Hodd Read online

  What sodden timbers, shredded sail-canvas or hempen rope were left by the scavengers, we stacked together. I would fain have helped greatly, but my efforts were tiny crumbs, being still too small of limb to match what e’en Edwyne might have done. My master was strangely distracted, and saw me not as I toiled with him; afterwards he stood ankle-deep in the ceaseless surge, as he oft did, staring upon the waste of waters. And thus sometimes did Hodd also stand, in the thick leaf-mould of our earthen home; and of a sudden then would I be cast back years in time, to the sound of the sea, and feel naught but woe and grief.

  3

  For that first week in the wood was not without its afflictions, besides my homesickness and the strangeness of the woodland life, in which I still secretly said my accustomed prayers at the times when the brothers would be seated for Matins and the [canonical] Hours. One morning, on emerging from my hut, I saw through a dawn mistiness what I perceived as a dangling branch high in the oak; swiftly realising that it was none other than the quack or tregetour, who had slipped and now hung by the arrow through his hand, the bolt so placed in the bones that the flesh had failed to tear.

  He did not move through the falling of leaves, so we judged him perished. He hung like a felon on a roadside gibbet, soon concealed under a busy cloud of black crows, and there was great power in the sight; for Hod told us that by such an end, then all lies would end, for only through steel-hard mercilessness would the greater lies be vanquished – that of the Church and all those who served and obeyed it, whether serf or baron. Thus did he talk, that e’en when only crumbs of sense were caught, we still felt satisfied as after a feast: he was the Spirit of All Error himself, to have such powers, blaspheming the symbol of the True Cross.

  All this time I was both plotting within me to flee, with or without my instrument, while also sinking into an unwholesome attraction for this forest life, for (at fourteen or fifteen) I was trembling on the sill between a boy and a young man [homo adulescens], and this existence did seem to me very free and brave [virilis],133 despite its cruelty.

  Above all, it must be said, I was the favourite of Hod, for he had such fickleness about him, that he was attracted to novelties and believed them to be brought to him by spiritual hands or on the sea of his own divine essence. He addressed me privately in his hut, and even made me sup again on that enchanted soup of sorcerers, that changed the spirit in my eyes and made it as though of green pond water when the sun shafts through – so that I thought I saw bejewelled angels playing on the cythera and other such tricks, when it was all the work of demons who are skilled play-actors. He would say to me: ‘You are not just as a son to me, but homousios,’134 as though he were spouting the Creed, twisting it into a horrible blasphemy.

  Yet how swiftly we become accustomed to the greatest of horrors! For high above my head swung the cadaver of the quack on the end of his arm, his entire form picked clean by the crows and soon ragged and grey, stuck fast by Hod’s point; and upon whose hanging jaw, open like a semblant of a cry, still clung his goatee hairs. The wind brought down his stench, but not his bones, that failed to be loosened out of the socket of his shoulder; though three white pebbles eventually falling from him like seeds, I foolishly kept these, yet I could not emulate his trick.

  Oft a felon would look up and maketh the sign of the Cross in mirth, never hearing in his mind the hiss, as of hot fat in water, when his soul would be cast into the pot for this one terrible blasphemy alone. Then after a certain time, as upon wayside gibbets, certain bones would indeed loosen and fall, as though thrown by the leech’s phantom; and one shin-bone e’en struck the head of one among us with three lips,135 hurting him so sorely that he cursed filthily through his defect – yet the quack’s touch had cured him not of this disfigurement (japed the others with much laughter), but only added another on his pate.

  That Hode made me play and sing often, e’en in a single day between dawn and the hour of sleep … [sentence unfinished]. He was as great a lover of ballads as my previous master, brother Thomas. And oft do mirths of song and moods of music accompany the most wicked actions, such as dancing with harlots or the brawling of drunkards in a tavern, or the ceremonies of witches under the changeable moon. And he called me not by my real name,136 but by another.

  This is how it came about.

