Hodd

by Adam Thorpe

  Yet was he more dangerous than any man there, or any man I have ever met since, and worse e’en than Judas, by whose treason at least our Christian salvation ensued: for having no consciousness of goodness, as a gold coin hath not (though it be golden), then neither the milk of loving-kindness nor the meat of virtue was necessary to him; and therefore he could not be touched by spiritual hunger or need, nor be influenced by the comfort therein of a kind or generous action – nor recognise the shadow of sin, that makes such actions the brighter. What other man – lest he was demented, or deprived of all reason – could wish to slay the friend who had saved his life?

  This was one who, to test his mettle, would be prepared to dash infants against the wall, or raze a town through fire, as Nature doth when roused. Just as a tree hath not a care for humanity, but may topple upon our heads without a thought for sinfulness, or a wolf devour an infant without shedding a tear, or an owl or a crow blind a dying man after battle without pity, so Hode was of this kind: his heart a wilderness, his head a temple to the ‘holy Earth’, as quacks and witches call her.364 And these same fools give this so-called fallen goddess titles such as ‘guardian of heaven and sea’ – thus denying entirely the after-life, and our Saviour, as well as God Himself. So was Hodde a pagan and a heretic combined, of a pitiless purity of evil, entirely consumed by Satan – like a wooden idol consumed within by worm, yet still complete upon the outside, as Ezechiel365 saith of the pot of brass, full of filth and scum that must be burned away.

  If, in so many areas, the lewd will of man hath replaced the sacred will of God, then Hodde’s will was distinguished only by its presumption [arrogantia]. As felons flocked about him, even the roughest and most villainous types, then so also did those whom unkind fate had thrown into lordlessness, who were not naturally cut-throats but merely outlaws; and even some were peasants like myself, fleeing correction and labour, yet whose pauperism had not opened them to Christ, but only to uncleanly living and drunkenness – that Hodd told them was blessed and no sinfulness, for they desired it, and desire is as natural as thirst, whether for gold or for women or for spilling Christian blood. ‘And as naught that flows from the divine essence can sin, as a tree cannot sin,’ he would say, ‘therefore the Church is a painted board to make us fearful and blind.’

  Yet despite the allure of such words to those under the yoke of poverty and unending labour, his kingdom did not spread beyond the margins of that wood upon its hill, for all his vainglory; unless we count the wasteland of moor that spread about it on every side, useful to no man, and the company of informers and helpers planted here and there in the towns without, eager for the End of Days, and those vile persons who traded with him in stolen coin, furs, papers, salt and other such precious goods – of which false merchants there were innumerable examples.

  Indeed, he would have been forgot entirely, like many another criminal, but for my influence, alas!

  If I had not ta’en the spark of his evasion [from gaol] and blown upon it, it would have died forthwith in the darkness. But whatsoever I sang to the harp [ad citharam cecini], all men sang it gladly after me:366 other minstrels (and e’en parti-coloured players and buffoons) followed my songs and words, and so it spread beyond my ken, like the touch of leprosy passeth from one to another.

  I sang even then, on that same evening of the day when he had gazed up into his arboreal servant, our meeting oak – that I placed myself beneath to be better heard, for its roots had heaved up the earth to make a natural stage. ‘Sing a song of Robbert Hode, king of the outlaws and of the realm of the othar,’ he cried, in his usual manner, ‘and of his glorious escape from Notyngam.’ So I did, for I was prepared: and so near to the truth was it, that gasps came from every side, and cheers and hulloos, and my fingers seemed enchanted as they touched the fox-gut of Henry’s harp; my voice was ne’er so high and melodic, though cracking here and there (to the felons’ amusement): and sweet and inspired was my rhyming.

  I had a youthful gift of memory at that time, that enabled me full well to compose and place the words (or their likeness) in the den of memory, in which chamber of the brain they were as though inked upon a roll of parchment, the which my vital spirit could read in the light that he carried from the den of wit. Thus if the rhyme were not too long, I could sing it without impairment on the very same day it was conjured by my virtue imaginative,367 plucking and pressing the strings as I saw fit, that I seemed as in an amazing trance.

