In the Heart of the Garden

by Leah Fleming

  Fritha’s well and Beorn’s field, with water harnessed and earth subdued under the plough. Here was hearth, home and kin. It was spring once more, a time of hopefulness and promise. ‘All things pass and so must this,’ she said out loud. ‘We have scratched and scarred the face of this middle earth with our bare hands, sacrificed with our blood, humbled ourselves before the spirits of the greenwood who raged at our coming.

  ‘Spirit of the living well, guard our rootings here from those who would devour us. Here be sacred soil. All things pass but surely not this “luffendlic stede”?’

  By the Water’s Edge

  Iris

  ‘I shall miss all this,’ Iris whispers to herself as she walks the blue brick paths around the raised beds, stooping to pull out stray thistles, leaving a pink chiffon poppy to brighten up a line of cauliflowers. So much easier to stretch and hoe around these beds, not so far to bend her creaky back. She fingers the broad bean pods with pride, hanging fatly from the stalks just as they should be. The next crop of peas is ready to be picked and the dwarf french beans are doing fine. Beans and peas must have filled many a Bagshott belly before today, surely?

  The kitchen garden is the heart of any plot. It’s supplied my pots and pans when friends gathered for meals and gossip in the old days at Friddy’s Piece after the war. This veg plot saw us through some thin times then. When food was plain and in short supply, soups and casseroles, pies and chutney from this little plot never failed us.

  The kitchen patch was never a grand Edwardian walled garden affair, just a simple potager of vegetables and fruit bushes with herbs dotted here and there and a few self-setting perennials. The area was enclosed by an old wall and privy shed at the top, sheltered on the lane side by a rambling hedge of holly, elder, crab apple and hawthorn bushes. To the south lay the old brick and timber cottage itself, while to the west a neatly clipped yew hedge with an arched gateway sealed off the rest of her garden.

  It’s strange how I never feel alone in here, she mused. It’s as if there’s always someone just behind my shoulder working away, and a line of cheeky pigeons perched on the elder waiting to pounce on my brassicas. Why do I feel like I’m deserting my post and abandoning them all by selling up now?

  Tonight she will do the full tour; around the square kitchen beds, through the yew arch and up the gentle steps to where the spring tumbles down from the culvert. She notices that the boggy patch by the stream needs a bit of sprucing up; the flag irises as sitting tenants are crowding out her carefully graduated line of white astilbes, green and white striped hostas and pink primulas.

  They ought to be yanked up and taught a lesson but they’ve been there so long I haven’t the stomach or the strength. Besides the boulders are thick with slime. I might slip. How come it’s always this quiet wild bit which gets neglected, like some long-suffering trusty friend who knows I mean well even when I never get round to visiting them? Fridwell Open Gardens Day comes at the end of the week, old girl, and all this lot’ll be under close inspection. Cleaning these boulders is a job for Bob a Job boys or George from the village. Better get them in soon.

  No garden is alive without the sound of running water somewhere in it. Iris treads the stone steps gingerly up to the culvert which nestles half-hidden by the foliage of ferns and shade lovers. Here the greenery is darker, holly and yew again, silvery barks and foliage; a cool shady corner where the sun’s rays scarcely touch. There is a shrine-like feel to the spot, as if some Buddha should be resting in an alcove there to aid contemplation.

  How will I survive without the sound of water? And what are those pinks doing here? They must have escaped from the edge of someone’s herbaceous border; strays from amidst the ‘Hidcotes’ and ‘Clotted Creams’, wild tiny creatures struggling for light. It’ll be time to take cuttings soon for my new garden, if I have one.

  Iris likes to cheat the garden centre by buying one sturdy plant then creating hundreds of perennial cuttings and transplants to share around and sell at the produce stall; another gem from the Iris Bagshott Gospel of Gardening, her much out of little, loaves and fishes philosophy.

  A garden’s more full of sermons than any parson in church, she always maintains.

  Iris looks down from the top of the sloping garden, following the line of the stream south towards the church tower in the next field and onwards as it curls down in a narrow channel, widening eventually to swell the old mill ponds in the distance. How water glistens and captures the eye, cheers up dull corners, trickles down the stones here in a steady gush and once on level ground slows its pace to a stately flow.

