The View From the Cart (15 page)

From long practice, I had learned how to balance myself on one hand, whilst hoiking up my skirts with the other, and pushing the pot underneath me. It must have looked ungainly, with my limbs at all angles and my bare white skin flashing out, but I had scant concern for that. A trickle had begun before I was properly seated, but no more than that. The flood, when it came, was prodigious. I closed my eyes with the relief, and the pleasure of a task achieved. Only a stifled gasp from the monk aroused me.

He stood there, as before, but had a hand to himself, through the folds of his robe. I watched in round-mouthed amazement as he fiercely gripped and rubbed, gasping again, his face almost black. Then a great hilarity swept through me, and I had to keep both hands flat to the floor to prevent myself spilling the pisspot and myself into the resulting lake. The fellow was excited by my antics, I realised. Though how in the world a hag such as I was, bursting her waters in a shady corner, could be seen as an object of lust was a mystery. Fortunately, kind as he was, or perhaps sufficiently repelled by my age and infirmity, he had the wit to attend to himself. Once I had come across Edd in the same pursuit, in the barn, and then too had been amused. Like dogs when they scent a bitch in heat, I thought. They scarcely have to touch the thing and it spouts. I hoped the monk would find his sticky robe a discomfort for the remainder of the day, as I saw he had finished.

The supreme challenge before us now was to part company without acknowledging that anything had taken place. A single word from either of us would be intolerable. It seemed he realised this, and swung himself towards the hut door, before the heat in his face could subside, and to judge from his curious spraddled gait, before he was quite abated between his legs. But my relief was premature. He turned back to me, tears standing in his eyes.

‘You have made me sin,' he moaned. ‘I am not to do this thing; the Brothers have beaten me for it many a time. It was you, woman, who did it. Not me. I shall tell them that was so. There was no help for it. It was not my fault.'

‘Why tell them anything?' I snapped. His misery was awful to see.

‘God has seen me. I must atone, and do penance.' He turned away again, and this time left the hut.

With infinite care, I raised myself off the pot, and crept back to the bed. The chamber smelled now of human detritus and I spent some moments in thought. How seriously men took their organs of generation, attaching so many prohibitions and shamefulness to it. And what a price women paid for these attitudes. The monk truly did blame me for his weakness. Merely by making my body apparent to him, I had made him lose control. A small event, surely? Smaller and briefer than my pissing had been, in all likelihood. Would his God punish him for it? Had he weakened his immortal soul by it? Had it outweighed his kindness to me and the gentleness of his character? How trivial a thing it was, and yet it had been somehow terrible.

There was something pushing at the back of my mind, connected to what had just happened. With a frown I searched for it, until it came clear. This was what Cuthman had done, or so I believed, out on the moor with his sheep, and as a result we were now on this quest. Cuthman had cursed himself for it, in some way I didn't fully know. It was a sin which men alone comprehended, and for which they needed to atone so fiercely that the atonement could wreck their lives.

It seemed important to me to hold onto this piece of wisdom. It made me feel powerful and I was grateful to the monk for his indulgence, which seemed now to have been most extraordinary. As if I had needed to witness what he did, before my own understanding could dawn.

Cuthman came back then, and I could see that he too had learned something that morning. Two monks were with him, and they cast strange glances at him as they spoke between themselves, as if he were something amazing. The lad himself half smiled as he came to me and gave a brief apology for his long neglect of me.

‘We'll be going now,' he said, and gathered me into his arms without further debate. ‘Headed east, as before.'

He settled me into the cart, a folded sack behind me and the alms tucked closely by my side I lifted my legs until my knees bent comfortably and my feet would lie snugly in the pointed front, as I always did. Hands in my lap, and head held high, I tried to act as if only the best of women find themselves transported in this way. I think something about Cuthman's new demeanour influenced me. He seemed so much more sure of himself from that morning onwards, a man with a purpose, rather than a frightened boy fleeing from a hopeless poverty.

The monks stepped back as we passed, and one said loudly, ‘God be with ye, young Cuthman.'

