The View From the Cart

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘But they don’t bring us cakes, do they, Dada?’

  ‘Maybe they will some day,’ I put in. ‘We have done nothing to vex them. They can be captious, can piskies. One day they blow cold, the next they’re full of gifts and blessings.’ I looked him in the eye. ‘Just as your beloved God seems to do,’ I added.

  But we waited many more seasons before we could find much blessing in our lives. When it came, it came quick and brief.

  The village still held the Beltane fire night, despite the Churchmen telling them they should not. A group of monks on a mission from some distant monastery spent five or six nights preaching in the great hall where we had listened to Bran’s story. Spenna recounted to me how they described our Saviour wanting us to celebrate Pentecost or White Sunday at that time, with prayers and sacred singing. When the villagers asked how Lammas and the harvest should be marked, the monks spoke of saints such as Decuman who made a holy well by washing his severed head in the waters; or Samson who had travelled throughout Cornwall, to the west of us, converting the pagans. The monks wove tales and ideas and mixed the people up, speaking of harvests of souls for Jesus, or the importance of thankfulness for our God-given food. When pushed, they gave their blessing for a ‘dance of repentance’ and the baking of a holy loaf of bread from the first sheafs of gathered corn.

  But our short spell of happiness began at Beltane, when the harvest was as yet a distant hope, with the sowing not complete and the days still waxing longer. The fires were lit, and dedicated to St Bride, who would lay her blessings on the creatures in the fields. The cattle would deliver strong calves and yield rich milk; the sheep would grow thick fleece for our looms; the hunters would make good inroads into the wolves and other vermin that stole the livestock. There would be a fire or two for Brioc and perhaps the healer Madron, who kept disease away from young children, and some small saints of our own, such as Tillar, who had been a tall and beautiful Saxon maid, very taken with the Christ and all his doings. When I was born, she had been in her dotage, with her wits quite scattered. But in her greener days she had wrought wonders enough to warrant a special place amongst us. Tillar’s Pond was famous as the spot where she miraculously rescued a sturdy farmer who had somehow fallen headfirst into it. We had a special song to Tillar, and a few words of it would safeguard us from unpleasant accident.

  Edd and I did not go down to the village that year, but set light to our own small Beltane fire. The four of us performed a rite, which I had taken some time to devise. It happened that Wynn’s first menses has begun a few days earlier, and I was compelled to mark this event. St Bride was halfway right for it, but the Lady Freya - the same great Lady Goddess who gave Geat his magic tunes in Bran’s long-remembered story - was the figure I had in my mind as I prepared.

  I had already fashioned a ritual cup for Wynn when she was small. There was good clay to be had beside the river, and with careful cleaning and kneading, it had formed a good-sized vessel. Fired in a kiln we built in a pit, it was decorated with patterns scratched in the damp clay with a stick. I filled it with a potion of steeped rowan berries and other herbs, which made it red like blood and said some words over it. I may not have said them precisely right, since I had only heard them three times, at my own rite and those of my sisters. But they were heartfelt, calling for happiness and fertility for my girl child. Edd sat apart with Cuthie, showing due respect to these women’s matters, but later they came forward and we all danced around the fire, and waved burning sticks around our heads. The crescent moon rose above us, and there was a softness in the air which made me feel I was after all in the right place - where I was destined to be.

  I had drawn a circle, with some runes marked around the edge. At the moment of sunset I set light to the fire and called Wynn to sit before me. Binding her eyes, I kissed her and said a blessing. Then I led her into the circle and turned her around three times before telling her to point down at a spot before her. The nearest rune to her pointing was the fourth, the sign of messages and gifts. An auspicious rune for a young girl, and I clapped my hands in delight and called Edd and Cuthman to see.

  ‘It is true already,’ said Edd, producing his gift for her. He had carved a small figure for her from some apple wood, unbeknown to me.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, almost snatching it from the girl. It resembled nothing I could recognise, in the dappled light of the fire. Then I saw that it was a crow, stained black with a sharp beak and wide-open wings. ‘What have you given her that for?’ I demanded.

