The Spectral Book of Horror Stories (12 page)

Mother Durden’s parent, thus bereft, made strenuous effortes to reconcile herself with her family, but they would have none of it. They left her to rot in the utmost poverty. It was in these unhappy circumstances that her child (who bore the name Durden from her father) was brought up, schooled by her mother in many secret arts and in great bitterness against the family of Cutbirth. Her mother taught her many strange things about the family of Cutbirth, for they were a family long steeped in ancient lore.

One thing especially Mother Durden was told by her own mother and this concerned a certain booke. This volume has been called by many names, such as
Booke of Shadows
,
Mysterium Arcanum, Booke of Secret Keyes
, but it has been most vulgarly called the BOKE OF THE DIVILL. This booke, according to the most ancient tradition of the Cutbirth family, was taken or stolen from them by none other than Holy Anselme, founder of our Cathedrall and buried certaine fathoms deepe in the earthe where lay also her ancestor Cutbirth of Bartonstone.

It was Mother Durden’s most earnest wish, and that of her mother also before her, to recover this said booke, for she felte it hers by right, as ‘twere, of disinheritance. In recovering the booke, she would gaine power over her enemies, and especially over the family that had blighted her life.

She knew for certaine that this booke was buried in the cathedrall, somewhere in the crypte, and that she knew by what signes on the stone flags, one might finde the booke. But she herself might not enter the cathedrall, knowing her movements watched and suspect, and so it was only by some second party or Intermediary, she sayde, that she might discover that booke.

Then she made me a bargaine, and would to Christe I had not accepted it, yet I did never, as some may secretlie believe, sign aught; nor make a mark in my bloode upon a pact; nor kisse the Devill’s arse as a token of my allegiance; nor any suchlike foolish whim-wham. It was meerly this: I consented that I should endeavour to recover this said booke for her, having access to the cathedrall, and that if I did so, Mother Durden would grante me a share in the marvellous wisdome which, she assured me, it contained.

This I consented unto, yet for many dayes gave it no further thought. It seemed to me an idle plot, impossible of execution. Yet in my mind, the thought was never absent from me, for to tell truth, I received at that time many slights from my fellow clerks, and my great skills in musick were ever contemned by lesser minds. Some malicious worme of a Precentor reported me to the Dean for drunkennesse in a low ale-house which, when I came before him, I most vigorously denied, yet was I not believed and I was shamefully rebuked. My merits were despised, and my imagined vices bruited abroad by green-eyed jealousie. Such things festered in my hearte, so that I longed to strike down my unrighteous oppressors.

One evening, I had, to console myself, gone to a Maying at Great Bartonstone, to observe the dances, and take some note of the viol and hautboy tunes that were played. It was a fair evening, cloudless and still, as fine as any I have known, yet all was not well about my heart. There was dancing about the maypole and I saw some fine rumps of beef being roasted on spits. The laughter of children was all about me.

Then I saw one mother gather her two daughters into her skirts and hurry them indoors. I wondered what was to do until I saw at the edge of the village green a solitary figure in black looking upon the scene. It was Mother Durden. Some men who saw her were for taking up cudgels and driving her by force from the spot. But I restrained them, saying that I would see her on her way, and they, out of reverence for the clerical garb I had on, held back.

Mother Durden met my gaze as I advanced on her, but said nothing. Together and in silence we walked from the village and, as we did so, the villagers who had opened their doors to welcome in the evening sun, closed them as we passed by. At length when we were on the open cart track beyond the bounds of Great Bartonstone, Mother Durden spoke.

“Where is my booke?”

I tolde her of the many and various obstacles which stood in the way of my achieving the volume, that I would consider a strategy and bring it to her in good time, but that at present I saw no chance of its fulfillment. In suchlike manner I excused my tardiness, talking in a most politic manner and with great subtletie, but she would heare none of it. Straightway she led me to her cabin and, having no inke, penne, or paper to hand, she tooke an old dried calf’s skin, and, cutting her arm with a paring knife she dipped one of her long finger nails in her blood and with it wrote upon the skin. In truth, her writing was very ill, for she was all but unlettered and her hands, withered and curled with age, looked with their great nails for all the world like the talons of some monstrous antique bird which, except she grasped one hand with the other to be steady, shook with the palsye.

