MARK VALENTINE

The Axholme Toll

MARK VALENTINE IS THE author of the acclaimed 1995 biography Arthur Machen. His short fiction has been collected in 14 Bellchamber Tower, In Violet Veils, Masques and Citadels, The Nightfarers, The Rite of Trebizond and Other Tales and The Collected Connoisseur (the latter two both with John Howard).

He has also edited the anthologies The Werewolf Pack and The Black Veil and Other Tales of Supernatural Sleuths for Wordsworth Edition’s budget “Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural” series, and is the editor of Wormwood, the journal of the literature of the fantastic, supernatural and decadent.

“In the following story, the book called The MS. in a Red Box really exists,” the author reveals. “All of the legends about the Isle, and about Beckett’s assassins, are also genuine, except (so far) that of the Toll, and their final place of rest – or unrest.”

IT WAS STEVENSON, I think, who most notably observed that there are some places that simply demand a story should be told of them.

Such was the case with the Isle of Erraid, a tidal islet off Mull, where he stayed as a young man while assisting his father with his profession as a lighthouse engineer. It led to his story, “The Merry Men”, full of the wild lore of the sea. There are many such tales told of islands, which seem always to draw the imagination of the mainlander, and to nourish their own myths too. Yet I wonder if there are not also enclaves within the solid land of the country, which are islands in a different sense. They are somehow set apart from the rest of the everyday world. We enter them, and a sense steals over us of being in a different domain. Some subtle change in the terrain tells us that we are not quite wholly in a reliable realm.

For me, the Isle of Axholme, in the far north-western marge of Lincolnshire, will always figure as exactly such a place, for it was indeed once an island, and it is still remote and peculiar.

It was, as I say, until the seventeenth century, a real inland island, surrounded by three rivers at their widest span, traversable only by ferry. Even within the bounds these formed, much of the terrain was inhospitable marshland, whose narrow tracks only natives knew thoroughly. It was the practice for the isle folk to stalk these murky wastes on nimble stilts, and there was competition to be deftest at this unusual skill. Drainage by Dutch engineers under charter from Charles I ended its isolation a little, but it retained a distinctive character for quite a while afterwards.

Islonians, as they call themselves, are proud of their particular family names and still refer to “the Isle”, even though it is strictly not that any longer. In fact, it was always a series of islands: one long ridge in the middle, bearing four villages upon it, some outlying outcrops, and a cluster of ferry settlements by the riverbanks.

I found that its mysteries begin in the Dark Ages, when some astral catastrophe or other – a fireball, or so it is inferred – spread flame even through its wateriness, burning trees down to their roots deep underground, and denuding it for a while of vegetation. Modern conspiracists regard this as one sign among many of the cogency of the prophecies of Ezekiel. It has also been claimed as the true locality of Avalon – the fact of it being an island only accessible with difficulty, and the deceptive similarity of its name, being in its favour. Against that, however, is the sad absence of any other Arthurian links, or of orchards, for Avalon is generally held to mean “Isle of Apples”.

It has also had, through the ages, other reputations. Not surprisingly, its remoteness bred talk of magic, and it is said to have had a hermit-wizard in occupation for a century or so, on one of its lonelier knolls. The Templars, too, are naturally said to have had a priory here: although, in fact, it seems to have been Carthusian. There are astrological links, suggesting a lost zodiac, known now only by an old local saying, “’Tis Scorpio in Crowle” (the latter being the northernmost village on its spine), meaning a time of ill omen.

Then, it has its own literary mystery too. In April 1903, the publisher John Lane received a parcel through the post at his London offices in Vigo Street, under the sign of The Bodley Head. It contained the manuscript of a novel. There was nothing uncommon about that, of course, except that the manuscript had no sign of the author, and no title, and there was no accompanying letter. Nor was there any indication where it had come from. It arrived in a red box, and that was just about all that could be known about it.

The work was sent to the publisher’s reader in the usual way, and he reported favourably. As was his habit with anything out of the ordinary, John Lane then read it himself. He had made his name in the 1890s as the publisher of “daring” and “modern” books that came to epitomize the period as the “Naughty Nineties”, especially in his Keynotes series of novels.

