1 The Village
My ability to report on eerie matters in the far flung corners of the kingdom was greatly enhanced when I departed London to take up employment with the Liverpool Dockyard Police. This tale of the wilds of Cheshire which I will relate to members of the Club, including our esteemed president, will, I think, be of the greatest interest to all Pickmanites present.
My quondam subordinate, Police Constable Hector McAndrew, languishes in Lancaster County Asylum, ranting frantically of lands under the wave and squamous mermaids. I fear that I am in some way responsible for his sorry plight, since it was I, in my position as Commissioner of the Liverpool Dockyards Police Force, who despatched him to that fishing village whence came he by the mental aberration that plagues him still. Since McAndrew’s sinister interlude on the Cheshire coast is not without elements of grotesquerie and the bizarre, I have thought fit to report to you on the matter, outlining his supposed experiences.
You may or may not be aware that the Cheshire coast is infested by wreckers of notable cruelty and mercilessness, far worse than those for whom the counties of Cornwall and Devonshire are notorious. Those latter prey upon the Bristol traffic; these of Cheshire wax fat upon the wrecks of ships sailing into or out of Liverpool, second city of empire. Due to the laxity of ship owners in ensuring that vessels are subjected to costly maintenance, not to mention the storms that assail the coast in wintertime, it is seldom necessary for the wreckers to lure vessels onto the rocks using the false lights employed by their Cornish counterparts.
Entire families have forsaken their grandfather’s profession of fisherman or crofter to thrive by preying upon wrecks. This occupation is in direct contravention of the 26 Geo. II, which states that plundering a vessel in distress (whether wreck or no wreck) is felony without benefit of clergy, punishable by death by hanging. However, without hard evidence it is a difficult matter to bring any such felon to trial. So it was that I despatched McAndrew, in the unlikely guise of a poet seeking inspiration, to dwell in a cottage in the tiny fishing village of Hoose, near the Hoyle Lake, on the Cheshire coast.
According to his first report, which I received by post shortly after his arrival in the village, he rented a room in a thatched dwelling house of whitewashed sandstone belonging to one Broster, a gangling, angular, surly peasant with an unhealthy cast to his skin and severe alopecia not wholly concealed by a broad brimmed hat, who lived almost alone in
the decaying cottage, attended to only by his daughter, Polly.
“We’re reet grateful to take on a lodger, sir,” he explained to my agent. “Since me wife and me eldest were lost to th’ sea, I con fish nay longer. I would be on th’parish, sir, or in th’ workhouse, without thy money and th’elp o’ moi daughter.”
And yet there was a sullenness to his tone and a look to his watery eye that implied McAndrew’s presence, if not his money, was distinctly unwelcome.
“I seek inspiration amidst this bucolic setting,” McAndrew explained. My agent was a genial Scot with a dry sense of humour, and I believe that his guise of wandering poet, in the mould of the late Lord Byron, was his own notion. Before seeking employment with the Liverpool Dock Police he was a government spy, and had infiltrated such seditious groups as the Luddites and the Blanketeers. He was no stranger to subterfuge.
A cursory examination of the cottage, which was surprisingly well furnished for a poor fisherman’s dwelling, seemed to belie Broster’s protestations of poverty. Sundry items of mismatched furniture and garniture adorned the place, much of it betraying signs of having spent time in the sea, and McAndrew surmised that they had been cast up on the shore, if not in fact plundered from wrecks. Yet amidst that strange setting, Miss Polly Broster was a jewel, as winsome a coquette as any Parisian belle.
“I’ll ’elp ’ee unpack, sir,” she said, assisting McAndrew with his luggage, taking it through into the room he was renting.
In his report McAndrew waxes lyrical on describing the young lady, and I fear that he was smitten by her rustic charms. A pleasant spoken Cheshire girl, Miss Broster was a delightful creature with remarkably big, pretty eyes, lacking the ill looks or rank, fishy odour of her father; buxom and forward, with nice tricks of manners, sidelong looks, and a laugh as infectious as the smallpox. McAndrew stood talking with her some while after unpacking, and I gather from his words that he found her most appealing, a stark contrast with her surly parent.
However, she had her work to attend to, going by what she obliquely referred to as ‘shanks’ pony’ (i.e. walking) to fetch water from a nearby well. McAndrew assisted her, accompanying the girl on a perambulation of the sand hills that line the coast. These, a veritable range of sizeable dunes, can also be seen upon the Mersey shore, and are said to have appeared in the space of one night after a storm many years gone.
