My Lady of the Bog (5 page)

“Hey, what’s the matter, man?” the boy said, as if he hadn’t a moment ago ridiculed his name. And then with a prescience that Strugnell loathed, “Have a row with the old lady?” Strugnell attempted to take refuge in his obvious superiority—of age, class, rank and education—but the boy didn’t seem to notice it.

“Look,” Strugnell said, abruptly. “What is it you want?”

“They’s sayin’ the body of a witch been recovered, ‘long with some witchy treasure.”

“Who is?”

The boy motioned with his head. “Lads.” Strugnell looked up to see several weathered faces, shielded by the brims of their coarse woolen caps, turn back to their beers.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “A bog body was recovered. And yes, there were some artifacts.”

“In no-man’s land.”

“No-man’s . . .
what
?”

“That’s why no one’s claiming them, see? No one can figure out whose land it’s on.”

Strugnell groaned. Trouble coming. He could smell it. Not only did he have to discover
why
the bloody treasure was buried, but now, according to the boy, the spot was on some ancient join where three distinct landholdings met. There even seemed to be some question of
political
jurisdiction, as the find, he learned further, was on the seam between two parishes. Thus it was
truly
no-man’s land. And Strugnell saw now in a hellish vision a mound of paper rising on his desk higher than the mythical Yggdrasil: illegible deeds and fraudulent and contradictory titles with everything in
hides, oxgangs, rods
and
perches
and other archaic means and measures. And on top of all this was a blizzard of writs and countersuits whose knotted skein of competing claims would never be untangled in Strugnell’s lifetime. And, if he faltered, he was liable to judicial review.

“. . . Holders Fen? I would assume some chap named Holder owns it.”

“Ah, and so did I. But you know, guv, if we did, we’d both be wrong. ‘Cording to a Mrs. Katy Lane, some sort of local historian hereabouts, the word was originally Huldres’. Though on an 1847 map, it’s . . .” he paused a moment, referring to notes, “. . . H-o-l-d-r-e, some sort of intermediate spelling.”

Strugnell was suddenly on the alert. “You’re a reporter.”

“Freelance journalist. Edwin Cummings.” The boy offered his hand and Strugnell took it. It was disagreeably small, wriggly and hot, like holding a mouse.

Strugnell looked back down at the boy—from his crown of spiky blue-dyed hair down to his black, moldering high-top sneakers. This was a
reporter?
Then again, what did he think a reporter looked like? Some bloke in a trench coat with a fag parked in a corner of his mouth and a press pass in the satin band of his fedora? And Strugnell had the uneasy suspicion that the turning world had passed him by. For it seemed all wrong that a
real
reporter should be the age of his nephew, have skulls tattooed upon his knuckles and purple highlights in his hair. “Huldre, Holder, what does it matter how it’s spelled?” he barked irritably, buying time.

“Because a holder is something what
holds
, innit? Whereas
huldre
is a
fairy
, see? Huldres’ Fen, Fairies’ Bog—witches, fairies, juicier story, innit?”

Strugnell supposed it was. He wasn’t really listening. His mind was scanning like the automatic tuner on his car radio, dipping into different mental frequencies to decide which one he ought to hear. One message coming through loud and clear was that he really didn’t have a handle on this thing. He didn’t like the way the story of the find was already taking on a life of its own. Pretty soon he’d have the press camping on his doorstep and the division court breathing down his neck. Some might have welcomed this chance to display their talents and so advance their fortunes. But the coroner had no such ambitions. He had taken the position of West Dorset coroner precisely because it had seemed to him an especially unimportant one—one in which he would be left mostly alone. And the last thing he wanted was
anyone’s
attention.

As he left the pub, two things surprised him: one, that he was drunk (his gums felt numb and the cobblestones beneath his feet seemed several inches higher than when he was sober); and two, that it was still so bright. A wondrous radiance pervaded the air. It had rained, wetting the grass.

