by Rebecca Tope
Cuthman kept a distance from me, his blank eyes directed at the sky where it could be glimpsed above the trees. I supposed that he too had caught the words ‘the young saint’ and was acting up to the role to the best of his ability. Or perhaps he was praying for strength to resist a new collection of women, as he had done before at Maiden Castle.
‘Now then,’ the witch went on in the same harsh voice. ‘At nightfall, there is work for us all.’ Our captors gathered round, and amidst some argument and noise, we came to understand that we had arrived in the town on May Eve. There was a strange practice in these parts, it seemed, of stealing a May pole from the neighbouring settlement. A group of young men, led by a specially chosen hero, must take a team of oxen in the silence of midnight and carry off the great trophy, to erect in their own town square for the May Day dancing and games. I remembered the Beltane festival we had continued to enjoy in our village, despite the protestations from the priest, and assumed that this would be something of the same, though with some outlandish augmentation concerning the precious Pole.
‘Why do you not already have your own pole?’ I asked, rather boldly. As with any unfamiliar practice, my first instinct was to make little of it, and find fault. In our village, we had never felt any need to steal, or to fuss with some great unstable tree. Our fires and dances had been more than enough to greet the coming summer.
‘It was destroyed,’ came the curt reply, and I felt a small complacency at this disorganised way of proceeding. The people here were foreign, strange and therefore inferior. Despite the crowds and the simmering nastiness of the witch, I assured myself that my son would know how to conduct himself without coming to any harm.
It was strange to see Cuthman throw himself with enthusiasm into the planning of the theft. At first I presumed that he was plotting an escape, and wanted the townspeople to relax their vigilance, but as I watched and listened to him, it seemed that he was more light-hearted about his new position than I had seen him for many months. Stealing, surely, was contrary to his Saviour’s doctrine. The ritual of the Maypole was unfamiliar and curious to him, and perhaps he felt safer for knowing that the night-time escapade was to be carried out by a group of boys and men. He had never had cause to fear other men, and their company might be a fillip for him.
But I could not forget that the proceedings were being directed by a woman revered for mysterious magical powers, who had foreseen Cuthman’s arrival, and surely had her own reasons for summoning him to her as she did.
The night came on, cold and bright. I was given a sheepskin and food and told to get some sleep in a shelter close to the witch’s cave. Hal had begged to be included in the raiding party, and for a moment he and I both believed he would be refused. But then the witch smiled frostily down at him, patted his small white cheek and said, ‘Go then, little one. You may prove useful as messenger, at least.’
Separation from Hal as well as Cuthman made me considerably more uneasy. I felt worse than I had when the pagan women had Cuthman at the fortress. I was in a stranger land than ever now, impossibly far from my own home and with no notion of my own destiny. I could not see anything for myself, away from my son. The witch ignored me and I feared I would have no alms from her if Cuthman failed or disappeared.
I dozed, shivering from being alone on a cold night. Then there were shouting voices, calling from a distance, alarmed and angry. I waited, fuzzy-headed and apprehensive. Then, weaving a crooked zigzag path between the shadows, came the light head of young Hal, shrieking like a small animal running in fear for its life. I called to him, and he veered again, straight for me, crashing into me and burrowing his head into my middle.
‘Tell me,’ I whispered to him, ignoring all the other people who were running about, collecting in knots to shout orders and plans at each other, and then dashing off in all directions. Oddly, not one of them appeared to have noticed Hal’s urgency and distress.
‘They surprised us,’ panted Hal. ‘Great tall men with clubs and sharp sticks. There was a fight, and then we ran away. I should tell the witch.’
‘Cuthman?’ I knew already that my son had not run away. He had been chosen as leader. Whatever it was in his lonely moorland upbringing that made him value such an appointment, only God knew. But it had been important to him, from the first moment.
‘They captured him.’ Hal struggled upright, staring into my face. ‘I must tell the witch. I am her messenger.’
‘She is not here,’ I told him calmly. ‘She has gone after them. She will discover for herself.’ I was not being truthful; I needed the lad to stay close and warm with me.
‘But Cuthman is captured,’ Hal repeated.
I almost laughed. Captured twice in one day! What a fate was ours, in this wild world of strange men and their religious passions; half-mad women and their absurd sense of power. All I wanted at that moment, was my old hut, my dear Edd with his red cheeks and slow smile, and enough bread on the table. It was cruel of Cuthman’s God to force us to play such games as this. But I knew better than to resist by this time. Hugging Hal to me, and soothing his fears as best I could, I lay down and pulled the sheepskin over us. My shawl, torn and dirty, was wrapped round my feet, against the night chill.
‘It’ll be all right in the morning,’ I told him. ‘You see.’
Other things happened during that night, but I was too weary and battered to care what they were. At first light the witch-woman came to me, crouching low, so that her face with its white hair filled my vision when I opened my eyes. She scowled at me and said, ‘Stir yourself, Mother. This is a big day for your son. He will wish you to stand witness to it.’ She glared at Hal. ‘Fine messenger you made,’ she sneered.
‘He is too young for your work,’ I defended. ‘And you know all, I suppose, with your second sight.’
