Apples and Prayers (7 page)

Pheasant cocks parade along the lanes, their white collars bright against their red necks, like jewels laid out on the dull linen of winter. Across the valley, you can see smoke rising straight up through the windless air. The sky is sheet white, as plain as the lime washed walls the Protestant bailiffs are painting now in all our country's churches. The only sounds of movement are the slip and slop of water in the river's fast-flowing ripples and the cries of hungry birds. When the sun at last decides to grace the fields, they become a sharp, acerbic green that stings the eyes, like soured wine steaming from a heated pot.

Great flocks of starlings gather in the fields, moving as a huge black cloud that shifts all of a sudden in one direction and then the other as if, like people, moved by one collective mind. Collared doves and hungry crows are the only other birds to be seen. Those that have escaped the gamekeeper's gibbet, pick at scraps of carrion from the hedgerows. Plump dun doves peck around the woodland floor. 

At dusk, moon-eyed owls wing along the hedges, hunting mice. The squirrels are all at their nutting, stripping the bark from branches for more food, where no more beechmast or filberts can be found. They dash across the road in frantic patterns, now and then jumping out in front of the cart's wheels. They seem so confused at our journeying up and down the lane.

With few birds to catch, scavenging cats abound in the Barton's yard in these lean weeks, loitering for scraps and stolen morsels of food. The largest was a creature I called Red-Jersey; a red-furred tom with four white feet that looked as though someone had pulled a rusty doublet over his head, leaving only his white toes showing. And that head of his was the size of a fox's, his red eyes rimed, his fur clumped and torn away in patches where he'd made arguments with other ferals, wild boar and badgers. 

This year he didn't turn up. 

Perhaps the world had finally got the better of old Red-Jersey.

Spring awoke on the second day of February with a service of Candlemas in our village church. The priest, our upright Peter Lock, preached the Mass with fervour, befitting the purification of our Blessed Virgin. I could listen to father Lock forever and never tire of his heavenly message. His words lifted me out of my body, off the ground and into exalted realms, joining me to the heavenly spheres, as though I'd left this base existence and was present at the foot of the rock, listening to the Lord's sermon itself. Only the divine mysteries of our Church can open up these revelations. It's only the Mass that connects with the soul and leaves the body on earth, silencing the senses and speaking to the spirit within. 

As his words always were, father Lock's Mass was salve to us on Candlemas. No one understood his people better. He's always preached and administered the sacraments of baptism, marriage and burial, with honesty and openness. The rock of our village. A middle-aged man, of medium build, he took the middle path in all his ways; never extreme, always considered. His was an approachable face; an open, moon-browed air of wisdom. He presided over our church for longer than I remember. His hair and beard were both milk-white, the fuzz on his chin hanging low on his smock. It framed his face beneath his velvet cap which had, if truth be told, seen better days. His nose was fine and arch, sloping down from close-set eyes, lending him a look of constancy. For sure, I never feared him for his looks, nor did I have reason to fear him for his judgments. In the confession box he'd always listen well and his advice, or punishments were mete and exact. Children and women trusted him implicitly, some say the women too much, against his ministry's forbidding, God shrivel their wicked souls for such indictments.

After his sermon that day, we sang like songbirds to hear of the cleansing light that shines upon us in this world.
Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto
, he intoned for our prayers and we all repeated the Latin words as best we could.
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper
. Our heads were bowed down low in pious concentration.
Et in saecula saeculorum. Amen
. His service preached light and renewal.

To fit the day, the songbirds began returning to our fields. The weeks of crows and doves, it seemed, were over. Blackbirds and robins, blue-tits and fieldfares, great tits and goldfinches picked at the seeds from last season's teasel heads, each kind returned to us that morning, as if a gift from Heaven. All over the fields, tiny black specks of fowl pecked at the morning stubble after the long, cold night. In the trees beyond the orchard, a great woodpecker hammered out its territory, drumming its bill into the wood as hard as the woodsman's hammer and chisel. 

