Known by Name
The realm keeps its dangers the way it keeps its roads: by name, by place, and by what it cost the last time. What follows are tales, told as the people who keep them tell them: some are history and long over, some are still met in their own country, and some are told and never proven. Most Britons live their lives without meeting any of them. After each tale comes what the record can actually establish, and what a company should know before it is paid to go near.
Stories of the past history, over Present-day accounts still reported, in its own country Local stories told in one place, never proven
Corrupted beasts
The Crowmere Tusker
The droving lanes of the Crowmere country
In the autumn of 4328 a tusked thing came up out of the wet ground below the Crowmere lanes, and no herd would go down them. It took two drives and six authorities to open them again.
Present-day accounts Three questions on the fells · a kind of thingTurned Stock
The high wold and the fells of the north
A visitor asked a shepherd of the fells what the turned things were. The shepherd answered with three questions: does it breed true, does it keep to its ground, and can it be turned from the lambing.
Present-day accounts What uses drowned ground as habitat · a kind of thingThings of Wreck and Shoal
Dover, the eastern gaps and the Black Fen
In 4582 things came ashore at Dover with the wreckage, and for half a season priests, tide men and hunters worked as one line. The coast still cites it.
Present-day accounts Two shillings a head · a kind of thingWolves, and What the Bounty Calls Wolf
The northern march and the realm at large
Most bounties in the realm were for wolves, and honestly earned. Then a bounty man read the march’s five books together at Harrowgate, and found what the clause at the end of the schedule had been paying for.
Monstrosities
Corpse eaters
The Chalk Hounds of Wye
The Wye scarp, Kent
A burial ground on the Wye scarp was worked at night, and the county named the diggers hounds before anyone had seen one plainly. They are not hounds, and Kent has bought lamp oil against them for four hundred years.
Present-day accounts The sign, not the cause · a kind of thingCorpse Eaters
Failing burial grounds throughout Britannia; beneath London and Sarrum; the quarry belt of the High South; the Kent foreshore, pilgrim road and levels
Country priests have been told since 4278 to ask what is new in the ground, not in the wood. The country’s grave dogs are living things, and they come to a burial ground that has already begun to fail.
The restless dead
The Night Walker Years
The four northern parishes of the northern march, and the empty north-western quarter
In the ruin years the graves of the north opened and the dead came south along the northern roads. Nothing of the kind has been seen in the march within the record, and the march still keeps a name for it that nobody will say at supper.
Present-day accounts The dead of a bad thaw · a kind of thingRevenants
Throughout Britannia; worst on bad ground after thaw, at boundaries, and in the revenant belts at the edge of half-held country
A man buried at Candlemas in ground too hard to dig was seen at his own gate in the thaw. In the half-held country a manor pays for wolf season and revenant season in the same line of its accounts.
Present-day accounts Distance, season, water and money · a kind of thingThe Roaming Dead of the Northern March
The northern march: the upland dales, the fen holms and burial islands, and the wood
One hard winter a fen holm buried four of its dead late, and four parishes had to turn out together for three nights at Crowdyke. The march is troubled by its dead more than any district of its size, and says wickedness has nothing to do with it.
Haunts
The Cold Nurse of Mudgate Stairs
Mudgate Stairs, the lower wards of London
Sixty years ago a laundress going down Mudgate Stairs alone was taken by the hand and turned back from a flooded step. Something the wards call the Cold Nurse still walks the lower flight, and the capital still argues over whether she is dangerous.
Local stories The row nobody picksThe Bottom Row
The hop gardens of Kent: Yalding, Bearsted and the Len parishes
In more than one Kentish hop garden the bottom row stands in crop every September and nobody picks it. Something is said to walk it in the fourth week, and at Bearsted the oast-dryer tells the factor the ground is poor there, which it is not.
Spirits and their servants
The Grey Nun of Barrow Ash
Barrow Ash, the tithe country of the High South
A grey walker of the frost-bright meadows, followed by sickness and kept off with bread rather than worship. The valleys tell what follows when the loaf is not left, and the belt teaches by her what an arrangement with a power of place is.