He also issued his flagship periodical, The Yellow Book, which gave its name to the decade: the Yellow Nineties. It was, at first anyway, embellished with some of the audacious black-and-white drawings of Aubrey Beardsley. Their boldness, and the bright gold covers, soon made sure it was seen and hotly discussed.

But by 1903, John Lane had mellowed more into the role of a mainstream publisher. He was a shrewd businessman, who liked to be on good terms with his authors and to socialize with them: but still had a keen-eyed understanding of the exact commercial value of their work. The previous year, he had scored a success with Kenneth Grahame’s gentle pastoral pieces, Dream Days, with a verse play, Ulysses by Stephen Phillips (compared in his day to Shakespeare, Milton and Tennyson), and (rather more in the vein of the book before him), a rip-roaring historical study, King Monmouth by Allan Fea. Still, a strong seller in fiction had really eluded him. He was ready to find one.

When he looked at the untitled book, he agreed with his reader’s assessment. The mystery manuscript was a great historical romance in the tradition of Stevenson and Scott, about the seventeenth-century struggle between the proud and independent people of the Isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire and the Dutch drainage lords who had come to change their world forever, and drive them from their lands. It was a gripping, twisting and turning, swashbuckling, yet also thoughtful and sometimes eerie book, with the isolated marshlands of Axholme so strongly evoked that the reader almost felt they had lived there themselves.

Accordingly, Lane decided to publish the book. But how to do so, without even a title, and no author? No doubt with an eye to the publicity value, he placed an advertisement in the press:

“Hear something to his advantage”! It was the very phrase used by solicitors in mystery novels when a large or unusual legacy awaits the hero. The notice had the desired effect. It created what one newspaper called a “hullabaloo of excitement”. Yet no author came forward. The publisher tried again, with a further notice, saying he would publish the book at a certain date unless he heard from the author. This, of course, was very cleverly stoking up the interest in the book, and some acid commentators thought it was all just a stunt. But it was not.

John Lane went ahead and published the book as The MS. in a Red Box, and it has been known by this title ever since. After all the discussion leading up to its appearance, it was not surprising that it sold well. So much might be expected. But, gratifyingly for Lane’s and his reader’s judgment, critics and the public agreed about its qualities. It had an enthralling, well-devised plot, the right blend of adventure and love interest, the historical setting was just familiar enough but also original and unusual; the island scenes were strange and appealing to the reader. Indeed, the Axholme dimension may have had much to do with the book’s success: it was seen as a curious and inaccessible region still.

After the book came out, it is said Lane received many letters claiming authorship, but none of them were at all convincing. Two things, however, were tolerably clear about the author. He was a proficient, very capable prose writer and storyteller, and he knew the Isle of Axholme and its people and history intimately well.

Much of the book is a vivid, pretty brisk adventure story: the tale of Frank Vavasour, son of a local squire, who leads the revolt against the Dutch clearances, aided by loyal friends, betrayed by squinting villains, and never near enough to the arms of the vivacious woman he loves, who is inconveniently the daughter of a Dutch doctor – though a fair-minded and moderate man.

But there is also a strangeness about the book, caused by its Axholme setting: there are weird visions and curses, and the sense of an inexorable working-out of fate. In one episode, young Vavasour, hotly pursued by the King’s men, takes to the green alleys of the marshes, where their horses cannot go because of the treacherous terrain. And yet, it still seems to him that he is pursued, for over the wastes there comes to him the drumming of hooves where no horses could possibly be; he wonders what riders these beasts must bear. No more is said of the matter; Vavasour evades his predators, but the reader is left to think that the phantom author is hinting here at more than he can tell.

A strong candidate for the authorship has been put forward in recent years, to the extent that some editions now definitely attribute it to him, and so does the catalogue of the British Library. This is the Reverend John Arthur Hamilton (1854– 1924), who was a minister of the Congregational Church at Crowle, in Axholme, from 1870 to 1878: only eight years, but perhaps important ones, for he was very young and it was his first pastorate. He later went on to hold office at Saltaire, Yorkshire from 1878 to 1896, and finally in Penzance from 1897 until his death. He gave his house in Cornwall the name “Axholme”. This suggests the Isle remained steadfast in his memory.

