Aria Remains

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Two days after the calamitous storm and the carnage it had left behind, the villagers of Easthope buried their dead. They had gathered together upon William’s return to the barn, having discovered the bodies and surveyed the damage to the village, and mourned those they had lost. Several of them made short speeches, while others lit candles and carried them with them throughout the day in memory of those who had been stolen from them. Strangely, just over half of the homes and other buildings survived, while the others, some immediately next door, some even adjoined, had been shattered and destroyed. Neighbours offered to share their property with one another, gave each other all the support they could. As they continued to talk quietly, embracing each other, standing as one, Cordell stepped aside from the grieving and approached William who sat, alone, at the far end of the grass.

‘What say thee, William?’ he asked.

William shook from his reverie and looked up at his friend, shielding his eyes from the sun.

‘I cannot yet believe it,’ William said, gesturing for Cordell to sit beside him.

The grass was already dry, the fields that once lay behind now-fallen trees stretching away to the distance unobscured.

‘There is talk,’ Cordell said, ‘that Elinor Avery remains unable to locate the whereabouts of her husband. Perhaps he, too, was lost, has been cast somewhere along the dockside?’

William shook his head.

‘I searched all over, between each bush, behind each tree. Twenty-seven there are. Twenty-seven of us, parts of us, have been taken away forever.’

‘Then where, wouldst thou say, might he be?’

William shifted to face Cordell.

‘I have something that needs to be said, unpleasant thoughts whose very articulation I feel may make me quite unwell, yet must be said nonetheless.’

Cordell frowned, turned slightly towards William and nodded.

‘Thou hast already given me instruction,’ he said, ‘and I shall be certain to follow through with thy wishes.’

‘No,’ William said quietly, ‘it be not that, although I be greatly indebted to thee. There is something more, however. The injuries I saw down by the dockside, the way in which those poor souls met their end, I fear to reveal may not be attributed to the storm just passed.’

‘What dost thou mean?’ Cordell whispered, leaning forward. ‘How else might such a disaster have been met?’

‘It pains me to reveal, but… I fear these injuries were the work of a man. The work of one of us.’

Shocked, Cordell leaned back and covered his mouth.

‘What sayest thee?’ he hissed. ‘How might one of us be in any way responsible for such actions?’

‘I cannot bring myself to believe it can be true, but such harm to which I bore witness could not be as a result of that abominable tempest. The barbarity suffered could only hath been discharged by an individual, by a human…’

William immediately stopped talking and looked away, a new thought crashing into his mind, a new terror discharging a freeze within him. He quickly gave instruction to Cordell, asking him to help with the bodies, with the suppression of their true fates, then began getting to his feet.

‘William?’ Cordell said.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘but there hath come to mind a matter to which I must attend. I shall return briefly.’

Cordell said no more as he watched William stride away towards the fields. He wondered where he might possibly be going, since the villagers all knew, as they had been told by William himself, that nothing lay beyond the fields, nothing other than more grassland that went on for several miles until they met the cliff’s edge, the rocks falling away into the ocean below, while further inland was nothing but woodland and forest. For a moment he mused on the thought that neither he, nor anyone else with whom he had discussed the subject, had ever felt any inclination to explore any further than the fields upon which they worked. Perhaps there was something else, he thought, and made a mental note to ask his friend about it when he returned.

As William became a smaller and smaller figure in the distance, Cordell then became aware of a presence behind him.

‘To where hath he departed, now?’

It was Bridgette, sounding tired, resigned.

‘He sayeth not,’ Cordell replied. ‘However, he shall return before we know it.’

Bridgette sighed, then moved back towards the gathered villagers, embracing Elinor Avery as a few of the men began arranging themselves into a search party.

It was not until the following day, as the digging of graves close to the docks was well under way, that William returned to the village. No one had felt inclined to organise any kind of a wake since so many had been lost and so much distress had already been felt, thrown into a shocking and interminable despair such as they were, and so beneath a heavy cloud of traumatised and bereft silence they laid their shrouded deceased carefully into the ground. The sea was respectfully calm and the warm sunshine that spread over them almost betrayed the truth of what had happened just two days before. Still unable to understand or comprehend it all, as they lay their lamented to rest they knew neither what to say nor what else to do. Their lives had been so enriched, so improved by their relocation to Easthope that they had not even considered the chance of something so dreadful occurring. It had almost seemed as though they had been set apart from the evil and sadness they had known before, that they had placed themselves out of its reach, which made it seem somehow worse now that the reality of life, of the uncontrollable power of nature, had crashed into their new world.

