The population parted to allow the bearers to bring the litter to the hut of green branches. Here it was ceremonially lowered to within a foot of the grass and four girls detached themselves from the crowd, ran forward and assisted the women to alight. They then curtsied to the women and returned to be lost in the quiet crowd. The sisters went into their hut and that was the last which Fenella saw of them.
The next sound she heard was that of an approaching car. It was not the hearse proper, for it was nothing but an open truck, although it and the undoubted coffin it bore were smothered in flowers. The people, having made way for it, surged forward towards the seven springs, but kept all the time at a respectful distance from the equipage until it halted. Then it seemed to her that the crowd went mad. They made a concerted rush at the hearse and she thought at first that they intended to overturn it. It appeared, however, that there was merely a scuffle to get hold of the flowers. Men, women and youngsters jostled and fought. The flowers were ripped off the truck and two young men, stronger or more agile than the rest, hoisted themselves on to the vehicle and, amidst a clamour of pleading shouts, tore at the wreaths and sprays and flung the flowers to the milling crowd below. As each person grabbed a flower or a leafy spray, he or she tore down to the water and flung it in.
When the lorry was empty except for the coffin itself, the crowd moved quietly away and allowed it to drive on. It followed the course of the brook for about fifty yards, then drove across it at the shallowest spot, rounded the pond, then turned away from it and circled back to the lane. The villagers streamed after it. One or two were limping; some had blood on their faces and on the girls’ bare arms as a result of the frenzied struggle to obtain the flowers from the hearse; but all seemed calm again and, as the last of the band disappeared down the lane, Fenella thankfully returned to her car which, fortunately, she had left well away from the water, so that it had not been in the path of the demonstration.
She had removed herself as far as she could from the battleground around the hearse, so she had some little distance to walk to reach the car. In the excitement of the battle for the flowers she had forgotten the black-avised, sooty-handed Jack-in-the-Green and was startled when he appeared from behind the car. He smiled at her and said, in a different voice, and one which she fancied she had heard before:
‘Will you have lucky touch now, my dearest dear?’
‘Certainly not!’ said Fenella, annoyed and somewhat alarmed by his persistence. ‘And if you don’t go away at once I shall run to that hut of branches and ask for help.’
‘Scared of me, are you? No need to be. I’m harmless. I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem. Besides, the Weird Sisters wouldn’t thank you for dragging them into a man-and-maid fight, you know. That’s not part of their job.’ He waved a black hand towards the pond which the seven springs kept fed. ‘What’s more, I’m probably the only person in the village who knows which of these tiny rills is the healing stream. Take the luck while you can get it, my dear. Are you wed?’
‘No, but I’m on my way to be married.’
‘Then you need all the luck and all the protection you can get.’ He approached her and before she could do anything to prevent it, he had taken her hand, passed it across his black forehead, and, with a swiftness and strength which disconcerted her, he rubbed her sooty fingers across her brow. ‘There!’ he said. ‘And now for the verse and then the ceremonial cleansing…. No, don’t run away, or I shall be obliged to grasp you with these sooty paws, and then you really will be in a mess, won’t you?’
Fenella gazed wildly about her, but there was nobody to come to the rescue and even if the whole village had been present, she reflected, their bucolic sense of drama and comedy would have prevented their interference with this idiotic horse-play.
‘Well, make it quick, then,’ she said helplessly, feeling strangely at odds with herself because of her mixed feelings of fear, anger and a horrid kind of fascination which she recognised as sexual and resented accordingly. ‘I have no time to waste.’
The man stepped back a pace and recited solemnly:
‘ “O what are you seeking, you seven fair maids,
All under the leaves of life?
Come tell, come tell, what seek you
All under the leaves of life?” ’
‘I can’t answer that,’ said Fenella. ‘I know the ballad, of course, but I’m an agnostic.’
‘And you to be married in church?’ he asked, in an amused and yet tender tone. ‘Well, now, to think of that!’
‘Oh, that’s my relatives’ doing,’ she said. ‘So far as I’m concerned, the marriage ceremony is completely out of date. Wherever I got married, the ritual would be equally bogus, so far as my feelings and opinions are concerned.’
‘But you will take your vows to love, honour and obey?’
‘Of course not. We don’t promise to obey any more. That also is completely out of date.’
‘Is it, then? And yet you are obeying me.’
‘Only under threats.’
‘Don’t you want to be cleansed in holy water? Come.’ He stretched out a sooty hand. Fenella avoided