  The church has a squat little bell tower which issues a jarring sound even her failing ears can’t miss on the third Sunday of every month. Not much of a looker, Saint Mary Fridwell cum Barnsley, restored and reshaped to suit past budgets; built upon the foundations of a much older and larger edifice, as old as Fridwell and her own cottage, with the same foundation walls of pink stone, dating back to the time when monastic life was the closest to Heaven you could get on earth. But why here? Who chose this clearing for its water and grain fields, its protected position and seclusion? Who and why?

  PART TWO

  THE PRIORY

  AD 1087–1120

  ‘For the itch, the stitch,

  Rheumatic and the gout.

  If the devil isn’t in you

  This well will take it out’

  —Anon

  ‘Clove Gilliflowers

  They are gallant, fine temperate flowers… yea, so temperate… they are great strengtheners of the brain and heart, and will therefore serve either for cordials or cephalics, as your occasion will serve’

  The Hut By The Well

  The falcon steepened its ascent, circling the forest and passing high above the old clearing by the spring where once Fritha tended her patch. There are no signs of men dwelling here now; the cleared earth has returned to the wild once more. Here and there her peony seeds struggle for light in the undergrowth, the garden reclaimed by the green-wood.

  Now the flash of steel is glinting in the morning sunshine. Suddenly, at the signal of the hunters on horseback, the beaters flush up the heath birds from their cover on the wasteland. The falcon banks steeply, plummeting out of the blue to bind on to its quarry in one fell swoop, tearing its neck, feathers flying as the raptor gorges on its kill. This new hawk is shaping up well, sharp-set and plump-breasted enough but hungry for blood. The morning bag of heath birds will please the hunter who lures back his tercel to the glove with titbits and hoods him firmly with a leather cover topped with a plume of coloured feathers.

  *

  Hidden from view, Bagnold the swineherd, one of the beaters, caught a brief glimpse of his overlord, Guy de Saultain, and spat on the ground. He hated to see the wily old fox on Baggi’s shott, the corner of the wood where his own great-grandsires had once made their dwelling. Beornsley and Friths well meadows now lay waste; fields overgrown with nettles and scrub, tangles of knotted briars laced over ditches and the overgrowth robbing the soil of air and sun. Somewhere deep in the shadows lay the rotting beams of his family homestead. He was sure this was the exact spot from the way the stream trickled from the spring. Here they drew water and here was where his mother grew her pot herbs. Look, there, struggling for light, were some bright red peony heads. He could see his home garth again, bright with marigolds and orderly lines of leeks and onions. Bagnold felt tears welling and sadness aching. He stared around through a mist of tears. After so many years it was all still here waiting… perhaps for his return.

  It stirred painful feelings to see such desolation around Frithswell. Only the fierce thought that this bondsman would never bow his spirit to the Lords of the Kingdom calmed his urge to rush out and kill de Saultain. But one day Bagnold would gain back the shott, the place his fathers once held as freemen before they were forced to sell it for food and protection in those bad times of famine and pestilence before the final conquering by fierce men from the south.

 
; Now he lived with Eldwyth and their brood of hen chicks, tending swine by the Longhall, bound in service to the Normandy knight and his sons. One day, however, he intended to go back to Frithswell and reclaim all the wasted land and fine strips, unclog the weeds from the pond and grind his own corn like his ancestors who once sat at the bridal feast of Thane Godfrid. How the land flourished then and prospered by the well; how the daughters of Godgifu grew strong and tall, with high breasts and fair skin, gaining favour with the high kin of Ludmilla’s offspring; how Baggi’s sons of Frithswell bred strong men who fought alongside Thane Godfrid’s sons when hordes of Northmen spilled through the woods like peas from a torn sack and the thane’s men stood their ground, repelling the foe – a tale told many times over their meagre hearth to warm the cold bellies of his bairns; that victory feast of roasted meat and flowing mead in silver beakers. Bagnold could see them in his head, studded with bright stones. Sometimes when he ate his special mushrooms he danced among the jewels and flew over the treetops swifter than any falcon or lord on horseback.

