The View From the Cart (33 page)

Cuthman made no response, and I could not see the source of the voice. Though I knew well enough who it was. I could also smell fresh bread and smoked meat.

‘We have no fear of what you may bring here,' she went on, with some sternness. ‘We treat our visitors well, and have no reason to treat you differently. Come away, and eat with us. We can find you better beds than this chill ground, if that would please you.'

I was on my feet in a flash. I could see her now, standing down the slope a little way, her outline against the deep blue sky like that of a hobgoblin. Cuthman made no move, but he spoke in a suspicious growl.

‘I shall build my church on this hill,' he said. ‘I make no secret of it.'

‘Build, and welcome!' laughed the woman. ‘I told you - we fear nothing that you might bring here.'

So we followed her, coming to a hall under a thatch roof. A fire was burning outside, and women were preparing food all around us. Some were already eating, all were talking and drinking. The walls were decorated with fetishes made from feathers and small stones, carved wood and bones. Torches flickered and I could see little through the smoke. Although we were given curious looks from many, there was no hostility towards us, and no abating of the general good cheer.

‘Fippa!' called one man, with a generous black beard. ‘Bring your friends here.' He waved at a space on the bench beside him, and grasped at a loaf close by. Proferring it, he enticed us to him. ‘And who might ye be?' he asked us, in a shouting fashion.

The woman answered for us. ‘The lad is here to build us a church, and he brings his mother with him. He believes, no doubt, that he can offer us salvation from our sins.'

The man roared with laughter. ‘Another one, is it!' he cried. ‘They come at us from all sides, Fippa. Are you not alarmed?'

The woman shrugged and spread her horny hands wide. ‘What should I fear?' she said. ‘I know what I know. ‘Twill take a better man than this to make me say white is black. Could be that he will soon join our ways, when he knows us better.'

‘Nay,' I said, mumbling through the mouthful of bread. ‘Never think that. My son will not deviate from his faith.'

‘So be it, then,' said Fippa. ‘And you, good dame? Where will you worship?'

‘We are from a Christian land,' I said. ‘In the west, we have kept the faith alive since Roman times.'

‘Indeed?' She turned away, snatching at a passing girl's arm, to take a piece of steaming bacon from her. She seemed to forget us, as she took a hearty bite, the damaged teeth seemingly quite well able to serve their purpose yet.

It astonished me that she seemed to have no sense of Cuthman's power. Even the woodland witch who had taken my son for the Jack in the Green had foreknowledge of his arrival. Was this woman playing some deep game, pretending a casual lack of interest that was far from her real feelings? I believed she was. It was impossible, to my thinking, that she could fail to know what lay ahead. She was acting out a drama, where Cuthman was diminished and weakened by her refusal to see him as important.

‘What is the name of this place?' Cuthman asked, then. ‘It is well to know, since I am to spend my life here.'

‘We are the Steyn ingas,' said the man beside us. ‘We came from the Lance ingas who have settled a little south of here. There are many groups close by. But we have the great stone, the steyn which protects us and brings us such bounty from land and sea.' He looked at us, with great earnestness. ‘Steyning, is this place's name. We are the people of the Stone.'

The events which befell me the following day set the pattern for the coming months and years, although I could not know it at the time. Steyning was so entirely different from the moors I had known all my life, that I felt I must be in faeryland. The sea, slapping endlessly against the wooden wharves and the reedy beds, was like a friendly creature in the summer sunshine. A row of dwellings housed the traders who sent goods on ships and kept control of the comings and goings. At that time, there was perhaps one ship each week, sailing from France or around the coast from London. In the month following our arrival, I watched bales of wool being loaded, in exchange for ironwork and pottery. The atmosphere was of a newly-founded settlement, learning new ways, finding new skills. The forest was teeming with swine and deer, which provided meat for the taking. Groups of men with spears hunted regularly and the people rejoiced at the life they had.

That first day brought deeper joy than I could have imagined. As I woke I was struck by the comfort of the feather bed I had been given by the village people, and was in no hurry to rise. Stretching a little, sinking into the feathers, I waited for the pangs which always struck through my back and legs when I made my first movements of the day. Nothing happened. Cautiously, I twisted a little, rolling from back to side, pushing with one elbow. In normal times, that would have brought a scream of pain across one buttock and down to the knee. Again, I felt nothing. Only warm and dry and secure.

