Hodd

by Adam Thorpe

  Alas, I intended to consume a single precious page upon the tale of the court’s procession, yet my pen was swept forward, as a tiny barque upon a wave of memories, and I have blotted no less than four! Mayhap the reader hath quite forgot where he was, and e’en now rebukes these pages for taking him upon another way, as though falsely signed. For this and more, the book begs his tolerance, remembering in turn how books themselves are tolerant of readers who scatter fragments of their fare, such as cheese and fruit, o’er their open pages, or mutilate lovely volumes with their knives, or scrawl unworthy comments in the margin, that it were better those scholars were unlettered and given o’er wholly to sloth.

  For e’en the unlettered know this: that drowning men can yet survive by human intervention, yet when the waves be too high, the depths too profound, and the stir of water be too strong, then only the Almighty can be called upon. When the victim be a blasphemous and cruel felon, intent on overthrowing all that be good in our land, then the Almighty is not only no resort, but maketh the waves higher, the stir stronger, the abyss deeper.

  Naught could I do in the church at Notyngham, therefore, on hearing the gates close, but to watch helplessly as Robert Hod was seized, remembering the words he had spoken to me on the way, in that wild and desolate moorland place near Bakwele:248 ‘If I be took, Much, thou must not try to save me, but flee, that you may report to the others what hath become of me. For my bodily life, I count it not worth a nail, for once it hath been discarded, I will become my Creation, that shall itself dissolve into one boundless sea. Yet it is not time for that event to pass: the sacred marriage must take place before, as it hath been ordained from time immemorial, and only then can my spirit be truly freed, and with it the entire world of matter. I have been granted this message in my dreams, and the elect are about us even now, in angelic form. Hark to them!’

  And truly, in that desolate place by the crags on the way [to Nottingham], I did feel their presence, e’en on the cool air that blustered between the peaks. Yet something within me (no doubt the last remaining morsel of my true faith) did dare to ask him, as a question issuing from the most favoured of all the outlaws: ‘How dost thou know these things, master, and that they are not mere dreams – oft seen to be as frivolous as buffoons on a stage?’ And he looked at me with great wretchedness, astonied that I should not perceive the answer, which he gave thus: ‘The question must be, not how do I know these things, but how do others know them not? And not a speck, apart from a few of the chosen? For that ignorance is the chief mystery!’

  O miserable wretch that I was! To be taken in by such deranged jabbering, oozing from his mouth as pulp from a poison fruit! How puffed up I felt, to be intimate with such a personage, as a counsellor is with a king, though that king be a mere wisp of straw on the winds of time – of the same brevity as the sparrow crossing the hall, as it was famously said long ago!249

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  Yet I did obey him to the letter, on hearing the gates of the city close, by dint of my paralysis and not my will. For as the armed men [raised by the hue and cry] surged into the church, I remained pressed against the pillar under the tower, perched upon the high lip of the base that I might see the events unfold, with the golden boy He[n]ri beside me, my hand upon his shoulder.

  How excited he was, as we clung to the fresh-hued stone! I pulled him closer to me as though his boon companion, for I was uncertain whether I had been descried with Hode by witnesses, and so entwined with his guilt. I was still bearing the felon’s bow and quiver of arrows, indeed; they would be of small use to him now, methought – for he was thoroughly cramped by the press as the armed men250 came forward, his blue coat and hood marking him out as openly as a torch in the night.

  He, making no resistance, remained staring upon the damsel, who was being pulled away by her father and the short-statured baron,251 yet twisting [obtorsit] her neck back to seek her former captor’s face – for his hood had been pulled down and no doubt she did recognise him. Though hardly manly in my years, and many yards from her, I was nigh swooning, for I found her loveliness increased by the excitement upon her face (as I perceived it from afar), that mingled fear and astonishment and pleasure.

  She was delivered into the north transept, out of my view, and my attention returned fully to Hod. He was already seized, for he moved as a branch on the stream, not of his own volition. There was more shouting, and a crash as of masonry, as the phalanx surrounding the prisoner thrust a way through the crowd of spectators and made for the south door.

