Beeches and Bluebells

Badbury Clump, near Faringdon, Oxfordshire.

 

HINGEFINKLE'S LOGBOOK (Fourth instalment)

 

The Tale of the Giant Leech of Sumatra

for which the world is only just prepared

 

It was unusual indeed for my friend Agrimony, who was, after all, a self-styled hermit, to have any visitors other than myself, so you may well imagine my surprise when, one morning in midsummer, I paid my customary visit and discovered that he already had company. Agrimony sat with his back to me as I entered the room, but I could sense by the stiffness of his silhouette against the window that the young maiden sitting opposite him had been in the midst of relating events of considerable interest. He turned and appraised me through his monocle, and motioned towards a spare chair.

“Ah, Hingefinkle, it’s you. Pray, take a seat, light one of your infernal pipes if you must, and pay close attention to what Miss Euphorbia-”

“Forgive me, Sir, but it’s Miss Eleanor,” interrupted the young woman, turning a pair of gentle, dark eyes on my companion, and combing a tress of black hair behind her ear. I noted at once that the ear rose to a delicate point at the end.

Agrimony gave a sigh of exasperation and let the monocle drop to his paunch as he continued, “- and pay attention to what Miss Elasmucha has to say. It promises to be, I think you will confess, a tale which is not without interest, especially to one of your particular inclinations, Hingefinkle, and your enthusiasm for monsters, may help to throw some light on the conundrum she intends to set before me. Now, young lady, if you would tell us the facts…”

 

I sat in the chair as commanded, and filled and lit my pipe, and as I did so, the young Miss Eleanor, who could not have been more than ten years of age – although, by that age, elves are considerably better developed than we humans - closed her eyes for a moment to gather her thoughts, and began.

“You may have observed, kind Sirs, that my parents are of elvish extraction. I live with them in the little hamlet overlooking the Bilberry Moor some ten miles south of here-”

“Hum,” I said appreciatively, “I know it well! Many is the time I have said, haven’t I, Agrimony, that one of these days I must get around to doing a cartographic survey of the -”

Agrimony waved his hand impatiently, so that I lapsed once more into silence, and the girl continued.

“Yes, Mr. Hingefinkle, it is indeed a very beautiful and mysterious place,” she said softly, “but as I grow older, I seem to see less of the beauty, and more of the mystery. My parents chose to live there not long after I was born, although my mother was destined for high office among the elves of Bluebell Wood. Mother and Father say that they wanted me to know what it was like to live among the round-eared people – to know their ways, experience their joys and sorrows, and, if you will forgive me, good Sirs, to learn something of their eccentricities.” Here, her eyes darted from Agrimony’s monocle to my pipe, and then rested nervously on the floor. “I am sure that they made the right decision, for I love the Moor, and the simple pleasures enjoyed by the people who live on its edge. Outsiders say that it is a bleak place, but once you are familiar with it, and know the paths which it is safe to take, it is difficult to imagine living anywhere else.”

“Hum – provided, of course, that you know where the bogs are, and manage to avoid them,” I added enthusiastically.

“Yes,” she replied, nodding slowly. “Or at least, that is what I had always thought, until -” and suddenly her voice broke off, and she stared into my companion’s eyes with half-suppressed terror written all over her fine-boned features. “Oh, Druid Agrimony, I am so frightened!” she cried in a rush of tears, clutching at his hand. Agrimony sat motionless, waiting for her to continue with her story. She regained her composure, and continued her narrative in faltering tones.

 

“One week ago, my parents went to the Bluebell Wood for the annual Council of Elves, leaving me in charge of the day-to-day running of the property. Father runs a small flock of sheep on the moors, and it is my duty to care for them until my parents return in two weeks’ time. Well, I was very proud of myself, for everything was running quite smoothly until – until last night. It was well past midnight when I was awoken by a peculiar sound drifting across the moors; the sort of noise that water sometimes makes running down a drainpipe – a sucking noise. I had never heard anything like it, even at night on the moors, and it left me mystified. As I listened, I detected another sound, not so loud as the first, and almost drowned out by it – but I recognised this sound at once. Druid Agrimony, it was the sound of one of Father’s sheep bleating with terror. I leapt from my bed, wrapped a cloak about my shoulders, lit a lantern, and rushed out of the front door of our little stone cottage. It was quite dark, and there was a thin mist, so I followed the course of the dry-stone wall upwards towards the moor, and then down the other side. Here I paused and listened carefully, but the strange noise and the bleating were no longer to be heard. All was silent, and as the mist from the bog crept about me, I shivered with fear. I have often been out on the moors at night, good Sirs, and never before have I been afraid – but that noise possessed a sinister, unnatural quality, and I was shaken by it. To make matters worse, there was a horrible, musty smell hanging about the hollow, which quite made the bile rise in my throat.

