Hodd Read online

  Though I was lamed, our horses (having been left with Mercilesse Greenlese in the woods close by the road) were just as fleet356 when we sped away before dawn, with our chief sitting with Litell John upon the same saddle, as though no discord had ever occurred between them. And none being crouched in the brushwood, ditch or coppice to rob us (as oft robbers are robbed themselves), therefore we returned to our own malefactors’ camp safely by dusk of that same day.

  We were greeted like the victors of a great battle, under the leafy trees. Hodd was carried to his hut, where various potions of crushed beetles, herbs and common oil were applied on his skin, as he had begun to rave like a mad beggar, running a fever that threatened to carry him off. So potent had been the foul fumosity of the dungeon, that I too fell sick with diarrhoea [alvi profluvium], although I now think it the effect of my great and mortal sin.357

  * * *

  A full fortnight later, we were recovered enough that a celebratory feast was held under the principal oak, during which revelry I first recited the adventure to the strains of the stolen harp, while the felons listened in their drunken manner to one also reeking, yet able to rhyme; after which they resumed their jests and merriment. Some took their archery gear to the rock-bluff, while others (stripped to the waist) wrestled each other for pleasance through many a pull, so that their flesh was glossy with sweat – then slaking their thirst the more, like eager swains at a tournament.

  Seldom had I felt such contentment and pride, and verily thought myself a great figure in the world, incontinent with drink and wanton cheer; so that e’en my murder of a fellow-Christian vanished in mirth, yet was no more gone than a deer in the dapple-grey of a copse, that fooleth the sight by resting still.

  Yet all I was doing was raking hot coals about myself: for being carried about beside John on many a shoulder, both marvellously clad in stolen robes and green-leafed crowns, like knights in glittering helms after victory in battle, I touched the very roof-beams of pride.

  Hodde watched, yet he was not comfortable, even when toasted many times by the company; and when he stood upon the hewn log in his tight-fitting mantle the colour of dried blood, his speech was rambling and full of fantastic words that none there understood. His great hood that fell down his back, seemed limp and like the flayed integument of some monstrous organ.

  He was not as before, indeed, and horribly resembled the poor quack’s skull, hid high above the leafage. The light that once gleamed in his prominent eyeballs was doused, and his voice was weaker and somewhat cracked: and his teeth – that his lips moved over in that aforesaid curious way (as if sucking upon a plum) – showed more distinctly in their crookedness, between a neglectfulness of beard that gave him the false air of a desert prophet.

  I felt a restlessness among the men, for Litell John had command of them and had not the same power over their minds, but only over their baser natures that sought pillage and profit. And I saw how certain of the younger felons nearest me were e’en giggling during the speech! Yet when one among us, a rascal called Coillon358 (from his extreme ugliness of nose, that had been rivelled and pecked by disease), was found to have wronged one of the women in the Nunerie, by breaking in drunkenly that same night, Hode banished him, with a fresh disfigurement that was a veritable improvement, for the aforesaid protuberance no longer shadowed his face; while those who had giggled were guests for several days of the dragon’s pit, and the revelries were thus ended.

  We soon heard from others, how the sheryf had raged after the escape, and punished the guards with a beating on their bare shoulders, and how the one-eyed, aged serjeant on the postern gate had been rewarded with a spell in the very same cell, that would no doubt be fatal to him; although this news, being imparted by travellers waylaid by the felons on the road, might have little resembled the truth.

  Well before the feast – namely on the ninth day after the exploit – having been called as usual into Hod’s fraudulent temple for heretical instruction, I was asked to recount all that had happened, for he was confused (it seemed) by the visions he had seen in the utter and stinking blackness of his days in the dungeon. He was so thin, now, that he might have outfaced a skeleton for gauntness, and his hair was lank, and the whiskers were already thickening into beard, yet his wicked brow-mark shone like precious fat. Other men have spent months or even years in such places, and survived better! To my mind, Hodd had devils in him that had delighted to be in that underground place, that was so like their true home, and they had issued forth from his mouth and nose and buttocks to taunt him: and these being of such number and so plumped up on his wickedness and heresy, he was as a horse – or, rather, a sow – driven mad by flies.

