The Standing Water (30 page)

‘Oh, Little Drummer
Boy, please help us get that gauntlet and help us kill Mr Weirton. And if we
don’t or if we bottle out, may we die and have to live forever in your cold
dark tunnel. Amen.’

When we’d said our
oaths, we stood for a little while, hearing nothing but the coos and calls of
birds, the moos of a distant cow. Just as we were about to leave, a soft sound
welled up – a quiet patter, with the odd clank behind it. I trembled; my heart
raced as that patter swelled and grew, becoming a determined roll of thuds,
clunks and rattles. It was much louder than what I’d heard in my bedroom. It
must have been coming from under our feet, from that tunnel. It got louder
still – jerking the air, seeming even to quiver the leaves and twigs on the
trees.

‘It’s him!’ I
shouted. ‘He’s playing for us – it shows he agrees with what we want to do!’

Jonathon nodded,
grinned.

‘Are you still not
sure if it was him you heard?’

Still smiling,
Jonathon shook his head. After a few minutes, the drumming began to fade,
falling back to a low patter then petering out the way the songs did on
Weirton’s radio. Jonathon and I just stared, grinning at each other as my heart
bashed joyfully.

‘Brilliant!’ I
said. ‘He definitely supports us and I’m sure all the other spooks do too! Come
on, let’s get to the church and grab that gauntlet.’

We walked through
the gate and were soon teetering across the marshy fields. I looked for the
clumps of grass that marked the drier patches, but still a couple of times my
leg plunged into an unseen bog and a churned mass of mud and dung splurged over
the top of my wellie. I sucked an anxious breath as I spotted the two horses that
had troubled us last time. They stood on the castle’s knoll, swishing their
tails, their big liquid eyes tracing our steps. I didn’t know what I’d do if
one trotted up to us, snorting angry air, baring its teeth, but those horses
just stayed on their hillock, watching us resentfully. I remembered how Weirton
had locked stares with the stallion, slammed his fist into it, and I felt a
surge of admiration for the headmaster. He’d been so brave that day! Guilt rose
about wanting to kill the man who’d saved us from that beast. I forced myself
to remember the teacher’s outrages – the beatings, the humiliations, the
white-faced weeping kids being lowered after his thrashings. Anger frothed up
to drive away the guilt and I pressed on to the church. We walked under the
metal arch that crowned the graveyard’s entrance, and again I had a feeling we
were stepping out of one world and into another – entering the church’s holy
precinct in which lay the blessed dead, their souls protected by the good magic
that seeped from the church building, by all the sacred ceremonies that went on
in there. Jonathon and I paused for a moment in the graveyard. I looked around
me at the sombre yews, the worn and slanting stones, the humped and tussocked
ground; I saw the tap under which Weirton had soothed his hand after his
heroics. Jonathon moved towards the church and I knew I had to call out to him.

‘Wait a minute!
Before we get the gauntlet, there are a couple of things I need to say.’

‘Yeah?’

‘We’ll need to be careful.’

‘How do you mean?’

Jonathon looked at
me; suspicion screwed up his features. I strove to keep my face innocent –
there was no way I could imagine stealing that gauntlet on my own.

‘Well, I just
forgot to tell you, Davis said people need to watch out because that gauntlet
has a way of trying to slip itself onto the hand of whoever has it.’

‘What!? But that
would mean –’

‘Yeah, exactly,
you’d die.’

Jonathon’s lips trembled.

‘That’s it!’ he
said. ‘I’m off! I’ll just rely on my robot!’

He strode towards
the gate.

‘Wait a minute!’ I
called after him. ‘You can’t back out now! Not after we’ve made all those vows
– you know what’ll happen if you break them!’

‘Yeah,’ Jonathon
shouted back, ‘but when I said those oaths I didn’t know –’

‘And there’s
another thing about the gauntlet.’ I prayed this would persuade him. ‘If you
po-ssess it, it protects you against all robbers, violence and murder!’

‘Yeah?’ Jonathon
stopped, turned to face me. ‘So even if we don’t put it on Weirton’s hand,
Weirton won’t whack us, so we won’t end up like Lucy or Marcus?’

‘Yeah –’ my relief
sighed out with that word ‘– though we should still try to kill him for the
sake of the other kids.’

‘Kids like my
brother,’ Jonathon said, ‘remember how he looked after his last walloping? But
still maybe my robot –’

‘Your robot’s a
good idea, but … it might take a while to make. I think in this case magic would
work quicker than science.’

Jonathon nodded,
though his lips still quivered. We walked to the church. In the porch, we sat
on the cold stone benches. We tugged off our wellies – they were so mud-caked
we decided we’d rather not risk leaving any footprints in God’s sacred dwelling
that could be traced to us.

