The Girl Green as Elderflower (18 page)

Clare slumped more comfortably in the old wooden armchair, and looked absently at an advertisement for some feminine drink or cigarette. In a long vista of sun-shot woodland the backs of two evidently beautiful young people could be seen receding.

He was in the ride leading through Lady Munby’s woods. The Alsatian from the farm had brought him there, but the dog had disappeared. He stood irresolute, smelling the drunkenness of a flowering beanfield from nearby.

He was further on in the wood, where the masses of bluebells had lost their earlier darkness and faded to the colour of old denim. Gathering them he saw a small fairhaired girl, and said: ‘Amabel.’ But the child only smiled, with green-brown leaf-shaped eyes, and was suddenly no longer there.

At another point in the ride he saw a fairhaired woman. She turned, and he realized that it was Alicia in a headscarf. She smiled at him, vaguely, and passed, going to meet someone else.

He was standing in the heavy scent of an elder bush when he saw the back of a girl with long straight hair of elder-cream. As she, like Alicia, turned, he cried out: ‘Mirabel!’

Her eyes had not changed, but were still the green of leeks.

‘
E
,’ she said. ‘Kulisapini,
ambaesa bu ku?
’

‘
Ki
!’ he exclaimed. ‘
Ku nukwali biga
?’ He was amazed that she understood the language.

In the same tongue she replied: ‘Yes, I speak it. I also am of Saint Martin’s Land.’

He was about to approach her, when the door banged, and he woke.

‘So this,’ said Alicia, ‘is how you work for Mr Partridge. I hope he doesn’t pay very well.’

‘He pays in kind,’ Clare said, ‘and I’m not thirsty.’ His eyes and mind, refocusing after sleep, made of the sylvan advertisement something which he had noted to tell her. ‘Lissa, I saw a marvellous thing today at the farmhouse. Eight of their white doves were going crazy over the big elder. Ice-white against yellowish-white. “They’re grazing on the bloom,” Roger said.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Alicia. ‘Constable had a fondness for elder, like you. He wrote somewhere: “It is a favourite of mine and always was—but ’tis melancholy.”’

‘A drink?’ he said, going behind the bar, and without waiting for an answer poured two gins. ‘By the way, Lissa, I’ve got a job.’

‘Oh, Crispin,’ she said, ‘I’m so glad. What is it?’

‘Academic,’ he said, slicing a lemon. ‘Failed men of action teach. I can come and see you on that little train that passes the house Malkin haunted. At least, it’s a barn now, but I’m sure it was the manor house.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ Alicia said. ‘What is Malkin?’

‘A twelfth-century sprite,’ Clare said. ‘She once came through on your ouija board. By the way, I think I understand that now. There used to be a horse called Clever Hans which could answer simple questions in arithmetic, by stamping. Not even the owner knew how it was done, but it seems that Hans somehow got messages from the body-tensions of the owner, so he sensed when he was getting warm, and when he was spot-on. I think Amabel works like that. She knew, without knowing, what I expected to see, and wrote it.’

‘Unnerving child, as you said,’ remarked Alicia. ‘But normal.’

Tonic poured fizzing and clinking around the ice. ‘A friend of mine thinks Jim-Jacques might go back to being a priest.’

Alicia, reflecting, said: ‘That pleases me, somehow. It’s my tidy mind, I suppose, essentially Protestant, which wants things in their right place. Jim-Jacques never seemed to me to be anything else but a priest. Beautiful as he is, to one of my years.’

She raised her glass, and Clare chinked his own against it. She looked at him surprised, and he noticed in her eyes, the colour of fine dry sherry, a few flecks of green.

‘What is the toast?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘A general toast. To the place. To seely Suffolk.’

The stories of the sprite of Dagworth, the wild man of Orford and the green children of Woolpit are reported as recent history in the
Chronicon Anglicanum
of Ralph of Coggeshall (ed. Joseph Stevenson, London, 1875). The story of the green children is also told, with slight additions, by William of Newburgh in his
Historia Rerum Anglicarum
(ed. Hans Claude Hamilton, London, 1856). From William too I have taken the account of the Jews of King’s Lynn.

The stories of the Antipodes and their land, and of the Catalan father’s curse, are from Gervase of Tilbury’s
Otia Imperialia
(ed. Felix Liebrecht, Hanover, 1856). Various other hares were started by Liebrecht’s copious notes and quotations.

