifts, shaped by strangers from distant lands, brought by village men returning from raids. When her father was away fighting, young men would compete to cut wood for her, bring milk and meat to her mother and offer to plough their small plot of land. Her parents had long given up questioning her too closely about these favours, for they loved her. She was their daughter and she had more commonsense and courage than most of the men of the village combined.

She had never fallen for the grandiloquent boasts of the thegns or the simple-minded, straightforward advances of the peasant men. She took what they gave her, not what they promised; and promised nothing in return.

Only one man had attracted her recently. He was now with the army. He had arrived in the village to live with his uncle and aunt after his parents had been killed in a Viking raid. He was pleasant enough to look at; not strong but still interesting. Emma had flirtingly encouraged his timid glances, as she did with almost any newcomer and he responded, though not as she would have expected. He talked a lot.

He spoke of the beauty of the words and images he had seen in books, though he could not read; and most vividly of the joy he felt when playing the harp. He said it helped with the gaping hole in his life, now his parents had gone.

He had entertained at a few gatherings; his voice like a bell, his hands caressing the instrument to life to make music that only heaven itself could have created, pure and soaring, beyond the grime and filth of village life.

When he played, the riot of drunken idiocy abated and grown men, who had a few minutes earlier been hurling foul abuse around the hall, turned maudlin, staring tearfully into the shadows at mental images of lost kin or friends, at their own failings or at some insight into the transitory lives they led, like butterflies in a raging storm.

Emma found his behaviour endlessly confusing. She had learnt only one way to relate to men of her age; the way that almost always worked. She thought she knew what men wanted but the young harpist confounded her. Now he was with the army awaiting battle.

Images of his death came fitfully in her sleep. She saw his inexperience struggling against skilled killing. He had no chance. A sword immobilised his arm, a dagger slit his throat and an axe hacked into his head. Emma saw herself kneeling beside his desecrated body, covering his wounds with scented bandages.

Her troubled mind brought a confusion of terrible images, so when her anguish drew her to waking, it was into a world that could still have been a dream. Her senses, filled with the unfamiliar, unnerved her. The rancid smell of the cloak brought back images of the terror of the previous day. Instinctively, Emma felt for her sword. It was lying where she anticipated. The fire also crackled reassuringly and her fears began to subside. She looked around the small area lit by the flames; shadows danced on the perimeter of tree trunks; but beyond them there was the darkness and the dread of night.

You’ve woken too soon, a voice spoke.

CHAPTER TWO: LYNDEN REVISITED

The train heads south, hurtling far too quickly into the dark, the cold and the past like a nightmare circus ride. It took a decade to buy this ticket; it still seems a mistake. Late into the night, like a teasing lover, sleep finally releases me but peace is short-lived. Pale light soon seeps through the window; silhouettes of drab trackside warehouses flash past. The grey, damp metropolis looms ahead; another day to face.

Liverpool Street Station is cold and noisy. I’ve a scrap of paper in my wallet; it tells me which platform I need and again I read the number aloud. The Cambridge train is already there and soon we’re gathering speed through the city and the suburbs, then thundering through the countryside. The sun’s rays, like Midas’ fingers, touch the highest branches, transforming them, green-gold. An almighty roar and everything turns black.

When we shoot from the tunnel the carriage floods with the new day; bright, garish and blinding. My head aches; my shaking hand reaches for the first pill of the day.

The train eases into Cambridge. The journey was far too quick; my thoughts are miles away; years away. Stunned and slightly nauseous, I stare wide-eyed at the commuters outside, who are looking at me – through me. The doors open. Shit! My bag’s stuck in the luggage rack. By the time I’m racing down the aisle irritated people are pushing past me, hurrying for a seat. I push past them out into the freezing air; stumble out of the station and into the cacophony of morning traffic.

The taxi makes headway slowly, stuttering along the congested street; cyclists drifting past us, like shoals of fish past shipwrecks. It’s slow going then abruptly the row of ample houses ends and the road heads off between neatly ploughed fields of rich chocolate brown. A couple of roundabouts filter off more traffic and finally we pick up some speed.

I think it’s the pill; it sometimes does this.

No! The driver pulls over quickly onto the verge. Not me, he groans.