‘But,’ Jonathon
said, ‘maybe we shouldn’t leave the boots here. Just in case any adults come
and they get sus-pic-ious.’

A strange feeling
told me his caution might prove wise. We hid our wellies in the graveyard,
nestled in tufts of grass between a headstone and the church. We crept back to
the porch – the path’s gravel pricking through our socks – and I reached out to
push the mighty oak doors leading into the church’s main part. The doors didn’t
move.

‘Damn!’ I said. ‘Didn’t
think they might be locked!’

I pushed again –
the doors had just been stiff; now they creaked ajar. As I walked through them,
I again felt I was passing over a threshold – this time into the extreme
holiness of the church. We saw the dread altar, the gauntlet hanging ominously
before it. There were the rows of ancient pews, the lettered flagstones marking
the graves of those lucky enough to be buried inside the church, the tall
arched windows letting in the weak light of Emberfield’s summer. Near the wall
to the altar’s left was the tomb of the knight and his lady, their effigies stretched
above the boxes that held their bones. It was towards those figures we now
walked – walking across that chilly floor, through the church’s eerie quiet,
through the air that seemed dense with the weight of its holiness, infused with
its sacred smells of musty hymnbooks and old stone. We got to that tomb. The
couple lay in peaceful slumber, the knight’s sword at rest, their white hands
clasped in everlasting prayer.

‘Do you think he
was one of King Arthur’s knights?’ I asked.

‘Probably,’
Jonathon said.

‘You know King Arthur’s
coming back,’ I said. ‘He’s not really dead, just sleeping. And when England
really needs him, he’ll wake up!’

‘Shame he can’t
come back to help us against Weirton,’ said Jonathon.

We stared at that
sculpted knight. It really did look like he was just asleep. I felt bad about
placing my hands on his tomb, but I begged his ghost to forgive us. Our vow was
for a noble purpose – to fight cruelty and oppression, just like the knights of
old used to. They’d battled evil ogres and we ourselves had one to defeat. I
laid my palm on the statue; felt the cold, cold marble. Our vow echoed through
the church. Jonathon spoke the last bit.

‘And, if I do not,
let the ghosts of this knight and his lady who rest here, and the ghosts of all
those who rest under the church and in the churchyard rise up and haunt me for
the rest of my days. So help me God, amen.’

Now we’d made our
final oath, we were ready to take the gauntlet.

That glove hung on
its heavy chain, lit by dusty beams from the windows at both sides, its thumb
and fingers bent slightly. We approached it with awe, creeping on our stocking
feet, the cold of the stone – the cold of long ages – rising through our soles.
Soon we were near enough to see the scorch marks on the metal.

‘Remember what
happened to the knight who owned that glove?’ I said.

Jonathon nodded; my
eyes flitted to the altar in its railed-off space. It was so quiet now, but I
knew what would happen if we placed a foot beyond that barrier.

‘Of course, I’ve
heard the legend,’ Jonathon said, ‘but my mum says that during the church
services, they all come up to the altar and the vicar gives them a sip of holy
wine.
They
don’t get destroyed.’

I thought for a
moment.

‘That’s different,’
I said, ‘because the vicar
tells
them they can come. And the holy wine
must protect them. Know what that wine is?’

‘No.’ Jonathon
wagged his head.

‘It’s the blood of
Jesus Christ!’

‘Wow!’ he said. ‘But,
hang on a minute – how can it be Jesus’s blood if he isn’t even there?’

‘It’s magic, of
course,’ I said. ‘With his magic, he can turn wine into his own blood anywhere
in the world!’

‘Wow!’ Jonathon
repeated.

I was sure that
sacred fluid would protect anyone against the knight’s fate. Yet that day we
had no vicar, no wine to guard us should we go beyond that rail. Instead,
ensuring no fingertip, no tiny piece of skin slipped across that border, we
reached for the gauntlet. Of course, it hung way out of our grasp. Though we
stretched our arms, our fingers strained hopelessly below it. We tried jumping,
but our hands were still separated from our prize by a good length of air.

‘There’s only one
thing for it,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to go up on my shoulders.’

Jonathon gulped,
but he nodded and didn’t complain. I knelt down, lowered my shoulders; he
straddled them, and I stumbled up from the floor, my friend swaying as I
staggered under his – surprising – weight. I stayed still for a moment – until
we steadied – then tottered closer to the railings.

‘Careful!’ Jonathon
shouted. ‘Don’t make any part of me go further than the rails, or you know
what’ll happen!’

I tried my best,
but it was hard to control the burden that swayed on my shoulders, that I bore
on my wobbling, already aching legs. I managed to position us right under the
gauntlet yet Jonathon kept threatening to unbalance me as he dodged and
twisted, pulling his body back from where he thought the invisible line that
marked altar’s sacred space was. His fear trembled through him; those trembles
shuddered into my shoulders, making it even harder to keep us stable.