The story of the merman Nicholas Pipe is from Walter Map’s
De Nugis Curialium
(ed. Thomas Wright, London, 1850). ‘Annis and the Merman’ is a free translation of the Danish ballad ‘Agnete og Havmanden’, included in Ernst Frandsen’s collection
Danske Folkeviser
(Copenhagen, 1966). The Irish-Latin hymn in honour of Saint Martin, by Oengus, is taken from William Beare’s
Latin Verse and European Song
(London, 1957), and the aspersions on Saint Martin’s character can be read in
Britannia After The Romans
, published anonymously in two volumes (London, 1836 and 1841) by the Hon. Algernon Herbert. The source of the charm against Old Shuck I have been unable to rediscover, but am most grateful to Victoria Hyde for sending it to me.

The novel had an uncommonly long gestation. It has been putting itself together in my head, in intervals between other literary and academic activities, since 1966. As it is the first book I have written for a number of years, I take this opportunity of thanking the Arts Council of Great Britain for assistance received in 1969.

R.S.

Concerning a fantastic sprite

In the time of King Richard, at Dagworth in Suffolk, in the house of Master Osbern Bradwell, a fantastic sprite repeatedly and for a considerable time appeared, speaking with the family of the aforesaid soldier, mimicking in sound the voice of a child one year old, and she called herself Malkin. She asserted that her mother lived with her brother in a neighbouring house, and said that she was frequently scolded by them because, forsaking them, she chose to speak with mankind. She both spoke and acted in a way wonderfully laughable, often uncovering the hidden deeds of others. At first the soldier’s wife and the whole household were much frightened by her speeches, but being afterwards accustomed to her ridiculous words and acts, they spoke confidently and familiarly with her, inquiring of her many things. She spoke English in the dialect of that region, and now and then Latin, and she held forth upon the Scriptures with the soldier’s chaplain, as he has often truthfully affirmed to us. She could be heard and felt, but not in the least way seen, except that once, by a certain chambermaid, she was seen in the aspect of a very small child, dressed in a white tunic, the girl having previously much beseeched and adjured her to make herself visible. To which petition she would in no wise consent, until the girl swore by the Lord that she would neither touch her nor hold her. She avowed that she was born at Lavenham, and that when her mother took her into a field, where she was harvesting with the others, and left her alone in a part of the field, she was seized by a certain other woman and taken away, and had now remained with her for seven years. And she said that after another seven years she would return to her former cohabitation with mankind. She said that she and the others made use of a cap which rendered them invisible. She frequently demanded food and drink of the servitors, which, when it had been placed upon a certain chest, was discovered no more.

Ralph of Coggeshall (fl. A.D. 1187–1218):
Chronicon Anglicanum

Concerning a wild man caught in the sea

In the times of King Henry the Second, when Bartholomew Glanville was constable of Orford Castle, it happened that some fishermen of that place fishing in the sea captured among their nets a wild man; who being brought before the aforesaid constable out of wonder, was naked in every part and pretended to the human form in all members. He had, moreover, hairs, but they seemed on the upper surface as if plucked and cast away; his beard was truly abundant and like feathers; and about his chest he was very hairy and shaggy. For a very long time the aforesaid constable had him guarded by day and by night, lest he should approach the sea. What was put before him he ate avidly. Fish, indeed, he ate raw as well as cooked, but the raw ones he squeezed strongly between his hands until the moisture was all consumed, and then he ate them. He would utter no speech, or rather could not, even though hung by the feet and often most horribly tortured. Although brought to the church, he showed not the least sign of veneration or of any faith, either by genuflexion or by bowing of the head, however often he perceived the sacred things. At sundown he always hastily sought his bed, lying there until sunrise. It happened that they once led him to the haven, and loosed him into the sea, having first placed before him very strong nets in a triple line. Soon seeking the depths of the sea, and penetrating all the nets, he emerged again and again from the bottom of the sea, and for a long time watched the watchers on the shore, often submerging, and a little afterwards emerging, as if scoffing at the onlookers because he had escaped their nets. And when he had long disported himself in the sea in this way, and all hope of his return had been cast aside, of his own free will he returned to them on the sea’s billows, swimming, and once more remained with them for two months. But as he was afterwards more negligently guarded, and was now held in aversion, he fled away secretly to the sea, and was nowhere seen again. As to whether this was a mortal man, or some fish pretending human shape, or was a malign spirit hiding in the body of a drowned man, as can be read of in the life of blessed Ouen, it is not possible to be precise; the more so because so many wonderful things of this kind are told by so many to whom they have happened.

