Wild Love 1079
The troubles of that alien Norman, their king, did not interest the inhabitants of Chenna’s Tun near Winchester, or the neighbouring communities of Truham and Minstead.
They had their own preoccupations, some of which stemmed from certain laws lately imposed upon their district, which was in the middle of what William called his New Forest and had been made subject to the full rigour of his game laws.
Other troubles sprang from the wet, raw winter which set in early in the October of 1078 and was still drearily in force the following April.
But the May Eve of that year was mild and clear, arousing hopes of betterment. There was an atmosphere about the three communities that day, an undercurrent of restless excitement. As evening drew on, people came often to the doors of their wood and wattle cottages, to see how near darkness was. Suppers were prepared, but they were small and eaten quickly.
In Minstead, fourteen-year-old ’Ditha could not eat her beans and rye bread though her mother tried to persuade her and her grandmother, who had a nutcracker chin and the most outspoken sense of humour for miles, recommended her to ‘stoke your fires well, wench, you’ll need them’. Her father was silent, leaving her to the women. Once, his mother-in-law looked at him sharply and said: ‘Perk up, lad, you’re not about to be bereaved.’
‘Ain’t I?’ he said shortly.
In Truham – which was not a village but a scattered group of smallholdings – a garrulous woman paused from sweeping her floor to say: ‘It’ll be grand knowing our daughter’s there but you be careful this time, old man. That first child of hers is that sickly and I reckon I know why. It’s because…’
‘That’s the fourth time you’ve said as much. And it’s the third time you’ve swept that danged floor.’
‘I can’t keep still, waiting.’
‘Can’t keep your tongue still, neither.’
‘You’re as restless as a hare in March yourself,’ said his wife, chuckling, and went to the door yet again, still carrying her broom, to look at the sky as the sun went down behind the forest. The fan of a great elm, the tall spikes of fir trees, were outlined in black against burning gold and warm saffron. ‘How long till we can start?’ she said softly.
Minstead was the largest of the three communities, but in certain respects Chenna’s Tun was the most important, and knew it. The Tun lay in a wide clearing, with a stream curving round the northern edge of its two fields. On one side of the stream stood four small dwellings and their outhouses. On the other side was a house somewhat larger although similar in fashion to the rest, with a couple of barns of its own.
In one of the smaller dwellings, the young woman whose mother in Truham had just spoken of her looked worriedly at the baby girl coughing on her cot. ‘I know Goda’s staying to see to the little ones since it’s the wrong time for her to go to the Wood, but I don’t like leaving her.’
‘There’s always things folk don’t like about these nights,’ said her husband. ‘But it’s the friction strikes the flint, they say.’ Like the woman in Truham, he pushed open the door to look at the flaring western sky. ‘I hope that there’s a good omen,’ he said. ‘We need one.’
Across the stream in the bigger house, Old Chenna, the head of the village, although not grand enough to call himself its lord, chaffed his son and said to the young man who was their guest: ‘It’s none so often we have a stranger who’s also a friend with us on these nights. It’s good. You’re welcome.’
In difficult English, for he was a Norwegian, travelling alone through England (for what purpose no one ever knew), the young man said: ‘What would you do – no, have done – if I were not a friend, as you put it?’
‘Turned churlish and sent you to the priest at Minstead for a night’s lodging,’ Chenna told him.
In Minstead, a blind cripple in one of the humbler houses sat mumbling and monotonously cursing by the fire, because he knew that tonight he would be alone and he was at once jealous and frightened.
And in the priest’s house, Father Ilger sat, shutters closed against that majestic sunset, preparing a sermon for the next day, hoping his flock were also decently indoors for the night and knowing perfectly well that they were not.
In the Tun, Old Chenna said: ‘Time I was on my way.’
Darkness came. The moon rose, near to the full, turning new thatch from gold to white, and the moist young leaves of the forest to glistening silver.
Under the trees, however, the darkness was intense. The figures in the rough hooded cloaks who now set out from the three communities carried horn lanterns.
The direction they took was southwards; those who lived north of the broad track from Winchester to the coast slipping quietly across it in the moonlight.
North of the road lay the Hoar Woods, tree-grown tracts separated one from another by wide grassy glades or stretches of heath, called Hoar because the trees were so ancient and ivy-enswathed.
But south of the road was a district where the trees were just as old, and grew closely and continuously for miles. The forest here was so deep and tangled that even the Foresters rarely came there. The king’s huntsmen beat through it perhaps once in the year, when the king was at Brockenhurst, and charcoal burners used a clearing there occasionally; that was all. The tracks, such as they were, were made by deer.
On one such track the hooded figures now moved, in twos and threes, and single file. They went, however, with more boldness than they could have mustered on most nights of the year. This night, they were privileged and need not fear the stealthy rustlings in the undergrowth, or the enmity of the non-human sentience which pervades all woods by right from dusk to sunrise. Tonight, they were themselves a part of that sentience.
They went silently, for the winter rains had soaked last year’s fallen leaves, and the leafmould was soft enough to deaden footfalls. They went unhindered for though the path was faint, it had received unobtrusive attention, a bough pruned here, a rough place smoothed there, or a fallen tree shifted out of the way. They walked for a long time. The trysting place was deep in the woods.