This John Hamilton was an author. He pioneered the idea of sermons written as stories for children. His books included A Mountain Path and Forty Three Other Talks for Young Children (Low & Co, 1894), The Life of John Milton, Partly In His Own Words (Congregational Union, 1908), The Giant and the Caterpillar and Other Addresses to Young People (Allenson, 1912) and The Wonderful River and Other Addresses to Young People (Allenson, 1913). Somewhat more to the point, he also wrote at least one historical romance – Captain John Lister: A Tale of Axholme (Hutchinson, 1906) – set in the time of the English Civil War. But to that he put his name.

Yet all – bar one – of these worthy titles are not in the least like The MS. in a Red Box. That book is full-blooded, vigorous, and very rarely pious. This could, of course, be the reason why the author wanted it only issued anonymously. But could a man who had already put his name to these other books resist claiming authorship in some way for a work that must have cost him many hours of work, hours diverted from his more sacred duties? And could a cleric who was so concerned to mix storytelling with an improving message completely resist the opportunity to do so in this work too? Certainly, he could have sent the book to Lane anonymously, in the red box, just as Lane recounted – or collaborated with him on an elaborate hoax.

It was in the hope of throwing more light upon this literary mystery that I made my way to the Isle one day in late summer. I may as well confess now that I learnt very little new as to the book, or its author, but what I encountered instead gave me ample cause to remember the Isle well.

Axholme does not attract many visitors. There is a lot of ugliness within or in sight of it. Pylons, power stations, motorways, dredging operations and more obscure industrial plant are all too blatant upon it, and only escaped in its most hidden parts. Rashes of new houses make no attempt to emulate the local style – which at its quirkiest has hints of the Dutch influence – instead, they are often big, porticoed and made of a pale brick, all starved of colour, as if no one cared who builds what here. I even saw one with gateposts topped by lions whose heads were painted bronze and bodies gold. Yet its real architectural riches are not to be seen: all but one church was padlocked, perhaps due to vandalism.

Still, there were hints of the Isle’s inner richness, of what it might have been. The road from the most remote village, Wroot, following dead-straight dikes for four or five miles north to Sandtoft, is little-used, since there is a major road to the east following a similar alignment. But as I drove, I passed fields where there hovered drifts of blue flax, ethereal as clear, still, sky-filled pools. And these were bordered on the roadside edge by blazons of bright red poppies and the white mist of daisies, so the experience was at moments like riding through a phantasmagoric parade. It was as if, I thought then, the Isle was trying to put forth at least one show of beauty in defiance of all that was around.

The Isle supports a weekly newspaper – actually about eight pages of local news wrapped around standardized media features from its parent press. It must be one of the few papers to bear a quotation from Tennyson upon its masthead: “Ring out the old, Ring in the new, Ring out the false, Ring in the true.” The Epworth Bells (& Crowle Advertiser) has been published for 130 years. Among its fascinating pages, with the usual reports on fêtes, council meetings, juvenile delinquency, court appearances, there is a notice of high-water times on the Trent, which forms the isle’s eastern boundary.

To this column is added the cryptic comment, seemingly straight out of some ancient almanac: “The Aegir usually appears during high spring and midwinter tides and arrives about two hours before high waters in Gainsborough, about three hours before in Owston Ferry . . .”. Who or what, I naturally wondered, is the Aegir whose coming is so watched for? Some wrathful river-guardian?

Well, almost. It is a visible, lunging tidal current, rather like the Severn Bore, which broils the slow, broad waters of the Trent into foaming energy as it passes. The name, with its legendary ring, is of unknown origin. It would seem people do still gather to watch it pass, and talk about it as if it were a living thing: “Aegir’s on its way” or “Aegir’s strong today.”

I was left with the clear impression that, despite the intrusion of industry, the diminishing of its island status by drainage and dual carriageways, and the rash of incomers commuting to Scunthorpe or Doncaster, it still does have a deep-buried differentness about it. And I felt there was some thread linking all the legends together, which had somehow been lost, but which might be rediscerned. If it was not Avalon, was it the last refuge of some other legendary figure? If the Templars were not here, was there some other order of knights or priests? If the place was somehow blasted, always to be barren and with ugliness thrust upon it, was there some reason for this? And was it only the Aegir that was watched for here?