A strange landscape, its sparse acres are sandy and its slopes fringed with star grass. Amidst this herbage and the towering dunes a wanderer may encounter small cottages, dwarfed by their environs, with fishing nets drying outside to show the avowed pursuit of the inhabitants. In such a barren setting farming would seem to be of limited facility, apart from the grazing of livestock.
The wind sighed mournfully amongst the grass and blew grit into McAndrew’s eyes. Wading to the top of one sandhill, he looked out upon that anchorage they call the Hoyle Lake. Here ships rode at anchor. Miss Broster was able to name several of them, and their captains, since they were habitués of the region, it being much frequented by ships awaiting the turn of the tide, not to mention the fishing vessels of her neighbours and kinsmen. Further off, the grey waters of Liverpool Bay extended amidst sandbanks and reefs before commingling with those of the Irish Sea.
On one hand, the smokes and fogs of Liverpool tainted the air. In the opposite direction, the peaks of the Welsh hills stood out starkly against blue skies, while closer by a small island stood off from the shore. Looking towards Liverpool again with some longing, McAndrew remarked a lighthouse a mile or two off, one of several along the coast, and beyond it a curious octagonal tower. Miss Broster identified the latter as Mockbeggar Hall.
Before he could learn the derivation of this quaint sobriquet, McAndrew stubbed his toe on something almost wholly buried in the sand and fell flat. Stifling curses, he allowed Miss Broster to help him hobbling to a place of rest on a cast-up ship’s timber, beseeching the girl to determine the nature of his stumbling block. To his surprise, the girl showed little inclination to return to the scene of his downfall, but rather urged him to hurry home with the buckets once the pain from his toe subsided.
It was then that McAndrew noted a gig from one of the ships drawing ashore, rowed by a pack of villainous looking sailors. He would have remained behind to watch their progress but the girl grew distraught and he permitted her to lead him back to the cottage.
During his brief acquaintance with the sand buried obstacle, McAndrew had gained the impression that it might be a keg, of the kind that contains rum or brandy. This notion preyed upon his mind, and on returning he quizzed Broster about the discovery. The fisherman grew more than usually sullen, going as far as to warn McAndrew off.
“I don’t doubt,” said the fisherman morosely, “that there were a reason for what ’ee found to be where ’ee found it. Nor do I doubt that little good will come o’ fowk poking their noses into what is o’ nay concern to ’em.”
Fearing that if he asked further questions Broster would suspect the true nature of his work, McAndrew made no more inquiries, but instead spoke at length of the beauties of nature he had witnessed while walking with Miss Broster, using tones of rapture such as he supposed a poet might adopt. Broster scowled and directed his daughter to ladle out the ‘tater hash’, a hodgepodge of potatoes and rabbit that was their evening meal, washed down with a spiced homebrewed ale. After several draughts of the latter, Broster grew quarrelsome, and his daughter enjoined upon McAndrew to seek his bed. Her father would be himself in the morning, she explained.
McAndrew lay abed that night in his rented room with no intention of sleeping. When certain that Broster and his daughter had both gone to their own beds, and after a suitable space had passed to ensure they slept, he slipped from his bed and dressed himself. As silently as any Red Indian he departed the cottage, leaving the door on the ‘sneck’ (latch) and made his way across the sandhills, following the same winding path by which the girl had taken him during the day.
It was an eerie journey, illumined by the uncanny glow of the coastal lighthouses and a gibbous moon that limned the sandhills’ flanks with silver. The night silence was broken only by the occasional croaking of a natterjack toad. Reaching the sandhill where he had stubbed his toe, he sought cover behind a tuffet of star grass.
Several dark figures had gathered round the same spot, wielding spades and digging deep. McAndrew saw they were unearthing several objects that resembled kegs. In his eagerness to see more clearly this scene of moonlit skulduggery, he must have dislodged a pebble from amongst the grass for it went skittering away down the side of the dune. Whereupon the men started, seized their loot, and shambling, hopping, and leaping, vanished in different directions amongst the sandhills. Some even sought refuge in the spreading waters of the Hoyle Lake.
2 The Sunken Forest
McAndrew remained where he was. The exodus had been so rapid, it had passed like a dream. The sandhills were deserted under the light of the moon, as if no one had been there. He rose, and went to investigate. Quite a sizeable excavation had been dug, but there was no indication of what had lain in it. In their flight, the men, smugglers, wreckers or whatever they had been, had taken their loot with them. It would be dangerous to remain here, deserted though it seemed to be. He hurried away.