  He looked at me, with his tired eyes, and explained, ‘The crow be I. Dark, solitary, despised. He brings a message, daughter. Go from here, leave this place when you can and live amongst people. Be happy with the singing and play-acting. ‘Tis all wrong, us keeping you up here. Take’n and remember what I say.’

  ‘I have something, too,’ said Cuthie, solemnly. ‘I made it in secret.’ He took something from a linen bag; something large and awkwardly-shaped. I gasped when I saw it.

  ‘Remember when Mam made one just like?’ he said, holding up a bigger version of the little straw house I had made so many years ago on the day of Cuthie’s baptism. This one was of slender twigs, bound carefully together with thin strips of bark. It had a roof, and a large crucifix attached at the front. ‘‘Tis a church,’ he told us. ‘One day, I be going to build a real one. But you have this, Wynn. It’ll keep you mindful and bring you blessings.’

  I looked again at the rune she had chosen, and the cup I had made for her. It all came together, with the separate tokens from each of her closest kin. We had worked alone, and yet our creations had combined to point Wynn towards her future life. I sighed, content and trusting that for my girl child, at least, life would go well.

  But there were dark elements, too. Edd’s crow was a sinister thing, and a sad one. It held more than the message for Wynn. It told me something terrible about my man and his idea of himself. Cuthie’s little church concerned me, too. A young boy with an obsession turns too easily into a restless driven man. Edd had been just a one, but somehow I feared that his son would overshadow him completely with his secret Christian passions. Where, I wondered weakly, did he get them from? Where on those moors had that great God and his Son laid their hands on my boy?

  But we danced and sang and watched the fire die down as the moon rose high and we watched for whatever messages or signs there might yet be for us at the beginning of that remarkable summer when my daughter began her menses and Edd began the final seasons of his life.

  The meaning of Wynn’s rune seemed to last for months. First Spenna came, driving two early spring lambs before her. They were scrawny from being weaned too soon, and she explained that their mothers had died and she hadn’t the time to trouble with rearing them.

  I looked her in the face. ‘Not time to trouble?’ I echoed. ‘When they could keep you in meat through the winter and more?’

  She looked down at her feet, smiling a little. ‘‘Tis a gift for young Wynn, then. We’ve been fortunate this spring, with all the lambs alive and fattening well. Take them, will you?’

  I can’t pretend it was difficult, but I gave her a pot of honey to take back with her. Before she went she gave me some news.

  ‘Bran’s sick, did you know?’

  ‘No. What ails him?’

  ‘A cut went bad, and the place is getting bigger.’

  ‘Where?’

  Spenna put a hand on her upper arm. ‘About here. He says it was nothing - a blackthorn scratched him when he was pulling a sheep out of a thicket. He gave it no thought until it started to hurt him. The poultice seemed to draw it at first, but then it got worse. He can scarce move his arm now.’

  I pursed my lips. ‘That shouldn’t have got so bad. Who’s tending him?’

  ‘That’s the thing. Maggy is away to see her girl, in the Zummerlands, so there is none left with the skill to draw the poison. They tried pressing it out, but ‘twas too sore. He knocked them all away.’

  ‘Sounds bad, S
pen. Is that what you’re telling me?’

  She shrugged. ‘Bad enough, I reckon.’

  I told Edd as soon as he came in, and said maybe he should go and see his brother. Cuthie heard me, and came close. ‘No need to go there,’ he said. ‘I shall pray for my uncle. That will heal him.’

  Edd made the mistake of laughing. ‘So I’ve a miracle worker for my son, have I?’ he said. ‘Too many ideas in that head, boy, is what I say.’

  Cuthman whipped round like a snake. ‘‘Tis true, for all that. If I pray for him, then he will live. If I do not, then he’ll die. Which will it be?’

  Edd narrowed his eyes. ‘Take care, lad. I’ll have no such words under this roof. A man dies when his time is right, not for your saying whether or no.’

  ‘Hush!’ I ordered them. ‘What’s this talk of dying? Bran has a stiff arm, is all. Maybe he could use some help till it be better.’

  Cuthman looked at us both, his lips twisted in a sneer. ‘Then I make no prayers for him. And see what will happen.’

