The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  The hour was getting late when there came a sound like dead meat slammed down, as if someone had flung a carcass on the floor. Arrowsmith looked up.

  ‘Myrtle is lovely,’ said Betony next door, speaking a little too loudly, ‘but of all the plants not cultivated in gardens the hawthorn is my favourite, for it is both fair and strong. Its blossoms are as white as purity, its berries as red as passion, its leaves are painted with the green of youthful Springtime. Its thorny branches are kind to small birds of all descriptions, giving them shelter, so that hawthorn hedgerows ring with song. Even its Winter starkness has a wild sort of beauty, etched in black lines against grey skies.’

  ‘Yet those thorns can be cruel,’ Sorrel pointed out, after a quick glance at the window. ‘And of course bringing the flowers of the may into the house invites ill fortune.’

  ‘’Tis the same with lily-of-the-valley and all white flowers,’ averred Betony.

  ‘Ah, but ’tis not as dangerous as bringing in lilac,’ interjected Hazel.

  ‘I’ll not disagree that thorns can be harsh and fierce,’ Betony said, ‘yet only towards the foolish, or to the ignorant who approach them without due caution. And as for bringing the blossoms indoors—why would one wish to pluck such beauty and watch it wither, when it might display its loveliness for so much longer, crisp and strong on the twig, kissed by sunshine and rain? It is said that of all white flowers, the may was most beloved by the Faêran, and that is why they cursed those who would break its boughs, and hide it away within walls.’

  ‘It is reputed that thorn bushes were under the protection of the Fair Ones,’ said Hazel. ‘Some say the protection lingers yet. When I was a girl, any thorn which grew alone in a field was called a Faêrie Thorn. To this day, people say it is not right to cut such a bush. Cutting down a Faêrie tree brings death and madness—’ She broke off.

  Outside, a commotion had erupted. The five damsels and the elderly neighbour hastened from the house. A man ran through the Errechd, shouting, ‘Come and see! Come and see! Out along the West Road, at the top of the cliffs!’

  A knot of villagers was heading out of the West Gate where the guards were still talking excitedly about what the Master of the Village had been hunting when he passed through it several moments earlier.

  Grabbing their cloaks, the girls followed. Out along the cliff tops they went, and the salt gale rode up over the side, out of the firth to meet them. Spray blew upward in jets spouting over the top of the cliff. Violent, the sea below churned where it met the rocks, like boiling cream. Away on the far bank the cliffs gleamed like chiselled stone doves in the starlight. Crystal halls of water smashed there, gauzed by the mist of their own vaporisation. Their thundering was blown ragged by the gale.

  At the top of the cliffs, It was pinned, with Arrowsmith’s axe sticking out of It. To Tahquil, It looked like a sack of white wool.

  ‘Don’t be afeard,’ said Arrowsmith, his rough hand warm around hers. ‘It came to the house. I chased It, with the tilhal in one hand and the axe in the other. It took the road to the cliffs and I followed hard after. Just as It was going to slide over the cliffs and into the sea, I said a Word and slung the axe, which stuck fast in It.’

  ‘Where’s Spider?’ the villagers were shouting. ‘Fetch Spider!’

  However, Spider, it seemed, had made overly merry on Flench Ridings Night and still slept the sticky apple-wine slumber.

  Gathered together at a distance they considered safe, the audience scrutinised the strange thing pinned to the cliff top. It did not move. There was no way of knowing whether It was alive or dead. Indeed, there was no way of knowing Its true appearance, if It had one, because each person saw something different.

  ‘We’d better cover It over,’ someone suggested, so a few young men ran to fetch shovels. They scooped up soil and flung it over the entity, until It was buried under a thick layer of dirt. Then they dug a deep, wide trench around It, so that neither man nor beast might approach the dangerous object and possibly disturb It.

  In fact, none of the villagers dared go near It. They stood around with the wind whipping and harrying at their cloaks, like a flock of strange birds flapping.

  Now that the agitation was over and they discovered that they were in the perilous position of being outside the Fence at night, folk began to hasten homewards, clapping Arrowsmith on the back and congratulating him on a fine night’s work.

