Snow

This is a seasonal short story from my upcoming collection Losing Definition - enjoy 

 

Snow

It is a whole different kind of cold when it passes ten degrees below, perhaps twenty or thirty degrees below is different again, but I don't want to know.

The house heating was cranked up as high as it would go and the house was still cold. The temperature was borderline bearable in the one room, elsewhere was only suitable for a quick, heavily dressed dash. All this heating was costing a fortune, but without it the water would freeze in the pipes and rip them apart. We had had bad winters before, and year by year, we had prepared for them. Every autumn the house maintenance was scrupulous, cleaning out the rhones, checking the tiles, the gutters, fixing the harling, refilling the holes that freeze and thaw might pop open. There was a stock of emergency supplies in the loft, plastic sheeting, duct tape, paraffin lamps, Tilley lamps, a mighty lamp that ran off some sort of compressed petrol that hisses and spits but produced as much light as a hundred watt light bulb. The thin stylish curtains, on thin stylish curtain rails had all been replaced by plain heavy lined curtains on hefty curtain tracks. Year on year the house was more and more prepared for winter. Likewise ourselves, year on year, a breakfast of porridge, moleskin trousers, hiking boots and gaiters.

That year I had got myself a heavy felt Russian Red Army Ushanka hat, with flaps that came down and covered my ears, it took ages to arrive, posted all the way from the Ukraine. When I got it it felt a bit tight, the Russians must have tiny heads, it was the second biggest hat that they had and it was still tight on me. But with a couple of good soakings, and pulled down tight over my head, over time it moulded itself to fit just fine. It meant that I could fit my headphones into my ears, and listen to sturdy Russian orchestral music while I walked, without the wind whipping past, diluting the sound.

When I was heading into work normally I stood at the far end of the railway platform, waiting for the train, but in this weather I arrived slightly early to get a seat in the small uninsulated waiting room on the platform. Wedged in the corner I could keep an eye on the announcement board. You could never quite tell what was happening, the train might be late, or cancelled, or might even be on time. Best to try and cater for all eventualities, plot some path between the possible options that expends as little effort as possible. In winter always stay as dry as possible, and as warm as possible, for as long as possible.

That morning the train was on time, but it was already packed, presumably earlier trains had been cancelled, so the usual travellers had accumulated on the 7:57. The train was short of carriages so we were standing before we even left our station, but at least we were on the train. We called at a few more stops before the bridge, people trying to get on the train were shouting down the carriage for people to move on up the train. We were leaving people standing at every platform after ours, a throng of people pressing against the steamed up glass windows of our train, peering in, at us peering out.

It had been this cold for weeks, but this was the first of the real snow. It fell in that dry powdery way that it does when it is really cold. Not that fluffy stuff that you can make snow men out of, that you can bundle into a snow ball and throw at someone. Dry powdery stuff that drifts for miles and piles up against anything vertical. I could overhear the conversations of other passengers, text messages were coming in from people on platforms and the trains that were up ahead of us. The road bridge had closed, the rail bridge still seemed to be open. Buses had stopped, cars were getting stuck in drifts.

It was eerie crossing the rail bridge, all smothered in falling snow, we could not even see the sea beneath us, just the half light of snow falling all around us, a floating shimmering ephemeral wall. It was like being out on a misty day, you felt somehow naked and alone in a familiar place. It was just after crossing the bridge that the train stopped in a cutting. We tried to make the best of it, I suppose that is what they used to call the Blitz spirit, people spoke to those they were standing next to, just offering whatever help or comfort they could.

There was no point in getting angry or annoyed, the journey was an ordeal to get through and you could not afford to waste the energy when you had no idea of where you would end up. The railway cutting must have cut off the signal for mobile phones, the overheard updates from platforms and preceding trains had stopped, to be replaced by just speculation. I did my best to make myself comfortable, standing propped up against the edge of a seat. We obviously were not going to be going anywhere for quite a while, so I loosened my grip on the overhead strap.

It was obvious that no one was going to get to their work on time, indeed it was obvious that as soon as we got to our destination our first thought would be where we could stay the night, or how to get back home.

After an hour or two the guards on the train opened the doors, the men started to take turns and head back down the tracks to urinate against the basalt sides of the cutting. The snow stained yellow and a gentle steam rose briefly in the chill air.

