Hodd

by Adam Thorpe

  I understood by Hodde’s awful reply that I must conceal my ardour from him, and henceforth e’en took to ignoring the filthy offal that frequently spewed from my companions’ mouths, lest they think me eager for carnal relations. Being fourteen or fifteen, the sap of manhood was yet rising in me, with all its temptations to stray even further from the righteous path: though I was already lost in the thickets and drear wastes of evil ways.

  At night, when I lay sleepless, the damsel appeared to me as the Virgin Mary would appear before I fell into heresy: yet the present lady was in a less decent form, and tempted me to sin, leaving foul traces. As many a novice monk doth grow to wakefulness and weakness from such indiscretion, putting into peril his body and soul until saved by the succour and counsel of his companions, so was I engulfed in solitary vice: yet none there was to save me, nor any confession to be made.183

  Tormented by the damsel, who was locked up as in a tower until the solstice of warm June, when she was to become my master’s bride, I took part in robberies upon the highway, as though engaged on tremendous exploits in distant lands or faerie realms – like those I had once sung of, singing to my previous masters most sweetly over my nimble fingers that were now softened, alack, no longer calloused by the wolf-gut – for the harp was so [broken as to be unmendable?],184 even by the most skilful carpenter among us. Truly, I sorrowed that I was without my instrument at the very time I became lovelorn, and might have poured the honey of song over the vile prison in which those bluish-grey eyes were shut fast amongst defilement.

  And if my new master was speaking true? Satan whispered thus in my ear, even as I rode out to rob and ambush (though not yet kill), or practised my bowmanship, or clattered my stave against another’s.

  Breaking my nose during the last pastime, and fearful of being blemished (for it is the fairest member), I set it straight again with great suffering that my visage be not defouled. Yet deeper fouling was doing its mischief. Loading hay for the stables, or cutting wood, or increasing my skills in horsemanship, I was much invigorated [corroboratus] in body, but this drew vital spirits from my head and my mind weakened; thus I began to consider whether Hod might indeed be following in truth’s footsteps, just as the Lord Jesus Christ did.

  Mayhap his powers are indeed very great, I thought (or rather, the Devil slipped into my enfeebled mind and caused me to think); and if they say that those thousands who scorned Christ for a false prophet do now burn eternally in liquid fire, then who is to say that those who scorn Robertt Hodd, calling him a wretched felon and thief and murderer, be not equally mistook?

  Then it was but a small leap to considering, with brother Edward’s type of chopping logic, that if Hode be true, Christ be false, and thereby not a single heathen, Jew or heretic be burning at all; for if the Church and its teachings be but a great palace of pasteboard, and even Hell-fire a painting upon a board, to strike terror to dumb peasants and children [with their mouths] agape in the square … [matter erased].

  And so I reckoned that if Hode’s voice was a jug of bronze, pouring out wisdom from its lip,185 I was indeed a great fellow bound (as his disciple) for vast powers, thrust into the world for a reason so far hidden, as St Peter was, or St Luke. Pride is the worst sin, and tooketh me by the throat in the heart of the outlaws’ wood. And it is my contention now, at the extreme marge of my life (so long unwinding its thread), that there is great peril in living amongst natural growing things, instead of staying within that which is built by man in praise of God: for nature is fallen and the very leaves measled with Adam’s sin, her ground infected with snakes and crawling beasts of disgusting appearance, feasting on the rottenness that Heaven itself knoweth not – for nothing there [in Heaven] falleth with the cold but is eternally ripe and green in the balmy air, and without night. Yea, ’tis better to seek the very rim of the land, where all is naught but rock, sand and endless-seeming ocean, as did the founding fathers of this our great abbey, and also my first saintly master the hermit, to live as though upon the very portal of everlasting life, in utmost purity, far from the leaf-sodden mire of the forest, or the town’s stench.