Talking all the while, she drew upon the skin certain signes whereby the floor stones of the crypte were marked, and, in short, showed me where the booke had been laid to rest. Upon which I made many complaintes, videlicet: what if the booke were
lost, or taken, or had rotted away in the damp of that ancient charnel house? But she would have none of it and told me to bring her the book by the next full moon.

Fool that I was, I now felt compelled to carry out her wishes: whether because of the vellum scratched with her blood, or the baleful glance of her eye, or by my own secret desire, I know not. Yet still I delayed like a coward, letting ‘I dare not’ o’erwhelm ‘I would’ like the cat in the old tale, till my dreams denied me rest. For in them I saw Mother Durden seated in a vast cave, yet like her cabin, dark and noisome, illumined only by the red embers of her fire, and surrounded by a vast concourse of foul things: demons, boggarts, sprites, chimaeras, headless men who spake through their bellies and other suchlike terrors. And all of them did crye with one voice: delay not! Hesitate and you are lost!

And so at last I did summon up my courage, if courage it may be called, and, one night, concealed my self in the organ loft after evening prayer with pick, spade and lantern. Then, the great doores of the cathedrall being locked, I tooke myself down into the crypte, using all carefullie, and there lit my lantern.

The crypte is at all times and in all seasons a most dismall place, and at night, lit only by a lanterne it is very dreadfull. Some blast, damp and noisome, blew through it from I knew not where. Now and then my eare caught a faint scuttering, as it might be of rats, but I sawe none. Then, taking Mother Durden’s hide from my coat, I began to search among the tombs for the signs she had drawn in her blood. Many times I had to sweep away the dust to see what was scratched on the floore slabs, and it was long before I had satisfied myselfe that I had the very stone under which the booke was buryed.

It was a long stone of some whitish marble layed against the South wall in the far eastern corner of the crypte. I divined this to be the one, for it was carved very faintly with the head of a bearded man with hair all around him, like the image of the Sun God, Blad in Ancient Aquae Sulis, and this was also the blazon on the arms of Cutbirth to this day. And there were certain other carvings in ancient runic letters upon the stone by which, Mother Durden told me, I might know this was the stone to lift.

I had much to do, and yet I was assisted in that the mortar which bound the slab to its fellows was very old and had crumbled away in parts. At length I found my pick pierced through into a space beneath and, by dint of much leverage, I was able to lift out the stone slab and put my lamp in to see the space I had discovered.

There I found a pit, deeper than I had expected, about the height of a man, and at its bottom lay a man—or rather its skeleton—armed and richly bedight with gold and jewells, yet very strangely, not like the knights we see on tombs, but more resembling the Barbarians on Roman Monuments. His helmet was a mask of bronze, gilded, and the face of the mask was of a wild man, like the Green Man of the country folk. Through the gaps for its mouth and eyes I could see the eye sockets of the skull, dark as hell’s night, and a set of teeth that grinned at his owne fallen pomp. The bone hands were clasped across the breast and they held in their grip a dark thing like a boxe or bag of black leather: and this was the booke.

Then my heart rose and I was seized with a wild delight. Taking my lanterne I leaped into the grave, yet in my falle I let go the lanterne so that it smashed and fell and in no way could I find it, nor could I discover tinder and flint to ignite once more a flame. Now all was black, blinde black, and no single thread of light. Yet I despaired not, and groping about with my hands I first put my fingers through the mouth of the dead man and felt his teeth. All at once I recoiled and felt down further until I came upon the skeleton hand that held fast that thing of leather. I grasped it to prize it away from the dead man thinking them too feeble to resist, yet something in the sinews held it fast, so that I must exert all my strength to take it. And when I did it was as if something gave a great sigh and all the tombe breathed.

