‘This is grand!’ he said. ‘I oughtn’t to be here, really. Thank you for putting in a word for me.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Niggle. ‘I don’t remember what I said, but anyway it was not nearly enough.’
‘Oh yes, it was,’ said Parish. ‘It got me out a lot sooner. That Second Voice, you know: he had me sent here; he said you had asked to see me. I owe it to you.’
‘No. You owe it to the Second Voice,’ said Niggle. ‘We both do.’
They went on living and working together: I do not know how long. It is no use denying that at first they occasionally disagreed, especially when they got tired. For at first they did sometimes get tired. They found that they had both been provided with tonics. Each bottle had the same label: A few drops to be taken in water from the Spring, before resting.
They found the Spring in the heart of the Forest; only once long ago had Niggle imagined it, but he had never drawn it. Now he perceived that it was the source of the lake that glimmered, far away, and the nourishment of all that grew in the country. The few drops made the water astringent, rather bitter, but invigorating; and it cleared the head. After drinking they rested alone; and then they got up again and things went on merrily. At such times Niggle would think of wonderful new flowers and plants, and Parish always knew exactly how to set them and where they would do best. Long before the tonics were finished they had ceased to need them. Parish lost his limp.
As their work drew to an end they allowed themselves more and more time for walking about, looking at the trees, and the flowers, and the lights and shapes, and the lie of the land. Sometimes they sang together; but Niggle found that he was now beginning to turn his eyes, more and more often, towards the Mountains.
The time came when the house in the hollow, the garden, the grass, the forest, the lake, and all the country was nearly complete, in its own proper fashion. The Great Tree was in full blossom.
‘We shall finish this evening,’ said Parish one day. ‘After that we will go for a really long walk.’
They set out next day, and they walked until they came right through the distances to the Edge. It was not visible, of course: there was no line, or fence, or wall; but they knew that they had come to the margin of that country. They saw a man, he looked like a shepherd; he was walking towards them, down the grass-slopes that led up into the Mountains.
‘Do you want a guide?’ he asked. ‘Do you want to go on?’
For a moment a shadow fell between Niggle and Parish, for Niggle knew that he did now want to go on, and (in a sense) ought to go on; but Parish did not want to go on, and was not yet ready to go.
‘I must wait for my wife,’ said Parish to Niggle. ‘She’d be lonely. I rather gathered that they would send her after me, some time or other, when she was ready, and when I had got things ready for her. The house is finished now, as well as we could make it; but I should like to show it to her. She’ll be able to make it better, I expect: more homely. I hope she’ll like this country, too.’ He turned to the shepherd. ‘Are you a guide?’ he asked. ‘Could you tell me the name of this country?’
‘Don’t you know?’ said the man. ‘It is Niggle’s Country. It is Niggle’s Picture, or most of it; a little of it is now Parish’s Garden.’
‘Niggle’s Picture!’ said Parish in astonishment. ‘Did you think of all this, Niggle? I never knew you were so clever. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘He tried to tell you long ago,’ said the man; ‘but you would not look. He had only got canvas and paint in those days, and you wanted to mend your roof with them. This is what you and your wife used to call Niggle’s Nonsense, or That Daubing.’
‘But it did not look like this then, not real,’ said Parish.
‘No, it was only a glimpse then,’ said the man; ‘but you might have caught the glimpse, if you had ever thought it worth while to try.’
‘I did not give you much chance,’ said Niggle. ‘I never tried to explain. I used to call you Old Earth-grubber. But what does it matter? We have lived and worked together now. Things might have been different, but they could not have been better. All the same, I am afraid I shall have to be going on. We shall meet again, I expect: there must be many more things we can do together. Good-bye!’ He shook Parish’s hand warmly: a good, firm, honest hand it seemed. He turned and looked back for a moment. The blossom on the Great Tree was shining like flame. All the birds were flying in the air and singing. Then he smiled and nodded to Parish, and went off with the shepherd.
