The Tratthen Bow – Conclusion
A medieval French mercenary; a Victorian Chinese girl; a thing from the past is burned; signs of an early frost; the flight of an arrow comes around full circle.
[Author note: Contains the image of a dead fox]
“Here's the fellow,” said Ainslie, the embodiment of a dishevelled antiquarian, his unironed pale-blue shirt tucked into a pair of belted, brown corduroys. The glassy reflection of his round spectacles hovered over the spread pages of a large hardback book, which he held open on his palm. His strong librarian fingers stretched like knotted tree roots from one side of the binding, across the subdued cherry-red leather of the worn cover. He was standing almost at the top of a wooden stepladder where he cast a faint wavering shadow over the shop floor.
He closed the book, sandwiching the index finger on his right hand in-between the low swell of the displaced pages. Gray reached out to steady the wobbling A-frame as the shopkeeper backed down the wooden steps. At the bottom, he turned and laid the book almost flat on a nearby table, the front cover raised a few degrees by the spine of a neighbouring volume.
A bordered sketch of a serpentine creature – a sea monster with the head of a pike – filled the left-hand page. The drawing – a reproduction – was clearly much older than the book, which Gray assumed must have been published sometime during the last century.
“That's Aubrochet,” said Ainslie. “He was French solider in the middle ages. A mercenary most likely. He fell in battle. We don't know which one, but it would have occurred in the vicinity of the River Tratthen. He went into the water, no doubt mortally wounded. It was there that he encountered the Umbra – the local river deity for that long stretch – and a deal was made. He became the emissary of the Tratthen Umbra – it's servant on dry land.”
Absently he pursed his lips, lightly pulling them apart while they were still puckered, making a punctured kissing sound.
“There are some who believe these deals are done many years before, and that the death and ensuing transformation is payment. That would actually make more sense, though opinion leans strongly in the opposite direction.”
“Do they always come out like that?” said Gray.
Ainslie glanced down at the drawing.
“They tend towards bestial forms – either entirely animal or chimeric. Aubrochet was rather active in his time. You've heard of the Battle of Faberford Bridge?”
Gray nodded.
“Around two-hundred men slaughtered,” said Ainslee. His finger traced a meandering line down the page. “In the history books, it is framed as an ambush by a force assembled by Lord Alldritt. As if any man could inflict such terrible injuries as were descibed by those who were sent to gather the pieces.
“After that, things settled down for a couple of centuries. Aubrochet reached the end of his agreed upon term and was succeeded by Chiaohuli – the dripping vixen. That happened sometime during the late 1800s. It's hard to give exact dates. It's not like there is a coronation.
“Now, we know more about her. She was descended from Chinese immigrants. They left London and lived and worked on the Tratthen, which was where her father drowned her. I hear through the grapevine she's either going on is gone. There will be a new emissary in her place.”
He turned away from the book, and leaned with the small of his back pressed against the edge of the table.
“It's a strange business, when you consider how insular the river cults are and always have been. It's a religion passed down through family trees; more of a vocation really. For some reason that all flies out the window when it comes to picking emissaries. They are exclusively outsiders. I have often thought it is done to preserve a state of independence. To maintain a measure of distance between an umbra and its community.”
Gray perched with his buttocks partly resting on one of the lower slender steps of the wooden ladder.
“What about if someone was in the cult, but then renounced their ties with it and went into exile? Could they become an emissary?”
“I'm not so sure that you can walk away. The short answer is that it’s hard to tell when you don't know the full extent of the rule, or who is enforcing it.”
“Say, for argument's sake, that it did happen. Would that be a decision made by an umbra or is more likely to be a power play by the community; to squeeze a bit more influence by putting one of their own in the role?”
“As I said, it's hard to say without knowing the rule. I will tell you one thing. An emissary doesn't come into existence without an entire box of eggs being broken. It takes energy to transform the human vessel. That requires additional human sacrifice; bloody grist to the mill...”
Ainslee glanced around the shop at the books that were piled-up in stacks alongside the semi-unpacked boxes.
