CONCERNING A WILD MAN CAUGHT IN THE SEA
(De quodam homine silvestri in mare capto)
In the times of King Henry the Second, when Bartholomew Glanville was Constable of Orford Castle, it happened that some fishermen of that place discovered in their net a marvellous catch.
Squatting on the bucking boat on the chill autumn sea, a young soldier was trying not to think of his stomach. His open-air ploughboy’s face was sallow, and his fringe of hay-coloured hair damp with sweat.
‘Heave up! Heave up!’ shouted big Reynold, the owner of the boat, to his men. Then to the soldier he explained: ‘I don’t mean you, John. That warnt a very fortunate thing to say.’
It was not indeed, and John, running for the side, puked long and painfully. As he choked, Reynold gave him a hard friendly slap on the back. ‘Keep an eye on it, boy,’ he advised. ‘If you see a little brown ring, thass your arsehole.’
The men hauled on the net, calling to the herring: ‘Swim up! Swim up!’ When the rope was exhausted, they seized the meshes. Suddenly one of them yelled: ‘Reynold! Oh my Christ!’
The sick young soldier was at first too absorbed in his internal miseries to pay much attention to the hubbub all around him. But Reynold’s voice, sharp with bewilderment, called ‘John!’ and he turned with indifferent obligingness to look at the tangle of net.
Between and around the legs of the gaping men herring were escaping back into the sea. But the men had eyes only for what sprawled in the dank meshes, like a baby half struggled free from a shawl.
The man was of strong, was even of beautiful build. His wet brown hair was curled, as was the beard of the same colour which all but hid his fine lips. His powerful chest was shaggy, and water trickled down it to the arrow-like line of hairs leading to the bush where his sex drooped lax and large.
His face showed no expression, his eyes merely roving from one to another of the faces staring down at him. When they came to John, they paused. There was all at once a change, like a recognition, in that gaze of North Sea grey. The brown beard twitched, and then the wild man grinned, warmly, as white as shells.
Through the afternoon mist Reynold, John and the wild man walked from the haven to the mound where the great keep, in all its splendour of newness, raised its three turrets and handsome conical roof over the marshes, the forests and the sea. A basket slung on Reynold’s broad back dripped saltily. The wild man’s hands were bound behind him. His eyes, though taking in everything, seemed incapable of surprise, and he walked easily, athletically, unconcerned. The great height of the keep impressed him no more than the fact of his capture out at sea.
On the steps leading up to the door, under the raised portcullis, a young sentry was standing. Peering into the mist, he said: ‘That you, John? Proper boony, innit?’
‘Iss,’ said John. ‘Me and Reynold Fisher. And another chap.’
The three passed into the vestibule, and the sentinel started and stared. ‘Fucking hell,’ he said. ‘Who’s that?’
The wild man looked at the young sentry, and his sea-grey gaze grew fixed. The soldier was a dark youth, comely in a gypsy fashion, with long-cut black eyes and a shapely, thin-lipped mouth. There was humour in the mouth and the eyes, but humour which seemed to visit rather furtively. The wild man edged away from him, drawing closer to John.
‘He don’t like you, Robin,’ John said.
‘Fucking hell,’ the sentry said again. ‘He’s bollock-naked.’
‘He’s a wild man,’ big Reynold explained. ‘Our chaps net him in the sea.’
‘Fucking hell,’ said Robin, for the third time. ‘What are you going to do with him?’
‘Take him to the Constable,’ John said. ‘Do you know where he’s likely to be?’
‘In the lower hall,’ Robin said, and the flicker of a smile moved his secretive mouth. ‘Yeh, you take him up there, boy.’
John and Reynold, the wild man between them, went single file up the steps, and entered the great round hall, where at the great table the Constable sat. He was in conversation with a second lieutenant, a leggy youth whose bony face had not yet settled into adulthood. They paid no attention to the new arrivals, but somebody else had done so. From the stone bench encircling the room there came a feminine cry.
‘Lucy! Amabel!’ commanded the Constable’s lady, ‘close your eyes, both of you.’