  This knowledge was the only treasure in this rotten life; the source of his freedom and power. The mushrooms grew secretly on a bank. Only Bagnold knew where in the forest to gather them.

  He went in season after curfew, risking his eyes being gouged out and his bollocks cut off if he were caught, but it was his land by right and the only way he knew to defy the cursed de Saultain. The mushrooms were a gift from the tree spirits to take away his pain and for a while after eating them he alone ruled as King of the Forest. The branches would bend to him and whisper in his ear messages of homage and encouragement. Then he could forget that he was little more than a slave with only half of his left arm; useless as a ploughman, fit only for a stockman’s task, dressed in rough homespun like everyone in the village of Longhall. Even his daughter, Aella, was stronger and more useful than he was.

  He knew they laughed at his bitterness in breeding only wenches. He blamed the overlords for robbing him of strength and cursing his kin with double seed. Aella was thirteen, a wench of strange, fierce looks with hair the colour of rust and green eyes flecked with amber. She was already in thrall to the manor house and his mates often joked that she was too fine of feature ever to be of his breeding. She did not have the bulbous end to her nose, the fiery skin or sweaty sandy locks of her father. At the ale bench, he often drank until he fell over sideways and heard them call him ‘the Bagshott’s stump’ behind his back. Eldwyth would moan at his antics and curse him too.

  Lately she turned her back on him under the covers and spoke only when she felt like doing so; trying to tell him things were not so bad under this rule. While she could hear the slopping of fresh milk into her pail, the chewing of the cud, the din from the smithy close by, the swish of the plough in the fields and see the greenshoots of her cabbage patch growing, then she was not grumbling at her fate. But when did a woman know anything worthwhile? She’d told him all this talk of Frithswell meant nothing to her.

  ‘I’m fed up with you yattering on about the old days. What more can we want than our own hearth stones and kith and kin nearby, a church to salve our souls and enough holy days to dance and play games? You’re an old misery guts! How can you of all folk change anything?’

  Everyone knew he was forest-reared and orphaned young in the great harrying of Mercia after the Conqueror came; found wandering down the track with his hand hanging off. He remembered little of that night or the first coming of the knights with their chainmail coats and steel helmets and fiercesome steeds, slashing, burning, torching everything and everyone in their path. His father had stood in the shield wall with the men of Longhall and their thane’s young son. But how could peasants do battle against such armoury, equipped only with leather shields and their courage? Loud were the wailings and beatings of breasts as men were hacked down with their thane, their women left to the mercy of the Conqueror’s lust.

  For twenty years a white fire burned in Bagnold’s chest as he recalled how he was snatched from the wolf pit where his mother had fled with her children as the soldiers rampaged over the tracks. Sometimes the smell of burning or the scream of a child would stir panic in his limbs and he saw himself running, running. And then the searing pain of the hot iron on his stump, being held down in the smithy to endure the cleansing… that he would never forget. The rest was a blur. The fate of his mother and kinfolk was never known. The whole of Mercia lay under the Conqueror’s heel after that time. The Long Hall was pulled down, then rebuilt with stone walls and deep ditches; home now of this Norman knight. Guy de Saultain took the old thane’s lands and his daughter, Edwenna the Fair, to his bed. There was no one left to gainsay it for their native priest was killed and the new overlord brought his own chaplain to enforce the Church tithes and law in the district.

  As he watched the huntsmen ride off to another clearing, another kill, Bagnold spat on the ground again. They were cursed, he would see to it. The tree sprites were his friends and they would see that no de Saultain ever flourished on Baggi’s shott. One day… one day. Until then he would scheme and steal, poach and break curfew, for he was possessed of special powers. With his mushroom magic he was ten feet high, dressed in a world of colour and richness finer than the mantles of any poxy Norman. One day all this would be his… one day.

