On Beulah Height
So the inevitable had happened and the valley had changed. Beyond recognition? Possibly. Beyond redemption? Probably. In one sense it was wilder now than before, because human beings no longer lived and worked here.
But the stamp of man’s presence was visible beyond disguise in the shape of the long curve of the dam wall.
Nature, though, is a tough cookie. Through his art man tries to perfect her, and through his science to control her. But always she will shrug her shoulders and be herself again.
So here it was, the famous reservoir, built out of public money for the public weal in the days when privatization of public utilities was still a lurid gleam in a pair of demon eyes. Now of course it was a key feature in the master plan by which Mid-Yorkshire Water plc hoped to keep its consumers (sorry; customers) wet and its shareholders wealthy for the next hundred years.
And Nature, simply by opening her great red eye in the sky for a couple of months, had set all the plans at nought.
Around the dark waters of the reservoir ran a broad pale fillet of washed rock and baked mud across which ran the lines of ancient walls and on which stood piles of shaped and faced stone showing where bits of the drowned village had come gasping up for air again.
‘You want this beer or not?’ said Dalziel.
Pascoe turned to find the Fat Man was proffering a can of bitter.
‘Well, I carried it up,’ said Pascoe. ‘I might as well carry it down.’
He took a long satisfying pull. Dalziel meanwhile had put down his own can and extracted from the knapsack a pair of binoculars with which he was scanning the valley.
What else did I lug up here? wondered Pascoe. A kitchen sink?
‘This is where it all started, lad,’ said Dalziel. ‘This is what I wanted you to see.’
‘Thank you for the thought, sir,’ said Pascoe. ‘Is there anything in particular I should be looking at, or is it just the general aesthetic I should be drinking in?’
‘Is that what they call irony?’ wondered Dalziel. ‘That’s sarcasm for intellectuals, isn’t it? Lost me. I just want you to have some idea what it used to be like down there, what it must have felt like fifteen years back when they were told they had to get out. I reckon it pushed one of the buggers over the edge. Now I know you think I’ve been brushing my teeth in home-brew or something, but if I’m going to be tret like a half-wit, I’d like to be tret like a half-wit by some half-wit who’s got half an idea what I’m talking about. You with me, lad?’
‘Trying to be, sir.’
‘That the best you can do?’
‘I’ve always felt that if Satan took me up to a high place, I’d be inclined to go along with most anything he said till I got down safe,’ said Pascoe. ‘So fire away. Give me a guided tour.’
‘No need,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’ve got a map. It was in the file. I’ve got the rest of the file down in the car. You can take it home tonight and have a good read. Here.’
He passed over a sheet of cartridge paper. Pascoe looked at it and smiled.
‘I recognize this fair hand, surely? Yes, there they are, the magic initials E.W.’
‘Aye, it’s one of Wieldy’s. Thing you’ve got to remember is that what he’s marked as houses are nowt but piles of rubble down there.’
‘Was that the action of the water?’ wondered Pascoe.
‘No. The Water Board bulldozed them. They reckoned if they left buildings standing underwater, they’d be paying off sub-aqua freaks’ widows for evermore. Even the houses that weren’t going to be submerged they knocked down. Didn’t want anyone trying to sneak back and take possession.’
Pascoe studied the map. Dalziel passed him the glasses.
‘Start at the main body of the village,’ said Dalziel. ‘If you follow the Corpse Road down, you’ll see it ends at a bloody great rock. Shelter Crag, that is. So called ’cos that’s where they used to lay their dead ’uns, all wrapped up nice and cold for their trip over the hill to St Mick’s. When they got their own church, that seemed obvious place to build it, and that’s what that big pile of stones was.’
Slowly Dalziel guided Pascoe round the ruined valley with the care and precision of a courier who’d made the trip too often ever to forget. The main body of the village was easy enough to sort out once he’d got the church located. In any case, its relicts were substantial enough to be immediately obvious. Buildings which had stood apart weren’t so easily identified. Hobholme, the farm where the first girl had lived, wasn’t too difficult, but the Stang, site of the dale joinery, seemed to have been scattered far and wide. Heck, the Wulfstans’ house, had re-emerged as a substantial promontory of stones running out from the new shore to the edge of the shrinking mere, and on the far side it was easy to spot the long rounded hillock alongside which had stood Low Beulah, the home of the girl who had survived.