Sorry, I yell desperately, bolting out of the door, almost saving his interior and fall forward spraying vomit into the hedgerow.

Why me? His next words are lost.

An ancient walrus is bellowing its hostility. The decrepit lorry struggles with the soft gradient. A few yards away the vehicle stops, gasps for breath then its gears grate once more and it inches forward, blasting out fumes. The driver looks at me kneeing in the wet grass and grins.

When I recover enough I hear the thing spluttering down the slope the other side of the summit, followed by a string of traffic. I don’t want to look at the occupants. I pick myself up.

Mind if I have a minute or two? Sorry, I say again plaintively. I get carsick sometimes.

The driver looks me in the eyes and exhales slowly.

You got the money for this, pal? He sounds dubious.

I open my wallet and he’s assuaged.

You’ll have to pay a surcharge. I gotta make a living. I ain’t gonna get fares with a stinking car.

I’m about to argue with him; it wasn’t much of a mess but I decide against it.

That’s fine with me, I tell him. I understand. I’ll throw in a couple of extra tenners. He nods perfunctorily and reminds me that the meter is still running.

A few miles’ distance behind me the city rises through a blanket of mist. I couldn’t have picked a better place to throw up, near the crest of the only hill for miles. I remember it now and for the first time in a long while things seem a little better. We used to walk near here. I remember the velvet grass of spring, the damp pillowy moss, the delicate aconites quivering in the breeze, spreading in their thousands around the chestnut trees. I never knew she was watching us, even then.

I walk the short distance to the crest and see the land spreading out to the south; a soft mosaic of fields, pocket-sized woods and villages. I can hear her voice now.

The taxi pulls alongside me; the driver’s pointing to his meter. He tells me that he ain’t fond of druggies.

I ain’t been well, I assure him. It’s prescription stuff that’s all. It has side effects but I must look crazy. I give him the tenners to keep him happy and we continue.

Images fly by the window and I have an eerie feeling this is a dream. Twenty years have gone by as if they were twenty hours of boredom.

The taxi nears Lynden Granta, the village that made me almost famous. It’s grown. That shouldn’t be surprising; the East is sinking under people, traffic and money. The entrance to the village is at the top of a chalk hill, ironically called Black Hill, where less than a couple of hundred years ago a gallows still performed its civic duty. Pensioners sit there now gossiping, waiting for the bus, where poor buggers once waited for eternity. I imagine the sign:

‘Fare evasion risks public execution!’

The driver scowls at my chuckling and asks how much further.

Not far. Just down here to the left.

He lets me know that it’s good news.

I grin like a monkey.

The road slopes away down to the River Granta. I remember that it then climbs gently before heading out of Lynden and off towards the East Anglian coast.

Prehistoric tracks crossed the river that wound along the valley floor and around one of the crossings a tiny knot of humanity found it suited their purposes to rest awhile. The nomadic hunter-gatherers left the broken remains of a few stone scrapers during their summer stays, and these are the earliest surviving signs of human activity. These flints, together with thousands of tools, weapons, ornaments, statuettes, coins, and a mass of pottery sherds, stretching from the Neolithic to the early Medieval period, were found close together in the riverbed, most within a mile downstream from the current footbridge that leads from the churchyard to the fields.

Many of these objects were clearly valuable and could not simply be accidental losses. Most had been deliberately broken. Expert opinion is that they probably represent what remains of innumerable offerings to whatever deities the locals believed lived in, or close to, the river. They are still not only the richest collection of finds from any stretch of an East Anglian river but also the most enigmatic, as for many thousands of years hundreds of generations of people of differing beliefs must have felt this particular spot to be special. I’d read the theories - a persistant belief in the sacredness of water, a boundary between ancient tribal lands that somehow outlasted its original purpose, to continuation of a shadowy local druidic cult - but none seemed to me to explain how people who looked at life in many different ways, should have installed an ordinary looking crossing of a relatively minor river with such enduring influence. After 20 years, I’m still none the wiser.

Even the parish church - Saint Mary’s - was built within thirty yards of the footbridge, despite the obvious danger of flooding. There are numerous occasions documented in the surviving records of the swollen river leaching the dead from their resting places and carrying them through their village one last time. When I used to live in Lynden, ‘Spud’ Parsons enlightened me when we were well into a serious evening’s drinking at the ‘Green Man’, that during the flood of 1958, the former proprietor of the pub, who had died a few month’s earlier after years of sampling his own beverages, was disturbed from his peaceful decomposition and launched along by the torrent until he was washed into the pub’s flooded cellar and berthed beside his beloved casks.

