The Fabulous Beast (19 page)
Read The Fabulous Beast Online
Authors: Garry Kilworth
All that day I trudged over hill and dale, seeking I knew not what. How was I supposed to know which of these wonderful creatures was responsible for the crime? None of them looked capable of harm, though I did see one or two stealing milk from mortals’ churns and licking the blocks of butter which rested on market stalls. They took little notice of me, except to glance sideways as I passed them by. No one accosted me or asked what I was doing there. They seemed completely uninterested in my presence, which filled me with both surprise and relief. I grew bolder as the day grew longer and towards evening approached maiden.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I wonder if you could help me.’
Having stopped her and stared into her eyes, I was then stunned by her beauty and grace. She was without question the most exquisite girl I had ever had the fortune to encounter. Her eyes were flecked with gold. Her lips looked as soft as pink mushroom vanes. Her hair hung long in silvery, dazzling tresses down her back and over her shoulders. A madness came upon me and without thinking of the consequences, purely instinctively, I leaned forward and gently kissed those silken lips.
Stepping back, horrified by my own actions, I expected her to scream and call for assistance from her kind. I readied myself for a furious onslaught of elfen. Instead, what came out of her mouth were not recriminations, but protestations of love.
‘I adore you,’ she said, smiling into my face. ‘You are mine.’
I was completely disarmed and without speech for a moment, but she took my hand and started to lead me to the forest.
Then I came to my senses. ‘What’s this?’ I cried. ‘Are you taking me to my death? Do you have brothers, cousins, an irate father hiding in the woods, ready to cut me to pieces.’
‘No,’ came the gentle reply, ‘only a bed of moss.’
I remained astounded. ‘But – but do you not find me ugly?’
She cocked her head to one side, looking at me through quizzical eyes.
‘Many mortal men are unattractive,’ she said at last, ‘being bulky and awkward, with the physical strength and girth of wild boars. They blunder through the world, knocking things down, their vasty thighs banging against each other, their hefty arms hanging like butchered meat from hooks. But you? You are not one of those. You have the shape and nature of an elf. You are slender and elegant in form. Your speech is refined and temperate. I find you very attractive indeed.’
And so it was that Linette and I became lovers, prancing around the forest like young fauns, laughing at the silliest of things, delighting in each other’s company, filling our time with passion and frivolity, with nothing to fear and no thought of a dark future. I blessed those two witches, Bearrocscir and Beomia, the twins who had been responsible for sending me to this otherworld. They had sent me to a heaven denied other mortals. If they themselves knew what it was like, they would be eating the five hearts for their suppers, singing the magical rhyme that lifts a mortal from the earth and places them amongst the elfen.
A day with the elfen was like a year amongst the mortals. How pleasant and joyous it was to go out on a hunt with the male elfen, who rode their shoeless horses without saddle or reins. We cantered and galloped over leas and through the forest, our arrows miraculously finding their targets every time. These marvellous creatures were so lithe and graceful in their movements, leaping from the ground onto the backs of their mounts, their silver forms shimmering in the sunlight. Their voices sang out over pastures with the sweet notes of small handbells. We forded brook and stream, charged through spinneys sending the rooks up in black clouds, thundered over turfy mounds, thoroughly breathless at the end of our rides, but gloriously happy.
At night, I lay with my Linette, whose enchanting ways of making love opened previously closed doors of my mind. I had not imagined the act of love could be so pleasurable. Not only were our bodies locked in a passionate embrace, our spirits mingled and fused, fulfilling an even deeper desire in giving the soul delight as well as the body.
I saw my old villagers every day, working away at their mundane chores, the women scrubbing clothes and cooking and toiling in the fields, the men going off to hunt or to some pointless war which they believed to be a glorious occupation. Galan was there, tending vegetables that were more often eaten by slugs and snails than he or his wife. There were men and women digging trenches to keep the rain from flooding their dwellings. There were children playing in the mud and feeding the pigs, gathering filth as they did years. Rats and lice and bedbugs were the mortal’s companions at night and backbreaking work, like the ploughing and harvesting, was their reward in the day.
Yet – yet there was something noble about the way mortals struggled through life, often without complaint. The elfen I lived among now were, it had to be said, insipid. Were I still a poet it would be the travails and labouring of the mortal world which would attract me to the pen, not the effortless life of the beautiful elfen creatures.
