by Rebecca Tope
Still unable to believe it, I stood up and walked around the little hut we had been sleeping in. I raised myself on tiptoe - something I had not done since Wynn was a baby. I took long strides, bending my knees and swinging my legs. I jumped over my sleeping son, landing lightly as a young girl. If I was not dreaming, then it had to be that my back was finally mended.
But I was still wary. I remembered the day of Cuthman’s baptism, when my back was eased and I could at least walk a short way and carry the household crocks to and fro. It had not been a complete cure – it was enough for us then, a great improvement on my earlier cripplehood. Carrying Edd after his seizure had undone me once more, and although I would know never to be so foolish as that again, I could not assume a lifetime without pain, much as I would have liked to.
Cuthman awoke to my frolicking and stared at me in alarm. When I told him I was made young again, he sat up and rubbed his head as if to stimulate some sense. ‘There is no longer a need for you to be crippled,’ he said, slowly. ‘The purpose is served, now that we are here.’
Perhaps that was the moment when I knew for certain where my faithfulness would henceforth lie. I might dissemble to my son, prate as he wished me to, serve in his church, but in my heart I knew that I would never love or even forgive a God who could use me in that way. I might have been no more than a sack of apples, carted across the land by a penitent boy. But I hid my anger and nodded with a smile. Perhaps wisdom came with my wholeness, perhaps I remembered the deep look that Fippa had given me the day before. Perhaps I simply wanted to be free and light and happy for a time, and the way to do that was to allow my son his head, to think and plan whatsoever he wished. I had learned a lesson from the people of Steyning already, without knowing it.
But most of all I wanted to run in the summer light, and celebrate my new freedom. It was as if I had lost my old body, a soul released to float where it wished. For so long I had never moved without a thought to the pain that would come. I had paid a price for every step I took, every bending down or stretching up, every twist or sudden jerk. As the morning passed, I understood that I had somehow believed that the same was true for all people. I had lived in a world where all movement was pain, life itself was careful and constrained. All that changed as I gazed around me at the community stirring to meet the day. Even the old women moved smoothly to my eyes now. They climbed the hill to collect wood for their cooking fires; they strode down to the seashore to pick shellfish from the rocks.
Cuthman encouraged me to make the acquaintance of the people of the village while he went to inspect the woodland for suitable timbers. I let him go, wondering how one half-grown man could manage to build a whole church on his own. How would the walls stand against winter winds? How would he manage the roof? Would any of the village men help him? Would his God simply work a miracle and create a church out of nothing, sorcery beyond any we had yet witnessed?
I strolled towards the sea, drawn by its rhythms and sparkling light. A man I had not seen before came up to me.
‘Hail, friend,’ he said, with a smile. ‘I heard we have interesting newcomers in our midst.’
‘You mean myself and my son?’
‘I do. The young saint and his helpless mother - or some say grandmother.’ He looked me up and down, eyebrows raised, and then laughed. ‘A fraudulent claim, to look at you.’
‘I am different today,’ I mumbled, thinking it sounded foolish. Speaking to a strange man, eye to eye, brought on a shyness I had seldom known.
‘That will be Fippa’s doing,’ he nodded, unsurprised. ‘She mends and cures without knowing what she’s doing.’
‘My son, too, can work miracles,’ I flared, sensing the contest to come. Fuelling it, perhaps, too.
‘Fippa’s work runs deeper than miracles,’ he said, with real seriousness. ‘She is a channel for the gods, an ancient soul. Fippa knew Macha many ages ago, and Rosmerta and the great Cleopatra.’ My blank response appeared to amuse him, and he shook his head at me. ‘What? You are ignorant of these names?’ At my nod, he patted me on the shoulder. ‘Then you must learn,’ he told me. ‘There are wonderful stories for you to hear.’
