Hodd Page 12
Then began a wandering, mendicant [mendicam]167 life through many sweltering summers and many bitter winters that led at last to our village, where he came forwandred.168
I believed his story – why should I not have done? – and would often imagine him in these earlier years before he cropped his head and became a hermit. Yet so differing were his two lives, that it was hard for me to see them as belonging to one man, for children seldom care for the past, that is swiftly decayed to them, though it be but a month ago.
Indeed, the two lives were as different as mine own, for I had once been in the midst of God’s influence, whether in the sea-arrayed hermitage or the quiet-aisled abbey; and was now cast into the wastes of wickedness, as if cloven from mine own past. For this small wood had become my complete world, and the Lord seeing fit to send us a season of sunlight and soft showers that spring, our wild place was much beautied, and its great trees and lees of grass and fragrant herbs beguiled me further and deeper into its rough ways, wherein many tiny demons and imps lurked and winked as poisonous as toadstools in clefts of boles and under stones, and in the movement of the verdure.
And much pleasure I had in swordplay, staveplay and archery, e’en when bloodied, for I was a quick learner; and soon the two-handed sword was swift in my grasp, though it be weighted like a blacksmith’s hammer. The frequent climbing of trees made me nimble, and so skilled is the Devil that he can stir our vital spirits and animate our blood with such exercise, neglecting our reason, and make us think we are content. Furthermore, like any proud knight, I had my own horse from the outlaws’ stable, a dappled rouncy granted to me on Hodde’s orders – upon which I soon learned to ride as well as any man, though being thrown twice for the beast was restless.
Without a saddle or harness but only on the rough hair did I ride, and always accompanied by a pair of felons on their swifter mounts lest I attempt to flee over the heathland, though such a hot thought never entered my heart. And out of some forty horses in the wood, that were stabled in simple shelters on the easterly edge and well provendered with stolen oats and hay, making a stink through the trees as of a wealthy town, was added an unbroken colt of great promise, snatched from a meadow belonging to my former abbey. And one of the outlaws by the name of John Cardinall broke it skilfully over many days, that it became tame as a lamb.169
So familiar to me did the leech’s poor dangling bones become, I ceased to see them as horrible, and e’en when innocent wayfarers were slain on the road (for putting up foolish resistance or hallooing too loud), I felt it only as a soldier might feel the loss of an enemy in battle or siege. How weak my defences were, to crumble so fast! How inconstant our loyalty and faith to the spotless, all-powerful Lord! Yet He lets us sin, for we are free in our will – not being dumb beasts of the field, but as frisky in our hearts as a neighing colt.
Many times in the preceding winter months, before the cuckoo or the turtle-dove were calling for their mates, and only the jay’s scorn [contemptus] sounded170 in the lifeless cold, Hodde had bid me play to him in his hut. He would preach to me between songs in his usual manner, that I found sweeter than before, as poison is oft disguised by honey; though his import was preposterous. And filled with wonder at his impenetrable wisdom, I had allowed my ears to become the corrupter of my soul. Now my harp was broken, he called me less, yet still I knew by certain words that I was especially chosen, and his most resplendent and gifted disciple: thus giving my morsel of a life, of no more worth than a scrap of crust thrown to the ground, some bountiful reason to be.
And though we ate salted meat from the bluff’s caves – for scores of stolen bucks, harts, cattle and sheep had been salted and stored there before the winter – it seemed to me of the freshest and choicest kind; and so also did I indulge in the evil of intoxicants of the type that sometimes led to drunken blows between my companions, and foul oaths under the trees, for most revelous were the outlaws; yet fornication of the flesh was not yet permitted me, on pain of mutilation, though I was oft set to guard the palace of the women.
Polluted as I was, I had not yet seen a robbery, save the one of which I was the victim. We set off for the highway, that lay some four miles to the east, on a morning of blustery wind that had pushed away the clouds, and the night’s rain lay all a-glitter upon the herbiage and on the blear wastes of heath: riding on my steed to the rear of the fifteen or so felons, speaking merrily with them, a sword at my side and a bow on my back, a clutch of barbed arrows in my belt and a cloth wrapped about my neck that I might draw it up to hide my face, I was truly ‘Muche’ the outlaw, and not mine old and better self.