  Bran died two weeks after that. Cuthman loudly insisted that his lack of prayers, at our ordering, had been his uncle’s death knell. Edd and I glanced uneasily at each other, saying nothing. Forbidding prayers for the sick seemed then a foolish act - though neither of us could recall exactly forbidding Cuthman anything. The sickness in Bran’s arm had gone to his neck and chest, turning him black and putrid, stinking so foul that no-one could get close to him. They buried him with his green story-telling gown and cups, plates and other grave goods. Bran had been a figure of some renown, and there was a crowd at his burying. His sons carried him to his resting place, and his wife, Raga, seeming old and shrunken now, wept – though taking care not to come too close to his body.

  The family shared his goods, but every one of the sons had his own prosperous holding, and no real need for further stock. They took the cattle and hogs between them, but seemed indifferent about the sheep. Holding our breath, we waited for a decision from Raga. Finally, she told Rannoc to drive the whole flock up to us.

  ‘Edd has always been an outsider,’ she said. ‘But he is a good man, with a hard life. Take him the sheep and may they bring him joy.’ Rannoc relayed the message carefully.

  Edd so forgot himself as to give a whoop of triumph. ‘Twenty good ewes!’ he cried. ‘With lambs besides. It’s a fortune, wife!’

  Rannoc looked uneasy. The bounty seemed to him, as to us all, to be excessive. But sheep were plentiful throughout the village, and some were being killed before their time, or taken further onto the moors for their grazing.

  Cuthman came forward. ‘I shall be the shepherd now,’ he announced. His tone left no opening for contradiction. ‘I know what to do.’

  Chapter Six

  It quickly became plain that Cuthman had to be our shepherd, whether he wanted to or not. The new ewes required daylong attention at first, as they tried to return to their former home, and the lusher forage of the valley. They hurt their feet on our granite outcrops, and one day wandered as far as Cranmere Pool, which was well away from our usual grazing.

  So it was that Cuthman had to watch them. At daybreak, before they began to wake and move away, he would be there, waiting to guide them to a fair patch of ground and keep them under his gaze. Slowly they would drift further and further from the hut, until at midday he would begin to herd them homewards again, little by little, the sheep eating as they went the fine thin grass between the tussocks of heather and drinking from the countless springs and streamlets which ran down any slope. With luck, by dusk they would settle down at a point not too far from home, ready to begin all over again the next day.

  ‘What do you do all day?’ Wynn enquired, gazing at him curiously.

  ‘I pray,’ he said.

  Wynn laughed. ‘What? All day long? What do you pray for, little brother?’

  ‘For a sight of the Saviour. For courage, goodness, wisdom.’

  I interposed, before his sister could mock him again. ‘Cuthman, where do you get these ideas? Who do you speak to of such things? Do angels come to you, out on the moors, or merely strolling monks?’ Too late, I realised I must sound as scornful as Wynn had done, and tried to put an arm round him to counter such an impression. He ducked away from me.

  ‘The ideas are nothing remarkable, Mam. Everyone wishes to become better than he is. I pray to become a good shepherd, with strong sheep and plentiful lambs.’

  ‘That’s very fine of you. But a sight of the Saviour? That strikes me as a lot to ask for.’

  He shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

  As he grew, the lad seemed forever hungry. I remembered my mother complaining that she could scarcely keep food enough in the house for my brothers’ needs, as they grew from boys to men. Cuthman would wrap up a whole loaf and whatever meat he could find, with apples or plums in their season, and take it with him in a stout sack, slung over his shoulder. By the time he returned, the sack would be empty and his belly demanding a large supper. ‘We shall have to slaughter one of those lambs of yours before its time if this goes on,’ grumbled Edd, who had seen our food stocks dwindling. Cuthman nodded.

  ‘Plenty of lambs,’ he said, shortly. One of the orphans which Spenna had given us was a ram, fortunately not yet castrated when he came to us, and intact still at the time we gained the flock from Bran. Cuthman gave that animal special attention from the first, until he grew into a fine sire for all the future season’s lambs.

