Samantha Harvey - The Western Wind

Oakham, near Bruton, is a tiny village by a big river without a bridge. When a man is swept away by the river in the early hours of Shrove Saturday, an explanation has to be found. Was it murder, or suicide, or an accident? The whole story is relayed by the village priest, John Reve, who in his role as confessor is privy to a lot of information that others are not. But will he be able to explain what happened to the victim, Tom Newman, the wealthiest, most capable and industrious man in the village? And what will happen if he cant?

Reve is an extraordinary creation, a patient shepherd to his wayward flock, and through his words Harvey creates a medieval world that is in no way alien but almost tangible in its immediacy. His language is modern, but steeped in medieval culture and beliefs.

Samantha Harvey is the author of The Wilderness, All Is Song and Dear Thief. She appeared on the longlists for the Baileys Prize and the Man Booker, and the shortlists of the James Tait Black Award, the Orange Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award. The Wilderness won the Betty Trask Award in 2009. She is a tutor on the MA course in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

The Wilderness

All is Song

Dear Thief

DUST AND ASHES though I am, I sleep the sleep of angels. Most nights nothing wakes me, not til Im ready. But my sleep was ragged that night and pierced in the morning by someone calling to me in fear. A voice hissing, urgent, through the grille, Father, are you in there?

Carter? Even in a grog, I knew this voice well. Whats the matter?

A drowned man in the river. Down at West Fields. I I was down at the river to see about clearing a tree thats fallen across it. A man there in the water, pushed up against the tree like a rag, Father.

Is he dead?

Dead as anything Ive ever seen.

Id slept that night on the low stool of the confession booth with my cheek against the oak. A troubled nights sleep, very far from the angels. Now I stood and pushed my skirts as flat as theyd go. Outside looked dark; it could have been any time of night or early morning, and my hands and feet were rigid with cold. I shifted the oak screen enough to let myself out of the booth which isnt even a booth as such, but an improvised thing made of props and drapes and there was the flushed, worried, candlelit face of Herry Carter.

Went to find you in your bed but you werent there, Carter said, words tripping. I wondered if you might be here.

I wanted to tell him that I didnt usually sleep upright in this booth, I didnt know what had happened exactly that made me do it that night. But Carter had the look of somebody who couldnt care less, he only wanted to get back to the river.

Maybe theres a chance for Last Rites, he said, with lips set sullen and thin.

You said he was dead.

But if we could get a bit of holy wine down his dead throat

A dead throat isnt amenable to wine, I thought, but thought without saying.

If we could do at least that, Carter said, maybe he could have died a half-decent death. Otherwise

Otherwise his fate would be ugly, and his time spent hanging like a lifeless rag off a fallen tree would seem like a happy memory. Herry Carter was right to wish for better. So we two left the church and ran.

The first thing I noticed was the wind, which was strong, bitter and easterly. It was coming up to dawn and the sky had the slightest of light. We ran down the track towards West Fields, which is nearly a mile away and much of it diagonally across the ham. The river itself takes over two miles to cover the same distance. Myself, alb flapping heavily in the wind like a sail, bottle of holy wine sloshing in my right hand, holy oil in left, quick-moving, if breathless and with thighs full of fire. Like a deer, my father used to say, with a wink, because he liked to shoot deer. Carter, young, short, strong on his legs, blond hair blown sideways, trouser knees hardened with another days mud, all plain, buttery boyhood. He sprinted ahead with his arms pumping.

The ham was flooded, but not as much as it had been; the wind seemed to have pushed the water back into the river. Above us a huge, fast sky thatd be blue when the sun rose, and everything but the wind was wet the track, the grass, the earth, our feet and ankles, the tree trunks, the nests and the fledglings within. My toes were frogs in a swamp. When we reached the boundary of the lush grazing land at West Fields the world got wetter sodden sheep with shivering lambs, cows paddling upland in herds trying to find drier ground so that they could eat without having to drink, Townshends horses standing four-square in bog with their muzzles resting on each others drenched flanks. Only the wind itself was dry, dry and so cold, and blowing away long days of rain.

There, said Carter, and he pointed off towards the river seventy or eighty paces ahead. I left my axe to mark it.

Not much of a marker; with its blade rammed into the river bank, it barely stood a foot above the ground. Youd have needed a marker to find it. But Herry Carter had young eyes and his mind was focused on nothing else, just that axe, and that bit of river that had delivered up a poor old rag of a dead man. Carter upped his pace with the wind at his back and was there near the axe, striding this-way-that-way along the bank, ankle-deep in water by the time I caught up.

Its gone, he said. Desperate-sounding man, a rasp working at his voice. The body. It was there. There being the fallen tree, in the crook of a branch. The river was high and fierce and roiled around that branch; nothing could have stayed in place there, nothing. Not a mans body, not even a cows body. How could Carter have thought it would? But then, what could he have done? He couldnt have rescued the man on his own.

Wheres it gone? Carter was saying, over and again. Rushing up and down like a sheepdog. Then he stopped, looked plain at the water and his tone fell flat. Wheres the body gone? It was right there.

My once-white alb was soaked and muddy almost knee-high and I felt something like defeat, because Id have to ask Carter now , and I didnt want to have to ask. Id wanted to see for myself. The words came to my throat and stuck and wouldnt be dislodged with any amount of swallowing. Id have looked anywhere to avoid the sight of his pitiful, aimless running. Anywhere: downwards, upwards. Upwards, to the stars that were fading with the dawn.

When I looked back at Carter finally, he was to my left, twenty yards downstream, standing knee-deep and thunder-struck by a thick cluster of bulrushes leaning in the wind. Only then, coming closer, did I see he was holding something of brightish green, a piece of cloth or clothing, which he lifted feebly. A shirt.

Found this there, he said, a curt flick of his hand towards the bulrushes. Just hanging there.

So then I didnt even have to ask the question I hadnt wanted to ask, because the shirt made it clear who the drowned man was. We both knew who owned it; even in the poor light, that shirt belonged to one man only. Everybody else had beige shirts or brown or grey, of a wool that had never managed to look unsheeply. Nobody else had one of good linen that had once been as green as the swaying meadow of flax that gave rise to it. Faded now, yes, but all the same it was a fine Dutch shirt. Even before Carter found the shirt, from the moment he saw the drowned man, he must have known it was Newman. How many other poor, bloated dead men could there be floating down this river? How many other men disappeared into it three days before?