The darkness crept in around us like a predatory animal
circling its prey. That would, indeed, have been something worth seeing on this
February evening, as this would have been just the time for foxes to be on the
prowl hunting for rabbits unwise enough to seek an evening meal before heading
for the safety of their burrows.
We had been walking round Hickling Broad for more than an
hour and should have been back at our hotel in Potter Heigham by now, especially
as a mist was now adding to the gloom, but the distractions of short-eared owls
swooping across the frozen water and the sounds of buntings calling from the
reedbeds before settling down for the night had stopped us in our tracks. What
we really wanted to hear was the boom of a bittern – we had been told that they
were in the vicinity and neither of us had ever heard, let alone seen, one
before. This was the right time and place, so staying out this late seemed to
be a good idea.
Was that one now? There was definitely something there – but
a boom? It sounded more like the rat-tat-tat of a drum! There it was again – no
doubt about it – somebody was beating a drum from across the water.
This was very odd. Why would anyone be playing a drum at
this time of day, and in the open air? It sounded like a military drum – the
sort that you would hear at the Edinburgh Tattoo, for example – but there was
only one of them, not a whole brigade of drummers. We wondered if it might be
some young man who had been told to go outside and practice his paradiddles, or
whatever they were called, where the family couldn’t hear him. But that was
before we saw the drummer in person.
There he was! He was coming across the Broad in full sight
of us, skating on the ice. But surely the ice was too thin to support a person,
whether or not he was playing a drum? And it was plainly too dark and misty now
for us to be able so see someone at that distance – we could barely see each
other!
The figure we saw – and we definitely both saw the same
thing – seemed to glow with a dull silvery sort of light, as though it was a
canvas lantern with a candle inside it. It moved right across an arm of the
Broad over to our right, drumming all the time, and then – when it reached the
reedbeds – just vanished, and the drumming stopped as well.
To say we were astonished would have been a gross
understatement. I stood there for several minutes with my jaw on the ground,
unable to say a thing, and – judging by the silence beside me – I imagine that
my partner was doing exactly the same. Eventually, though, we recovered our
wits enough to make it back to the hotel.
When the receptionist saw us come into the lobby she took
one look at our faces and said “You haven’t by any chance just been down at the
Broad, have you?” Of course, we said that that was where exactly where we had
been.
“I should have warned you earlier”, she said. “I take you’ve
just seen our local ghost? I’m just going off duty – meet me in the bar in ten
minutes’ time and I’ll tell you all about it”.
A stiff drink was exactly what we needed, so we were glad to
take up her invitation. Marcia was a local lady, in her 50s, who had lived in
the village all her life and knew all the legends associated with the place.
“He only appears at this time of the year, and only when
there is ice on the Broad and a mist in the evening air”, she began, as we got
outside a couple of double brandies.
“There was a young man from round here – over the other side
of the Broad – who joined the Army as a drummer-boy not long before the Battle
of Waterloo in 1815. He fell in love with a girl from Potter Heigham, but her
father did not approve – he wanted something better for his daughter than a
mere drummer-boy.
“So the two could only meet in secret, which they did down
by the Broad. Because of the hard winter that year he found that he could skate
across the ice, and he did so every night. I’m not sure that the pair got up to
too much mischief – a bit too chilly for anything of that sort, I would imagine
- but they seemed to be happy enough with that arrangement.
“But one night in February the ice was only as thick as it
probably is tonight, and the drummer-boy fell through the ice into the freezing
cold water, couldn’t get out and was drowned. His ghost has skated across the
Broad every February night ever since, as long as there is a mist and a thin
film of ice on the water. And - of course – he always beats his drum as he does
so.
“Not everyone I tell this story to believes me, unless –
that is – they have seen the ghost for themselves.
“Right. I see that you’ve finished your drinks – ready to go through to the restaurant for supper?”
© John Welford
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