A concern for public health led the Parish Council in the early years of the twentieth century to open a public cemetery well above the flood plain to service the needs of the growing village community.

Saint Mary’s dates from the mid-tenth century with evidence beneath its foundations of wooden structures and pagan beliefs stretching back for over another few thousand years; clear testimony to Pope Gregory the First’s foresight. The great pope urged Augustine of Canterbury, who led the mission to convert the pagan English at the end of the sixth century, to convert pagan sites to churches rather than destroy them. Thus feeling at home in their familiar holy places, but with Christ replacing pagan deities, the heathens would be more likely to feel well disposed to the new faith.

Just the other side of the footbridge from the church, in the damp earth close to the river, there’s a ring of ash trees. It draws the mystics and witches’ covens by its antiquity and evocative symbolism and is now protected behind a high fence. Forty years ago it was discovered to be a single tree, almost five hundred years old; its shape formed by human intervention. Coppicing since the late Middle Ages, to produce useful wood from the regrowth, had created its current form.

The first bridge allowed the tracks to thread out like a spider’s legs from either side of the river after the ice had retreated northwards, the river’s level had risen and wildwood spread over the land. The bridge would have been among the earliest human constructions in the valley.

The present river was tamed long ago into the domesticated thing it is today; no longer a fit home for any spirit worthy of its name. Drainage of the fenlands and precautions to lower the risk of flooding affecting real estate prices for the burgeoning housing estates, have turned a former wild animal, prone to annual flooding and violent outbursts, into a sedate trickle. Once in a while though, it rebels against its shackles. When the skies darken and shake, until they’re blacker than the black fen soil, and rain drenches the land, day after day, and the waters melt the earth, and spread themselves across the flat expanse; an ancient ancestor of the modern drain remembers its past, finds its natural course and wreaks havoc, before being cornered once again.

So too with the human population, now largely self-controlled, but every now and again the social fabric is ruptured and a monstrosity is committed; terrible and shocking to the populace who endure it but as terrifyingly natural as a river breaking its banks. The list of the crimes committed by folk who were turned off more or less legally on Black Hill gallows attests to the excesses that can happen in small closely-knit communities.

The example best known to the present-day population of Lynden, apart from very recent instances since the gallows has been pensioned off, is that of Thomas Ellis. He lived in the village in the decades just before the Civil War cut a swathe through the country in the 1640s. His crimes are well known to every schoolchild in Lynden due largely to a plaque in the churchyard wall by the main gate, framed by grinning skulls and summarising his career and downfall. It was placed there during the years of the Cromwellian Protectorate to remind parishioners of his evil deeds and what happens to those who commit crimes against God.

In a time when pregnancy and birth regularly killed mothers and babies, Thomas might have expected to avoid scrutiny but for his greed and carelessness. It was only after his third wife had been dead for almost six months that the family of the second wife came forward. Similarly of moderately wealthy means, this family had also lost their daughter to a virulent sickness in the early months of pregnancy. Thomas had gained considerable land holdings in Lynden and neighbouring villages from these marriages but rather than maintain close emotional and practical ties with his erstwhile parents-in-law, he had turned on them and taken them to the courts over disputed fields and barns, even paltry holdings.

Things turned badly against Thomas when the circumstances of his first marriage were examined and the pattern was found to be similar; the unexpected death of his wife during pregnancy.

The lord of the manor himself held court over the inquest, which drew fashionable ladies and gentlemen from Cambridge and other neighbouring towns to watch the proceedings. There were many witnesses but no real evidence to convict him, until an unexpected turn of events.

Encouraged by her family, a young, shy and apparently physically unattractive heiress from a village just to the south of Cambridge came forward, claiming that Thomas had been wooing her for almost a twelvemonth, while his third wife had been alive and healthy. Thomas ridiculed the claim as that of a woman whose lack of marital charms had made her desperate and that he had never seen the woman in his life before seeing her in court. She seemed a rather sad and forgettable figure until she presented a ring that she said Thomas had given her as a symbol of his undying love. The family of the second wife recognised and owned it immediately as a family heirloom. There was uproar. The young woman then presented several other pieces of jewellery, at once described and claimed by the families of the various deceased wives.

