The View From the Cart

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘But you have been baptised, Wynnie. You’re God’s child, too.’

  She shrugged. ‘Not like Cuthie,’ she said.

  I took the stick away from the little lad, then, and told him the faeries had all gone away, as he wanted. He only partly believed me, but it was time for the meal, so he let me lead him into the hut.

  Cuthie’s third winter was a harsh one. Snow drifted against the hut, seeping through the walls, so that we were always cold and damp. We ate salt meat and oatmeal, with a carrot or two, poorly roasted in the fitful fire. The snow-laden air made the fire smoke and fail to draw, and it seemed to me that we sat for weeks in the near darkness, shivering and sick. Edd took it hardest, struggling to keep the grain dry in the linhay, where starving rats and mice braved his rage and stole or spoiled much of it. He brought it in, but the warmth of the hut, feeble though it was, set a mildew on it. We had beets, well covered with sods and sacking, which were meant more for the sheep than for us, but we ate some of them. They took most of a day to cook, so we chewed the fibrous slices raw, suffering the gut ache that followed.

  The children were miserable, penned in with nowhere to run and play. Edd and I cuffed them many times each day, banging them down to sit still and stay quiet. I thought of Spenna, along the valley, with her five brats in a hut the size of mine, and trembled for her. I craved her company and laughter, her stories of our young days when she ran free on the moors and cast charms to catch a good man. She claimed to remember it better than I did, saying that I had gone with her many a time, but I knew otherwise. She had gone with other village girls, never me. I had never taken part in such pranks. My memories were of lying with her under the apple trees, chewing the long grass and telling secrets together. It was Spenna who heard me tell of my mean-hearted mother and my wish to live beyond the borders of the village.

  Spenna knew charms for everything, and she passed them on to her own daughters, which I had never dared nor wished to do with Wynn.

  Edd began to cough that winter. Something settled on his chest which he never truly shook off again, and after that any cold wet weather would start him off. He learned to breathe more shallow, afraid of the pain I could often see if he took in air right to the depths. His hair thinned and turned grey, though he was not an old man. He let his beard grow, straggling and parti-coloured, which gave him a wild look. We all grew thinner that winter, but Edd became gaunt, his hands and wrists bony and stretched-seeming.

  My own proclaimed cure on the day of Cuthman’s baptism was not as complete or permanent as I had then assumed. I regularly awoke to a stiffness that took much of the day to shift. If I walked up to the nearest tor, I was limping and bent before I reached home again. But the pain never returned as bad as it was in those early months, and with effort, I could be nearly normal in my daily tasks.

  Spring came at last. We gave the sheep as long as we could on the new grass, and then killed two of last year’s lambs, bringing a bounty of meat. Edd took one into market and traded it for bread and a newly weaned red heifer calf. It seemed an enormous good deal to me, but Edd grinned and said I’d never had much sense of value.

  ‘Tis safe, see,’ he explained. ‘That lamb be grown and killed and butchered. No more to do but store and eat him. If we’re to have good beef, ‘tis two years of worry and watching first. Not certain. The calf could die tomorrow, worth nothing.’

  ‘Then why?’

  He grinned again. ‘I felt lucky,’ he said.

  I thought of his coughing and the vicious snow and the rats, and wondered what spirit was in the man to say what he did.

  The heifer attached herself to us from the first, having none of her kind to be with. Wynn took special charge of her, moving her from byre to grassland and back again. The beast’s rump broadened as she grew and she became handsome. It seemed that Edd had been right in his gamble, though there was a long wait yet before the slaughter.

  ‘Wynny’s a quick pupil,’ he remarked. ‘She can take on some sheep in a while.’ Like any father, he took a special pleasure in his girl child.

  On the moor above our hut, half a morning’s walk away, stood a granite dolmen, mossy and weathered, but securely upright as it must always have been. The great table slab was high above our heads, and the space beneath it easily large enough to lie down in. Shepherds had sheltered there for generations, some using it as a night refuge, and my children loved to play there. They talked about it now and then, as the ‘blood place’, which I assumed at first was due to the reddish streaks down the stones which I recalled from the days when I could walk so far. But overhearing them one day, I realised that this was not what they meant.