  When I came to the reckoning of Henrie, I broke down at the finish, for the illness had weakened me sufficiently that I could not hide my feelings as before, and wept until my entire face was moist.

  Instead of being sore displeased, he put his arm about my shoulders and said, ‘Verily, thou hast done a great service, for this angelic boy was destined to become a great and powerful bishop, burner of heretics and oppressor of the free spirit, remembered by posterity as St Henry of Lincoln – for that city is where he was destined to serve his Lord Pope. And he was to live to a great age, writing many brilliant treatises of huge renown, e’en rivalling those of Augustine. And on his death the Spirit within him, which is called anima, would have become the otherwe as with all beings, in many floating veils; save that his was so glutted on so-called heretics, that it would have overcharged its vaporous vessel as certain clouds do, with a dreadful breaking noise, and rained a kind of running flux, causing corruption of beasts like a cattle-plague, and grievous illness and famine.’

  Amazed, I asked him through my tears, ‘How do you know this? For you did not meet Henriy, and he was but nine or ten, though indeed he was exceeding proud.’

  Hodde then laughed, and his eyes kindled again with something of his former spirit, his dark line of single eyebrow creasing above them, and his gaunt nose moving, that he did very much resemble that bird which finds a savoury goodness in excrement and carrion, and dieth of hunger.359 ‘I know all things, and it is a wonder that men know them not,’ he said. ‘But search in your heart, and you will know them too, for you are of the elect. Indeed, you will be placed even higher than myself !’

  And I was so much stupefied that I could only stammer forth: ‘Higher, master? How can that be?’

  Following a pause for thought, he said: ‘After the sea of divine essence hath covered all that we know, and extinguished humankind, but for the few angelic forms who have had the truth revealed to them, you will be placed so, extraordinary as it might sound. I saw this in the dungeon: you flitted far above me, like a lark.’

  He paused, and went to the corner of his birch-lined hut, that resembled a pagan temple full of idolatry: there he took out a hidden flask of wine and drank a long draught, like any tavern-haunter. Indeed, he had a sweet scent about him of the incontinent drinker, a common plain fault that I was blind to. Then he wiped his whiskers and turned to me and said: ‘Aye, you were far above me, a light in the darkness, I swear. This is because you have done a most powerful deed, in ending the life of that future oppressor, that might e’en have prevented the sea of divine essence from outbreaking these earthly limits and flowing, so dangerous and venomous was he. That was the purpose of my suffering in that hellish room those three days, that you might release us from the bonds of the future.’

  Then, after coughing moistly as with a rheum, he came up to me again and whispered close: ‘So must you do the same once more with your blade or your bow, but to another far closer and better known to us.’

  His warm lips touched my ear, as the Devil’s do in tempting us, or as a harlot does in lechery; and immediately I fathomed his meaning, with such a chill about my battered heart that it well nigh stopped. Seeing that I did not ask him of whom he might mean, he murmured the name, and laughed (for I now believe he was intoxicated). ‘But I cannot,’ I stamme
red, ‘for he hath done no evil, and is one of our company, and indeed hath just saved your own life, dear master.’

  As men doubt whether there be a God and yet be displeased by this very temptation of the Devil, so was I heartily displeased by Hode’s words, though just before I had been puffed up like a toad by his praise. But e’en more displeased was Hodde by my recoiling, and he pinched me about the neck, and shouted, ‘How canst thou doubt my words, when I was right about the one you have slain? Dost thou pick and choose my words like cherries?’

  I denied this, but did not know what more to say, for no soldier must doubt a single one of his general’s words, or all collapses: for every stone in a great cathedral partakes of the whole, and so it was with the heretic Hode. If this stone be hollow, then why not that one also? Mayhap, then, none can be trusted, and the whole edifice is but a playing company’s pasteboard castle.