Returning to Broster’s cottage some while later, he slipped within and found his own room where he undressed in the darkness and then slid himself between cold sheets. His mind was a whirl of surmise and it took him some time to fall asleep.
In the morning, after breakfast, McAndrew posted his report to me, then borrowed a sturdy nag of Broster’s and rode with the sandhills on his right hand and the mudflats and sandbanks on his left. The sea was busy with shipping, but dark clouds surged on the horizon and he disliked the look of the weather.
The tide was out, and as he galloped along the strand he saw what resembled the stumps of trees in the sand below the highwater mark, as if a whole forest had been felled ere it was inundated. Passing the lighthouse, he crossed the sandhills to see meadows and marshes stretching away in the direction of two low ranges of hills. Another lighthouse was visible on the closest of these prominences.
The octagonal tower was his destination. As he drew closer, he saw that Mockbeggar Hall stood in its own grounds in the lee of the sandhills, surrounded by several outbuildings and lawns with ornamental flowerbeds, a far cry from the meagre dwellings he had hitherto seen. This, he told himself, must be the home of a gentleman. Dismounting and flinging the reins to the stable-boy who appeared from an outbuilding, he approached the door and rang the bell.
After handing his visiting card to the butler who answered, he was shown through into a library. He was inspecting a carved piece of wood on one wall, on which someone had inscribed the enigmatic words From Birkinheven unto Hilbre / A squirrel might leape from tree to tree, when the door was opened. A woman’s voice said, “In the old days this was forest as far as the eye could see.”
He turned to see an elderly lady leaning on a stick. She entered, and sat down on a chair by the fireplace.
“You may sit,” she added graciously, and McAndrew did as he was bidden. Introducing herself as Mrs Boode and welcoming him to Mockbeggar Hall, she added, “We seldom have visitors at this time of year, Mr McAndrew. May I ask what brings you to this coast?”
“I am a poet,” McAndrew said, “and I am staying in a nearby cottage while I seek inspiration amongst scenes of unspoilt nature. I live in Liverpool, and the city’s hurly-burly is not conducive to poesy.”
“Indeed,” said Mrs Boode. “I fear your work has yet to come my way. How may I help you?” She rang for the maid and drinks were served.
“You mentioned a forest,” McAndrew said obliquely. “On my ride here I went along the shore. It was low tide, and I seemed to see tree stumps going out a long way, vanishing into the sea itself.”
“This coastline is eroding at a rapid rate,” Mrs Boode said. “The old rhyme you were reading refers to a forest that once stretched from what is now called Birkenhead, newly a scene of the most ardent industry, to Hilbre, the small island off the coast. Once it was not an island, and land stretched much further. Sometimes, when there has been a storm and the tide is low, whole villages have appeared from the sand and mud, whose lanes show the ruts of wheel tracks and the prints of boots of a kind worn hundreds of years ago. I have heard that if you swim a short way out from the shore due north of the nearby lighthouse, it is possible to find gravestones beneath the water, as if some churchyard stood there at one time, since flooded. Amongst the tree stumps of the forest you saw have been found the antlers of Irish elk and other extinct creatures. Furthermore the wood has become stone, so it must be very old. This library is ornamented with petrified wood taken from the forest.”
“How very interesting,” said McAndrew politely.
“Oh, the vicinity is rich in folklore,” Mrs Boode added with a laugh. “Some say that it was on this shoreline that King Canute bade the sea ‘come not hither nor wet the sole of my foot’, and a mermaid is said to appear by the so-called Mermaid Stones nearby when the moon is full. The local people are most inventive in their legends.”
“I am staying with some of them,” McAndrew commented, “a fisherman named Broster and his fair daughter.”
“I fear I have not made his acquaintance,” said Mrs Boode a little frostily. “I would counsel you to be wary of the natives. In my youth I went to live with my husband on his plantation in the West Indies, when pirates were still not unknown in those waters, and yet it is the denizens of the Cheshire coast who I find to be the most rapacious and cruel saltwater thieves.”
“I believe I read something to that effect in the Liverpool Mercury,” said McAndrew airily. “Are they truly more black hearted villains than the likes of Calico Jack and Captain Morgan?”