  Glimpsing blood upon Hod’s forehead, I saw he had been struck by a club or staff; carried bodily like a drunken man, his feet dragging behind, he seemed in a reverie, with mouth agape. And all this while Henry did join in the tumult with piping cheers; yet nowhere did I spot brother Thomas, the Judas of the matter (as I thought of him then, poor doomed wretch that he was!). Then the south door closed upon them, and was guarded.

  Thus was the Arch-fiend arrested, not as later he bid me describe it,252 but as a dog is dragged on a rope to the dunghill.

  I wished to descend from our perch and make my way out of the building by the north door, to see where they were taking my master; but the church of St Mary’s was [now become] the market of Bagdad, the famed metropolis of the Muhametans: such a stir and bustle was there, and such a clamour, and such a turbulence of heads, fists, staves and swords, along with men’s cries and women’s shrieks that echoed greatly in the vast stone chamber of the place, with additional voice from the priests and sidesmen and so forth berating the mob from the chancel, that I wondered if any of us might emerge unscathed.

  For word had got round already that an infamous felon had been taken in the holy place, during a divine service, and this itself caused such a consternation and excitement that those of the shyref’s men not now accompanying the arrest did gain needful employment in breaking the heads of the common folk that were come into the church to gape, and thus exciting them further; while another path was beaten out from the throng by dint of clubs and staves, for the express purpose of the damsel, who left along the north side upon the arm of the baron.

  Much blood was spilt, therefore, and many folk were dishevelled, bruised and torn in that sacred place, yet not by Robert Hod.253

  The vicar and his ministers were meanwhile shouting from the chancel that it was a violation, for the church was a sanctuary, and not even a murderer should be drawn out; and on coming down the side of the nave to the south door, where they attempted to egress, they fell into a scuffle that saw a glittering cope torn and trampled underfoot, and several holy men pushed to the floor, as the scherryf’s guards grew wrathful themselves. And true it was that never before had such a violation been seen during mass! Though Almighty God knew better, for Hod cared no more for the divine service than the dog that was now barking at the affray, before relieving its bladder on our pillar.

  When eventually Henrie and myself were able to leave, it was too late to learn by my own witness where Hode had been taken – but at second hand I knew immediately on emerging into the market, for the talk was of little else. Indeed, a parti-coloured buffoon with bells on his wrists was gaining pennies by miming the event in a ridiculous fashion, e’en to the shame of mincing like a woman in imitation of the grey-eyed Isabele, and thereby causing bursts of laughter. His reward was to have fists and feet laid upon him by a pair of the baron’s oafs, whose rough jingling [tinnitus]254 put an end to the spectacle, for (being a stranger) he delighted not in the baron’s influence, and knew not what gravity of insult he had committed. And again, Henry did watch the beating with a pleasure that sat ill upon his girlish countenance; and even I, on seeing this harmless blasphemer of my lovelorn worship vanish under kicks and blows, was glad.

  The gossips proclaimed that the dangerous outlaw had been took to a manor belonging to the baron many miles away, wherein a deep gaol awaited him, and the delights of the baron’s many famed instruments of torture (such as the rack, or pressing by weights, or being fille
d by foul water) to be extracted of a confession. Others maintained that he had been dragged to a lightless cell within the thick stones of the castle, wherein the sheryff threw the worst malefactors, who oft perished in the stench of unclean straw or were gnawed alive by rats, there to await the justices.255 And such glee did these common folk show, that it was only with great effort that I hid my anger from them and from Henri.

  ‘Let us see which it is,’ I said, ‘for such a felon is not a daily dish.’ And we joined those already drifting towards the castle, as we thought it probable that the high sherf would have taken him in under his own jurisdiction, as the law makes plain. Little Henry lost no opportunity to vaunt his own abilities, boasting of his favoured position in the eyes of father G[e]rald, let alone ‘his courageous master, captor of felons’. The boy indeed looked the picture of saintliness in his oblate’s cloak. Pshaw! [phui] did I wish to exclaim, and buffet those golden curls; but instead I played the amiable shepherd in the play, that his view of me remain innocent and opaque.