Smokers of both sexes huddled miserably together, united in their plight, before chucking their dog ends down the short gravel incline. In the cutting it was quiet, there was not much wind anyway. Some snow was finding its way down to us, but the angle of the cutting seemed to be protecting us from the worst of it.

I had got off the train for a pee and there was a group of figures that seemed to be particularly purposeful, so I headed towards them. We were all heavily covered, various assortments of winter wear, skiing wear seemed particularly popular this year, but there were also Barbour jackets and quilted jackets too. Everyone was wearing a hat, and most of us were wearing scarves over our mouths, a few even had ski googles. I recognised the tallest of the figures, he was a regular commuter on the train, I had probably sat next to him hundreds of times but we had never spoken. He wore a dark quilted jacket and a ski hat with a fleece face mask and googles. His boots were that orange leather colour with bright red laces, and a bulging tongue. He was saying that we should just walk on from here, we could cut onto the motorway after a short distance and head back home from there. While the roads were probably impassible for traffic, it should be relatively easy to walk the short distance involved. There was some macho agreement amongst the heavily wrapped figures about the shortness of the distance and the feebleness of just waiting.

On a whim I decided to go with them, there was no word of when the train would start moving and I was getting bored of squeezing into a cold damp corner of the train with all the other commuters. There were half a dozen of us, we headed up along the gravel track for the length of the train, as we headed past the front of the train, we heard the driver shouting at us. He must have wound the side window down, he sounded pretty annoyed, but not annoyed to get out of the train. For a moment I worried about electric rails, or getting my foot caught in points, but we came out of the cutting into the open without any drama. The wind cut through us, stabbing at any exposed flesh, and finding its way to any warm flesh beneath the layers. The tallest man was at the front, and we instantly sorted ourselves into single file behind him, the snow had covered the railway tracks, but the rough layout of the landscape was still visible.

Now I wished that I had paid more attention to what had passed my window so many times before, now I could not remember what was under the snow at all. The motorway and the railway line cross over/ under each other at different points, I honestly could not remember whether it was left or right that we needed to turn to reach the motorway. The figure at the front turned left, and I did not disagree strongly enough to do anything about it. He sped up slightly down the slope, and then stepping sideways up to the wooden fence. Heavily wrapped in layers the fence was a trickier obstacle than I would have believed possible. In turn we fought our way over it, I landed heavily on the far side of the fence and turned to try and help someone.

The wind was accompanied with snow now, within the field the snow was already up to my knees, and it seemed to be deepening quickly. We were taking it in turns to take the lead, pushing aside and trampling the snow was too exhausting a task for anyone to cope with it for long. Too quickly it was my turn to lead, after stumbling at the task, I found a rhythm of jumping slightly and then letting my bent knee half push aside half flatten the snow before me. No sooner had I pushed forward a bit, than the others hungrily followed me. A tap on my shoulder indicated that I needed to straighten up the path I was cutting. I was out getting out of breath and the cold air was tearing at my throat.

The field felt endless, with neither beginning nor end, a vast endless expanse of white that hurt your eyes to see.

My initial energy and enthusiasm had been completely exhausted, the wet was seeping through everything I wore and I could feel myself slipping into grim survival mode, resolute and determined. I was dead already, but I would just keep going on out of sheer cussedness. There was a change of lead and we stopped. After a few seconds of standing still I pushed a path through the snow and stood with the others. We formed a small huddle, each instinctively facing away from the oncoming wind. I pulled back the scarf that covered my mouth. The person in the blue ski jacket who had taken the shortest spell at the lead was not happy, they wanted to us to all head back. Her red bobble hat bobbed up and down seriously. I could not see much of her face behind the colourfully tinted ski goggles, in fact from appearance alone I could not be certain it was a she, but it was a woman’s voice. No one was exactly keen to head on further, this was rapidly turning into a bad case of all the gear and no idea. All this winter clothing had looked fine in the shop but in real life we were struggling. Trying to walk through snow that was now half way up our thighs it was obvious that our clothing could not protect us from the sheer numbing pain of extreme cold.