‘Oh my God,’ burst out the youthful officer, and seizing his cap from the vast table he rushed to hold it over the wild man’s privities.
The wild man looked at him with slight puzzlement, but with unchanging calm.
‘Private Westoft,’ said the Constable, grimly, ‘perhaps you would care to explain what you mean by coming in here with that madman, and exhibiting him to my wife and two little girls.’
‘Please, sir,’ John said, ‘I’m very sorry, sir. I warnt aware, sir, there was ladies present. He’s a wild man, sir. Reynold Fisher here, he net him in the sea.’
‘How frightfully interesting,’ the Constable’s lady said, and she rose from the bench and came to examine the wild man, now made decent by the lieutenant’s cap.
‘A wild man,’ said the Constable. ‘I see. Does he speak?’
‘No, sir,’ said John. ‘I mean to say, he int spoke yet.’
‘And he lives in the sea?’ the Constable inquired.
‘It seem so, sir,’ said Reynold Fisher. ‘A matter of three mile out he was.’
‘I see,’ said the Constable again. ‘That is useful to know. In a situation of marine warfare, he could be of considerable value to us.’
‘Mr Clare,’ said the lady to the young officer, ‘your gallant work with that cap must be tiring you, and it does look just a little silly.’ Turning, she called: ‘Lucy, go into the kitchen, darling, and ask Mrs Kersey if she can somehow lay her hands on a pair of trousers.’
The brown girl went out, and the little fair girl who had been sitting beside her came further into the room.
‘Amabel,’ the lady said, ‘just step upstairs to the chaplain’s chamber and ask him if he would join us.’
The fair hair girl nodded and went away up the spiral stair.
‘Alicia, my love,’ remarked the Constable, ‘what an efficient Constable you are.’
‘Oh, pooh,’ said the lady. ‘If it takes a woman to see that Mr Clare is making himself look a perfect idiot, then it’s a good thing there’s a woman there.’
The brown girl came back in a hurry, and handed her mother a faded pair of blue jeans. On the fly was sewn a yellow patch, bearing the inscription: DOWN WITH PANTS.
‘Now, Lucy,’ the lady said, ‘you and I will turn our backs, and the gentleman will do what gentlemen do in the mornings.’
The lieutenant removed the cache-sexe of his cap, wondered what to do with it, and at length clapped it on his sandy head.
‘He seems very quiet and amiable,’ said the Constable. ‘Is there any point in having his hands bound?’
‘No, sir,’ said Reynold Fisher. ‘Just a precaution, like.’ Putting down his basket, he produced a knife from his pocket and cut the cord of the wild man’s wrists.
The youthful lieutenant looked doubtfully from the jeans to the wild man. As he foresaw, what lay ahead was a complicated manoeuvre, involving first lifting one of the man’s hairy legs, then the other. While this proceeded, the wild man had what looked like a fit of giggles, except that he made not the faintest sound.
At last he stood decorous before them, clothed from the navel like a Christian.
A quick step was heard on the spiral stair, and the chaplain entered, followed by Amabel. The chaplain was a big man, still youngish, black-clad and serious. But when the wild man looked at him, when he smiled in his brown beard, the chaplain smiled back with a fraternal condescension.
‘He like you padre,’ John said. ‘I can tell. Some people he don’t like one bit, but he like you and me.’
‘And who,’ asked the priest, ‘might he be? Some poor creature weak in his wits, no dou
bt.’
‘A wild man, padre,’ said the Constable. ‘Reynold Fisher caught him in the sea.’
‘A wild man,’ said the priest thoughtfully. ‘And in the sea. Now that raises an interesting question, or confusion. A wild man is properly a man of the woods, or in Latin homo silvestris.’
‘Silvester!’ exclaimed the lady. ‘But that of course, is what we must call him.’ She curtsied to the wild man. ‘Your servant, Master Silvester.’
‘He can’t be a man of the woods,’ the Constable said. ‘Reynold caught him three miles out. What is a wild man, anyway?’
