The View From the Cart (7 page)

‘But then, her eyelids fluttered, and she gave a little cough. A tinge of pink flushed across her cheeks. He snatched her to him, squeezing and hugging her, trying to warm her chilled flesh. She coughed again, and shook her head as if dazed.

‘ “What happened?” she asked. “Where is the coach? Why is it so cold?”

‘Geat made no reply, but tried to wrap his own tunic around her, despite its being as wet as her own clothes were. She laughed and pushed it off. “Geat! What are you doing? Why are we so soaked? Come - we must continue our journey.”

‘It disturbed him that she had no memory of her adventure. But he took her advice, and led her into the forest, away from the river which had so nearly claimed her. As they went, he heard a great wail of anguish. It grew louder and louder, filling the air, and the ground beneath them. He understood that it was the deserted River King, howling for his dear Queen. How he must have loved her, thought Geat, uneasily. Did
he
love her so much? All he could offer was a warm body and a collection of songs. What did she feel as she heard the tortured soul crying so piteously?

‘He looked into her face. There was nothing to show that she could hear the crying. She had forgotten all about the river and its King. Some part of her had indeed died there in the river, so that she was almost lost to Geat, too. The magic song of loss and sorrow was echoing yet in Geat's head, counterpointed by the sobbing. He knew he would never shake it from his ears completely, and that life would forever have an edge of sorrow, no matter what joys and beauties it would bring him. And he knew, too, that his wife would be the poorer for not being able to hear it, because of what she had left behind in the river.'

Bran looked around the hall then, and clapped his hands, to signal the last line of the story. A few people looked up from where they'd been dozing.

‘And so, my friends, remember - we should all try to be like Geat and keep all the Lady's melodies in our heads, so that we can know sorrow as well as joy, loss as well as gain. For then we are whole and strong and the demons of the underworld will have no powers over us.'

We stayed the night in the hall, with one or two other families who lived too far off to get home in the dark. Our beds were comfortable, chaff and straw piled high, as close as we dared to the fire, everyone heaped together, warm and intimate. Cuthman had remained awake until the very end of Bran's story, and then sat rigid and blank, like Mathild herself when she came out of the river, until I took him outside to piss and the cold air stirred him.

‘The lady was dead, wasn't she?' he said. ‘And then she came alive again. Can that happen? Can it, Mam?'

‘It happened to Our Saviour,' I replied, carelessly. I might just as easily have quoted one of a dozen tales we knew from storytellings and minstrel songs.

Cuthie said no more, and I had no notion of what thoughts might be flying around in his head. I gave him bread and a drink and he settled peaceably enough. My dreams that night, as I recall, had nothing to do with Geat or anyone else in the story. The hall was warm enough, but mice skittered in the corners and an owl hooted outside louder even that Edd's snoring. I wondered for some time why we had bothered to make the long walk to hear a tale we already knew amongst people who had no love for us. It was something people did, just as they sang and danced when the harvest was gathered, or marked the winter solstice with feasting.

Back on the Moor, we settled into our customary life. The children grew, the winters were sometimes harsh, sometimes less so. I worried now and then about the scene Edd had related to me at the dolmen, but I could detect no evil consequences and cast it from my mind. The autumn that we slaughtered the heifer saw us all well fed and contented, though quieter perhaps for coming so close to the realities of living and dying. My back ached in wet weather, and once I fell on a patch of ice and suffered a winter of stiffness as a result, walking in my old bent posture until it slowly eased again. Edd grew grizzled, trying to make corn flourish on the spongy soil. He seemed to have lost his urgency for coupling, and we slept peaceably side by side with nothing to disturb my sleep. I feared another child as much as I'd ever done. I was still young; women of my age might expect another ten children, if their health permitted it.

We scratched a poor living, never seeming to gain anything, year on year. If the hogs thrived, the crops failed. When the sheep prospered the beets rotted. It felt many a time that the gods – or the Christian Lord God Almighty – were playing games with us, teasing us with their whimsical giving and taking. If Edd or I were ever to say as much, gazing at the sky in reproach or despair, Cuthman would chastise us, his boyish voice prating priest's words. ‘We have to live by faith,' he would adjure us. ‘If we are unhappy, it is thanks to our own vile sins.'