  ‘I shall stay alone in the house for the rest of the night,’ he said, ‘in case.’ He turned to Tahquil, lowering his voice. ‘Do you hear the wet wind off the water, Mistress Mellyn? A sound like the calling of a name.’

  ‘I hear the wind, sir,’ called Tahquil, drifting away in a bouquet of maidens.

  ‘Nothing more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good night,’ he said.

  ‘Good night.’

  Uhta woke Tahquil from tortured dreams with a sudden tightening as of a coiled spring—the imminence of the day. Something was about to happen at this early hour.

  The wind had dropped. All was still. The clatter of hooves on cobblestones alerted her—looking out of the window she saw Arrowsmith mounted on his horse, leaving the stable. Finoderee was going to mow the round-field with him, and Finoderee was angry. The urisk had warned, ‘… he can be spiteful.’

  Betony and Sorrel were stirring too.

  ‘Will you venture out with us to the cliffs?’ they asked. ‘The men are taking Spider to see where It is pinned. He will know what to do. And on the way we shall bathe our faces in the early dew. If ’tis done before dawn on the first of Uainemis, one is assured of an improved complexion. It cures freckles.’

  ‘We shall come.’

  Tahquil and her friends dressed hastily, tugging cloaks around their shoulders. Already, out on the Errechd, many indistinct figures were assembling in the almost-darkness. The flames of their torches wove a dance but their faces were morose. This was the hour that made any festive atmosphere impossible. There was something about the chill, the stillness, the tense and expectant obscurity and the bleak blue tinge of pre-dawn air that would unfailingly bring melancholy to even the highest-spirited reveller wending home from a merry night at the inn.

  Of which there were none this uhta—carousing throughout the entire night was a luxury the folk of Appleton Thorn only permitted themselves at Midsummer’s. Rest was a necessity; they had to work hard for a living, although not as hard as they would have had to work without the help of a certain brawny wight.

  Spider was late, it having been difficult to rouse him. The village girls used this spare time to splash their faces with dew from the leaves of hawthorn and ivy, which were said to be most powerful.

  ‘Dew of ivy can bring ye a husband within the year,’ they whispered, giggling.

  At length the wiry old dyn-cynnil arrived, yawning, and the three visitors joined the torchlit throng as it moved off toward the gate in the glimmering darkness. Along the cliff-top road the procession walked, its members conversing in muted tones, until they arrived at the place; the wide, deep trench and the mound in the middle. The tip of the axe-handle still stuck out of the top. Here, the procession halted and gathered expectantly around Spider.

  Spider looked solemn. He gazed at the blank dirt. Beyond it, the sea glimmered with a satin lustre. Gentle draughts blowing up the land’s wall stole under the onlookers’ cloaks and flared them wide and hollow, spreading them out like war-banners.

  ‘Got to have a look at It,’ declared Spider.

  Someone handed him a shovel. He jumped over the trench and began to raise the soil. As he lifted the seventh spadeful, a lurid light glowed up at him and the spectators drew back uttering gasps and muted cries. A dense mist steamed out of nowhere, wrapping Spider in a nebulous smear. Through the blur, the onlookers could dimly discern something rising out of the hole. Next moment it rolled down the cliff and into the sea.

  Startled shouts jumped from many throats, but It was gone.

  The mist tore int
o tattered strips and blew away. Spider was revealed leaning on the shovel and looking out across the firth.

  ‘It might have been a seal, or maybe an otter!’ proposed a voice.

  Gravely, the dyn-cynnil shook his head.

  ‘Perhaps, or perhaps not. Eldritch wights that dwell in the air, in the ground and water are more numerous and various than we can ever know. What chance have such as we of understanding them, or even seeing them aright?’ he said. ‘Better to leave that to the mighty wizards, and those that have the Sight.’

  They all made their way home, shaking their heads at the strangeness of it all, and the sun ran the gilded line of its upper edge along the horizon’s maiden blush.

  As the damsels reached the house three horses came cantering up and wheeled to a halt. Arrowsmith and his reeve and steward dismounted. Crimson rivulets, as dark as wine, soaked through the fabric of Arrowsmith’s breeches. One leg was drenched with blood from the thigh down. Wincing, he limped to the door, shrugging off offers of help from his friends. The sisters flew to him like wrens, uttering soft cries of distress. Once indoors, they made him rest his leg on a stool while they tended it.

