The Storyteller's Granddaughter

by Margaret Redfern

  ‘I were so bound up looking and touching I didn’t hear no one coming till there was a voice shouting, a bit high-pitched and shrill. It was the woman of the manor, with those skinny little hounds of hers about her skirts. She must have come down from the solar, but in those days I didn’t know much about those things. She stood in the archway with the firelight and torchlight playing over her and she was like…well…it was like magic again. Was she a beauty? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I never took no notice. It was the robe she was wearing. I were used to drab and this were like bright flowers on a May morning. Bright red with a deep blue band round the bottom and some kind of sleeve that was green like apple trees in spring and it were all a’gleaming in the torchlight and firelight.

  ‘“Who are you?” she said. “You’re not one of the house servants. What are you doing here?”

  ‘“I’ve brought wood for the fire, mistress,” I said.

  ‘“You’re nowhere near the hearth. Come here where I can see you.”

  ‘She was a brave lass, I’ll give her that, calling over a big oaf like me with nowt but yappy little dogs with her, but I didn’t think of it like that. Not then. Then I was afeard she’d think I was up to no good and sure enough that’s what she said.

  ‘“What are you thieving? Hand over whatever it is you’ve taken.”

  ‘“I haven’t took nowt,” I wanted to say, but I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. I think I put my hand out to touch the robes she was wearing and that’s when she started to scream for the men and them yappy little hounds were yelping and snapping at me and servants rushed in and men armed with swords and staves and I ran. Couldn’t see how to tell them I weren’t stealing nowt so I ran. They wouldn’t never have listened to the likes of me. I was out of that hall and out of the manor and I can’t tell you now how I did it. They were chasing after me. I was afeard they’d set the dogs on me. Not the dainty little hounds that I’d seen in the hall but the hunting pack. Now they were vicious. If they were turned loose and I was caught I hadn’t a hope in hell, frozen or fiery. I couldn’t go home – she’d have turned me in straight – and I didn’t know anyone who’d give me shelter. My head was buzzing. I was a dead man, I thought. So I ran and kept on running. I knew a place where I could bide a while. It were in the marsh and I reckoned none of ’em would be too keen to risk setting a wrong foot there on a bitter winter’s night. There was no sound of the pack and the chase got fainter and fainter. A cold, snowy night, see, so they gave up. Why bother for a nowter of a great oaf like me? Easier to catch me the next day – if I survived a freezing night out on the fen. That was their reckoning, I suppose.

  ‘And of course they were right. I couldn’t stay out there and live. Not on a night like that. And I couldn’t stay on manor land. But I wasn’t a serf no more. I was a free man. So I went. It was a hoary cold night, like I’ve said, and I’d have perished if it wasn’t for the old man at the tavern in the next village. I knew him a bit and he knew what a tongue that woman had on her. He found me laid down in his doorway. “Best be out of the cold tonight, bor,” he said, “and go your ways tomorrow.” He didn’t ask no questions. Just took me in and fed me hot broth and spiced ale that had a hot poker stuck in it – that were good – and dried my clothes and found me somewhere to sleep for the night. He were a saint, that man. But, “Best go your ways,” he said, and that’s what I did.

  ‘I worked my way down to the south, to the sea. I had to go begging but there’s nobody as thinks a big oaf like me is starving. So I had to help myself to a bit of this and a bit of that. I did honest work as well but there’s little enough in winter. It was better when the spring came. And that’s when I found the woad dyers. Stumbled into ’em accident-like though I suppose you could say as it were God’s hand. I smelt ’em first off. The stench of the vats were awful. Fierce. It clung to you, to your clothes and skin and got up your nostrils till you couldn’t smell nothing else. Steam and stench. There’s days when woad men can’t not see each other across the fermenting house because of the steam. And the stench of them men! Stink gets into your clothes, see, like I said. Set yourself anywhere near a warm blaze and the stink gets stronger. Weren’t given house room, sometimes. They’d a place for themselves all together away from the rest – but then, they had to keep the heat steady, night and day. That’s where the craft comes in and it’s crafty they had to be, keeping the vat and keeping its secrets.

