The View From the Cart

An imagined account of the life of St Cuthman in the Dark Ages

REBECCA TOPE

Praxis Books. Herefordshire.

© Rebecca Tope 2014

ISBN 978 09559517 32

For Luke

With thanks for being a most gratifying grandson.

THE VIEW FROM THE CART

PART ONE RUNE

Chapter    One

Chapter    Two

Chapter    Three

Chapter    Four

Chapter    Five

Chapter    Six

Chapter    Seven

Chapter    Eight

PART TWO CROW

Chapter    Nine

Chapter    Ten

Chapter    Eleven

Chapter    Twelve

Chapter    Thirteen

Chapter    Fourteen

Chapter    Fifteen

PART THREE ACORN

Chapter    Sixteen

Chapter    Seventeen

Chapter    Eighteen

Chapter    Nineteen

Chapter    Twenty

PART FOUR CHURCH

Chapter    Twenty-One

Chapter    Twenty-Two

Chapter    Twenty-Three

Chapter    Twenty-Four

Chapter    Twenty-Five

Chapter    Twenty-Six

Chapter    Twenty-Seven

This story begins with a birth, as perhaps every story should. A tangled, tearing business it was, bone on bone, the struggle lasting from first light to first light; a whole day's cycle lost in that frenzy of pain and terror. I felt sure that one or other of us must die - perhaps both. My man, poor Edd, crouched close by, chewing his lips, his face the colour of a mushroom. I threw at him everything I could lay hands on. A plate caught his ear, so blood dripped through his hair and onto his neck.

My own blood flowed fitfully. I saw myself, great lumpen object, legs twisting first one way, then another, as I knelt, squatted, rocked, all over the hut, desperate to expel the thing inside me, pushing down at myself, heaving, shouting at him to come out. Our first child had fled outside on her stout little legs, to huddle with the dogs, or so I supposed when I missed her, sometime in the day. She came back when the sun sank, and retreated to her corner with a hunk of bread. She always knew what was good for her, that little woman. In my few moments of clarity I caught sight of a sun-filled sky to the west, bare trees sinister against the deepening blue of late afternoon. I could smell smoke and the midden and the hot sharp stink of my own body.

No battle was harder fought than that birth. It reached its wild crisis in the darkest hours of the night. I felt the infant twist and push, breaking something inside, bringing pure agony for a few moments, but still refusing to be born. I clawed at myself, like an injured dog or rat, attacking my own pain.

Not until I was exhausted into making my peace did I feel a change. The child's fight had ceased. It was as if it merely waited now for the strength to tackle the final stage of its entry into life. Lying curled like a cat on the filthy skins, my thumb in my mouth, sweat cold on my skin, I gave a great sigh and prepared for whatever might yet come - even death. ‘No more,' I said aloud. ‘Let me die, then. I did all I could.' The lamp guttered, making the huddled shape that was my daughter flicker and move in the shadows. Edd brought another light, using the last of our oil to better illumine my struggles. The blood on his face had dried, giving him a look of violence and reproach, both together. He put his hand on mine, and I felt how he was shaking.

Then something touched me. A warm thing, like a great hand, smoothing along the whole length of me. My breasts tingled, my legs lay straight and wide-parted. My frenzy was over and I could accept my fate. Almost I could see the loving thing that had come to me, as the angel came to Mary before she had her child. Almost I could hear it telling me that I had done everything any woman could. I had no strength now; even endurance was too much to ask.

For an age, nothing happened. I rested, despite the pain rooted so deep within me. The dark sky I had stared at for so long turned paler, as if a layer had been peeled away from it. My son came forth at last. First an arm, outstretched, packed close against his head, fist tightly clenched. I took hold of him by the shoulders none too gently, even though the anger and resistance had long since drained out of me. Another great clenching of my body finished the task, and the wet grey thing was born. Expecting it to be dead, I barely allowed myself to look. When it made no sound, I was sure, and laid myself back, weary and miserable, hot tears soaking my face. The pain inside me was still there, I noted dimly. When Wynn had been born, all discomfort vanished with her delivery. Something was badly different this time.

Edd crept closer, a bucket of glowing peat in his hand, from the banked fire he had been tending throughout my labours, knowing the child would need warmth. A bowl sat on the embers, full of warm water urgent for my washing. I knew he would not bear malice for the wound on his head. He and I had made the child; he must share the anguish of bringing it into life.

‘A lad,' he said. I could hear the smile in his voice. ‘A fine little lad.'

I opened my eyes, but could see little in the dawn light. Edd had extinguished the lamp and the fire was smoking. Besides, my vision was never good. From childhood I had been conscious that other people saw more refined detail than I ever did. I tried to sit up to look, but was laid flat again by a sharp sting low in my back. I waited, certain that it would go away in a moment. The baby began to snuffle and mew in a pool of water between my legs. I had obligations. Once more, I pushed myself up. The pain flared like fire, many times worse than the birth pangs had been. I cried out, as much in fear as bodily hurt. ‘Help me!' I shouted.

Unknowing, the child's father plucked him up, awkward and glad, and tried to give him to me. ‘I can't,' I gasped. ‘Wrap him and lay him close to me. Bring new covers. And find Wynn, if you can.' The child had gone out again at some unnoticed point, escaping from my trouble that she could not help or understand. Edd skittered about trying to obey me, worried now, not daring to ask for reasons. Every little while, I moved - first from side to side, then raising my head and shoulders. Each time the flames roared through me, consuming me. Only by remaining rigidly still, scarcely breathing, could I endure. Finally, I had to voice it.