  ‘You be the knifeman next time,’ Cuthie was insisting. ‘I’ll be the gift for God.’

  ‘It ain’t for God,’ Wynn corrected him. ‘It be for the old gods. Your blood makes the ground good.’

  The boy looked mutinous, thrusting out his underlip. ‘Not so,’ he muttered.

  I never understood where my children learned the things they did. They would come back from a day on the moors, hungry and tired, dirtier than seemed possible and yet full of some strange energy that put a fierce light in their eyes. I asked them, more than once, ‘Have you been with the faery folk, to look so odd?’ Some of the muck on them caused me to wonder, but they generally went straight to the water tub to wash before coming into the house, and the stains around their mouths were mostly from blackberries or tiny strawberries, or even the tasteless haws which they chewed when really hungry.

  ‘No,’ they would always reply to my question, looking at me warily, but with an air of truthfulness. It seemed to me they were saying, Not faeries, but - and I was left to fill in the unspoken word. Demons? Angels? Ghosts? Piskies? The possibilities were too numerous and too fearful for me to pursue. I could see no sign that Cuthie or Wynn were damaged by their moorland mysteries, and so I let it be for the present, trusting that nothing would harm such children as these.

  But that summer, when we had a spell of long hot days, and there seemed no reason to work, Edd did my bidding and sneaked quietly after the youngsters as they headed up to their dolmen. I was uneasy, left behind as always, hoping he would not catch them at any wickedness. Hoping, too, that they would not detect him and feel we were against them, untrusting their childish practices. There was thick furze growing there, which an army of spies could lurk in without being observed, but Edd could be clumsy and unheeding, and he could never go long without coughing. I instructed him as best I could. ‘‘If they do hear you or catch sight of you, pretend you’ve come to fetch them for some work with the sheep or hogs,’ I told him. I was snappish in my frustration. By rights I should be the one to see that they came to no harm and broke no holy commandments. But while no longer a cripple, I was weak and slow, my back permitting no more than a half-hour’s walk before the pain began again.

  That day was endless. I was reminded of Cuthie’s baptism and how I had fashioned the little house. It stood yet, where it had always been, seven or eight years since I made it, and we had grown accustomed to the small changes in it that marked the seasons. White may blossom would adorn the roof and doorway at Beltane; purple sloes from the blackthorn at Samhain. Although I pretended to myself that Wynn continued to decorate it, I never saw her doing so. I preferred to keep a distance from it, and not peer too closely, lest I catch another glimpse of a shadow moving inside. But I knew better, on this hot day, than to let my fingers start weaving again. Instead, I called the dogs, one by one to sit next to me in the shade of the north-facing wall of the hut, and combed their coats for them, cutting out any knots with a knife, and checking for sores and parasites. I had a particular fondness for the dogs and their good nature. Edd prized them, too, and was skilled at directing them with whistles and gestures, which was an art I had never learned. I preferred to spoil them, treating them as children, attending to their health and comfort.

  It was soothing, too, to be giving my attention to another creature and its needs.
I murmured as I worked, to keep the creature still and console it for some of the painful moments when I pulled at a knot or examined a cut pad. My favourite bitch remained lolled against me, after I had finished, and we dozed together in the midsummer stillness. She had finished with breeding, the same as I had. The last of our dogs capable of siring pups had died untimely, a year back. Edd had drowned all the dogs in the last two litters, keeping only the bitches, in the belief that they worked better. I missed the playful babies, but admitted that we had reached the limit with the four we now had. They went hungry in winter, as it was.

  I was roused, as the sun was low in the sky, by Edd calling me. He sounded strange and I answered quickly, with my heart thundering from apprehension. He met me, breathless, as I struggled to get up, the dog all entangled with my skirt and my head giddy from the abrupt disturbance.

  ‘They are bewitched,’ he cried, the words flying from him as if kept too long in his mouth, as he hurried back from the dolmen.