The man’s touch was friendly, direct. I wanted his hand to stay on my flesh, warm and strong. I forgot my son, planning to bring his great God to these forsaken folk. My soul felt thin with ignorance, and I wanted to feed at the rich table I had glimpsed in this place. Where the monasteries had revered manuscripts and Bible texts, the stone worshippers told ancient stories of migrating souls. Though we had been welcomed in both places, we might have been less well received by the monks if we had arrived announcing an intention to change their ways and convert them to new beliefs. The absence of hostility in this community was astonishing. Either they were fools, or they had complete confidence in their own gods. Or both, which Cuthman would say.
‘I have heard many a story since leaving our homeland,’ I said, remembering first one, then another. The hermit and his strange unfinished tale; the wild imaginings of the young woman on Maiden Hill, which still haunted my dreams once in a while. And my own jumbled attempt at telling a tale, coming together in my mind, now that I could be in one place, to gather myself. It came to me then that the people of Steyning might wish to hear a telling of my own life history, and that I should be ready with it when they asked. ‘I could tell a story, too,’ I said to the man, impulsive and eager. My ordeal would not be real or true until I could tell it to others. While Cuthman dug his church’s foundations and hewed down the oaks and elms, I would sit before an avid crowd, and put my life into careful words.
‘And we would wish to hear it,’ he assured me. ‘Time enough when the days grow short again, and we gather in the hall for warmth.’
‘It’ll all be forgotten by then,’ I said, thinking of the months of summer before us, and afraid to wish them past. He laughed at me, and gave me another pat, closing his fingers a little around my shoulder. My heart lurched in my breast, with the shock of remembering the feel of a man’s touch. Edd had squeezed me in that way - it had been a special thing between us in our early times together. The suggestion that this man might find me appealing as a woman was very strange to me. Was I not an ancient hag, by this time? A burdensome bundle to my son, thin and dry and stupid?
‘There is much for you to see,’ he went on. ‘We have settled here, according to the wisdom of our Stone, and we must look to the coming years, for the sake of our children. It is a chosen place; Fippa tells us it was waiting for us, virgin and rich. Our hogs and sheep flourish, ships have begun to use the port we have built, and they bring us wonderful goods.’
And truly it did seem wonderful to me, a glittering land, peopled by happy pagans, who had all that anyone could wish for. The rising forested hills seemed to offer protection and concealment; the open sea, calm and inviting, was a route to a greater world, which I had scarcely begun to imagine. The man’s words about the future had a rightness to my ears. Living in such a community could not fail to invite hopes and plans. Already, on my first full day here, I was sharing in the optimism, and thinking of my own prospects in the years to come.
‘Might I see your Stone?’ I asked, hesitant and careful. The adulation of a piece of granite was altogether alien to me. I had seen the dolmen on our moors at home, and known it to be a kind of sacred altar, but never had I known people to give worship in this way.
‘Come,’ he said, and took hold of my forearm, his fingers tight on my skin. We moved briskly, my legs still marvellously lithe, my back straight. In the light of a clear morning, the stone was quite different. Gleaming polished granite, dark grey with sparkling specks embedded in it, and covered with carvings and painted designs, it was easy to believe that it contained its own spirit. We stood only two or three paces distant and the man bowed his head in reverence. We were facing the sunlit side, the short shadow falling away from us, the carvings clear to see. It was some moments before I recognised many of my own rune symbols etched onto the sacred Stone, bu
t when I did, my excitement was prodigious. Eagerly, I traced them - the sign for strength was before me, flanked by those for harvest and protection. Did they mean the same thing here, I wondered, but did not like to question the man just then. It was hard to speak, in any case. I looked up, the rounded head of the Stone high above me, circled with a ring of carved oak leaves. The carving was skilled, the grooves cut deep and confident. Slowly bringing my gaze down again, I came at last to a group of acorns depicted at the foot of the stone. The more I looked, walking slowly around all four faces, the more there was to admire. A great craftsman had quarried and shaped this stone, smoothing out the unevennesses, sharpening the corners in ways I had not believed possible.
‘It is beautiful,’ I murmured, at last. As I spoke, a sense of power came over me. I felt the soles of my feet tingling with the life beneath the grass, and my fingers had fine gossamer threads linking me to all the living creatures in the forest and skies around me. I was a tiny stitch in a great cloth that was all of creation, a crossing point of the warp and weft that was our fate and destiny. In that moment, everything came together in me and I was an essential part of the whole.