So I stayed a while, not yet willing to wake on the cold hill’s side without my beloved elf beside me.
Then one day I saw an elf with a fiendish smile on his face spitefully throw a dart at a passing mortal who had done nothing wrong. I had witnessed such things several times while in elf-land, but before this had been too obsessed with my new love to question it. Yet now, I was upset by the act and wondered about this animosity from the elfen.
‘Why did he do that?’ I asked my beloved. ‘What harm was the mortal doing?’
She shrugged her slim white shoulders.
‘Who knows? Perhaps he annoyed a bee.’
And so it was as simple as that. A man or woman might inadvertently brush against a rose and cause great offence in the world of the elfen. No mortal could possibly guard against all such transgressions. They are minor accidents of which they are not even aware.
The incident made me go to the bower of my king and look down upon him in his sick bed. I was overwhelmed with pity. Here was a man, a great man, laid low most probably for a tiny fault against nature. As a man this aroused indignation in my breast. Who were these beings, these idle silver-fish of otherworld, to rob us of our lord? I returned to my beloved and demanded to know who had shot my king.
She did not know. No one could know.
‘Then how can we cure him? You must know that?’
‘A kiss would do it,’ she told me. ‘A kiss from an elf.’
I thought about this, then asked, ‘Would
you
do it for me?’ Surely a kiss from those sweet lips would cure a king of his affliction?
‘There is danger in such an action.’
‘What?’ I asked. ‘How is there danger?’
She took both of my hands and her heartshaped face tilted upwards as she stared into my eyes.
‘If a kiss is exchanged between a mortal and an elf, they must fall in love with one other. This is what happened between you and me, my dear one. If I kiss the king he will recover, but I will fall for him and pine until eternity ends for a love which can never be mine. The king is in his life and I am in mine, and he will never know me.’
The choice was a terrible one. If the king was not to die, I would lose Linette, who in turn would spend forever mourning an unrequited love. The king, though well, would be in love with a ghost in his heart. We would all three have to suffer for all our days. Yet how could I let my lord’s people down? How could I, knowing there was a way to save him, simply send him to his grave? In the end, I could not, and begged my beloved Linette to perform the kiss which would restore a sovereign lord to the people who treasured and needed him. And because of the feelings she held for me, she did as she was asked, though tears of silver flowed down her cheeks and filled my heart with unbearable sorrow.
I left her, sitting by the king’s bed, looking down on him as the colour came back to his complexion and his eyes cleared.
~
When I returned to my village I was greeted as a hero. I had killed the elf who had made the king sick. The theigns treated me almost like a real person and the king was so grateful he presented me with a bronze armring. I am told that after his illness he often woke at night with a strange feeling and told his theigns he had the eerie sense that he was being watched over by some benign spirit. He believed it was one of his ancestors, there to protect him from further harm. He also called me one evening and asked me to write a poem for him. He looked melancholy, as though his soul was aimlessly drifting on a sea of wishes.
‘I want it to be about
yearning
,’ he said in a sad tone. ‘A poem that touches on an empty feeling that never seems to go away. Your words must express a deep and uncontrollable desire of the heart which it cannot name or indeed even imagine what would satisfy it. Verses about something that has been lost and will never be found again . . .’
It was easy for me to write such a poem, since my own heart felt the same emptiness and hunger for that which I had relinquished.
When I met the twin witches on a path through the forest one day, they asked me if I had followed their orders to the letter.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘The animal hearts and the toadstools.’
‘Yes, but what about the cow pat?’ enquired Bearrocscir. ‘Did you smear it over your face?’
‘Most definitely,’ I answered.
It was only when they were some way down the path and I heard their shrieks of laughter that I realised I had been duped.
On an evening in
Guili
, the Yule month, I visited the house of my neighbour, Galan. When he opened his door I presented him with a tray of good winter cabbages.
‘For you,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I stole your vegetables. It was wrong of me. It will not happen again.’
He looked me up and down, his eye finally resting on the armring, given me by King Raedwald.
‘That’s all right,’ he said, taking the tray. ‘All’s well now. Why don’t you come in and eat with us? My daughter, Wilona, is visiting for a few days. We have been speaking of your recent success. And Wilona has just mentioned that she’s very fond of your poetry . . .’