  There was a small crowd already before the castle, straining to see through the iron gates into the courtyard, and jabbering together. Hod’s repute had been inflated on the instant, by mere dint of his being arrested in the great church, yet few had heard of him this far south of his activities; whereas other outlaws, slain or seized likewise, had been swiftly forgot, though more local than he (being denizens of the forest of Scherwode, hard by Notyngham) – e’en when their corpses were dandled in iron chains at the gates or the crossways for the crows to peck and urchins to throw [stones?] against.

  ‘Hark,’ cried Henri, ‘I think I hear him screaming! That is very fine! He will have a second and much more unpleasant [insuavem] episode after he is hanged, which will continue for ever!’ I was disgusted to hear him speak thus, in the mincing manner of my old master, for he was not yet ten and such phrases from a small, budding mouth sounded obscene. I wished to dash his brains out on the cobbles, for the devil’s daughter of jealousy was dancing wildly in my chest again; instead, I told him in a calm voice that it was but the noise of the swifts, who nested in the castle’s eaves high above our heads.

  A baker’s boy delivering bread to the castle (still covered in flour and stains of soot as if just emerged from the night’s ovens) confirmed to us that he had witnessed the wicked felon, marked by rotten fruit and dung thrown at him in the lanes, being took into the passageway that led to the gaol; and he maintained that the cells were as horrible as the gaolers, with heavy iron neck-bonds so fashioned with spikes inside that if the wretches did not stand, but attempted to sit or lie, then they would be pierced, as in the sleeping time of anarchy.256 Requesting a prayer in the abbey church for his sick mother, the boy gave Henry a honeyed loaf from his sack, in kind.

  Thus Henrie and I broke sweet bread together by the castle, little thinking how fate would soon entwine our souls firmer than flour and water in a bakery, till Doom’s trumpet! He laughed shrilly, pleased at his ruse, for the bread was free. When I said that it was not free, but paid for in the eternal coin of prayer (determined to be more than his equal in the imitation of brother Thomas’s phrases), he laughed e’en louder, saying in his piping voice, ‘I have no intention of praying for that simpleton’s idiot mother, my friend! I care not an acorn for the poxy dame!’ And then I saw that his goldenness and angelic countenance concealed a mean and vicious temperament, just as King John’s257 lewd and ugly ways did show as an infant, as plants or trees grow awry from the first day: the mildew [mucor] engendering with the seed.

  Anon Henrie informed me that my former master had not glimpsed me in the church, being slow of eye. I asked: ‘Doth he wish to meet with me?’ […] ‘Indeed,’ quoth the boy, ‘though not here but in Lentonne priory, for the subprior [of Lenton] hath much expertness in the writings of St Iohannes Damascenus258 and other ancient scholars, and [wishes to show us?] the priory’s great herb garden, in which many diverse and useful plants grow, after the example of Macer.’259 And the golden Henri was so excited by this, as much as by the arrest, that [I felt he was?] tormenting me, for of a sudden I was seized with a great grief, that I had cast all this fragrancy aside for the stinking life of a forest felon and cut-throat … [my new master?] now chained to the bare floor of a foul cell, from where many an innocent never emerges – or no longer of sound mind.

  Gruffly, therefore, I [released?] my arm from his and said I must make my way swiftly to the butts upon the commons, where the wealthy merchant aforementioned would be waiting, no doubt impatient for his bow. In truth, I planned on running hotfoot to the stables where our horses were tethered, and returning by the main highway to the outlaw’s camp, to summon help. Alas, Henry gave me a most winning and imploring look, [saying?] he did love the butts and archery, but his life as an oblate forbad him such pastimes, and that he was mortally sick of learning and of chafing his knees in endless prayer, and of the blows of the birch-rod. ‘Mayhap you might bring me to the butts,’ he pleaded.

  And I, expressing horror that he should think of abandoning his master, heard the bells pealing noon, whereupon he said there was time enough – and that, were he to return a little late to the priory, he would say how the violent and dangerous press in the church delayed him – which was not a lie.