  Many hundreds of feckless young men, I hear, do now find solace in the woods of this or that baron or lord, fleeing the evils of the city or their own misdeeds; and some spurred – alas! – by the wretched progeny of my minstrelsy, do e’en dress in green and call themselves ‘Roberdesmen’ or ‘Robbinsmen’! Though that be play-acting compared to our true outlaw life, which was as cruel and hard and wretched, in truth, as any hovel-dweller burning charcoal, and scarce redeemed by our plunder: many were the outlaws with gout in their limbs from dampness, that sometimes slew them with its frosted sword. The times are dangerous, therefore, if the fashion be for forest-dwelling, or sleeping in waste places thick with imps and demons, or e’en travelling to the sinister haunts of witches and sorcerers and pagans (and similar human servants of the Devil), such as giant rings or circles of stones – wherein the common folk go to be cured of their maladies, hideously mistaking that cold rock for the warm mercy of the Lord.186

  I wondered further, that if (in Hode’s reckoning) no lost souls be burning or suffering torments and pinchings as though their flesh be ever warm, then where do the dead resideth? Remembering what he had told me – that the dead join the sea of the divine essence, losing their bodies and scattering e’en the atoms of their souls; and that there is no torment, nor fear of the after-life, and therefore no sin save awareness of sin – I found comfort in this, just as I had found comfort in my two previous masters, taking off and putting on their dress and colours as though I was but a child playing at tournaments or joustings.

  In my manifold ignorance, however, I was all but the worst of heretics, applauded by Satan and his fiends. Terrible confession!187

  Then the idea passed through me, with a great shudder, that I might slay Hod and see if all Creation dissolveth; although he once told me that were he indeed to die, he would become a shadow within all created matter, ever more powerfully subtle, and that he cared not a clove of garlic for his life. But horribly I pleased myself to think that if he were dead, he would not marry, in his flesh, the grey-eyed damsel! And so tormented was I, that I ground my teeth and suffered sleeplessness, and my face went unwashed like the most servile beggar. ‘You look indeed like one of us,’ said Phylip, though my face was not yet scarred and bludgeoned by accident or violence, and my tongue was not yet so foul with oaths as theirs.

  One morning when again guarding the Noneryye, and seized by desire, I scribbled foolish words of love with a burnt stick upon white birch bark, [addressing it] to: ‘The damsel with the bluish-grey eyes’, and slipped the morsel under the wattle fence, believing she could read simple letters. Soon I heard high laughter, of a mocking sort, and regretted my action. One of the women, of a most vicious appearance from her forbidden trade [negotia illicita] beyond the camp, and smelling like a dunghill as do all bawds beneath their perfumes and decay,188 then came to the fence where I was posted and bid me lower my ear to a chink [in the fence], for she bore a word from my sweetheart.

  Foolishly, I did as instructed and received the word directly, alacka-day! – for she thrust her hole [against the wattle] and let off a noise like thunder from her hinder parts, filling the air with a foul stench and saying after, ‘Thus doth thy sweetheart love thee, my goodly knight! Daf thou art, to tilt at such a targe!’189

  Then a message came, on the following week, that a great sum of gold was to be paid by the father, in return for the damsel’s release. It must be set down here that our retinue did include several wastrel sons of the nobility, though not of the highest barons, but of the middling sort; and that these retained links with certain important members of the towns thereabout (even unto Yorke), that were of a corrupt nature.190

  One felon of this sort named Ralph, while of handsome appearance, possessed a withered hand of great ugliness; he, being an ungovernable boy, had thrust [this hand] into the heat of the hearth when aged five, for a childi
sh wager, half consuming it in the flames. It looked very like a peacock’s rivelled foot; and like a peacock, that sees the foulness of its feet and lets fall its wondrous feathers in shame,191 Raph was very ashamed of it, and covered it with his sleeve. He it was who brought the news of the ransom, and swiftly bruiting it abroad among us (for our leader was shut away in his temple-hut like a soothsayer, receiving visions), we grew excited. Verily, this gold was but small change for the father, an exceeding rich merchant of Notyngham, who wished to grant192 his lovely daughter to an elderly baron of great influence at court – whose name I dare not even now divulge, for they say his offspring are as cruel and cunning and lecherous as he was, being of the same corrupt blood.

  The deadline being but three hours, before this aforesaid baron had sworn by God to send a mighty force as great as his had been against the infidel, to wipe us out amidst horrible tortures and executions (this baron having the king’s ear), Litel John went straight away to his general; only to find him snoring and nigh insensible, plunged into a deep sleep by the effects of the [intoxicant] soup, of which he had took many draughts, mingled with the fine Rhenish wine captured on the highway, by which he was oft diseased with the headache after.