“They are wreckers, Mr McAndrew,” said the old lady. “During winter storms, whenever a ship founders off this coast, the people of all the neighbouring villages come down to seize what they can take a hold of. By ancient custom, they maintain that a man may claim anything washed up from the wreck if he puts his foot on it and declares ‘This is mine.’ Anything can be claimed—as long as the owner is dead. And if he isn’t…” The pause gave sinister emphasis to her words. “I have done what I can to ameliorate the savagery of my neighbours. Whenever a ship has been wrecked, I have done all I could out of Christian charity to see that the crews were rescued and given every comfort in my home. I am cordially loathed and detested as a busybody by villagers all along the coast, but I have no fear of them.”
After taking his leave of the hospitable old lady, McAndrew mounted his horse again and continued his ride along the shore. From time to time he found cottages or small villages whose inhabitants watched his passing with eyes that glittered, he now fancied, with a murderous menace and avarice. Mrs Boode’s words only confirmed what he already knew, what I myself had told him when I sent him on his mission. But otherwise his peregrinations that day were fruitless.
It was growing dark when he rode back towards the village of Hoose. The wind blew amongst the star grass again, but it was growing to an angry howl, lashing up the surging foam of the sea, and all he could hear otherwise was the thudding of his nag’s hoofs on the sand. The glow from the nearest lighthouse was his only source of illumination when he detected a sound of stealthy movement from all around him.
Dark figures appeared from the sandhills, converging silently on him and his plodding horse. A clammy hand snatched his ankle, another the tail of his coat, and he was dragged from the saddle. Fists and feet punched and kicked him, and a man struck at him with a heavy stick. He fought desperately against his unseen assailants, hearing his nag whinny as she galloped away.
3 The Storm
“Knock the spy on the sconce and fling ’im in th’ wayter,” one of his assailants growled.
“Wait!” cried another. “Look out t’ sea! T’ sea, mon! To sea!”
The storm was growing. McAndrew saw the dark figures gazing out to sea, where a ship was battered by the howling winds. She was an Irish packet ship by her lines, carrying mail and passengers to Dublin, and he could see her heeling over as her mast shook and trembled in the storm wind and the crew struggled to lower the mainsail. With a crack that was audible even ashore, the mast snapped and vanished overboard.
Now with only mizzen and bowsprit, the ship was driven towards the sandbanks. Excitedly, voraciously, the wreckers began running towards the water, McAndrew forgotten in the heat of the moment. One man went sprinting up the strand, as if bearing a message. Taking this as his cue, my man fled.
He knew, as he floundered over the sandhills, that the wind was growing, that it would batter the coast, that ships would be driven onto the sandbanks and the shore itself. He knew that if things ran true to form the local villagers would come down to the strand to seize whatever they could get their hands on. He should be on hand to witness it, or else he should send for help. If he returned to Mrs Boode, perhaps word could be sent to Liverpool and the Dock Police.
But he was dazed and battered from the fight. He needed a mount if he was to reach Mockbeggar Hall in time, and the only horse available to him had galloped away into the night. He had a shrewd suspicion, however, that he knew where she would be making for, and so he turned his steps in that direction. Towards Hoose.
When at last he saw the lights of the village amidst the dark shadows of the sandhills, the storm wind was reaching its height. He stumbled blindly, arms bent to shelter his face from the stinging grains. When he found his booted feet clattering on cobblestones he lowered his arms to find the village a scene of the utmost fervour and excitement.
Men carrying lanterns crowded the narrow lanes, accompanying other men and even women and children with handcarts or barrows or horses or asses; every means available for transporting ill gotten gains. They were moving en masse in the direction of the coast. McAndrew stood in their path, staring at them in a daze.
“Out o’ th’ road, mon!” someone yelled, and he staggered into the shelter of a thatched cottage as the villagers flooded past.
Seeing Broster and his daughter among this rout, the former leading his lost nag, McAndrew grabbed the man’s arm.
“What’s happening?” he shouted.
The good folk of Hoose were singing as they eagerly traversed the few sandy acres leading down to shore. “Looks loike there’ll be a wreck afore mornin’,” Broster shouted back, not breaking step so McAndrew was forced to follow him. “Thou’d best be gaddin’ ’ome. Bain’t for th’ likes o’ ’ee.”
“We was afeard for ’ee when th’owd nag come back without ’ee,” said Polly pertly. “Did she throw ’ee?”
