Aria Remains
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

#

There had been hints of what was to come during the afternoon, as the skies darkened and a strengthening wind escorted a brooding, premature nightfall across Easthope. Despite this, none were prepared for the scale of the storm or the damage it would incur. As it grew in ferocity, William joined Cordell and Penhallick, the miller, as they went from house to house, raising the villagers and leading them to the largest of the barns.

‘We’ll be safest in there,’ William told them as they battled against the wind, their bodies forced into almost impossible angles against the earth, struggling to catch their breath.

As soon as everyone they could replace was inside, and Penhallick had secured the door, the storm became even more aggressive, as though rising to the challenge. Torrents of rain threatened to tear through the roof, clattering and smashing against it, while the wind pulled and pushed at the edifice, a great beast growling and clawing at the walls and doors, desperately trying to expose the people recoiled inside.

Roaring and bellowing, spitting at the barn, the sound of the storm grew unbearably fierce. Bridgette, her arms wrapped around her daughter, grasped William’s arm so tightly he felt his hand begin to numb, while the other villagers grouped themselves into a semi-circle, sheltering one another as best they could. From outside they heard the wretched, pitiful sounds of cowering animals, a frightening variety of crashes and bangs, the pandemonium of buildings being destroyed, objects being tossed around, trees being flattened. The storm was killing the village, was breaking it apart, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

‘What shall we replace, what shall we have left?’ Bridgette asked. She had barely taken her eyes from the baby in her arms even as the cacophony entered its fourth hour.

William shook his head.

‘I daren’t even wonder,’ he admitted quietly and then, catching Cordell’s eye, said more loudly, ‘but whatever has happened, whatever is left out there, we shall rebuild, we shall put our home back together.’

‘Thou thinkest it be something we can do?’ Cordell asked, raising his voice against the pendemonium outside and causing others around him to raise their heads and look hopefully towards William.

‘I know we can,’ William answered. ‘I have faith, I hath belief in each and all of thee that we shall be able to resurrect both the village and ourselves, for I know how much faith and belief thou hath in our home.’

‘Wouldst thou say…’ Elinor Avery began, looking nervous as everyone’s face turned to her.

‘Go on,’ encouraged William, smiling and gesturing towards her. ‘Be not afraid to talk amongst us.’

‘Wouldst thou say it shall take so little time as it took before?’

William smiled again, while Bridgette shuffled uncomfortably beside him. The other villagers were unaware just how quickly William had finished his work, sculpting the village from the earth, replaceing the tools and materials he needed waiting for him each night, cleaned and replenished. It had been an addendum to the deal he had struck, that the memories of the villagers and their perception of time, at least the sense of time that they understood, should be distorted in such a way that they would not have been able to chart his progress accurately. They were aware it had been completed swiftly but found no surprise or suspicion in it, and had experienced their own lives and activities differently than they would otherwise have been able to do. It had been as though a shaman had weaved around them all a protective web of familiarity, had blurred any evidence of change, had muted any thought of inquiry.

‘Working together,’ William said, ‘I be sure - certain, indeed - that it shall take us no time at all to replace ourselves returned to where we were. Better, in fact; we shall learn from this storm, from whatever damage it has caused, and plan accordingly so that we shall improve our plight.’

As he spoke, the loudest and most violent crack of thunder tore through the skies, rattling the building and sending jagged blue sparks of electricity careering along the tops of the walls. Some of the villagers gasped, some cried out, and a sense of panic gripped them all. The atmosphere grew suddenly more heavy, the building more claustrophobic. It was as though the walls were closing in on them all, ensnaring them, trapping them as the storm prepared to do its worst.

‘’Tis Jupiter’s thunder,’ Annie Farrow said meekly, sitting close to Bridgette, as it bellowed and raged.

William looked over to the large wooden doors, still secured with a solid plank of wood holding them in place, and watched them begin to shudder as though they were being wrestled from outside, as if some miserable, relentless giant was wrenching and tugging them, trying to force them open. Seething and wild, its energy unrestrained, this mighty and ferocious thing would not be swayed, would not relinquish its terrible hold on Easthope until its grim work was complete.

‘William,’ Bridgette said, sounding terrified, clasping her daughter even more closely to her body.

‘Fret not,’ William told her, clasping her hand against his arm. ‘The barn will hold.’

She nodded. William knew she found his assurance as difficult to believe as he, but they both understood there was nothing else he could say. Still the doors shuddered and danced, the thunder roared and the gale blew in yet more lashing rain, resounding against the structure like hundreds of thousands of nails were being thrown against it, heaved by something colossal, something wrathful. Knowing there was nothing they could do but wait, the villagers remained huddled against the far end of the barn, some praying, some watching the doors and studying the roof with wide-eyed expressions of dread.

Perhaps an hour later, without any warning or indication that anything had changed, suddenly the doors tore open, each one flying away into the dark trees beyond as though nothing more than paper, twisting and turning out of sight. Several people screamed, William got to his feet and then, extraordinarily, no sooner had he taken one step towards the entrance, the night fell completely silent. The wind disappeared, the rain stopped hissing and, as they all stared towards the open doorway, a first glimmer of morning light showed itself above the oak and birch.