The wily and cunning Arch-Satan rode in front on his fine black Spanish destrier171 worth above £40, with its large nostrils and good wind that permitted him swiftly to depart the scenes of his crimes. He had promised me that one day soon I would have not only as fine a mount but also a resplendent harp, to be taken from a baron’s castle by his own hand. Thus we are beguiled on the road to Hell by satiating visions and golden promises, by a feast laid out upon a table draped by samite and brocade of Bagdad, assailing our nostrils with scents of cardamum, honey and cloves – but which banquet (when bitten into) crumbles to dust, to the very last muscat-nut or morsel of jellied quince. For what was Robbert Hod but a simple horse thief, worthy only of the rope, or to hang in chains at a crossway?
We passed Salise and lurked in the bushes along the highway called Watlinge Strete, the same that brother Thomas and I had been taken upon, and near that very spot where it comes up onto the heath at Barnesdayle172 towards Dancaster. The melancholy felon called Will Scarelacke, of very moist humours and yellow skin, and always weeping in one eye, lay in wait beside me. He made a fitting companion for the balance of humours: I was exceeding dry and airy and excited, for my melancholy had been thinned, as if sieved by this manly, woodland life.
We knew there to be a convoy ripe for picking: three rumbling waggons laden with silk stuffs for the milliners of the town, a fourth carrying choice French wine, a mule with a full barrel of salt strapped to its back, and a small cart loaded with well-stitched leather harness for the [coming] tournament; while accompanying the carts (though not of them) was the Bishop [of York]’s man with a payment of gold about him from the palace at Yorke. How Hode knew these things to the last detail was through the speaking flashes of glass, that also told him of the travellers’ progress; for we did not wait upwards of an hour before the waggons appeared on the brow, after the carriers’ whistles to the horses upon the steep hill were carried to us first by the blusters of wind.
At the last [moment], it seemed, there had been added a guard, for the convoy was flanked by six or seven men indistinguishable in their countenance from ruffians, on bony chestnut cobs, and armed with long swords. Each of these was grappled easily off his mount by two felons who leapt out of the bushes – a skilled manoeuvre much rehearsed in the trees. One corpulent guard made the error of resisting – wounding the horse breaker, John Cardinall – and was soon guzzling upon an arrow piercing his throat almost to the fletchings, that had flitted from the bushes; the others (save one) were dragged into these bushes and stripped, and made to flee for their lives over the bare heath in nothing but their shirts. The one guard remaining, whom I recognised as a felon recently absent, was laughing at his ruse: he had greased the company’s stirrups in the town stables with mutton fat, that the men’s feet kept slipping, giving rise to many choice oaths.173
A frightened young cob had struck out behind and felled an outlaw, whose companion thereupon pierced the poor beast with his sword. Will Scarlack and myself had seized the mule with the barrel of salt, while the others had done likewise with the silks and the wine. The carters and drivers offered no resistance, nor did two well-dressed citizens – a fair-haired damsel and her elderly male companion, who were travelling without encumbrance of baggage among the carts. John Cardin[al] was pouring blood from his thigh as from a jug, and blaspheming at it; while the hoof-struck felon was insensible, hi
s skull nigh cloven.
All this taking place among a great medley of shouts and cries and whinnyings, I yet heard no distinguishable words, for my ears were buzzing with excitement, and my heart pounding. The Devil had filled me with a sweet sense of glorious adventure that was yet heedless of caution; failing to pull my cloth mask over my face, my features were seen in full, though spattered horribly by the road’s mud.
The pack saddles [clitellae] of our pack horses and sumpter-mules were loaded with the captured goods and departed for the camp, the whiles our prisoners were led away until out of sight and earshot of the bloodied roadway; and I accompanied them as their guard, with other felons. There our captives were tied one to the other and sat upon the heath grass between the furze that grew thick around, pleading for their lives; while the Bishop of Yorke’s man was struck many times with one of the driver’s whips, until his head was sorely cut and the blood soaked his tunic: for the outlaws did especially detest bishops. He whimpered like a hound, the gold spilling from his purse as Philyp stabbed it with his dagger, that their contents might fatten a bag held proudly by myself.