 

“I decided that there was little I could do with the aid of my little lantern amidst the rising mist, for the bog is a dangerous proposition after dark, so I turned back for home, resolving to return at first light. I had only walked a few steps when I stumbled over something soft, warm and bulky. I clutched at it with one hand as I fell. It was wool, good Sirs, but you can imagine my horror when, as I drew my hand away and held it to the light, I saw that it was soaked with blood. I turned up the lantern flame, and I confess that I could not suppress a scream – for there, lying amidst the sedges on the edge of the bog, was one of Father’s prize rams, quite dead, with a gaping, fleshy wound the size of a dinner plate on its chest. Beside it, the ground had been churned up, as if some giant serpent had threshed about upon it.”

 

“I see,” said Agrimony prosaically. “And what did you do then?”

“I ran away,” she replied. “There are legends – unspeakable legends -”

“Hum. That is quite true,” I ventured, “and the legends would seem to have some basis in fact.”

“Capital!” said Agrimony. “I perceive that you have already developed an opinion, Hingefinkle, you old codger!”

“I presume, young lady, that you refer to the Legend of the Giant Leech?” Eleanor nodded silently, and I continued. “Hum. Yes. Of course, the legend has probably been magnified out of all proportion, but I can furnish you with some details of a more trustworthy nature. It all started with my great-great grandfather Gearsprocket, the famous Eastern explorer – you have heard of him, I presume? Very well-”

“Codswallop!” Agrimony grumbled. “What possible connection can exist between your great grandfather Gearsprocket and this young lady’s dead sheep? Pah!”

“Hum. Great-great grandfather,” I insisted. “Gearsprocket was, as I have just said, a famous Eastern explorer. He was also a renowned collector of giant invertebrates; it was he who discovered the horseshoe crab -”

“Poppycock! An idle fantasy!” Agrimony rudely interrupted.

“Hum. And he also collected the first known living specimens of the bird-eating spider -”

“Pah! An impossibility!”

“- and the Giant Leech of Sumatra.”

“You really are a credulous old codger, aren’t you, Hingefinkle?” blustered Agrimony, his face turning the colour of a boiled beetroot. “You are not going to suggest, by any chance, that old Gearsprocket brought a giant leech here alive, all the way from Sumatra? I know about Gearsprocket’s travels, and the little barque he sailed in leaked like a sieve! It was barely seaworthy enough to carry him, let alone a gigantic leech.”

“Fiddlesticks!” I replied testily. “It was not a giant leech when he brought it. It was a juvenile. It grew up after he had got it here. He kept it penned up in a converted sheepfold on the Bilberry Moor, until one day it escaped and was never seen again. They found great-great-grandfather Gearsprocket two days later, half submerged in the mire, with a wound precisely like that which Miss Eleanor just described. Why! I should say that it is perfectly obvious that the Giant Leech of Sumatra still exists! This is fascinating! Absolutely fascinating!”

 

Agrimony rolled his eyes wrathfully, but to my surprise, he did not attempt to argue with me any further. “I will indeed look into your case, young madam, if only to disprove all this codswollop about corpulent bloodsucking nematodes. Quite frankly, I can’t be bothered with sitting around listening to him spouting such unutterable tripe!” He stood up, brushed off his cloak, and impatiently motioned for Miss Eleanor to exit, but as he did so, there was a knock.

“Fiddlesticks!” I said. “Three visitors in one day! You will be becoming popular, Agrimony!”

“Popular schmopular!” he cried, opening the door with a vicious snarl, but his expression faded into one of bemusement as Gladys Sparkbright, looking even more bedraggled than usual, marched into the Hermitage, a long tress of grey hair flopping about her face where it had fallen from its bun.

“Thar’s no point in beatin’ abaht th’ bush, so there isn’t,” she began, exhaustedly taking a seat without waiting to be invited. “Ah’ve bin robbed! Goblins, it were, or so ah should say by th’ smell. Cor! What a stink! Thought yer oughter know!” She grabbed the stray length of hair, wound it about the bun, and transfixed it with a knitting needle. “Ah ‘aven’t even begun ter make an inventory of everythin’ that’s missin’: three mahcroscopes, fifteen chronometers, one iron-ore extractor – an’ that were a brand new prototahpe… extracts th’ element from surroundin’ rock lahk a charm, so it does – two lathes, six boxes o’ teabags-”

“Indeed,” said Agrimony impatiently. “I suppose you have no idea how the culprits managed to abscond with so many things all at once.”