On The Eyelids Of A Wolf
King Penda of the Mercian Angles paced his great hall, calling for the attention of those warriors and princes subservient to his bidding. Sturdy, dark-haired and narrow-eyed, Penda was a brute figure of a man. Like all Anglo-Saxon kings he knew he was directly descended from the great god Woden, from whom he derived his spiritual power. That puissance was, and had for some time, been threatened by a sickness called
Christianity,
which had spread throughout the many kingdoms of Britain. Where he found it, and when he could, Penda stamped on this illness of the mind. It disgusted him. He despised other kings for turning their backs on the true gods of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Could Christians trace their ancestry back to a warrior god? No, for Christ was a man of lands in the East, a pacifist who was born and lived in regions where effeminate oriental rulers held sway.
Many had tried to turn the warrior-king Penda, a marcher-lord whose borders were ever-expanding, and convert him to this mild religion which preached peace. But were he to become one of these Christians, he would have to forsake his ancestors, to deny that as a king he was a descendant of Woden. He would have to deny Woden himself, God of the Dead and the gallows; God of Magic and Wisdom; High King and Master of the Runes – but, above all, Lord of the Wild Hunt. The god who rode his wondrous eight-legged stallion, wielding his ash-shafted spear, chasing the great boar across the dawn skies.
‘They call me a pagan,’ he said to Aedan, the witchkiller, theign of a subkingdom of 5,000 hides. ‘What is that supposed to mean? They use it as some kind of insult, but all it means is that I am clean of this plague which has swept over the hills and valleys of our island.’
Aedan nodded. He knew what was bothering the armring-giver, his king.
‘You will go to war against Oswald of Bernicia?’
‘I shall unleash my warriors, those that others call slaughter-wolves. North Umbria is mine by right of conquest. Did I not defeat Oswald’s uncle, Edwin? How many of these Bernician and Deiran kings do I have to kill, before they let me claim what I have earned by right of might? You destroy one and another flies up in his place like a sparrow. Where is my hearth-brother, Raedwald, King of the Eastern Angles? The Wuffing clan were like me, followers of our divine ancestor . . .’
One of Penda’s
gesiths
muttered, ‘Not so much
him
, as his wife.’
Penda’s head came up. ‘What was that?’
‘My lord, I said that life has long since left his bone-vessel – you remember he died over eight years ago? – though his wife is still of our belief.’
‘His wife? What have women got to do with anything? I am talking of these Christians – the West Saxons, the East Saxons, the South Saxons, the Jutes of Kent – all have succumbed to this dread sickness which robs great rulers of their manhood, which creeps over their spirits like the spreading ink of darkness and saps the armring-giver of his desire for battle.’ He stopped pacing and glowered at his
gesiths
as they waited for his commands. ‘This time I shall crush the Bernicians without the help of those pale spear-bearers from Wales, for I have heard that Oswald has defeated my Celtic ally Cadwallon and put him to the sword. Well, we shall see who falls under the sword in the next battle!’
A great cheer echoed around the hall.
‘We shall hang the heath-walker Oswald from the gallows and Woden’s guileful birds shall pick out his eyes. Woden’s ravenous beasts shall devour his liver. Watch for the full moon tonight and you shall see a brace of ravens cross its face. Listen beyond the middle hour and you will hear two wolves howling deep in the darkness. These will be the very beasts who will feast upon the sword-hating Oswald’s corpse as it hangs on the gibbet. I swear this will come to pass, just as sure as the sky is made of stone.’
Another cheer, which brought the kitchen boys running, to see what sport was playing in the great hall. They were booted back to their pots and pans, their hanging hams and basting boar. There they informed the scullery maids that they were going to war with their master and king, the great Penda of Mercia. Why? asked the girls, you are no Mercians, but Hwicca slaves and Celtic boys stolen from Gwynedd. The boys replied that being part of the spear-rush and shield-wall is better than scrubbing mud off turnips, for you get to stick blades in men instead of rabbits’ guts. You will all be sorry, prophesised the scullery maids, when your heads are dangling from the spears of the North Umbrian Angles.
