A Whisper of Blood

by Ellen Datlow

  He had, it seemed, collected his papers and belongings from his private offices in the deep recesses of the museum, on the 15th March, 1878. His departure had been quite typical of the man. He had placed his files and books upon a handcart and hauled it, clattering, up the levels, dragging it through the reading room disturbing everyone present, through the wide foyer, and out into the day, having caused more than one jowl in the establishment to quiver with indignation. He used to tell my mother, with a hearty chuckle, that if the Victorians were good at one thing, it was displaying indignation.

  On passing the Chief Curator on the steps outside, he reached into a bag, drew out a vase of exquisite Egyptian design, and passed it over. When opened, within the neck of the previously sealed vase was a perfectly preserved red rose, its scent a fleeting moment of an ancient summer day, instantly lost as the flower became dust.

  Not on the cart that day, however, were thirty sheets of paper, loosely bound between two stiff pieces of cardboard (marked with his initials) and tied with string. He had placed a red wax seal across each of the round edges of the sheaf. On being handed the package, I slit the seals and cut through the formidable string knot with my penknife: shades of an Alexander who lived long before William.

  Most of the sheets in the folio are blank. I shall summarise the puzzling contents of the rest.

  Sheet 21. This consists of the single word: REVELATION!

  Sheet 22. This is written in a more precise hand, but clearly William Alexander’s. It reads: “The Bard too! The knowledge passed down as far as ELZBTH 1st. Who censored it? Who changed the text? Two references are clear, but there must be more. There must be. Too sweet a myth for WAS to ignore. P—has discovered lost folio, but spirited it away.” (Two sheets covered with numbers and letters: a code of some sort?)

  Sheet 25. This is headed “The Dream of the Rood.” It is one of two sheets that clearly relates to the “thorn” and “resurrection.” The margin of this sheet is peppered with words from the Anglo-Saxon language, but the main body of Alexander’s text reads like this: “Sige- beam.” This means Victory tree? The runic character “thorn” is used more prolifically in the alliterative half-lines than seems usual around this point in the poem’s body. Then the word swefna: “of dreams.” Then there are the words syllicre treow: “wonderful tree.” This phrase is enclosed by the rune “thorn.” A dream tree, a tree of victory (victory over death?) surrounded and protected by thorns.

  “Yes.” The tree of everlasting life. The tree is the rood, of course, the symbol of Christ’s cross. But surely “tree” is meant in another sense too? A literal sense. Then, to confirm this, the phrase in the poem “adorned with coverings.”Perhaps this means more than it says? Perhaps strips of material? Rags?

  “I am certain that the message here is the ragthorn tree.”

  This is the only note on The Dream of the Rood in my great-uncle’s file, but it proves that some albeit cryptic references to the ragthorn remain extant, since this text can be read in any school edition of the poem.

  It is clear that an abiding and darker myth concerning the return to life of a soul “buried beneath a tree” has been imposed upon the Christianity of the author (who probably wrote the “Rood” in the eighth century). But was the ragthorn at that time a tangible shrub that could be plucked, planted, and left to resurrect the corpse of the thane or lord buried below? Or was it already a myth by that time in Old England?

  The last sheet contains two fascinating pieces of Middle English poetry, dating from the late 1300’s, I would think, as one of them is the last stanza of Chaucer’s famous poem The House of Fame, believed to be unfinished. It is clear that the poem was completed, but the last few lines removed, either by Chaucer himself, or by orders of his patron:

  Alexander, who must have discovered the parchment, though it is not part of his file, had this to say:

  “It is Chaucer’s script, no doubt about it. The parchment page is faded, the ink has spread, but I am certain this is the original. Other editions omit the final four lines. Here they are, following the known ending:

  Atte laste y saugh a man,

  Which thaty (nevene) nat ne kan

  But he seemed for to be

  A man of gret auctorite… (here the known MS ends)

  Loo! how straungely spak thys wyght

  How ragethorn trees sal sithe the night,

  How deeth sal fro the body slynke

  When doun besyde the rote it synke.

  To put those last few lines into more familiar language: Lo, this man spoke of strange things, of ragthorn trees scything away the darkness and how death will creep away from the body if it is buried beneath the ragthorn’s roots.

  Finally, a single stanza from an English religious lyric, which my uncle found at the same time:

  Upon thys mount I fand a tree

  Wat gif agayne my soule to me!

  Wen erthe toe erthe of mortual note

  And ssulen wormes feste in thi throte

  My nayle-stanged soule will sterte upriss

  On ssulen wormes and erthe to piss.

  (On this hill I found a tree

  which gave me back my (soul)—

  While the world might take note of mortality

  And sullen worms feast on your throat,

  My thorn-pierced body will rise up

  To treat the worms and the world with contempt.

  This, then, concludes my listing of the sheets bound into what I shall call “The Alexander Folio.” How much further in his quest my great-uncle managed to journey is hard to know, but he certainly discovered more than have I. What fire must have burned within him. What a fever of discovery!

  How death shallf rom the body slink when down beside the root it sinks. …

  That tree. That terrifying tree. It is the route to and from the Underworld for a man who is reluctant to die, who wishes to remain … immortal.

