……where several owls called out to me from the alder trees across the marsh, plaintively and in the deep dreaming evening, I heard, half heard the moon rise, slipping as smoothly as an old coin through a hole in a pocket, swishing through mists and mires behind their branches. Sonorous too, the beat of a drum, from who knew where, ten leagues away perhaps, but a drum I swear, nonetheless.

She turned her face towards me in the gloom, eyes gleaming like a cats with some inner light, while the gravestone against which she leant cut it’s arched shadow sharply against the sky.

I heard her voice or so it seemed, an instant before she spoke, out of step somehow with the thoughts and plans which had brought us together to that place.

“You recall” she began, her voice a whisper “What I asked of you some days ago?”

“What was that?” I asked cautiously, well aware of what she was talking about.

“To make love to me again as you once used to” she said softly.

I shook my head without smiling and without looking directly at her.

“I agreed nothing!” I said.

The evening was warm and wonderful and in the water in front of us a handful of stars, newly fallen from grace, glittered intricately. It was sad but true and I shook my head because I recognised, straight away, her challenge, oblique and subtle though it might have been.

I shook my head because while she leaned against a gravestone I sat higher, enthroned if you will, upon the rounded top of my newly rescued iron bound chest.

Newly recovered I should say for while the Abbot in his wisdom retained it for me he had neither keys nor access to the contents of it whilst it was in his possession.

“I’m not going to fuck you goodbye if that’s what you’re asking!” I told her firmly.

“Then fuck me hello” she demanded.

“I’m not going to fuck you at all!” I told her, equally as firmly.

“But…….why?” she began again “Am I no longer desirable?”

“More than I could ever say”

“Then why won’t you? I want you to. I want you……want you!”

“No……”

“But WHY NOT?”

“For all the same reasons I gave you before”

I heard her sigh, sensed her disappointment and knew, still knew, I’d never change my mind. And I’ll give you my reasons, so you too will know. There are secrets and secrets and some of them, so many of them, countless numbers sometimes I think, secrets they must remain, for time itself and the safety of it’s passage forbids their revealing.

Once, when foolish and complacent, I’d hinted, and those hints, mere words only, had begun both the hunt and the chase, with me, stupid unthinking me, as both hunter and the hunted. Because some secrets, as I have said, must never be revealed and some lore must never be told.

As it was the ship about which I’d spoken was accepted as a sea going, terrestrial ship, a galleon or schooner rather than, inconceivable to them, a craft which flew, for want of a better word, through the air. The secrets, as they’d understood them, related to her rig rather than her propulsion, her compass rather than her navigational aids, her sails rather than her gyroscopes and artificial gravities. One has to stop somewhere. One also has to stop sooner rather than later. One has to smile, close the book, put away the charcoal and scrub out the diagrams sketched roughly on black painted boards and leather as speedily as one can.

One has to sever ties too, and so often those are the hardest to do. Sever them and leave no trace.

In the beginning we had been lovers, she and I, openly sharing some rooms in a merchant’s house. Woollens and silks he’d sold and secrets too, when he could get them. Military plans, matrimonial mysteries, scandal at the highest level. Subversion was his forte, falsehood his drinking companion, innuendo his ally at the gaming tables he frequented. But he’d been good to us, for all his failings, jovial and generous with everything we’d needed. Lovers yes we were and that only, so far as I was concerned. But she, poor she, had wanted more.

“My father will trade with you, she said, “in Bristol, where his business thrives”

So I travelled there, to Aquae Sulis, all unthinking and it seemed as if the Romans might have left only a short while before I arrived, except that the ways were rutted, the building tumbled down and the only wealth I saw was the mess in the streets.

“My mother likes you,” she said, snuggling closer against me. “And my father……”

That was a cold winter, as I remember it, cold and fog filled and somehow very sad. “I want your child, your children,” she whispered while the curtains around the bed shimmered hazily and the candle guttered and dripped a stalactite of grey wax onto the pillow by my head.

Yes, that was a cold winter, as I remember it, icy at night in spite of her soft warmth. As cold as charity because I had nothing to trade, at least naught that they could understand. How might I, in all honesty, show them how my craft was hidden, for all they craved was knowledge, they said, not hinting that along with that knowledge came power unimagined and frightening.

Nothing to trade and suddenly I became defensive and wary. Next time she accosted me I made some excuse, the time after that I refused her again, until spurned thus she screamed imprecations, threats, dire warnings so that it dawned on me how close a run thing it had been. Many were the times I might have got her with child when, in the wildness of abandonment with her I had not cared how lavishly I had spread my seed.

A close run thing indeed when in Wells men said the earth had moved and dragons now were waking beneath the maze in the Cathedral cloisters. Red and white, turning in a pit burned deep as a well into the chalk. Her father looked at me slyly. “Were they,” he asked, “anything to do with me, or were they simply rumours he’d heard?” Strange the man and stranger still his ideas.

“There are straight ways,” he told me, “and circuitous ones, as there are in peoples dealings and the ways in which they understand and interpret these things” he sighed deeply, resignedly, knowing I think, he’d soon see the last of me.

“Dragons indeed!” he murmured “How unseemly in this day and age!”

Worried by what I might have caused to happen, I begged his leave as soon as I was able, at the equinox, or near enough. T’was early that year in any case and the countryside was rapidly a’greening.
Straight ways, he’d said, so I took one, a grassy one and long, a Way which crossed the peaks of many hills.

“But must you go?” he asked suddenly, tactlessly I thought for we both knew how much his family needed new blood.

“I must!” I stated. It was true enough. I had to go for if I did not then, by all the stars I’d soon succumb.

“I want your children!” she’d told me plainly and often enough “Give me……give me……give me!”

Her words became a mantra, a paean and served, not a moment too soon, as a final warning to me.

