The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  His friends hauled him to his feet.

  ‘Come on, Cooper,’ they said philosophically. ‘There’s naught wrong with ye that a pint of best beer wouldn’t set to rights.’

  They repaired to the Thorn Tree, but an uneasiness had crept amongst them.

  ‘Bullbeggars one night, It another,’ some muttered, ‘not to mention Shocks. Black Annis will be next no doubt; we shall hear the gnashing of her teeth and she’ll be reaching her metal claws in our windows to steal our babes and how shall we defend them?’

  Some began again to look askance at the newcomers.

  Despite these undertones their stay at Appleton Thorn lengthened. Each day brought a new excuse as to why they should not yet depart. However, while most of the inhabitants tempted them to tarry and argued that to leave now would be to travel at a perfidious season, there were those who whispered to each other that these three damsels on their untoward, unaccompanied journey had drawn after them unwholesome things, and that an extended visit might bring down some eldritch threat upon the hamlet.

  There were questions, too, as to where Tahquil and her companions must go, and why, and by what means they would travel. Unwilling to divulge anything which might provide a clue to spies, the travellers gave out the only story they could fabricate—that they had disembarked from a merchantman at the firth’s mouth and walked up the coast road to see the famous Summer celebrations of Appleton Thorn. They would rendezvous with friends at a specified location to the north, and they must meet them there early in Grianmis.

  ‘Why did they not accompany you, your friends?’ persisted their inquisitors. ‘Three young damsels, all alone, ’tis not right. Or do you have some manner of special protection?’

  ‘We do,’ they said, but they would not disclose its nature.

  ‘And why north? And where?’

  Arrowsmith defended them against such inquisitions, saying, ‘Pry not into the affairs of our guests. You would have them believe us discourteous rustics.’

  But this only had the effect of whetting the curiosity of the villagers and, deprived of facts, they began to hypothesise their own.

  Since his altercation with Arrowsmith, Finoderee was proving more and more troublesome. He used his hideous strength to extremes with every task he undertook, resulting in the loss of livestock, damage to ploughs and other equipment, and the spoiling of cart-loads of produce. Constantly he oppressed Arrowsmith with his excess of zeal.

  ‘He’s turning unseelie,’ lamented the men and wives of Appleton Thorn. ‘He is corrupted. Something must be done.’

  One evening in the middle of Uainemis, Greenmonth, after Finoderee had thrown all the cut hay over Bonfire Hill, scattering it far and wide, Tahquil inquired, ‘Master Arrowsmith, how shall you deal with Finoderee?’

  ‘This very night,’ he replied quietly, glancing to right and left in case of eavesdroppers, ‘we assemble. The wight turns unseelie. He runs awry and must not be permitted to remain in these parts any longer. Who can tell what damage he might be doing at this moment?’

  ‘He has haunted around here for many years, has he not? Is he not as old as your customs, or older?’

  ‘We shall bring iron,’ the headman continued without heeding her, ‘scythes and pitchforks, halberds and good Eldaraigne broadswords. Spider shall stand alongside us. And I have a Word, a Word of Gramarye.’

  ‘Your men will suffer sorely. He is strong, Finoderee. I have heard it said that he once lifted a block of stone that all the men of the village together could not budge. Are you wanting to be revenged on him or do you truly wish only to protect the village?’

  ‘The desire for vengeance is strong. But the village comes first, while I am at its head.’

  ‘Then I beg you to do one thing.’

  ‘Aye, and what might that be, Mistress Mellyn?’

  ‘Once—how long ago it seems—I offered to pay him, and he said, “Alas, poor Finoderee, don’t send him away, he only wants to help.” Give him a suit of clothes, good clothes made to fit. He is dressed in rags like a household bruney, and perchance he will depart if rewarded. Besides, after he has laboured so diligently for the village, would you not agree that he deserves proper remuneration?’

  Arrowsmith looked up at the stars. The sound of the sea booming in the firth echoed from afar and, as many times before, he seemed to be hearkening to it, as if to some call.

  He looked down and said, ‘There might be sense in what you say, Mistress. I will not be forsworn—aye, it will be done, but if he does not depart we shall drive him forth or vanquish him.’

