Kings of Albion

by Julian Rathbone

  A burning brand is poked into the foot of the pile of wood and branches and, despite the soft drizzle that is now falling, the flames take hold and are soon snaking up into the heart of the heap; there is a crackle and snapping as it takes hold, and a plume of white smoke sewn with gold and ruby sparks climbs into the cloud-filled, darkening sky. The next thing that happens is that a life-size human doll, made of straw and dressed in old clothes, is brought out and two men, holding its shoulders and feet, swing it high up on to the tire, which thus becomes a make-believe pyre.

  A cry, a shout rises up, and the women who, I can see it now by the light of the fire, are wearing masks or hoods made of coloured cloth with eye-holes, seize burning brands and, still dancing roughly in time to the cacophonous beat of the music, come madly out into the orchard, banging the trunks of the trees with their brands and shouting curses or imprecations such as 'Bear apples, fuck you, Goddamn you. I want pears from you.' Once their brands have broken up, some hoist up their ragged skirts and. holding the lower branches in their hands, grip the trunks with their thighs and knees and rub their private parts against the bark.

  Needless to say, in the midst of all this, I am discovered. A tall young woman with red hair flowing from below her hood throws back her head in an ecstasy real or simulated and finds my foot six inches above her forehead. She freezes, then screams: this time there is no doubting the fear and anger

  All those nearest her catch her tone and, still carrying their brands, approach. The effect spreads outwards and soon the whole gathering, maybe forty or more, men, women and children, are gathered around my apple tree, looking up at me. There is no mistaking their hostility, and by now I have enough Inglysshe to glean from the men, who have pushed to the front, a sense of its cause.

  "E doos be a fuckin' friar or a monk, no doubt o' that.' 'Arr. But why be 'e 'ere?'

  "E be a spy for the Bishop, no doubt o' that neither.' 'Well, what's to be done wi' im?'

  'Cut 'is fucking throat, I say, an' bury 'im in the midden.' 'If 'e get out of 'ere alive, then fucking Bishop'll send 'is men to burn our fucking village an' we be well fucked.' And so on.

  'Well, first thing, zummun 'ad better get 'im out o' that there tree.'

  Rough hands reach up to me, fasten on my ankles and pull. 'All right, all right,' I cry, 'I'm coming.'

  And because I'm a touch frightened I forget to deepen my voice.

  "E only be a young un from the sound of it.'

  Once on the ground the nearest gets hold of my cowl and pulls it back while two more pinion my elbows to my sides.

  'Here's a thing, then. Zumman get a light on 'im, let us see 'im proper.'

  They have much to admire and find strange. First there is my head, once shaven but now with an all-over pelt of hennaed black, about half an inch long and no tonsure, then my full but tended eyebrows, also grown back, my straight nose, full lips and rounded chin. My eyes like deep mountain pools. My skin the colour of copper exposed to the air just as it begins to brown and lose its golden look. One of the women seizes my hand and turns it beneath the flickering light. 'This be no man's hand,' she says. 'This be a woman's and a lady's at that.'

  'An' this be no friar's mantle,' another says, 'wrong colour and cut, and the material too fine.'

  'She got boobies too,' one of the two holding me from behind calls out, after having a quick squeeze with her free hand.

  At that, the one holding my hand, who was the first to see me, lets go and pulls up the hem of my gown, all the way, as far as the belt will allow.

  'Yers,' she says, 'that's no friar nor monk. That's a hen.' Gerroff,' says I, and, looking over her shoulder and seeing curious children as well as men gathering round, one of whom lowers a torch to illuminate my lower half, she does indeed pull down the skirt of my robe. 'Zorree,' she whispers, almost in my ear, and I note a certain female companionship..I sense that I have one quality at least that has provoked a touch of sympathy. I feel better for it.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It is now clear to me that what I have been walking through during the day is the corridor linking winter to spring, the first stirrings of the new season having been beneath my feet and around me in the sights and sounds of the woods. These people, too, were well aware that a threshold had been reached and that the deities that control such things might well need a ritual shove to get us all across. Deities? Not the Christian godling and his mother and his father in heaven but the goddesses and gods who are worshipped here and everywhere, but in many parts are now hidden away like-toys we are supposed to have grown out of. Except for these people, and many more across the world, it's not a whipping you get if you're discovered, but the rack, the thumbscrews and a burning. Hence their fear of me when they took me for a friar.

