Time of the Beast (20 page)

‘Soon the torch began to flicker and die, so I discarded it. We went onward for a time in the dark until there came the first rays of dawn. Now I began to see that we stood upon a high ridge of land, which with the daylight would soon command imposing views of the forest all around. Here Catia said we must wait, and she crouched down to conceal herself in the high undergrowth, indicating that I should do the same. As the light grew, she pointed into a deep valley below where I saw emerge out of the fading gloom a great skull-like mound of rock, which rose above all the dense vegetation that grew about it. I was filled by a sense of bitter dismay.

‘ “Is that it?” I said. “That lump of stone is your forest devil?” It seemed the most foolish and laughable superstition I had ever encountered. I rose up, unable to contain my frustration, and began to climb down the steep face of the hill towards it, determined to demonstrate to her that an oddshaped dome of rock was nothing to be feared. But instantly she ran after me, growing wild with alarm as she called to me in desperate whispers to go no further. I paid no heed, but continued my descent until she rushed forward to fling herself upon me, throwing her arms about me as she pulled me with all her strength into the cover of some high bushes nearby. I found I did not resist her, for I was overcome by sudden and unexpected feelings as she clung to me, and pressed her body to mine. We stood there together, and in her great fear I felt her tremble against me. At once I put my arms about her, obeying an impulse to comfort and protect her that soon became a feeling of strange delight in simply holding her.

‘I could hardly remember the last time I had touched another human being. All such desire in me had long been forgotten, sacrificed to other more violent passions. But now the feel of her as she nestled against me brought at once to my troubled soul a sense of calmness and contentment I had forgotten could exist there. And I began to reflect on the common joys of men, and saw how they had always been denied to me. Now I felt only that I did not ever wish to free her from my arms and that this sublime moment might never end.

‘But then I felt her body become rigid with terror, while she buried her face in my breast as I heard come from somewhere nearby the sound of softly treading footsteps, and moments later my senses were assailed by the pungent smell of rotting flesh.

‘In the half light, from out of the dense foliage which enveloped us, I vaguely saw a figure go past. Over its shoulders it carried a decomposing deer carcass – carrion scavenged from the forest – but although I could not yet see the scavenger clearly, I gained from it immediately an instinctive impression of loathsomeness and deformity. My flesh began to tremble and creep as my hand reached down to clutch at the hilt of my sword. Could it be – dared I hope? – that finally I had found him?

‘I edged forward, peering through the heavy screen of leaves, observing the back of the figure as it trudged away. But then it turned, looking quickly behind it, and in the dimness I gazed momentarily into its face. What I had sensed was true. It was indeed a monster – but not the one I sought.

‘Its face was simply bestial, with a wide bulbous nose and thick protrusions of lumpy bone above the eyes. Its features seemed grotesquely irregular, covered all over by a filthy tangle of beard, and the lips were blubbery and swollen. From its eyes there gleamed a look of unremitting savagery. I saw then that its body, hunched down beneath its stinking burden, was quite short, yet broad and massively muscled, and almost naked save for a few tatters of animal skins which hung about it. I stared after it, barely believing what I saw, as it turned and continued on its path down the hill.

‘I had sometimes heard tales told of the dwarf men, or the wild men: creatures of incredible ugliness and malignity who inhabited the most remote and secret places in these lands, and who were often said to live in places beneath the ground. Until now I had not believed in them. But as the daylight began to grow, I looked down at the distant dome of rock, and there I saw others slowly appear: all manner of freakish and sinister figures, that moved to the great stone, and looked warily about them before clambering onto it, one by one, then climbing down to its base before they simply disappeared. Then I knew that hidden beneath the rock must lie the entry to their secret cave.

‘But soon, in their midst, I saw a figure far taller than the rest, whose disgusting form I could not mistake. It was he – my hated adversary. I froze, and shook in the grip of rage and triumph as I watched him move among those others, who seemed to give way to him as if they regarded his sheer size with a kind of primitive awe or deference. In a moment I watched him descend beneath the earth, and the rest quickly followed.

‘Catia and I remained silent, locked together in our close embrace, not daring to move out from our place of concealment until the sun was fully risen and the valley below had long grown still. Finally we emerged and crept away together from that accursed place, while my mind sought to assess the situation.