With the tide turning against him and with a sizeable reward for further evidence, Thomas’ steward found his voice. He gave evidence that his master had mused in unguarded moments over his plans to use fields that were not yet his; only in the months to come did he own them through his temporary marriages.

Thomas’ admission to the murders of all three wives and the children they were carrying was devoid of any contrition. Unemotionally, and in the practical language of a yeoman farmer, he explained his plans to build up the value of his assets from the small farm he had inherited from his father. He had based the choice of his first wife on the holdings he was likely to gain from her that bordered his own land. Thomas expressed disappointment in her; that she was more interested in gossip, social engagements and flippant spending than running the household soundly. He said he was sad about the child but as he would have had little time to instruct his offspring in proper husbandry, and his wife was not up to the task, it was best to end the business as best he could.

Thomas continued his account as if he were discussing the routine butchering of his livestock. He said that once he had experienced how easy it was to aquire and then discard a wife, he continued the practice, as unfortunately it proved necessary. His firm intention, he was at pains to point out, was to acquire a decent wife, who would care for his property and children, but each one showed herself wanting. So he poisoned each of them.

On his way to the gallows, Thomas was pelted with the lowest substances the crowd could lay their hands on and showered with abuse. But that was not enough. To the jeers of the crowd, the executioner pulled away the ladder leaving Thomas suspended. Then was the moment when members of the families of the murdered women exacted their final revenge. They cushioned his feet with their hands to give him hope then, with curses, they let him go so the rope tightened slowly and painfully. They repeated this spectacle several times before the executioner finally intervened and Thomas was left to twitch and writhe away his final moments in agony. His body was left to hang for a fortnight before the remains were removed and buried in an unmarked grave outside the wall of Lynden churchyard.

I always liked the entrance to Lynden. It was a joke - well for some. A newcomer, after turning into the High Street, appeared to have a choice between two roads. If they were lucky, they noticed in time that the road to the left had a few cowpats, distributed like mines to catch the unwary, and avoided it. If they were unlucky, perhaps intimidated by the sight of a speeding local in their rear-view mirror, they ended up in the muddy yard of Holme Farm.

A couple of barns fronted the main road, reeking of ammonia from years of accumulated chicken and goose shit. I still remember the relief I gained for my blocked winter nostrils from breathing in the air from one of the barn windows. It took a while to recognise the buildings now; they’ve front doors of polished wood and windows with bars, and a black driveway behind ornate iron gates has replaced the mud. A nice white BMW is parked where cows once wandered on their way to milking. I preferred the shit but I suppose old man Lilley preferred the money. He had to live with the muck and the regular interruptions to his bucolic routine; I only laughed at them.

I feel despondency creeping upon me; it looks like any other village now. I’m an idiot to think I could find anything here. I should have buried the past as fast as I could and got on with life. That’s what life’s about; moving on; making the best of it; taking it as you find it. But I didn’t. I made a mistake; I buried myself. But the strange thing - and it’s sustained me for two decades - is that the more I buried myself in the village, the bigger it got. I know - it’s the small pond syndrome. All my analysts told me so. A narrow vision, a tiny world, nothing else to do or think about. But it sustained me. Lynden did get bigger. It was far bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. It was a mustard seed that became my universe.

I saw empires wax and wane; wars appear on the horizon and fade to be followed by the next. I saw new ways grow old. I saw hunters and gatherers settle down to clear the woodlands and farm the land; the growth and decline of feudalism; periods of prosperity and of poverty. I saw people believe in many things and end the lives of others who believed differently. I saw countless lives come and go; some growing rich but most dying dirt poor, worn out by the difficulty of living. Most never made a ripple that others noticed; they were just the connection between what went before and what came after; links in the precarious chain of existence. I saw all this and more when I dug into Lynden. Quite literally, because twenty years ago, I was an archaeology student here, and Lynden was the object of my study.