On the woodland floor, the badgers emerged from their setts by evening, to begin their growling and fighting. Below the earth, their mates were birthing their young. Spring was on its return. All the animals were pairing. In the trees, the squirrels chased each other in wild circles, flagging their tails and crying loud sounds. As I walked across the yard, I could smell fox scats along the hedges of the orchard and worried for my chickens. The reynards were now back about their business. 

The year, it seemed, had turned. 

Overnight the Mary's Tapers and Lent Lilies had nudged their way up through the hard earth. Sometimes the Lilies all come up blind without a flower in sight, only a mass of greenery but, this morning, their firm green tips were pointing upwards to the sky, like the spears of a Holy army. 

Before the good Priest's sermon, sweet Alford and I had gathered flowers and herbs from the woodland floor. Dog's mercury, violets, gorse and primroses. Winter aconite, alder, cyclamen and celandine. On top of our load, we carried in a bowl of pristine white petals from the Mary's Tapers flowering beneath the oak trees beyond the village common. With their procession to the altar, all malevolence and evil was banished from thereabouts for then and, God help us we prayed, evermore. 

But with the ending of Peter Lock's sermon and lessons, his own jubilation was tempered by caution and warning.

‘I hope you've revered this Candlemas,' he said, ‘for this is the last time you'll know it like this. No more candles… that's if we get to honour it at all.' 

Our congregation was silenced, broken then by the voice of one man, Woodbine, our carpenter.

‘What festival will Candlemas be, Father, without the burning of tallows?'

‘A poorer one for that,' replied the priest.

‘Then we shan't abide it,' said Woodbine.

‘But abide it you must. The Council's Law is Holy Law, whether they be right or wrong.'

‘But candles is for Candlemas, as Christ is for Christmas.' 

We nodded our heads, as though we chanted nostrums.

And yet we were all fearful that father Lock was right. No one dared to speak against these strange and wicked changes. It was only Woodbine who showed his courage. A forester himself, he was built like an ancient oak, solid and firm-rooted. He was as reliable in both his work and his resolve, as oak timbers are for building. Upon the labours and faith of such men, the reputation of our shire's been built. He stood from the crowd, as a model tree stands proud from a hedgerow, strong, unshakeable. Even his face, tanned from years of handling bark, was deep-grained with wrinkles and furrows. Yet his eyes shone out from the hollow of their sockets, like an owl's great eyes from its moonlit nest. And there was as much common sense in those eyes as ever could be credited to an owl. Woodbine talked little but, when he did, it was always worth listening. His hands were also true. He could strike a full-swung axe blindfold through the thinnest of twigs, his aim was that accurate.

When the good priest's sermon was over, we carried the greenery away from the church in our wooden trugs. We were blessed to sweep the congregation floor and strew perfumed violets on the ground, where before only rank, decayed rushes had lain, crushed flat beneath our peoples' devout feet. 

Yet, however sweet the air had been made to smell, the congregation left the church that day in muttered gossip.

Although the weather, it seemed, had turned on that auspicious day, such signs don't augur well for the coming times. I had the old rhyme ringing round my head as I made my way back home.
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, Winter will have another flight: If Candlemas Day be shower and rain, Winter is gone and won't come again
. The beat of the rhyme, if not its message, raised my wilted spirits for, if the song was true, then more bad weather was set to come our way on the heels of this upturn. I reasoned that I'd have to cover over our beehives with straw, for warmth and protection, if yet more frosts and chill winds were afoot. I couldn't bear to think of another winter stretching on throughout the length of March, or goodness knows til when. The commoners were crying out for a little good cheer and brighter days, what with current hardships and privations. I knew of these from my own experience and talking with John Toucher.

John farmed his few strips of fields to bring forth wheat and root crops. The land is exceedingly heavy there, where it slopes down towards the river and John had to plough in plentiful straw and dung each year to break up the sodden clay. His arable land needed annual rest and he gave it over to grazing in the early part of the year. That way the animals dropped their dung and fertilized his marshy fields.