  ‘Cry mercy! What’s happened?’ exclaimed Viviana as the three travellers entered the room.

  ‘The wretch most unworthy!’ Arrowsmith expostulated. ‘As I mowed he followed me, grubbing up the roots so ferociously that at one time his pickaxe grazed my hamstrings. Indeed, my legs were in grave danger of being cut to the bone, had I not moved nimbly. I told him that he will never work for me again, now that he has so offended me, but he said he will continue to do so, and went off to drive my sheep up to pasture on Bonfire Hill. We went after him but already in his vengeful zeal he had driven them too close to the cliffs and some of them had fallen over. I shall call all the men together to drive him out!’

  ‘I fear you will not be able to rid yourselves of a wight like Finoderee by force,’ said Tahquil.

  ‘That’s as may be,’ said Arrowsmith grimly.

  In the mellow morning the village turned out to pay respects to the Noble Thorn. They bawmed and adorned it with flowers and ribbons. Six village girls came riding on black rams to dance in a ring about the tree while the traditional Bawming Song was sung. This was followed by a festive picnic on the green lawns of the Errechd, and various rowdy sports.

  Then horsemen in splendid costume trotted forth from the gates to perform the annual Riding of the Marches. The inspection of the boundaries of the common land outside the village was a dangerous mission, since it must pass under the eaves of the Khazathdaur. The cavalcade was headed by a young man chosen to be the Cornet, who bore the village banner and who led the Cornet’s Gallop at the end of the Ride.

  The traditional Summer ceremonies did not cease there. When the light lengthened in the afternoon, those responsible for keeping watch and ward over Appleton Thorn set out to collect their head-penny from every householder and, by an old statute both bawdy and chaste, a kiss from every woman they met. The reeve, the bailiff, the steward, the Keeper of the Keys of the Common Coffer, the water bailiff, the constable and the Village Master had a merry duty as, armed with their ribbon-decked tithing pole, they toured the cottages. They were accompanied by a Pumpkin Scrambler in extraordinary raiment, who tossed to the children miniature pumpkins hollowed out and filled with honey cake and spiced fruits, and who offered these dainty victuals to each woman kissed.

  ‘Fie! ’Tis a silly game,’ said Caitri, watching the shrieking goodwives pretending to avoid the tithing-men’s jocular advances.

  ‘You are too young for it anyway,’ said Viviana, glancing in the tiny looking-glass chained to her chatelaine, and pinching her cheeks to redden them.

  ‘I wouldn’t wish to be kissed by those churls!’

  ‘I would not scorn a kiss from Master Arrowsmith,’ said Viviana, who relished any sort of merrymaking. ‘And that young water bailiff—the set of his shoulders is not entirely odious.’

  ‘I shall shut myself in the house,’ decided Caitri, ‘and they will never find me.’

  ‘I too,’ said Tahquil, ‘am surfeited with celebration.’

  She and Caitri hid themselves away on the top floor of the house of the Master of the Village. She could not hide herself from everything, however. The Langothe worked its claws deeper in her, with every hour.

  The distant sounds of laughing and cheering scratched at the upstairs shutters while the day faded. The Forest Horn sounded from the now deserted Errechd, and the shutters flew open. Favouring his injured leg, Arrowsmith climbed in.

  ‘I’ll not let the men trouble you,’ he said. ‘Pardon my uncouth entrance, but I could not get inside any other way. My sisters locked the house and kept the key. The village ladder is mine.’ Looking at Tahquil, who sat calmly by Caitri, he faltered.

  ‘Are you come to claim the kiss,’ said Tahquil, ‘which lawfully is yours? I cannot stop you.’ Her gaze met his, steadily.

  He read her message with ease. For a time he did not reply. Eventually he proffered a honey-coloured globe dripping with ribbons.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You are not of the village, Mistress Mellyn. You owe naught.’

  Tahquil accepted the gift. As Arrowsmith turned to leave, Caitri rose, stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the side of his stubbly jaw. He muttered something, then awkwardly flung a leg over the windowsill. Before he descended out of view he hesitated once more. Turning his eyes upon Tahquil he said, ‘Will you stay till Meathensun? You will be Queen of the Garlands.’