  Men stood inside the East Gate at uhta. Helmed they were, and clad in a motley assortment of half-armour and brigandines. Their pikes and halberds and common farming implements stood up like a thicket.

  ‘Open the gate,’ commanded Arrowsmith.

  ‘Aye.’ A throaty grunt from beyond the fence. ‘Open the gate, boys, that Arrowsmith might come a-mowing the meadows with Finoderee. We shall raze the tares and marram alike to the naked ground.’

  The gate swung wide. Finoderee stood grinning.

  ‘There are no meadows in need of mowing,’ said Arrowsmith, ‘or reaping.’

  ‘But there’s a field of barley,’ grimaced Finoderee.

  ‘The barley’s only new-sprung.’

  ‘Better early than late,’ said the wight, having the last word.

  Arrowsmith stepped forward and held out a bundle.

  ‘Take these clouts, Finoderee. You have worked long and hard for Appleton Thorn. Here is your reward.’

  Finoderee’s coarse face metamorphosed into a cameo of surprise and dismay. Tenderly, almost fearfully, he took the bundle and opened it. He shook out every article as it came to hand and held each one aloft.

  ‘Cap for the head,’ he cried, ‘alas poor head! Coat for the back, alas poor back! Breeches for the bum, alas poor bum! If these be all thine, thine cannot be Ishkiliath.’

  The burly old wight threw off his old rags then and there before the gate. He donned the new clothes before turning and walking away towards the forest, singing as he strode:

  ‘It’s not well mowed! It’s not well mowed!

  Then ’tis never to be mowed by me again.

  I’ve scattered it all to the east and west—

  They’ll have some work ere they get their rest!’

  But when he had passed out of sight his voice could still be heard, and his plaint—faint …

  ‘Far from me is the fen of weeping,

  Far from me is the glen of sleeping,

  Far from me is the field of reaping.

  No more the watch-hours I’ll be keeping

  When the yellow moon comes creeping.’

  Finoderee never returned to Grey Glass Firth. The men went back to their homes and took off their armour and laid down their weapons. When the sun rose that day, there would be many heavy tasks awaiting.

  On the land, people had to work hard for a living.

  Tahquil and the sisters were still wakeful when Arrowsmith came limping back to the stable to throw himself on the fragrant hay and find repose. They moved away from the window after they saw him go indoors.

  ‘Will you not stay for Weighing the Lord of the Hundred and Hare Pie Scramble next moon?’ asked Betony. ‘Will you not remain and dwell with us?

  Tahquil shook her head.

  ‘The Lord of the Hundred and Master of the Village has always been an Arrowsmith,’ Sorrel said. ‘It is not a hereditary title, but an elected one, by secret ballot. Appleton Thorn has thrived under the watch and ward of our forefathers’ line. The Noble Thorn itself has thrived, living far beyond the years of any other tree. We dwell so remote here, beyond the aid of the greater world. They say that if ever the Arrowsmiths leave the village then the luck will go and the Noble Thorn will perish.’

  ‘A mere superstition, surely.’

  ‘They say in the village that you have spelled our brother,’ said Betony. ‘And in sooth, he was a merrier man ere he set eyes on you.�
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  ‘That is hardly my fault.’

  ‘He might be married now, if he had wanted. Every maid wants to marry a silkie’s son. Have you seen him, swimming in the firth, quick and sleek as a seal? No man has dived so deep and so long. No man can catch fish with his hands and swim so fast, swim down to the ocean and the skerries out beyond the firth’s mouth, where the seals play.’

  ‘There is a power of him,’ said Sorrel. ‘And he has the Word. His mother taught it him, but she was not our mother—two marriages had our father. Sometimes at nights Galan stands at the window and listens to the water mulling and brewing in the firth.

  ‘He longs for the open ocean, but he has said he will stay if he takes a landwife. If not, then the land cannot bind him much longer. None here please him enough, not that he is hard to please, but being of the blood that he is, he looks for different qualities in a wife than most men.’

  ‘Would you have me bear the doom of the village upon my shoulders?’ cried Tahquil angrily. ‘I have never given any sign of love. I do not play with men’s affections.’

  ‘You kept the honeysuckle stick—’

  ‘Was that some meaningful gesture? I know naught of your customs. Here it is. Take it back now.’