Once I gripped him hard by the shoulder, and stared him down. ‘I commit no sin,' I hissed at him. ‘Why would your God think otherwise?'

‘All mankind is sinful,' my son maintained. ‘We suffer for the evil done by our forefathers.'

And perhaps that was so. I had no language to gainsay it, and it did perhaps account for the troubles we endured.

As the children grew older, we began to attract more visitors. Rannoc, Bran's son, climbed the moorland track to our hut once or twice each moon, and took Cuthie off to catch river trout and trap hares and pigeons. Wynn went too, when they'd allow her, but I could see the boys cold shouldering her, so she would tramp home sullen and silent. Spenna came with her youngest daughter, and we set up my loom together, or plucked a fowl. I always made sure she took some reward home with her, for her trouble.

Slowly we seemed to enter sunnier times. Cuthman and Wynn were well grown by then and Edd more stooped and grey than ever. He and I must have made a comical picture, I always with a care how far I walked and where I placed my feet, wary of my back, and he so weatherbeaten and weary. His life had been not yet thirty years and so soon he was past his best. His choosing of the pitiless moorland for his home, where the wind always blew and the ground never as good as it might be, with so much furze and heather and bog, had given him little but struggle and disappointments. I recall now when I first met him and he spoke of the piskies and the clear enchanted air on the granite tors. He wooed me by talking of a magical land, just a morning's walk from the village, where we could live free and happy. And I married him gladly, my head full of his pictures.

I saw piskies, on late summer evenings, faint shadows on the edge of my sight. But they never brought us fortune. Edd heard them laughing their harsh cackling laughter when a ewe died for no good reason, or the corn was all stolen by crows. But he blamed himself, in accordance with Cuthman's insistent doctrines, though just as often framed in piskie-language, instead of Christian. He had done something to displease them, or they would never have taken against him as they did. If the piskies held you in their favour, then everything you touched went well. The tale of the ploughman who came across a piskie kitchen and was treated to a warm plum cake when his work was done had long been a favourite of ours. Even Cuthie never tired of hearing it.

‘Why did they give it to him, Dada?' he demanded.

‘Because he took a care not to plough too close to their sacred stone,' Edd explained. ‘A great boulder in the middle of his best field, but he never tried to shift it. He knew it was an ancient holy place, full of magic. He showed respect, you see, even though it was something he didn't properly understand.'

‘And the piskies lived inside that rock?'

‘Inside or underneath. He never found out. He was just a plain man, with his own gods, but he knew he should mind how he behaved with that boulder.'

‘But they don't bring
us
cakes, do they, Dada?'

‘Maybe they will some day,' I put in. ‘We have done nothing to vex them. They can be captious, can piskies. One day they blow cold, the next they're full of gifts and blessings.' I looked him in the eye. ‘Just as your beloved God seems to do,' I added.

But we waited many more seasons before we could find much blessing in our lives. When it came, it came quick and brief.

The village still held the Beltane fire night, despite the Churchmen telling them they should not. A group of monks on a mission from some distant monastery spent five or six nights preaching in the great hall where we had listened to Bran's story. Spenna recounted to me how they described our Saviour wanting us to celebrate Pentecost or White Sunday at that time, with prayers and sacred singing. When the villagers asked how Lammas and the harvest should be marked, the monks spoke of saints such as Decuman who made a holy well by washing his severed head in the waters; or Samson who had travelled throughout Cornwall, to the west of us, converting the pagans. The monks wove tales and ideas and mixed the people up, speaking of harvests of souls for Jesus, or the importance of thankfulness for our God-given food. When pushed, they gave their blessing for a ‘dance of repentance' and the baking of a holy loaf of bread from the first sheafs of gathered corn.