He was going to learn about sheep, and the high pasturages, and look at a wider sky, and walk ever further and further towards the Mountains, always uphill. Beyond that I cannot guess what became of him. Even little Niggle in his old home could glimpse the Mountains far away, and they got into the borders of his picture; but what they are really like, and what lies beyond them only those can say who have climbed them.
‘I think he was a silly little man,’ said Councillor Tompkins. ‘Worthless, in fact; no use to Society at all.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Atkins, who was nobody of importance, just a schoolmaster. ‘I am not so sure: it depends on what you mean by use.’
‘No practical or economic use,’ said Tompkins. ‘I dare say he could have been made into a serviceable cog of some sort, if you schoolmasters knew your business. But you don’t, and so we get useless people of his sort. If I ran this country I should put him and his like to some job that they’re fit for, washing dishes in a communal kitchen or something, and I should see that they did it properly. Or I would put them away. I should have put him away long ago.’
‘Put him away? You mean you’d have made him start on the journey before his time?’
‘Yes, if you must use that meaningless old expression. Push him through the tunnel into the great Rubbish Heap: that’s what I mean.’
‘Then you don’t think painting is worth anything, not worth preserving, or improving, or even making use of?’
‘Of course, painting has uses,’ said Tompkins. ‘But you couldn’t make use of his painting. There is plenty of scope for bold young men not afraid of new ideas and new methods. None for this old-fashioned stuff. Private day-dreaming. He could not have designed a telling poster to save his life. Always fiddling with leaves and flowers. I asked him why, once. He said he thought they were pretty! Can you believe it? He said pretty! “What, digestive and genital organs of plants?” I said to him; and he had nothing to answer. Silly footler.’
‘Footler,’ sighed Atkins. ‘Yes, poor little man, he never finished anything. Ah well, his canvases have been put to “better uses”, since he went. But I am not so sure, Tompkins. You remember that large one, the one they used to patch the damaged house next door to his, after the gales and floods? I found a corner of it torn off, lying in a field. It was damaged, but legible: a mountain-peak and a spray of leaves. I can’t get it out of my mind.’
‘Out of your what?’ said Tompkins.
‘Who are you two talking about?’ said Perkins, intervening in the cause of peace: Atkins had flushed rather red.
‘The name’s not worth repeating,’ said Tompkins. ‘I don’t know why we are talking about him at all. He did not live in town.’
‘No,’ said Atkins; ‘but you had your eye on his house, all the same. That is why you used to go and call, and sneer at him while drinking his tea. Well, you’ve got his house now, as well as the one in town, so you need not grudge him his name. We were talking about Niggle, if you want to know, Perkins.’
‘Oh, poor little Niggle!’ said Perkins. ‘Never knew he painted.’
That was probably the last time Niggle’s name ever came up in conversation. However, Atkins preserved the odd corner. Most of it crumbled; but one beautiful leaf remained intact. Atkins had it framed. Later he left it to the Town Museum, and for a long while ‘Leaf: by Niggle’ hung there in a recess, and was noticed by a few eyes. But eventually the Museum was burnt down, and the leaf, and Niggle, were entirely forgotten in his old coun
try.
‘It is proving very useful indeed,’ said the Second Voice. ‘As a holiday, and a refreshment. It is splendid for convalescence; and not only for that, for many it is the best introduction to the Mountains. It works wonders in some cases. I am sending more and more there. They seldom have to come back.’
‘No, that is so,’ said the First Voice. ‘I think we shall have to give the region a name. What do you propose?’
‘The Porter settled that some time ago,’ said the Second Voice. ‘Train for Niggle’s Parish in the bay: he has shouted that for a long while now. Niggle’s Parish. I sent a message to both of them to tell them.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They both laughed. Laughed – the Mountains rang with it!’