  How I did hate him then! – for his small hand was fast about my arm, delaying me. And I did understand how he was a curse in my life; had he not drawn my former master away from me with honeyed airs, as once Edwyne had with the hermit, I would never have embarked on my foolhardy adventure, and steeped myself in felony and sinfulness, living like a vagrant under the boughs!260

  Then suddenly the truth came to me, in my torment, how I was always in great need of worldly affection – that imperishable love of the Lord never being enough for miserable and weak sinners, though it be as freely granted as sunlight is.

  And so greatly thirsting as I was, I would always find a fresh spring of affection: yet each time drawing too much from it, I caused it to dwindle or dry up; or I did poison it that it became clotted matter [tabum]:261 as happened with the hermit, then brother Thomas, and must soon come to pass with Robert Hode, unless I were to save him from certain torture and execution. I cried secretly within: ‘Alas, that I lost my proper father as an infant, leaving me only the offscourings of his love and influence, so I have to search for its manliness in diverse places: curses on that evil and lewd king!’262

  My dagger was in my belt, and so incited was I by these dark, tormented thoughts, that I might have cut his [Henry’s] throat then and there anigh the castle gates where the motley knot of citizens gawped: from tinker to baker to cripple to cook, alike thirsty for news, as much as the lean goldsmith or the fat merchant – or even the fair ladies gossiping and giggling (to the invisible demons’ delight) so close to us we could smell their sweet violet [nosegays?] upon the air, and catch their nonsense – for they had already fashioned Robert Hod into the handsomest villain in the land. And Henry wondered what was the matter with me, for I was turned very pale under my dirty visage: and I all but broke into tears upon his little shoulder!

  It may be that the golden boy was replete with fiends, as a sweet apple can be full of writhing worms – fooling the hungry wayfarer under its shining skin, as it lies on the grass. Sometimes, even in my senescence (some eighty years later), I do think this of the boy; but only for comfort, to appease my horrible guilt.

  My own present blotted and flaccid skin, that time alone has pocked and defouled, would make no one pause, however famished. Only the eternal fire might burn it and purify it, though each purification is swiftly followed on the morrow by the same former corrupting, as with an antrax:263 for the punishment for murder is crackling flame without end, be it as hot as that which maketh glass, or melteth the hardest iron.

  I knew the commons area was hard by the stables wherein we had tethered our horses, yet as we walked towards the city wall, I had no notion of where upon the commons the butts might be found, for all was feigning in my sto
ry. I was afraid the stables would already be guarded by the [sheriff’s?] men, for immediate enquiries would have been made in such places, but just as worship was neglected in that time, so also was the capturing of malefactors. I believed Hod to be already pressed by a great weight of iron, or nipped by pincers, or hung by his thumbs and smoked at his feet, that he might give my presence away; or confess even to deeds he never committed, such as the stealing or murthering of children, or e’en the casting of spells upon the king. I felt the rope rub my neck, and was sore afraid.

  My only thought was to flee the city, but we found the gates still locked fast, that not even a mouse might enter or leave until the sh[e]r[i]ff was ensured that none other of Hod’s men be within Notyngham; though many said it was the baron’s order that shut them. It is true that there was fear of insurrection at that time, for the king was very young, and many barons chafed at the power of his regents.264 A rich Jew was arguing with the guards, that he might be let out by the [small] door in the great gates, and I saw coins pressed into the sergeant’s hand and, corrupted by this bribe, he let the door be opened, to the anger of the others held back by sharp-pointed lances from our forefathers’ time.

  Others were let in and out, that did not resemble felons, but each time money passed hands (as I understood it), to the increasing anger of the common folk who wished to pass also with their honest wares. And insalubrious stuff being thrown, such as rotten fruit, greasy pasties, putrid pigeons and even more unmentionable garbage, against the gates and the venerable walls of stout oak,265 the guards before them were struck: and so the constable came out, with such a paunch before him that you would say he was holding a barrel under his hauberk, and a trumpet was blown. He threatened – as if in proclamation – that those throwing would suffer the hurdle or the pillory, as befits fraudulent traders (he said), for they were buying cheap and selling dear, and it was all corrupting for the belly (clapping a hand on his own); and this speech made many laugh – for by this he meant to turn all merry, and draw the anger out.