He still didn’t feel he could face the wife and so shouldered his way into the field behind the tavern, spray from the wet shrubbery striking him coldly. He was surprised when he saw the half-fallen circle of stones and realized where he’d come. He limped toward it—for though his wounds were emotional ones, he moved like a man who’s physically hurt. He was aware that his shoes and socks were drenched. He was conscious, too, of the ancient dolmens, with their soft tracings of lichen and moss—and he also knew that he wanted from them something they could never give him, some cosmic form of amnesia and love. It reminded him of the two or three times he had sought out a church to relieve the guilty pressure inside him, but had always left feeling faintly cheated, the guilt still there, if somewhat allayed.

Beside the stones was a wishing well—not a manmade one, but a natural spring—that overflowed into a woodland pool above which swallows swept and damselflies hovered. Many old legends were attached to its waters. It was said the pool was without a bottom. It was also claimed St. Augustine had evicted the nymph inhabiting it, promising whosoever, while sipping its waters, asked a boon in the name of Christ would have his or her wish come true—though the waters’ wish-fulfilling status was clearly some millennia older. Coins and ritually damaged swords from its depths had been dated to the Iron Age. The coroner looked down at his face in the wind-wrinkled water.

Perhaps some black star had dawned in his chart, some vile conjunction. How else to explain it? For the theft of the treasure for which he was responsible (to the
Queen
, no less!) had turned his world upside down. It would be a miracle if he managed to keep his job—and everything had happened so fast! He was like a man fallen from the top of a mountain: one moment he was standing on the summit, exultant; the next, he was broken on the road below. Staring at the pool, he had the miserable notion of drowning himself in it, loading his pockets with stones and walking into the bottomless lake, and he might have done it, he thought, if the result would not have been so demeaning. He saw his corpse like a clown’s in dripping clothes, the rocks in his pockets, someone, the coroner (but that was
he!)
pouring water from his shoe as though it were a gravy boat.

And that was when he saw a slender hand break the water’s surface, shining whitely in the twilight for an instant, then submerging, only to shoot up again. And this time a gleaming arm came with it and the dark, streaming hair of a woman or girl, each strand meticulously combed by the water. Strugnell glimpsed her white, wild face, violet eyes, and tender mouth, and even without his meaning to, braced himself for her cry of help, but the body sank back down again, without a sound, like a sword sliding back in its scabbard.

Strugnell leaped to the rescue at once. Kicking off his shoes and diving in, he shortly reached where the girl had been, but now he could not see her. He looked about, then dove and lo! she was just beneath the water’s surface, open-eyed, her hair fanned discus-like in all directions. Clumsily, he embraced her, then kicked them upward. But oddly, the surface wasn’t coming any closer. And though he swam and struggled the harder, he found instead they were sinking like stones.

And the coroner realized then this was the perfect finish to an absolutely
beastly
day: first the theft, then the row with the missus, then the boy in the pub, and now
this
—death by
drowning!
He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was . . .
immensely!

Looking up, he glimpsed beyond the water’s surface the silver twilight, and every cell in him ached for that airy world—even as the creature, her lips strangely smiling, carried him away . . . .

He paused to let me take this in.

“Well,” I said. “You didn’t drown.”

“I awoke on the bank with the sun in my eyes. It was six in the morning. When I got back home, the lady wife was frantic. I’d never spent the night away—I mean, without calling her first.”

“And the girl?”

“I thought I’d find her drowned among the reeds, but there was no one.”

“Yet you saw her?”

“Saw her? She tried to
drown
me.” He looked disappointed by my lack of alarm.

“Don’t you see? First, I have that dreadful dream, then the treasure goes missing, and then I see someone who should never have been there and then
I
disappear—somewhere—for the better part of an evening. Tell me, please, I’m not going mad!”

So that was it. He needed someone to talk to. He needed a friend. Which, quite simply, is how I became one.

Chapter 6

W
hen Strugnell had gone, I considered his tale, but couldn’t make any sense of it.
Had
there been a drowning woman? Admittedly, he’d been drinking; had he mixed his liquor purposely or inadvertently with drugs?

For if a woman
had
drowned, her body would likely have surfaced by now. And if Strugnell had
saved
her, were we to believe she had wandered off into the night, leaving her rescuer unconscious on the bank?

