Nisi Dominus

My old friend Peter Prior, whom you may remember got himself embroiled in that rather unfortunate disagreement with the Victorian Society over the screen in St Leodigarius' Bulford (shall we say their estimation of the carving was more generous than his judgement that it would be put to good use as kindling for the parish bonfire?) wrote to me lately to say how much he is enjoying his sabbatical in Florida. When first he accepted the year's teaching at Boca Raton I was, to be honest, as surprised as you, given that to all who know him, it seems impossible to imagine Peter anywhere quite so distant from the dusty old churches which have been his life for so long, but shortly before he left he related to me his reasoning for his sudden removal to the new world. I am sure when you have read over these notes, you will come to understand his motives, as I now do. When, a couple of years ago, the decision to replace the floor of St Mary was taken, I was delighted, Peter told me one evening as we packed the last of his books in preparation for his journey. I'd always cursed Whittle, or whatever the fool's name was who put those blasted wooden platforms in. They were just so stupidly ugly, so out of keeping with the church itself. The infernal Victorians (Peter was not a man who forgot his grudges quickly) did their best to bugger the place up, and that nonsensical chapel they put up in the twenties for the organ has ruined the building's symmetry, but they are nothing to that awful floor. I can't say I care much for what they've laid in its place - it looks like it's escaped from a cheap kitchen shop - but as long as no damn fool goes digging around underneath it again for a long time, they can have what they damn well want. This, you may agree, is uncharacteristic of Peter. Those of us who have worked with him know him to be a purist of the first order when it comes to the High Middle Ages; some have quite simply refused to return to a dig with him when he's lost his temper with some poor parish priest who wanted nothing more than for his congregation to be warm as they huddled together for mass. So, to hear him capitulate so uncomplainingly was remarkable. Surely, I put it to him, he could have used his influence as the project's archaeologist to sway the Faculties Committee to choose something more in keeping with the building. At first, he said, I was minded to, but I've no time for such games now. I started the dig full of all sorts of high ideals. Damned silly of me, I admit: you'd have thought I'd know better by now. What chance was there of finding anything of value in a place like that, where every hundred years or so some fool of a priest goes and tears it all apart in the hope of satisfying his God a little bit more? But there I was, hoping to happen upon some plague pit that hadnt been opened before, or perhaps, just perhaps, a foundation stone from the Norman church. That would have been something, wouldnt it? Buggered their floor plans up and ended my career on a high, not slinking off to the colonies to preach to fat white kids whose sense of history extends as far back

as their last taco. Isnt that what they eat there? Theyll probably all be Jewish, anyway, or hispanic. I demurred to offer any comment on this, and returned to packing the books in my corner of his study. Anyone who has even poked his head around the door of Peters study will laugh at this: Peters collection, exhaustive, enthralling, arcane as it was, had long ago outgrown its accommodation on the shelves and had extended its tendrils across the floor, where it sprouted new shoots, tugging at your ankles as you passed, apparently chaotic yet possessed of some divine order which Peter alone understood. He had lapsed into silence, and I turned over in my mind how this was a far greater upheaval than he was letting on: in this day and age theres no need for a man to take his books with him abroad for a year, especially when he has no researched planned, and the thought occurred to me that we should not see him back again. I tried to engage him in idle talk of his accommodation in Florida - for some reason I pictured a great Southern mansion, still smelling of tobacco and slavery - yet he seemed to ignore me, leafing through a pile of papers at his desk. Although the room had been quite quiet for some time, I became aware of a deeper silence, and I turned to see Peter holding a single photograph, staring quite intently at it. He seemed utterly oblivious to my presence, and when I called his name he started visibly and the look on his face when his eyes met mine was that of a man who had suffered a very nasty shock to the nervous system. His eyes stretched wide and the tips of his fingers were white from grasping the photograph, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse and his sentences were broken as he gulped. I was glad wed kept a bottle of sherry on the side to refresh us in our labours, but it troubled me to see his hand shake and even spill a little as he took his first draught. To my surprise, the photograph was of nothing more than a gargoyle, the face perhaps six inches in length; its mouth was open and one hand sought to cover the eyes, while the other partially covered the mouth. It was, in short, entirely like a hundred other gargoyles I could call to mind within a ten mile radius of our present location, except that it was at the base of a pillar, and the pillar itself seemed to rest on sand. When I asked Peter the location of this curio he jumped again, almost spilling his sherry all over the pile of papers. It is, he said, the last picture I took in St Marys. That idiotic doctoral student who insisted on accompanying me for the dig demanded that I take it, and a fat lot of good it did him. He wont be hurrying back to this sort of work. Leave him to his Anglo Saxons, I say; they wont give him half as much trouble. And hereupon Peter told me the story which I here set down. I was angry enough, he said, that those ham-fisted workmen had been allowed to tear half the building apart before we could get in. I didnt want Cooper there in the first place - hes two years into a PhD and has a smart-arsed answer to every question I raise - but I put him to good use tidying up the crap the builders had left behind. It took us the best part of two days to make the place fit to work in, let alone carry out our measurements. We only had two weeks, and were livid wed had to waste so much time tidying up after a bunch of Polish vandals, but we could tell straight away we wouldnt even need that long. Our presence there was a sop to the diocese so