William sat on a small grassy ridge above the docks, watching them sadly, thinking of what he had learned from his journey beyond the village, of the enlightenment that had fallen across him. Having left Cordell the day before, he had walked for hours, across fields, through woodland and over narrow streams and deep ditches, driven on despite his lethargy, despite his sorrow. It was an anger that had grown within him, a boiling realisation that, as it was not the storm that had caused such mayhem, similarly it was not one of the villagers in whom he had placed so much trust.

It had struck him as he sat talking with Cordell, had appeared to him with such clarity that he was incensed he had not thought of it before.

Beckett.

It must surely have been Beckett.

Bridgette had been right. She had told him that Beckett could not be trusted and now he saw that he should have listened to her, should have known what she would say before even agreeing the deal in the first place. His temper rising, marching across the countryside, heading for the small, desolate hut where he had met Beckett upon that fateful spring night, the night he had been lured away from Calcote with ideas of new beginnings, he was also riven with regret, bemoaning his lack of patience, his desire to get everything finished himself so that he could present his new village as a gift to the others. Why could he not have waited, have asked them for help? It would have taken them much longer to complete, it would have perhaps meant their plans would have been discovered before they were done, it might even have meant that they would not have been able to finish at all. But even that, surely, would have been better than the loss of life, the pain and misery they were all now being forced to endure.

‘Beckett!’ he shouted as he approached the final line of trees that separated him from the small, untended hut that stood alone, forsaken by all living things and all that was good and scrupulous.

‘Beckett! Show thyself, thou abydocomist, thou cumberworld, thou raketire. Bring thyself hence and answer for what thou hast done.’

Surging through the trees as they reached and clawed for him, snagging his tunic, marking his skin, he finally emerged at the hut. It was a dour, unpleasant scene, just as it had been at his last visit, the line of smoke trailing from the hole in its thatched roof, the obnoxious odour weaving into the air through the dirty piece of fabric hanging across its door.

‘Beckett!’

William stood and looked around, listening out for any sound that might be a sign of the man for whom he searched, but there was nothing. No sound, no intimation of life at all. There was a wretched, dull feeling to the place, an inert, doleful tint to the air as though nothing had stirred there for many years, that all it had experienced was death and decay, displeasure and unrest.

He waited for several minutes, then peered inside the hut, finding nothing but straw and dirty linen, half-filled buckets and unwashed wooden bowls, then went further down a narrow pathway at the rear of the hut, lined with trees and plants that seemed sickly, as though they were merely clinging, by the most tenuous means imaginable, to the last few pages of their story, the final remaining moments of their lives. He knew that he would eventually meet a river but had no reason to travel that far, knowing it led nowhere but to the ocean at one end and came to nothing at the other, where the isthmus beyond it linked back to the mainland and so, instead, he turned and went back to the hut, yet still there was no sign of Beckett.

Preparing to leave he quickly turned again, thinking he had, at last, heard some movement behind him. Still seeing nothing, he suddenly felt overwhelmed with the sensation that something had changed, that there was something different about the hut and about the barren patch of land on which it stood and the bitterness of the air around it. He opened his eyes wider, wanting to somehow see more, to be able to pinpoint what had altered, yet he could identify nothing specific. It came to him as more of a feeling, he thought, an impression that there was something changed or that it was, perhaps, his interpretation of where he was and what was around him that was somehow different, that it had been affected by some external force. A light breeze swept across him, feeling much colder to him than it really was, and it seemed to enter into him, finding a way into his veins so that they, too, developed a chill. And then, without warning, something came moving along the narrow valley lined with dying trees. It came towards him at a great speed, glowing the brightest shade of white, a white so dazzling it was almost impossible for him to look at, as though a part of the sun had broken away and was hurtling across the land. He could discern no shape, no figure nor form, yet it came so very quickly that, before he had barely had time to question what it might be, it was upon him, pushing him to the ground.

He had the impression that night had fallen and that a new day was now approaching by the time he regained his senses. He recognised the early morning cool in the air, heard the singing of the birds and understood the light was not quite developed, was young and fresh, hopeful and alert. He was still on the ground, still halfway between the wretched hut and the line of trees and still, as far as he could tell, he was alone. He did have, however, something working its way around his mind, something that wasn’t quite an idea, wasn’t quite a memory or a query. It was something that fell awkwardly between all three, something that told him he had been given the answer to a question he did not remember asking.