  I had heard other women comment on the strangeness of the time when their children turn to full grown people. Over those two or three summers, with Cuthman’s flock flourishing and Edd somehow crumbling away, the old pattern shifted into something quite different. Wynn played a part in this, by leaving us for days on end to stay with Spenna in the village. She worked with the potter, learning her art and the mysteries of firing the different types of clay. She went on a cart down to the southern edge of the moor, where a special clay could be had, and came home full of the sights she had seen and the people she had met. It was her first time away from the village and she gained a new understanding of how wide the world was and how much there was to discover. She stayed a few nights with us, describing every detail of her journey. Cuthman listened avidly, questioning her on the roads and whether she had passed any churches or hermitages.

  But we adapted to the changes, and life continued. I tended my bees and fowls and spinning and weaving. I grew vegetables in a plot behind the hut, and gathered fruit and berries. Edd milked the home cow, and continued to grow an acre or two of corn. The hogs did poorly, often breaking out of their paddock and running off to live as their wild brothers did in the forests to the north of us. Since Bran had died, something went out of Edd. It had frightened him that a life could be so brief. We could both feel the shadow of death in the hut, but we never spoke of it. We made much of the blessing of the sheep, and the happy life that Wynn was forming for herself.

  When it came, it came swiftly. Edd had cut his meagre crop of corn, and was threshing it in our little barn, when I heard him cry out. When I found him, he had his hand to his head, his face crumpled with agony. I looked foolishly for blood or a wound of some kind. But the wound was too deep for me to see. As I watched helplessly, he fell over onto his side, and scrabbled horribly with his left arm and leg, trying to right himself again. I ran then to lift him, to save him from such awful indignity.

  Somehow I got him to lie straight and still. His face was strange, one side of it all loose and sagging. When he tried to speak, his mouth wouldn’t work and formless sounds emerged like thick cream glugging from a narrow-topped flagon. When I asked him whether he was in pain, he gazed at me uncomprehending.

  I couldn’t leave him on the barn floor. It was cold out, and he would take a chill on top of whatever else had happened to him. Carefully, I propped him onto the leg which seemed to have some strength in it, and supported him on the worst journey of my life. It took us an hour to cross the few yards to the hut. I tried it all ways, and finished up w
ith Edd dragging behind me, his arms over my shoulders, my back bent over, taking all his weight. He seemed not to understand what was happening, and made no effort to help me. When we got into the hut, and I let him slump onto our bed, he was dead.

  I was not much better. Only in the final minutes had I become aware of the strain on my own feeble frame. The urgent need to get him into the hut seemed stupid to me, once I understood that I had been carrying a dead man. I could have left him for Cuthman and it would not have mattered. But I had set the flames in my back racing again, as severely as they had when the damage was first done, a dozen or more years ago. I collapsed beside my husband, both fists digging into the place where I was hurting. The pain left me breathless, weeping and terrified.

  All I could do was wait for Cuthman to come home. Dusk was setting in earlier, for which I was thankful, and I watched the sky slowly darken as I lay beside my dead husband. Time and again I shifted, trying to convince my back to stop hurting, to believe that this time it was a simple strain, which would ease with a few hours’ rest. Each time, the agony seemed worse. Whatever it was that had broken or torn when Cuthman was born seemed to have sundered completely now. I could not lift my legs, nor even move my feet. By the time Cuthman appeared, I was convinced that I would never walk again.

  The hut was in darkness, no rushes burning to show the boy his way home, no supper cooking for him. He knew something was amiss before he reached the open door. ‘Mam!’ he called.

  ‘Here, Cuthie,’ I moaned, trying to warn him that something terrible was awaiting. ‘Quickly.’

  He was at my side, looking from me to his father in the gloom, before running to strike a light. He dropped the tinder twice before he got a spark, and carried the lamp across the hut to look at us again.

  ‘He’s dead, son,’ I said. ‘And my back has failed again. I can’t walk. You must fetch help.’

  Utter horror filled his face. He put both hands to his head and gripped fistsful of curls in a frenzy. ‘No!’ he screamed. ‘Oh, God in Heaven, Holy Jesus, please no.’ For a short while, he was mad, running to the door and crashing his fists against the lintel. Then he came back to me, his eyes red and wild.