  October 13, 1971

  I am being directed, or drawn, towards new discoveries. Is it my great- uncle? Or the tree? If it is William Alexander, then he must be dead, for the spirit of a living man would not work this way. It is only spirits that have been freed from mortality that can guide the living.

  This leaves me wondering about whether Alexander attempted immortality—and failed.

  I suspect that if I searched the grounds of Scarfell Cottage carefully, or dug below the walls, into the space below the tree, I believe I would find his bones. Is he here, urging me to finish what he could not, whispering to me: Do it right, do it right? Or… am I influenced by something else, some other spiritual presence?

  I can only conclude that if not he, then the ragthorn is my guide. This would beg the question: Why? Why would the thorn wish me to find the clues to its secret power over life and death, its unnatural, no, supernatural, force? Unless—and my heart races at the thought—unless I am its chosen disciple! Gilgamesh was chosen. No doubt others after him, with Alexander the last. It is possible to fail. Of course it is possible to fail. But I intend to understand, thoroughly, what is expected of me, and succeed where Alexander did not.

  A low mist, thick and blunt-nosed, winds through the valley like a soft sentient beast, sniffing amongst the mosses and rocks and leaving damp crags and stunted hawthorns dripping with moisture. Its restlessness finds its way into my spirit. I find writing difficult. There is a feeling on the land of a permanent, mist-ridden dusk. I pace the house, constantly going outside to stare at the ragthorn, perched like some black-armoured mythical bird upon the crumbling drystone wall.

  Even inside the house, my eyes continually stray to the lintel, to the evidence of the tree that has it in its tendrilous grasp. My work lies scattered around the house. I am possessed by a desire to leave the place. But I cannot. I have not heard from Wilkins for months. It is a year since I have opened the Alexander folio. Something must happen soon. Something must happen.

  April 10, 1972

  The tree has grown. For the first time in years the ragthorn s
hows signs of growth, twig tips extending, roots inching farther across the garden, extending below the house itself. It is coming into bud, and it seems to shake, even when there are no winds.

  September 17, 1972

  An odd fragment has come to light as I worked in Cambridge, searching for the Shakespearean folio owned and hidden by Lionel Pervis (the P–of the Alexander folio), who I have discovered was my uncle’s contemporary. The fragment is a further piece of Middle English, perhaps once part of a collection of Sacred Songs. This fragment, a faded vellum sheet pressed between the pages of a copy of the second edition of Paradise Lost, may once have belonged to Milton himself. Certainly, this edition of his book has annotations in his own hand, still clear despite his blindness. One is tempted to wonder whether the dying man was clutching at a truth whose greatness had only been hinted at. He had perhaps discovered this obscure and frightening stanza from a hymn and kept it as an odd symbol of hope and resurrection.

  Quhen thow art ded and laid in layme

  And Raggtre rut this ribbis ar

  Thow art than brocht to thi lang hayme

  Than grett agayn warldis dignite.

  When you are dead and buried in lime

  And the roots of the Ragthorn form your ribs

  You will then be brought back to your home

  To greet the world again with dignity.

  November 22, 1974

  I have at last found a fragment of the lost folio of Hamlet, but not from my searches at Cambridge! It was here all the time, in the Alexander papers. One of the apparently blank sheets is not blank at all. I would not have discovered the fact but for a coincidence of dropping the sheets onto the floor and gathering them by the dim light of the hurricane lamp. The shadowy signs of word-impressions caught my attention immediately. The marks were shallow, the merest denting of the heavy paper from the rapidly scrawled writing on the now-lost top sheet. But the impressions were enough for me to use a fine powder of lead, and a wash of light oil, to bring out the words fully.

  Clearly, Alexander was privileged to hear the relevant passage from Hamlet, from the original prompt copy of the play, and wrote them down. Lionel Pervis would not part with the whole folio itself, and perhaps it is now destroyed.

  (Even as I write these words I feel apprehensive. I am certain, those years ago, that I carefully examined these blank sheets and found nothing. I know I tested for secret ink. I know that. I would surely have noticed signs of overwriting.)

  The fragment of Hamlet makes fascinating reading, and tells me much about the method: the actual means by which the process of burial and rebirth must be achieved.

  Here is Alexander’s account of the discovery, and his copy of the scene that some hand, later, had eliminated from the versions of Shakespeare’s play that have come down to us:

  Pervis is a difficult man to talk to. His career is in ruins and he is an embittered man. He has confirmed certain thoughts, however. Added valuable insight. In summary: The most reliable text of Hamlet is to be found in the Second Quarto. However, no editor would dismiss entirely the text that appears in the First Folio, though scholars have proved that the First Folio was derived from a corrupt copy of the prompt-book, used at the Globe Theatre.

  Pervis’ brother is a barrister of repute, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Was present during the discovery of a hidden room in the cellars of his firm’s building, which had been walled up and forgotten. A mountain of documents was discovered in that room, among them several pages of a manuscript of great interest to Shakespearean scholars. Pervis (the barrister) sent these to his brother, in order for the Shakespearean actor to assess their worth in academic terms and asked what monetary value they might have. Pervis (the actor) claimed never to have received the papers and was taken to court by his brother and, though he could not be convicted on the evidence, was widely believed to have stolen the manuscript. It ruined his life and his career.

