by Rebecca Tope
Ing. A winter visitor from Eastern Lands, where the warlike Danes dwell. He comes amongst us to proclaim the thaw, and then departs again, leaving a new green on the land. He is the source of fertility and plenty.
Epel – our native land, the place we hold most dear. The place where we feel safe, won for us by our ancestors, to be bravely defended. The place where we feel safe and comfortable, knowing how we must live, and what the customs are. I felt a tear slide down my face as I scratched the criss-cross of this sign. When would I know Epel again?
Day. The light, the summer solstice when the days are long. Clear reason, safety, joy. Understanding, bringing bounty.
Oak. Our father and mother tree, feeding the hogs with its acorns, the hogs feeding us. The timber taken to build ships, churches, chests. We owe the oak great honour, for its stately height, long life and bounty.
Ash. Another tree, but how different! Quick growing, for making spears and fences. It holds fast to the ground, seldom felled by storms. It burns slowly, throwing warmth from the hearth. It endures.
The Axe-hammer, part of a warrior’s kit, hanging from his horse, hacking the enemy’s shield. A thing of beauty and power and killing.
The Beaver. A creature at home in water and on land, eating fish and vegetation, building his own home, and diverting great rivers with his work.
The Grave. I shuddered, knowing all too well the reality and horror of this sign. Hateful to all men, where there is only earth for company. But the grave is also a gift, relieving us of the misery of age and illness. The grave is sure and certain and teaches us to live boldly.
And last, the piece of broken pot on which I need draw nothing. The Blank, signifying the great Unknown, governed by the three Fates, weaving and cutting, measuring and judging. All people, places and things are woven into the threads of Fate.
I put the runes one by one into a pouch of pigskin I had from my father at my marriage. He had pressed it into my hands without a word. A man of few words, I had to guess its meaning. I had used it carelessly since then, but now it found its purpose.
‘Mother? Have we no broth?’ My son came up to me, stooping to bring his face close to mine. ‘Where is my food?’
I had forgotten to cut up the turnips and set them to cook over the fire. It would be a long wait until we could eat them, and I felt ashamed of myself. The rune work had absorbed me, and made me forget my duties. I made a swift move to tuck the pouch under my skirt, knowing that Cuthman would object to them. There was little of his invisible God in them, although I had seen monks use them from time to time, when they came to the village to instruct us in scripture.
We waited, cold and silent, for the woody vegetables to soften. I was resigned to whatever came to me next. Nothing in my life thus far had been under my own control, except for the departure from the village with my husband. I had followed an unknown path then, and could perhaps do so again. Again, I had a man who would protect and guide me. A man who would over-rule me, too, if my inclination ran counter to his. Edd, too, would have done the same, if we had ever disagreed. I clutched at my bulky bag of runestones, as my only link with ancient ways and the solace I hoped they might bring me.
PART TWO
CROW
Chapter Nine
Cuthman’s exalted manner returned and I had no choice but to trust myself to him. I even became convinced that he would indeed fashion a vehicle for me to ride in. He abandoned the sheep, as he had threatened, and spent the next two days in the barn, banging and chiselling, using timber from the woodstore beside the hut. The wheel was his chief difficulty. It should have an iron rim, he said, to survive the many miles he expected us to travel. We had no forge, and no more than a few nails and rusting farm tools which might be used. Neither did we have money to buy a finished wheel from the wright in the village. Doubtfully, Cuthman gathered up the length of cloth I had last woven, along with Edd’s finest sheepskin jerkin, and leather boots. It was just possible that they would be enough to cover the cost of a wheel with a stout rim.
He was gone all day, but came home with a fine piece of workmanship. Impatient to complete the task, he took a short tallow candle out to the barn with him and set to work fixing the wheel to his barrow. From his cry of triumph that woke me late in the night, I concluded that he had been successful, but I was quite content to wait until next morning to lay eyes on the carriage which I was to call my home for who knew how long.
