The View From the Cart (34 page)

‘It is beautiful,' I murmured, at last. As I spoke, a sense of power came over me. I felt the soles of my feet tingling with the life beneath the grass, and my fingers had fine gossamer threads linking me to all the living creatures in the forest and skies around me. I was a tiny stitch in a great cloth that was all of creation, a crossing point of the warp and weft that was our fate and destiny. In that moment, everything came together in me and I was an essential part of the whole.

‘You feel it,' said the man, with a nod. ‘You have become one of us.'

A momentary wild fear gripped me. I could not become one of these pagans. Cuthman would not permit it. He would require me to serve him and his God, going amongst the people and telling them of the Gospels and the love of Christ. I would be torn into pieces between these faiths and their impossibly different practices.

Woven in with my fear for myself was a deeper dread for the Stone and everything it represented. Erected on a broad field, bordered by the sea on one side and the pathway between the dwelling huts and the forest on the other, it was the natural centre of the village. Cuthman's knoll was a distance away, higher, certainly, but detached. The people would have to divert their footsteps to visit it, climb the rising ground, and enter the new church which I had no doubt would soon be built. As if in a bright shaft of sunlight, I witnessed the difference that Cuthman intended to bring to these lives. And I put my hand out to the stone, in a mixture of protectiveness and reverence.

The man and I stood a little longer, in silence, before moving away in unison. He took me to the seashore, as if knowing how much I had wanted and feared to approach it. Away from the wharf a little, there were wooden posts knocked into the ground, disappearing into the lapping water, dark rags of slimy weed caught around them. Small stones covered the stretch between the field edge and the water, difficult to walk on. Scattered amongst them were shells and clumps of strange vegetation, and I bent to collect pretty shells as we approached the water. Soon my hands were full and I was rummaging for a pouch in my skirts to hold some. The man laughed at me.

‘You will quickly tire of them,' he said. ‘And if you do not, then there will always be more for you here.'

‘But - ,' I began to protest.

‘I know,' he nodded. ‘We were all the same, when we first came here. We all have strings of shells, and sea wrack hanging from our walls. There is a mystery to them, coming as they do from the depths of the ocean.'

‘How long have you been here?' It was a question I should have asked the previous night. ‘You speak as if you are newly come.'

‘The first of us found this haven six summers ago. We broke away from the people of the Lance, when the numbers grew and there were divisions amongst us. This land is densely settled, as you may have observed on your journey.'

I shook my head. ‘We came along the high ridge, and saw nothing but rivers and a great earthen fortress on a hilltop. Perhaps some smoke rising, along the southern shore.'

‘Well, you will discover them. The people of the Stor bring goods here for trade, and many others will soon begin to do so. The hill fort is Chancton, a place of great antiquity. Fippa has a fondness for it at the summer solstice.'

I turned my attention again to the sea, standing on the very brink. The moving water seemed alive to me, rippling to and fro, rhythmic and powerful. ‘It seems closer than it did last evening,' I remarked, ready to believe my own senses were at fault.

‘Have you no knowledge of the tides?' he asked, his voice raised as if speaking to a simpleton. I shook my head warily.

‘The waters rise and fall, in their own rhythm, coming in as far as the line - see? - where the grass ends. And it goes out again, down to that last post - ‘ He pointed to a timber barely a hand's breadth above the water, twenty or thirty paces from where we stood. I was lost in wonderment, and barely able to believe what he told me.

‘It will be at its lowest at sunset tonight, or a little earlier. We can come and measure it then, so that you can understand,' he said. ‘Each day, it is at a different time. We are trying to make charts of it, but no-one is sure of the way it should be done. In winter it changes. Sometimes the tides run mad and come far beyond the grass for a while. Have you tasted the water yet?' He smiled with a secret knowledge, knowing that I had not.

I bent and cupped some water into my hand, barely touching it to my lips. It was cold, and I recognised the smell as being the same as that of the air around us - a tang that I could put no words to. As it reached my tongue, the strangeness made me spit. It was like blood or tears, mixed with the sharpness of wild garlic and something I had never known before.