‘You feel it,’ said the man, with a nod. ‘You have become one of us.’
A momentary wild fear gripped me. I could not become one of these pagans. Cuthman would not permit it. He would require me to serve him and his God, going amongst the people and telling them of the Gospels and the love of Christ. I would be torn into pieces between these faiths and their impossibly different practices.
Woven in with my fear for myself was a deeper dread for the Stone and everything it represented. Erected on a broad field, bordered by the sea on one side and the pathway between the dwelling huts and the forest on the other, it was the natural centre of the village. Cuthman’s knoll was a distance away, higher, certainly, but detached. The people would have to divert their footsteps to visit it, climb the rising ground, and enter the new church which I had no doubt would soon be built. As if in a bright shaft of sunlight, I witnessed the difference that Cuthman intended to bring to these lives. And I put my hand out to the stone, in a mixture of protectiveness and reverence.
The man and I stood a little longer, in silence, before moving away in unison. He took me to the seashore, as if knowing how much I had wanted and feared to approach it. Away from the wharf a little, there were wooden posts knocked into the ground, disappearing into the lapping water, dark rags of slimy weed caught around them. Small stones covered the stretch between the field edge and the water, difficult to walk on. Scattered amongst them were shells and clumps of strange vegetation, and I bent to collect pretty shells as we approached the water. Soon my hands were full and I was rummaging for a pouch in my skirts to hold some. The man laughed at me.
‘You will quickly tire of them,’ he said. ‘And if you do not, then there will always be more for you here.’
‘But - ,’ I began to protest.
‘I know,’ he nodded. ‘We were all the same, when we first came here. We all have strings of shells, and sea wrack hanging from our walls. There is a mystery to them, coming as they do from the depths of the ocean.’
‘How long have you been here?’ It was a question I should have asked the previous night. ‘You speak as if you are newly come.’
‘The first of us found this haven six summers ago. We broke away from the people of the Lance, when the numbers grew and there were divisions amongst us. This land is densely settled, as you may have observed on your journey.’
I shook my head. ‘We came along the high ridge, and saw nothing but rivers and a great earthen fortress on a hilltop. Perhaps some smoke rising, along the southern shore.’
‘Well, you will discover them. The people of the Stor bring goods here for trade, and many others will soon begin to do so. The hill fort is Chancton, a place of great antiquity. Fippa has a fondness for it at the summer solstice.’
I turned my attention again to the sea, standing on the very brink. The moving water seemed alive to me, rippling to and fro, rhythmic and powerful. ‘It seems closer than it did last evening,’ I remarked, ready to believe my own senses were at fault.
‘Have you no knowledge of the tides?’ he asked, his voice raised as if speaking to a simpleton. I shook my head warily.
‘The waters rise and fall, in their own rhythm, coming in as far as the line - see? - where the grass ends. And it goes out again, down to that last post - ‘ He pointed to a timber barely a hand’s breadth above the water, twenty or thirty paces from where we stood. I was lost in wonderment, and barely able to believe what he told me.
‘It will be at its lowest at sunset tonight, or a little earlier. We can come and measure it then, so that you can understand,’ he said. ‘Each day, it is at a different time. We are trying to make charts of it, but no-one is sure of the way it should be done. In winter it changes. Sometimes the tides run mad and come far beyond the grass for a while. Have you tasted the water yet?’ He smiled with a secret knowledge, knowing that I had not.
I bent and cupped some water into my hand, barely touching it to my lips. It was cold, and I recognised the smell as being the same as that of the air around us - a tang that I could put no words to. As it reached my tongue, the strangeness made me spit. It was like blood or tears, mixed with the sharpness of wild garlic and something I had never known before.
‘Salt,’ said the man. ‘Greatly prized, I understand, by the Romans in their time. You will soon like it. We gather bowls of the water, and leave them in the sun. Soon white crystals form, which we put with our food, for extra zest. Did you not notice it in your supper last night?’