Cuthman carried me out to see it at first light. It was larger than I had imagined, stoutly made from cut planks which lay smoothly side by side to form my floor, my bed, my viewing platform. I was to travel in this handcart for days or weeks – I had no idea how long our journey might be – and I regarded it with trepidation. Three low walls bordered the floor, coming to a point above the wheel. I could sit with my useless feet tucked into this point, and my back against the third side of the triangle. I would thus see where we were going, with Cuthman behind me, propelling me along.
‘Try it,’ he said, and carefully placed me in my vehicle. My knees were forced up, but I discovered that this was a reasonably comfortable position. He stuffed a bag of chaff down behind my back, where I would otherwise rub against the barrow, and I leaned carefully against it. The wood was cold and hard, but I could bear it surprisingly easily. My son stood behind me, gripped the handles and lifted my carriage off the two stumpy legs he had given it. I twisted round, sending a new tearing pain across my buttocks, to watch his face, trying to judge how much of his strength it would demand. He had altered his first idea, and woven strong leather straps to go over his shoulders, attached to the handles. This way, his arms would not take all the strain, and I could see that it was not too great an exertion for him.
‘It works masterful,’ he gloated, using a word which Edd had made his own, and which reminded me of my dead man with force enough to bring tears. ‘We’ll leave first thing in the morning.’
And so I spent a dreamlike final day in the hut where I had lived more than half my life. Cuthman forbade my taking anything but the most necessary articles with me. No cooking pot, no candles or spindle. ‘But what’ll I do?’ I pleaded. ‘How shall I pass the hours sitting in that barrow?’
‘There’ll be plenty to see,’ was all he said. I was permitted my thick woollen shawl, a cake of tallow soap and a little cloth bag with a comb, rags for my bleeding times and the carved doll that Wynn had made as a child. I wondered how we would keep the rain off, how we would eat, how we would find a way to some better place. It seemed a scheme of desperation and folly; but I knew we could not bide where we were. Our days on the moor were over, and we had no choice but to seek out a new and better life.
There was rain on the morning of our departure. I had insisted that Cuthman inform Spenna of our plan, and she had come to bid us farewell. She stood by, white-faced, and clutched folded hands to her breast as Cuthman lifted me into my cart. My hair was dripping, the bed of the cart was wet and my misery consumed me. Spenna and I had been close friends and it was cruel to part. When we began to move away, eastwards along the side of the valley, she walked alongside.
‘Us’ll meet again,’ she assured me. ‘Folks travel more these days. Send word when you’ve settled, and I’ll come to see you. ‘Tisn’t likely to be far off.’ She glanced at Cuthman, all harnessed up with his straps, the muscles of his neck tight with my weight, and it was plain that she thought he would scarcely move us ten miles before giving up the struggle. I was not so sure. We could only survive in a place where we would receive alms from prosperous people. Such a place might be a monastery, which I believed would suit Cuthman in his new godliness. To my knowledge there was no such community within a sennight’s walk.
Spenna walked a mile or so with us before finally tearing herself away, her clothing soaked and the world full of mist and moistness. We clutched hands, and wept. ‘Keep a watch for Wynn,’ I begged her. ‘Tell her I’ll never forget my child, and I wish her a good life.’
She prom
ised, and then made a blessing over me, wishing me the recovered use of my legs and a new home which would be everything I could want. I couldn’t watch her disappearing, faced forward as I was, only seeing the future and never the past. Left alone with my unwavering son, I knew a seething panic, my insides gripped by such pain that I thought I would soil myself with a bitter stinking flux from it. But before I could demand that Cuthman stop and lift me out to perform the business, it calmed a little, and I said nothing.
The rain abated and a weak sun appeared. Ahead there was no moorland, but gentle hills covered with trees. Our path was narrow, but level, and the cart ran smoothly, for the most part. With Spenna gone, I was able to take note of this peculiar means of travelling and resign myself to making the best of it. Behind me, Cuthman was almost silent. His breathing was not laboured, and he did not speak to me. I could not turn myself far enough to look at him. Almost I could believe that some creature had taken his place, and was moving me along with uncanny strength and gentleness.