  ‘Blue-black they were, worse than what I am. Pockmarked with it, they were. Horny nails like mine are now, black with dye. But it didn’t matter, see. Nothing mattered except that moment when you lifted the cloth from the vat. Hot, it were. You’d to mind you weren’t scalded. But lifting the cloth bright green and dripping and seeing it turn all shades of blue right there in front of your eyes. That was worth it all. That was something. All my life I’ll remember seeing that. Something like a miracle, out of all that filth and stench and back-breaking work and then that. Makes you believe in summat, that does. Fresh batch, see, that’s a deep black-blue. Then it weakens and it’s more blue and green. Woad’s used to make other colours too. Beautiful greens – that’s woad mixed with yellow from weld or dyer’s broom. Then there was all the scarlets and pinks and violets – that was woad mixed with madder or kermes. And the russets and tawnies and greys and the best blacks…got to keep the vat the right heat but, like I says, that’s secret stuff, see, along with the mixing. Can’t tell you nowt about that. A woad vat’s like a man, see, that wants to eat and drink, else he dies. It’s alive and you have to cherish it. Humour it, else it gets sulky and won’t do its magic. There’s some as calls it woman-like.

  ‘I got work there. I was big and strong and could lift heavy loads. I wasn’t much help with the weeding – too big, see – but when seed’s been wanted I’ve knocked and flailed seed from straw. And I’ve carried full loads of woad balls many a time, carrying board set on my hat that I’d padded out wi’ straw – helps take the weight, see – and the woad’d be dripping down my neck. We had horses to crush the plants once they’d been picked but there’s been times when I’ve done that an’ all, round and round and all of a sweat till you thought you were like to drop in no more time than a blink of an eye. I’ve always felt sorry for them horses. They went in spry and they came out wrecked, poor devils, liked drowned rats.

  ‘Trouble is, they liked us to drink, see, as much ale as we could. We pissed into buckets and it was saved for the vat. Saved for fulling as well. Saved for anything and everything. They wanted our staäle so we drank their ale. I got a taste for it. You know how I am, Dai. I try but sometimes I can’t help myself.

  ‘Then I heard tell of the big dyers in the lands across the seas. Flanders and the like. We were just a small place. We sent our wool across to Flanders and they dyed it and sent it right back to us. Madness. What were wrong with our dyeing? I wanted to see what it was they did that beat us. I wanted to see those other worlds where the woad was rightly worshipped. I thought about it. That woman who’d married my dad, and her brats, I hoped as they’d enough to eat, but I wasn’t a serf no more so I could go where I wanted.

  ‘And I did. I took a ship for Flanders – worked my way across same as you, rebel-boy, but I’ve a stomach for the sea. Doesn’t bother me none. Once I were there, I did anything I could to keep body and soul together. Couldn’t get much out of the dyers, though – kept their secrets to themselves, they did – but I heard tell the best work was done in Venezia so I took ship there. Now there’s a rare place they’ve made out of water. Beats owt we’ve done in the Fens. That’s when I saw the churches and the paintings and altar cloths and the rich clobber that were worn, if you’d money, of course. Poor were like poor everywhere – nowt in their skips and nowt in their bellies.

  ‘There were the traders, of course, place like Venezia, bringing back silks and damasks and fine cotton and brocade and the like, and one of them had a batch of indigo. Indigo! That’s magic, that is, same as woad’s magic. Isn’t it, Sakour
a? So I thought as I’d like to see it and got myself set on as a wharf man then begged myself a ride East and got set on the caravans. I tried to keep out of trouble but I’ve not been right successful that way. I’ve had to do a runner more times than I care to remember. Still, it got me places I never knew existed let alone thought as I’d ever see.

  ‘Places where they made indigo. Balls of it – looks like some sort of metal but it’s not. It’s plants, same as woad, and nice and light and fit for carrying. They use it for making their paintings and books and such, in Venezia. Pay a packet for it. Does more than that, though – look at Sakoura here, with his indigo cloth wrapped around that wound of his, and it’s healing real nice. I wanted Rashid to try that but I knew it weren’t no good telling you. I swear it were as good as the shivery spiders for pulling down rebel-boy’s fever – begging yer pardon, Kazan, and I’m sure as the wise-woman’s potions did their work an’ all. But I’ve seen women hold their bairns over an indigo vat to heal ’em of jaundice and bites and burns and fever – all manner of ailments. I’ve seen women in screeching hysterics calm down when they’ve been wrapped in indigo cloth. Aye, and the falling down sickness, helps with that an’ all.