“Oh, aye, ah do! They ‘ad a cart! Th’ tracks were clearer’n th’ nose on yer face! In view o’ that – ah thought ah’d let yer know, considerin’ as you an’ ‘Ingefinkle are in possession o’ so many of mah rejects.”

“Quite so,” replied Agrimony. “I hope your goods will be safely returned – but in the meantime, the local Druid fraternity will provide you with the protection you need. I would do it myself, but this young lady here has already enticed me to the Bilberry Moor, and, frankly, I don’t think I can be bothered with all the bureaucracy involved with using protection spells these days. Hingefinkle! Put that pipe away! Are you coming or not?”

 

*

 

Snowdrop, it seemed, was in an even more stubborn and ponderous mood than usual, and Agrimony gnashed his teeth and bellowed at the poor carthorse as we followed the road, such as it was, to the Bilberry Moor. At length, however, he dropped the reins and turned to face me.

“I must confess, Hingefinkle, to being a little disappointed. For a moment I thought the young lady here had presented us with a considerable conundrum, but now I perceive that there is nothing remarkable in it at all.”

“Hum,” I replied indignantly, “I rather think that the Giant Leech of Sumatra would be considered remarkable by most people -”

“Codswallop! You must dismiss that absurd notion from your mind at once, Hingefinkle. There is considerable danger awaiting us, and if you insist on looking down every hole and peering into every quagmire in the hope of finding two-hundred-year old renegade leeches, you will only succeed in endangering us even more. There is only one feature in what we have heard today which requires any consideration. I commend to your attention the unpleasant olfactory sensation which Miss Euphorbia experienced in the hollow. A horrible, musty smell which quite made the bile rise in my throat. Cogitate on it if you can!”

 

I can only admit that I was flummoxed by this remark, for leeches, in my experience, hardly smell at all, but when I attempted to question him further, Agrimony refused to be moved, until at last the cart lurched across a rutted track on an upland meadow, and came to a halt at a little cottage built of the characteristic local stone.

“We can walk from here,” said Miss Eleanor as we dismounted, and she led us up the hillside, taking the path of the previous night, alongside the dry-stone wall. Her father’s sheep bleated and tramped about among the bilberries and heather as we climbed, and a grouse flew away on noisy wings, cluck-clucking as it went. Agrimony and I were quite breathless by the time we reached the top of the moor, but Eleanor dashed on ahead, running down the hillside towards the mire.

“There it is!” she cried, pointing to a patch of red and white amid the mottled greens, browns and purples of the moor. As we approached, we saw that it was indeed the ram, its head thrown back in rigor mortis, with a large, round wound on the chest, just above the heart. There were great, snake-like impressions in the ground beside it, and I quickly estimated the diameter of the body which had left them at half an ell. The nauseating, musty smell still hung about the hollow, and Agrimony sniffed at it distastefully, and then stooped at the head of the carcase. He drew back the ram’s upper lip, revealing blood-drained gums beneath.

 

“Hum,” I said triumphantly, “the marks in the ground and the sucker-wound would both appear to be consistent with my hypothesis. This is quite clearly the work of the Giant Leech of Sumatra, so fiddlesticks to you, Agrimony!”

“Indeed?” replied Agrimony testily. “Your nematode appears to have evolved somewhat in the past two hundred years, for it has evidently sprouted legs.” He gave a sarcastic sneer and pointed to a number of clawed footprints beside the lifeless body of the ram. The tracks led away towards the mire.

I stooped and inspected them carefully. “Remarkable!” I enthused. “These are hominid footprints, though I don’t know what to make of the claw-marks.”

“There is one other problem with your hypothesis, if you can credit it with so lofty a title,” added Agrimony. “How do you account for the rope which has so obviously been used to hobble the ram whilst it was being attacked? The chafing marks are still clearly visible, and in two places at least, the rope has rubbed the skin away completely.”

“Hum. That does seem to rule the leech out,” I had to admit, “at least as the sole agent in this crime.”

Agrimony gave me a withering look. “Precisely,” he said, and without another word, he strode off boldly across the mire, following the mysterious tracks.