And even though her body arched and the pearly gates themselves yawned wide I did not touch her, for in truth I was most sorely afeared of a possible outcome. Twenty third and sixteenth centuries do not mix. Neither their bloods, secrets, mysteries nor their genetics though to my chagrin there were times when she almost persuaded me to forget them. Times, hard times, but I did not touch her.

“I must go!” I told her father unequivocally.

“Then go” he said sadly “and with my blessing “but know this. Your leaving more than grieves me, it grieves my wife and daughter also, much more than I can ever say”

I could not say I was sorry. I was not. Relieved yes, saddened perhaps, disappointed a little I might say. She…...we were good together sexually if nothing else. Good, and yet……

He shook my hand, her father. We faced each other across the Way, across the centuries, the gulf of which he was not even remotely aware. Man to man we hugged briefly, strongly, patting each other’s back in wordless acceptance.

We stepped apart, I looked sunwards, squinting while time passed uneasily.

“Man” her father told me, “walked this Way in the early dawn and has done so ever since. Regard his signs as you travel, the standing stone, the hillside notch and the mound within its own grassy hollow. And here and there some figure, long in stature, gleaming white upon the hillside, deep etched so long ago through turf to chalk. The winds always blow up there, closer to the sky than you can believe, trailing mists like the breath of the valleys, soaring higher than you’ve ever been……”

I wondered how long he’d been wanting to tell me that. Was it impromptu or had he learned it for this one occasion. It all sounded quite romantic anyway, especially Uffington, for I’d once espied that figure from afar and from a height of about seven miles. You see? You see! How, oh how, could I ever explain them that?
……………

She cried and followed me, side saddle on her father’s sprightly, grey maned mare and in the shelter of the greenwood, where we halted that first night, she offered herself once again to me.

Firelight lit her, danced on her limbs as it danced on the limbs of the trees while our horses snuffled softly, droop headed, stiff legged, in grass long enough to brush their bellies but I did not touch her.

All the next day she followed me doggedly, her crying almost done, her resolve worn to a transparent thinness by the time we came unto his Lordships gate. I rode on beneath the arch, challenged. then bowed to almost in the same movement upon the disclosure of the Lady’s cowrie.

I went on while she lodged at the gatehouse with some nuns of dark habit and cheerful disposition and there, for two days she waited for me, asking no questions nor offering any answers, nimble in her needlecraft with which she paid.

Until, in this evening’s light when, with some trepidation I sought her at last in order to say goodbye.

And there she sat, still cloaked in hope, hiding her face behind a mask of thought with a carven tombstone at her back. She wore nothing beneath the borrowed habit, no ribbons, jewellery, not even a pair of shoes. Her body reeked of want, of need, of the burgeoning hope which she carried with her unto the end. But for all her half naked pleaded offerings I did not touch her.

“The boatman will be here soon” I said “I am told he will pick me up from the Abbot’s quay as soon as he can……”

“You might ask the Abbot to……” she began hopefully.

“To what?” I asked, already knowing her answer.

“Marry us!” she muttered quickly.

“He’d sooner order my burning at the stake!” I said.

“He’d never do that!”

“No?” I asked “Maybe not, no, but I’d rather not tempt him”

I savoured her scent while she snivelled, retained the memory of it as a keepsake, a reminder of those oh so recent good times.

Silence then, for time indeterminate. Silence, save for the owls duetting with that far off drum. I think some fair or pageant was under way, a joust mayhap, some leagues away upstream, behind the banks and ditches of the Lords castle keep.

Silence, save for a sudden crackle of sparks, rising high from a brazier, and the ragged shouts of laughter which echoed across the valley.

Silence in which she breathed raggedly, rejected and close to tears. I suppose in reality t’was no kind of silence at all.

At length she turned again and regarded me.

“Where will you go?” she asked.

“To the Low Countries initially” I told her “the boatman has orders to take me down river to Lynn and secure a safe berth for me aboard the schooner ‘Marguerite’ presently unloading green glazed pantiles on the Purfleet”

She said nothing, knowing her cause was lost.

“They appreciate me there!” I told her quietly, while the river swirled swiftly past our feet. “In the Low Countries. Secrets or no secrets”

“They’d appreciate you here too, if you’d let them!” she retorted bitterly.

“Hang me more like!” I said “Out of hand and with the lords blessing”

“The Abbott would speak up for you……” she tried again desperately.

“The Abbott would rather be rid of me!” I told her. “He told me so less than an hour ago. Heretic was one of the words he used against me, I believe”

“But……never……!”

“Punishable by death, he said!”

The moon rose higher as she considered this, unthinking for the evidence stood there before her tearful eyes. All the secrets in the world locked up, secure thankfully, in my iron bound chest.

“I shall………miss you” she whispered at length.

“Yes?”

In the half-light I saw her nodding, a grey shadow etched with silver, as indistinct as the lettering on the gravestone against which she leant.

“Of course I shall!” she cried softly and I knew tearfully too, our paths separating after so long a time.

“For a while perhaps” I answered lightly “But ere long you will forget……”

“I……think not!” she murmured, more to herself than to me.

I heard the boatman then, as she cried piteously at last, oars muffled, carving perfect rings across the silver stream.

So sad yet so fitting, the place of our parting.

Stone steps down, straight down ten paces from the gloom of the cemetery to the liquid silverlight of the river, ten steps while she stood up, stood still and watched me leave her, still as a statue silhouetted against the moon.

And when the boatman’s boy scrambled for my chest, the scrape of iron and the hooting of owls, merged with the distant throb of the Lords merriment, and, coalescing with the murmur of the river, served to drown at last the sounds of her tears.

© Aahlu 2001-2010. Exerpted from a much longer tale.

top