“You mean to plunder the vessel?” McAndrew cried, not heeding the girl.
“Only if she founders,” said Broster. “If not, there’ll still be rich pickin’s alung th’ strond.”
“You can’t take your daughter out in this storm,” said McAndrew. “Or with this gang of villains.”
“Oi towd ’ee,” said Broster. “Gad back to th’ouse. Dur’s on th’ sneck. Don’t ’ee come wi’ us.”
“I’ll come with you,” said McAndrew, suddenly inspired. “You’ll need help carrying your booty back home.”
Broster looked at him in surprise, studying him as if he saw a stranger, rather than his lodger. “That be reet good o’ ’ee, sir,” he said. “Never thought a poet like ’ee would ’elp us. Too
like a mardy choild, beggin’ thoi pardon, sir.”
By the time they reached the shore near where McAndrew had been ambushed, fires had been lit in the lee of the sandhills and their sporadic light shed illumination on a ghastly scene. The packet ship had foundered some little way off shore; its mast and rigging was all that could be seen jutting from the turbulent water, but the strand was strewn with a litter of goods from its hold. To McAndrew’s horror, he saw the bodies of crewmen and passengers mingled with the flotsam and jetsam.
Already people from the surrounding villages had descended upon the shore and were busy hauling items of cargo up out of the water. McAndrew saw men and women carrying timber, bales, boxes, and sundry other items cast up by the foaming wave. Little remained for the Hoose folk when they got there. Broster fell to cursing at this dearth, but mercifully the roaring of the wind obscured his oaths.
McAndrew saw three dark, drenched shapes clamber up out of the surf, crawling on hands and knees as the wind battered at them. Several men approached, and for a moment McAndrew rejoiced, thinking they would become the castaways’ saviours, but it was not to be. On encountering a pair of ill shod feet, the first of the escapees looked up. A man raised a cudgel, it swooped down and the castaway fell flat in the surf, a dark stain blotting the water.
Another man scrambled to his feet and began to flounder away, but the men followed him, one seizing him by the legs, another belabouring him with his cudgel until he moved no longer. The third castaway got as far as the sand before the mob beat him and flung him back into the water.
“We con keep whatever we foind,” Broster explained to the horrified McAndrew, “as lung as th’ mon who owned it be dead. ’ee shouldn’t have come,” he added. “This bain’t for th’ likes o’ ’ee.”
“Is it for the likes of your daughter, man?” McAndrew demanded harshly. “What kind of example are you giving her?”
“Polly’s a good girl,” said Broster. “Not soft gutted like some Oi could mention. What’s that ye’ve found, lass?”
Polly looked up from her inspection of a drowned woman’s body. The clothes, though thoroughly drenched, were costly and in the height of fashion. The face was one of remarkable beauty, and long tresses floated around her half sunk head like seaweed. A ring glittered on one finger and earrings dangled from the corpse’s earlobes.
“Looks loike gowd, feyther,” she said with an impish grin. “’ee take th’ ring and Oi’ll have th’ earrings.”
McAndrew was shocked. “You see how your upbringing of her has blighted the girl’s morals?” he stormed. “If her mother were still here…”
“If ’er mayther were still on droi lond,” said Broster, “she wouldn’t be wasting toime loike this.” He produced his knife as if to cut off the finger, ring and all.
McAndrew grappled with him, seizing his knife hand. “In the name of Christian charity!” he exhorted the fisherman.
Broster thrust him aside. In his weakened state, McAndrew was helpless, and he landed painfully on his side in the wet sand.
Standing over him, Broster laughed. “’ee prate to me o’ Christian charity!” he yelled. “But ’oo is it led us ’ere but th’ parson?” He indicated a well dressed man who was loading an ass with valuables cast up by the waves, and McAndrew saw that this was indeed a man of the cloth.
Broster seized the finger of the dead girl and began to saw through flesh and bone. Morbidly fascinated, McAndrew watched the grisly process, sickened by what he saw. All around, the strand was a scene of bacchanal as the wreckers caroused, singing ‘Admiral Benbow’ and ‘Spanish Ladies’ while they harvested the bounty of the sea. A keg of rum had been hacked open with an axe and a group of men was passing it from mouth to thirsty mouth. McAndrew saw the man Broster had called parson drinking deep as he held the keg precariously to his lips.