  Back home, girls go out into the fields, make heaps of flowers and place on them images of Parvati and Shiva. In play they perform a marriage ceremony between the goddess and the god: it is all done as a childish ritual, a game, but still carries, like the ancient odour one smells when opening a long-closed chest, the survival of something far more powerful from the times when the gods walked among us, something which resembles what I am now caught up in, in darkest Ingerlond.

  Meanwhile, a debate continues amongst these villagers as to what should be done with me. The older men are all for cutting my throat, though one or two of the younger ones suggest that they should 'give me one' first. However, the women are generally against this for, as an older lady points out, if I am a religious then I must be a Clare, by which she means. I later learn, a member of the sister order of the Franciscans. It seems they are the only females who venture away from their convents, and when they do it is to bring succour and charity to the poor and ill. However, if I am not a Clare, then what am I? It would be foolish to harm me before discovering what the consequences may be.

  By now we are all in the large barn, which has an earth floor, piles of dry grass or hay round the sides and heaps of grain. As the elders continue to argue, the rest are clearly preparing for a feast. The musicians, for want of a better word, have gathered at the far end opposite the big double doors, their drums, pipes and stringed instruments around them. There are a few tootles on the pipes and a bagpipe sets up a drone; one of the men rattles a box, filled, I imagine, with dried peas, another begins to beat a primitive drum, a skin pulled tight over a clay pot, with the palms of his hands, and so on. Some trestle tables are set up and a big barrel with a leaky bung is hefted up by six strong men and placed on one. Smoke, laden with the odour of burning meat, drifts in from an adjoining lean-to stable.

  I am still held by the arms in a corner furthest from tin-door and behind the band. The women are close around me and some of the men looking curiously over their shoulders, when at last the one who first found me, whom the others call Erica, cries, 'Only Greasy Joan will know, she's the one, she'll know.'

  'You're right,' cries another.

  'But who will dare to wake her up?' a third asks. 'She'll give them cramps and stitches for a fortnight.'

  'She ought to be here. She never misses a Bride's Day. she never misses the Bridget Feast.'

  'But nor 'as she ever slept without food or drink for a month either.'

  'Go on, get her up. An' if it kills her, well, good riddance, she's lived long enough, that's for sure."

  And three or four melt away into the smoke that's now swirling more thickly than ever. It smells green, as if they're trying to cook on fresh-cut wood rather than charcoal.

  Presently they're hack with a very old woman half carried, half supported between them. Because the old crones, the wise old women of Vijayanagara are usually so, I had expected her to be thin, scrawny, a bundle of bones, but this old lady, although, so they say, she has fasted a month, is fat with lolloping breasts beneath her gown, a belly like a barrel, huge thighs, and ankles swollen like puddings packed in the stomachs of sheep. She is also bald and toothless, so only her cheeks look thin. She's grumbling and cursing through her gum
s, uttering obscenities worse than any I have yet heard, even here in Ingerlond.

  They plant her in front of me and she gazes at me from eyes that look left and right at the same time, up and down, and one is misty blue, the other pale green. She has a wart on one cheek with four black hairs growing out of it, and big dewlaps, like a great white-water buffalo's, which quiver and shake when she speaks or moves her head. In an ambience already rich with foetid odours, her own stale exhalations, the smells of flesh tired and unwashed, old piss and shit, make a cloud around her.

  'Come on, Greasy, tell us who she is,' they call. 'Is she a witch? Takes one to know one…' and so forth.

  She peers at me, shifts to one side then the other, reaches out a podgy hand, looks more like a long-teated cow's udder than a hand, and touches my wrist. Then she cackles, a hard, rattly sound, and hisses too, like an angry goose, showering us all with spittle and revealing teeth small, yellow and broken. At last the fit leaves her, and she almost shrinks in front of me, seems to sink a little.

  'Yer fools, y' know, yer all bloody fools. Can't y' see her skin, how dark it is, can't y' see her beauty, the glow about her? That I should live, live to see this day, this night. Well. I'm blest after all. At the end of me life I'm blest.'