  As dusk fell after my singing, and we all ate and drank about the cooking fire, I noticed Littl John regarding me and smiling, his heavy brow lifted, for he was covetous of his own glory; and he came up to me and bid me compose a ballad that spoke only of his own exploits, of which (having been a soldier, he claimed, at many a battle and long siege) he had a full quiver. ‘Then my name shall be very famous all over Inglonde,’ he said.

  So fearful was I of the murderous thoughts implanted in me by our leader, that I nodded, and stammered some feigning agreement, and after a while I walked away from that spot. Spending much time with Hodd, at his command, since his escape from the dungeon, while he was sick and I swiftly recovered (oft keeping my silence while his words wriggled like serpents in my brain, from den to den, infecting all with their poison), my reasonable spirit was hindered in its proper workings in the body: just as Eve was impaired, and she in turn impairing Adam with her allure.

  For he would tell me that I could do everything as I wished and desired, and not divide the world into angels and devils, which is something born only in the contriving brain: for the truth is oneness, from which all flows. And once, taking a leaf from a creeper that had penetrated his hut between the planks, he called it Christ, and God, and then chewed the leaf and swallowed it: ‘My spirit is in all, and all is in my spirit,’ he proclaimed, blaspheming thus horribly through his crooked teeth.

  Troubled, as I said, by Litl John’s request, I walked away as if to do my offices unto the place wherein they were generally done: this being a stinking pit past the horses, near the marge of the woods, as it is in any town. Then taking the path beyond that spot, I came out through a gap in the low timber wall (that was no more defence than a straw wicket), into the slender young birch-trees on the very edge of the camp. Yet shamefast at my secrecy, I craftily kept out of sight of the sentry who still (despite Hod’s will) watched the heath from a high bough some fifty feet away, and would have pierced me through with his arrow if he thought I was escaping – for the felons feared betrayal most of all.

  There, alas, I had at first a most horrible vision among the young birch, for it was now the confusing light that followeth a bright sun’s setting. I found myself beside one of the poles on which a boar’s head had been affixed, full evilly as in pagan lands, and bestuck about with feathers, and malodorous. And in the gloam I bestrewed it wrongly, and saw it as brother Thomas’s great head, with his broad mouth hung open. Further away in the gloaming [I saw] another the like – but this being the pole of the aforementioned baron’s retainer, whose face Hode had nicked with his knife, it was yet more horrible; and the torn features made very like Henry’s by my impaired wits,368 that receiveth all through the eyes onto a blank whiteness in the brain, and fashion new and impossible sights thereby, I almost fell into a swoon: for the heads did sing in plainchant most sweetly to my ears as I gazed upon them: Gloria in excelsis deo. Et in terra pax hominibus bone voluntatis. Laudamus te. Benedicimus te. Adoramus te. Glorificamus te.

  Such is the power of God’s influence in even the most spotted of souls, that at the heart of that hideous pagan place, surrounded by bewitching, heathenish idols of the cruellest sort, this heavenly confirmation did ring in my ears very joyfully; and I softly and quietly sang also, as though in the very heart of the holy abbey, far from the forest of unbelief. And seeing this abbey lit by myriad panes of coloured glass, that had been moulded by God’s grace out of the ebbing light through the glade (the sky by a trick seeming still bright against the foliate darkness, though the sun wa
s sinking beyond the hills of the moor without), I understood by the lovely, sacred singing that the wood entire had been transfigured into glass: aye, all the greenwood into brittle glass, as the seas become the sky in which the blessed cannot drown, for they have no breath but are beyond breath, yet they live eternally.

  And my soul rose up in joy at the thought, for how base is Nature compared to the eternal light of the Lord!

  Then, being taken out of this revelation by a distant tumult, I understood that something was amiss in the clearing, and wondering sore what it might be, I tore myself from the transformed place among the birches (that had passed by God’s mercy from pagan to Catholic), and sped with a sinking heart to the centre of the wood. There I found Litl John in altercation with Hode, who was brandishing his sword, for without such a blade he would have been crushed by his rival – his strong sinews having shrivelled greatly during his fever.