His few ewes had been lambing in recent weeks and the cattle had been housed in the barns against the rougher weather. As soon as the cold lifted, he'd wheel out cartloads of their dung and spread it widely on the fields, to lie there on the earth for a month or so before digging in. That way he'd have an even crop and a good yield later in the year, or so he hoped. The dung, he scattered thickly in the furrows and thin on the ridges, his land being so wet until summer, needing good manure to bring it to proper condition. His few livestock were provided with only enough pasture to satisfy them, so they could graze and grow to good condition themselves without damaging the fields with their heavy hooves, as cattle left to freely roam surely will. It irked him when his neighbour's animals jumped over his fences and found their way onto his strip, but he was never so angry for long. ‘Their shit for my grazing,' he used to say.

‘Good morning John,' I greeted him that early February morning, as I walked back from our bittersweet Candlemas service. 

John was already working in his field and I stopped to throw some playful words across the high hedgerow, where he stood shin-deep in mud. 

‘Your land seems awfully muddy,' I observed. 

I hadn't seen him for several days and it would be a pleasure, I hoped, to pass the time of day with him in sweet nothings.

‘Aye, Morgan. But even this muddy land may soon no longer be mine,' he replied, without so much as even looking up at me to bid me back good morning. He seemed in no mood for playing games, or wasting time in talk of love.

‘The land you farm is yours by right and payment, John. It'll be yours until they dig you into it.' I'd been addressing my talk to the hedge until now, when he finally showed his broad brow above the bushes. 

‘The voice, it has a face,' I said.

‘Indeed it does,' he replied, ‘until they bury it, as you say. I'll be lucky if the land's still mine by then.'

I reached across the hedge and squeezed his arm. ‘Who could take it from a man like this?' I said. ‘No one could wrestle it from you, even if they came to take it by force!'

‘Listen Morgan,' he snapped and shrugged me off. ‘Put your ears and eyes to work instead of your tongue. Can't you see? On land where many men have made their livelihoods, tilling the arable soil, now we only see more flocks of sheep. So many, the earth's nearly blotted from sight. Look around you, Morgan. One man, the shepherd, will own all of this, where twenty men have yet endured by their own labours.' His cheeks reddened in the chilly morning air.

‘A shepherd can't take your land from you, John! No man can. It's nothing but rumour and gossip.' 

In some uncertain way, however, I feared he might be right. If Candlemas could go, then so might tenants' rights. And though I didn't want my man to sense it, I too felt that so much now seemed uncertain. 

Buckland is as busy a small village as any round here. Set high on its hill and ringed by woods, wanderers are met by the welcoming view of the spire on our church from many miles away. Our deep and wide village green fronts that church, like an apron spread before the brick and stonework, neat along its edges, but nowadays much overworked. The number of yeomen who'd begun to bring their flocks through that common ground, to graze their animals, was more than one could countenance. How there were any blades of grass remaining, I don't know. And yet it wasn't as if they didn't have their own fields set aside for grazing at the westernmost bounds of our parish. I can't see why we had to endure their beasts bleating, dropping their dung on the very steps of our church. Sacrilege.

‘It isn't the shepherd himself,' John Toucher went on, ‘but the laws which are there to protect him, Morgan. Enclosures. Infernal, permanent hedges! Look abroad into neighbouring villages. See how many green field strips have been taken and made into one large field, hedged in and turned over to pasture. It's the Lords who take acre upon acre, for grazing their sheep. And with favours like these afforded to the shepherd, men like Billy Down will gain at our expense. They pitch man against his fellow, muscles or not.'

I'd heard talk like this from other tenants in the village and was used to hearing the name of Billy Down taken in vain. His was the largest flock in the district. It was impossible to miss his presence. Or rather, his flock's. Countless nights working out under the stars and sleeping in the hedgerows, delivering lambs from straying ewes on the cold hillsides, had thinned Billy Down into a small, lean shape. He was wealthier than most in Buckland, thanks to his rich earnings in the wool trade, but gave no sign of this in his attire. He dressed as any other villein would, in boots, breeches and his stinking tanned doublet, save for that thick and warm sheepskin, which nearly doubled him in size. He was nothing more than a boy to look at with it off but, with it on, he looked like one of his own stocky rams; thin legged, but vast and cloud-like on top.