‘Salt,' said the man. ‘Greatly prized, I understand, by the Romans in their time. You will soon like it. We gather bowls of the water, and leave them in the sun. Soon white crystals form, which we put with our food, for extra zest. Did you not notice it in your supper last night?'

I shrugged. The food had been strange, it was true, but I have been more concerned with the people than their cooking, at the time.

‘Now it is noon,' he announced, abruptly. ‘We must go.'

He walked a little way with me, back towards the huts, and then veered off to the north, nodding for me to continue alone. ‘I am Frith,' he told me, as he went, giving me no chance to reply. Well, I thought, he will know my name by now. Or else, like everyone we met, he would think of me as Cuthman's mother, with no need of a given name of my own.

Cuthman had come down from the forest when I reached the Hall, but paid me little attention. A light shone in his eye, and I was pleased that he said little. The people brought us bread and meat, and some early salad leaves, and we ate heartily. I was uneasy at their bounty.

‘Can we not earn this food in some way?' I asked a woman close by. ‘There is much I can do.' I spoke proudly, trusting my new back to sustain me through baking or weaving, or whatever task I might be given.

‘Mother!' Cuthman spoke sternly, hearing my words. ‘Are we not here to bring salvation to these people? What greater way can there be to earn the bread we eat?'

Impatient for once, I swung round to face him. ‘And can you be sure you can persuade the people to think as you do?' I challenged him. ‘Perhaps salvation is more than they are looking for.'

‘You understand nothing,' he growled at me. ‘I am here to do the work of my life, and you are here to aid me in that.'

‘Maybe so,' I mumbled. ‘Maybe so, and maybe not.' My son chose not to hear me, but when I turned back to my meat I found myself looking into the wide knowing face of Fippa, staring at me with a grin of pure amusement.

Lammas was almost upon us, and the leaves became a little dusty, while the flowerheads turned to seeds and the fruits ripened. The living became even easier and there were long afternoons when the sun was hot, and we sat in the shade telling stories and carding the new fleece. Frith and I had grown closer, not merely exchanging stories of our past lives, but, to my astonishment, delighting in the discovery that we were much less old than we had believed ourselves to be. Our bodies met and rocked together, my skin softening and blooming under his touch. Because of Cuthman, I had insisted we be discreet in our couplings, but it was plain that many of the villagers had seen the truth.

Fippa came to me one morning, as I sat with Frith, sharpening stakes for the new fence around the compound. She directed all her attention at me, ignoring my man entirely, squatting down in front of me, and taking a handful of woodchips to toy with as she spoke.

‘Woman,' she began, ‘there is something irregular in your doings.' She spoke slowly, in the tone of authority that came naturally to her. From such a small and ugly woman, it should have been comical, but something in her dark eyes made sure that I would listen seriously. I could never forget that I had seen her face in the hermit's pool, nor shake off the notion that she had some link with my Wynn, which had yet to be revealed.

I gave no reply to her accusation. It never even entered my head to make denials to her. Neither of us needed to look at Frith to know that he was the subject under scrutiny.

‘We are past the usual season for handfasting,' she continued. ‘And yet there is nothing to prevent it taking place now. Indeed my own mam used to favour Lammas over Midsummer.' She scratched idle markings on the ground with her makeshift tool before glancing at me sideways, showing her black teeth in a crooked grin. ‘And would you have your child born without the proper processes?'

‘Child?' A jolt flared through me, starting deep within and filling me down to my toes and fingertips. A thrill of magic and holiness and the most proud delight, and no trace of the fear that would have frozen me only a few months before. I felt warmth on my hand, and looked down to see Frith's fingers curling into my palm. I gripped him tight, and gazed into his face. Red cheeks, silver-flecked beard, and grey eyes narrowed from staring into the sea and sky. What had we done together, without thinking or knowing a whisper about it?

‘I am to have a child?' I murmured, turning back to Fippa. A tremor of fear swept through me, then, and guilt that I had perhaps done a wrong thing. The images of Wynn and Cuthman as babies came to me full and clear as if I relived those moorland days. The warm proud magic of first motherhood, after Wynn was born, mixed with the dread that I would not be allowed to do it again. I could surely not deserve such grace.