‘What can you see?’
I called up.

‘On the end of the
chain’ – Jonathon’s voice, high with panic, echoed through the church – ‘there’s
a hook, which goes through a loop that sticks out of the glove. So we should be
able to lift it off.’

‘OK,’ I stammered,
struggling under his heaviness, ‘let’s do it.’

I tilted my neck
back, watched as Jonathon lifted his arms. Though he reached and strained, his
hands couldn’t even brush the glove’s fingertips.

‘Damn!’ I said. ‘Still
not close enough! Guess they hung it so high for a good reason. I’ll put you
down.’

I manoeuvred myself
into a squat, as Jonathon squealed and protested about being lurched too close
to the altar rail. When I was near enough to the floor, he scrabbled off my
shoulders. He was still trembling, his face white.

‘Suppose that’s it
then,’ he said. ‘Just can’t reach the glove.’

‘Maybe there’s
something we can stand on –’ I glanced around the church ‘– a chair or stool.’

But the only seats
were the pews, and those ancient benches were firmly fixed in place. An idea
dawned in my mind.

‘Hey, what about
those cushion things people kneel on? They’re quite thick.’

I ran to the
nearest pew, hauled one from under it, causing cords of long-settled dust to
whirl.  ‘Dust devils’ my mum called them – most inappropriate in a church. I
held that oblong cushion up to show Jonathon.

‘Won’t be enough,’
he said.

‘I know, but if we
make a stack of maybe three and I stand on that with you on my shoulders, bet you
could unhook that gauntlet.’

‘No way! It was
dangerous enough before! It’ll be even worse with you standing on them!’

I grabbed another
two cushions, stacked all three under the glove. I got into a squat on that
tower of well-stuffed wool. Without any more protests, Jonathon, with a couple
of hops and a jump, launched himself so his legs straddled my shoulders. My
feet sank into our stack, but I reckoned we still had the extra height we
needed. I straightened my legs, inching into a standing posture on our sagging
shifting base. Now upright, trying to keep balanced as the cushions wobbled
below me and Jonathon swayed above, I craned my neck to gaze at him.

‘You’re near
enough!’ I shouted. ‘Just reach up your hands.’

Jonathon was
trembling again; he hesitated for some seconds, long seconds for my legs. A
violent shudder jerked through those limbs; my thighs bulged and ached. I
couldn’t let us fall – I thought of how hard the floor had been when Darren had
bashed my head on it, how much worse it would feel if we plummeted from a
height. Jonathon stretched up his arms and grasped the glove.

‘How does it feel?’
I asked.

‘Ancient,’ he said,
‘and very, very cold.’

Jonathon lifted the
gauntlet, began to slide it around the curve of the hook. My heart banged as a scraping
sound echoed through the church.

‘The ghost of the
knight!’ I hissed. ‘He doesn’t like it!’

‘It’s just the
metal!’ Jonathon whispered

The sound scraped
again. Fear made my legs buckle, sway. I wobbled and teetered on those cushions.
Jonathon was rolled and jerked; his hands gripped my head, his fingers covering
my eyes.

‘I can’t see, you
idiot!’ I hissed.

Now the church door
creaked, footsteps rapped from the porch.

‘Someone’s coming –
we have to get down!’ came Jonathon’s urgent whisper.

But he didn’t move his
hands. More footsteps echoed. We lurched and reeled; I struggled to keep us
balanced on those shifting cushions. I tried to yank Jonathon’s fingers from my
eyes, but he gripped my face with astounding strength. I wrenched them away –
the force of that action toppled us. The cushions slid from beneath us; we flew
back, plummeted. Luckily, the cushions landed in such a way that they partly
broke our fall, but still my elbow banged the floor hard. Dull pain pulsed
through my arm – I’d no time to worry about it. Now the doors dividing the
church’s main part from the porch were creaking open. I kicked the cushions
across the floor – my aim was good: they slipped under the first row of pews. I
sprinted – dragging Jonathon behind me. We hurled ourselves onto the flags,
diving, then skidding under that same line of benches. We scrabbled up into a
squat; I peered above the pew and saw the door was now ajar. Weirton stepped
from behind it, began to stride down the aisle. We were hidden from him, but if
he went on walking to our end of the church, he’d easily spot us. Under the
cover of the pew, we scuttled on hands and knees across the dusty floor, though
I’d no idea where we should hide. At the pew’s end was the tomb of the knight
and his lady – there was a gap between it and the wall, just about big enough
for us to squeeze into. We crawled into that space as Weirton paced towards the
altar, the bash of his heavy tread reverberating in the church’s hollowness. We
got ourselves into a squat, and found we could peep over the lady’s effigy: see
a section of the church framed by her sombre face, her praying hands, her hair
and gown below, and the straight line of her husband’s tomb above. Weirton
stopped; glanced around; his face twitched; he looked – I thought – uneasy. He then
resumed his march and seated himself on the very row of pews we’d crawled
along.