“Be careful!” Eleanor called after him. “The mire has sucked many to their deaths!” but Agrimony waved his arm impatiently at her. She and I exchanged worried glances, and, as it was evident that Agrimony was not to be dissuaded, I shrugged my shoulders and followed him.

 

We walked through the mire for almost an hour, wending this way and that, great swathes of sphagnum moss and peaty bog on either side of us. Agrimony stopped frequently and bent over, examining the ground. Twice, it seemed that he had lost the trail, and we spent anxious moments wondering whether we were not stranded in the middle of the bog with no way forward and an impossible maze preventing our return to dry land. Agrimony took a stone from his pocket and tossed it onto the surface of the mire. For a moment it lay there, and then, slowly, it began to sink, until at last it was engulfed, leaving only a trail of peaty-brown bubbles on the surface.

“Observe, Hingefinkle,” he said, “one false step, and you’ll end up like the Tollund Man. Not that he is very well known yet, of course, but he will be… he will be!” And then he marched on, following faint impressions in the mossy ground.

 

“Fiddlesticks,” I said at last. “That smell is getting stronger. What on earth is it?”

“It is the stench of Goblins,” replied Agrimony beneath his breath. “I must warn you that when you meet them, you will find their manner quite charming at first, except of course for the smell. Do not be deceived. They are quite incorrigibly evil, and in this case, they are not only thieves, but potential murderers.” As he spoke, I stopped, and pointed wordlessly to a stone cairn on an island in the middle of the mire. A thin plume of smoke arose from a makeshift chimney in one corner of the structure, and despite the awful, pungent smell, I was quite sure that I could detect the smell of fried black pudding.

Agrimony gritted his teeth and stepped forward, prodding the ground suspiciously with his staff as he went. After some manoeuvring, we reached the cairn, and crept around the outer wall, until the entrance loomed up beside us.

 

“I say, Griswald, me old chap, I think we have visitors!” came a voice from inside the cave. It did not sound at all offensive, and for a moment I doubted Agrimony’s warning.

“Oh, how absolutely spiffing, Snotgobbler!” said a second voice, slightly higher-pitched than the first. Invite them in for a spot of tea, some fried bread and black pudding, do!”

We stepped through the doorway to find two dandyish-looking gentlemen sitting upon stools in front of a stove. Several pieces of black-pudding were sizzling on top of it, and one of the fellows was turning over pieces of fried bread with a spatula. But as I surveyed the rest of the rough-hewn room, I realised with a start that it was cluttered with gadgets from the workshop of Gladys Sparkbright: mud-spattered microscopes, dented telescopes, broken chronometers, and, in one corner, an enormous cylindrical object made of brass, from the end of which there protruded a long, flexible hose, about a half an ell in diameter, ending in a nozzle which looked for all the world like the oral orifice of a leech magnified ten thousand times.

“Observe,” whispered Agrimony, “the iron ore extractor.”

“Well, well! This is positively cosy,” said the young man with the spatula. He wore a dapper pin-striped suit and a tasteful green cravat. I must admit that he did look a personable sort of fellow, except that his feet were bare and hairy and ended in long, hooked claws – and that (how could I forget so obvious a thing?) his skin was a bright, sickly green.

“Absolutely cosy,” said the second young man, who was sitting at a rough-hewn table with a fork in his hand and a lily-white bib tucked into his admirably starched collar. His skin was quite as green as that of his fellow, and I noted with some disgruntlement that while he was popping the lightly-buttered pieces of black pudding into his mouth with commendable finesse and decorum, the urbane and sophisticated effect was somewhat marred by the fact that there was no plate, for he was eating the black pudding direct from the surface of the table. As Agrimony advanced into the room, the first young fellow turned and inverted the spatula over the table, scattering pieces of well-greased fried bread across its surface.

“Superbly cosy,” said the spatula-wielding fellow. “Take a seat, do! Oh – there isn’t one. Well. Never mind, what?” He turned back to the stove and began cracking a number of large leathery eggs on top of it. They popped and sizzled, and he prodded them with his spatula.

 

“Enough!” roared Agrimony, raising his staff, and as he did so, a remarkable, not to mention terrifying, change came over the young gentlemen. Their noses suddenly grew to four times their previous size, and became hooked at the ends. Warts sprouted up all over them. I recoiled in horror as the prim-looking waistcoat of the chap sitting at the table split up the back from top to bottom, revealing a portion of slimy green skin. The eyes of both young gentlemen suddenly became bloodshot, and the pupils glowed a malignant shade of purple. The spatula-wielding fellow opened his mouth to reveal an elongated blue tongue, and slowly began to lick the wax from his own earhole.