I dug into the pit of my back with a fist. I curled myself into a ball, hugging my knees. Finally, I sat up on the bed and raised my arms above my head. Cuthman was asleep beside me, on a mattress of his own. Seabirds were calling outside, echoing cries like lost souls, bringing a strangeness to add to the miracle of my cure. The sun had risen, but I could hear no voices. The people here slept late, like those of Maiden Castle. It seemed that only Christian folk rose early and set to work with the dawn.

Still unable to believe it, I stood up and walked around the little hut we had been sleeping in. I raised myself on tiptoe - something I had not done since Wynn was a baby. I took long strides, bending my knees and swinging my legs. I jumped over my sleeping son, landing lightly as a young girl. If I was not dreaming, then it had to be that my back was finally mended.

But I was still wary. I remembered the day of Cuthman's baptism, when my back was eased and I could at least walk a short way and carry the household crocks to and fro. It had not been a complete cure – it was enough for us then, a great improvement on my earlier cripplehood. Carrying Edd after his seizure had undone me once more, and although I would know never to be so foolish as that again, I could not assume a lifetime without pain, much as I would have liked to.

Cuthman awoke to my frolicking and stared at me in alarm. When I told him I was made young again, he sat up and rubbed his head as if to stimulate some sense. ‘There is no longer a need for you to be crippled,' he said, slowly. ‘The purpose is served, now that we are here.'

Perhaps that was the moment when I knew for certain where my faithfulness would henceforth lie. I might dissemble to my son, prate as he wished me to, serve in his church, but in my heart I knew that I would never love or even forgive a God who could use me in that way. I might have been no more than a sack of apples, carted across the land by a penitent boy. But I hid my anger and nodded with a smile. Perhaps wisdom came with my wholeness, perhaps I remembered the deep look that Fippa had given me the day before. Perhaps I simply wanted to be free and light and happy for a time, and the way to do that was to allow my son his head, to think and plan whatsoever he wished. I had learned a lesson from the people of Steyning already, without knowing it.

But most of all I wanted to run in the summer light, and celebrate my new freedom. It was as if I had lost my old body, a soul released to float where it wished. For so long I had never moved without a thought to the pain that would come. I had paid a price for every step I took, every bending down or stretching up, every twist or sudden jerk. As the morning passed, I understood that I had somehow believed that the same was true for all people. I had lived in a world where all movement was pain, life itself was careful and constrained. All that changed as I gazed around me at the community stirring to meet the day. Even the old women moved smoothly to my eyes now. They climbed the hill to collect wood for their cooking fires; they strode down to the seashore to pick shellfish from the rocks.

Cuthman encouraged me to make the acquaintance of the people of the village while he went to inspect the woodland for suitable timbers. I let him go, wondering how one half-grown man could manage to build a whole church on his own. How would the walls stand against winter winds? How would he manage the roof? Would any of the village men help him? Would his God simply work a miracle and create a church out of nothing, sorcery beyond any we had yet witnessed?

I strolled towards the sea, drawn by its rhythms and sparkling light. A man I had not seen before came up to me.

‘Hail, friend,' he said, with a smile. ‘I heard we have interesting newcomers in our midst.'

‘You mean myself and my son?'

‘I do. The young saint and his helpless mother - or some say grandmother.' He looked me up and down, eyebrows raised, and then laughed. ‘A fraudulent claim, to look at you.'

‘I am different today,' I mumbled, thinking it sounded foolish. Speaking to a strange man, eye to eye, brought on a shyness I had seldom known.

‘That will be Fippa's doing,' he nodded, unsurprised. ‘She mends and cures without knowing what she's doing.'

‘My son, too, can work miracles,' I flared, sensing the contest to come. Fuelling it, perhaps, too.

‘Fippa's work runs deeper than miracles,' he said, with real seriousness. ‘She is a channel for the gods, an ancient soul. Fippa knew Macha many ages ago, and Rosmerta and the great Cleopatra.' My blank response appeared to amuse him, and he shook his head at me. ‘What? You are ignorant of these names?' At my nod, he patted me on the shoulder. ‘Then you must learn,' he told me. ‘There are wonderful stories for you to hear.'