We argued, well most of us just stood there too cold to think, the tall man wanted us to head on, the woman wanted us to head back. It seemed common that no one would want to go forwards or back alone. Nothing was agreed by our huddle, the woman headed back along the path that we had cut. Looking back along the path, it was starting to fill up again with snow, and was far from straight, but heading back looked relatively achievable, we had managed to come this far, going back surely could not be too bad. A few others headed back after her, there were just three of us left, we said nothing, well nothing that I heard, and headed on. By now we were no longer walking on the ground beneath, the snow was thick enough that eventually it just compacted enough to support you. The rhythm of trying to walk through the snow, was just part of the larger rhythm of taking turns to lead. The snow was thick around us, there was no obvious direction to head, no sun to orientate us, no landmarks to mark the horizon.

We must have crossed fences without realising, progress was slow but we were covering the ground, it was just that we did not know what ground it was or where it was taking us. We each retreated into ourselves, the exhaustion starting to make us feel elated, until the leading person fell. Not just stumbled, we did that all the time, but fell, like you knew it was bad. He was bleeding, the snow was streaked with red, after so long with just ourselves and the white of the snow, it gave you a jolt to see colour again, like that. He had must have torn his leg on a barbed wire fence somewhere in the snow.

He could not walk, he just lay there, we pushed up the snow to shelter him as best we could. He lay there looking tired and half dead, watching as the red snow expanded out round him. I did my best to make him comfortable, and holding his face between my mittens looked at him, he was looking at me, but I could tell he was not really listening or seeing. I looked him in the eyes and told him that we would be back with help. We both knew that I was lying and did not care. With my sole remaining companion both of us stepped gingerly over the barbed wire and headed on.

There were just the two of us then, it was like fighting your way up a sand dune that was slipping down against you. All the time, the wind was hammering into you. After a while the pain orientated you, we were not heading in any particular direction anymore, just walking because stopping would mean something else. I could see my companion, and counted another, sometimes ahead of us, sometimes behind us, white on white, I struggled on because I was too stubborn to lie down and die, …

We had been climbing for so long, when climbing turned to falling, I felt weightless for a moment, the sudden silence and stillness was like being immersed in some new element, I could see an arm in a heavy jacket, and thought how strange it looked, and slowly recognised it as my own arm. Things were happening that I was too tired to understand, I was made out of ice and I was starting to melt, I was starting to fall apart like all that snow and ice that gets tramped into the house on your boots, there was no wind, it was quiet, quiet in a way that was feeling increasingly oppressive.

***********************

I understand now that we must have been walking in circles for hours, we were not far from the train, but had stumbled upon a farm building tucked out of sight of the railway line, the farmer had used a tractor to keep the ground in front of his farm house clear, the snow was banked up, and we had walked up one side and fallen down the other as he was looking out his farm house window. He was a stout fellow, wiry in the way that farmers often are, grabbing us by the scruff of our coats and pulling us in, like he would manhandle a recalcitrant sheep.

The train we had left was still waiting in the cutting when the wind shifted and the snow toppled in half filling the cutting. With the carriages half submerged in snow, there was little they could do as the carriages got darker and darker as the snow rose up entombing them. Perhaps it never occurred to them that it could just keep on snowing. So many people died that day, too many to count.

That is all a long time ago, it seems ridiculous now that we could all have been so unprepared. The glass roofs on the railway stations and the holiday caravans on the estuary coast are all gone now. This is a cold hard world now, perched on the snow and ice, scraping through the seasons.

Nipple / Award / Room

/ Nipple /

 

The house was large and untidy, battered in the way that a growing family will batter a house.

 

She was large and untidy, battered in the way that a growing family will batter you. She was sitting in a large fabric armchair, the seams had stopped fraying and were now parting ways. There was a thick plastic ring of long ago spilt coffee on the right arm of the chair. She was typing away, her face puckered and scowled as she typed, as if each word was a pulled tooth. She paused, “Darling, darling.”

 

An open copy of the Times stood vertical, commendably so, eight fingers visible, four at each side. “Mmmm,” emanated from the newspaper.

 

“Darling, darling, another way of describing an erect nipple, quickly, now,”

 

The Times offered. “Another erect nipple.”

 

“No no that won’t do, I’ve already said that, something else,”

 

The Times counter-offered. “What about one half of a matching pair of two erect nipples, you haven’t said that.”