The clearing opened up with a flicker of firelight (the ash pile that lay permanently in the charcoal burners’ clearing was not all due to the manufacture of charcoal). They were glad to see the fire for despite their conviction that tonight the perils of wolf and demon were withdrawn, the lanterns had done no more than show the ground just before their feet and they had come all that way with invisible companions. It was all too easy to let one’s imagination slip, to think that the presence breathing just behind you might, in the darkness, have… changed… into someone or even something else.
And yet they had come here to change into other creatures. Where the path entered the clearing, a curious heap of objects lay. As each figure came in, it snuffed its lantern and, stooping, set it down, taking an object from the heap in exchange. Shadowy hands were raised to shadowy heads. And when they walked out into the firelight, their human faces were gone.
They had the heads of goats, crowned with stubby horns. Their eyes gleamed through the slits of leathern masks. As they went, they loosed their cloaks and dropped them. And so came, naked but for the masks, past the fire and to the feet of the Being they had come to worship.
On the far side of the clearing, there was a fallen log of elm, its bark gone years ago, its wood bleached with weather. On it as on a throne, hands at rest on thick thighs, sat their Lord.
His worshippers were as goats. But He, above the throat, was stag. The firelight sparkled on the fourteen ivory points of his spreading antlers. They tipped in acknowledgement as each worshipper kissed his king’s bare feet.
Having done so, the worshippers sat on the ground in a semi-circle before Him, old folk and children (though none younger than about ten were present) at the back.
When all were seated, the royal Being said: ‘Does any challenge the right of the King?’
No one answered. The fire whispered and crackled. At length a second ritual question was asked. ‘Before this Feast of Beltane begins, are there any declarations?’
This was answered. ‘Bloody forest laws,’ said a broad Hampshire voice, oddly mundane in that fugitively lit clearing and in that gathering, which was part human and part beast and yet touched with something that was neither.
‘Yes,’ said the King, and his voice was deep and hollow. His accent too was rustic but ceremonious phrasing garnered through centuries lent him dignity. ‘Not only can we lose eyes or hands for taking a deer. Now we learn that we cannot even fence our land. We shall be hard put to it to defend our corn from the deer this year. As if the weather of the past year were not trouble enough. Let us then dedicate this Beltane to the confounding of the Norman and his laws. The forest has its own powers when it cares to use them. The Norman lost his son in it, five years gone. Remember that while you dance. Remember that while you love. Bring forth the Maiden.’
There was pushing and giggling and a figure was thrust to its feet. The slender childish body under the goat mask was that of a girl. She was shivering.
‘There is nothing to fear,’ said the King and the smile in his voice drew a ripple of laughter from the rest. ‘We all come to it but for monks and nuns and they do not attend Beltane. It’s a rare May Eve when the Maiden is truly so but tonight she is and this is her Initiation. And not only hers. Chenna the Young, my one living son, who one day will wear the antlers and sit upon my throne unless my house is cast from it by challenge, also tonight becomes truly one of our company. In recognition of the future, I yield the Maiden to him. Stand up, my son.’ A youth rose, nervously. At the back of the assembly, one of the older folk began a low, disturbing rhythm on a drum. ‘Where is the goat?’ asked the King.
A goat – it was in fact a young kid – was carried over to him. A knife was handed to him. He slew the kid with the blade across its throat and in the blood he baptised Young Chenna and the Maiden. ‘Take her hand,’ said the King, ‘and stand by my throne until the dance begins. I will join it tonight. Remember that our seed renews the corn and that if your union is fruitful then will our fields be blessed, free of blight and ill-weather. May the God of the Wood show us mercy in this year to come. One more thing. We have with us tonight a stranger to our forest though not to our observances. May he too plant a seed and leave something of his strength among us to be nurtured. Herne Huntsman, Lord of the Forest, hear us! Take your places!’
The gathering rose. The King joined it. It formed a double circle, men outermost, facing an inner ring of women. A second drum began. A pipe joined in. The beat quickened. The two circles began to revolve in opposite directions. The music quickened yet more. Someone began to chant: someone else cried out, in excitement. Swifter still grew the rhythm; feet stamped, the dancers sang, flinging out their arms. There was yearning in the music. If any had feared the embrace of a faceless partner, the drums and the dance overcame it now. Moonlight, flamelight, flowed over sliding muscles, sweat-beaded skin, matted chests and polished young breasts, swinging used dugs, shoulders wide or sloping, bellies flat or heavy. The dancers whirled, swaying. Suddenly the circles closed together and became a single ring of wildly gyrating pairs.
The pairing was not quite left to chance. There were evasions and attractions. But there were no rules. Brother had met sister and parent had met child in the dance before now, and would again.
By the throne, Young Chenna caught up the Maiden and half-running, bore her to the clearing’s edge where the light did not follow. Still spinning, the other pairs danced away from the firelight also and vanished among the trees.
Round the fire, the old people who no longer danced or coupled exchanged chuckles and a ribald jest or two and set food to cook. The lovers would come back hungry.
Four times a year they met and three times a year the ritual was of this fashion. At these feasts, the act of love was sacred and with whom one coupled did not matter. If children were born of such unions, they were blessed. Tonight, the normal world was left behind. They had withdrawn to their origins when they were part of the wild wood themselves and there were no marriages, only matings.
The Feast of Beltane, 1079, had begun.