‘Feared and rejected by men, my enemy had incredibly found his place among a company of monsters. But how might I reach him there? His companions looked strong and dangerous, and would doubtless seek to protect him. I cared little for my own life, but I feared that if I launched an attack I would die before I could kill him. And so he would triumph.

‘At a safe distance, I turned to Catia and smiled at her. I felt towards her now a warmth and affection, indeed a kinship, deeper than any I had known in my life. So I told her that she was wise and clever and very brave, and now she must consider that her debt to me was fully discharged. But she did not seem convinced of this, and she looked deep into my eyes as she reached out to take my hand.

‘ “You come with me?” she said. “Live with my people? Be with
me
?”

‘Tears sprang into my eyes as I looked down at her. She too had felt it, this powerful unspoken bond between us. And to her, a feral child of the woods, I appeared neither wild nor frightening. I might never have imagined this. For long years I had considered nothing beyond the destruction of my detested sibling. It had filled my mind and driven me onward through unendurable hardship and privation. I had long ago accepted that no other life was possible for me. But now, as if by some miracle, I saw that one was offered. A light broke into my darkness. It seemed at last I had discovered my enemy only to find that he had placed himself beyond my reach. And I was tired… so very tired. Yet even as I saw this, there reached out to me the hand of
freedom
. Might it be so? Could it be that the Fates would finally release me from my dismal burden and grant me a new life, among foreign people, where the shadow of my past could not touch me? I reached out to Catia and held her, brushing my face against her hair, gathering her warmth and softness to me. And in that moment I dared to imagine that I might become human again. That I might be once more a
man
, and live in the company of others, with a wife at my hearth, and children…

‘A spear of ice seemed to pierce my heart. I had long told myself bitterly that my mission of retribution was my father’s only legacy to me. But I saw now this was not so. There was also his blood – his tainted blood. How could I take a wife and visit this blight upon her? To contaminate her body, her community, her descendants with the blood of monsters. For we had all become freaks and monsters: my father, my brother, and me. I flung her from me, and cried out:

‘ “Go back to your people. I cannot go with you. I am cursed.
I am cursed!
”

‘I turned and ran blindly until I was far away. Then I fell to the ground and screamed out my desolation into the empty skies. I was condemned to be forever alone – the Fates had decreed it so. Then my cries turned into mad laughter as I thought of that despicable wretch who was my brother and saw again the grim and tragic joke: that truly we had grown to become much alike. Twin souls, Urta had said. But he had always been the dominant one. He had stolen my life and afterwards governed my existence: forever in front, leading me and taunting me. But now there had grown a great disparity between us. For he had found companionship of his own monstrous sort. He had achieved fellowship and belonging, while I could have none! And my hatred for him swelled beyond reason.

‘Now I saw what I must do to reach him. I must somehow enlist the aid of others. Armed and prepared, we must enter that hellish underground place to destroy a nest of monsters.

‘I rose up, and as I made my way through the forest, I cut at intervals signs upon the trees. I went for many hours, marking my route in this way, until I came to a wide track where the woods had been cleared. I followed this until I reached the edge of the forest. Soon I came to the hall of the local lord, an old Roman fort surrounded by a decayed defensive wall: a square-shaped structure built from crumbling stone, shored and supported all over with pieces of wooden framework.

‘As I approached the entrance the guards came out to surround me. They did not understand me, but regarded me fearfully as they jabbered at me in Celtic and pointed their spears at me. But I submitted myself to them, laying down my sword, and at last they took me inside, shutting me in a dark cell in a dungeon below the ground. They gave me food and water, looking upon me as a great curiosity, and I languished there for a time before the lord himself came to view this oddity, this wodewose from the forest. There also came with him his son, a boy upon the brink of manhood. A youth named Cadroc.’

The man called Cynewulf fell silent and fixed his eyes on Brother Cadroc. Yet the monk did not return his look, but only gazed far out into the distance, while his face appeared much troubled. At last Cynewulf turned to Aelfric and me, and said:

‘So it was that we set out to pursue those devils, to corner them in their lair, where the chanting of the monks defeated them, and I came at last to face my hated foe and take my longed-for revenge upon him as the cave collapsed and I drove my blade deep into his heart. Perhaps you have heard these things related by Cadroc? But this is not the end of my story.