‘A complex business,’ said the priest. ‘I myself would be inclined to say that a wild man is a person of weak intellect, possibly abandoned by his parents in some wild place as a child, and therefore growing up like an animal. It is not impossible that such a man should be a powerful swimmer, could literally swim like an otter. This man may have been such an abandoned child. I notice that he breathes air quite naturally. Did it seem to you that he could also breathe in the sea?’
‘I couldn’t properly say,’ said Reynold. ‘I thought he was swimming like a man, dint you, John?’
‘Couldn’t say, mate,’ said John. ‘I was too sick to see.’
‘Another possibility,’ continued the priest, ‘is that he is a malignant spirit inhabiting the body of a drowned man. We read of such a case in the Life of Saint Ouen.’
‘He int,’ said John indignantly.
‘Mind your manners, soldier,’ said Lieutenant Clare.
‘And yours, padre,’ said the lady. ‘I’ll not have you saying that our very pleasant-looking guest Silvester is some demon inside a corpse.’
‘There remains,’ said the chaplain, ‘the possibility that he is a merman. I must do some reading on that, but it seems the likeliest explanation.’
‘A merman!’ cried the girl Lucy. ‘Oh Marco—I mean, Mr Clare—would you sing us the ballad of the merman?’
‘I’m afraid, Miss Lucy,’ said the youth, ‘this is not quite the place. But at another time, with pleasure.’
Logs were burning in the great stone-hooded fireplace, but the three large windows were growing black. The merman began to glance at them repeatedly, with unease. He drew closer to John. At length he took John’s hand, and gazed into his eyes beseechingly.
‘You know what I think it is,’ John said. ‘I think he don’t like the dark. Do you suppose, sir, we could give him a place to kip?’
‘With no trouble at all,’ said the Constable, ‘but there is the matter of security. This man is potentially a devastating weapon against the King’s enemies. I’m afraid it will have to be the dungeon.’
‘With a brazier,’ the lieutenant said, ‘the dungeon could be made quite habitable. Not that the man seems to feel the cold. But somebody should probably stay there with him.’
‘Wish to volunteer, sir,’ said John.
‘Good show,’ said the Constable. ‘Organize a brazier, Mr Clare, and clean straw for both of them. Has the man eaten? Has anybody seen him eat?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Reynold Fisher. ‘He had a bite about eleven o’clock time. I’ve got his supper with me in here.’
He stooped to his basket, and took out a fine herring, which he gave to the wild man.
The wild man held it between his hands and crushed it. The juices dripped on to the stone floor. When the fish was a pulp, he wolfed it, bones, head and all.
‘I should say a merman, definitely,’ observed the priest.
Reynold offered another fish, and the merman dealt with it in the same way. A third was refused, with a shake of the head and a smile.
Amabel, who had not spoken until then, said in a precise little voice: ‘He has a very nice face.’ At her tone, the wild man turned and directed his smile towards her, white and warm.
‘Well, Silvester,’ said the lieutenant, diffident with the name, ‘I’ll conduct you to your quarters, and Private Westoft will see you settled.’
‘Goodnight, Silvester,’ said the gracious lady.
‘Goodnight, Silvester,’ echoed Lucy and Amabel.
The wild man hesitated. Then, awkwardly, he bent his head. It was almost a bow. He swung about, lithe and swift on his bare feet, and walked silently away after the lieutenant and John.
Later that evening the lady sat before the fire, her daughter on one side of her, her ward on the other. On a stool a few yards away sat the lieutenant, tuning his guitar.
‘Well, Miss Lucy,’ he said, ‘here is your request. The name of it is “Annis and the Merman”.’
Strumming chords, he began to sing, in a light true voice which sounded very young.
By Orwell Bridge as Fair Annis passed,
—Ah, the sighing and the singing
A merman rose from the deeps so vast
—While the bells of England were ringing.
‘Oh hear me, Annis, oh hear me, pray:
Would you be my true-love, for ever and aye?’
‘I wool, I wool, if rich you be,
In your own country, beneath the sea.’
