by Rebecca Tope
‘ “And your very same chin,” the queen replied.
‘ “And the hair grows from a point on her brow, just the way yours does,” he added.
‘ “Remember what the piskie told you?” said the queen. “You would see your child again when she was married. I believe this must be she.”
‘ “Girl!” called the queen. “Can you tell us who you are?”
“She is yours,” came two voices together. One was that of the old shepherd’s wife, bent now and almost blind. The other was the tiny shrill voice of the piskie.
And so all became clear. Sweetpea and William inherited the kingdom in their turn, but they never forgot the poor old shepherd and his wife, and made sure to give them a happy and comfortable old age. They loved each other long and well, and ruled the kingdom wisely...’
Long before I finished, I knew that Cuthman had fallen asleep. The moon rode high and bright stars thronged the sky. I was not particularly pleased with my performance as a storyteller. I had been in too much hurry to reach the ending, and had been lazy in thinking of what the people would say to each other, and how they might look. It made me remember my life on the moors, and poor Edd, burdened by my helplessness. As I lay down and tried to wrap myself comfortably in my shawl, I anticipated the dreams to come. Surely I would be returned to my home, where I could walk tall and far, and my little children, more numerous than two, would frolic round me.
I should have known that dreams are not for our anticipating.
Chapter Fourteen
After another weary hungry day, seeing nobody except for a small knot of people on a far-distant hillside, we crested a long gentle rise which had taken us much of the afternoon and Cuthman set the barrow down for a rest. Before us lay a wide plain, mostly filled with forest, and with scarcely any sign of habitation, except away to the south east was the misty outline of a city. Between us and the thronged buildings, dominating the land, and almost shimmering with meaning, stood a huge ruined fortress on a natural hill. In the early twilight, where everything was grey and indistinct, I could only make out faint shapes. The far-off city might be a stand of trees, or a rocky outcrop, in reality. But the fortress was real. It was well over an hour’s walk away, surrounded by rings of high walls, most of them battered and broken. There were small clusters of animals, cattle and sheep, outside these walls, and wisps of smoke rising from numerous points inside them. I had no idea what it was and why it struck me as so important.
Cuthman came to stand beside me, staring down the slope just as I was. ‘A strange place,’ he said, with a hesitancy in his voice, even perhaps fear. We were standing on a plateau, which ended abruptly in a sharp decline down to the plain below. Pointed circular barrows dotted the plain, and the ruins of a number of Roman buildings showed that we had come into an area which had been much used by men of importance for countless ages. But it now had a neglected abandoned feeling to it. As if conflicting armies had fought themselves to exhaustion here, and even now had not recovered their energies to begin again.
Slowly, reluctantly, Cuthman eased the cart down the chalky path, digging his heels in to hold it from running away. I clung tightly to the sides, expecting every moment to find myself careering down the hillside, tipping over, rolling amongst the stones. Now and then, I would hear the scuff and slither of Cuthman’s foot losing its grip, and the cart would lurch forward. But he always caught it again, and at last we were on more level ground. The fortress now rose above us, greater than any building I could have dreamed of, but badly broken and tumbled down. In the fading light, it seemed insubstantial, even now we were so much closer. We could hear music coming from its walls.
Drums, pipes and strings were all being played, with human voices joining in. The rhythm was strange and broken, the resonances sending fingers into my deepest parts and stirring me. The voices wailed, high and wordless. It was a sound to welcome the night and the bright stars and the dark creatures which emerge from the shadows.
We had come to it from the south, where all we could see was a long impenetrable rampart. A sentry platform towered over us, but there did not seem to be any lookout on it. Indeed, as I peered more closely, it seemed to me that it was too old and rocky to be used safely. One of its legs was broken, and there was a hole through the floor.
Cuthman said nothing, but with an effort that I could acutely feel, he lifted the cart and shoved it over the tussocky grass to our left, seeking a gateway into this mysterious place where people sang as if they had everything they needed.