  Littel John took command then, saying, ‘Ay, let her be given back in the presence of twenty of us, fully armed, upon the point known as Hoddes Stone,’193 as was oft done with lesser ransoms paid.

  So, like a turtle-dove let out of its cage, and without Hodde’s knowledge or approval, the damsel was led away between the strongest felons, while the remaining number guarded the wood carefully all abouts, lest this be a trap to lure the main force away.

  And thus I watched my amorette depart from the trees upon her bay palfrey, that I was sore envious of – e’en for the touch of her pretty feet on either flank.194 She was surrounded by felons like a pearl within the roughest of shells, and I did crave my harp. Her face was indeed the colour of pearl, and her locks as yellow as a blackbird’s beak, and her small mouth likewise lustrous, moistened by her free-flowing tears, that made her eyes to shine like crystal as they looked about; yet she espied not her young adorer sitting in a fresh-greening tree with his bow, though I waved my hand at her, for either the air did not bring the likeness of me to her, or her sight was cumbered by the tears’ moisture, or her wit was too destroubled. And all about us the primerole was a-flower in such great abundance, seeming as though covering the greenwood floor in gold for her departure, that they minded not if her horse’s step crushed them.

  My heart was heavy, but also I was in great fear, for when Hode waketh from his drunken slumber, he must be furious to find his Virgin gone, that was his future spouse. Only I knew, as his principal confidant, of this matter of sacred marriage, yet said nothing to Litt[le] John, whom I feared as much as I feared Hode. What must he do, when he findeth her flown, that was to be his own blasphemous substitute for the spotless Virgin we are all betrothed to in spirit? He must tear me from limb to limb, as the one too cowardly to explain.

  Thus I approached Litylle Joh[n], on his return with a great amount of ransom in a purse of gold coins, worth some £400,195 and told him directly what our leader had planned. The giant felon, closing his lower lip over his upper lip in deep and effortful thought (for Hode said his rival’s brain seemed lacking in vital spirits that were drawn on overmuch by the demands of his huge shoulders and limbs), said to me that a flash of lightning had struck the Nonnerye, and changed the damsel into a bag of gold, leaving a circle of burnt earth: and certainly then I understood, for I had seen a felon go to the Nonerrye with a lit torch.

  When Hodde awoke as though from death, with a face all red like a harlot’s painted with lead and vinegar, he emerged from the temple-hut of birch with fresh visions: one being that his head had been cleaved in two and his brain replaced with one of silver, pearls and gold by a comely maiden in a meadow of flowers, that now his brain was exceeding brilliant and precious, of the value of £400. And this striking the men as extraordinary, for it seemed to reflect what had truly occurred (in the way supernatural dreaming doth), they fell to a murmuring like bees.

  And Littl John, much astonished, took Hodde aside and said unto him: ‘You have dreamed aright, and as things must be.’ Hod did not understand, and looked at him blearily; then John recounted to him, not in the way we had agreed upon, though the earth had been burned with a circle, but only the truth: for he was much a-frighted by this reported dream, and did not care for lying and dissembling.

  And Hode nodded calmly at this news, saying, ‘You have swapped her for filthy lucre’s sake, Johnne. She will return at the solstice, for it is written in my dream; I did see, after she had replaced my brain, the phoenix above my head. After it is burned to ashes, it becometh a worm in three days, that soon waxeth to a bird of the same great beauty. This meaning that in three months, when day burns equal with the night [on the solstice], she will appear again, for we are one and have no mate; for how can we have a mate, being one in essence, as indistinguishable as two drops gendered in the same sea?’

  Lityle John muttered, and bit his lip that it ran blood; so Hodde said: ‘You close like the oyster against me, but I am the crab, that awaits patiently for the oyster to open [its shell] and then puts a stone to hinder the closing of it, that he may devour and gnaw the oyster’s flesh.’

  For H[o]dde was truly in a great rage and sorrow, but hid all of it like a monk concealing apples in his great sleeves during Tierce, to nibble upon, that do in truth hold wasps inside their flesh.196 And Litl John kept his silence, as if his mouth was indeed the hard shell of an oyster, and he was afraid of the stone that might keep it open.