Well, I had my answer to all those questions.

That winter I went back to Axholme, and took a cottage there at Christmas. I dislike that time of year, for I am by nature solitary and prefer nothing better than quietness and my own company, with a good fire and a good book. So it is a habit of mine to go away then, somewhere quite remote and unexpected, where I shall not be disturbed and the rites of the season can pass me by, unobserved. I confess, too, that the Isle had taken a hold of me, for all its hardness and harshness, and I wanted to reflect more upon its mysteries.

The place I took I had found in a notice in the Epworth Bells. It was an old ferry cottage, a simple, tall, redbrick building, with few rooms, standing by a narrow track, which had once led down to the crossing; since that had closed many years ago, there was now little use for the track at all, and people seldom took it. Grass and moss grew down its middle and the hedges either side were thick and high.

When I walked down the lane from the little station, bearing my modest luggage, there was still the skeleton of a hard white frost lingering from the morning, crusting the dark wood of the hedge and the rank green of the road with a lichen of white.

The house still belonged, through some long process of bureaucratic accretion, to a semi-somnolent drainage board, and they largely left it to itself, getting what meagre income they could from rentals. And since Axholme is hardly a prime place for visitors, it was often empty. A caretaker, from off-isle (as they say there) had charge of it, and apologized when I spoke to him that it would be rather cold, for there had been few winter lets and he said it was very seldom wanted at this time of year. However, kindling and logs had been left for the fire, and he hoped I should soon be fairly comfortable.

When I retrieved the keys from under a brick, and let myself in, the chill enveloped me at once, and it almost seemed warmer outside in the frost-charged day. Exploring the house did not take very long. It was functional, and its only characteristic touch was a pair of opposing high-arched windows, one on the wall facing the road, the other facing the river. They had, I supposed, enabled the ferryman to watch for passengers. They let a great light into the main room of the place, even from the drawn winter sky, giving it a curious church-like quality, a sense of sanctuary, of radiance. I felt at once that it would do very well to dwell in during the day, as I pursued my studies.

There were other relics of the place’s past as a ferry-keeper’s cottage – four rotting stumps on the bank, old mooring posts, and a pitted, scabbed brass bell by the side of the house, once used, I surmised, to summon the boatman’s attention if he had not seen his passengers approach. A raggedy strand of hoar-encrusted rope hung down from the clapper.

Over the succeeding days I soon established the unvarying routine I prefer and which conduces, I claim, to the most concentration in pursuing obscure studies. In the morning, I would make myself a pan of porridge, sufficiently staunch to see me through until evening. Then I would take a brisk walk as far as I could across the Isle, becoming accustomed to its byways and channels, its rusting iron manufactories and machines, its hideous haciendas and pompous-porticoed new halls. Returning in the early noon, I would get a fire going, surly at first, later more eager, in the blackened grate, and settle down with my notebooks. By four o’clock it was quite dark and I felt myself snugger and securer still, a dweller in a far redoubt that none had need to disturb.

Though I thought I knew the Isle well from my previous visit and from the study of both ancient and modern maps, I found my morning walks often took me to curious corners or tracks that I had not encountered before, and which were unknown to the cartographers. Since the three great rivers and all their tributaries continue to shift their course when in spate, and since the people here seem pretty free to do what they want with the land, this did not surprise me too much.

Yet there was one dismal plot which did puzzle me somewhat. It was some three days after Christmas, and I had gone far into the hinterland of the Isle, perhaps as remote from any settlement as it was possible to get there, for I always seek the furthest solitude possible.

Mostly the terrain is unvarying, and my way took me along straight dull tracks between flat fields holding only the dry husks of sapless stalks, or great turned clods of earth. Hungry crows wheeled in the dim white sky. At last, I came to a crossroads, of a kind: my thin, purposeless track carried on and further on, but it was intersected by an even more doubtful byway, merely an alley between great, clawing, overgrown bare hedges. No sign indicated where any of the four ways went. I was casting about to see if I could descry any landmark which might hint where I had got to, or where I might get to, when I noticed beyond the nameless track an unexpected hollow in the land.

Nowhere in the Isle has the pleasant undulations of some of our downland or shire country, and this sudden descent surprised me somewhat. I went nearer, and found it looked for all the world like a pit caused by quarrying – except that there is no quarrying here, and there was no sign of the loose rubble usually left behind at such sites.