  Yet I nodded as if in agreement, for I was eager to be free of his grip, and of his coughing, and of his foul, wine-tinctured breath on my ear. ‘Watch him closely,’ he added, in a soft hiss, ‘for he doth mean to finish us, before we finish him! Thus you must choose the moment soon, e’en within days. This our little forest kingdom is torn by deceit and fraud and corruption, like Ingelond360 itself. Perverse is the world, and it is best to be rid of it: and by tipping over the cup of wickedness when it is full, to the very brim, we shall know the boundlessness of endless bliss.’

  Thus like a serpent did he beguile, and I was much torn, and full of fear; for part of my brain did keep the memory of him when he was prostrate in the dungeon: and like an ordinary and most miserable vagabond was he then, sprawled on those befouled rushes!

  3

  To slay Litle John was so far beyond [my] ability and will, that I could not see how I might obey my master, beguiled though I was by his flattery. Yet I began to comprehend how the big-shouldered felon was taking advantage of his master’s state to presume command; for when Hode had hobbled from his hut during the second week of his sickness, with that new beard upon him from neglect, saying that they must move the camp to a wilder place upon the coast, after the advice of a vision, Litel John had refused, and our leader was too sick to complain. Yet I now believe he did complain, by bidding me after to slay his lieutenant.

  In the days following the feast, Hode ordered the men to erect more poles all about the edges of the wood, where the low line of defence ran (its timbers much in need of repair). They stuck heads of poached deer and boars and suchlike upon the tops and decorated them with feathers to make hideous masks, as those blaspheming pagans do, that are not yet rooted out from certain wild places, nor from our very towns and villages.

  Some of the fire was in him still, for when a haughty, blond-haired retainer of the cruel baron’s was caught on the road, and perforce dragged before our leader, the poor wretch was hanged on the instant from the great oak in his fine blue mantle, and then his head likewise stuck on a pole at the marge of the trees: its face receiving cuts [cultro vulneratum] from Hodde’s sharp knife, so that the victim’s own mother would not have recognised him.361

  ‘Now,’ said Hodd, in his address to the assembled company, ‘we have no need of guards or sentries, nor even a wall, for the divine essence flows about us in a ring, and is harder than steel to our enemies!’

  Litl Johnn thought this all folly, and said so there and then. ‘Amazed am I,’ he cried, ‘that we are trusting to this ruse of sticks, as solid as a happy dream, when our enemies are eager for revenge. E’en now they may be encircling us, and yet no alarum will shrill, until they leap on our very throats.’ To which sensible observation, born of much soldiering in his case, some of us were in timid agreement; others were troubled by this disloyalty, for they still believed Hodd to be one of the elect and that this horrible pagan vice might protect them, as earthworks protect a town; and the remainder like myself did not know which way to blow, but looked about anxiously for the enemy slinking up to us through the trees.

  Alas, what evils we are prepared to believe; in the same way dames – even a baron’s lady – are happy to believe in ten sorts of delicious wines, when the huckster draws them all from one miserable and tainted barrel!

  At this, Hodde told him that he [Little John] was an unbelieving knave, and not worth expending an arrow upon, and would be less than ashes when the day came of the overbreaking of the spirit. ‘Indeed thou shalt be a spot of grease on the great ocean flowing from my bowels, that is broad and without a bottom [largitio non habet fundum].’ At this we all laughed greatly; but Hode, wickedly smiling, bid us be silent with a raised arm, and added: ‘Thou art not pure, John, because there is a morsel of your spirit that is tainted with doubt, that believes sinfulness be possible, like a speck of dung in the sweetest honey. Therefore you sin in every action, and even raising your little finger, you are defiled, a mere servant of that cursed horned creature, the Church.’362

  Litl John looked about him then, and seeing us all grinning like fools, turned to Hod and said, ‘The only sin I committed was to free your miserable cadaver from the gaol, wherein we saw what the blessed one had come to, fevered and stinking.’ Hod scoffed, though he was troubled by this: clothing it in merry words and speckled with oaths I cannot repeat, he said: ‘Then were I to cut thy throat, knave, you would esteem it not a sin, for verily it would be a just reward for your bad judgement. Though I would deem this act of murther a very wise act, and even blessed, for I desire it most strongly, and all that the pure in spirit desire, is blessed.’