 

“I haven’t said that because it is shit, come on,”

 

The Times made its final offer. “His nipple stood to attention like the bearskin hat on a guardsman’s head, like the well chewed end of an old biro, like a pleasure missile aimed at her cardiac muscle, like…”

 

“I’m not Fay Weldon, I’ll just stick in a load of ‘x’s and come back to it later. I’ve still got seven hundred words to do today so I would appreciate a little bit of help.”

 

The Times quivered slightly and asked. “What is this one, Lucky Lucy and the Dolphin who can’t say No?”

 

“I only wrote that one book about dolphin sex, and it hardly sold any copies at all. This is still the sequel. The first one was three hundred thousand words long, and sold by the shedload, so the agent says that the sequel has to be bloody enormous.”

 

The Times responded. “Didn’t you say we earned a million pounds on the first one last week, why bother with the sequel, do what you like. I thought the dolphin sex book was good, what about tuna sex.”

 

“You never read it. Anyway tuna sex would be stupid, dolphins are intelligent mammals, who would want to read about having sex with a tuna.”

 

Not unreasonably the Times responded. “Who would want to read about having sex with a dolphin?”

 

“That creature porn is selling by the shed load, and you can get away with knocking out a word count of fifty kay, stick it on Amazon and the money comes rolling in. Anyway, this is real writing, this is hard work.”

 

The Times displayed its literary aspirations. “It is hardly Dombey and Son.”

 

“It pays the mortgage, better than your teaching ever did.”

 

Silence descended once again in the house of that week’s Times best selling author.

 

/ Award /

 

The mighty face of the newspaper glowered across the well worn kitchen table, had you not known that the paper was flimsy and insubstantial it would have seemed like a mountainous region beset by very neat graffiti. Like the diaphanous robes painted by Poussin it had a monumentality totally out of keeping with its reality.

 

That week’s Times best selling author was trying on dresses.

 

“Is it those awards tonight?” boomed out from behind the newspaper.

 

“Yes darling, I told you yesterday, and the day before,”

 

“Do I have to go?” echoed from the Thunderer.

 

“Yes darling you have to go.”

 

Silence, from the Thunderer.

 

“I am sure that your favourite author will be there, that one that you like, Beachum, Stovepipe Beachum.”

 

“Oh,” the Thunderer had regained interest.

 

The Thunderer continued “I like him, that one where the hero has a biscuit and all the memories of his childhood come flooding back, or the one with the one sided coin, or the one with the man and his last cigarette, just incredible.”

 

“Hmmm, just how does he come up with all those ideas?” his wife replied. “So, we have managed to agree on one thing, you are coming then.”

 

“I suppose so, what about you, what are you going to fit your pert little breasts into, fresh like dewy apples newly picked from the tree.”

 

“Hmmm, I was thinking about this, the outfit I have been trying to show you for the past ten minutes.”

 

The Thunderer offered its fashion advice. “Oh that, it makes you look like Darth Vader, you can’t wear that.”

 

“What about the floral one,”

 

The Thunderer offered a supplement of fashion advice. “You do know that I love you dearly but that one just makes you look like someone from the Laura Ashley Regiment of Long Range Snipers.”

 

“What does that even mean?”

 

The Thunderer continued. “Okay then. Wear that one you always wear, I like that.”

 

“I am a best selling author, I cannot wear a dress you bought in Primark to everything. People will think that I am mad.”

 

The Thunderer had exhausted its interest in fashion. “I suppose you have to wear something, wear that Laura Ashley thing then, I quite like that.”

 

A moody silence descended once again on the home of the Times best selling author.

 

Some time later the Thunderer piped up again “Darling, have you done something to your hair, it looks like that character from Harry Potter, you know.”

 

His wife sighed wearily, “I don’t know if you don’t tell me.”

 

“I haven’t really seen all the films, you know, you know, that one.”

 

His wife loved the Harry Potter films, she started to wax eloquent on her favourite topic “You mean like Hermione Grainger, she has the most lovely thick hair, or Bellatrix Lestrange she has hair like something out of a dark moody Pre-Raphaelite painting?”

 

“No, I’ve got it now, I remember, it was Hagrid.”