Stories of the past A door opened onceThe Envoy on the Harrowgate Roll
The northern deaneries; the roll is kept at Harrowgate
Once, three parishes that had quarried against agreed terms gave evidence before a prior and before something the Harrowgate roll calls an envoy. The roll gives the finding and the penalty and nothing about what stood there.
Stories of the past The warning with a dateThe Lady of Mere Wold
The Mere Wold vale, the High South
In the winter of 4419 the Mere Wold vale kept its terms exactly, and they stopped holding. Nine households left and never came back, and the hamlet at the head of the vale stands empty still.
Present-day accounts A title of place, not a name · a kind of thingThe Grey Lady
Wherever a mere, ford, spring or wood has a guardian; heard in the fen country and the northern marches
Not one power but a title many districts give the power of their own water. The marches tell of a mere whose Lady began to give more than she was ever asked, and of the parish that quietly stopped going down to it.
Demons
The Crooked Hearth of Godmersham
The Stour valley, Kent
A warm room with no fire in it, then milk that would not sour, then deaths in the house: the Stour valley tells the Crooked Hearth in that order, because that is the order. It is the one trouble in Kent a parish can stop, if somebody reports the room.
Present-day accounts What Kent says instead of possessed · a kind of thingBeen in the Ground
The parishes of Kent, from the marsh to the scarp
At Otham in 4613 the Grey Nails burnt a charm house and turned out a woman of seventy-one, and the deaths in the parish went on for two months. Kent does not say possessed; it says somebody has been in the ground.
Present-day accounts The pit villages’ word, not the church’s · a kind of thingThe Ridden
The Blackdown pit villages and furnace settlements, Sarrum county
In the Blackdown chapel villages a man who comes up wrong is said to be ridden, and it is not the church’s word. Most mend or die. A few are kept at home, fed and sat with, and nobody outside is told.
Things that defy description
The Lights of Lantern Mere
Lantern Mere, the wet country of the northern march
The deepest water in the northern march is named for the lights seen on it. A prior once had the middle blessed; the boat came back, and the fen went on rowing round it.
Local stories The one nobody points atThe Bad Barrow
The middle wold, the High Wold, northern march
The dale leaves five of the High Wold’s barrows alone. Four have names and stories; the fifth has neither, only a bend in the drove road and the best grazing on the middle wold, which no flock has touched for as long as the parish book runs.
Local stories The quarter nobody walksWhat Is in the North Wood
The northern quarter of Wychwood, northern march
The northern quarter of Wychwood has not been cut, walked or surveyed in living memory. The wood cannot say what is in it; it holds several firm opinions instead, and tells of the parties that went in and of the one who waited for them.
Local stories A rate, never a sceneThe Vampire of Yellow Ward
Yellow Ward, Sarrum
The oldest of Sarrum’s named rumours: not something buried under the city but something said to live in it, holding a room and a name like anybody else. The ward has named two men in living memory, and almost nothing about it can be established.
Local stories The hill nobody has climbedWhat Is on Gant Fell
Gant Fell, at the northern end of the High Wold, northern march
Four men went up Gant Fell in good summer weather. Three came down that evening, and the fourth walked out two days later on the far side and never said what was on top.
Adversaries
Lord Abdul Harun
The Inner Sea and the western crescent
London calls him a corsair-lord, and the southern packet rooms darken their stories with his name whenever the fear that day is raiding. His is the name behind a great many of the Inner Sea’s ransom arrangements.
Stories of the past A black story with a roll behind itRandal Hartfell, the Pale Stag
The hay roads of the Sarrum county
In the bad years after 4460 a Hartfell levy captain turned levy-men into reavers along the hay roads. The drover courts sat through the Long Hunger and wrote it all down, and his is the best documented of the High South’s black stories.
Stories of the past A name that makes a tithe barn colderCanon Bertram Halden, the Granary Wolf
The tithe country of Oxford
A canon of the Halden church was said to have hidden grain in a famine year so that obedience might rise with hunger. Whether he did cannot now be established, and the chapter says so; the name has outlasted every other scandal of the house.
Present-day accounts A name the Admiralty plans againstAdmiral Ingrid Skall
The fjord fleet base of the far north, and the northern winter convoy water
The one officer on northern water whose movements the British station plans against by name. She is not at war with Britannia and has twice come to the help of British hulls; the Admiralty’s caution is about what she can do, not what she intends.