  ‘What did you see?’ I was tight with knowing he could never report all of it, and I must suffer his slow telling, covered over with his own thoughts and fears as it would be. Tighter, too, with knowing I did not in my heart want to listen to the things he would force me to hear. I felt my own arms pressed hard against my sides as I stood waiting. ‘Where are they now?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Up there yet. They never saw me.’

  ‘That’s one mercy, at any rate,’ I sighed, and tried to loosen my hold on myself. ‘You must have thought it safe to leave them.’

  ‘Safe!’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘Safe never came to my mind.’

  ‘Tell me.’ I almost sobbed with impatience and fear.

  ‘They are bewitched,’ he said again, more quietly this time, a flat statement of fact.

  ‘Did you see witches?’

  ‘Not I. But they were speaking to them. The dolmen is a great altar to - something. Wynny killed a swallow, and burned it.’

  I sighed again, with a feeling of release. It sounded so much less than I had feared. My own mother had used the ashes of swallows on my chest now and then, as a cure when it was troubling me. I had even thought of trying it on Edd, when his cough was at its worst, but that had been in winter months, when swallows could not be found. ‘Is that all?’ I said, a little crossly.

  ‘It is scarcely even the start,’ he snarled at me, his face dark. And he began to describe a scene which I could only dimly imagine, but which convinced me that my children were able to see and hear beings from some other realm. Edd told me that they climbed onto the dolmen slab and danced there, making the shape of the Holy Cross, and calling out strange incantations all about sacrifice and blood and magical things. They had fashioned a kind of tree, festooned with garlands of wild rose and other flowers, and Cuthie stood against it, in imitation of Christ.

  ‘But they did no harm?’ I interrupted, for my own reassurance. ‘They caused each other no injury?’

  He paused. ‘No bodily harm,’ he agreed. ‘But it cannot be wholesome. We must forbid them ever to go there again.’

  I wanted to agree with him. And yet - there was something almost appealing in what he told me. The bright light in Cuthman’s eyes as he enacted the death of Jesus, the long complex chanting which Wynn performed with such skill and confidence. I felt a pang of envy at the thing they had found, up on the lonely moors. They were surely using the dolmen for what it had first been meant for. Not as a draughty shelter for some poor old shepherd, but as a holy spot, chosen with care, where the gods could be contacted and celebrated. Wasn’t it for this very existence we had left the village, and the untidy lives of too many people with too little understanding of freedom and open air? We had been seeking something beyond the confusions of that way of living. Perhaps our children had been born with some great advantage, because Edd and I had shown courage above that of other people.

  Yet it seemed extraordinary that the two, still so young, should have created such a complete and detailed ritual from the scraps of information we had given them about these matters. It came to me, with sudden certainty, that some passing priest or monk had met them, up on the moors, and instructed them. Or, more likely, a witch woman, mad and solitary, on some long walk collecting her materials for cures and spells.

  ‘What must we do, then?’ Edd asked me, slumping down on a bench and coughing. The matter was for me to deal with, as it ought to have been from the start.

  ‘I will speak to them,’ I said. ‘It strikes me that someone has been with them out there.’

  ‘Who would that be?’ He shook his head, dismissing the idea. ‘They are bewitched,’ he insisted, yet again.

  ‘If that be true, then surely there would need to be a witch to cast the spell?’ I snapped at him. He merely shrugged, and said no more. Fear bristled all over him, and I understood that he was afraid to say more.

  Wynn and Cuthie came home at nightfall, their feet dragging with tiredness. I resolved to wait until morning to speak to them, rehearsing what I would say as I lay wakeful that night. A simple solution seemed to have presented itself by next morning.

  ‘Wynn, you neglect your duties to the heifer, with spending all day on the moor,’ I began, almost before the child was awake. ‘Besides, you father needs you to keep watch over the sheep. Summer will soon be over, and the time for play gone with it. What use are children who never show their faces from dawn till nightfall?’ I spoke calmly, but with a firm edge, so there could be no arguing. My daughter looked back at me, a veil over her eyes, so I could not divine the thoughts skittering through her head. She cast a quick meaningful glance at her brother, who drew back into a shadow, leaving her to tackle me alone.