  There was an outlaw of tall stature, very slender, with a darkness under the eyes as of illness, yet ruddy-cheeked and hale, by the name of Phylip. He had a jacket upon him of rough donkey-skin sewn on the inside with rings of iron, that was his hand-hewn coat of mail. He was ordered to teach the proper skills of bowmanship to one who had only played with a crude bow as any spirited boy might, with the indifference of a pastime. Phyllip set me to shatter an oyster shell in the middle of a round target of leather stuffed with straw, some four-score [yards] off, which he performed easily. He gave me his bow, taller than myself (though I was already near to a manly height) and which I could not bend more than an inch, at which the other felons scoffed, even in Hod’s hearing: pricking me to greater efforts.

  A bow was found of my own size and weakness, with softer sapwood, though still strong to draw, and after rapping my nose with the string so hard that I bled, standing as I was like an old bent man and with a hideous grimace on my visage, my second shot missed the target [scopum] entirely and vanished into the briars before the shielding clump of rocks: for this was where the buttes137 lay, that no one be striped or killed accidentally, and that the arrow points might be cleaned and sharpened upon the stone. I continued for many hours until my three fingers were blistered and my palm raw where I held the bow, and my shoulders and arms were pulled like yarn; yet the oyster shell remained whole, with a few of my piercings about it in the leathern-bound straw.

  At first I felt the arrow striking the side of the bow, yet soon I could make it slip past freely. Philipp made a noise like many tiny bells when he moved (sporting his jacket always); he was of a frigid disposition and of fewer words than a monk, able with his bow to snuff out a candle’s flame from ten-score yards. He wished to be one of the elect, but although he earnestly believed in the othair he had not yet felt it, albeit as infected with filthy heresies as the rest. He said that the strength and dark powers of a yew were in the bow, and the guile of a wolf in the gut, and the far sight of a goose in the fletching, and the virtue of the ash in the shaft; that I must welcome the first into my arms when I drew and the second into my fingers when I released, that they might both enter the arrow138 the moment it flit, and make a greater hurt on piercing.

  Pricks [virgae]139 were also set there in the ground for us to shoot at, so thin that to clove them or come e’en within an inch demanded great skill. Soon I cleaved one, and then another within days, and Phyllipe said my shooting was good enough for me to be called a true brother of the temple of the free spirit – that was in truth a feckless band of cut-throats!

  A look-out stood upon the height of the rocks, the other side of which lay open ground falling away from our wooded rise in shallow heathland – the same coarse ground I had traversed on first coming here, if by a more westerly approach. One cold morning, when left alone by Phylip, I shot my arrow deliberately wide, so that it flit past the rock’s cliff and I must needs retrieve it in the area beyond. No cry came from the look-out, though I felt his eyes upon me. I could by now distinguish well between the thirty-seven felons; this man was called William Scerelack140 and [had worked] in a slaughterhouse before stealing and murdering; he was of very moist humours, with a face the [yellow] colour of saffron and exceedingly melancholy, drawn down like melting wax or a drowned dog, and always weeping in one eye.

  I made to look for the arrow, or rather its white fletching of goose-feathers – treading upon the rough grass between the low thickets and glancing outwards now and again. It was a dry day of clean wind, yet I could not identify the crest belonging to the hill upon which Richerd and I had worked, cutting the bracken: there were many low hills rolling right unto the horizon, and all empty
in that waste, and I conjectured that the place was visible only from the far side of the wood.

  I proposed casting aside my bow and running for freedom, yet knew that a single shot from Will Scearlacke atop would have pierced me through, for e’en in high wind when the arrow yaws from its true course, Hodd’s men could shatter the oyster [shell] as if it were a barn door; and there was no cover upon the slopes, only shallow trenches carven by water in the soft ground, and a few great pits or holes wherein they would tip their rubbish and bad meat and gnawed bones (for there were no dogs), with a stench when the wind blew towards us worse than the great cess-pit beyond the stables. And even perished felons they buried behind the rocks – with a strange and blasphemous ceremony that was of no more use than a Jew’s or a Mahumettan’s or a heathen’s, and less than a man saying cokkow141 a thousand times: what use could it have had, never once mentioning God or His Only-Begotten Son?