 

/ Room /

 

Lucy pulled her woollen hat down, it seemed colder here than it had at university. She looked round nervously, but her over stuffed case was still sitting there, there was no one else about, no thieves loitering waiting to swoop. There was a small taxi office, the door was open and she could hear the local radio station playing. The same old disk jockeys that she had grown up with, still making the same old jokes.

 

Her father would be coming soon, she pulled out her mobile phone and started browsing through text messages and Twitter and Pinterest, and the whole great time sink of insubstantial distractions. In seconds she was immersed, deep down the rabbit hole that is any teenager with a mobile device and a live connection to the internet. A car horn woke her from her reveries.

 

Her father shouted across “Hi sweetheart, you been waiting long?”

 

She shouted back “No just got here, thanks for coming to pick me up.” Now that she was no longer at home, and she normally had to pay for taxi fares, or bus fares, or indeed everything, these small kindnesses were marginally more noticed and marginally more appreciated.

 

He grabbed the suitcase by the handle, wincing as he lifted it. “Oh, no worries, we really miss doing your laundry, jump in.”

 

She replied, bubbling with the undefined excitement of at last being a grown up, in a grown up world. “You’ll never guess who I was speaking to on the train?”

 

He looked at her, considering whether to guess that it was Jesus Christ or something similarly ridiculous, but could think of nothing that would have made her laugh. He just nodded and said “Go on then, who was it?”

 

She carried on, “That composer, the really famous one.”

 

He replied, “You mean Beethoven?”

 

She was getting exasperated. “No, the one at our university, what’s his name, the Scottish one.”

 

He replied. “Oh, the Scottish one, the famous one, that is really impressive.”

 

He continued “I should probably say, there have been a few changes at home,”

 

She shouted back over the car roof as they got in. “You mean in addition to mum earning about a million pounds a week with THAT book.’

 

He did his best to sound indignant. “That is no way to speak about what your mum does, anyway, seeing as you don't live at home anymore, we thought it might be time to make some changes.”

 

It was her turn to sound indignant. “But I do live at home, that is still my room.”

 

He attempted to adopt a reasonable tone, as if speaking to a child. “We are paying a small fortune for you to stay at university, so no you don't still live at home, anyway you are never there.”

 

She was getting annoyed. “I am so too, I will be back during the summer, and Christmas.”

 

He was still patiently trying to explain. “Well maybe, but you hardly live there anymore, so we thought that we would make a few changes to your room.”

 

She was getting worried. “What sort of changes?”

 

He was really trying to sound reasonable. “Well now that we have the house to ourselves, your mother and I, we thought a few changes were in order, you have read the book haven't you?”

 

She was getting exasperated. “No I have not read the book, and what sort of changes?”

 

He replied. “Well, your mother always rather wanted some space, just for us.”

 

She was clutching at straws. “What like crafting and sewing?”

 

He was Mr Reasonable. “Not exactly.”

 

She sought to clutch at some more straws. “An exercise bike, that sort of thing?”

 

He was driving smoothly, along a road that he had driven along a thousand times. “Closer.”

 

Her mind was starting to spin. “Well what then?”

 

He was not reassuring her. “Are you sure you haven't read the book?”

 

Her mind was spinning out of control. “Ewww. No I have not.”

 

His driving was entirely controlled. “Well now we have the house to ourselves, and the privacy and all that, your mother thought it would be nice to have a sex dungeon.”

 

She did not think that her life could get any worse. “You what!”

 

“It is very tasteful, that lube is so much cheaper if you can buy in bulk, and then there are all the chains and sex toys and things.”

 

After that it was a long silent drive home. On arrival, she ran from the car, ran to the door, ran to the foot of the stairs.

 

She almost shouted at her mother. “Mum, what have you done to my room, that room is my whole life, you can't go changing it, my posters, my books, my whole childhood is in that room.”

 

Her mother replied calmly. “We only made a small change or two, I really did not think you would mind.”

 

The student Lucy ran up the stairs, her mother puffing gently trying to keep up with her.

 

Lucy was close to hysterics, frantically looking round her room, the One Direction posters, the Snoopy bedspread, it was all almost exactly as she remembered it. “Mum, you have changed the curtains!”

 

Her mother replied. “Sorry don't you like them, I thought the gymkhana pony curtains were a bit age inappropriate but they are still about if you want them back.”