But Neb Cottage, home of prime suspect Benny Lightfoot, and scene of that last attack, perhaps because it was high enough up the fell not to have spent the last fifteen years under water, was very hard to spot. Perhaps, like the man himself, it had re-entered the earth from which its stones had been prised.
He didn’t share this fancy with the Fat Man but swung the glasses to bring the dam wall into view.
Somewhere there was a valley – the Lake District was it? – whose naive inhabitants according to legend built a wall to keep the cuckoo in and so enjoy spring forever. Here the purpose had been scientifically sounder, but not all that much more successful. With two-thirds of its footing in dried-up clay and the middle third lapped by sun-flecked wavelets that wouldn’t have swamped a matchbox, the dam wall looked as awkward as a rugger forward at a ballet school.
He ran his gaze up the gentle concavity of its front to the balustraded parapet. There was someone there, a man, strolling along, very much at his ease. From this distance and angle it was hard to get much impression of his face, but he was tall with long black hair brushed straight back.
‘Someone down there,’ said Pascoe.
‘Oh aye? Bit earlier and likely you’d have seen dozens. Local historians, bird-watchers, nebby hikers. No way the Water Board can keep them away without mounting an armed guard,’ said Dalziel. ‘Let’s have a shufti.’
He took the glasses, scanned the dam, then lowered them.
‘Gone, else you’re having visions. Someone up on Beulah Height, though.’
He’d raised his glasses to the saddled crest of the opposite fell.
‘Beulah Height. And Low Beulah. Someone must have been pretty optimistic,’ mused Pascoe.
‘Am I supposed to ask why?’ demanded Dalziel. ‘Well, no need, clever-clogs. “Thou shalt be called Hephzibah and thy land Beulah.” Isaiah sixty-two: four. And Pilgrim’s Progress, last stop afore heaven, the Land of Beulah “where the sun shineth night and day”. Got that just about right. Mind you, there’s some as say it comes originally from Anglo-Saxon. Beorh-loca or some such. Means hill enclosure. There’s the remains of some old hill-fort up there, dating from Stone Age times they reckon. Some time later on, farmers used the stones to make a sheepfold under the saddle, so they could be right.’
‘You haven’t been going to evening classes, have you, sir?’ asked Pascoe, amazed.
‘You ain’t heard nothing yet. Could be it’s the fold itself gives the name. Bought or bucht is a fold and law’s a hill.’
‘That makes Height a touch tautologous, doesn’t it?’ said Pascoe. ‘And it all sounds a bit Scottish, anyway.’
‘Do you not think we sent missionaries down to civilize you buggers?’ said Dalziel, referring to his own paternal heritage. ‘Any road, there’s others still who say it’s really Baler Height, bale meaning fire, ’cos this is where they lit the beacon to warn of the Armada in 1588. You likely got taught that at college, or were they not allowed to learn you about times when we used to whup the dagoes and such?’
Ducking the provocation, and slightly miffed at having their usual cultural roles reversed, Pascoe said, ‘And Low Beulah? They lit a beacon to warn the ducks, perhaps?’
‘Don’t be daft. A low’s one of them burial mounds. Yon little hillock next to where the farm was is likely one of them.’
Pascoe knew when he was beaten.
‘I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘You really did your homework fifteen years back.’
‘Aye. Whatever there were to know about Dendale, I learnt by heart,’ said Dalziel heavily. ‘And you know what? Like all them dates and such I learnt at school, it did me no fucking good whatsoever.’
He pushed himself to his feet and stood there, glowering into Dendale, looking to Pascoe’s imagination like some Roman general sent to tame a rebellious province, who’d discovered that in terrain like this against foes like these, classical infantry tactics were no sodding good.
But he’d find a way. They – Roman generals and Andy Dalziels – always did.
Except of course in this case he was looking into the wrong valley.
As if in response to this critical thought, Dalziel said, ‘I know what’s down there is old stuff, lad. And what’s down in Danby is a new case. But there’s one thing I learnt fifteen year back that chimes useful to me now.’
‘What’s that, sir?’ asked Pascoe dutifully.