Before long, I spoke. ‘Tired, son?’ I asked.
‘Nay.’ His voice was strong and joyous, altogether different from what I had expected. I understood then that he was indeed on some mission or pilgrimage which I could not properly share. I was his penance, just as some pilgrims put stones in their shoes, or carry burdens on their backs. Like me, he had his back turned firmly to our past life and was walking cheerfully to wherever the road might take us.
‘The barrow works well,’ I said. ‘I shall not mind riding all day like this. At least when the day be dry,’ I added.
‘All this day, and many hundred days hereafter,’ he responded, almost singing the words. I wished I could look into his face. Many hundred days? I repeated to myself. A man could walk to Rome and back in a hundred days. Many hundred would take us over the edge of the world, for sure. I hoped he was making a jest of it, and chose to challenge him.
‘Not hundreds, I hope,’ I said with a forced laugh. Cuthman made no reply.
As the day began to turn, and the faint sun to sink away behind us, hunger became my most urgent need. We had brought no food with us from the hut, but Spenna had pressed a small bundle into the cart beside me, filled with honey cakes and dried plums, before taking her leave of us. I opened it now, and held a cake over my shoulder for Cuthman. ‘Time to eat,’ I said. ‘Rest yourself now.’ He had walked without pause for perhaps five hours. We were already close to Spenna’s hopeful guess of ten miles distance from our old home.
Cuthman was gracious in his acceptance of the cake, and said he would be happy to stop and eat it as soon as he’d found the right spot. He pushed me off the track down a gentle slope between great oaks until we were in a shadowy hollow with a sheltering bramble-covered bank behind us. He set me down, and walked round so we could see each other. He stretched his arms upwards and out several times, emitting great deep sighs of relief.
‘Aching, are they?’ I asked. He shook his head.
‘Stiff,’ he said. ‘Be better tomorrow. I’ll have the cake now.’ I gave it to him, and before he ate it, he closed his eyes and muttered a short prayer of thankfulness. I almost remarked that he should be thanking Spenna for it, not his blessed Saviour. But Cuthman was on a pilgrimage now, and behaving as he thought proper. He would strain his body to its utmost and subdue his will to what he believed was God’s. Whether or not I joined in was unimportant to him. Tired and a trifle wistful, I waited for him to lift me out and help me piss.
My legs took some time to straighten from the crooked folding they’d suffered in the cart. I leaned against a friendly old oak, and ate two of the honey cakes and half the dried plums, giving first a brief thought to where we might find food the next day. I could have saved something, and yet Cuthman’s faith was spreading to me, and I found it easier to forget the morrow than to worry about it.
The forest was loud with the sounds of creatures. Owls, wolves, barking foxes and some wild hogs all announced themselves, careless of our presence. A modest brook ran close by, just out of sight, and we could hear the water, swelled by a few days of rain. It felt peaceful to be sharing their home, with nothing of our own to mark us out as different from them. Deftly Cuthman fashioned us a shelter from dead wood and dry leaves. We lay down, close together for warmth and slept like contented babies until daybreak, never noticing the shower of rain that must have fallen during the night.
Chapter Ten
The ground was wet and the branches dripping when we awoke. We had the last of the plums for our breakfast, grateful for the drying breeze which greeted us. We had foolishly left the cart in its normal position overnight, and water had collected inside it. I did not regard the prospect of sitting in the wet for another whole day’s travelling with much enthusiasm. Cuthman tipped it up, and rubbed it with handfuls of moss he had pulled from the trees, until it was almost dry. We laid a carpet of fresh moss in it before he settled me down for another long ride. I looked around at our first night’s resting place with some affection. It had been an ordinary forest and yet seemed to provide everything we needed. There were early flowers appearing under the trees, wood anemones in early bud and the green leaf spears of blooms that would carpet the forest floor in the spring.