She smiled thinly. ‘I know your son has allowed himself to be taken.’
‘And will be well able to resist doing your bidding.’
‘Never fear,’ the woman laughed. I could see she was excited, jumpy with her own importance. ‘Nothing has gone awry with my plans.’
It was too much for me to comprehend. Hal had crawled away from me and was pissing against a bush, not so far distant as I might have wished. Other women were fuelling cooking fires and carrying water. With a sigh, I got to my feet, brushing at the dust and dirt which was clinging to my skirts. Although some bits fell to the ground, I was still a wretched figure, dirty and stiff. My back always stabbed me in the morning, my legs slow to take my weight and even slower to propel me forward. I seemed old and useless to myself, and almost beyond caring what befell me or my son from henceforth.
But there is a specialness to the first day of May which never fails to bring good cheer. Earlier Beltanes came to my mind, most vividly the one that we had celebrated especially for Wynn. It was a time to be hopeful and happy. The sky was bright, smiling blue through the pale green of the new leaves. A cuckoo sang not far away, his voice piercing through the chorus of blackbirds, thrushes, pigeons and finches. A fresh scent of a land greeting the summer, proud of having come through another winter, glad to be warm again and fertile. There would be many a new babe begun this day, in the reckless festival which was the age old mark of May Day. Cuthman himself, I believed, had been conceived at Beltane, and born nine months later at Imbolc. Such was the common pattern, and Edd and I had not been such rebels as to abjure the general practice.
The morning was filled with the laughter of women. A bowl of thick porridge was handed to me, decorated with some pink apple blossom that seemed to me a sign of the excesses to come. Everywhere there were young green shoots, adorning the hair and clothes of the women, strewn on the ground, woven into the harness of a donkey tied to a stake close by. Never in my home village had the May festival been celebrated like this.
But I did not complain when the witch woman brought me a fine new skirt to wear. In undignified haste I pulled off my old one, casting it carelessly aside, and wrapping its replacemen
t snugly around myself. It was made of a light woollen weave, decorated with embroidered flowers and butterflies, fastened with a neat metal hook, the like of which I had never yet seen. My topshirt and shawl seemed all the more disreputable in contrast, and the witch quickly fetched me replacements for them, too. I was made new again by the creamy colour and the sense of freshness that the new clothes brought me.
‘I must wash myself,’ I announced, feeling my skin rough with the long months of skimped cleaning it had known. And my hair was gritty from going so long unwashed. Summer was here, with a warm day perfect for a complete wash. I began to remove the clothes again, wanting my body to be worthy of them before they could be worn proudly.
The witch nodded a little more agreeably, and led me to a specially-built bath house. ‘Just like the Romans,’ she boasted. ‘We have our share of civilised ways, for all the priests might call us savages.’ I remembered the ruins I had seen with the decorated floors and complicated brick constructions. This hut was not in any way similar. But it contained a shallow iron tub, with a ledge above holding soap and a linen sheet for rubbing dry. There was also a large bowl for tipping water onto dirty hair. ‘Your little lad can bring you water,’ said the witch.
Hal was not impressed with the task, even though I helped him. The river was some distance away, and the buckets we used were heavy even before they had water in them. What advantages there may have been to a bath house were lost on me when I compared it to the ease and speed of simply washing in the river itself. True, the water warmed a little from sitting in the tub with the sun beating onto the roof of the hut. The bottom of the tub was smoother than the riverbed, and there were no weeds or mud in it. A channel led away from it, for the dirty water when I was finished. But the initial sense of luxury faded as I sat rubbing fatty soap all over my body and slopped water onto myself. The result was admittedly a feeling of freshness, and my hair certainly benefitted from its washing, but I could not see that I had been so very dirty before. The skin has its own ways of keeping clean.
When I suggested to Hal that he make use of the water in the tub for his own cleaning purposes, he grimaced horribly and skipped hastily out of my reach. I did not insist. There were times when I was content to acknowledge that I was not in reality his mother. I would do my best to protect him from harm, but more than that was not required of me.
The sun reached its highest point in the sky, and the atmosphere changed. The women began to gather themselves together, preparing to set off to another place. As I had always known it, Beltane celebrations began in the afternoon, with dances and games, to develop into a feast as the sun sank, with the lighting of great fires and increasingly wild behaviour lasting far into the night. I assumed that these people conducted themselves in much the same manner.
I was becoming impatient to know what had become of my son and the Pole he had gone to steal. Hal’s initial panic seemed to have gone entirely, and he expressed no fears for Cuthman’s wellbeing. Had the men of the settlement convinced him that it was all harmless fun? Had Cuthman himself been light and larky about it? If it had not been for the Maiden Castle episode, and the look in the witch woman’s eye the day before, I might have felt as relaxed as Hal seemed to be.
But a suspicion had crept into my mind that there had been a different intention from the one we had been told. The excited reception we had been given seemed to suggest something more, when I paused to think about it. Cuthman’s arrival had fulfilled some kind of prophecy - would their seers bother to predict something so usual as the ritualised raiding of a neighbouring community for its Maypole? And Hal had seen something menacing during the night’s raid, which had alarmed him enough to send him running back to me. I began to wonder whether I had cause to be very much more alarmed than I had been thus far.