I had eyes not for this lustrous hoard, that to the Lord Our God is always but filthy excrement when compared to the gold of His eternal glory, but for the fair sample of young womanhood on her bay palfrey, of no more than sixteen or seventeen years; her tender white skin was flushed with fear, as her eyes of a startling bluish-grey [glaucitatis]174 looked about in bewilderment under her smooth brow, yet ever turning away from the bloodied victim of our ire. Love stole into my young heart and pushed out all other senses, and I became its loyal simpleton. As the wasteland’s thorns and wild roses were in flower, and the morning sun alighted upon us at that very moment between high clouds, the pitiful spectacle was transformed into one of a delicious sweetness. For God of truth she was fair!
The man I took to be her father or uncle, whose mild and scholarly appearance had not deterred the outlaws from unseating him from his saddle, had not been further injured and was permitted to remain on foot beside the damsel. Hodde rode hard towards us from the road, eyes alight after the devilish work, and spoke in his usual preaching manner to the terrified prisoners; these understanding no more of what he was saying about the divine essence and the othaire than they might a Frenchman or a German. As Robeytt Hodde’s reputation was exceeding broad, and included unspeakable acts of cruelty such as the gouging out of eyes, or the cutting off of feet (though these might have been exaggerated),175 and no other man so dominated the area as he did (not even the abbot or the sh[e]rif), they were eager to show compliance: thus tyrants rule by fear alone.
Hod then turned in his saddle to the fair maiden, and I saw his eyes gluttonously feasting upon her beauty beneath the wimple176 of fine linen; his lips moving with soft, private words to her, his fingers were laid lasciviously upon her wrist below the buttons,177 and I witnessed them prodding under her glove. Her guardian stepped between the two in protest, only to be swept aside like a ragged curtain by the outlaw’s hand, sheathed in its fine fingerless leather that seemed stitched to the skin. Whereupon the old fellow lost his footing and lay prostrate upon the heath’s meagre grass.
We roared with laughter, for the man was a venerable fool, with white stubble and lean neck, and his smell was of fish three days old. See how pitiless I had become! In truth my heart was filled with jealousy, that my master had touched that beauteous flesh. I had seen her flinch, and pull her member away and tremble all over, though this sight failed to dint the fattening demon of jealousy within. Tears moistened her flushed cheeks as she regarded the poor old man upon the ground, nursing his face with its bloodied nose; yet never (at this time) did I question the vileness of my master’s actions, not even the meanest, for I was flush with pride at being a member of the elect.178
A peacock’s shrill cry sounded, which being a warning that unwanted company had been spotted on the highway a good mile off (even though these may have been simple wayfarers and not the sherriff’s men), Hod bid us through clenched teeth to take the maiden prisoner. We all sped away with our prize, leaving the old man tied up weeping among the carters in that blear wasteland, till some passing shepherd or pedlar take mercy upon them, hearing their cries; or mayhap one among them contrive to gnaw away the tough rope. For there being nothing tilled there, they could not hope for a Jack the peasant to untie them.
And thus was I dubbed this day a worthy outlaw, merry as could be.
5
A few days after the robbery, walking with him alone one morning on the marge of the wood, in the company only of crows cawing above us, I enquired of R[o]b[e]rt Hod what was to become of the grey-eyed maiden. ‘We shall offer a mass for the Blessed Virgin,’ he said; this being oft his manner, that a blasphemous wit might deflect enquiry. And so might a fox be seen to be grinning while leaving the hen coop, his mouth well bloodied (a sight witnessed by me only a week ago, snow fresh upon the ground, while I limped in my drear old age about our abbey’s outer court).
And then seizing my hair, he drew me close to him and said that were he to couple with the damsel in the manner of a dog,179 and then drown her after in the foul swamp of filth that was our camp’s cess-pit beyond the stables, that would perforce be no sin, for the only sin is to believe that the elect of the sea of the divine essence can indeed sin.