  I gasped, astonished that he should be declaring his bloody wishes so openly; yet I now see it as his skilful way of deceit, for no man would normally declare himself openly to the victim, if he meant it in earnest. And thus he put on the cloak of dissembling, as all devils do, by his plain-spoken honesty;363 and so the assembled company cheered and clapped, thinking Hode to be sending soft missiles of ribaldry, and not deadly poison as they were, while I sat silent and morose in my own darkness.

  And likewise John did not reply with his mouth, but pulling down his breeches in an indecent manner, turned his posterior towards our leader and let out a great wind, with a noise as loud as players and buffoons make by strongly blowing into a bladder and violently breaking it. Yet this was performed with his own anatomy. And then he cried, after the manner of our leader’s blasphemous declarations: ‘And that, too, is most sweet, for nothing is foul that is made by the divine essence!’

  Hode asked me the next day about the grey-eyed damsel, searching my eyes as he did so, so that I stammered in my speech. ‘I feel the end drawing nigh,’ he said, bowing his head in the hut, ‘when we shall be united, the virgin and myself, and all shall be liquified in bliss. But first my chief rival must be effaced [delendum est], and the task is yours; for last night a vision came to me, wherein I saw you triumphant, trampling his huge cadaver.’

  And I did feel fear and pride mingling; for he looked upon me as a father doth his son, that would beat him more sorely the more he loveth him – the father loving better the son that is most like to him.

  Then he took me from the hut to stand under the great oak. There were few felons in the clearing, for some were crouched in the shrubs miles away by the highway, others still guarding the camp, and most engaged on sundry tasks here and there. Looking up, he bid me watch the myriad little leaves so blithe and bright in the summer sunlight, and moving in gusts of a full breeze with birds warbling among them. ‘Every leaf is honouring me,’ he said; ‘each one, numbering thousands upon thousands, is acknowledging and honouring my presence, for they are part of my inmost being, and they praise me as their father.’

  Indeed it seemed to be as he said, as I looked up into the giddy heights of the bough-laden tree: that were like the heights of a great abbey church springing from the roots of the pillars. Each leaf was moving in obeisance and fealty and honouring, as handkerchiefs flutter at a famous knight in a tournament. His eyes were shining as he stared upwards with his gaunt face, his lips moving over words
I could not hear at first. ‘We must build higher,’ he murmured. ‘Higher and yet higher. Thou must perform thy deadly task tomorrow, as it is writ. Do not extort from me instruction, let there be no delay, only remain fierce and merciless, and remember that you are the purest in heart; and whatever the pure in heart desire, pure are the waters thereof.’

  Then there was a bray of the Jew’s horn from the margin of the wood, for Litle John had returned with Will Scathelock and others from the road. No booty had been taken; each time the wayfarers had been too poor, or were moving in armed parties of twenty or more. This was so increasingly since Hod’s escape; no one now dared venture on the highway alone, if he were worth robbing. And when Litl John came up and told us this, Hode said, ‘Nothing hath his being of naught,’ which is a phrase of Boethius, and was sarcastic in his mouth, for Hodd smiled when he uttered it, as if nothingness was indeed something in his mind: and whatever he said did oft seem as doth a solid substance, e’en when it was a contradiction [quod contra dictum est] unto itself, or grievous heresy. And we all know that the one true God is incapable of contradicting Himself.

  At that point the breeze grew in the trees, and the great oak swayed its boughs with a creaking noise, that it seemed to be obedient to its master. I saw Hode lift his bearded face and look upwards at it again, with shining eyes like an ascetic, and lips moving silently once more; in that moment I understood how he was inviolate in his purity, and that we were corrupted, for none other among us would so resemble a saint. My unbelief was such that I saw in him the effigy of Christ: compared to the other felons in the clearing, whose glances were mostly sidelong and whose brows oft scowled – so steeped in vice were they – he had writhed to be unharnessed from both good and evil, evil and good, as though these were the same, no different than are two numbers in dice! And seeing naught but righteousness and purity in all his own thoughts and actions, he therefore had a hideous piety about him.