He sat up, rubbing his head and stretching his neck. Slowly, as he got to his feet, he began to feel the strong, undeniable urge to go back to Easthope as quickly as he could, that there was nothing for him here and that the people in the village needed him now, more than they ever had before. As he walked, twisting incautiously between the trees and then, once free of them, pacing across the fields, through the ditches and the narrow streams, the zephyrs by the cliffs doing nothing to avert the strength of the sun, a vision started to form in his mind, a dream or a scene that he had witnessed but not seen, a play acted out before him even though he had not been there to view it.

He saw an old woman, slightly bent in posture, her face drawn and populated with deep lines of age and loneliness, a small dog standing beside her. He watched them as they looked into a line of trees and then, emerging from the trees, breaking into the milieu just as the sun rose over the hills, providing its heat and light to all who require it, bringing life and hope and the promise of something new, the whisper of another chance, and another, leading onto endless opportunity, he saw a much younger woman. A beautiful woman, a woman of purity and grace and incalculable righteousness, with long dark hair and blue eyes, and he understood that she was naked but did not see her nakedness, did not want to look at her body since he knew it was something not for him to observe. She was an icon, a dove, her spirit floating with absolute freedom above them, and she was surrounded by stars, hundreds of stars that had combined to make a glorious wheel that turned and steered all of the most majestic items of the universe into a firmament all of her own, where she held them safely to her breast so that they would be preserved for everyone until the end of time. Not recognising either of them, still he could not help but gasp at the exaltedness of this young woman. He had no recollection of ever having been in the company of either of them before, yet there was something very familiar about them both, something he recognised in, or despite of, their unfamiliarity.

‘Someone there?’ the woman with the dog asked, her voice rough and tired. ‘Who be there? Who be that?’

‘I’m sorry,’ the young woman said, emerging further from the trees. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you. It’s just that I’m… Well, I’m lost. I don’t know where I am, or even how I got here. Do you think you can help me?’

‘Be thee alone?’ the old woman asked.

The young woman nodded.

‘Where be thy garments?’

‘I… I don’t know,’ she admitted, looking down at herself. She held one arm across her chest, the other across her midriff, covering herself as best she could. ‘I don’t know anything. Can you help me?’

The dog moved towards her and sniffed her calf. The old woman nodded.

‘Come hither, inside,’ she said, and William watched as they went into the small, putrid hut.

It was then that something within William began to change, that a seed of knowledge, an understanding he had long held but had not yet been able to uncover from its loam began to rise, shooting toward the sun, allowing him to see things of which he had been previously blind. He did not know from where this comprehension had come, could not understand why he had not been able to divine it before, yet its appearance brought such clarity to him, such a chilling lucidity that he felt mortified to have not previously considered it. He saw its development as he had seen the illusion of the young girl and the old woman, since even in his absorption he knew it could not be real but that it was, rather, the forebear to this new cognisance. It was as though he needed to have been there, at that awful, filthy spot, for this revelation to be brought to life, for it to be seen, and he felt it was an attestation from nature herself, an expression of regret for her forced complicity in the deadly storm.

Still deep in thought, the pieces of a puzzle slowly reuniting so to show him what he must do next, he began walking again, desperate in his desire to return to Easthope so that he might begin to put into place arrangements he felt necessary to constrain this new exposure. Within moments he saw Beckett, appearing from behind a small gathering of hawthorn a hundred yards ahead. Dressed in a dark woollen tunic and linen trousers, with a brimless red cap pulled low over his head, William noticed that he had blood smeared across his clothes. He seemed to be looking for something or someone, calling out, although William could not understand what he was saying.

‘Beckett!’ he shouted, and the man turned to look at him.

‘Beckett!’ William called again. ‘I must speak with thee. It is of the greatest import.’

As Beckett walked towards him, the breeze stroking the grass, the waves rolling agains the rocks, William now knew that it was not retribution he sought but answers and fidelity, the acknowledgement that his was a conjecture of veracity since he no longer believed it to have been Beckett who shouldered the terrible responsibility for the murder of so many people.

‘How didst thee knowest I should be here?’ Beckett asked, his voice calm, his emotions steady.

‘I did not,’ William replied flatly. ‘But I have been searching for thee, walking through the night so that I might find and question thee.’

Slightly distracted, still looking around, Beckett nodded and asked, ‘What be it I might do for thee?’

‘I want to knowest why,’ William said. ‘Why it was that such pain and iniquity was brought upon our village.’

Beckett looked confused, now giving William all of his attention.

‘What doth thou mean to say?’ he asked, puzzlement clear in his tone.