‘When I emerged from out of the cave, I departed immediately from the company of Cadroc and the others, slipping away easily amidst all the uproar and confusion. I needed to be alone with my thoughts, to come to terms with the great complexity of my emotions. At first there resided in me only a kind of numbness, a sense of disbelief that finally it was over. But this gave way gradually to feelings I could not have anticipated. There grew in my heart no swell of triumph or exultation, but rather a deep melancholy, almost a sensation of grief akin to what I had felt at the loss of my old life. I imagined I understood this: that the singular compulsion which for years had ruled my existence was suddenly gone, as if I had awoken from a long and incredible dream. But in all those years I had never paused to think beyond its accomplishment. Now that it was done, and my arch-enemy dead, I must come to terms with the realisation that I was finally and utterly alone in the world, without direction or purpose. What I felt was indeed a sense of loss. Yet I soon began to understand that it was something far more.

‘For he began to haunt me. Wherever I went I could not escape him. In death his ghost pursued me as in life I pursued him. I started to sense his presence, and the feeling of him grew ever more powerful as I began to hear his footsteps following mine like an echo; and I would turn to see nothing but
know
he was there. I would hear his sighs upon the wind and the sound of him as he crept beyond my sight among the trees and rushes. Then I began to see him! At dawn or dusk, standing far out in the mist, waiting and watching, his image at first only a blur that almost imperceptibly grew stronger and more distinct until finally the clear vision of him took form before me, exactly as I saw him in his last living moments before I struck the fatal blow. Because in that instant I had seen in his eyes only a look of rage, fear and confusion. It was then I understood that he did not recognise or remember me – that he did not know me at all, that I meant exactly nothing to him. He did not understand the reason for his death. There was only a dull glare of brute incomprehension. But over the years he had grown in my mind to become my consummate enemy. I came to see in him every aspect of malice and cunning as he outwitted and eluded me in our duel to the death. I saw a monster of iniquity, my mortal foe, motivated by devilish spite. Yet I realised at the end that in truth he was none of these things, but only a desperate, wretched and despised outcast – a victim who had sought simply to survive. Finally I understood him and that all the hate and vindictiveness I came to see in him had all along been truly my own. Now I remembered the last words that Urta spoke as she saw her vision of a monster: “Beware it, for it is yourself, and your hatred will make it
deadly!
”

‘So finally I saw the reality of it – how my father’s madness had likewise come to be my own. But now there came also my father’s demon of self-horror and despair. I came to the Fens as an outcast, and since then I have existed here alone… and yet never alone.
He
has been forever with me like a distorted mirror image, his outward deformity the perfect reflection of my inward corruption.

‘But then, a short time ago, I began to have the dream. It is the same vision I suffered on the battlefield in my youth. It has returned to me. Each night the crows come, flocking obscenely upon me, covering me with their crawling horror. I seem to feel myself rise from my bed, yet I cannot wake or break free. And I imagine I stumble far out onto the fen, and still the birds swarm about me and cling to me, cloaking me with their blackness as I draw my sword and strike at them in desperate fury. Until suddenly I understand that they are
his
creatures – that his time has come, and now it is he who moves against
me
. This is surely what the dream portends.

‘Yet now the dream changes, and I find myself stalking through the dark, creeping with silent intent upon a lonely cottage which stands in the distance ahead, somewhere on the border of the marshes. Pale moonlight shines behind me as I move ever more swiftly and feel within me the gathering of both a monstrous rage and a terrible joy. I come to stand at the shadowed doorway of the hut, then smash at it so the timber breaks and splinters, and I see inside the faint glowing embers of the hearth and the dark huddled shapes which rise from sleep in alarm and terror. And my heart burns with sheer hate at the sight of the warmth and life and kinship they share. I move in among them, see dimly their faces, male and female, young and old, and my fury grows as I see the horror in their eyes when they look upon me. And I breathe in their helpless fear to make me stronger as I strike at them and feel the tear of flesh, the spatter of blood and the crunch of bone as they fall. And still I strike, pounding and crushing them into the dust until their screams and sobs are silenced forever.