  Will Scarelock called down from the rock, wherefrom he had spied the arrow sticking up from the heath at some distance, and was pointing. I went down the slope towards the shaft and, upon pulling it out of the heather, looked back whence I had come: the wood seemed as the high wall of a great castle doth, and was very dark either side of the rocks – though the low sun shone upon its boughs, now leafless, and struck the camp’s smoke that it looked most like the loosening of a thousand pale spirits into the air.

  Indeed, the wood was no doubt smaller than the area of a kingly castle, though always feeling vaster within. And Will Scarelock hailed me again from the rocks, for I believe he did fear me running away and himself being forced to pierce me, though it was of no matter to him in truth, for he regarded a hare and a man with the same indifference [aequitate].

  Then I raised an arm to him, my heart receiving my thoughts and beating very loud and fast; and I knew of a sudden that I did not wish to run away! For in the holy house of St Edmund’s, what was I but a boy minstrel from the kitchens, whose voice was now cracking and thus less pleasing to his master? And I saw as in a vision the angelic face of young Henry grinning upon me in triumph. Here in the wood, yet full of robbers and murderers and blasphemers and idolaters, I was the one who was chosen: for thus did the chief lord of the wood saith, and he had the power of all demons to change the serpent’s hiss into the sweet hum of a honeybee.

  What is more, the boyish part of my spirit had awakened to this forest existence, that seemed (despite the exceeding roughness of many of the felons) easier than the discipline of father Gerald’s rule. I considered that were I to become a novice monk, I would be bound to a hard life of chastity and devotion, and maybe suffer the same stripes as the oblates, who must not even talk together lest they receive a blow with an open hand upon the cheek, or a book broken upon the head.142

  Then the ampulla that brother Thomas had given me, with drops of holy water from the shrine of St Cuthbert, leapt suddenly inside my shirt as a mouse might; being as I was in great peril of instant damnation, the sacred fluid was eager to be far from me, as sheep are from wolves. And it was as if I had died at that moment, and the Devil being my lord of the manor, had took from me my most valuable possession – this being my soul.

  And it appeared to be taken in a flash of light, for such did I see on the horizon, to my great surprise! Indeed I saw another, flashing more; and when I turned my eyes back towards the bluff, I saw Will Scarlack holding a great fragment of glass, that by means of its great lustre and transparency, did bend and rebound the lines of light from the sun, to cause the glass to flash itself, as snow or ice doth, or as the sunlight doth off our abbey’s windows. And the two flashings far and near, appeared as it were to be speaking, as armies send signals by means of smoke or fire when no messenger can pass.143

  In this way, I later understood, Hodde learned of ripe fruit to be plucked upon the highway, of what fruit it was, and of what number; though no one would tell me what secret accomplice held the glass afar off, upon the crest.

  When I was again at the foot of the rock, Will Scarelock leaned over and cried, as if I were a stranger: ‘Whence cometh this young devil?’ (which was in mirth, though he never smiled). I replied, calling up: ‘Fro moche aventure!’144 for already the demons were working my lips. And he answered, as if disdaining me, which was his habit: ‘Moche? Nay, litel, for this [felawe] be smal to seyen.’145 And I shook my arrow and said in childish defiance, though it were half in jest, ‘Moch!’

  When Hod and the other felons heard of this, they laughed and called me Moche, the litel mynstrel sein.146 And so Muche became my name among them, as if my previous name was a skin sloughed away.

  This Muche (that was my myself) took part in many robberies; he awaited on the road, skulking behind trees and bushes with his skilled sword and bow, and terrorised innocent wayfarers, yet he housed my own soul. I was as a stone falling from the dizzy heights of a cliff, bound for Hell-fire, or a loathly dragon covered all over in that first health and beauty of young men. Muche was a loathsome thief and murderer, a succubus of Satan, yet was my soul saved; for though the spirit be suffering the greatest thirst in the desert, as long as there is a single drop of water that remaineth, so there is hope of forgiveness and salvation. The Lord loves each soul that gives itself up to Him, but those that are stubborn like the Jewes or Mahummetans, He despises.