But at length I had the booke in my hands, and still my trouble was not over for all was impenetrable night and I must climb out of the grave. And it seemed to me, doubtlesse in my terrour, that the walls of the grave were growne taller, higher than mine own heighte and that I was at the base of a deepe pitt and indeed in the very pitt of death itself. Then I knew mortall fear and despaire which was doubtlesse why I felt, or imagined that I felt, the dead and flesheless hands of that ancient warriour clawing at my feete in the grave, so that I began to trample underfoot his mouldering corse in my rage. Then, thinking at least to save the booke, I hurled it out of the pitt and heard it fall with a great commotion onto the floore of the crypte so that the whole vaulte echoed. Then I myself made a great leape and found my hands on the stone slab which then began to slip towards me and so crush me by its weight in that hideous sepulchre. Then by some grace my other hand grasped the edge of the grave, I let go the marble slab which fell with a mighty crack into the tomb, missing my person by a bare inch.

Thus did I finde myself on the floore of the lightless crypte. I felt for and founde the booke and with it made my way, crawling and not upright lest I fall againe, until I at length found the steps and the waye up into the dim cathedrall where through its vast windows the first streakes of a grey dawne were beginning to anointe its sacred walles with light.

Finding a candle I returned to the crypte where I took my pick and spade, and made all seem as though no man—or woman—had been there that night and that the ruin of the tombe was but the naturall decadence of age and decay. I hidde the booke with my spade and pick in the loft of the pipe organ, and I thanked God that the zealots of Protestant faith (some, surelie, enemies of mine) had not succeeded in removing this noble instrument from the Cathedrall, then, having a key to a side door of the cathedrall I made my way secretly out of that sacred house.

Never did blessed dawn come sweeter upon a troubled soule! I breathed free air, I had accomplished my purpose. Though I had known no sleepe that night I felt refreshed by the pure air. Rooks were stirring in their parliament among the elms. I bethought myself to take a cup of ale at an Inn, then perhaps to my bedd. I had left the Cathedrall close and was come into the towne when of a sudden I heard a noise as of a great concourse of people which I greatly wondered at, it being barely past six of the clock, albeit in a bright summer morning.

As yet I saw no-one in the bare streets of Morchester, and in my affrighted and exalted state, I thought that the Day of Judgement had come, and that the noise I heard was of all the dead rising from their graves to come before the Awfull Throne of punishment and rewarde. In the next moment my wild apprehensions were put at rest.

I saw a great throng of men and women come up the main street and in their midst was a cart which some were drawing along the road. Upon the cart sat a figure muffled and bounde, but yet I saw her face, and it was Mother Durden. On the instant I concealed myself so that she would not knowe me, but I had seen in her eyes the dreadfull knowledge of her own doome and death.

Placing myself in the crowde behind the cart I asked my fellowes what was to do. They told me that they were bringing Mother Durden to the house of the Justice of the Peace, Sir Digby Fell, and were to lay before him most grave charges of witchcraft. I asked them on what groundes of evidence this charge was brought and they told me that she had brought a murraine on the cattle of Sir Everard Cutbirth, and that when Mother Durden had begged a cup of water off Goodwife Tebbitt, she being refused had bitten her thumb at her, and that very night Goodwife Tebbitt was seized with paines in her belly and did shit in her bedd some small stones very like the balls of a muskett. I followed them to the house of Sir Digby Fell where she was arraigned before the said magistrate, and he still in his nightshirte and marvellously distempered that he should be roused from his slumbers. And when Mother Durden was unbounde and brought unto the magistrate she cried out with a loud voice that before God she was innocent of the charges brought.

I was standing at the back of Sir Digby’s parlour and far removed from her, but yet she saw me, and called out for aid, but the crowd drowned out her speach with their shouting. Even so, some who stood by me had guessed that she had called out to me, so that they did question me, saying: “Did not Mother Durden call out to you for aid?” And I denied it. Then another came, saying: “Have I not seen you consort with that damned witch in the woods about Bartonstone?” And I told them I knew her not. And yet another, a most ill-favoured woman with but one eye and no teeth to her mouth said: “Yea, I have seen him, and he has been into her cabin in the woods to make the two-backed beaste in foule and most unholy congress with that limbe of Satann.” And I said to her: “Be silent you toothless turde! Have you no regarde to my priestly gowne! I tell you, I never sawe her before this day. Begone, foule lump of carrion!” And if any cock crew at that moment—for I had denyed her thrice—I never hearde it, but Mother Durden was taken to a gaol where she was watched day and night and doubtless put to the question under torture, for three dayes later she did make a full confessioun and set her mark in blood to a document wherein it was written.