Further, this was no great excavation, but an open maw in the ground which could probably be descended, in a loping run, in a dozen or so strides. It would not be easy to accomplish, for there was barely any vegetation to offer a foothold. It was all ash-coated earth as if there had once, long ago, been some great fire here, and the dead cold embers had never yielded to the wind but clung instead to the sides of the pit.

Here, too, the crust of frost which had dissipated elsewhere in dank trickles of moisture as the weak sun rose, had retained its crystalline grip. I saw that once inside this sullen depression, it would be no easy matter to climb back up through the treacherous dust.

I was about to resume my walk, when, taking a final look at the pit to see if there was any clue to its purpose, my attention was snagged by a stump at the very depth of the hollow. It was all but indistinguishable from the dreary bleached soil, except that it stuck out slightly like a dotard’s back tooth from bony gums, ground down by the years. It put me in mind of the decaying mooring posts outside the ferry cottage and I involuntarily, for no intelligent reason whatever, looked to see if there were any more. And indeed I did soon see a second, even more sunken into the hard defile, and then, with a mounting sense of unease, a third and a fourth; and no more.

Well, it was a coincidence, and that was all – so I reassured myself. Old rotting wooden posts are to be found often enough in the country – the remains of a stockade, rubbing posts for cattle, gallows for crows, or simply marking out a plot of land. I chided myself for letting the place get the better of me, and, to shake off my subdued feeling, I picked up a nearby pebble, like an ossified egg, and sent it clattering down into the hollow where it bounced and jerked and – turned by some unseen obstruction – suddenly swerved and struck against one of the stumps. It was no art of mine that had achieved that, and I shrugged.

Yet as I resumed my former road I could not shake off the disquiet that had stolen upon me as I stared down into the pit at those four whittled stakes, driven down hard into the grim earth and weathered, perhaps by centuries, into gnarled relics.

That evening I stirred up the fire higher still than usual, and sat for a while meditating as the flames threw their benison upon my body and the shadows flickered over my face. My books and my notes lay to one side and I reflected again upon the curious history and mythology of the Isle, mulling over my growing conviction that some greater legend lay behind it all.

I knew that lore may reach backwards as well as forwards, and take upon itself, in a new guise, all the potency of the past. Arthur, a Dark Age warrior, becomes also a Roman Emperor and a medieval king. Robin Hood, a peasant outlaw, is transformed in retrospect as a pagan demi-god, and reinterpreted as a freedom fighter. That monkish chronicle of a great meteor’s descent in the Dark Ages, for example, might be perfectly veridical in the essentials – embroidered a little, given a pious gloss, certainly, but the record of a true event. Looked upon later, though, it might be seen as the harbinger of some even greater doom or wyrd which was to befall the Isle.

As I crouched upon the flagstones before the hearth, dreamily turning over these things in my mind, I heard in the distance the sound of a furious drumming. I got up and tilted my head to one side, the way a creature does when it wants to listen more intently. The rapid pounding noise did not relent. I went to the great window that gave out on to the ferry road. I saw myself and the room reflected in the blackness beyond, and a glassy fire leaping.

I turned off the electric light, and these images dimmed, letting through a vista of the road. There was a fine three-quarters moon, but it was harried by dark clouds, and threw only a pale, veiled light. I craned my gaze and made out a haze of dimness moving in the direction of the house, which my mind at once connected with the onset of the monotonous thudding. Despite the glow of the fire, I felt as if I was back in the room when I had first entered it, confronted by a slab of cold.

I could not draw away from the window. The sound became harder, heavier, faster, fiercer until I thought it was rising to a pitch I could not endure. And then there emerged, as the moon shrugged itself free of its sable assailants, a great burst of sudden light, which, however, only served to heighten and accentuate the aureole of darkness which massed around its edges.

Then there fell upon me a deep, harrowing, rivening surge, like pain or grief or shame. I had no understanding of its cause, nor of how it began or when it passed, but only that it bore in upon me and ran through all my thoughts and senses like fire or ice. And I felt overborn, as if by a measureless force that would fling aside any feeble attempts to resist.