Ralph of Coggeshall

Concerning a boy and girl emerging from the earth

Another also wondrous thing, not unlike the foregoing, happened in Suffolk at St Mary Woolpit. A certain boy was discovered with his sister by the inhabitants of that place, lying by the edge of a pit which exists there, who had the same form in all members as the rest of mankind, but in the colour of their skins differed from all mortals of our habitable world. For the whole surface of their skins was tinged with a green colour. Nobody could understand their speech. Being accordingly brought out of wonder to the house of Master Richard Calne, a soldier, at Wikes, they wept inconsolably. Bread and other food was brought to them, but they would eat no victuals which were placed before them, even while tormented for a long time by the greatest pangs of hunger, because all food of that kind they believed to be inedible, as the girl afterwards avowed. At length, when some beans newly broken off with their stalks were brought into the house, they made signs with the greatest avidity that those beans should be given to them. Which being brought to them, they opened the stalks in place of the bean-pods, thinking the beans to be contained in the hollow of the stalks. This some of those standing by noticed, and opened the pods and showed the naked beans, which being shown they ate with great joy, for a long time touching no other food at all. The boy, however, always as it were oppressed by languor, after a short time died. But the girl, enjoying continual good health, and become used to any kind of food, entirely lost that leek-green colour, and gradually recovered a sanguine habit of the whole body. She afterwards being regenerated by the holy bath of baptism, and remaining for many years in the service of the aforesaid soldier (as from the soldier and his household we frequently heard), showed herself very lascivious and wanton. Questioned frequently concerning the men of her region, she averred that all dwellers and things in that region were tinged with a green colour, and that they perceived no sun, but enjoyed a certain brightness such as happens after sunset. Questioned further by what means she had come into this land with the aforesaid boy, she replied that because they were following some cattle, they came into a cave. Having entered which, they heard a certain delectable sound of bells; caught up by the sweetness of which sound, they walked for a long time wandering through the cavern, until they came to the exit of it. Whence emerging, as if stunned by the too great brightness of the sun and unaccustomed temperature of the air, they lay long at the edge of the grotto. And when they were terrified by the agitation of those who came upon them, they wished to flee, but could in no wise discover the entrance of the cave, before they were seized by those arrivals.

Ralph of Coggeshall

Concerning the green children

Nor does it seem proper to pass over a prodigy unheard of by generations which is known to have happened in England under King Stephen. And indeed I have hesitated long over this matter, which was related by many; and the thing seemed to me either of no or of concealed reason, ridiculous to repose faith in; until so overwhelmed by the weight of so many and such witnesses as to be compelled to believe and marvel at what I cannot approach or explain by any forces of the intellect. There is a village in East Anglia four or five miles distant, it is said, from the noble monastery of the blessed king and martyr Edmund. Near which village are seen certain very ancient pits, which are called in the English tongue
Wlfpittes
, that is, the pits of the wolves, and bestow their name upon the village which they adjoin. Out of those pits at the time of the harvest, the reapers being busy about the gathering of the fruits throughout the fields, there emerged two children, male and female, green in the whole body and of strange hue, clad in raiment of unknown material. And when they were wandering stunned through the field, they were seized by the reapers and led into the village, and with many tears at the sight of so much which was novel, for several days were tried with offered food. When they were almost dead with fasting, nor attended to any of the foods which were offered to them, by chance some beans happened to be brought from the field; which immediately seizing, they sought the lentil itself in the stalks, and finding nothing in the hollow of the stalks, wept bitterly. Then certain of those who were present offered them the legume plucked out of the shells; which immediately accepting, they ate freely. They were nourished by this food for several months, until they knew the use of bread. Thereupon, little by little changing their own colour, through the prevailing nature of our foods, and rendered like us, they also learned the use of our language. And it seemed to the wise that they should receive the sacrament of holy baptism, which indeed was done. But the boy, who seemed to be the younger, living a short time after the baptism, was removed by premature death; his sister, however, remaining safe and sound, nor differing in much from the women of our kind. Indeed, she afterwards took a husband at Lynn, it is said, and a few years ago was said to be still living. When they had the use of our tongue, being asked who and whence they were, they are stated to have replied: ‘We are people of the land of Saint Martin, who undoubtedly is held in especial veneration in the land of our birth.’ Subsequently asked where that land might be, and by what means they had come from thence, they said: ‘We know neither. This much we remember: that when one day we were grazing our father’s cattle in a field, we heard a certain great sound, as we are now accustomed to hear at St Edmunds, when they are said to sound the tocsin. And when we heard that sound which we wondered at in our souls, suddenly, as if fallen into some departure of the mind, we found ourselves among you in the field where you were reaping.’ Asked whether in that place there was belief in Christ, or whether the sun rose, they said that land to be Christian and to have churches. ‘But the sun,’ they said, ‘does not rise in our native places; its rays illumine our land very slightly, restricted to a measure of that brightness which among you either precedes the sun in the east or follows it in the west. Moreover, a certain lighted land is seen not far from our land, the two being divided by a very broad stream.’ These and many other things, long to unravel, they are reported curiously to have replied to those inquiring, and let what conclusions that can be drawn concerning these matters. I myself am not ashamed to have set forth the prodigious and marvellous event.