But our short spell of happiness began at Beltane, when the harvest was as yet a distant hope, with the sowing not complete and the days still waxing longer. The fires were lit, and dedicated to St Bride, who would lay her blessings on the creatures in the fields. The cattle would deliver strong calves and yield rich milk; the sheep would grow thick fleece for our looms; the hunters would make good inroads into the wolves and other vermin that stole the livestock. There would be a fire or two for Brioc and perhaps the healer Madron, who kept disease away from young children, and some small saints of our own, such as Tillar, who had been a tall and beautiful Saxon maid, very taken with the Christ and all his doings. When I was born, she had been in her dotage, with her wits quite scattered. But in her greener days she had wrought wonders enough to warrant a special place amongst us. Tillar's Pond was famous as the spot where she miraculously rescued a sturdy farmer who had somehow fallen headfirst into it. We had a special song to Tillar, and a few words of it would safeguard us from unpleasant accident.

Edd and I did not go down to the village that year, but set light to our own small Beltane fire. The four of us performed a rite, which I had taken some time to devise. It happened that Wynn's first menses has begun a few days earlier, and I was compelled to mark this event. St Bride was halfway right for it, but the Lady Freya - the same great Lady Goddess who gave Geat his magic tunes in Bran's long-remembered story - was the figure I had in my mind as I prepared.

I had already fashioned a ritual cup for Wynn when she was small. There was good clay to be had beside the river, and with careful cleaning and kneading, it had formed a good-sized vessel. Fired in a kiln we built in a pit, it was decorated with patterns scratched in the damp clay with a stick. I filled it with a potion of steeped rowan berries and other herbs, which made it red like blood and said some words over it. I may not have said them precisely right, since I had only heard them three times, at my own rite and those of my sisters. But they were heartfelt, calling for happiness and fertility for my girl child. Edd sat apart with Cuthie, showing due respect to these women's matters, but later they came forward and we all danced around the fire, and waved burning sticks around our heads. The crescent moon rose above us, and there was a softness in the air which made me feel I was after all in the right place - where I was destined to be.

I had drawn a circle, with some runes marked around the edge. At the moment of sunset I set light to the fire and called Wynn to sit before me. Binding her eyes, I kissed her and said a blessing. Then I led her into the circle and turned her around three times before telling her to point down at a spot before her. The nearest rune to her pointing was the fourth, the sign of messages and gifts. An auspicious rune for a young girl, and I clapped my hands in delight and called Edd and Cuthman to see.

‘It is true already,' said Edd, producing his gift for her. He had carved a small figure for her from some apple wood, unbeknown to me.

‘What is it?' I asked, almost snatching it from the girl. It resembled nothing I could recognise, in the dappled light of the fire. Then I saw that it was a crow, stained black with a sharp beak and wide-open wings. ‘What have you given her
that
for?' I demanded.

He looked at me, with his tired eyes, and explained, ‘The crow be I. Dark, solitary, despised. He brings a message, daughter. Go from here, leave this place when you can and live amongst people. Be happy with the singing and play-acting. ‘Tis all wrong, us keeping you up here. Take'n and remember what I say.'

‘I have something, too,' said Cuthie, solemnly. ‘I made it in secret.' He took something from a linen bag; something large and awkwardly-shaped. I gasped when I saw it.

‘Remember when Mam made one just like?' he said, holding up a bigger version of the little straw house I had made so many years ago on the day of Cuthie's baptism. This one was of slender twigs, bound carefully together with thin strips of bark. It had a roof, and a large crucifix attached at the front. ‘‘Tis a church,' he told us. ‘One day, I be going to build a real one. But you have this, Wynn. It'll keep you mindful and bring you blessings.'

I looked again at the rune she had chosen, and the cup I had made for her. It all came together, with the separate tokens from each of her closest kin. We had worked alone, and yet our creations had combined to point Wynn towards her future life. I sighed, content and trusting that for my girl child, at least, life would go well.

But there were dark elements, too. Edd's crow was a sinister thing, and a sad one. It held more than the message for Wynn. It told me something terrible about my man and his idea of himself. Cuthie's little church concerned me, too. A young boy with an obsession turns too easily into a restless driven man. Edd had been just a one, but somehow I feared that his son would overshadow him completely with his secret Christian passions. Where, I wondered weakly, did he get them from? Where on those moors had that great God and his Son laid their hands on my boy?