‘A little before Beltane,' Fippa nodded. ‘Do you not feel it?'

‘I shook my head, wishing I could say I had known already. Such was Fippa's power that I had no doubt that she was right.

‘And you will be handfasted with Frith? At the next full moon?'

I sighed, long and deep. The image of my full-grown son rose before me, like an angry angel, accusing and betrayed. How could I do this to him? I could not enter into a heathen ceremony of marriage, when I had been wedded to his father by a Christian priest, and lived as a Christian all my life.

‘No,' I said. ‘I must wait for the church to be built, and be married there. I am a Christian.'

‘But Frith is not,' Fippa snapped back. ‘And the growing of a church will take a great deal longer than the growing of a child.'

I shook my buzzing head. ‘Then I will wait,' I said again. I could not worry about the status or future of a child I had known nothing of, a few moments earlier.

‘Do not break our friendship,' she warned me, her voice low and harsh. Her lips drew back from the broken back teeth, in a strange grimace. ‘Together we can be contented and strong. You are welcome here, so long as you follow our ways. We have been pleased to see Frith made happy again. There is much to lose.'

I said nothing, though she expected something from me. At last, she threw down the chips of wood, so they fell into a design of their own accord. It was the rune of the grave, quite clearly. The long stem, with the same crooked branch on either side. The lines my grandmother had taught me, those that went with this rune, came into my head. ‘Riches fade, joys pass away, friendships end.' Fippa was killing my love for Frith. I took the rune as a threat, more than a prediction. A challenge to me to defy her power. I stared at her, full of fear and doubt and anger. With a weird cackle, she got to her feet. A great crow she had tamed as a chick flapped over to her from a low branch close by, and settled on her shoulder. I shuddered. I had not seen it do this before, and had thought little of her having such a companion. Now I saw the meaning of it and understood how much trouble there was yet ahead of me.

When she had gone, Frith put his arm around my shoulder. He was trembling. ‘What have we done?' he said.

‘We have taken pleasure in each other,' I replied. ‘And nature has done the rest. We should be proud, not quivering like disobedient children. She took great pains to strike fear into us.' I was still bewildered by what had taken place. I had believed Fippa to be a force for goodness, a woman who would rejoice at any new life. Instead, she had seemed intent on punishment and threat.

‘She did not expect defiance,' he explained. ‘She has known little of it from these people.'

‘And you - what are you thinking now?' It seemed that everything had changed between us. He had become weak in my eyes, merely because he had remained silent throughout the encounter with Fippa.

‘I would be honoured if you would be handfasted with me,' he said gravely. ‘And I would feel the most favoured man on earth to have a child of my own, after so many years.'

‘I cannot give any undertakings,' I told him, sadly. His hand still lay in mine, and when I looked at him, I almost felt the same eagerness for the sensations his body could give me. Almost, but not quite. ‘Something has been spoiled,' I said.

He nodded. ‘It has been too brief,' he whispered.

‘Is it finished then?' He had given in much more easily and quickly than I could grasp. For me, there were still possibilities for us. Frith was alive and in good health. He did not cough, his bones were not staring out from his sides. Life had been proven by the seed taking root within me, and life brought hope with it, by its very nature.

‘No, no.' He spoke in a voice thick with distress and denial, but I had no sense that he felt it was within his power to control the outcome of our story. ‘We have just begun.' He squeezed my hand. ‘If only you will help me, and do all you can to placate Fippa.'

But I turned away from him, and walked up the knoll to the place where my son now had a hut of his own.

When I got there, Cuthman was nowhere to be seen. The foundation trench was finished by then, a four-sided scar on the hilltop, the soil banked up on the outside, all the way around, making it visible from some distance away. It had been finished for a week or more, and I was not sure what he intended to do next. Two days earlier, he had come down to the dining hall at sunset, sitting with Garth and Welf, Fippa's sons, but saying little to them. It had surprised me at first, until I dismissed it as no more than a chance seating arrangement. There had not been space next to me, with Frith so attentive, and there had been a coolness between Cuthman and me for a few days.