That night, after returning from a hunt, during which they had chased the prancing deer over mossy slopes, and stopped to spear salmon that leapt for the marble sky, Penda’s warrior-priests fried the intestines of a mute swan in a copper pan and found that the signs for war were good. The serpent Nithogg would soon be sucking the blood of the slain upon the battlefield. The terrible Hall of Cowards, whose doors faced the cold north, its walls made of serpents woven together like wickerwork, would be spewing their venom upon the souls of those who turn from the fighting and desert their lords, while heroes and brave men would be winging their way to
Waelheall
, which has a ceiling of golden shields, and whose halls have more than six-hundred-and-forty doors, there to feast on
Saehrimnir
, the great boar who comes back to life every morning so that he can be hunted again and again, and his flesh feed the warriors who died with swords in their hands.
In the middle of the night, Penda sent for a sorcerer who had come down from Pictland to earn his keep amongst the Anglo-Saxons.
‘How can I ensure I keep my life-dwelling forever?’ asked Penda. ‘If you have no answer for me, I’ll cut out your heart and feed it to the dogs.’
The sorcerer was quite used to such threats, quite used to being asked one of three common questions, quite used to being roused in the small hours by a brooding king about to go to war.
‘I have been told,’ said the wizard, ‘that the secret of everlasting life lies not with the alchemists and their stone, but is written inside the eyelids of a wolf.’
Penda, sitting on his carved wooden throne, leaned forward.
‘Ah! Good. And where can I find this marvellous beast?’
‘He roams the forest pale at night, in the time when ice covers the world of earth. You must track him down and read his secret. There are those who have caught him and have read the runes. They now dwell amongst us, ancient as the hills, old as the crags. They have seen the giants who built the stone houses at Lundenwic and Ellendun. They have kissed the cheeks of our ancestors and drunk the mead of gods.’
‘That’s what I want,’ cried Penda. ‘When this war is done, and winter comes, I will send out a hunting party.’ He paused, then asked, ‘But how will I know this wolf from any other? Does he have special markings? Or eyes of fire? Or fangs of gold or silver?’
‘His cowl is the dark blue-grey of slate and he is much larger than any common wolf.’
The sorcerer then bowed his head and left the royal presence, determined to be long gone from the kingdom when Lord Penda returned. He thought Eoghanact or Connachta, across the sea to the west, might be a good place to go. He might pause in Powys or Dyfed on the way, but even beyond Offa’s dyke was not out of range of the powerful ruler’s long merciless arm and he knew he would be wise to continue going west to the island of mist and mizzle beyond. Penda was not a king to play games with. He had taken the kingdoms of Wessex and East Anglia to task and had killed their kings Sigeberht and Anna. Later had driven King Cenwalh from his West Saxon throne. Then Edwin of Bernicia had fallen under his sword. Penda was a savage and indurate warrior who would squash a wizard sooner than a garden slug.
The following day King Penda set out to teach Oswald a lesson. The kings of Dal Riata and Pictland might recognise Oswald’s supremacy, but not Penda. Penda was the scourge of Bernicia and any upstart ruler of that kingdom who had ambitions, especially if he was a Christian, had to deal with the force and might of Penda
~
The army is led by a regiment of foul witches, whose snarled and sagging paps are protected by breastplates fashioned from human pelvises and whose bony hips are padded with badger-skin. Following these scrawny grey-haired hags are cohorts of slave-warriors from Dumnonia: stalwarts from the south west with long straw-coloured hair and drawn-out vowels. Then the limb-weary conscripts from the tiny midland kingdom of Lindsey, whose bumbling, overwrought ruler had once been a cook in the wine-halls of King Cynegils of Wessex, and who longed for those glee-bough days to return, when he was praised for his goose pies by a regent with a discerning palate.
Finally the main army of wealth-greedy Mercians, tramping on foot, or riding tough little curly-maned ponies, led by their king-warlord. They carry leather shields three-feet in diameter, mounted with a central boss. The shields are inlaid with copper and silver ornamentation: magical birds shapes, such as hawks and falcons; enchanted animals, like the fox, the wolf, the dragon; bewitching reptiles in the form of snakes and lizards. They are for the most part armed with throwing spears, war axes and dagger-swords they call
seaxes
, but the
gesiths
, the king-warlord’s hearth companions, wield a magnificent long sword. These swords are imbibed with mystical power, covered in gold trappings, and have a blade so strong and sharp it will in an instance slice through a man from the crown of his head to his tender crotch, splitting him in two halves, each half with one ear and one eye, a single leg and an arm – but only on the left section, a bared heart still pumping.