 

Lucy muttered quietly. “But, but, dad said, …..”

 

Downstairs, her father was smiling as he dragged the heavy suitcase into the hall way, and hung up the car keys.

The New Pearl of Great Price - a John de _____ story

 

My name is John de _____ and this is my story. Although this story is scarcely credible, even to myself, I swear that it is all true. As a younger man, I was the faithful servant of Henry, to become the greatest king in all Christendom. He was a strong virile man, full of wisdom beyond his years and with the strength of many men. 

 

I am a soldier, a soldier in the service of God and in the service of his due representative on this earth, King Henry. A soldier pledges his life, and when he pledges his life, he knows that his life on this earth is but a short thing. Like the flowers in the field, there for a day and gone. To live is something, to die is a nothing. It comes to all, and it is better to die well, than to live badly. 

 

I feel I must explain myself, lest I be thought a liar. Those papists with their Spondent quas non exhibent sought to outlaw all such things as transmutation, transubstantiation, alchemy and the multiplying of base metals. And there never was such a parcel of rogues and charlatans as the alchemists, all mad with their quicksilver and poisonous roots. But the Summa Perfectionis by Psuedo-Gerber and the Margarita preciosa novella by Petrus Bonus, held within their coded texts a truth that was only even suspected of by the most perceptive of adepts. The terms, Azoth, the balance of the four elements, the philosopher’s stone even. It was not about the conversion of base metal into gold, though I myself have seen aqua regia turn gold into nothing. No the adepts were not breaking that unseen fixed balance of the four basic qualities that make one metal as it is, and forcing it to become another. They were breaking that unseen fixed balance that chains us all like a cart behind the plodding horse that we call time. 

 

They say that Petrus Bonus died a century ago, but I met him. He wore velvet gloves that stretched from his fingers to his elbows. His hands were fixed stiff by his side, like a stone effigy over a great man’s tomb. His skin was discoloured like I have never seen, save in plague victims. He told me to mix for him his alchemical compounds to make his Azoth, the universal medicine, and then I need never fear battle again. I did as he instructed. I kept one hand upon my dagger and my eyes upon him always. I did not trust him any more than all those other rogues with their mystical texts and dusty cells full of powders and roots. They are all too full of the heathen arab and the papist.

 

He drank a measure of the potion, and I drank the rest. He exclaimed that I had made it better than he could have himself, and I paid him well. 

 

I am a knight of the greatest king in Christendom. There is gold aplenty to be found in soldiering and I know full well that I will never end my days in slumber with my dogs around me, in my own great hall. The money was ever nothing to me, but it would be an amusing story to tell when we were all in our ales, and merry with tall stories and bawdy rhymes. 

 

X X X X X X X X X X 

 

We fought long and hard that day, I fought on my armoured horse until it was felled by halberd after halberd. And as my pierced horse slumped to ground, I fought on. They were poorly armed and scrawny. It was easy enough to hack away at them until even my mighty arms were tired. The day went on and on, and I had slain very many, and there was no shame to it. I fought on back to back with my liege, until my liege too was felled, and then I fought on. 

 

I hacked and stepped forward, pushing them back, and weakening their strokes. They were poor fighters, easily forced into the weaker position. Leave a man hungry for long enough and he will never amount to a real soldier. For soldiery is a hard living, and a soldier must be fed well. 

 

There was no shame to it. I have killed many men, as many as the starlings in the sky when there is a great murmuration of them. 

 

My foes surrounded me, my leg was wounded and I fought on killing many, but they still came. The battle was ending, and it seemed we had not won. The field was filled with the sounds of the dying, and of the wounded being put to the sword. 

 

A man, large as I was myself, came through the melee. He smote me with an axe near as long as a man. I stumbled and fell to my knees. On my breath was the name of my lord and king. I pledged allegiance to him with my dying breath, and staggering forward my numbed hands shifted on my broadsword. I held it now like a knife to stab down upon something loathsome, and stabbed it down into the ground. My sword fixed in the ground, like the cross upon which our Lord Jesus was crucified. With my king’s name upon my bloodied lips I fell back, and I was dead. 