  Then, at that very instant, the skeleton of the quack did laugh, and all of us looked up in terror; but it was in truth the babbling of a pye197 perched high upon the skull, that with the ribs, one arm and half a leg out of the hips, was all that remained of the whole man, as they say certain men appear after battle – albeit still fleshed and bleeding, and e’en alive in their groaning.

  Hode was glad of the gold, despite his pain and sorrow, for he might therewith corrupt further the wits of important men, and buy their agreement as he saw fit, as great lords do even unto the judge and the jury, should any of us be taken.

  Whereupon some days later, receiving reports that the lovely maid was returned to Notyngam and devoutly giving thanks thrice daily to her lady the Mother of God in the great church therein that is called St Mary, he did sit upon a fallen trunk in the clearing, gnashing his teeth and devouring his own lip, and said that he had not seen his own lady for a week, and must see her now;198 and that if he did not, 10,000 crossbow-bolts would pierce his heart, for his heart was a castle under siege. And I was thus so eager to espy her myself that I declared myself (in a loud voice) willing to accompany him with his guard, that must number twelve like the disciples.199

  Then there was disturbance among the men gathered in the clearing, as of a hive when it is kicked and sets forth a humming, for to go to Notyngham would be to invite their own doom, though they be armed to the teeth. The gates of the city would be closed behind them, and though they might resist with much bloodletting, their pains could only be rewarded with death or arrest, and no amount of gold might spare them: for the baron’s coffers were full, and he himself almost mightier than the king (who indeed feared him); and being betrothed to the damsel, this baron would utterly destroy any man who had ever done mischief to her, with the most horrible tortures.

  Then Hodd rose, and shouted very loud, that all were put into a hush as a cloth over a hive doth to the bees within. ‘Why, thinkest thou to announce my arrival with trumpets and such great clatter as might wake the dead, e’en those we ourselves have put into the earth with our murtherings? Fools! I will go in disguise, alone but for one, and that be [Little] John, for I needs must have a page to carry my bow.’ And here much mirth burst forth, for the felons were quick and fiery of temper and ever-changing.

  But Lytl John, as furious as a boar smi
tten by the spear of a hunter, did roar piteously that he would do no such thing – when it might have been better to have laughed also, and not frot his tusks upon the insult, whetting them for battle with his leader. Hod was nimbler sure, in wits and body, and instilled great awe amongst the men, whereas [Little] John was perceived as being more brawn than brain, and all his merits housed in a boarish courage that broke heedlessly upon the enemy, and put them to flight in sheer terror. Yet, as we all know, the boar hath a shrewdness in him too, though more forthright than that of a fox.

  And he cried thus: ‘Never shall I bear thy bow, nor thy arrows, but only mine own, as thou shalt bear thine. Though it be for a mere wench, as be comely and nothing more, and for a mere lovesickness like a lily-livered boy’s, yet shall I accompany thee, for thou hadst need of protection in thy weakness.’ And this so angered Hodde, that he struck John across the face with his hand, and all present did gasp and cry out.200 Then Lityl John drew his sword, as if to smite off his master’s head, and all our lives – even the lives of the full green trees and the loud or muttering creatures within, and the daylight itself, and the grass that sparkled with dew at our feet (for it was morning) – did seem very brittle, as of glass.

  But our leader stood firm, as he was wont to, only his hand resting upon the pommel of his sword, that was of very fine ironwork, and its blade of the sharpest steel. Mayhap if the birds were not singing so merrily in the verdure, as it was springtime, we might have heard a growling. Then John’s choler, spread from his gall into every extremity, did begin to retreat, and his face grew less red. ‘Thou art no better than a lovesick gnof,’201 he declared; ‘and if thou were not my master, thy head would now be rolling on the turf. Find another man to go with thee, for I will have none of it, nor this wench-folly.’

  And he walked the length of the clearing towards his great sorrel courser, and mounted it in one leap, and spurred it blindly so that the hooves well nigh spilled us as though [playing] hoddmen’s blinde,202 and galloped away beyond the rocks and out onto the moorland – as I guessed, for I could hear only his hoof-beats growing dim, the trees being thick with new leaves.