With a chuckle, Broster lifted up the severed finger. One end was bloody, the other was graced with an elegantly manicured fingernail. In its middle was the ring, a band of gold containing a gem that resembled a ruby in the fitful firelight. He stripped it from the finger, consigned the latter to the yeasty waves, then slipped the ring on. He held it up and examined it gleefully in the firelight.
“Feyther,” grumbled Polly, tugging at the corpse’s earrings, “’ow do Oi get these off?”
“Do as thoi mayther would ’ave done,” said Broster.
And Polly knelt down beside the body, the wet skirt of her gown clinging scandalously to her slender legs. For a wild moment McAndrew thought she was kissing the corpse goodnight. Then she lifted her head and he almost vomited, seeing the trickle of blood run down her lip. In one triumphant hand she held an earring, which she had torn away from the corpse’s earlobe with her own teeth.
4 Beneath the Wave
McAndrew awoke with a dry mouth. He was gazing up at a sky in which drifted early morning clouds, and seemed to be lying in the sand. Turning his head confusedly, he saw the tide was out, a long way out. He was very cold.
When he sat up, his clothes moved stiffly on his skin. They had partly dried out on his body as he slept but still retained moisture. Salt was crusted thick on them. He broke off in a fit of coughing. He had no recollection of falling asleep.
To one side of him were the sandhills, to the other the beach stretched as far as the distant sea, which glimmered bluely on the horizon. Over the dunes the morning sun was rising. A few broken fragments of wood lay scattered on the churned up sand. Black circles showed where fires had blazed last night, and here a few embers still glowed. In the near distance, the broken timbers of a ship lay half sunk in the sand.
Crawling nearer to one of the patches of ash, he found enough unburnt wood and sufficient embers to start a new fire. Once it was burning merrily, he stripped off his still wet clothes and propped them up on sticks by the fire. Clad only in his drawers and his shirt he sat waiting for his clothes to dry. What had happened?
He remembered the revelling wreckers, his fight with Broster, the horrifying scenes that ensued. Then all was a blank. Had he fallen asleep where he lay? It was the only explanation. And then the wreckers had all returned to their dwelling houses. As soon as his clothes were dry, he would make his way back to Liverpool and file his report.
He heard laughter like the mocking call of a gull. Turning, he saw, atop a sandhill, Polly, her long hair, her gown, and her shawl all fluttering in the breeze. She ran down the side of the dune as barefoot as any gypsy wench.
“There ’ee are!” she said. “Feyther thought Oi would foind ’ee here. We lost ’ee in th’ festerment last neet.”
McAndrew, like most Scotchmen, was prudish to a fault, and felt mortified to appear before a young woman in only his shirt. But what he remembered of the night before filled him with righteous wrath.
“You have been led astray, Miss Broster,” he said severely. “Your father, all the other villagers, they have led you into sin. I must take you away from here, shield you from further temptation.”
She laughed, gazing down at him. “Mr McAndrew, Mr McAndrew,” she chided. “Oi could not leave moi village. We are aw one family in ’oose. Aw th’ same, Oi miss Mayther, ond moi brother.” Brightly, she added, “Feyther says it is toime ’ee met Mayther.”
McAndrew gazed sadly at her. “Miss Broster,” he said awkwardly, “your mother was lost at sea long ago, your brother with her. I will never have the privilege of meeting that good lady.”
“O’ course ’ee will!” she said eagerly, seizing his hand. “Come wi’ me. We’ll go to see Mayther.”
Protesting, he allowed himself to be hauled to his feet, but withdrew his hand from her grasp. “Miss Broster,” he remonstrated, “I must be going…”
“Not yet!” she insisted. “Oi must take ’ee to see Mayther. Come on! Oi’ll race ’ee.” She ran across the sands in the direction of the distant surf.
McAndrew stood by the little fire, gazing anxiously after her. What did she mean to do? He tested his clothes again, but they were still wet. Hoping no one else was abroad on this cold morning, he broke into a run, following the line of footprints Polly had left in the deep, rippling sand.
Soon his shoes, the leather already thick with saltwater, became unwearable, and he paused to unbuckle them. Once he had done so he looked up. Polly was but a tiny dot on the horizon. Gasping for breath, feet bare, he shambled after the girl. He found her shawl lying half in and half out of a tidal pool. Picking it up, he stared at it in bewilderment, then ran on. Further along he found her cap. Then her gown, discarded beside a spot where her footprints had halted a while. When the marge of the sea became more distinct he saw that she stood a little way out into the water, with the foam rushing around her ankles. She wore only a chemise.