they could claim the necessary research had been carried out, but nobody gave a damn about finding anything: the bones neatly stacked by the North door told me everything I needed to know. Damnit, those blasted Poles had even raked over the dirt where theyd removed the boards, shifting the debris into neat piles, and to my horror, there was fresh concrete over what must once have been a grave shaft. I could have spat, but we decided to make the best of a bad job and set to, trying to bring some order to the chaos we found. All day we worked, finding nothing of any value: a bone here, some pottery there, a couple of shards of glass, but nothing even worth recording. In the end I found my thoughts wandering to the pillars around me. Youve seen, Im sure, those hideous fluorescent dots theyve stuck on them about fifteen feet up, so they can keep track of how much the building is moving. Well, it occurred to me that we were damned lucky to have a church there at all, such was the way they were bowed. It was a terrific risk they took when they rebuilt the church, you know, to make the columns so slender, and at the time I thought they were blessed with extraordinary good fortune that the whole thing hadnt collapsed (although we dont know how much more damage that cretin Moffat did when he tried to dig out a crypt that had no business being there in the first place). There is a story in one of the archives that the place nearly collapsed sometime around the early sixteenth century, but the crisis was somehow averted. The day drew on and I stepped out to get a drink, leaving Cooper to continue working in the nave close to the South transept. It was getting dark when I returned, intending to tell Cooper to give up for the day, yet when I called out to him from the North door he jumped out of his skin, and looked entirely in the wrong direction - up towards the altar, I thought, at first. He was holding something, which he dropped as he snapped round to face me, and he scrabbled in the dirt to pick it up, scattering dust everywhere. I was about to curse him for his shoddy work, but before I could do so he had scrambled to his feet and rushed over to me, clutching whatever it was hed just picked up. He grabbed my arm and muttered, Lets go to the pub. But Ive just come from there. Arent you going to tidy up? No, lets go and get a drink. I need a pint. He seemed to be making a great effort to control his voice. Now you know me, old friend, and even though Cooper is a creep Ill have a drink with him, especially when he seemed to have found something exciting. What was absolutely certain was that I wasnt going to let the bugger out of my sight to claim the credit for anything worthwhile. In the pub he relaxed a bit, although he did insist on sitting facing the window which looked out towards the church, and we set to looking at the bit of parchment - for that was what hed brought with him. Even Cooper was able to identify it as chancery, but he struggled to pick out more than a few words; the man is, I tell you, a waste of time as an academic, but he can dust pots well enough. When I had time to look over the piece it seemed to make no sense, although I did note the name Ilkeston, which first led me to think it was a scrap from that part of the world, but we picked out Mellers and Taverner fairly soon after, and I recalled that Ilkeston

had been Prior of Lenton in the first decade of the sixteenth century, and a particularly unprepossessing character he was, no match for Elmham (even with his faults). Mellers, too, was a shit, if ever there were one (I laugh every time I think of that silly wife of his founding a school to atone for his sins). Theres some evidence Ilkeston and Taverner fell out over work on the church, and if Mellers had anything to do with it, itll have been done on the cheap. The whole thing was signed Marsdene, not a name I had ever come across. But thats not really to the point - the parchment was a right mess, evidently written in a hurry and, according to Cooper, stuffed in a void at the base of a pillar - the same pillar, as it happens, where that gargoyle is to be found. We pored over it for hours, quite losing track of time, Cooper insisting it was some sort of deed of gift, and at the time I thought him even more stupid than usual. It was a mish-mash of schoolboy Latin, bits of scripture and odd scribbles next to the names, but above all was written nisi dominus, and, oddest of all, the dominus was crossed out and next to it was written a name Id never seen before, and, if Im honest, hope never to see again. I certainly won't repeat it any time soon. Not much more the wiser we went our separate ways, and agreed to meet early the following morning. Cooper took the keys with him, and I returned here to look up this Marsdene fellow. Theres almost nothing in the archives about him (well, those that have been digitised at all competently, which isnt saying much), except that he was a mason of sorts and that he died in 1512 in an accident in the church. Theyd finished the nave by then, and theres no record of where he was buried, but you know what the churchyard at St Marys is like, and how many times its been dug over since then. I looked over the parchment several more times, beginning to make more sense of Marsdenes scratchy hand, and pieced together the following: et dixit eis solvite templum hoc et in tribus diebus excitabo illud evils shall come on them Israel was holy si converteris non commoveberis Typically gloomy stuff, youll agree, and nothing really unusual for the temper of the age. This Marsdene may have been a Protestant of sorts, or just have decided that a town run by a scoundrel like Mellers was destined to go to the dogs. The following morning I met Cooper at the church and was surprised to see him looking decidedly seedy. His face was pale and sweaty, and he sucked nervously on a cigarette, which surprised me, as I hadnt seen him smoke before. Feeling the effects of those beers last night? I asked, enjoying seeing this callow twerp suffer from one too many at the bar. Not at all, he replied. I just couldnt sleep. I kept thinking about this man Marsdene and his parchment. Did you make any more of it last night? I began to speak but he cut me off.