  'Oh, come on, Granny Greasy, don't mess about, tell us who she is,' they cry.

  'Well, then, I will. This here is none less than Mary Gypsy, Mary of Egypt, Marry Gyp hersel'! Miriam Marina. She'll dance for you, if you ask her nicely, and if she don't like you she'll blast your wombs with warts and fill your cunts with teeth.' Then her voice drops and she speaks to me alone. 'Forgive me. Lady, it's your sister loves me now, your sister and my mother, old Hecate, but truly I loved you once."

  And with that she turns and, tottering like a rotten tree in a storm, she stumps and stumbles her way from us, out through the smoke to whatever bed she's been wakened from.

  By Hecate I understand her to mean Kali.

  They look at me with wonder.

  'Are you really Marry Gyp?' they ask. 'Will you dance for us? Please dance for us.'

  I look out beyond them, this small group of women, to where the rest are jigging and stamping to the beat of the drums and the twisting music of the raucous pipes. Every now and then they wave their arms above their heads and holler. 'Hey-ho, silver moonshine,' thus invoking the Queen of Heaven. Over by the tables beer is being drunk from the barrel, most of it direct from the bung, the young men catching the stream, which looks like nothing less than a stream of pee, catching it in their mouths the way a dog will catch milk squirted from a cow's teat. Others are eating slabs of pig-meat wedged into lumps of grey rye bread. Clearly no one's going to watch me dance with any serious attention. I'll look a fool gyrating in a corner while the others stumble about the place locked in their own worlds of booze, food, their own revelry.

  'Later,' I promise.

  And 'later' comes in an hour or so, but meanwhile I've persuaded my friend Erica to take me to her hut where I make my preparations. Inside there's a small fire of white charcoal, and a baby hangs in a basket from the roof. There's no man about, so either she's a widow or she's been caught out by some other woman's husband. She has no jewellery except for some copper bracelets, which she dips in sour beer to give them a gold-like shine. I prefer copper anyway, it's Parvati's metal, and I have my small bag of pearls hidden away… I'm not saying where – no, it's not rude, just that it's good to keep a few secrets, you know?

  We scout about and, taking a big risk, she gets us into the church. They only see a priest once a month, but he's left some vestments in a chest. Erica uses flint, stone and a tinder-box to light some candles, and while she goes through the chest I take one and have a look around. There's a damp smell about the place, cold stone sweating the body fluids of the dead. There's Jesus, all taut muscles and corpse pallor skin, stretched on his cross, silly bugger, and his mother too in a side-chapel, holding the baby, a gold-leaf halo round her head. But where's the mother in all her glory? Should be the babe looking at her with adoration, not the other way round.

  I return to the vestry and pull my robe over my head. Erica gives a little gasp. I take her hand, rough from washing clothes and field-work, and make her stroke the flat part of my chest above my breasts, then my breasts, my shoulder, my back and my buttocks, and she sighs with wonder at their smooth, gleaming darkness in the candle-light. Then, out of an amice nicely embroidered, with strings and all, we improvise the little skirt or apron temple-dancers wear.

  Normally I would matt my hair with ghee and pile it up in a jewelled crown, but now, of course, it is still growing out of its shorn state and is far too short, so we rip up a white and gold chasuble too, and heap that up like a turban. I paint my face with charcoal mixed with butter, shaping my eyes like almonds, thickening my eyebrows and eyelashes, and use red clay and butter for my lips. Finally I draw spiral and dot patterns round my nipples, which I also paint with red.

  Thus decked out, in tawdry imitation of the figure I would have been at home, when I would have worn a girdle, necklace, diadem, anklets, ear, toe and finger rings, all made of gold and set with precious stones, I look grand enough, numinous even, for Erica to fall on her knees, clasp my thighs and bury her head in the amice.

  'You really are the Marry Gyp.' she moans, 'you really are.'

  I put my tiny finger-cymbals on my third fingers and thumbs, bend my elbows in front of me, crook my little fingers, and let her hear the silvery chime.