“Miss Broster, I must beg you to come away from the water,” he said uncomfortably. “And I insist you put your clothes back on!” He placed them all in a neat pile by the water’s edge.
“They’ll only get in th’ road when we gad to visit Mayther,” said the girl, and to his horror, she reached down and pulled the chemise up over her head. “Oi see thee come ready,” she added, “but thou’d be well instructed to doff thoi undergarments. Follow me!” She turned and waded further out, then as the water began to reach her waist, dived as sleekly as any otter.
It is at this point that Constable McAndrew’s report grows unreliable, for he maintains that in that flash of bare flesh he saw for the first time that her creamy skin was freckled with a multiplicity of tiny, dark green scales. Despite this uncanny vision, he feared for her life. It was cold and the sea would be icy. Struggling out of his shirt he ran after her, wallowing through the surf and diving into the water. At first he saw nothing under the surface but rising bubbles and a distant green glow. Then she was there, naked as the day she was born, her legs threshing like flippers. She seized his hand, and together they swam through the green depths.
The water was warmer than he had anticipated, and the wintry sun danced above them as she led him deeper. Now, extending across the sandy sea floor as far as he could see, he saw the stumps of trees like those he had noticed closer to the shore. The pair swam over the felled forest, passing occasional wrecks, ships of ancient design; an Elizabethan brigantine here, a Viking longship there, even a quinquereme, and a curraugh of the ancient Irish lay half shrouded in sand and festooned with weed. It must be noted that he had no trouble breathing during a lengthy period submerged, but such fantasies are to be expected from the ravings of madmen.
Next he glimpsed drowned buildings. Medieval houses of wattle and daub through which swam dog fish, cod, pollack, even a conger eel. Beyond the medieval houses squatted mud huts such as the Saxons dwelt in. Beyond them he says he saw half toppled towers built of drystone like the brochs that can still be seen in many parts of McAndrew’s ‘ain countrie’.
Amidst this prehistoric city lurked a broch larger than the rest. Out of it swam fishlike forms with bulging eyes and squamous skin, yet shaped uncommonly like men, if deformed and of abysmally savage type. And something else lurked inside the broch. Something Polly called Mother. She urged him to swim under the stone arch.
At the mere sight of that tentacular horror, McAndrew broke frenziedly free from the girl’s grasp, shuddering in fear. She reached out to seize him but succeeded only in slashing him across the face with a hand that now was sharp with talons. His last sight of her revealed the disappointment written upon her green hued face as he began to swim, swim, swim desperately for the surface. Shoals of fishlike men pursued him avidly through forests of weed, and he fled them for a nightmarishly long space of time…
The next he remembers is waking up in a bed between crisp, starched sheets, with Mrs Boode’s concerned face peering down at him. He was shivering with cold. A smartly dressed maid helped him to sip from a hot drink and he coughed violently.
“Mrs Boode!” he cried. “Madam, what am I doing here? Is this Mockbeggar Hall?”
“Why, yes, Mr McAndrew,” she said, “or should I say constable?” Seeing his bewilderment, she added, “You have spoken a deal in your sleep. Much of it I could not understand, but now I know that you are employed by the Liverpool Dock Police. You were found cast up on the shore after high tide and my servants brought you in, fearing for your life. There was a storm last night and at least one ship went down. I fear the wreckers claimed the lives of those wretches who were spared by the sea. But how did you come to be in the water yourself?”
Had it all been a dream? It must have been, he told himself, for it had been low tide when he followed the girl into the water. He felt a twinge of pain from his face. Reaching up with a tentative hand, he encountered the linen of a dressing.
“You seemed to have been attacked by something,” Mrs Boode informed him. “Something that left four slash marks like the claw marks of some large creature. The sea can do strange things to a man’s body.”
Epilogue
When he was brought back to Liverpool McAndrew was sufficiently compos mentis to write down what he had seen in an official report. But what I read gave me no qualms to call in an alienist of my acquaintance, and after many efforts to calm the madman, he was committed to Lancaster County Asylum.
No arrests were made amongst the villagers of Hoose, neither Broster nor his compadres were hanged at Gallows Hill as they so richly deserve, for no judge would listen to evidence provided by a man who has been condemned to the madhouse. But I am determined that one day we will break these wreckers, these land pirates who stole from me one of my most able officers by driving him out of his wits. The Lord grant that I live to see that day!