  ‘I’ve a few bits of cloth to show for my travelling, some of it real old, lovely stuff. I’ll show you tomorrow when it’s light. There’s one as I’d like you to see, rebel-boy – said as it were Abr’am sacrificing his son, the man as sold me it. That were in Egypt and I’m not sure how he came by it but I weren’t asking. Abr’am’s got pop-eyes – he looks daft – and you can see a scrawny sheep high up in a corner. Got its ribs showing. Not much of a sacrificial beast, I’d have thought. But it’s real workmanship. I’ve a nice little bonnet, as well. Got it from your place, Sakoura, where the black men live. Indigo’s nearly black an’ all – wards off the evil eye, does that deep indigo. The way the patterning’s been done on it sounds real simple but it’s not so easy as it sounds… You tie screws of the cloth tight to stop it being stained. They let me try and I made a right mess, I can tell you. Mind you, these ham-fists of mine aren’t fit for dainty work like that.

  ‘Eh, I’ve seen wonderful things. When I met up with you I was coming from Baghdad – that’s where the best indigo dye is. Baghdad Blue, it’s called. Tell you secrets as I shouldn’t, I’ve got some with me now, in my bag. I wanted to take the indigo back with me to Venezia, to them painters and such, maybe make something of myself after all. But then somehow the devil gets into my head and I can’t think straight. I didn’t come by it as honest as I should. I were on the run when I met up with you. You lot don’t know this but if it weren’t for Dai here I don’t know where I’d have been. I were that in need of belly-timber I could have et a horse. You were camped, remember, for the midday Call. I crept up and stole a roll of flat bread. I were making off wi’ it when Dai here catches up with me and says it would go down better with a bite of cheese and a sup of something. So I stayed. Not never been anyone kind to me like Dai here, putting up with me bad doings and never a cross word nor asking me owt about myself…

  ‘Yes, it needs saying Dai boi. I won’t be hushed – though I know as there were those of you as didn’t want me with you and I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want me neither. I swear to you on sweet Jesu’s life, I’d not never take nowt from any one of you, not never, however sore tempted I was, or hard-pressed.

  ‘Anyways, that’s my story. A drunken nowter, like I said. Yes, tell ’em that, rebel-boy. A quarrelsome, drunken nowter and a runaway and a thief. I’ll mog on tomorrow, if you don’t want me here no longer.’

  Blue looked round at them with that half-guilty, caught-out expression on his face. They were silent. He shrugged. ‘A’ll mog on, then, like I said.’

  Kazan started to move towards him, felt her wrist gripped, clamping her to where she was. It was Dai. He slanted her a quick glance and an infinitesimal shake of his head. Then his eyes were fixed again on Blue, and Edgar who had helped tell his tale looking more an angel than ever, with his golden curls a nimbus in the light of the fire.

  ‘That’s not true,’ said Edgar. ‘Well, you’re drunken often enough, that’s for sure, and quarrelsome often enough. And yes, you’re a runaway same as me, and runaways have to take what they can get, sometimes. But nothing? A nowter? How can you say that?’ He stumbled over his words, searching for what he wanted to say, and she realised this was why Dai had held her back. It was Edgar whose words mattered most to this hulking, clumsy, too-often-drunk Fen man. ‘You’re a hero, that’s what you are. And you’ve the soul of a poet, a mystic. You’ve a gentle soul.’

  ‘His soul is coloured in the magic of the indigo.’ Sakoura’s voice came from the rim of darkness beyond the glowing embers of the fire. ‘In my country, one who understands the mysteries of the blue as this man does is honoured by even the greatest of men.’