“...That's what the occult amounts to when you boil it down to its essence: The transference of energy in unusual directions.”
“I haven't seen you around here before,” said Gray. “Are you just setting up?”
“We are itinerant. When the rent gets too steep in one place, we pack up and move to new digs. We have loyal customers who will ferret us out wherever we go. Actually we've been in this unit before. It still has some of the old shelving we put up.”
“You say we.”
Ainslee smiled to himself with closed eyes.
“My partner, Derek. He passed away a few years ago. We still communicate.”
On the pavement outside the shop, Gray checked his phone. There were several missed calls, all from the same number.
He hit redial. Standing with his back to the busy road, he stared past his ample reflection in the window of bakery, while he waited for an answer. A voice broke thorough abruptly, mid-ring:
“Andy?”
“Alright John, is there a problem?”
“Just giving you a heads-up. The police were round your gaff earlier.”
“I am the police.”
“Yeah, well, when you weren't in they came round to mine. You're wanted for arson. They say you burned down a pub.”
“When was that supposed to have happened?”
“Last night, they said.”
“Last night I was in the middle of the countryside where my colleagues dropped me off. They know exactly where I was.”
“Yeah, well, look, there was someone in the pub when it burned down. He didn't make it. Look, Andy you should come in and get ahead of this, before they send out the dogs.”
“Cheers mate. Thanks for the update.”
Gray had hung up the phone. He took out the simcard and ground it under his heel. In a nearby alleyway he stamped on the handset a couple of times, then threw it into some bushes.
Wendy Elvidge's barge was gone. The corrugated hulk of the derelict factory-shed loomed over the massed silhouette of its own wreckage, that cluttered the dark, shallow water of the partitioned river.
Gray returned to his car and drove to Garmead.
A damp, musty odour lingered in the air, like the pungent aftermath of a recent flood. He wandered through the old village. In the narrow front garden of a small house, with off-white walls, Philip Alletne was manhandling part of a glass cold frame into position over a flowerbed.
“Good morning, Mr Gray,” he called. “Have you come to meet with your arrow?”
Gray crossed over the road.
“It's afternoon.”
“I'm getting ahead of the frost,” said Alletne, rising to his feet.
Gray rubbed his reddened fingers together.
“How come it's so cold here?”
“Weather anomalies are a common factor around many of our rituals.”
I thought that you lived in that big house on the other side of the village.”
“The majoirty of the properties in Garmead are in communal ownership,” said Alletne dismissively, as if the matter was of negligible concern. “I hear you are a wanted man, Mr Gray. Where will you go? Forward or back?”
Gray turned away without answering. He followed the narrow lane out of the village, quickening his pace until the houses on either side were replaced by tall hedgerows and he relaxed and slowed down. Shortly after his first leaf-dappled glimpse of the stone hump of Faberford Bridge, he caught sight of something lying still and on its side at the edge of the road. When he got closer, he saw that it was the stiffened body of a fox, recently dead, dripping wet, as if, with it's last ounce of strength, it had hauled itself out of the river and onto dry land. The premature evensong of a blackbird threaded its way through the breeze-blown foliage, as wearily he stepped over the lifeless threshold.
The bird was perched where he assumed it would be, on the compressed apex of the bridge, facing the downstream current. Its untimely twilight song ceased as Gray approached. It hopped around on the motored stone, fixing him with a pair of dark, yellow-ringed eyes. Its yellow beak opened and closed, emitting a succession of strained, high-pitched warbles that seemed to penetrate his soul. He felt suddenly removed from the conventions of time and physical geometry. The dark orange void of the bird's open throat began to grow larger as if he was being drawn towards it, until it filled his vision and he could see nothing else.
Sorry to be so non-commenting, Sam. I love reading your comments on the Kureishi substack. Sometimes the fiction is harder for me right now- I have an allergy to fiction at the moment. Tried to listen to Shadow of the Wind, the "international best seller," and it made me feel sick. So I feel bad not commenting but my comments would not be relevant. Reading you, though...