THE HOMECOMING OF BEORHTNOTH BEORHTHELM’S SON
(I)
BEORHTNOTH’S DEATH
In August of the year 991, in the reign of Æthelred II, a battle was fought near Maldon in Essex. On the one side was the defence-force of Essex, on the other a viking host that had ravaged Ipswich. The English were commanded by Beorhtnoth son of Beorhthelm, the duke of Essex, a man renowned in his day: powerful, fearless, proud. He was now old and hoar, but vigorous and valiant, and his white head towered high above other men, for he was exceedingly tall,45 The ‘Danes’ – they were on this occasion probably for the most part Norwegians – were, according to one version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, led by Anlaf, famous in Norse saga and history as Olaf Tryggvason, later to become King of Norway.46 The Northmen had sailed up the estuary of the Pante, now called the Blackwater, and encamped on Northey Island. The Northmen and the English were thus separated by an arm of the river; filled by the incoming tide, it could only be crossed by a ‘bridge’ or causeway, difficult to force in the face of a determined defence.47 The defence was resolute. But the vikings knew, or so it would seem, what manner of a man they had to deal with: they asked for leave to cross the ford, so that a fair fight could be joined. Beorhtnoth accepted the challenge and allowed them to cross. This act of pride and misplaced chivalry proved fatal. Beorhtnoth was slain and the English routed; but the duke’s ‘household’, his heorðwerod, containing the picked knights and officers of his bodyguard, some of them members of his own family, fought on, until they all fell dead beside their lord.
A fragment – a large fragment, 325 lines long – of a contemporary poem has been preserved: it has no end and no beginning, and no title, but is now generally known as The Battle of Maldon. It tells of the demand of the vikings for tribute in return for peace; of Beorhtnoth’s proud refusal, and challenge, and the defence of the ‘bridge’; the cunning request of the vikings, and the crossing of the causeway; the last fight of Beorhtnoth, the falling of his golden-hilted sword from his maimed hand, and the hewing of his body by the heathen men. The end of the fragment, almost half of it, tells of the last stand of the bodyguard. The names, deeds, and speeches of many of the Englishmen are recorded.
The duke Beorhtnoth was a defender of the monks, and a patron of the church, especially of the abbey of Ely. After the battle the Abbot of Ely obtained his body and buried it in the abbey. His head had been hacked off and was not recovered; it was replaced in the tomb by a ball of wax.
According to the late, and largely unhistorical, account in the twelfth-century Liber Eliensis, the Abbot of Ely went himself with some of his monks to the battlefield. But in the following poem it is supposed that the abbot and his monks came only as far as Maldon, and that they there remained, sending two men, servants of the duke, to the battlefield some distance away, late in the day after the battle. They took a waggon, and were to bring back Beorhtnoth’s body. They left the waggon near the end of the causeway and began to search among the slain: very many had fallen on both sides. Torhthelm (colloquially Totta) is a youth, son of a minstrel; his head is full of old lays concerning the heroes of northern antiquity, such as Finn, king of Frisia; Fróda of the Hathobards; Béowulf; and Hengest and Horsa, traditional leaders of the English Vikings in the days of Vortigern (called by the English Wyrtgeorn). Tídwald (in short Tída) was an old ceorl, a farmer who had seen much fighting in the English defence-levies. Neither of these men were actually in the battle. After leaving the waggon they became separated in the gathering dusk. Night falls, dark and clouded. Torhthelm is found alone in a part of the field where the dead lie thick.
From the old poem are derived the proud words of Offa at a council before the battle, and the name of the gallant young Aelfwine (scion of an ancient noble house in Mercia) whose courage was commended by Offa. There also are found the names of the two Wulfmaers: Wulfmaer, son of Beorhtnoth’s sister; and Wulfmaer the young, son of Wulfstan, who together with Aelfnoth fell grievously hewn beside Beorhtnoth. Near the end of the surviving fragment an old retainer, Beorhtwold, as he prepares to die in the last desperate stand, utters the famous words, a summing up of the heroic code, that are here spoken in a dream by Torhthelm:
Hige sceal pe heardra, heorte pe cenre,
mod sceal pe mare pe ure maegen lytlað.
