‘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.
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
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