It was dark before we reached the end of that south wall, and rounded it to be met with bewildering shapes and shadows in the dim starlight. There was no gate that we could see, but stone-lined paths, running between huge earthworks, smoothly grassed. Sheep softly grumbled at our presence.
We were too afraid to try to gain entry that night. Instead, Cuthman dragged me out of the cart and down a steep slope into a strange long ditch, full of old straggling grass and a scattering of furze bushes. It was sheltered and fairly dry, so we wrapped ourselves as warmly as we could, ignored our rumbling bellies, and went to sleep.
We woke slowly, and I took a few moments to recall the night before and the place we had come to. As I raised my head, I seemed to be in a sort of bowl, with steep green sides. On the rim, ignoring our presence, were sheep, some standing but most lying quietly chewing. The pangs of hunger had subsided, as we had known they would, but food was still our immediate need. The only sounds were birdsong and the muted belchings of the sheep.
My cart was invisible from where I lay, and I felt suddenly anxious for it. Although we couldn’t hear or see them, we knew there were people close by, who might do it damage.
When we spoke it was in whispers, so awed were we by the place. ‘Come on,’ Cuthman said. ‘We must try their hospitality.’
On my hands and knees I crawled back up the side of our hollow, and stood unsteadily, clinging to my son. We were again on the stone path, which rounded a bend just ahead of us. We left the cart, after some debate, and walked carefully along the path. Around the bend we were confronted by a high wall, lined with wooden laths in poor repair, and whitened with chalk. At first it seemed there was no way through, but as we hesitated, we could see a narrow space to our right, where the path turned sharply again. This was like nothing we had ever known, and I at least believed myself to be dreaming. But we continued, passing through the space, and finding ourselves then on a short narrow causeway with a great drop on either side into ditches far deeper than the one we had slept in. We could barely stand side by side without fearing to fall down into one or other of them.
Cuthman raised his head, trying to understand the place. Ahead of us the wall loomed high and forbidding, although plainly in serious disrepair. More wood than stone had been used in its construction, and the weather had been unkind to it. We supposed that there must be a gate beyond all these twists and turns and falls and rises, but we couldn’t see it.
The approach took us a long time. I began to wish we had brought the cart. It seemed a great folly to have left it behind, and I said so. Cuthman hesitated. ‘I can fetch it,’ he offered, though reluctantly.
I was walking without pain. Although far larger than any construction I had seen before, the fortress could not be so vast that I could not stay on my feet long enough to enter it. The way sloped upwards, and I knew what hardship a slope caused my lad when pushing me in the cart. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I prefer to enter this place as a normal being.’ The idea of arriving in the cart, as I had at the monastery, repelled me. This time I wanted to retain my dignity.
We turned many more sharp corners, and were dwarfed by great white walls, and alarmed by deep V-shaped ditches for what seemed an eternity. ‘Are we crossing into Hades?’ I asked, at yet another twist. ‘The way is strange and difficult enough.’
The gate was abruptly there, and presented us with no obstacle. One side hung loose and broken, the wood rotten. ‘It has been hacked down, see,’ Cuthman po
inted out. Old splinters, green with moss and mildew, showed where long ago weapons had battered at it and forced an entry to whatever lay inside the gates.
We crept almost stealthily through, and paused at a flight of rough-hewn steps, bordered by more white-daubed walls. These had symbols painted onto them in blue dye, and patterns of broken stones outlined our way. Everything seemed old and decayed, a relic of times long past. ‘Perhaps they were ghosts that we heard last night?’ I said.
As if answering my words, a peal of laughter rang out, somewhere ahead of us, to be joined by others. A group of young girls was close by. Wattle fences made a kind of street up to the centre of the castle, and concealed whatever might lie to either side. A dog barked, further away, and I could smell smoke. The sense of a small town slowing waking came to me. A town where there was no need to rise early and work, no prizing of the morning hours. I recalled the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which our priest had told us many times. I carried a picture of those towns where all the activity happened after dark, and the people lay in their beds until noon.