‘I am crippled,' I said. ‘Something is broken in my back. Better I had died than this.' I recall little after those words. It seems I swooned from the pain, and then slipped into a sleep of pure extinction for an hour. When I woke, little Wynn's hand was fluttering across my face, her eyes wide with curiosity.

‘Ah, Wynn,' I murmured. ‘If only you were older.' She was not yet two years in the world, but on that morning, she made a great leap into a new life.

Still suckled herself from time to time, she knew what the baby most needed. With a few deft gestures, she brought the infant's mouth within reach of my nipple, without for a moment hurting me, and thus arranged his first vital sustenance.

The child lived and grew. My agony abated into a stiffness which only stabbed me if I tried to make a sudden move. My Imbolc babe watched the spring creep over the moors, his wits maturing with the year. The first primroses and early lambs provided his entertainment when his father took him out of the hut for some air.

Gradually, I forced myself to endure a sitting posture, propped with a board inside our south-facing wall, where some warmth came through on sunny days. I worked clumsily: unable to use a spindle properly, I devised a peculiar system of stretching the yarn across the hut, showing Wynn how to wind it up, as I twisted it from the fleece. Preparing food was simpler, so long as it was brought to me. Feeding the baby was easiest of all. Somehow his presence always soothed me; his eager mouth sucking so rhythmically eased my rigid back. Many a time I drifted away into a daytime dreaming, where I could run around the tors and take my due place in the outdoor work.

We were visited, of course. Spenna, my lifelong friend, could not conceal her shock at my disablement, when she arrived three days after the birth. Carefully, she examined the hurting place, stroking her fingertips over the skin, watching my expression with her sharp black eyes. ‘Tell me just what you did,' she said. ‘You felt something break inside?'

‘Not break,' I corrected. ‘Not quite that. But he twisted, and something stabbed me inside. Or,
tore.
He had his arm up - so - ‘ and I demonstrated. ‘That did the damage, I reckon.'

‘Should mend,' she said, dubiously. ‘With time. Here - does this feel better?' And she stroked again, humming softly, giving attention to the wound inside me. Spenna had five children herself, and I trusted her skill and experience.

Something warm welled up and I felt a sudden hope. But then I moved slightly, to ease myself away from a hard thing underneath my hip, and the old pain screamed through me, worse than before. ‘Aagh!' I groaned. ‘No, Spenna. Let it be. ‘Tis too early. It needs time to heal.'

She moved back a little and nodded, trying to hide the concern on her face. ‘You could be right,' she said. ‘I'll come again, a sennight from now.'

But she left me alone for longer than that, as even good friends will when the distance between is a morning's walk and her own life filled to overflowing. And I found I could carry on as I was, with Edd tending to my needs in much the same way as I took care of the baby's soiling. Lifting my lower self was impossible. Edd rolled me over, little by little, to change my rags and pack soft quilting underneath me. My bed was raised only a hand's breadth from the floor, forcing him to kneel beside me. We scarcely spoke in those days, both perhaps afraid of inviting the gods' attention to me as I hovered between health and crippledom.

Instead, he brought me tokens and charms to help the healing. Twigs of yellow furze, the lambs' tails from the hazel, and finally a sprig of sacred mistletoe, for which he had to search most of the day when he should have been sowing the corn. ‘I climbed the tree for it,' he said proudly, ‘and used my teeth to cut it through. This will heal you, my lover.' His gentleness touched me, and I chewed the bitter leaf almost as hopeful as he had been when he plucked it.

That night, I thought I detected some improvement. The child was restless, bleating tetchily to himself, as he lay between us. Somehow he rolled himself close against me, wedged in the crook of my arm as I lay face down. Every night I would painfully turn over onto my face, finding it the most comfortable position for sleep. But now the baby was seeking my breast, and I could feel the milk leaking into the bedding. Holding my breath, I pushed myself over onto my side, scooping the child to me, not wishing to wake Edd or Wynn. The expected pain did not come. The sucking baby sent me back to sleep, in a position which would have been impossible two days before.

But next morning I was stiff and ungainly again. Edd changed my rags, and we noted that there was no longer any bleeding or discharge from the birth. He brought me porridge and an apple from the store. It was wrinkled and brown but tasted sweet. I could tell Edd was waiting for me to announce an improvement. Mistletoe is powerful medicine; impossible that it should have no effect. Almost I opened my mouth to say ‘I did feel easier in the night. Perhaps the cure has begun.' But something stopped me as I squinted up at him.

Instead, I stared down at my legs, thin and white, sticking out from me as if made of peeled elder rather than living flesh. We had not been sure whether their use was lost. Cautiously, I tried to move one foot, nodding to Edd to watch me.

Slowly, the foot inscribed a small circle. Edd smiled. ‘That shows!' he cried. ‘You'll soon walk the moors again.'

‘And be the shepherd, too?' I was teasing him, knowing his distaste for shepherding work.

‘And be the shepherd,' he agreed, his face all grin and good cheer.

I moved my foot again. The whole leg felt weak and reluctant, but there was no pain. I tried the other, with the same result. ‘It doesn't hurt,' I told him, as if conferring a great gift.

‘There!' he said, as if everything was settled and right again.

That day, I pulled myself onto the pisspot, when Edd was out of the hut. Before that morning, he had lifted me on and off it, willing and strong, concerned for my helplessness. We had a length of sacking as screen, but when he tried to leave me alone, I wobbled and wrenched my back, crying out for him to stay with me.

Then I dragged myself halfway across the floor to add a stick to the fire, using my arms, my legs barely part of me yet.