  In my woodland dreams at this time, and then again later (during the week of Our Lord’s Passion, this being ignored entirely by the outlaws), I was oft visited by the dream-shape of my smooth-browed master and teacher [the hermit], cleaning the filth from me in a great sea wind that flapped his tattered robes; but my disease was too insidious, for though the Devil was in me, Satan was nothing but satisfied by the booty and gain of that evil purpose. Only grievous chastisement can hurt the cloven-hoofed beast, only when the rods break the skin with red welts can they reach the furry back of the Arch-demon crouched within, and expel him squealing in pain. Or if a holy man of great sanctity press him out by prayer or the scattering of holy water, then he departs swifter than a bolt.

  But no holy man came near the outlaws’ wood in corporeal form, as if the many heads of wild beasts suspended from trees at the marge did make a powerful throng of frenzied monsters thick enough to baulk even a saint. Thus it [evil] was left to seethe and corrupt beneath the boughs. And after the chill suffering of winter, sheathed in frost and snow, where icicles hung upon the rocky bluff, spring soon clothed the wood in lovely greenness, hiding its pollution the better, so that every demon hidden in the rocks and trunks and soft, mossy hummocks rejoiced in their dance with the felons – and most especially with our emperor, Robert Hodd, whom John did call The Robbynge Hoode:147 for he always wore such a guise, like Death’s great cowl, to conceal his wickedness when he did rob and slay; this hood pulled down lower than his waxen brow-scar.

  Methinketh now I must return (in my telling) to the sacred sea-place: dwelling too much on those times when I was a felon hath made me weep and [turn] weak, that I desire God to take me at last in my present great age from this cloister-bench of cold stone, upon which a glimmer of sun yet danceth, warm upon my hand, though my tale be unfinished.

  In truth, I should never have departed from his [the hermit’s] influence, but I was a spirited young boy; and my mother having passed to the Lord in the year 1219, when I was eight or nine, of a sudden cancre148 that tettered her skin like drops of black lead, I was tended to by a neighbour in the village who received as her reward a despising by me.

  This neighbour was unmarried, for she was crooked in the body, and as hairy and rough on her arms as an ass; yet she was of a kind disposition and kept a clean house and many hens. In my grief and surprise, that I locked away (for I shed not a tear after the funeral), I became bitter at heart and my liver swelled – the seat of love being the liver, that loss maketh swell with absence.

  At about this time, the hermit spent more and more time in prayer, wishing to know God more deeply while still on this mortal earth, and scarce ate or drank. He became more lik
e a length of [drift]wood, that is twisted like water from imitation of the sea in which it is tossed, and was salted the same, and much bleached under his shaven skull. So thin did he become, living on morsels of fish, coarse bread and wild sea herbs, that his throte-bolle149 did become very prominent, like a heron when it swallows a fish. He was scarce of this world, so exceedingly pure and unpolluted was his fleshly body.

  He was not to be disturbed at prayer, even if he sat upon the sand and the tide lapped about him, or a storm broke upon his head with spray from the lower sea and falls of water spilt over from the upper [sea]; and when strong winds coming into the clouds like water into a bladder, burst them open for lack of egress with a flash of fire that lit his stilled visage, the ensuing thunderclap (that our ears – duller organs than our eyes – hear moments later) shivered him not a whisker.

  I sometimes had to wait an hour or more before greeting him in my high voice, but that was no matter; I could work my letters without him as oblates continue their study of the Bible in private, and also I ran errands for him and even laboured at tasks, just as they [the oblates] till the vegetable garden, or shake the dust out of their palliasses, without supervision.150 Striving to be away from the pain of this fallen world, of which the beat of the sea and harsh screaming of the gulls did remind him, he could shut these out by meditating upon the angels, entering sometimes into a marvellous trance.

  I saw that around his chest he wore a knotted cord tightly drawn, that rubbed his flesh and caused sores in which worms would breed and wriggle unplucked, for he said that not only are all God’s creatures of His kingdom, but that his father was a frivolous and careless man, and as it says in the Bible: ‘I am thy Lord God, a strong jealous lover, and I visit the wickedness of fathers into the third and the fourth generation of them that hateth me.’151