‘Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens.’
It is here implied, as is indeed probable, that these words were not ‘original’, but an ancient and honoured expression of heroic will; Beorhtwold is all the more, not the less, likely for that reason actually to have used them in his last hour.
The third English voice in the dark, speaking after the Dirige is first heard, uses rhyme: presaging the fading end of the old heroic alliterative measure. The old poem is composed in a free form of the alliterative line, the last surviving fragment of ancient English heroic minstrelsy. In that measure, little if at all freer (though used for dialogue) than the verse of The Battle of Maldon, the present modern poem is written.
The rhyming lines are an echo of some verses, preserved in the Historia Eliensis, referring to King Canute:
Merie sungen ðe muneches binnen Ely,
ða Cnut ching reu ðerby.
‘Roweð, cnites, noer the land
and here we ther muneches saeng’.
(II)
THE HOMECOMING OF BEORHTNOTH BEORHTHELM’S SON
The sound is heard of a man moving uncertainly and breathing noisily in the darkness. Suddenly a voice speaks, loudly and sharply.
TORHTHELM.
Halt! What do you want? Hell take you! Speak!
TÍDWALD.
Totta! I know you by your teeth rattling.
TORHTHELM.
Why, Tída, you! The time seemed long
alone among the lost. They lie so queer.
I’ve watched and waited, till the wind sighing
was like words whispered by waking ghosts
that in my ears muttered.
TÍDWALD.
And your eyes fancied
barrow-wights and bogies. It’s a black darkness
since the moon foundered; but mark my words:
not far from here we’ll find the master,
by all accounts.
Tídwald lets out a faint beam from a dark-lantern. An owl hoots. A dark shape flits through the beam of light. Torhthelm starts back and overturns the lantern, which Tída had set on the ground.
What ails you now?
TORHTHELM.
Lord save us! Listen!
TÍDWALD.
My lad, you’re crazed.
Your fancies and your fears make foes of nothing.
Help me to heave ’em! It’s heavy labour
to lug them alone: long ones and short ones,
the thick and the thin. Think less, and talk less
of ghosts. Forget your gleeman’s stuff!
Their ghosts are under ground, or else God has them;
and wolves don’t walk as in Woden’s days,
not here in Essex. If any there be,
they’ll be two-leggéd. There, turn him over!
An owl hoots again.
It’s only an owl.
TORHTHELM.
Owls are omens. But I’m not afraid,
not of fancied fears. A fool call me,
but more men than I find the mirk gruesome
among the dead unshrouded. It’s like the dim shadow
of heathen hell, in the hopeless kingdom
where search is vain. We might seek for ever
and yet miss the master in this mirk, Tída.
O lord beloved, where do you lie tonight,
your head so hoar upon a hard pillow,
and your limbs lying in long slumber?
Tídwald lets out again the light of the dark-lantern.
TÍDWALD.
Look here, my lad, where they lie thickest!
Here! lend a hand! This head we know!
Wulfmær it is. I’ll wager aught
not far did he fall from friend and master.
TORHTHELM.
His sister-son! The songs tell us,
ever near shall be at need nephew to uncle.
TÍDWALD.
Nay, he’s not here – or he’s hewn out of ken.
It was the other I meant, th’ Eastsaxon lad,
Wulfstan’s youngster. It’s a wicked business
to gather them ungrown. A gallant boy, too,
and the makings of a man.
TORHTHELM.
Have mercy on us!
He was younger than I, by a year or more.
TÍDWALD.
Here’s Ælfnoth, too, by his arm lying.
TORHTHELM.
As he would have wished it. In work or play
they were fast fellows, and faithful to their lord,
as close to him as kin.
TÍDWALD.
Curse this lamplight
and my eyes’ dimness! My oath I’ll take
they fell in his defence, and not far away
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