I began to feel faint. So much walking, so little food, and a growing fear that we had come to a place of evil, all combined to alarm and weaken me. ‘I must rest,’ I panted, and Cuthman seemed relieved to pause and sit on a treetrunk crudely fashioned into a bench. It faced across the ‘street’ to a section of woven fencing daubed with a large human face, with spirals for eyes and a wide open mouth.
‘Look!’ said Cuthman, pointing down beside his feet. I bent forward to see. A large piece of stone was wedged against the wood to prevent it from rolling. On it was carved a simple face, with wide-spaced eyes and small tight mouth. It might have been the head from an ancient statue, except that the back was rough and unfinished. It had a curious power, which slowly made itself felt as I looked. I got up and moved to be in front of it, crouching to look at it directly. I had never seen a person like this. Broad cheeks, and a long nose, but no brow to speak of. I remembered Wynn drawing similar faces with a stick in the clay. It was as if a child had been given stone-carving tools, and left to make this immature sculpture.
‘They have a liking for faces,’ I remarked, pulling myself into a straight posture, with my hands on my buttocks. The curves and stiffnesses of my back protested, but I managed it. Being thinner than for many years was a help, I realised. Where there had once been cushions of flesh, now my hands met bone. For a brief flash, I wondered about the life spark and how it is we move at all; how our will is all we need for momentum. And where does that will go when we die? Again I felt the weight of Edd on my back, heavier as his spark went out, leaving him inert and empty from one moment to the next.
‘Strange faces,’ Cuthman remarked. I looked at him, sitting loose, with his big sore hands dangling between his thighs. He seemed pitiful; misplaced and starving. I could see the bones in his wrists, the skin pulled tight over them. His hunger must be far more acute than mine, for he was still growing, besides using so much effort in pushing me in the cart. His hair hung lank and long, beyond his sharp chin. He had a sore on one cheekbone, which I had not noticed before, and he shivered a little. It seemed impossible that this was the child of my own body, the cuthie little tacker so admired by Edd.
‘Should we try to go away again?’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘I cannot,’ he replied. ‘I must eat.’
As if waiting for this admission, a tall woman in a long blue cloak stepped from a narrow space between two wattles, and came towards us, gliding rather than walking. She had thick brown hair, and broad cheeks. Her hands were tucked inside the cloak, like a monk. She stared at Cuthman, with narrowed eyes, seeming to be concentrating on his groin, which was poorly concealed by his shabby tunic.
‘Good morning, strangers,’ the woman said, slowly. Her accent was strange, but we could understand her. ‘You look cold and hungry, am I right?’
We nodded, but said nothing. We did not doubt that she would give us food, without any need for undue supplication.
‘Come then,’ she invited, taking a step backwards. Cuthman stood, and held out his arm for me. I tried not to lean on him more than necessary. The woman led us through the gap in the fence, and into a wide open space, with hard-packed bare earth and some rough huts encircling it. Most of them seemed empty and unfit to live in. One had a fallen tree lying across it. Two woman sat beside a fire, some distance away. A dog came trotting towards us.
We crossed the open area to the fire, eagerly expecting something hot to be offered us to eat or drink. The women looked up at us, showing weathered brown faces and broken teeth. They were old, both of them, much older than me. Their hands were like twisted thorn roots, with blackened cracks around the nails. One looked hard at our blue-cloaked escort. ‘A man, Enthia?’ she croaked, and tried to laugh. A rattling cough emerged instead.
The younger woman smiled patiently, but I thought there was a twitch of disgust at the corners of her mouth and the sides of her nostrils.
‘Lean, by his looks,’ said the other crone. ‘Cold and weary.’
I was growing impatient at this delay. Close by the fire, we were already warmer, but I could see no trace of food, nor smell any. I looked to the woman who had been addressed as Enthia, for enlightenment.