  ‘The heifer and sheep are safe enough,’ she said carefully. ‘I would watch them if they needed me.’

  ‘That may be so. But your father hopes to get more sheep, needing pasture further off. They will be for you to watch.’

  She nodded as if that needed no comment. Then she waited. I was filled with esteem for her in that moment. She had a strength I had not before perceived, arising from something in her I did not recognise. I knew then that I had already lost her, though she was not over ten years in age. She seemed to me not so much bewitched as in full possession of herself, fearless and certain. I was a poor broken old thing beside her, unfit to assert any authority over her. A struggle began inside me, violent enough to make me sit heavily on my bed and shed some bitter tears.

  ‘Wynn - ‘ I began. ‘What - ?’ But I did not know the questions to ask her. She had been my firstborn, a sweet rosy baby, who had made few demands and learned rapidly all the skills of life. She walked many weeks before she completed her first year, and talked soon afterwards. She had looked after me when my back was ruined by Cuthman, and soon she looked after her little brother, too. I had no right, now, to wrest back the power. I had given it to her too early, and it was hers now, to do with as she might.

  And she was kindly in her strength. ‘Mam,’ she said, gently. ‘There is naught to worry you. Cuthie can hear mysteries, out on the tors, and we learn things together. Good things. Things which all people need to know.’

  ‘Witches and magic!’ I spat, reviving a little under her tenderness. ‘Things the Holy Church has forbidden.’

  ‘No!’ came a piping objection from the corner of the room. ‘‘Tis God who tells me the things. And God is good.’

  I gave up. Where my own mind was filled with shadows and confusions, my children were clear and sure. I had listened in my girlhood to the angry priest and his instructions, and had found them full of omissions and untruths. If Cuthman in his innocence could hear the true voice of God, I should rejoice. But I had in my mind a picture of the little boy standing against a pagan tree, mimicking Christ, and shuddered at how blasphemous it seemed.

  We did not speak of the matter again. The summer ended abruptly, with wind and rain and black skies. Edd bartered some of our oats and apples for a few ewes, and we set our energies into preparing for
the winter, once again. The heifer grew and matured, well into her second year, and we were proud of her. The winter was easier that year, drier than usual, so our corn did not rot in the barn.

  I had no further trouble from the children the following summer. Wynn kept herself busy, spinning, gathering herbs and honey, tending the new lambs. If she and Cuthie did go back to the dolmen, it was in snatched half-days, and they were careful to show no signs when they came home. Edd took his lad with him most days, pulling out weeds, directing water to the corn along little channels they dug together, snaring pigeons and hares for the pot.

  Samhain came gently that year, after a golden autumn rich with nuts and fruits. The heifer was close to three years old, and ripe for slaughtering. We had promised meat to a number of people at the market, and the day was fixed.

  Wynn was ghostly white throughout that morning. The heifer calf had grown up under her ministrations, and the healthy creature owed much to the girl who had tended it. Killing a full grown cow was no light task, and we would all be involved. I felt my own insides watery and weak as the time came near. Edd sharpened the knife, again and again on a stone, and I saw how his eyes glistened. Cuthman alone seemed steady. ‘She won’t fight it,’ he said, in a strange tone. ‘She knows it must be.’

  That only made it worse, to my mind. Together we went out and led the creature into the yard between the barn and the house. Her head was held in a halter, which Wynn had decorated with leaves and berries, all red to match the cow’s rich hide. But she had tucked yellow furze flowers in amongst them, to add a note of cheer. My whole body was full of sentiment, rising into my throat like thick wads of fleece, making it hard to breathe. Behind my nose and eyes tears were stinging and pressing. Edd tied the halter to a post, and stared into the animal’s eyes. She looked back at him, calmly chewing her cud.

  ‘She isn’t ready,’ I protested to Cuthman. ‘She has no notion of what is to happen.’

  ‘The two are the same,’ he said, obscurely. ‘She has no fear of dying. So she’s always ready.’