‘I learnt that in this place in this kind of weather, the bastard who took that first lass didn’t stop, mebbe couldn’t stop, till he’d taken two more and had a go at taking another. That’s why I brought you up here, to try to get it into your noddle. Some things you can’t learn out of books. But take the Dendale file home with you for homework anyway. I’ll test you on it tomorrow.’
‘Will I be kept in if I fail?’ asked Pascoe.
‘With this one, I think we’ll all be kept in long after the bell goes,’ said Dalziel. ‘Now let’s be getting back down while it’s still light enough to see how far we’ve got to fall.’
He strode ahead down the Corpse Road.
Pascoe took a last look across the dale. The setting sun filled the fold bowl between the two tops of Beulah Height with a pool of gold. Last stop afore heaven. On a night like this you could believe it.
‘Oy!’
‘Coming,’ he called.
And he followed his great leader into the darkness.
day two Nina and the Nix
EDITOR’S FOREWORD
We came from water and if the Greenhouse theorists are right, to water we shall probably return.
It accounts for 72% of the earth’s surface and 60% of a man’s body.
In places under permanent threat of drought, like Arabia Deserta and Mid-Yorkshire, it brings riches to some and death to others.
And over the centuries man has peopled it with a whole range of elemental creatures, mermaids, undines, naiads, neriads, krakens, kelpies, and many more, all suited to the particular age and culture which spawned them.
Here in Mid-Yorkshire the most common hydromythic entity is the nix.
The nix stands midway between the English pixie and the Scandinavian nicor.
In some tales it figures as a sort of brownie, generally benevolent in its relation with humanity. In others it is much closer to its Norse cousin which emerges from its watery lair by night to devour human prey. The Grendel monsters in the Beowulf saga are a form of nicor.
The present tale I heard many years ago from the lips of old Tory Simkin of Dendale, now sadly taken from us, both man and valley. It troubles me to think how much of the past we have lost while modern technology preserves in electronic perpetuity the idiocies of our own age (of all that have ever been perhaps the most deserving of oblivion). I thank God there are a few superannuated fools like myself who think it worthwhile to record the old stories before they are lost forever.
If this be vanity or blasphemy, then behold a vain blasphemer from whom you may obtain further copies of this book and information about other publications of The Eendale Press at Enscombe, Eendale, Mid-Yorkshire.
EDWIN DIGWEED
NINA AND THE NIX
Once there were a nix lived by a pool in a cave under a hill.
For food he et whatever swam in his pool or crawled in the mud around it.
Only friend he had were a bat that hung upside down high in the roof of his cave, though often when it spoke to him its little squeaky voice seemed to come from somewhere high in the roof of his own head.
If nix wanted to go out, he usually waited till night. But sometimes he’d hear voices of kiddies playing in village far below and he’d sneak out in the daytime and find a shady place in the hillside where he could watch them.
Best of all were when they played in the pond on the village green and splashed each other, and ran around shouting, their shining faces and white limbs all dripping with water.
The one he liked watching most were called Nina. Her hair was as blonde as his was black and her skin as smooth as his was scaly.
Came a summer when sun shone so warm and sky stayed so cloudless that not even thought of seeing Nina could ’tice nix out into that heat and that brightness. He sat tight in his dark dank cave waiting for weather to change. But it didn’t change and after a week or so he noticed when he knelt to take a drink that the water in his pool were further away than it used to be.
Day followed dry day. Sun burnt so hot, nix could feel its stuffy heat even down here in his cave. And without a drop of rain to slip through the cracks in the hillside and fill up his pool, the level got lower and lower. Soon the creatures that lived in it, and them as lived in the muddy edge which was getting bigger and bigger and drier and drier, began to die. And soon the nix began to feel very hungry.
‘You going to sit there moping till you fade away?’ said bat.
‘Don’t see what else I can do,’ said nix.
‘You can find some food,’ said bat.
‘I’ve looked and I’ve looked and there’s nowt left to feed me,’ said nix.
‘I weren’t thinking of feeding thee,’ said bat. ‘I were thinking of feeding the pool.’
‘Eh?’ said nix.
‘Have you not noticed? Yon pond in the village hasn’t got much smaller. And you know why that is?’