  Pervis later claimed to have been “given” a copy of the manuscript, though it is fairly certain he sold the original to a private collector who will have it now, in some safe in Zurich. Pervis would not release the copy to anyone, but insisted that the new version must first be heard from him, playing Hamlet’s ghost at the Old Vic. Victorian society was scandalised and he was refused and demands were made upon him, which sent him into retreat, somewhere in Wales. It was there I managed to track him down. He was by that time a bitter old man. He knew of me, of my reputation for scandalising the society that he believed had dealt him meanly, and with a certain amount of gold was persuaded to part with lines of the text, including reference to the burial place of Hamlet’s father, beneath the roots of an exotic thorn tree.

  (From Act I, Scene V)

  Ghost: Thus was I sleeping by a brother’s hand,

  Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched,

  Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,

  Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,

  No reck’ning made, but sent to my account

  With all my imperfections on my head.

  Aye, quarters to the four winds pointed right

  Below the ’bracing ragthorne’s needled limbs,

  Yet by ironic touch my flesh immured,

  Base metal traitoring this but perfect tomb.

  O, horrible! O, horrible! Most horrible!

  If thou has nature in thee bear it not,

  Let not the royal bed of Denmark be

  A couch for luxury and damned incest …

  But howsoever thou pursues this act,

  Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive

  Against thy mother aught—leave her to heaven,

  And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge

  To prick and sting her.

  Fare thee well at once,

  The glow-worm shows the matin to be near

  And’gins to pale his uneffecutal fire,

  To where my bones lie compassed.

  Thus to thee

  Adieu, adieu, adieu, remember me.

  (The ghost vanishes)

  I have read this speech fifty times now, and still the words thrill me. Since William Alexander had seen this verse, he must surely have seen the clear indications of method, the method of burial beneath the ragthorn’s “root vault.”

  “Quarters to the four winds pointed right…” The body positioned so that it formed a star, confirmed by that later line: “where my bones lie compassed.” Obviously not a set of compasses, because the angles on such instruments are variable. It has to be the four main points of the magnetic compass: north, south, east, and west.

  Then also that warning, not to take metal into the grave.

  Yet by ironic touch my flesh immured,

  Base metal traitoring this but perfect tomb…”

  But for the metal, the tomb would have been perfect. (For the raising of the dead?) Ironic touch. That play on irony and the metal iron. Perhaps he had been buried in full armour, or an amulet, whatever, the metal touched his body and imprisoned it within the roots of the ragthorn. The miracle could not take place. Metal had negated the power of wood, a living substance.

  I am this much closer to an understanding.

  March 18, 1976

  My great-uncle is buried beneath the ragthorn. I say this without evidence of bones, or even a final letter from the strange man himself, but I sense it as surely as I feel the tree feeds from the stone.

  This afternoon, with a trusted local man called Edward Pottifer, I excavated into the hillside beyond the drystone wall, where the valley slope begins to drop away steeply towards the stream. The ragthorn’s roots have reached here too, but it soon became clear where Alexander himself had dug below the tree to make his tomb. We cleared the turf and found that he had blocked the passage with rubble, capping it with two slabs of slate. He must have had help, someone like Pottifer perhaps, because he could not have back-filled the passage himself. I suppose there is no record of his death because he knew it had to be that way. If a man took his body
and buried it beneath that tree, it would have been done in the dead of night, in the utmost secrecy, for the church, the locals, and the authorities would surely have forbidden such a burial.

  He knew the method, and yet I feel that he failed.

  He is still there. I’m afraid to dig into the ragthorn root mass. I am afraid of what I shall find. If he failed, what did he do wrong? The question has enormous importance for me, since I have no wish to repeat his failure.

  I am ill. The illness will worsen.

  April 12, 1976

  I have been studying the evidence, and the manner and nature of the burial is becoming clearer. At Cambridge, Wilkins has sought out all the different meanings of the various key words and I am increasingly convinced that I have a firm knowledge of just how the body must be placed in the encompassing, protective cage of roots. The orientation of the body must be north—south, with the arms raised as in a cross to the east and west. There must be no metal upon or within it. The armour is stripped away, the weapons are removed. Metal is counter to the notion of resurrection, and thus I have left instructions that my back teeth are to be removed when I am dead.

  May 1, 1976

  In preparation for that time when it comes, I have now—with the help of Pottifer—dug a passage several feet long into the side of the hill, below the ragthorn. I have finally taken the same route as that followed by William Alexander, but a hundred years has compacted the earth well, and it is no easy task. That we are on the right track is confirmed only by the mixture of slate that appears in the soil, and the fact that the thorn allows our excavation to continue in this direction. We press on, striking up, away from the bedrock. We did attempt other passages at first, but with every foot in the wrong direction there was a battle to be made with the protecting thorny roots. They snagged at our flesh and pulled at our hair, until we had to abandon those first diggings. The tree knows where it wants to put me.