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In the depths of the night in Cambridge, a large object floated with the slow downriver current, emerging from beneath the dark shadows of the trees and the vegetation on the bank into the clear area along the quays that lined the river either side of the Great Bridge.
The water moved slowly there. As the current edged the object round a gentle bend, some profound eddy caught it, setting it briefly in motion.
To an onlooker, it might have seemed that an arm waved; asked for help, perhaps.
For the object was a human body. The appeal for help was nothing but an illusion, for the body was quite dead.
Time passed, and, yard by slow yard, the body made its way past the moored boats, the majority dark and closed up for the night. It floated on its back, arms and legs splayed out, and gradually the gentle current swept it over to the northern bank. Sometimes its right foot, still wearing a boot although the left one had gone, knocked against the side of a boat. If any sleeper on board heard the small sound, he or she dismissed it as the general background noise of the night.
Now the body drew close to the Great Bridge. Aboard the last boat on the north bank, a woman was awake. She was nursing a baby, and she sat in a pool of light from a single lantern. She was intent on her child, watching the small face as her little son drew the abundant nourishment from her breast, and had no eyes for anything in, or upon, the river.
Had she glanced down, she would have seen a pale face illuminated by her lantern. The face had received a battering, and there had been a great deal of blood. This had all been washed away from the exposed flesh, although the tunic and undershirt were still heavily stained. The hair, long, fair and well cut, floated around the broken head like a halo.
On the right hand, extended towards the nursing woman and her child in silent appeal, three fingers and the thumb were crushed almost beyond recognition.
As the dead man floated beneath the Great Bridge, the trailing edge of some torn item of clothing caught on the ruins of an ancient wooden quay, of which nothing remained but a few rotting wooden piers under the water. For a while, the current tried to pull the body free, and it began to bob about as if eager to assist. But the movement caused another piece of cloth to become caught up, and then the body was still.
It was to remain there, in the dark shadows beneath the bridge, for some time before anybody spotted it, by which time much of the exposed flesh would have been eaten away by the small creatures of the water and the river bank.
It was a sorry end, for a man who had travelled so far.