But even in my dreams, Lynden took on a supernatural size. I still have a recurring dream where I’m walking up the gentle slopes of Triplow Hill on the eastern edge of the village, in the sure knowledge that when I reach the top I’ll see a higher ridge, then another - all figments of my dream - each with a collection of ancient dwellings with smoke drifting from their chimneys and strange folk, who also call Lynden home, smoking pipes and growing vegetables in their front gardens. Even as I think of it now, it’s hard to separate fact from dream.

Now, as I look once again at the reassuringly mundane domesticity of the High Street, I know it was my fairy story. It was the fanciful creation of madness.

In late morning, on a clear, still day in November, I’m dropped at the churchyard gate by a much relieved driver and walk into the churchyard.

The leaves form a golden canopy above me. Some rest in saucer patterns around the tree trunks. The sunlight streams through in solid shafts of light, beaming from behind a lime tree, turning it into a flaming apparation. The grass around the graves is rich, dew-soaked and a lush, fresh green. Apart from the birds, the voices of faraway children playing at school and the rustle of tumbling leaves falling on their compatriots, all is quiet and beautiful.

I came here to meet someone - or, more correctly - to make sure she’s gone. I hope she has, because it means I’m cured, but I’ve missed her so much. I’ve refined and practiced the words for years in case she has waited for me. I’m strong enough now for either outcome.

I cross the grass to the southern side of the church. I remember where she is; how could I forget; near the path to the river, where the little footbridge crosses the Granta but there’s more headstones now. There’s a few names I know and smile in recognition. Their owners smile back. Others smile at me; people I don’t know but I’m pleased to see them because I feel their welcome.

Here she is. Her stone has aged, turned dark by the years. Beside her lie her parents and I can still smile at the words on the headstone. Life would have been so much better had she stayed but I musn’t dwell on that any more; there’s a time for all of us to move on and we have to deal with it. That’s what the specialist said and Christ knows she’s paid enough to know what she’s talking about. She told me to come back to bury the past once and for all; to tell my friend that it’s over. One last try.

I daydream about her for a while until, almost instinctively, my eyes take the narrow path, enveloped by autumnal colour to the little footbridge crossing the river.

Bridges are wonderful things. I’ve always felt their magic. They connect. Before I uncovered my other young friend and set in train a modern search for an ancient legend, Saint Mary’s greatest claim to fame was an early fourteenth century wall painting of a bridge full of naked, happy souls, destined for heaven. They were leaving behind the world of monstrosities, disorder, pain and change on one bank, gazing forward to purity and permanence on the other. It had been miraculously saved from the Puritan onslaught and covered with whitewash, until discovered by the Victorians during one of their gross attempts at church improvement. At least they left it alone.

A woman leads the heavenly troupe; strangely for a church painting she is full-breasted, a crown on her head, her arms raised slightly. In a few wonderful lines, the rustic artist has managed to convey a real person. Her face is round and noble with large eyes looking passively to the sky. I read a commentary on the painting. According to the recognised code used in church paintings, this was a standard expression of submissiveness to the will of God. Though from my modern, secular eyes, she seems to be preoccupied with her thoughts.

Now, here they are. The two women who changed my life – I suppose, who I loved, although that sounds weird – now buried within ten yards of each other, although their lives and deaths are separated by more than eleven hundred years.

Then I see them.

I begin to shiver, soon beyond control. In all my dreams, I didn’t expect this. I don’t want this; all this confusion. The years are dissolving and blurry images come into focus. Running from the distant woods, down the hill, across the fields and years and over the bridge to meet me; all those memories. I’m crying and chuckling like an idiot; like I used to, when people would cross the street or dart into a public toilet to avoid me. My arms open in embrace. I can’t refuse, whatever they are.

That’s why I’m back, not to bury the past but to be part of it; to be with her again; where I knew her; in my youth; in her village; when she died and I went mad.

I was never going to forget her. I didn’t want to forget her. I wasn’t going to throw another spadeful of dirt onto her coffin as each day passed.

She’s smiling, coming over the bridge now.

I’m, I’m sorry I took so long. I couldn’t…. The words stick in my throat. I’ve never stopped thinking about you.

That’s alright, she says gently, smiling reassuringly, reaching out her hand. You were never decisive, were you, Adam? I’ve been dead these twenty years but you never forgot me and that’s why I’m still here.