‘Is…is it over?’ asked Clemence Pagge, shakily getting to her feet, leaning against the wall for support. She bore the same tired, pale expression as the others, a guise William understood. It spoke of despair and fatigue, the trauma of adamantine, unshakable subjugation. It was as though all the hope William had wanted to bring them, the bright future they had all begun to recognise, had suddenly and malevolently been stolen from them, had been taken away and hidden in a place where they would never be able to replace it again. He knew that he had to speak, that he had to say something to quell their heartbreak.

‘I think it be so,’ William replied, moving cautiously towards the doorway, looking around the barn as he went. Just before he reached the entrance he turned to them.

‘Pray, let me remind thee that no storm can last forever and that, after every storm, there comes a calm. Look, look yonder and see for thyselves - the sun will smile once more and, amongst the darkness left over us by such a ravenous and untamed beast we shall indeed replace ourselves a new day. Be I all too aware that we are troubled, we are frightened. And I cannot speak an untruth to thee, cannot say there will not have been losses, that we shall hath forfeited something of what we love without any choice in the matter but, together, our lives shall once again return to the path we have set ourselves upon.’

Turning to the doorway, as the villagers nodded and breathed and tried their best to smile, William could barely believe his eyes. Almost half of the trees that had once encircled the large area of grass before him had been knocked askew, resting at strange angles against their more fortunate neighbours, while several of the other buildings, the smaller barns on either side of him and a handful of the houses to his right were completely destroyed, their wooden skeletons shattered.

‘What doest thou see?’ someone asked from inside the barn.

‘There hath,’ William said, still surveying the scene, ‘indeed been some damage, buildings lost, trees fallen..’

He halted for a few moments, then decided it would be best if he was the first to investigate further.

‘I shall leave thee for a short time,’ he said. ‘I shall look to see what else we may have lost, and I shall investigate alone, just in case there be further danger not yet revealed to us. Please, wouldst thou all linger here until my return? I shall be as quick as I can be.’

Without waiting for an answer he began walking, striding across the grass, heading for the main grouping of homes to his left and then on further, down towards the water, to the docks which had seen such busy trading and bartering but a few hours before. As he went, along the trail of destruction, past the shattered houses, a great sadness began to grow inside him. Animals lay dead all around, the cows and horses and chickens that had been allowed to roam free, never once attempting to get away from the village, had now been forced to make it their graves. Wooden farm machinery, tools and other equipment was scattered everywhere he looked, as were personal belongings, clothes and furniture, bowls and spoons.

As he approached the water’s edge he realised the storm surge had claimed a considerable area, flooding the ground and reaching sixty feet further inland than it had just hours before. The stone dock had been completely submerged, while the small huts that stood around them, and the vessels they employed for fishing and for travelling to other villages as they made their trades, had vanished. So much devastation, so much they had lost, and yet it was only when he reached the very edge of their new boundary that the most terrible sight of all confronted him. There, amongst the mud and rocks, twisted into the strangest positions, lay at least two dozen broken bodies.

‘Oh, no, no,’ William muttered, going to each of them, checking for any sign of life even though it was clear that all were dead.

There were Travet and Yate, Goodwyn and Salter, smeared in blood, arms and legs shattered, twisted at unbearable angles. Beyond them lay Cheyne and Leigh, then Elizabeth Donvers and her young daughter, Beatrice, still holding one another’s hands. As he moved amongst them William began to cry, the tears stinging his eyes as he examined each of the bodies in turn. Abell and Leverer were sprawled at the new shoreline, the water detained only by the low grassy verge that curved around the horror, shards of metal protruding from their necks as if the storm had thrown spears directly at them. Follywolle’s neck was not only broken but his head was completely turned around, while Phelip appeared to have had the bones in his arms smashed, from shoulder to wrist, fragments poking through the bloody wounds.

This isn’t right, William thought, trying to cover Margery Nele’s bare torso with what remained of her dress. These poor souls don’t look like people who have suffered the anger and spite of a terrible storm, that they had been picked up by the vicious gale and then dropped onto the ground again. No, this all appears to bear a much closer resemblance to murder, that each of them has been attacked and then left here as some kind of grisly memorial.

But who could have perpetrated such terrible acts? What could have committed such dreadful atrocities?

William shook his head as he carried on, following the fresh line of the ocean, replaceing yet more of the villagers, their bodies again showing signs that they had been tortured, that they had lost their lives not by the random will of the storm but at the hands of another.

After he had checked every single one of them, had closed their eyes - those, at least, whose eyes remained - and had covered them all with pieces of sack he recovered from a single, small wooden boat that had, amazingly, suffered no damage at all, he returned to the low grass verge.

Twenty-seven souls had been lost. Twenty-seven of the brave, trusting villagers who had followed William here twenty-seven years before, willing to join him in this adventure, this rebellion against their old, oppressed lives, now lay dead.

Twenty-seven…

William closed his eyes and considered the concomitance, the strange synchronicity, beginning to grow certain that this atrocity must have been committed by one of the villagers. It had to have been someone with such evil, such hatred in their heart, waiting for the opportunity to embark upon this terrible rampage, yet he could imagine one of them capable, one of them he did not trust. But it must have been someone he knew, someone he lived amongst, someone he had invited to join him in this new world.

Somewhere from the middle distance came the sound of a howling dog, as if decrying the massacre, lamenting all those who had been lost. William, too, began to cry once more, for all those who had given so much and who now lay lifeless around him, and for those who were, as yet, unaware of the terrible price the night had cost them.