Then again, as Strugnell had noted, local legend had long associated the pool with witches, nymphs and fairies. And against this mythic backdrop, the girl in the sylvan well was starting to look increasingly familiar. Her pale face, blue eyes, black hair and submarine home were all signatures of the Phantom Queen, whose avatars included Guinevere, Blanchefleur, the Lady of the Lake, and the myriad white mares and spectral white ladies who haunt so many English moors and castles.

If one pursued her pedigree further, down to the roots of her family tree, one came upon those Stiff White Ladies carved in stone and bone that guard so many neolithic tombs.

Stranger still, the coroner appeared to have tapped into one of the deeper levels of this mythic pool, where the oldest vestigial imagery dwells.

For while death is now “black,” once it was white. In fact, death has been “black” a relatively short time. For tens of millennia before the conquests of the Indo-Europeans, death was the color of ghosts, of bone, of ash, of the winter snows, the waning moon, the pallor and hue of a three-day-old corpse. “White is the neolithic color of death,” writes Gimbutas. How else were we to understand the identity and nature of Strugnell’s lady?

Not that I believed Strugnell had encountered an actual Celtic goddess. Only that her archetype still flourished in the British imagination, along with a host of other dangerous and magical wraiths—mummies and nymphs—figures pivoting between love and death.

And here my analysis of the coroner’s bizarre tale would have likely ended had there not occurred a revelation that completely upended my thinking about both the coroner’s story, as well as my Lady’s. For while dressing the next morning, I received a phone call from Sir August informing me that an autopsy of my Lady was scheduled for the following day and inviting me, as the newest member of the Royal Archeological Commission, to attend.

Overjoyed, I gratefully accepted. But that was only the first bit of good news: Rumple had translated the inscription on the stakes.

“And what do they say?”

“At first, I thought it might be
ogham.”

“I see.”

“Celtic tree language.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But they’re runes. Quite interesting, really.”

“I can imagine. In what language?”

“M. E.”

“Really! And what, sir, does the Middle English
say
?”

“Ah, yes, well . . . the inscription warns against removing the stakes and freeing the saga, Albemarle.”

I was silent, then asked, “What the
fuck
did you say?”

He was taken aback, perhaps by my profanity. “A saga’s a witch, a feminine sage; it’s . . . archaic.”

“Yes. I mean, no. The saga’s
name
.”

“Name? Well, apparently, it’s . . .
Albemarle
.”

I reject fantastic explanations, whether the result of otherworldly encounters or crackpot ideas like those of von Däniken, who sees in every Toltec ball court landing fields for UFOs.

Having said this, I must confess I was at a loss to explain this last revelation. For Strugnell, as you’re well aware, had dreamt of “Albemarle” two nights before—a name unusual enough that the odds of his dreaming it up by chance seemed to me remote to none. As I rejected the inference that a supernatural entity had announced itself to him in this manner, I knew there
had
to be a
rational
explanation. The only problem was, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of it.

I spent the morning at my office in Exeter, proofing a table of radiographic data, but I couldn’t forget the bizarre development. It was like something stuck between your teeth that your tongue keeps working back and forth, and I kept pondering it, looking for some reasonable explanation.

I remembered a dream from some years before. While digging in Pakistan, I had, apparently, been exposed to tuberculosis. Fortunately, the disease wasn’t active, and the doctor had assured me it was no big deal. I simply had to take a course of Isoniazid. That night, however, I had a terrifying dream in which an astronomer named Tycho Brahe was peering through a telescope at some ruinous new star.

When I awoke, I thought I had made the strange name up, for I had never heard of Tycho Brahe. Imagine my surprise when I learned he had been a real medieval, Danish astronomer! Still I couldn’t imagine
why
in the world I had dreamt of
him
—until I paused to consider his initials. Obviously, news of my exposure had upset me more than I had thought. Equally odd was how I had imbibed Brahe’s name with no conscious knowledge or recollection.

Something similar, I reasoned, must have happened with Strugnell. Perhaps he knew runes and had, subconsciously, read the name on the stakes. Or maybe as a boy he’d heard a now–lost local legend about the fairy, Albemarle, whose name his dream had disinterred. Or perhaps Sir August had botched the translation and the name on the stakes wasn’t Albemarle at all!