He stopped her mouth, he took her hand,
He led her down to his own drowned land.
Eight years they bode, eight years together,
And seven sons called the merman father.
Annis sat by the cradle and sang.
The bells of England, how sweet they rang.
Annis stepped to the merman’s door:
‘To church, to church let me goo once more.’
‘You shall, dear heart, you shall this day,
Till your children call you, and then away.
‘But once you pass by the churchyard wall,
Your yellow hair you must not let fall.
‘And once you tread on the flagstones bare,
You must turn aside from your mother’s chair.
‘The priest will speak the Sacred Word.
You must not kneel nor bow your head.’
He stopped her mouth, he took her hand,
He led her forth to the English strand.
When Annis passed by the churchyard wall,
Her yellow locks, she let them fall.
And when she trod on the flagstones bare,
She turned her straight to her mother’s chair.
The priest spoke out the Sacred Word,
And deep she kneeled, and bowed her head.
‘Oh hear me, Annis, me own first born:
Where was you, gal, all them years I mourn?’
‘Eight year, eight year in the marman’s hall,
And his seven sons, I bear them all.’
‘Oh tell me, Annis, me darest darter:
What give the marman to be your suitor?’
‘A band of gowd so red and fine
The Queen’s hand haint none sich as mine.
‘A pair of gowden-buckled shoes
The Queen can cry for do she choose.
‘A harp of gowd, for me to sing
When me heart was sick with sorrowing.’
The merman made him a broad broad road
From shingle strand to the chapel yard.
At the chapel threshold he entered in;
The images turned away from him.
His hair was of the purest gold,
His eyes they were so sorrow-filled.
‘Oh hear me, Annis, what I shall say:
Your children call you, and still you stay.’
‘Let them, let them, if call they must.
They oont lie no more on their mammy’s breast.’
‘Oh think of the big lads, think of the small,
Think of the pitman,* the least one of all.’
‘I oont think no more of the big nor the small’
—Ah, the sighing and the singing
‘And least of the pitman, the least of them all’
—While the bells of England were ringing.
The dungeon was a pit, twelve feet square, twelve feet high. In the daytime it was lit by one narrow window, b
ut that night there was only the glow from the brazier near the ladder leading to the floor above. It was close, damp and malodorous from the garderobe nearby, but for once it was warm, and the straw bedding was fresh and sweet.
As John rattled the poker in the brazier, a sharp small face looked down from overhead. The porcine eyes of Corporal Snart were on the wild man, who suddenly drew back, and going to the darkest corner, buried himself in straw.
Under a bristling nicotine-stained moustache, Snart bared yellow teeth. ‘So that’s him, is it? Seem to me he stink like a trawler.’
‘What you smell is piss,’ said John angrily, ‘from the fucking garderobe. He smell a fucking sight sweeter than some people I could name, and that int so very surprising, seeing he wash himself twenty-four hours a day.’
‘He don’t talk, they tell me,’ the corporal remarked.
‘No, he don’t,’ John said. ‘Pity that int infectious.’
‘I shan’t be surprised,’ said the corporal mysteriously, ‘if he do talk, one of these days.’
When the corporal was gone, John went and lay in the straw. From his shirt he produced a little box, and placed it between himself and the wild man. When he had turned a knob, it began to make music.
‘Thass a good radio, that,’ John said. ‘Got that cheap in Aden, I did, when I come home from Malaya.’
The wild man was enchanted, was rapt. The disc-jockey’s voice made him grin with delight. A look sentimental almost to tears was on his face as he listened to the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest.
‘Good old Luxembourg,’ John said. ‘Thass always there. But it’s lights out time, dear boy.’ He switched off the transistor and burrowed into the straw. ‘Goodnight, Silvester.’
Half an hour later, John’s snoring was stopped by the sound of Pearl Bailey. He rolled over, and found that the wild man had discovered the secret of the on-switch. He turned it off, took the wild man’s hand and slapped it. ‘Bad,’ he said, and went back to sleep.
The Girl Green as Elderflower Page 9