I shrugged. The food had been strange, it was true, but I have been more concerned with the people than their cooking, at the time.
‘Now it is noon,’ he announced, abruptly. ‘We must go.’
He walked a little way with me, back towards the huts, and then veered off to the north, nodding for me to continue alone. ‘I am Frith,’ he told me, as he went, giving me no chance to reply. Well, I thought, he will know my name by now. Or else, like everyone we met, he would think of me as Cuthman’s mother, with no need of a given name of my own.
Cuthman had come down from the forest when I reached the Hall, but paid me little attention. A light shone in his eye, and I was pleased that he said little. The people brought us bread and meat, and some early salad leaves, and we ate heartily. I was uneasy at their bounty.
‘Can we not earn this food in some way?’ I asked a woman close by. ‘There is much I can do.’ I spoke proudly, trusting my new back to sustain me through baking or weaving, or whatever task I might be given.
‘Mother!’ Cuthman spoke sternly, hearing my words. ‘Are we not here to bring salvation to these people? What greater way can there be to earn the bread we eat?’
Impatient for once, I swung round to face him. ‘And can you be sure you can persuade the people to think as you do?’ I challenged him. ‘Perhaps salvation is more than they are looking for.’
‘You understand nothing,’ he growled at me. ‘I am here to do the work of my life, and you are here to aid me in that.’
‘Maybe so,’ I mumbled. ‘Maybe so, and maybe not.’ My son chose not to hear me, but when I turned back to my meat I found myself looking into the wide knowing face of Fippa, staring at me with a grin of pure amusement.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lammas was almost upon us, and the leaves became a little dusty, while the flowerheads turned to seeds and the fruits ripened. The living became even easier and there were long afternoons when the sun was hot, and we sat in the shade telling stories and carding the new fleece. Frith and I had grown closer, not merely exchanging stories of our past lives, but, to my astonishment, delighting in the discovery that we were much less old than we had believed ourselves to be. Our bodies met and rocked together, my skin softening and blooming under his touch. Because of Cuthman, I had insisted we be discreet in our couplings, but it was plain that many of the villa
gers had seen the truth.
Fippa came to me one morning, as I sat with Frith, sharpening stakes for the new fence around the compound. She directed all her attention at me, ignoring my man entirely, squatting down in front of me, and taking a handful of woodchips to toy with as she spoke.
‘Woman,’ she began, ‘there is something irregular in your doings.’ She spoke slowly, in the tone of authority that came naturally to her. From such a small and ugly woman, it should have been comical, but something in her dark eyes made sure that I would listen seriously. I could never forget that I had seen her face in the hermit’s pool, nor shake off the notion that she had some link with my Wynn, which had yet to be revealed.
I gave no reply to her accusation. It never even entered my head to make denials to her. Neither of us needed to look at Frith to know that he was the subject under scrutiny.
‘We are past the usual season for handfasting,’ she continued. ‘And yet there is nothing to prevent it taking place now. Indeed my own mam used to favour Lammas over Midsummer.’ She scratched idle markings on the ground with her makeshift tool before glancing at me sideways, showing her black teeth in a crooked grin. ‘And would you have your child born without the proper processes?’
‘Child?’ A jolt flared through me, starting deep within and filling me down to my toes and fingertips. A thrill of magic and holiness and the most proud delight, and no trace of the fear that would have frozen me only a few months before. I felt warmth on my hand, and looked down to see Frith’s fingers curling into my palm. I gripped him tight, and gazed into his face. Red cheeks, silver-flecked beard, and grey eyes narrowed from staring into the sea and sky. What had we done together, without thinking or knowing a whisper about it?
‘I am to have a child?’ I murmured, turning back to Fippa. A tremor of fear swept through me, then, and guilt that I had perhaps done a wrong thing. The images of Wynn and Cuthman as babies came to me full and clear as if I relived those moorland days. The warm proud magic of first motherhood, after Wynn was born, mixed with the dread that I would not be allowed to do it again. I could surely not deserve such grace.