Cambridge Herald 27 November 1960

DEATH OF MR SAM ELLIOT

The funeral of local South Cambridgeshire identity, Mr Sam Elliot, took place last Monday at St Mary’s, Lynden Granta, following his death at his home in Lynden on 18 November, at the age of 70.

Mr Elliot was born in Lynden, the second son of a family of three boys. He fought in WW1, surviving trench warfare in France and Belgium, including the Battle of the Somme, although the effects of a gas attack took its toll in later life. His older brother was unfortunately lost in France in 1917. Mr Elliott inherited his parents’ farm between Lynden and Highstock and was farming it shortly after the end of the War when he married Miss Agnes Mallyon of Billsham. They had two children; Brian and Doris.

Mr Elliott passed the farm to his son after the latter’s demobilisation at the end of WW11 with the rank of captain. Tragedy befell the family with the suicide of Captain Elliott in 1954, shortly after the murder of his fiancee, Miss Eliza Pammenter, during a robbery at the family home. Mr Elliott’s daughter and husband then took over management of the farm.

Mr Elliott was well known in the area for his knowledge of local history and dialect, and especially for his uncanny ability to identify ancient mausoleums and other historical sites in South Cambridgeshire and the adjacent parts of Essex, despite their often virtual obliteration following centuries of ploughing. The greatest example of his gift was, of course, his insistance that Matlow Hill near Swiversham covered the burial of a Viking chieftain. When the site was excavated in the early 1950s, it gave up the now famous Matlow Treasure of a Scandinavian warlord, buried with exquisite weaponry and other symbols of his rank, but also with a crucifix around his neck. Mr Elliot credited his father for this skill, saying that he had inherited from him a great store of folklore from the region but more than that he had come to share his father’s love of his home village and the surrounding district.

Mr Elliot was also an eccentric, for many years often keeping a lonely all night vigil on the Granta Footbridge near the church after the death of his son, no matter what the season or the vicissitudes of our English climate.

CHAPTER THREE: VISIONS OF EVIL

Cold sweat trickled down his back.

Though the hint of day smeared the eastern sky, night still held its menace and in the sombre light the world transformed.

The valley twisted and creaked, like a ship in a storm and the wind raged, sweeping dark spirits up the slope towards him. Their voices danced around his head, chuckling and tormenting.

Today you die, Athelstan the Aetheling.

Trees swayed then beneath them the earth fell away and a black, stinking, oozing wound opened. The mouth of Hell grew wider and wider, filling the valley.

Evil sounds belched from the underworld; the throbbing heartbeat of thousands of weapons drumming on shields, the eerie wail of the battle horns and violent, foreign voices.

With a roar, the spirits changed into men; the great Viking army spilt out from the gaping hole and onto the plain. The pagans streamed up the hillside, under their fluttering ravens to where the East Angles waited.

No. It’s just as the abbot had said; the Devil had sent the Northmen. Athelstan stifled the cry but the thegns had heard him. He crossed himself repeatedly.

One vision faded but another followed. Beyond the lines of grey men stretching along the snow-covered ridge, out of the vapour of morning, an apparition took shape.

These were the tricks of the Evil One. Spearhavoc, the worst of the troublemakers, had thundered to the assembly days earlier, bellowing over the storm’s fury.

Listen. Listen well, my brothers. The great wolf of our people will not fail us. He has heard our cries. He has heard our pleas and will come, as he did in former days, when we were men. In my dreams he has come to me and spoken. He has lain lonely and hidden until now. He is ready to lead us to a great victory. I have seen what will be. Believe in him and he will pull the raven to pieces before it has a chance to fly.

He raised his trembling finger and pointed at Abbot Caelwin.

Then let the Northmen and their gods know, our spirits still protect us. He poked his chest with the same animated finger, his eyes bulging from below his flowing grey hair. We have no need of other gods.

The abbot had had enough of the old fart’s dramatics. He glared at the quivering fool and hammered the bench with his staff.

There is one true God, only one and he alone will protect his people! God has brought the Northmen down upon us because we have turned from him. We pray to idols and believe animals have spirits. The Lord God created the beasts of the earth to serve and feed us. We are above them; it is blasphemy to believe otherwise. When we were children, we believed there were spirits in beasts because we knew no better but now we are men, and have been shown God’s way, and should have outgrown superstition. Don’t turn from the truth? Our heads aren’t weak! Pray to the Lord God and he will save us. Ignore him and you will roast in Hell!