‘I will fetch milk,’ she said. ‘Sit down and warm yourselves. Soon there will be hot broth.’ She glided away then, towards a larger hut in better condition than the others. It had an open front, and I thought I could see some movement inside, though it was in shadow. She went inside, and I realised that Cuthman and I had both been watching her go with a childlike wistfulness. We were not easy in the company of the two unpleasant old women.
Instead of turning to face them, I looked away, and scanned the settlement. Between two of the decaying huts I could see a strange arrangement of troughs and barrels which seemed to fill a large area. Turning again, towards the weak morning sun, the wattle fence proceeded. This side of it was unpainted, and propped up in places by lengths of wood. The impression was that this was the ‘back’ of it, where there was no need for ornamentation or tidiness. A considerable distance away, there rose a much stouter wall, the height of two men, with protrusions on its top at intervals, which I could not make out from where I sat. The population of this settlement appeared to be much depleted, and I wondered at the women we had seen so far, and what their lives were about.
The crones both coughed repeatedly, and stirred the fire a little. They seemed to be waiting for something, but with no sense of urgency. Perhaps it’s death that’s coming for them, I thought, glancing once or twice at their wrinkled faces and awful hands. They were like horrible demons, kept alive beyond their natural span by some sorcery. I felt no inclination to speak to them, and I was sure that the same was true for Cuthman. They mumbled quietly between coughs, but did not seem to be in conversation. The time drew out, but nothing happened. The sun stood still behind a pale thin covering of cloud, sounds drifted to us of children playing, the dog had flopped down close by, forming a rough circle around the fire, and I began to feel warm and drowsy.
At last the woman came back carrying a large blue jug in one hand and a deep bowl in the other. Her hands were small and white, and her right arm braced against the weight of the full jug. Where did she get milk from, I wondered? I had seen no sign of cattle.
‘Sheep’s milk,’ she announced, as she set the jug carefully between us, bending her back with a suppleness that made me envy her.
I had never milked sheep for my own sustenance, only to get the flow started for a lamb to suckle. It seemed that a great many ewes would be needed to fill a jug of such size every day. And did the lambs not go hungry if the people took all their rightful food? Since my earliest years, I had seldom tasted milk of any kind - the village cattle had been prized more for meat than for milk.
The woman handed me the bowl, less than half full. I sipped it, not knowing what to expect. It tasted thin and sour and I could not believe that it would nourish me. But I wa
s thirsty and drained the bowl, just the same. Cuthman did likewise, though unable to conceal the little curl of distaste that crossed his lips.
‘You will learn to enjoy it,’ the woman said, her voice smooth and rich. ‘Later there will be cheese, made from the curds. This is merely the whey.’ I had little understanding of the uses of milk, but grasped that this was some poor substitute for the real thing. The later intrigued me. Were we expected to make a lengthy visit here, then?
Every minute or two, the woman settled her gaze on Cuthman, as if assessing him in some way. It made us both uneasy, and I shifted a little closer, with the faint idea of protecting him. In a while, she asked, ‘What age are you boy?’ My lad looked to me to reply, which made him seem young and nervous.
‘He was born at Imbolc, fifteen or sixteen years ago. I cannot be certain which it is. The years needed no counting where we were.’
The woman pushed out her lips a little, thinking something through. ‘I have yet to hear him speak. Is his voice of a manly tone?’
The question was strange and rather awkward. I stared at her stupidly. Then I waved a hand at the lad. ‘Say something,’ I invited him. ‘Let that be the answer.’
Turning red under his chapped skin, Cuthman stammered something, which was so low that little could be made of it. The woman sighed. ‘Sing for me, then,’ she demanded, and I thought perhaps she wanted him for the music we had heard the night before. The monks we had stayed with made much of their holy music, and there had been singing in our village church. I relaxed a little, thinking that at last there was something here we could understand. But Cuthman had not the courage for a solo performance, and merely blushed more deeply than before.
‘No matter,’ she dismissed him. ‘All will become clear in time.’