In front, and on the flanks, and bringing up the rear, are the military musicians: hell-fiends howling on horns, bellowing on trumpets, whirling their bullroarers, clashing their cymbals and beating their drums. Such a terrible sound they make, a cacophony of noise, that a sea of wildlife flees before them: terrified rabbits, weasels, stoats, badgers, rats, voles, mice – and wheeling and swooping above, the wild land birds. Evil dwarves and fairies too, are cowering in hollow trunks. Marsh demons and forest phantoms hide under their own shadows. In their peat-hag lairs the ogres of bog and swamp believe the sky is falling down.
King Oswald, Christian ruler of the Bernicians and Deirans, has been told by envoys and his own spies that Penda is coming. Oswald, nephew of the slain King Edwin, waits for his enemy on a high curving field of flowing grass. God is on the side of Oswald, who is His servant and follower. Oswald has spoken to his men, who have big hearts and steadfast spirits. Oswald too is a ruthless king, who has taken the lives of subjects and enemies without compunction, but he has had his moments of justness and fairness: moments which have escaped his enemy.
Still, they are much alike, these two kings, one fighting under old gods, the other for a new one. They each believed in their right to rule, they both desired empire, they both hated each other with equal venom.
At noon, the slaughter-place is found. The dark-haired hordes of Penda hurl themselves into the battle-hedge of the realm of Bernicia. The toothless, horrible heads of witches roll in the grass, staining green to red. The hapless vanguards of slave-warriors from both sides batter each other’s shields without enthusiasm and fall over easily, closing their eyes in a pretence of death. The conscripts from neighbouring kingdoms whirl their slingshots and fire their arrows, then scatter like field mice.
Grooms and squires still run by their mounted lords, brushing and combing last-minute touches to the sheen of a stallion’s flank, or replaiting the fine blonde tail of a high-stepping mare. Stewards are retrieving precious wine goblets from the hands of their householders. Servants are taking cumbersome cloaks from the backs of their masters.
Warriors come together. Swords bite with iron edges on thin helmets. Shields crack together. Spears pierce neck and naval, breast and belly, and enter the backs of running cowards. Battleaxe blades swoop like swallows to lop off ears and noses, split skulls in various places, lop off hands, and legs. Daggers, those secret, cryptic weapons, surreptitiously enter spleens. Expressions of utter surprise and horror appear on the faces of those who slip to the ground, dying.
Penda the pagan, solidly backed and flanked by his hearth-companions, hacks his way contemptuously through a human wall of Oswald’s
gesiths
and when he reaches the Christian king, drives his great sword through the Bernician’s heart.
‘Where is your Christ at this moment?’ cries the triumphant Penda, the reeking blood running down his puissant blade. ‘Where is this lover of the meek and humble?’
‘I am with him now,’ sighs Oswald, and dies.
~
Penda took a number of North Umbrian slaves and hostages, slaughtered those of the Bernicians who had not the forethought to vacate the battlefield once the day was lost, and set off home. On the way back the night was full of portents and omens in the shape of bright gems which slid across the stone sky. The one remaining witch interpreted these signs as foretelling good, rather than evil, for the conquering king. Penda took Oswald’s body with him and once back in Mercia ritually dismembered the corpse, tearing the limbs from their sockets with teams of horses, and cutting through the neck with a woodman’s axe. Men, even kings, not buried whole with weapon to hand, and other accoutrements and trappings, would find a difficult to tackle the monsters of the Otherworld.
The head and limbs were hung like trophies from the branches of an oak, an offering to Woden as the Hanging God of the Gallows. Oswald’s right hand still held his sword, his finger-grip proving impossible to unclench, and the blade was left dangling on the end of the severed arm. The night winds blew through the cords that held Oswald’s remains and sang songs of lament. Penda grew angry on hearing the wind’s dirge, since he did not believe Oswald deserved the sorrow of the elements. He cursed the wind for its compassion. The wind’s answer was to increase in volume and is songs hummed and thrummed through the ropes, growing louder and louder. To escape this outrage Penda went on a hunt for boar deep in the forest, out of earshot.