‘No,’ said nix.
‘It’s because of them juicy young lasses always splashing about in it,’ said bat. ‘Get yourself one of them, and you’d soon see pool filling up again.’
So nix went up to the surface to take a look for himself. It were so bright and hot he could only stay up there for half a minute, but it were long enough to see that bat was right. The village pond were still full of water, and the little kids were still splashing around in it.
Back down he came to his cave and he said, ‘So you’re right, but it’s not much help. How am I going to get one of them to come down here? They’re all shut up in their homes at night, and if I go out during the day, I’ll shrivel up and die.’
‘Then she’ll have to come to you,’ said bat. ‘Go out tonight and gather all the prettiest flowers you can find, and plant them all around the entrance to the cave. Then just sit and wait.’
So that night the nix stole out and went far and wide over hill and dale, uprooting all the flowers he could find, moon daisies and stepmothers, Aaron’s rod and bedstraw, but no flopdocken, for that’s a flower nixes and their kind cannot abide. And he planted them all around the mouth of his cave.
Next morning, Nina went for a walk up the hill afore the sun got too hot. She wanted to pick some flowers for her mam, but there weren’t very many because the heat had dried up all the ground and baked it so hard that even the grass was brown. Then suddenly she spotted this hollow in the hillside so full of flowers it looked like a garden. She made haste to get there and started picking the brightest blooms when a voice said, ‘What do you think you’re up to, little girl? Do you always steal flowers from other folks’s gardens?’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ cried Nina. ‘I didn’t realize this was anybody’s garden.’
‘Well, you realize now,’ said the voice.
She couldn’t see who was speaking but the voice seemed to be coming out of this hole in the hillside. So she went to it and said timidly, ‘I really am sorry. I’ll put them down here, shall I?’
‘Nay, now they’re picked, you might as well keep them,’ said the voice.
‘That’s right kind of you,’ said Nina. ‘But won’t you come out into your garden where I can see you?’
‘Nay, lass. I can’t bear this heat,’ said the voice. ‘In fact, I were just making myself a jug of iced lemonade. Would you like to try a glass?’
Now Nina was very hot and thirsty indeed and she said eagerly, ‘Yes please.’
‘Right, I’ll pour you one. Just step inside and help yourself.’
So she pushed past the flowers which fringed the entrance to the tunnel leading down to the cave and stepped inside.
Next moment she felt herself seized by her long blonde hair which she was wearing in two pigtails and before she could scream she was dragged right down into the bowels of the earth.
There she lay in the foul-smelling dark, sobbing her heart out.
Finally she ran out of tears and rubbed her eyes and sat up to take a look around.
Outside, sun were so bright, a little bit of light filtered down the entrance tunnel. By its dim glow she saw she were in a cave. The ground were strewn with rocks and stuff. In the middle of the cave was a small, foul-smelling pool, and on its edge sat this thing.
Its body was long and scaly, its fingers and toes were webbed with long curved nails, its face was gaunt and hollow, its nose hooked, its chin pointed and fringed with sharp spikes of beard, its eyes deep-set and staring, and its mouth twisted in a mockery of a smile showing sharp white teeth as it spoke.
‘How do, Nina,’ it said.
‘How do, Nix,’ she answered in a very low voice.
‘You know who I am then?’ said nix.
‘Aye. My mam’s told me about you,’ said Nina.
What her mam had told her was never go up the fell on her lone else the wicked nix that lived beneath it might steal her.
Now she wished with all her might that she’d taken heed!
‘Then it’s nice of you to come visiting, Nina,’ said nix.
‘It’s nice of you to have me,’ said Nina politely like she’d been taught. ‘But please, I’d like to go home now, it’s nearly time for my dinner.’
‘It’s long past time for mine,’ snapped nix. Then, smiling his terrible smile again, he went on, ‘Tell you what, Nina. It’s so hot, why don’t you have a little swim afore you go?’
Nina looked at the dreadful pool and shook her head.
‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘My dad says I’m never to go swimming by myself, only when there’s someone bigger around to take care of me.’
‘Never fear,’ said nix, standing up. ‘I’m bigger and I’ll take care of thee.’
He came round the pool towards her. At that moment a voice came drifting down the tunnel from far above.