  The sisters gazed upon her sorrowfully, and would not accept the stick, so she laid it on the table.

  ‘Pray do not reproach me!’ Tahquil said. ‘Three reasons I will give to you for declining your invitation. The first is this; as has been proved time and over in every tale of yore, all liaison between mortal and immortal is doomed to tragedy. Where is his silkie mother now? And where your mortal father? I would hazard that the one swims far out in the cold ocean while the other lies deep beneath the cold stone.’

  ‘Ah, but that brings a question,’ said Betony. ‘Does our brother’s blood run with the sealkind or with humankind? Is he mortal or no? But tell on, if so ’tis your will.’

  ‘The second is that my heart is already given. I love another, and it will be so while I have life. ’Twas he who gave me the ring on my finger. Thirdly, if this were not so, yet could I not marry Galan, for there is no real love between us. I honour and admire him. Perhaps he thinks me comely—that is all.’

  Sorrel picked up the honeysuckle stick and turned it over in her hands.

  ‘Then you will depart.’

  ‘This very day.’

  Arrowsmith’s sister threw the stick into the gorse fire, where it burst into yellow buds like a sudden, brief Spring.

  Tahquil and her companions rode out of the East Gate accompanied by the Master of the Village. His sisters and most of the villagers followed at their backs, some mounted, some on foot. Slowly they rode up to the barleymow and the meadows where Finoderee used to wield the scythe, and around past the rushy curraghs and the glen where he no longer slept the days. They splashed through Grassrill Beck and clattered across the stone bridge by the gorse mill. They passed across the open downlands, while away to their left the firth boomed and rolled with a grey swell like sounding whales, and white stitchery seabirds braced themselves against the salt wind out of the west.

  At the northern marches of the common lands, Arrowsmith and the three travellers detached themselves from the concourse and took their leave; for he had sworn that he would ride with them and deliver them safely into the care of their friends and nothing would dissuade him from this resolve. In tears, his sisters fell upon his neck and clung to him. The men saluted and the women curtsied. One would have thought they were losing their headman forever.

  Leaving the villagers, the three companions and their defender turned their horses’ heads to the north. As they rode away they heard the voices—bass, alto, tenor, soprano, raised again in song:

  ‘The wind whistles wild in the withies of willows,

  The magpie is calling to welcome the dawn.

  The Churrachan sings to the wheel of the mill-o,

  Where green are the hillsides and golden the corn.

  In rushen-grown curraghs where water is shallow,

  The herons are wading, the frogs are a-spawn.

  Bright marigold, bog-bean, flag-lily and mallow

  Spring under the leaves of the old peppercorn.

  The wind from the Firth lifts the hulls at the winnow,

  The waves on the Firth lift the hulls in the morn.

  The fishing boats sail for the sturgeon and minnow

  So pearly. So early, the fishermen yawn.

  Beyond the curs’d reach of the forest’s dark shadow

  Where loiter foul wretches that make us to mourn,

  We bide at the edge of the wide, open meadow.

  Unseelie we banish, malign wights we scorn.

  So if you’ll but lend me the wings of a swallow,

  No more shall I linger bereft and forlorn—

  I’ll fly on the path that my heart yearns to follow,

  Back to the Grey Firth and the place I was born.

  Where applejack cider’s abundant and mellow

  And we’ll sit ’round a pint when the sheep have been shorn.

  Where the gorse on the Creech is a buttery yellow,

  We’ll raise up our jugs. Drink to Appleton Thorn!’

  Just before they reached the shoulder of the hill, the four riders turned and looked back. Small against the wide, green land looked the knot of villagers, insignificant against the sky’s dizzying heights. Their song came lilting clearly on the breeze and every hand was lifted in a flourish of farewell.

  3

  LALLILLIR

  The Veiled Vale

  In Lallillir I heard the water falling

  Through secret places bung with dripping ferns.

  And, as it fell, the water-voices calling

  From rushing gills, and mossy becks and burns.