  ‘No,’ said Tahquil, ‘I cannot stay.’

  She gazed past him, over his shoulder, as though focused on some distance he could not see.

  ‘Aye,’ said Arrowsmith.

  He climbed down, disappearing from view.

  Handbells were ringing throughout Appleton Thorn, ringing like cup-lilies on the brink of clear pools. Night stalked through narrow streets.

  A horse’s skull with snapping jaws came roaming in the dark from house to house, seeking admittance. Terrifyingly it pranced; the jaws flapped and clicked. Youths swaggered at a safe distance, but immune at the side of this equine spectre sauntered a huge man dressed as a woman and brandishing a besom.

  ‘Hey, Sally!’ called the youths, and the man-woman roared. He shook the broom and chased them, and the horse-impersonator hidden under a sheet of linen, and bearing the skull on a pole, chased them too, pulling the strings to make the jaws snap. Tonight was for Burning the Boatman, so the Hooden Horse was abroad.

  At the other end of the village an effigy issued from a cottage, its arms hanging limply across the shoulders of two men. His body, larger than a man’s, was crammed with old rags and shabby fleeces, saturated with turpentine and whale oil. The amorphous head was eerily and somewhat riskily lit by two candle-lamps for eyes. A crowd assembled, marching in his wake. As he travelled down the main street he stopped at the doors of the oldest and the most esteemed villagers, whereupon one of his attendants would sing loudly, on a single note:

  ‘At Pikehall Crags he tore his rags

  At Appleton Thorn he blew his horn

  At Churrachan Stee he broke his knee

  At Grassrill Beck he broke his neck

  At Cliffroad’s bend we’ll make his end

  Shout boys, shout!’

  After which the members of the crowd would give three cheers, take another swig from their spilling jugs and continue on their way. The Hooden Horse and facetious ‘Sally’, meanwhile, jumped unexpectedly out from corners at anyone straying on the fringe of the mob.

  Carrying flaming brands, Tahquil and Viviana found themselves in the centre of the press, borne along with the tide. Still ringing the handbells, the villagers exited from the West Gate and continued out along the cliff road, past the excavated spot where It had rolled into the sea the night before. Down the rough-hewn wall stair went the Boatman and the crowd, with the Hooden Horse’s jaws snapping at their heels and enormous Sally sweeping. There at the bend where the stair terminated on a
level platform just above the high tide mark, all torches save one were extinguished and the Boatman met his end.

  They stabbed him with a knife and laid him in a canoe, then set him on fire. The canoe was pushed out onto the black waters of the firth. As the Boatman burned, the villagers sang—not any traditional verse, but whatever songs came into their heads. He blazed up with a popping and a crackling and the orange flames, moving away, cast their dazzling reflections way down into the obsidian depths. The current and the tide caught hold and bore the boat from shore. It dwindled as it departed, but the fire leaped higher until it became a splendid blossom of pure, radiant energy suspended in total darkness, its light eclipsing, for the moment, all others—a blend of dazzling ruby, topaz, citrine.

  For a long time the audience stood, and the choruses from their combined throats, bass and alto, tenor and soprano, sobered now. Far out across the water the flames began to die and soon the burning Boatman was only a glowing speck, a hot coal in a black pit. Then the boat sank—they heard the hiss of steam, and all was over.

  The reason for it all had long ago been forgotten.

  The single torch gave life to the others, and led by the Hooden Horse, the procession wound its way back up the cliffs and into the village. The bells were silent now. Some folk dawdled—Cooper was the last man in tow. The rest had just passed inside the gate when they heard him shout and turned to see him pointing to a figure lying beside the road.

  He cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘Someone’s hurt!’ he yelled. ‘Come and help!’

  Before anyone else had time to move in its direction the figure abruptly grew to the supernatural stature of thirteen feet. Like a tower on legs, it began chasing Cooper towards the gate. Shrieking madly, the man came bolting along, his cloak flying. With one last despairing effort he hurled himself sprawling on village ground and the guards slammed the gate. The figure, which had now shrunk to a respectable height, bounded away laughing wildly.

  ‘The Bullbeggar!’ wailed the crowd. ‘The Bullbeggar of Creech Hill!’

  Cooper lay gasping, moaning.