‘And may thy faith blossom and bear fruit,' said the other. Their faces were solemn, as if in the presence of an important personage. I clamped my lips tight together to prevent myself from questioning the boy before we were alone on the road. Then I burst out, like a pent-up spring, the words gushing from me, ‘Tell me, son, and quick. Why do they treat you so reverent and serious? What have you been telling them?'

He spoke slowly, as if half in a dream, behind me. ‘They asked about the sheep, so I told the whole thing about the angel and the circle. And other things, just a little. How God did speak on the moors, a few times, telling how I should do this cart. They wanted to know how I lived, as a little chap. Very excited, they were. Said I was a holy man.'

‘Man!' I scoffed, uneasily. ‘Boy you be, for all your strong arms.'

‘And my Da, too.' His voice drifted away.

‘You never said anything about that? How you put the curse on your father? I ordered you not to do that.'

‘I did, though. They said that was a test from God.'

‘And how did they arrive at that idea?'

‘I did a bad thing, like Saint Peter. It makes me a plain mortal, see. But now I be stronger for it. And God listens to me now. I have been tempered. The monk said that.'

‘Tempered,' I laughed. The word meant little to me, but I disliked the sound of it, all the same.

We had left the city of Exeter behind us, unvisited, skirting it to the north, since the river mouth we glimpsed far to the south would have been impossible to cross. Now the land was all folded hills, and sudden sweeps of country running from one hillside to another. The road itself was wide and well-built, and I remarked on it.

‘Tis Roman,' said Cuthman. ‘The monks said so. But we'll be leaving it soon, to keep by the coast. It'll be warmer, then, and the way lies due east.'

And so the day went by, with me secretly picking at the loaves beside me, and trying to think about what I was doing, out in the cold world with only a foolish lad to mind me. When we stopped for a rest, Cuthman was annoyed at how much of the food I had taken. I chided him, saying, ‘And him so worried we'd live too easy for a sennight, with such quantities of food about us. I did thee the favour of lessening such troubles.'

He finished the first loaf, and cut himself a slab of pork, walking up and down as he ate, and swinging his aching arms above his head, first one, then the other. I almost expected him to start turning head over heels like a little child. He seemed light and changeable like a faery lad, angry one moment and jumping over the tree roots and brambles the next.

The weather had been poor all day, with a chill wind and flurries of stinging rain hitting me full in the face. Cuthman had intended us to continue until dark fell, after our meal, but the clouds rolled over us, heavy and black and he decided we should stop where we were, with the shelter of a thick holly tree to tempt us.

He ran about, gathering sticks and leaves, as on our first night, and fashioned a closed shelter, making a wall facing the holly. Then he steadily pushed me into the sharp leaves, back and down until I was under the lowest branches, with the spikes of dead holly leaves beneath me. ‘Ow!' I squealed, like a young girl. ‘This won't do. I'll be all prickled.'

Cuthman laughed, merry again, despite the hard cold rain lashing down on his back, as he crouched half in, half out of the shelter. Then he knelt upright, his head knocking the holly boughs, and spread out his hands. Slowly, he brought them down to the carpet of vicious spikes, and as I watched, a white beam of light came from his fingers and spread like a mist over the leaves. Immediately, all the prickling stopped. ‘There!' he said, ‘Tis soft for thee now.' And a look of satisfaction filled his face.

The day had been too much for me altogether. Without another word or thought, I eased my back into a pocket of dry ground, patted the miraculous blanket of mist once, just to be sure, and closed my eyes to sleep.

I awoke with a dark mood on me, after a dream where a great crowd stood in a circle around me, laughing and mocking, while Cuthman with a halo like Christ himself stood by and let them. He even waved at me, as if I were his own creature, something he had made for their entertainment.

The weather was as chill as ever, but the rain had stopped. We crawled from our shelter, and ate some more of the food which Cuthman had kept carefully wrapped and covered in the cart, so that wolves or foxes would not steal it. I enfolded myself snugly in my woollen shawl, prepared for a long day out in the cold, and Cuthman fastened his hood securely, so it would not blow back as he pushed me along. Then we rejoined the road and faced east once more.