  *

  As Guy de Saultain rode back from his morning’s hunting, the jessy bells jingled from the falcon’s tethering straps and the bell from the peel tower was still ringing out the news of King William’s death. Few here would bow their heads to pray for his soul. Many could not forget his triumph over the Mercian liegemen whose thanes were slain at Hastings and Stamford Bridge. Guy himself would shed no tears either. How eagerly he’d left his home village of Saultain to cross over the rough sea; how full of thoughts of glory and battle honour he had been – a silly young pup of a horseman, ambitious to serve the Norman cause. Little did he expect to be put out to grass in this damp backwater, mopping up Mercian treachery and guarding the centre ground. Now his hair was as silver as his helmet, his cheeks hollow, afflicted of late by a weakness in his stomach so that food rushed through him and his breathing was laboured.

  He could feel his strength ebbing away. There was little pleasure in hawking now or in his new tercel, Courage. The effort to stay upright and dignified while searching out somewhere to relieve his bowels every hour had quite exhausted him. All he wanted was to soak in the bath tub, change his linen and lie on his bed.

  No one would mourn his passing; his sons, Gilbert and Robert, were quarrelsome and weak, his daughter Ambrosine too pious for her own good. His saintly wife Edwenna had died in childbirth many years ago. Who else cared a jot about his welfare? He noticed how the beaters bowed grimly to him. The Mercian English were a cussed lot, proud and servile at the same time, bringing him their rents and tithes with sullen dirty faces. The Reeve chosen out of their ranks to chase up any late payers was little better though at least he was cropping his hair short now to show where his allegiance lay. Even his late wife had been none too clean and tidy when they were first wed.

  The Saxons liked gaudy colours, so easy to target in battle. Aim for long hair and a brash tunic and you’d bagged another. But there was little satisfaction in such a conquest, racing northwards to dig out traitors and agitators, Danish rebels and raiders, before they could gather to counterattack.

  Here in the middle lands he had fought the bloodiest of campaigns to wipe out resistance and was given his estate in recognition of his effort.

  This very morning Guy had found himself riding over clearings and tracks he had not seen for twenty years, back over the killing fields where the peasants were gathered for slaughter like a cattle cull, their offspring speared out of their misery, crops burnt and laid waste. They were little more than animals after all so must not feel pain like noblemen or Normans. How could they when their blood was thin and intermingled with that of Celtish brutes? And how dare they resist their superiors and not expect to be destr
oyed? He was often amazed by how much torture their puny bodies could resist, how stubbornly they defended their hovels and kinfolk before they were piled into the gravepits.

  Guy could not fathom why they haunted his dreams with such regularity, those bloodied faces shouting blasphemies and dying curses, spitting into his face so that he awoke drenched in his own sweat like any coward. Why was he always hearing babies wailing for their mothers, the screams and pleas of women as his men bore down on them to silence their impudence? No matter how he drowned his sleep with poppy juice and peony seeds, the long procession of the vanquished haunted his dreams. He had rebuilt the old church and given alms and Masses, praying that his wife would intercede for his soul. It had helped for a while but finally the apparitions had returned to grin at him.

  Lately one image came nightly to wake him: the hut by the well, long since returned to bracken and fern beds now, and the terrible scene re-enacted with his own daughter’s head instead of… the cursing finger of that old, old man before his soldiers closed in on him, hacking him into joints in seconds. Why did one scene stand out when there was so much else? Just one minor halt on their way north.

  At first he took comfort from the words of Bishop Ermenfrid who absolved knights from eternal damnation by suggesting if they did not know just how many they had slain on the battlefield, they could do penance for one day a week for the remainder of their life or else redeem themselves by building a House of Prayer or endowing land to the Church. He had done all of that for a while but a shire knight was far too busy to give up one day a week to religious observances so he paid Father Jerome to say prayers on his behalf. Surely all his building works at Longhall must count for something? Yet sometimes he was gripped by a fear that it was not enough. What if there were a last trump and a Day of Judgement? How would his life’s deeds be stacked up? For or against salvation? He had only been obeying his lord the King. That was every knight’s sworn duty, to defend the realm against treachery. Now he was the King’s representative in this shire and his manorlands were well ploughed and planted. Longhall peasants should have no complaints. He was just but ruthless with villains hereabouts; stealing, fornication, poaching from the hunting chase or running away were dealt with swiftly by the hanging rope.