  The other outlaws, in a state of drunkenness as was their wont on many evenings, and e’en into the night,369 had made a circle about these two: either shouting for calm, or cheering on the fight – so low had Hode sunk in many of their fickle estimations, that the fraudulent Pope of their heretic church had no longer full authority over them. And some of these last were wrestling or sharing blows with those loyal to Hodd, so that a melee had ensued about the cooking fire, as in a knightly tournament (or more like a tavern brawl), with the great drum being beaten by Flawnes in merriment, and another piping most poorly on a wooden flute.

  Then I saw how Litel John, though unarmed, was taunting his master, for he was large and lithe and sure-footed, whereas Hod had been laden with ill-health, and was now in the harness of drunkenness, resembling a hopping, broken-winged crow with swollen eyes and straggling beard. And Ives of the cloven lip being next to me, I asked what the quarrel was about. ‘’Tis all your doing,’ he laughed, ‘for you promised John a song of his brave exploits.’ ‘Nay,’ I replied, much dismayed; ‘he asked me, and I could not disagree.’ ‘Without doubt,’ said Ives, ‘but our true master forbids this, for if John were to get a greater name than he, then the bliss promised us would not be forthcoming.’

  Indeed, Robert Hode was shouting vociferously at Litel John, calling him the agent raised from Hell by that Devil the Church, and no natural man of freedom and wildness, and that he was sent in order to impair the end of days and the overbreaking of the [sea of ] divine essence, and clip the wings of the elect, that all the land be turned to brambles from which none will tear themselves. Meanwhile, fights were breaking out among the men increasingly here and there, as bubbles appear in heated water that is close to boiling: the clamour was very great. I saw even the sentries arrive from their posts, drawn by the noise, for it was a clear, moonlit night on which an attack was little to be feared; among these was Will Scathelock from the rocks, his melancholic face lit by eagerness to batter a few heads.

  Then of a sudden Hod leapt at Litel John, who surprised by this and no doubt himself worse for drink, was slow to spring away; and receiving a seeming hurt on the thigh, he drew his own sword and would have rent Hode’s flesh in turn, but others ran up behind and wrestled with the big felon to drop the sword – for these melees among the outlaws rarely involved blades, but ended in cuts and bruises only, as hawks that are mewed up too long yet tear at each other lightly.

  It was at this moment that I decided to flee. The holy revelation was still flowing from chamber to chamber in my brain; and its sacred spirit affecting my animal spirit, as fresh water flowing into salt, this last passed the marrow of the ridge-bone and touched the sinews of moving, engendering a great fervency in all the parts of my nether body.

  I slipped away from the battle, with only a last glance at Hodde, who had himself been disarmed by Philyp and the lame John Cardinall, while all about a veritable carnage of fists and sticks did rage, with such a violence of hands laid upon each other’s gullets that it would have been amazing if none were slain, though many still laughed as if it were all in jest, yet bore bursten skin in many places, as pilgrims bear badges. Mayhap one or two shouted after me, but I kept my pace soft and slow, as if returning to my hut in weariness, yet once in the trees I crouched low and was utterly consumed in darkness as I fled.

  With the harp on my back, but without my bow or any other of my meagre possessions in case a felon crossed me, I came swiftly to the rocks. Though a torch burned there for the look-out to spy any long shadows it cast upon the moor, signifying a human presence, I ran further on into the desert of heath: for I trusted the look-out had been tempted away by the fight. My own shadow dancing before me like a long-legged fiend of the woods, my courage nearly failed me, for all in front was dimness (as though belonging not to this world nor to no man), as the future is for all of us – save we make magic enquiries after the pagan fashion, and pollute our unknowing.

  And behold, thus I escaped the palace of the Arch-fiend, Prince of All Error!