  In the hall things are much quieter now. Only a block-flute from amongst the pipes is playing, and the drummer is using his fingers on the skin instead of beating it with his palms. Five couples sway to his beat, locked in close embrace, the rest are strewn about the earthen floor or giggling in the piles of hay, mostly in couples. There is less smoke and the big barrel on its table is leaking a slow dribble, which an old man, prostrate beneath it on his back, attempts to catch in his mouth. Needless to say, a silence spreads out from where I am until the whole hall is as quiet as a desultory snore here and there will allow, and all open eyes are upon me.

  I give the cymbals a ping or two, and head tilted both forwards and to the side, swing one knee up and out before bringing the sole of my foot down with a tiny stamp. Then the other side, the other foot. My arms swing, my fingers straighten and curl. Ping, ping, and the drummer, who is wide-chested, has arms like elephant trunks and a black mat of hair across his chest, picks up on my rhythm with his fingers and his friend with the flute, tall and thin with yellow hair, ventures a little run. And round my feet the incense Erica has brought from the church softens the bite of woodsmoke and sour beer.

  Presently, in the Teluga tongue, I sing.

  Oh, Goddess Minakshi

  whose lovely body has a deep blue sheen

  with long eyes shaped like a carp

  Goddess who provides release from the fetters of life

  who resides in the forest of kadaniba trees

  esteemed one

  who conquered Shiva

  grant me bliss.

  And later, the drummer adds his ditty:

  Such a one did I meet, good sir, such an angelic face who like a sprite, like a queen, did appear in her gait, in her grace…

  Prancing and swaying, I swing down the hall and the clouds of incense part around my thighs, my brown feet raise the dust. Copper and pearls flash and glow in the embers of a fire and the stir of my passing makes the flames on the tapers shudder. My naked breasts promise more than pomegranates, my buttocks are peaches.

  Eyes turned up at me gleam and flash and no one moves except to sigh in pleasurable pain. I cannot dance for ever, and already they know they'll not see my like again.

  Flute and drum are getting to know me. Messages flash between us. The first flutters like breath in a baby's throat, the second quickens in a lovelorn pulse. I turn on a toe, pummel the floor with my feet, fling my arms in windmills of desire about my head, and without taking their eyes from me every he and she there reach
es for his or her other. The sweat glistens on my shoulders, runs between my breasts, my thighs, and the wind I've raised begins to gust about the corners of the room, the sacking over the entrances fills like sails, and the gale, a warm wind with rain on it, rushes in, gathers me in its arms and blows out the lights.

  There is plenty of the long night left. In the dark Alan, the drummer, is the first to find me, but he's a noisy brute and his groans and shouts soon lead David and his flute to the comer we're in. The hay is deep and soft and still smells fresh, even of the summer flowers that mingled with the grass when it was mown. They're nice, they take the edge off my hunger, but Eddie they are not. Better, or as good, when they at last fall silent, or almost silent apart from thunderous snores from Alan and sighs and whistles from David, Erica finds me, takes my hand, and leads me to her bower where her boy-child swings from the roof in his cradle and charcoal still glows in the centre of the floor. She sponges me down with rags soaked in warm water, gives me cold spring water, cheese and bread. She makes me lie in her cot with her and rocks me to sleep in her arms with her lips in the crook of my neck, her breasts that leak a little milk against mine, and her strong legs crooked on my waist and lying across my thigh.

  Before dawn, but not before cockcrow, she sets me on my way towards Banbury but I'm hardly more than a hundred yards out of the village when running feet make me turn and Alan falls in beside me without a word, his clay drum on his back and a cloak over his leather jerkin and apron.

  Ten yards, and it happens again, through the mist and over the sparkling frost comes David – cloaked, too, and no doubt with his flute about him. He gives Alan a look that lacks friendliness and falls in on the other side, also without a word.

  This will not do. Both seek to own me and that I will not have. I whisper a prayer to Parvati and in ten minutes or so it is answered. We are climbing a hill now and once we're over the crest the village will be gone, and nothing will induce them to return. As subtly as I can I reduce the length of my steps. I even pant a little and put my hand on a branch as if I need to rest. And then, at last, they come. First a little girl in a woollen dress, her hair all loose, but she is overtaken by a boy who scampers past her and reaches us first.