That force, that cloud of darkness seemed to encompass the ferry house and all the terrain around, and I imagined it stalking across the whole Isle. For how long I stood transfixed by its presence, I could not say. But I know that it was followed by two simple, stark sounds, which struck me then as even more dreadful than the thundering clamour that had been raised before. One was the cracked clanging of a single bell; the other was of laughter, deep, full-throated and careless.

Both sounds echoed shrilly, and then receded in the brittle silence. Yet I seemed to listen to those echoes throughout most of the rest of the night, until dawn trickled into the sky with thin scarlet rivulets amid a great pallor of cloud.

As soon as the daybreak grew, I packed up my papers and my cases, placed the key back under the brick, and went to the station to wait for the earliest train. There was a chill wind and as I looked back, the bell was creaking and swaying, causing a dull tolling.

There were still a few days left of my time away, but I had not the will to go very far and so I made my way to the village of Allborough, perhaps a dozen miles beyond the river from Axholme. It looks out from its green bluff over the estuaries of the Don and the Trent and towards the broad waters of the Humber, and I gazed upon their slow silver waters for several hours, allowing the gentle, secluded atmosphere to restore me somewhat.

Allborough is known for its great round medieval labyrinth, carved upon the turf, and carefully preserved by the village. After threading this quietly by myself, meditating as calmly as I could upon what I had heard and felt, a new heartening came upon me.

From the green maze, I went to the church, where a replica is laid out in tiles on the floor. It was growing dusk by now, and the door had just been locked for the night, but the churchwarden, whose house was opposite, saw me, and came out to let me in. He was an amiable and pottering sort of man, just the sort of harmless company I needed, and, peering from his thick glasses, he soon told me somewhat about himself and the village.

He was not from these parts, but knew all about the local history, more so – he lightly implied – than those who had lived here much longer. He showed me the church’s treasures, which included a Thompson admiralty clock with its vast pendulum, an eighteenth-century bier, looking only like a hand-cart, and a Roman foundation stone concealed beneath a small trap door.

By a plain side altar, too, four shields were displayed. But instead of showing arms, they were all utterly black. “Those are Victorian,” he said, “but we always put them out at this time of year.” And then he asked if I knew that the nave had been restored by Becket’s murderers, for the shields represented the suppressed emblems of the four assassins, and they were placed there on the eve before each December 29, the anniversary of the saint’s martyrdom in 1170.

For penance, he said, these knights had been ordered by the Pope to go to Jerusalem, then in Saracen hands, and expend their wealth upon the preservation of a church there. This they all took an oath to do. But, legend said, the assassins were more cynical, and more cunning, than that. For they had a ruse in mind. One of them knew that a part of the village of Allborough had always been called Jerusalem, and so they came here. Until around 1690, the verger said, when it was stolen, a stone recorded their part in preserving the church. There was still today in the village, he averred, a house called Jerusalem Cottage: though it was quite modern, it was on the site of earlier buildings of that name.

If you look for them, you will find many legends of the Canterbury assassins, Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracy and Richard le Breton. The four cursed knights seem to have roamed throughout England, and left some sort of holy legacy wherever they went, in a vain attempt to atone for their infamous deed.

Yet one thing you will not find: their graves. They have no known tombs. By some it is said they did in the end journey to the real Jerusalem, and finish their days in vigil, fasting and penance. They were buried, by this account, in some obscure monastery of the Crusader kingdom, or by the Templars in one of their citadels. Other traditions say that this was not so and only later piety, clerical inventions, credit them with such great expiation; in truth they never strayed far from England. No hallowed place would have their bones, nor did their families wish to have the taint of their relics upon them, so that when they each died, their bodies were taken to a remote place for secret, shameful burial. And several places now lay claim to that dishonour. But I think I would believe more in the truth of a place that does not claim them.

After all, perhaps Stevenson had only half of the matter. It is true there are places which stir the mind to think that a story must be told about them. But there are also, I believe, places which have their story stored already, and want to tell this to us, through whatever powers they can; through our legends and lore, through our rumours, and our rites. By its whispering fields and its murmuring waters, by the wailing of its winds and the groaning of its stones, by what it chants in darkness and the songs it sings in light, each place must reach out to us, to tell us, tell us what it holds.