I paled, sickened by the thought, and began to weep while uttering no sound. Yet it was not the pain of his grip, that tore a clutch of hair from my scalp, that caused my tears, but the crazed love I felt for the girl, whose look alone had dragged my heart through its portals, and conquered my reason. Thus do women madden us with their beauty, a beauty that is relished by the serpent Satan.
Then Hodd released my hair and laughed, saying that the girl had not been touched in any wise, for she was to be his virgin bride. Astonied, I said, ‘How is this to be?’ And he replied (speaking like a quack),180 that a message had come from the othur on the night air, carried by the goddess that is the Mother Earth, though in the form of a bat. This bat entering his temple (meaning by this, his simple hut lined by birch bark), addressed the one who continually spins all of Creation from his bowels (namely, the ‘free spirit’ of himself), that he must conjoin with her of the grey eyes; for this damsel, and not Mary Mother of God in her heavenly spotlessness, was the true Virgin.
Setting his hood over his scalp, lest (as I secretly thought it) a crow stab at his heretic’s brow-sign, he added: ‘She was sent for this very purpose on the sea of the divine essence, like the loveliest of ships.’ I asked, feigning delight, though my heart was a plumbstone in a well: ‘Prithee, master, when shall the nuptials be?’ To my surprise, for I had not thought him serious, he answered, ‘Upon the next solstice.’
Alas, such obsolete dates do heathens and heretics ignorantly take as significant, while ignoring saints’ days such as the Feast of St Valentine or St John’s Eve, or even Pentecost or Good Friday, and other hallowed marks upon the calendar that guide our gaze upward and not down into the trodden mire.
‘Thereupon the cup’s measure will be full,’ he continued, with eyes very prominent and shining under his false cowl, ‘and the end of days be accomplished, for we are near to the very rim. Paradise, separated from us by the upper sea, and too long a journey for the span of a man’s life – the last stretch being all frozen ice – shall be conjoined likewise with Mother Earth, after all those who are not free in spirit have been burned by a great fire. All this shall happen at one hour after midnight on the day of our marriage. Believe me, little Moche, for nothing is but what is ordained, and I ordaineth all things even when my right hand knoweth it not; and the world shall be full consumed in the time of halve a milewey.’181
And so fierce and powerful was his look, aided by a sudden gust that smacked against the wood’s edge, flinging the crows upwards like blown ash, that I shuddered from fear of the purifying fire but a few months off: for the hermit and even brother Thomas would also say that our measure was full to the brim, an
d our age was the last, as senescence be in a single life.
In truth, I had not seen the grey-eyed maiden since she had been taken to the Nonnerie, lamenting her fate in weeping, after the robbery on the highway some days before. It was told me by the wounded John Cardynel, rank with a stink of verdegris182 and his leg very swollen, that he had been tended by one of the women, who had (though a rough bawd) strong skills in healing: ‘The damsel being held for ransom, is an exceeding annoyance to them; for she ever complains, bewailing her fate or falling into a sulk. And since she has arrived – no felon being allowed into the Noneryye for fear she might be misused, but authorised only to know a woman in the trees without, well guarded by a companion – ’tis very vexing to the bawds among them, for the rough woodland floor doth prick their posterior flesh!’ He recounted other tales, of a more indecent than amatory nature, that I feigned enjoyment of.
I was appointed to guard the hut on the fifth or sixth day; and during my watch I heard the murmuring of women within, most like turtle-doves, and their shadows flitting beyond the wattle fence when they came out of their prison, and my mind was moaning, ‘Ey, therein lies my love!’ No watchman was permitted to enter the gate, for not only was any visit by a felon to be authorised by our leader, but no guard must risk being tempted or overpowered by female wiles. This glimpse goaded me further, as the sweet smell of apples or plums, more than the full sight of them, must tempt a boy to scale a wall. And it is well known how lascivious knights crave to break down the door of a true nunnery, when the open bawdy-house is but two streets away! Thus are we the honeycomb for the demons’ busy offices, diligent as wasps in our cells.