Before we started off, I found myself staring intently at the anemones, remembering a copse beside our hut on the moor where I had watched so eagerly for the first white buds to appear and herald the spring. Grandmother’s nightcap, we called them, because of the whimsical shape of them. There was a particular magic to these brave little flowers which stirred my heart. Finding them here, further from home than I had ever been, gave me courage for whatever might befall Cuthman and me. As he began to fix the strap around his neck, I suddenly said, ‘Gather me a few of the flower buds, son, will you? Just for a reminder of how we started on our journey.’
With a patient sigh, he let go the strap and walked over to the leafy patch, brave in the shadows under the trees, and quickly plucked three or four buds. I held them protectively as we pushed back up the slope to the track we’d left the evening before. They would surely not develop and open, plucked so long before their prime, but they pleased me and later in the day I tucked them into a damp mossy corner of the cart beside me.
It remained dry and we slowly climbed a long hill, following the morning sun until it hung overhead at midday. A shepherd saw us and waved from his vantage point on a little rise. What must he be thinking, I wondered, to see a lad pushing a heavy barrow containing an old woman? What other strange travellers did he witness from his roadside spot? Did he go home at nightfall and describe to his family the events of the day? Or did he have sons and a strong wife to care for the homestead, leaving him free to spend nights in a linhey with the sheep, as shepherds mostly did? Pity for Cuthman and the impossible task he had set himself after Edd had died filled me, and I bent my head to grieve for the life my boy had lived this past half-year.
I grew tired of watching the road forever ahead of us, narrow and tree-lined in most places, so that there was little to see on either side. Where the trees thinned, there would be open spaces with stumps showing where the timber had been felled for spears or ships or iron smelting. We passed one stretch of cleared land which was churned and broken, so the surface was all uneven, but there were clumps of strangely bright green grass growing through. ‘There’s been fighting here,’ remarked Cuthman. ‘Blood’s been good for the grass, see.’ I shuddered, wondering how he could know about such things. Our village had seen no battles in living memory, or for many lifetimes before that, but we had news of struggles and wars from the few who came through from other parts of the country. And the old stories often concerned fighting in all its awful detail.
I saw the man coming towards us before Cuthman did, but said nothing for a few moments. He was small in the distance, on a stretch of road which lay fairly straight, but undulating. He disappeared in a hollow before I saw him again, larger now and with his face easier to see. He had long fair hair and narrow shoul
ders. ‘Here be company,’ I remarked, curious to observe the stranger’s reaction to the odd pair we presented.
Cuthman continued to walk steadily, whistling in short snatches, which he had not done until now. I tried to sit up straighter, and compose myself as if it was a normal thing to ride in a barrow pushed by a lad. The sun shone full on the man’s face, and I saw his sharp blue gaze flick from Cuthman to me and back again. At perhaps twenty paces distance, he nodded and said, ‘Pleasant day. Spring in the air, thank God.’
Cuthman paused, and stood still, waiting for the man to come level with us. I was smiling and agreeing about the weather. ‘Be you a man of God, then?’ my son enquired, in a manner I thought needlessly rough.
‘Merely a Christian,’ came the reply. His voice was strange to me, as if there were dough inside his cheeks. ‘And yourselves?’
‘We are pilgrims.’
‘And your goal? Where might you be heading?’
Cuthman stammered a few words about journeying eastwards, waiting for a sign from God that we had reached our goal.
‘Seems as if you’re doing penance for something,’ remarked the man, fixing the cart with his light sky-hued eyes, one brow raised in quiet amusement. I stared defiantly back at him, less inclined to like him as we talked. There was no violence in him, and yet he seemed to have a power I did not understand. His easy words and quick grasp of what we were about seemed to diminish us. I remembered that we were fleeing from a helpless poverty, with not the least idea of where we might get to. We were contemptible in this man’s eyes, I saw now. Ragged and ignorant, living like beasts under the trees. It seemed, though, that Cuthman felt differently.
‘Aye, I do penance,’ he declared. ‘I killed my father - is that not reason enough for you?’