 

X X X X X X X X X X 

 

But Petrus Bonus had tricked me with his half truths and ways, that potion had done something else to me, so that I was no longer as other men. When that axe went though my breastplate, I fell upon my knees. As the life left my body, likewise that anchor which fixed me to that time was loosed. Like a vessel caught in a strong tide, my body was swept by strange currents beyond its control. 

 

I woke from my death and found myself here. My armour broken and rusted, my broadsword still before me, like the cross of our Lord Redeemer. I was scarce more alive than I had been, not far from death. But I was no longer on that field of dying peasants where the crows tugged at the carrion that we had made of each other. I was here where no birds flew and no flowers bloomed. And my numbed hand was made of stone.

Misericord - a John de _____ story

 

[A misericord or mercy seat, is a wooden shelf fitted beneath a folding seat in a church. They can be ornately carved.]

 

The scholar adjusted the angle-poise lamp. There was far too little space left on his oak desk. He picked up the pile of books on medieval alabaster work and stained glass, moving them aside to place them on a windsor chair, already well laden with books. 

 

At last, there was nearly enough space. He pushed back the paperwork and artefacts out further towards the edge of the desk. A few toppled precariously, but nothing fell off. The circle of bright legible light fell on the middle of his desk. He unpacked the manuscript, the edge was tattered. Shreds were about to detach forever, now part of the manuscript, the merest touch and they were on their way to the oblivion of being dust. 

 

The manuscript conformed to the broad description offered by the antiquarian bookseller. It was a handwritten manuscript probably of the medieval period. Very late, but possibly medieval. It smelt musty and old, foxed and splatted with spots and damage. At first he focussed on the damage, the random pattern that age had inflicted on it. Then he tried to switch his focus to what remained. Looking back in time to see what had been written on this yellowed parchment. The antiquarian bookseller had merely described it as possibly medieval parchment, he had made no further attempt to describe it. With no illustrations or illuminated characters it was not the most prepossessing of items. He looked around his room, in the partial gloom he could see the same reassuring collection of artefacts that he always liked to look at. Like a miser admiring his hoard, his eye flicked between the items. A variety of misericords, the heavily decorated underside of fold away church seats, designed to offer temporary respite during a long church service. They were decorated with mermen, centaurs, green-men, courting couples. They were roughly rectangular, that was the beauty of the medieval, nothing was ever quite square or quite straight. It was always contorted in some cartoonish manner. There was a huge ceiling boss, a screaming green man sheaved in leaves. The boss would have covered the part of the ceiling where the stone reinforcing ribs crossed. In use it would have been visible, but not legible, yet the detail was incredible. The leaves sprouted forth from his eyes and mouth. There were fragments of rood screen or jube, the wooden tracery that separated the medieval church chancel and nave. Figures being swallowed by reptilian mouths and swathed in looping oak leaves. The medieval wood carvers continued a tradition of working and venerating the living oak that stretched back to at least the druids that the Romans had encountered when they invaded. Back when an older faith pervaded these islands keeping and maintaining the people in their happy state of fear and awe. 

 

These wooden carvings were rare, rarer than just their antiquity would suggest. Under the Tudor Reformation the state had destroyed the vast bulk of religious carvings, tearing them from their churches and burning them in great bonfires. 

 

He heard the faint rustling of leaves. He had probably paid too much for this piece of tattered parchment, he usually did. 

 

He scrunched up the brown wrapping paper and board, throwing them aside. He pulled across a medieval dictionary and started to work through the text methodically. If the text were actually of more than just the usual very parochial interest then it might be of some real value. 

 

 

“My name is John de _____ and this is my story. Although this story is scarcely credible, even to myself, I swear that it is true. As a young man, I was the faithful servant of Henry, to become the greatest king in all Christendom. He was a strong virile man, full of wisdom beyond his years and with the strength of many men. In the winter of 15__ I was dispatched in his service to the furthest reaches of his kingdom. The kingdom was unruly. Henry had been chosen by God to lead us, but his lords and their serfs were not worthy of him. They were disputatious amongst themselves and unduly troubled by ungodly things. With a troop of my soldiers I was to travel the lands of our King and instruct them in their rightful duties and allegiances. A good king will have obedient people and those that will not be obedient must be fearful, in fear for their very lives. 