  ‘Nay now,’ said Blue and his big hand crept up to wipe his cheeks. The girl felt her own eyes brimming. Now the rest of the silent listeners were breaking into words, applauding the big man’s courage and resourcefulness, amazed by what they had heard, that peeling off of the outer layers, like onion skin, so that the coarseness and belligerence and superstition and strange outlandish tongue, all the things that had grated on them for so many miles, all were peeled away to reveal the poetry of this man’s inner soul. Like the indigo itself, hiding its secrets in stench and murk. Perhaps tomorrow he would annoy them all over again but tonight, tonight he was, as Edgar said, a hero, as much for what he had dared tell them as for the life he had lived. But the loneliness, she thought, how lonely he had been. A life of desolate loneliness, this man who had never been loved. This was the nearest he had come to a family, this little group of travellers thrust into each other’s company and every single one a lonely soul hugging their own dark secrets to themselves. She wanted to cry for his loneliness, for the loneliness of them all.

  ‘Well, Fustilugs,’ he said at last, ‘what does yer reckon to me now?’

  ‘It is just as I said: you are a good man. Me, I knew it before your story but this I found of great interest and Edgar did very well in helping you with the telling.’ She considered the big man. ‘A man with a gentle soul must have a God-given name.’

  He rubbed a thick finger up and down across the side of his nose. ‘A doän’t knoäw as anyone nivver called me by my naäme.’ He was blushing. ‘It’s Oswald. A reckon as A’ve got used to Blue.’

  ‘Then Blue it will be.’ Her head dipped so that her face was hidden by the fall of hair. ‘Nene always wore blue-dyed clothes.’

  ‘Colours of a wise-woman.’ Blue nodded his great tousled head. ‘A’d like to have met her.’

  ‘I wish it too.’ It was true; Nene would have recognised at once this man’s true nature. She drooped her head more, wanting to tell them all that this was her grandmother who she mourned, that she herself was not what they thought. She wondered, if she told her own story, and how she had deceived them, could they forgive her? Be as you are or be as you are seen. The moment was lost in the scramble for sleeping places and feeding the fire. She found herself curled up between Dai and Blue’s bulk. ‘In caäse yer frit in the night,’ he teased.

  ‘I am yürük,’ she reminded him. ‘I am used to star cover.’ She made her voice sound sleepy but she was wide-awake and sad for herself and the big man lying near her and lay for a long time listening to the steady breathing and snores and muttering around her; somewhere, a camel coughed and a horse stamped its hoof. A dog barked and was answered by another. Closer, someone ground their teeth in sleep. There were rustlings and squeakings of invisible night creatures, a dark shape swooping. Far off, a wolf howled but kept its distance. She watched the pale, thin moon travel across the dark sky and traced the outlines of the star patterns that winked and blinked in the frosty night. Which one was Nene? They all seemed so far away, so cold and distant. At some point, a shadowy figure piled more faggots on the dying fire until warmth spilled out again; firm hands tucked the blankets a
bout her more securely and the figure settled beside her again and she realised it was the brown man, the one who knew her secret but did not despise her; the one who had spoken with such anger but who had readily forgiven her. She must have slept after that.

  16

  Sorrows and pleasures of life vanish in time

  Leaving behind only the good name one has gained

  (Yunus Emre, 14thC)

  The fire was still glowing red embers when she was roused by the first Call to Prayer of the new day. Rémi materialised beside her, balancing a bowl of hot broth, steam rising from it into frosty air and mingling with her own ghost breath. He offered the bowl to her and she took it gratefully, shamed into realising that she was the only sluggard still rolled in blankets that were white and cracking with frost. Rémi shrugged and smiled and signed. ‘No sleep,’ she recognised. ‘Dai says let you sleep now.’ She wondered how he had known, if he had been as wakeful. She was comforted by his care for her. Yes, a kind man, as Blue said, despite those sharp words spoken to her alone. All shall be well and all shall be well. Nene’s voice was close in her ear. Her heart lightened. All shall be well.

  The earth, hardened by the hot summer, was sharpened by the first frost of winter but the way became marshy the closer they came to the great lake, and there was the sound of water running in stream beds. At times the animals squelched through mud, churning the surface of the road. They passed villages remade from more ancient villages, half-hidden amongst the undulating hills, and orchards where a few late apples were still hanging from almost leafless trees, and those leaves were already bronzed and yellowed by autumn and swirled along the road in front of them. Sometimes, the land dropped into forested ravines. Beyond the gentle hills, the mountains rose dream-like. The sun travelled before them, sinking lower and lower, flooding the sky red and orange and pink and staining the mountaintops.