  FROM THE CHAP-BOOK: ‘POEMS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY’

  Tahquil tied a scarf over the lower part of her face as soon as they had passed out of sight. On leaving the village she had drawn on a pair of gloves, lest the leaf-ring should betray her identity to questing wights. Her garments, the travel-worn garb from the fisher-cot, were drenched in oil of lavender—a gift from Betony and Sorrel. Her head swam with the intensity of its fumes. Surely no unfriendly wight could penetrate that smothering fragrance … or was it already too late for disguise? During their sojourn in the village she had unwittingly relaxed her vigilance. Reconsidering, she pulled off the scarf. To go about masked would surely attract more interest than not. The inevitable dirt of travel would conceal her features less conspicuously.

  Their borrowed steeds were a welcome means of travel. Three of the horses belonged to Arrowsmith and his sisters, the fourth had been lent by the water bailiff. To lend a horse was a generous gesture indeed, for which Tahquil and her friends were deeply grateful. It had been arranged that Arrowsmith would bring the beasts back with him after he saw the travellers safe to their destination.

  The Master of the Village might have been a welcome addition to their band, except that he was a well-known figure in these parts. The news that he had ridden off with a trio of young women could not fail to attract the attention of inquisitive wights. His presence could only make them more obvious.

  ‘Your sisters’ tears threatened to drown you,’ Tahquil remarked to him as they cantered on. ‘You will return soon, within a day or two surely—not long enough to warrant such distress. They love you dearly.’

  But will he turn back when he finds out we have no protectors to guard us along our further journey?

  ‘This I have said to my sisters and to all the rest,’ replied Arrowsmith, ‘that either I will return in two days or my horse will return without me. And if they find tied to the saddle a strand of kelp, then they will know where I have gone.’

  Then he rode his horse close up beside her and looked her in the eyes.

  ‘Fear not,’ he said. ‘My sisters have spoken to me. By the ring on your finger I now know you to be pledged. I force no suit.’

  He flicked the reins a
nd cantered ahead.

  She had seen what it cost him and her heart quickened with compassion. For that alone, she might have loved this grave, honest gentleman, almost.

  The northerly way they followed was an old road, a faint path cut into the hillsides, called the Long Lane. Rising gradually all the time it crossed a land of dales not rugged, grand or majestic but rounded and gentle, with no peak rising more than two thousand feet. So vast and open was the sky that the land seemed no more than a rim pressed against it. the horizon framing the surging clouds and sun-rinsed blue of the heavens.

  Thickly wooded hills stood above beck-threaded valley floors where bird’s-eye primula, hart’s tongue fern and pink foxglove peeped from stony crevices. An ancient rune-carved monolith, its edges softened and worn by the loving, ruthless caresses of wind and water, stood by itself—a lonely sentinel rooted in the turf of a distant slope. A windhover falcon gracefully rode a thermal, hanging in the lucid air.

  ‘By Kingsdale Beck we go,’ said Arrowsmith, ‘and past Churnmilk Hole. By Frostrow and Shaking Moss, and Hollybush Spout.’

  The Long Lane entered woodlands of wych elm and aspen. Spindly trunks like painted streaks, gold-flecked with sunlight, supported a misty tracery of leaves. Epiphytic lichens, ferns and mosses lived firm-footed on the organic debris which, for centuries undisturbed, had built up in clefts and hollows in the boughs. The undergrowth was rich with pink valerian, woodsage and early purple orchid. Red deer raised their heads at the sound of hoofbeats and darted into thickets. Grouse flew up in fright from wild shaws and bosky braes.

  The horses splashed through shallow stony fords across fair streams of silver which cut through overhanging woods. Droplets flew from their hooves, as bright as polished threepences. Fish leaped like silver-plated leaves. Towering trees leaned their long boughs over the water and the banks were in flower with primroses and celandine, marsh marigold and herb robert.

  Into open country they passed again, still climbing. From the peaks to the east, gills hung long and glittering like strands of Icemen’s hair.

  ‘Over there to the east,’ said Arrowsmith, ‘Ashgill Waterfall goes tumbling down the scar by Crooked Oak. In Autumn after rain the falls are thundering and the trees seem to have been wrought of copper. Look to the northeast—Rookhope Chimney rises beyond Briarwood Bank. The dales have names, though Men have never dwelt here. Only the road and the Rune-stone have been wrought by the hand of man, long ago, but the Long Lane ends at the foot of Mallorstang Edge.’