 

It was a hard winter, the wet ground solid with frost. We were unwelcome everywhere we went. We struggled our horses up endless tracks through oak woods that had never seen a cart. We fought off cur like wolves, and snarling wild pigs, cold hungry. The woods were full of brigands but they knew better than to attack us in the daylight. At night we heard their oaths and footsteps in the dark of ancient woods. The nighttime woods were always full of their noises around us. 

 

When we found a village we were scarcely more comfortable. The huts were low and mean, crowded round a church or pond, like weary hunters round a fire. Hungry dogs licked round us as we entered each village. Dark eyed children looked on. At each gathering I would say my story. I would tell them of their great king and their place in his kingdom. The lords would shift uneasily. They lived in comfort in service of their king, but had done so little to deserve his favour. 

 

I am pledged to the service of my king. After that I am pledged to the service of my Lord God. The churches were as dark and mean as the people. We were far away from the fashionable papistry and Latin of London. The churches were dark and crowded with their carvings. Dark oak figures of heathen things, mythical figures and conjoined couples, gargoyles pulling at their cheeks, twisting branches and oak leaves. On the Lord’s day we would go to the church. The services were long and stilted. 

 

It was in the darkest month of that year when we came to the village of F_____ after days of riding through the tightest of forests. As we approached our path was bordered by oaks on either side, huge twisted trees that were too broad for a man to put his arms around. Trees that were so ancient as to be near useless for anything but firewood. The houses were set low in the ground, turf walls and roofs of scattered brash. It was Sunday and there was no one to be seen. The village circled it’s church. I led my men to the church, stooped low to enter. The church was dark, but full of people. There was the sweaty warmth of many people together. The place smelt of wood and damp, like the woods that we had been marching through. No one turned to face us. We sat at the back of the church, there was empty space and we genuflected before sitting back on the misericords. I took my right hand off the pommel of my sword and placed it on the side of the pew. It was carved with their usual pagan heathenry. The service was unfamiliar, the dialect here too thick to understand. 

 

The church was a long low building, the row of pillars were like the oak trees that led up to the village. It was entirely covered in carvings. Green men and wild hairy men of the woods, carved oak leaves and carved ivy spread across every surface. 

 

The people of the village stood and knelt, their hands pressed together in prayer. At the front of the church there was an ornate rood screen, atop it a rood, a figure of our Lord Christ, upon the cross. This Christ was entangled in oak and ivy leaves. The people roared as one, their prayer becoming more feverish, in the faltering winter light the endless carvings seemed to fidget and settle, flicking like the tail of a summer lizard. 

 

Their chanting grew louder. The Christ rood grew brighter in the dark. The chanting was like shouting. The rood Christ stepped forward, the leaves started to swallow up the Christ until they consumed him. The figure was now a green man, the screaming green man, walking through the air towards us. My men jumped to their feet, their swords and axes at the ready. The wooden leaves were flicking and twisting, grabbing at my men as they chopped desperately to save themselves. I watched as my men were swallowed up and torn apart by this dark wooden undergrowth, I myself felt the pew twist and grasp at my wrist. 

 

I pray for forgiveness from my king and my Lord. I ran to the horses, climbing atop the strongest of them. The heavy horse galloped as our lives depended on it, the very avenue of oak trees bending and grasping at us. My king is the wisest king in Christendom. He knew my testimony to be true. Together we set out to rid the country of it’s paganism.”

 

 

The scholar rocked back in his chair feeling sick. The light was getting dimmer and the sound of rustling leaves was getting louder and louder, but it was winter and there was not a tree for miles.

 

 

Losing Definition - Stories by Peter Reid

 

As touched on in earlier blog postings, for some time I have been working on a series of short stories that I intend to collect together as Losing Definition for self publishing on Kindle. 

To be honest, I have been busy with other things for a while, but I am now trying to make a concerted effort to pull together the collection. Proofing the stories for final publication is unbelievably tedious, and I am still to decide on exactly what order to publish them in, but things are progressing. I think that I will just publish the stories here on my blog as I finish off the final proof. Having said that, there is no guarantee that everything that appears in the blog will appear in the final book, or that i won’t make further amendments, some stories here might not make the final cut. 

I do hope you enjoy these stories. 

best wishes 

Peter