The shutters flew open and half the candles died. Monstrous shadows appeared along the walls and even the bravest of the thegns felt their skin shiver.

"Not all the rains that have fallen since God breathed his spirit into this world will soothe one agonising wound in the underworld.

My brothers, don’t gamble with your souls.

It was enough - just enough for the moment but he looked troubled; his chest heaved with the effort. The Wuffingas had been baptised – but in shallow water – and the hearts of the poor were open to Christ but the abbot knew the thegns hankered after the old ways, when they were more than men and walked with the gods.

The Lord knows the abbot had strained for over half his life to keep the faith alive but it was hard, especially once the Northmen came. They raided the monasteries, murdered the brothers and sisters of Christ and ravaged the land. They tore the threads that bound the Church and people together. They reminded men of the old gods and unsettled the people.

The abbot too yearned for the old days, when he was a novice at Etheldreda’s great foundation; when the daily cycle of prayer was a bulwark against the enemy; when the brothers and sisters of Christ fought alongside King Edmund’s soldiers; some in mail and leather, others in their cowls; some fighting blood and muscle, others the black spirits of the Evil One. But that was when Edmund ruled. Life was far different now. It was hard enough for Caelwin to rise to another day of listless existence; at least today the old fire had burnt.

Spearhavoc pushed past the abbot.

Your God will have us all dead.

The Wolf Spirit of the East Angles snarled its defiance into the valley. Its howl rolled over the low hills and flocks of booming birds arched skyward from the meres.

Athelstan needed to pray. He held as truth the abbot’s words that the old ways were worthless superstition. So what was happening could not be. Alone among the ranks of warriors, he knelt, closed his eyes, tears flowing down his cheeks, his heart pumping hard and he began mumbling sacred words, over and over.

But instead of peace, another vision came. The hill’s heartbeat throbbed beneath his feet; it too was growing faster. In his mind’s eye, he saw the hillside covered with cold bodies - twisted, naked, blue and black, gashed and unnatural - limbs, heads, torsos, lying in heaps - his own sightless eyes stared back at him. He squeezed his head between his hands.

Lord God, protect me. Sweat ran down his face. Lord God, deliver me from these visions. Please, he implored. I will serve you all my days if you would only deliver me, Lord.

He prayed and wept, until they merged into one. Athelstan heard the sneers around him. The thegns spat at his feet.

Women’s piss. This is men’s work.

CHAPTER FOUR: EARTHLY AND MYSTIC ENCOUNTERS

Bastard. Emma threw her cloak in the direction of the figure, swung her sword, aiming it at the stomach and tried to leap to her feet. It was too ambitious. Her vision faded, she slipped and fell backwards heavily against the tree trunk; her sword jarring from her grasp.

Lord Jesus preserve me! The man threw his burden of sticks into the fire and retreated. I mean no harm! He repeated the words. The wood hit the crackling fire, sending red embers indiscriminately into the air, showering Emma. With a howl from the sharp pain on her scalp, Emma scooped up some snow and rubbed it furiously into her head.

The male figure had fallen to his knees, a safe distance from the ferocious woman and was covering Emma’s cloak with snow to extinguish the smoking burns.

I’m, I’m sorry, he yelped. Your cloak has some small burns - three, I think. I hope you’re not in too much pain?

Emma’s racing heart began to calm but she held a handful of snow to a smarting right ear and scowled. The apology came from a young, nervous-looking monk. He folded the cloak with considerable, almost obsessive, care and placed it on the snow a safe distance from her. Then he remade the fire, again with extreme attention to the task then knelt on the other side of the foul-smelling garment; his head bowed. Emma felt her body begin to relax; her breathing calmed and the thumping of her heart subsided.

The monk appeared a very lamentable, flimsy and harrowed figure; deathly white with the extremities of his nose and ears blue; his face covered with a great many spots, and possessing a long, pronounced, dripping nose. He had short black hair of irregular length, tonsured poorly, unable to hide several scabs and roughly scratched insect bites. The distressed figure wore a rough, brown, serviceable cowl; caked at the bottom, and elsewhere spattered, with mud; and from the unmistakeable smell, also with animal excrement. He