We passed two burial grounds during the day, the barrows high and fearful in their dark significance. Cuthman talked more than before, passing on the knowledge he had received in those hours spent with the monks. It seemed they had told him the history of Dumnonia, Wessex and the Welsh, nothing of it known to him before. They told him of the Romans and the great temples and villas we would see as we journeyed, though many in such ruins as to leave mere marks on the ground, these four hundred years after the Romans departed our land. There had been fierce battles ever since that time, the latest one only five years before, and renewed warfare expected at any time.

They had told him about saints travelling the world, in ships and on foot. Men who burned with such love of Jesus that they convinced whole cities and tribes of the truth of the Christian doctrine. And other tales, which Cuthman had found less compelling, about arguments between learned men on the details of the Gospels. There had been a great gathering in Deira, nearly two hundred years before, where the decision on how to set the date of Easter had been made. The lad laughed as he told me this.

‘Seems that they all got highly enraged over it, shouting and speechifying. It mazed me, to think it could be important.'

‘Could be that God really cares,' I responded. ‘Easter is a big festival.'

‘They talked of how Dumnonia was a strong Christian area, with the faithful fighting for God against the invaders. Made me feel proper proud.'

‘No wonder you spent so long with them, making you feel so good,' I remarked, a little tartly. He ignored my tone and chattered on, repeating all kinds of bits and pieces, much of it only half-understood by him and of little meaning to me. At least it was clear that the monks had been encouraging of our pilgrimage, and ready to take us seriously, which I found a surprise. Hadn't they laughed when they first caught sight of us? I said a little of this to Cuthman.

‘Tis you as did it,' he mumbled, so I could barely hear him.

‘What?'

‘Pushing this cart with you in it. Seems they have a seer, who foretold that we'd be coming past. Said we're destined for something. They wouldn't say exactly what.'

I said nothing to that, seized as I was by a great fear. Destiny was not a thing to seek. I wished I'd kept silent about the trick with the sheep. The wind blew even colder in my face and I closed my eyes. I no longer wanted to look ahead and see where we might be going.

The motion of the cart, slow and jerky, as Cuthman placed his strides between the handles, shorter than he would normally step out, lulled me into a doze, and I huddled as low as I could, wishing he'd thought to put a roof on top to keep the weather out. The afternoon was well advanced when he took a side road, heading for a thick patch of woodland some distance away, where I presumed he intended us to stop the night. I roused myself a little, holding onto the cart sides as we bounced over some rough ground. It seemed as if I was dreaming when I saw a strange building, tucked secretly between the trees, with a wisp of white smoke coming from the roof hole.

It came closer, and I blinked and shook my head, unable to credit what I saw. A house, big enough to hold a man and some sticks of furniture, built exactly the same as the toy I had made from straws, those many years ago.

‘Tis magic!' I said, low and fearful. ‘It can't be real. That be the little house I made the day thee was christened. You wouldn't remember it.'

‘I do, though.' came his voice behind me. ‘Wynn called it the faery house. She and I played with it, and I saw faeries inside. Might be some inside this one.' He sounded incurious, resigned to whatever might befall. Exhausted from pushing the cart so far, I concluded with a flicker of concern.

The light was fading, and the house was in deep shadow. In place of straws, the walls were of neatly-cut logs, set tight against each other, the roof of woven thatch, lashed firmly in place with hemp. Cuthman released his hold on the barrow, ducked out of the straps, and touched a finger to his lips. Then he walked cautiously to the low doorway, where the door stood open. and peered inside the little house. After a moment's hesitation, he went inside. I waited with the impatience that was becoming a familiar mood. I could only abide my helpless state when Cuthman was with me. Alone, I was not only frustrated, but afraid. What if he never came back for me?

Much to my relief, he appeared again only moments later, with someone alongside him. With my increasingly imperfect sight, I could not make out any features, but it seemed to be an old man, with white beard and ragged clothes. At the sight of me, he threw his hands in the air and laughed. Then he performed a little caper and smacked his palms against his sides. A madman, I decided, with some nervousness. Cuthman seemed to be thinking the same thing.