“You don’t like black-pudding, what?” said Snotgobbler with a drool. “Never mind! Perhaps we’ll turn you both into rissoles instead.”

“Oh, botheration!” said Griswald. “I’m sick of beastly rissoles. Can’t we turn them into proper sausages?”

 

Snotgobbler was on the verge of mentioning the possibility of human hamburgers, when Agrimony suddenly clapped his hands, and the pieces of black pudding flew into the air and stuffed themselves into the mouths and ears of Snotgobbler and Griswald. The two Goblins threw themselves helplessly upon the rocky floor of the cairn, spat out the bits of black pudding, and rolled about clutching their stomachs, slavering and squealing uncontrollably.

“So!” roared Agrimony, adopting a commanding stance with his foot on Snotgobbler’s head. “It was you two who stole the iron ore extractor from the workshop of Gladys Sparkbright, and adapted it for the purpose of blood-extraction, for the making of black puddings!”

“Yes!” cried Griswald between wails of perturbation. “It was us! And we’re proud of it!”

“I presume that making puddings from the ram was just a practice-run for the real thing?” said Agrimony, aiming a kick at Snotgobbler’s bottom.

“Yes, absolutely!” groaned Snotgobbler. “Black pudding made from mutton is not a patch on black pudding made from people!”

“Especially young people,” added Griswald with a groan.

“And especially elves,” choked Snotgobbler. “We were going to start with Miss Eleanor.”

 

“I thought as much,” said Agrimony grimly. “I would turn both of you into black puddings on the spot, but frankly, I can’t be bothered. Any suggestions, Hingefinkle?”

“Hum,” I said, after some thought. “You could turn them both into sheep. There would be a certain amount of poetic justice in that.”

And that is precisely what Agrimony did. Surprisingly, Griswald and Snotgobbler made wonderfully obedient sheep; they even led us across the maze of dry ground which passed through the mire and onto the moor, and with two well-aimed kicks, Agrimony propelled them towards the curious flock of sheep which had congregated at the edge of the mire.

“Hum,” I said, as Eleanor stared nonplussed at the new additions to her parents’ flock. “So the Goblins adapted the iron ore extractor to attract the haemoglobin in blood?”

“Haemoglobin, schlaemoglobin!” said Agrimony grumpily. “Do you realise the paperwork I shall have to do to justify my use of that little spell back there? It will take me a week to fill in the forms!”

“Fiddlesticks,” I replied, in as conciliatory tone as I could muster, “it will be worse for Gladys Sparkbright. She is going to have to invent a way to get the iron ore extractor and all her microscopes out of that quagmire!”

 

*

 

As a matter of fact, it took Agrimony two weeks to do the paperwork, because when he had completed it for the first time, the local Druid fraternity told him that they had recently changed the colour of Spell-Employment Notification Form 28Z/4150c from green to a lovely shade of lilac, and it was quite simply impossible for them to accept a Notification on the old form. I was on the verge of congratulating him on having signed and dated the lilac version of Form 28Z/4150c, when there was a knock at the door.

I put down my pipe and opened it to reveal Miss Eleanor, looking even paler and more frightened than she had done on her last visit to the Hermitage.

“Oh, Druid Agrimony!” she cried. “It’s Griswald and Snotgobbler! Father found them both this morning on the edge of the mire, quite dead, with gaping, bloody wounds on their chests. We looked for footprints, but there weren’t any, and oh -” (at this point she sobbed uncontrollably for a few moments before gathering her wits and continuing), “and when we looked out across the mire, a great pool of peaty water began to churn and froth, and something – something awful – arose from beneath the surface-”

“Hum,” I said calmly. “Dear Miss Eleanor. Take a deep breath, gather your thoughts, and then tell us what it was that you saw. There is nothing to fear.”

She obediently kept her silence for a few moments, and then burst into tears. “Oh, Mr. Hingefinkle! It was the head of a gigantic leech!”

Agrimony polished his monocle morosely, held it up to the light, and scrutinised it meticulously. “I see,” he said slowly. “In the light of this new development, I have a useful piece of advice for you and your parents.”

“What’s that?” asked Eleanor breathlessly.

Agrimony sat on his chair, put his feet up on a stool, and gazed vacantly at the ceiling. “Give up sheep-farming and go and live in the Bluebell Wood,” he said with a sigh.

 

Done