The man's touch was friendly, direct. I wanted his hand to stay on my flesh, warm and strong. I forgot my son, planning to bring his great God to these forsaken folk. My soul felt thin with ignorance, and I wanted to feed at the rich table I had glimpsed in this place. Where the monasteries had revered manuscripts and Bible texts, the stone worshippers told ancient stories of migrating souls. Though we had been welcomed in both places, we might have been less well received by the monks if we had arrived announcing an intention to change their ways and convert them to new beliefs. The absence of hostility in this community was astonishing. Either they were fools, or they had complete confidence in their own gods. Or both, which Cuthman would say.

‘I have heard many a story since leaving our homeland,' I said, remembering first one, then another. The hermit and his strange unfinished tale; the wild imaginings of the young woman on Maiden Hill, which still haunted my dreams once in a while. And my own jumbled attempt at telling a tale, coming together in my mind, now that I could be in one place, to gather myself. It came to me then that the people of Steyning might wish to hear a telling of my own life history, and that I should be ready with it when they asked. ‘I could tell a story, too,' I said to the man, impulsive and eager. My ordeal would not be real or true until I could tell it to others. While Cuthman dug his church's foundations and hewed down the oaks and elms, I would sit before an avid crowd, and put my life into careful words.

‘And we would wish to hear it,' he assured me. ‘Time enough when the days grow short again, and we gather in the hall for warmth.'

‘It'll all be forgotten by then,' I said, thinking of the months of summer before us, and afraid to wish them past. He laughed at me, and gave me another pat, closing his fingers a little around my shoulder. My heart lurched in my breast, with the shock of remembering the feel of a man's touch. Edd had squeezed me in that way - it had been a special thing between us in our early times together. The suggestion that this man might find me appealing as a woman was very strange to me. Was I not an ancient hag, by this time? A burdensome bundle to my son, thin and dry and stupid?

‘There is much for you to see,' he went on. ‘We have settled here, according to the wisdom of our Stone, and we must look to the coming years, for the sake of our children. It is a chosen place; Fippa tells us it was waiting for us, virgin and rich. Our hogs and sheep flourish, ships have begun to use the port we have built, and they bring us wonderful goods.'

And truly it did seem wonderful to me, a glittering land, peopled by happy pagans, who had all that anyone could wish for. The rising forested hills seemed to offer protection and concealment; the open sea, calm and inviting, was a route to a greater world, which I had scarcely begun to imagine. The man's words about the future had a rightness to my ears. Living in such a community could not fail to invite hopes and plans. Already, on my first full day here, I was sharing in the optimism, and thinking of my own prospects in the years to come.

‘Might I see your Stone?' I asked, hesitant and careful. The adulation of a piece of granite was altogether alien to me. I had seen the dolmen on our moors at home, and known it to be a kind of sacred altar, but never had I known people to give worship in this way.

‘Come,' he said, and took hold of my forearm, his fingers tight on my skin. We moved briskly, my legs still marvellously lithe, my back straight. In the light of a clear morning, the stone was quite different. Gleaming polished granite, dark grey with sparkling specks embedded in it, and covered with carvings and painted designs, it was easy to believe that it contained its own spirit. We stood only two or three paces distant and the man bowed his head in reverence. We were facing the sunlit side, the short shadow falling away from us, the carvings clear to see. It was some moments before I recognised many of my own rune symbols etched onto the sacred Stone, but when I did, my excitement was prodigious. Eagerly, I traced them - the sign for strength was before me, flanked by those for harvest and protection. Did they mean the same thing here, I wondered, but did not like to question the man just then. It was hard to speak, in any case. I looked up, the rounded head of the Stone high above me, circled with a ring of carved oak leaves. The carving was skilled, the grooves cut deep and confident. Slowly bringing my gaze down again, I came at last to a group of acorns depicted at the foot of the stone. The more I looked, walking slowly around all four faces, the more there was to admire. A great craftsman had quarried and shaped this stone, smoothing out the unevennesses, sharpening the corners in ways I had not believed possible.