The View From the Cart (42 page)

Haltingly, I told Hal the story. He wrote it briefly, and read it back to me afterwards, on the day before he left.

Cuthman was born on the moors in the west, a shepherd boy, brought up in the Christian faith. When his father died, he was left to care for his bedridden mother as well as the sheep. One day, an angel came to him in the fields and told him his father was dead. He drew a magic circle around the sheep, and made them stay within it.

Because they could not find enough food to live on, Cuthman resolved to make a pilgrimage eastwards, trusting that God would provide for him and his sick mother. Since she could not walk, he fashioned a handcart for her to ride in. Using a leather strap across his shoulders, he pushed the cart many miles across the country, finding food as best he could.

They met many people, and saw many strange things, until they reached the monastery of Chidham. Here Cuthman stayed a while, and learned enough from the Brothers to believe that he could become a priest. It was at Chidham that Cuthman's true vocation was born. As he left, to proceed on his pilgrimage, he was mocked by a group of haymakers, when the strap of the cart snapped. So Cuthman punished them by causing a heavy hailstorm to fall on the field. And ever since that day, there has been a storm on the same field, on the same date, every year.

Cuthman mended the cart strap with a length of elder, and continued his journey. When he reached the settlement of Steyning, he found the people there were heathen, worshipping a Sacred Stone. So he converted them, and built a church for them. He borrowed oxen from the sons of a woman named Fippa, and one day was using the oxen when Fippa raised an objection. So he had her taken up in a whirlwind and drowned in a nearby pool.

Cuthman became priest of the Christian community, and it prospered under him.

I said nothing for some moments. It was true, and yet not true. It had left so much out, said so little about me, and nothing of Wynn or Edd or Brigid or Brock. He made it sound so easy, too.

‘It will do very well,' I assured him. ‘You have done well.'

And perhaps it was then that I resolved to learn to write myself, before I grew too old, so that I could tell the story in my own way. And now, twenty years after Hal's short summary, which has become renowned beyond these shores and which has been added to by what came later, I am learned enough to do it, though it is hard to believe that I am the same woman as lived on those moors, fifty and sixty years ago.

THE END