William studied him for a few moments and then, his voice and temper even, said, ‘Tell me, then, thee without acquaintance, why it be so that the agreement reached between thee and I should be so barbarously shattered, and of the role thee hast played in such brutality.’

‘I knowest not,’ Beckett replied with a shrug that spoke to sincere unawareness rather than callous indifference. ‘I knowest not of that which thee speakest, about what thee might mean.’

‘Twenty-seven,’ William said, now beginning to struggle to hold his anger in check. He was looking Beckett directly in the eye. ‘Twenty-seven lay dead this day, twenty-seven withered at thy hand.’

‘William,’ Beckett said calmly, placing his hand on William’s shoulder, ‘I hath no idea, not even a first inkling, about anything thou sayest. I hath not been to thy village for some time and for certain I am not responsible for any hurt, for any taking of life. That be not a thing I wouldst ever do, and I be sorry, truly, for thy loss.’

William shook his shoulder to free himself.

‘Then who wouldst thee suggest may be the culprit? Who be it must admit to the responsibility?’

Beckett shook his head, his expression one of condolence.

‘I promise thee, William East, I knowest nothing of which thee speaketh.’

‘Then what be this blood, covering thy clothes as a clear mark of thy guilt?’ William asked. ‘How doth thee account for such affirmation?’

’T’was not I, I can promise thee,′ Beckett answered, looking down. ‘This guilt of which thee speaketh and that thee hangs around my neck be nothing more than the residue of the rabbit I hath earlier caught, so that I might hath sustenance later this day. But pray, William, what terrible things hath been happing over yonder? Can thee be certain this terrible loss cannot be laid at the trampling feet of our terrible storm just passed?’

William, seeing a certain light in Beckett’s eyes, a certain measure and composure to his countenance that told him he was telling him the truth, that he had no hand in the vile massacre perpetrated against his innocent neighbours, explained the injuries he had found on the villagers, the cuts and gouges, the binding, the broken bones and missing limbs, none of which could have been caused by any storm. It had to be, he said, the shameful work of a person, one without soul, a creature short of reason, buried deep inside the devil’s greenwood. Beckett listened carefully, shaking his head and frowning at what he was being told.

‘I must proclaim thee correct,’ he said, when William had finished. ‘It sounds not the work of a storm but the work of the devil and I, as thou must see, am no devil.’

‘But the deal struck between us,’ William said. ‘The agreement we hold. I sayest not that thou be any demon, yet surely thou hast some power not of this world. How else wouldst thee explain how I managed to complete my task with such speed, with such ease?’

‘Apologies, William, my friend,’ Beckett said, a sincerity in his voice that masked the growing sense of understanding, of comprehension now dawning upon him, ‘but I know not of these things. It be true that I hath, in the past, been seen as responsible for some several acts that fall without the boundaries of approbation, that I hath been held to account for acts that I now regard with great shame and repulsion, and for which I cannot be more sorry. However, it also be true to say that, despite evidence to the contrary, not all things seen are as they seem. And yes, it be true that I heard of thy rapturous construction, of thy village that stands apart from all others, that preaches fairness and equality, that is based upon good and sound principles, yet I hath played no hand in its establishment, have entered into no deal with thee.’

William listened and believed him, feeling now doubly sure of his suspicions, yet he did not want to give them voice. He wanted to hear it from Beckett, wanted to know what he knew since he felt it was clear he must have had some wicked part to play. He breathed deeply and decided to adopt a different approach, to be more gentle, to subsume a pretence of unenlightenment.

‘Wouldst thou be in possession of any knowledge, of even any notion, that may indicate the scoundrel that be behind such pervertedness?’

Beckett shook his head but, William noted, it was without the same conviction, the same definitiveness.

‘And who it might be, if it were not thee, with whom I came to such an agreement to allow, as thee would have it, my rapturous construction?’

‘I cannot be certain,’ Beckett said and, as was clear to William, he was being truthful although, as they were both aware and in which they were both complicit, there remained words unsaid.

They regarded one another now as though on even ground, as though neither could be blamed since they had both come to the same conclusion as to the author of not just the carnage that had befallen Easthope, but to the puppeteer who yielded such poisoned strings and was leading them both in so solemn a dance. It was a moment of great significance, although neither man realised just how important their realisation was to prove, nor the effect it would have upon not only them but on the lives of so many others. They parted in an air of measured friendliness, albeit one that lacked the strength to have carried those sentiments that were now weighing down upon them, had they allowed them their freedom.