‘Nina! Nina!’ it cried.
‘It’s Dad!’ cried Nina. ‘I’m coming. I’m coming.’
And she set off to run up the tunnel, but she’d only gone a little way when those terrible hands caught at her ankles and dragged her screaming back down.
Far above she could still hear her dad’s voice, but now it was fading and soon it was far away, then she couldn’t hear it at all.
She lay on the edge of the pool with the nix towering over her.
‘Just wait till my dad gets a hold of you,’ she sobbed. ‘He’ll pull your neck like a chicken’s for the pot.’
‘He’ll have to catch me first,’ laughed nix. ‘Now let’s go for this swim.’
Nina looked up at him and saw he were strong enough to make her do whatever he wanted her to do. No use fighting then. What was it her mam used to say? God made men strong but he made us clever. Why use fists when you can use your noddle? And her dad were always boasting she were bright as a button.
Well, now was time to see just how bright a button she really was.
‘All right,’ said Nina. ‘But I’ll need to tidy up first.’
She stood up and began brushing off her dress, which had got all dusty when the nix dragged her down the tunnel. Then she took the ribbons out of her pigtails and unplaited her hair and combed it with her fingers so that it tumbled over her shoulders like a fall of bright water.
And all the while nix watched her with eyes like hot coals.
‘There,’ said Nina. ‘I’m ready. But you’ll need to jump in with me to help me to swim.’
‘Take care, Nix,’ squeaked bat. ‘They’re sly as spiders, these lasses.’
But nix wasn’t listening. His eyes and his thoughts were fixed entirely on Nina.
She took his hand in hers and made him stand alongside her on a big rock at the edge of the pool.
And she said, ‘I’ll count up to three and then we’ll jump together. All right?’
‘All right,’ said nix.
‘One,’ said Nina.
‘And two,’ said Nina.
‘And three,’ said Nina.
And they jumped.
Only, as nix jumped forward into the pool, Nina let go his hand and jumped backwards on to the ground.
Then she turned and ran as fast as she’d ever run in her life up the tunnel.
It only took nix a second to realize her trick.
Then, screaming with rage and dripping foul-smelling mud and water, he dragged himself from the pool and set out after her.
Oh, she were fast, but he were faster.
She didn’t dare waste time looking back, but she could hear him behind her, his sharp nails screeling against the rock like hard chalk on a shiny slate, his stinking breath panting like Bert the blacksmith’s bellows.
Her long hair streamed behind her and she felt it touched by his outstretched hand. Faster then she ran, and faster, till she felt it no more. But still he was close and her strength was failing. Now she felt the hand again, this time close enough to get a hold of a tress.
She felt the grip tighten, she felt her hair being twisted to make the grip firmer, above her she could see the ring of bright light that marked the end of the tunnel.
But it was too late. He had her hair fast now. He was pulling her to a stop. It was too late.
She stretched out her arms to the light and screamed, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’
And just as she gave up hope and knew she were about to be dragged back down to the depths, she felt her hands seized.
For a moment she was stretched taut as a rope in the tug-o’-war at the village sports. Then, just as in the tug-o’-war when it seems the two teams are so evenly matched they must hold each other there for ever, suddenly one side will find the strength for one last pull and the other will go sprawling helpless on the ground, so Nina felt the pull above increase, the pull behind slacken.
And next moment she was out on the hillside in the bright golden sunlight, lying on the grass at her father’s feet.
Oh, how they hugged and kissed, and nothing was said to scold her or remind her she’d disobeyed.
When they were done hugging and kissing, her dad rolled a huge boulder across the entrance to the cave.
‘There,’ he said. ‘That’ll keep yon nix where he belongs. Now, let’s be getting you home to your mam. Let’s take her some flowers to brighten the house.’
So they set to, and picked moon daisies and stepmothers, Aaron’s rod and bedstraw, and on their way home they found a bank covered with flopdocken, which the nixes hate, and them they picked also.
And very soon after, when Nina’s Mam went to the back of her cottage and looked anxiously up the hillside, her heart jumped with joy as she saw her man and her little lass coming downhill towards her with their eyes bright as star-shine, their voices raised in a merry catch, and their arms full of flowers.