  Swaddled in night, I made for the glassworks I had left but the year before, on that fateful day; being the last place the felons (I believed) would ever think to find me – until I was ready to travel further north, and to my long-departed home.

  One way only was there to restore my life’s crooked limb: and that was to go on a pilgrimage to the holiest place I knew, this being the hermit’s cave. I knew not whether he was still alive, and doubted it, but natheless I had to return what was not mine before I could make full amends. Nay, it was not the same instrument, yet Henry’s harp was e’en finer than the hermit’s, and this appeased me – being a simple young fool at that time.

  I deserved to be burned by the breath of God’s nostrils, as all heretics and murtherers deserve; instead His mercy blew upon me, I know not why – except it be to communicate my story, or such of it as is sufficient to display His workings in this fallen world full of lures and pitfalls.

  As I hurried as best I could over the darkling heath, startled by night cries very like a peacock’s (though they were of owls or other creatures), and fearful of wolves and night demons, I saw again Hode’s face in my head, as I last glimpsed it in the light of the fire: red and inflamed were his eyes, like a veritable fiend, as he struggled to fight. Yet a cunning tenderness slipped into my heart on the back of a tiny devil, and I wept for Hodde then like a lost father, feeling a sickness and dizziness of brain. This also was the fiends’ doing, ever amorous after sinners.370

  For inside this meagre vessel [the brain], there was raging a battle as fierce as the one under the trees: my inward devils struggling and thrashing against the inpouring of the spirit of Christ’s mercy, and my spirit rankling like an infected wound doth, under the clear skin.

  And at any moment I expected to be pierced by an arrow, and the point to be soaked in my blood to the very root, long after I had placed fifteen-score [yards] between my back and the hill,371 on that awful glimmering waste.

  4

  Something else Hode told me at that time, when he was ill, that much astonished me.

  On informing him what such-and-such a felon was doing, and what was being said about the fire (as he had bid me be his ears and eyes for that period), he suddenly murmured a curious phrase, that yet I thought I recognised. And on asking him to repeat it, he said it again, but in the Latin version, as is its proper place, yet thrice repeating the last word like a charm, ‘obriguerunt’. And I was puzzled, for it was a line from the song of Moses, hailing the vast power of the Lord: ‘Then were disturbed the princes of Edom; trembling withheld the strong men of Moab; all the dwellers of Canaan dreaded Him, or were overwhelmed.’372

  He, confessing then that he had once been a priest – which hardly surprised me – admitted also that he had been most obedient to the Church, and eager not to sin, and more devout than any he knew; for he had wished to be a vicar of the Lord ever since he was a boy. He wore a hair-shirt in those days, to battle the better his temptations, that would come to him in swarms and prick him with desire to drink or be lecherous or swear or blaspheme; and lewd
thoughts snatched him from his inner prayers, e’en in the middle of a service. Horrible faces leered and grinned as he spoke the sermon, and these devils pulled away their breeches and did such things with the Holy Word as cannot be repeated: all this went on in his thoughts, most vividly, despite fasting, and lashing himself with whips tipped with sharp flints, and going about barefoot on the cold earth of the church373 when snow lay upon the ground without.

  Then it began to come to him, insidiously like a worm, that such weeping and gnashing of teeth was fruitless, for it did not keep off the devils: and one day when talking alone with an honourable lady of the congregation in the back of the church, he placed a hand upon her, and instead of casting him away, she relented, and took off all her costly vestments and stood naked and white as Eve. Such joy he had of this, and such an overwhelming of relief, that he lay with her secretly many times in his house, and e’en in the church behind the altar: she was clearly the devil in disguise, and his young man’s gluttony could not resist her comely flesh-meat. And then did he keep, after mass, the host in his mouth, that he might pass the Body of the Lord into hers when he thus kissed her, and both enjoy further exultation.

  Thus he fell into diabolical disgrace, and was cast from the body of the Church; pursued by the lady’s relatives and husband-to-be, he was fortunate to escape with his life – though so soundly beaten with clubs, that his head was cracked, and scarce an inch of his body was not painted blue, and he feared his brains might flow over his face.