"Do you think," he said. "Do you think Marsdene loved this place, or hated it?" This dumbfounded me. "What sort of a question is that?" I asked. "Oh," Cooper's voice came in dry gulps. "He did everything he could, didn't he, to keep it standing in those early years." "I've no idea what you're on about. Marsdene was a mason, and we know precious little else about him. As far as I know he might have carved a few of those crude pieces on the north transept. There's nothing in the record to suggest he did anything else. Now for heaven's sake will you tell me what the devil is up with you. " "Do you think," Cooper said, apparently having ignored everything I'd just told him, "that you can grow so desperate you can turn to anything, anyone to help?" This was nonsense. I was on the cusp of telling the fool to clear off home when he said, "What else did he write?" I told him what Id found, expecting him to be as nonplussed as I, but he simply turned, sullenly, and went into the church, leaving me to rush after him. He paid no heed to my cries and went straight to the column where Id found him working yesterday, picking up a trowel, and, to my horror, digging furiously, almost stabbing at the base of the pillar. What are you doing? I cried, livid that he was behaving like such a spoilt brat. Do you think youre going to find anything else like that? Hell not care, either way, he muttered. I sought to grab his hand, for he was making a fearful mess of the ground around the pillar, but he snatched it away, twisting his arm out of my grasp and digging with renewed fervour. His breath was coming in short gasps, and he had fixed his gaze so intently on a little spot which was just poking out of the sand. I tried shouting, but he ignored me with such extraordinary concentration that in the end I simply stood back and watched him work. To my relief he eventually ceased to cut and stab with such violence and recovered some of his professionalism, although every few minutes he glanced over his shoulder, completely ignoring me, as if looking for someone coming from the chancel. For the life of me I couldnt understand what he was looking for, so I took a turn there myself, despairing of the mess the workmen had left behind: dustsheets were draped halfheartedly over the grotesques carved on the choir stalls, flapping limply as I passed, and dust motes stirred in the air above me. The floor was stained dark where the roof had leaked, and only an old order of service from some six months before hinted that this had ever been a living church. The heavy cloud outside dimmed what little light filtered through the windows, and I found myself quite disorientated, almost bumping into a covered statue of the Virgin Mary. Id had quite enough by this stage, and resolved to return and see how Cooper was getting on, but was frustrated to find the blocking the arch beneath the organ was locked. This necessitated me picking my way slowly back round in front of the altar, cursing the fools whod left such a

stupid mess to impede my progress. But of a sudden, the silence of the church was broken by a terrible cry from the nave, and the sound of running footsteps. I hurried as best I could, clambering between boxes and once making a terrible racket as I knocked over a crucifix covered in a sheet. From the nave came only the sound of Coopers troubled breathing, and I found him kneeling beside the base of the pillar, covering his face with his hands. What in Gods name was that? I cried. He said nothing. It was at this point that I noticed the carving hed uncovered - that of the man attempting to cover his eyes and mouth, as if hed seen a terrible thing. Again I tried to get Cooper's attention, but still he did nothing but kneel in the dirt, staring at the grotesque. I got one sensible thing from Cooper later that day, although thats not saying much. He simply muttered, over and over, they labour in vain that build it. I took him home and he insisted that I come in with him and sit awhile, communicating more by gesture and nods of the head than anything youd call English. I poured him a good slug of the poison he called Scotch and let him sit, until he said, You heard him run, didnt you? I heard someone run, or something sounding like that. You heard him run. Heard who run? Him, Marsdene, him, from the grotesque. Dont be ridiculous, said, almost losing my temper. What on earth makes you say you saw Marsdene? Do you mean that ridiculous grotesque on the pillar? Its him. You have no evidence for that. I know its him. The paper was in a crack in the stone just next to it. You know full well that means nothing. Have you forgotten everything in the excitement of uncovering some nasty old carving? It was him, and he made it. He knew what Mellers had done to keep the church standing. What in Gods name are you on about? There were other things beneath that pillar. Things I wish Id never seen. Youre an archaeologist man, how can you be shocked at a skeleton or two?

They werent skeletons. And from then on, I got nothing more out of him. The next day I went and looked myself and photographed the carving. Ive tried ever since to convince myself that cadavers can be preserved in those conditions, but I cant, not honestly at least. I dont know whether Mellers demanded he put those poor creatures there to stop the church collapsing, or whether his doing so caused all the trouble in the first place, but Marsdene must have suffered agonies. *** Ive been back to St Marys once or twice since Peter told me this extraordinary story, and it seems peaceful enough. Mellers name lives on in the school up the hill, and the all congregate there once a year to give thanks for his wifes good deed. Theres no sign of the carving poor Morris uncovered. That, and what may lie beneath it, is buried for another century at least, I hope.

Will Burn, Christmas 2013