My new clothes gave me a sense of status which at first was very pleasing. Then slowly my suspicions turned to this matter, too. The garments were finely made and had to hold some value. Why had I been given them so freely? Was Cuthman so important to them that his mother too must be honoured and well dressed? I looked around for the white-haired witch. There were many pressing questions I wished to ask her.
But she was nowhere to be seen. I called to a woman nearby, asking what was happening, but she just smiled at me and continued with her work. She was carefully rolling up a pack containing several small stones and other things. I wondered whether they were runes, the markings invisible to my poor sight. I struggled stiffly towards a cluster of women, who were also tying up bundles and checking each other’s hair and clothes, tweaking stray folds and locks into place. They laughed with a wildness that I remembered from my girlhood. Many a virginity was ended with the Beltane frolics.
‘Please tell me,’ I panted. ‘Tell me what is to take place, and where my son might be. I am beginning to worry about him.’
Two of them turned to face me. Young, with rich brown hair and blue eyes, they seemed plump and healthy and uncaring. Their faces were alight with excited anticipation, and they could hardly restrain their giggles. ‘Your son?’ said one, her voice high with some strange thrill. ‘The Jack, you mean?’
The others instantly hushed her, pinching her fiercely until she squealed. It merely puzzled me, and I stood there, foolish and ignorant. The high-voiced girl seemed to take pity.
‘Your son is safe,’ she told me. ‘We are leaving shortly, and you can come with us to see it all. Can you walk far, or should we use your cart?’
I had forgotten my cart for the moment. It stood abandoned beside the witch’s cave, and I remembered how uncomfortable I had found it on that last walk. But my legs were stiff and slow. Again I felt old and weary, the world moving too quick for me, like a fast-flowing stream, carrying something precious away from me, too rapidly for me to follow. But then Hal was beside me, nudging his bony shoulder under my elbow.
‘Lean on me,’ he chirped. ‘You can walk, then.’
I smiled gratefully at him. ‘I will, then,’ I told him. ‘But first there is something I must do.’ I hobbled over to the cart and rummaged in the small heap of my things. The bag of runes was as I had left it, and I dipped my hand in, saying to myself Show me how I should conduct myself this day. Opening my clasped fist, I was hardly surprised to find the rune for Hail sitting there. It seemed a most obvious message. A chill disruption to our plans. Ever since we had left our home, disruption had surely been the watchword for our lives. Every day was a disruption, a dislocation. But I knew better than to dismiss it so easily. Today, there would be a further upheaval. And I remembered my question - involving my own behaviour. I was being advised to behave disruptively, called upon to interrupt proceedings, perhaps. A feeling of foreboding began to grow within me and I looked around for my loyal friend Hal.
‘Come then, lad,’ I beckoned. ‘I am ready for whatever may be about to happen.’
We walked back towards the seashore, and I annoyed my companions by stopping every few steps, despite having Hal’s brave shoulder to rest on. Partly the walking wearied me, and partly I was in awe of the size of the place. I had never seen so many buildings together before, and it made me breathless to imagine how it would be to live there. The proud fort rose high over the huts and fields and storage barns.
We soon reached a large field set on a south-facing slope. A green ash tree, recently felled, but with many of its branches left intact, stood erect in the centre of the field. Woven into it were all kinds of blossom and early summer flowers, creating a mass of colour. It had been set in a small pit, with supporting timbers encircling it, so that it was stable. At its summit, there was an odd arrangement of protruding branches, lashed into place, like nothing I had ever seen.
A ring of small unlit bonfires surrounded the Pole, tokens only, made from scraps of dry bark and slender boughs too small for use as fuel, stored through the winter, by the looks of them. Knots of people stood together, watching a wooded stretch to the east, but with a suggestion that it was yet too soon for anything s
ignificant to happen. I saw a group of monks in earnest conversation in the south-west corner of the field, and thought they seemed angry.
‘Is such a festival allowed by the priests?’ I asked. ‘Is it not ungodly?’
‘Hush,’ one of the women snapped at me. ‘You know nothing.’
This seemed unjust, when I had merely been asking for information. I had not noticed any clerics the day before, nor seen a church close by. The witch woman in the woods had authority beyond any doubt. I gave it up. Whether church or witch prevail, there was little that I could do but keep my wits sharp, and my loyalties unstated.
Hal remained by my side for a while, and then began to look around impatiently. ‘I wish I could find some company,’ he mumbled, half to himself.
‘Go, child,’ I encouraged. ‘You are not needed here.’
He looked at me, uncertain about such a rejection. Then he nodded and ran off, dodging around the clusters of people, until he reached some boys somewhat younger than himself. They faced him suspiciously, but he dug in his pocket and produced some oak galls and began tossing them in the air, deftly catching them in turn and throwing them up again. It was a trick he had practised with us in the forest, and by this time had a magic all of its own. It was as if the little balls stuck to his fingers. He could keep five or six in the air at once, moving them so fast, the eye became confused.
It seemed to have the hoped-for effect on his new playmates, for they began smiling and chaffing him and together they all moved away, and I saw no more of him.