As I shivered, as my
heart boomed, questions were thrown up by my panicking mind. What on earth was
the teacher doing here? It was always weird to see him outside school – like
the times I’d bumped into him with my parents in Goldhill. It was as if God had
picked him up and thrown him down somewhere my brain knew he shouldn’t be. But
seeing him
here
– on the day we’d begun enacting our plot to kill him!
My heart banged harder as I wondered if he’d been tracking us, if at any moment
he might leap from his pew, start scouring the church, haul us from behind the
tomb and thrash us – a thrashing that might not stop till we reached the state
of Marcus or Lucy. I shivered harder. The cold of the tomb and the cold rising
through my socks along with my nerves meant I shook so violently I had to
clench my mouth shut so my teeth wouldn’t rattle. The teacher glanced around
more, some kind of distaste seemed to be screwing his features, crinkling his
eyes, making him frown. I wasn’t sure why he should be uncomfortable in God’s
holy house, unless – of course – what he’d done to Marcus and Lucy, and who
knew how many other kids, made him feel anxious before the Lord. Weirton swung
his gaze over to the church’s other side – he stared at those rows of red
crosses he’d pointed out to me: perhaps he was desperate to scare some demons
off. As my elbow throbbed to remind me of the bang it had received, he moved
his eyes back to the altar and glimpsed the gauntlet. He sucked breath; his
face jerked back; his eyes swelled. I hadn’t given this any thought, but – of
course – after our attempt, the gauntlet must have been swinging on its chain.
Its movement had now settled into small sways, but that motion was still more
than could be explained by something like a breeze. Weirton stared at that
rocking glove. Jonathon and I clutched each other – surely this was the proof
he’d know our presence by! But Weirton just gawped at the gauntlet before hauling
his gaze away and sinking his face into his hands. His eyes covered by his palms,
he stayed hunched like that for a minute or so. When he looked up again, the
gauntlet’s swaying had stopped.

He shook his face,
wiped his sleeve – the sleeve of a chunky blue jumper rather than one of his
usual smart jackets – across his forehead, and let go a long breath of what I
suspected was relief. Weirton then clasped his hands, bowed his head and
started to pray, his lips twitching frantically as he mumbled words I couldn’t
make out. He’d just finished his prayer and was again staring at the altar and glove
when more footsteps came from the porch – footsteps far lighter than Weirton’s.
The door creaked – a slower, more cautious creak than the teacher’s had been, a
creak that sounded like some effort had been needed to make it. The tap of those
gentle footsteps now echoed from the aisle and the grey bobbing head of the
vicar came into view.

‘Hello, James,’ he
said, as he made his stooped way towards Weirton.

He sat down on the
teacher’s bench and slid himself along it, pausing a couple of times as his
feet stumbled over the cushions I’d kicked down there. Despite my fear, I had
to push down the sniggers that welled up from hearing Weirton called by his
first name. His middle name – Ronald – was even more hilarious, and there were
plenty of sly chuckles whenever kids saw it at the bottom of official letters.
But we had to make sure those sniggers stayed secret. Once Weirton had heard
the brother and Darren Hill making fun of his middle name and had given both
boys such a battering I thought they’d never sit down till the next year’s
Christmas.

‘Hello, Reverent,’
Weirton said.

‘Oh Rodney,
please,’ replied the vicar, causing fresh giggles to surge in me.

‘Rodney, sorry for
taking up your time, thank you so much for coming.’

‘That’s quite all
right, James. Sorry we had to meet here – got a sense you felt some reluctance
about the venue. Perhaps not the most convenient of places, but I’ve a wedding
rehearsal booked here for eleven.’

Any amusement died
as I wondered how long we’d have to crouch there. My legs were aching; pins and
needles were running in my feet – all in addition to my throbbing elbow.

‘Well, it is a bit
out of the way, living in Goldhill, and it’s a good old hike across that muddy
field, but I’m just grateful you could see me at all.’

‘Oh, you should
have come from the road. There’s a little carpark on that side, just down from
the railway crossing, a gravel track …’

The two men waffled
like this for some minutes before the vicar said, ‘James, time’s ticking on so
I suppose we should get down to business. What was it you wished to talk
about?’

Weirton shifted and
fidgeted in his pew, wriggling and fiddling in the exact way he yelled at kids
for. A tooth clamped his lip; he looked sheepish and finally said, ‘Vicar, as a
man of God, I’m sure you understand the concept of duty.’

‘Of course,’ the
vicar nodded.

‘And sacrifice,
self-sacrifice …’

‘Yes, it forms the
whole basis of our religion.’