“The Wildwood holdeth many marvels, and these be of them: the spawn of evil wights quickeneth therein, and at other whiles it melteth away again like the snow; so may it be with these carcasses.”
And some of the older folk of the Woodlanders who stood by hearkened what he said, and deemed his words wise, for they remembered their ancient lore and many a tale of old time.
Thereafter they of Burgstead went into Wood-grey’s hall, or as many of them as might, for it was but a poor place and not right great. There they saw the goodman laid on the dais in all his war-gear, under the last tie-beam of his hall, whereon was carved amidst much goodly work of knots and flowers and twining stems the image of the Wolf of the Waste, his jaws open and gaping: the wife and daughters of the goodman and other women of the folk stood about the bier singing some old song in a low voice, and some sobbing therewithal, for the man was much beloved: and much people of the Woodlanders was in the hall, and it was somewhat dusk within.
So the Burgstead men greeted that folk kindly and humbly, and again they fell to praising the dead man, saying how his deed should long be remembered in the Dale and wide about; and they called him a fearless man and of great worth. And the women hearkened, and ceased their crooning and their sobbing, and stood up proudly and raised their heads with gleaming eyes; and as the words of the Burgstead men ended, they lifted up their voices and sang loudly and clearly, standing together in a row, ten of them, on the dais of that poor hall, facing the gable and the wolf-adorned tie-beam, heeding nought as they sang what was about or behind them.
And this is some of what they sang:
Why sit ye bare in the spinning-room?
Why weave ye naked at the loom?Bare and white as the moon we be,
That the Earth and the drifting night may see.Now what is the worst of all your work?
What curse amidst the web shall lurk?The worst of the work our hands shall win
Is wrack and ruin round the kin.Shall the woollen yarn and the flaxen thread
Be gear for living men or dead?The woollen yarn and the flaxen thread
Shall flare ’twixt living men and dead.O what is the ending of your day?
When shall ye rise and wend away?Our day shall end tomorrow morn,
When we hear the voice of the battle-horn.Where first shall eyes of men behold
This weaving of the moonlight cold?There where the alien host abides
The gathering on the Mountainsides.How long aloft shall the fair web fly
When the bows are bent and the spears draw nigh?From eve to morn and morn till eve
Aloft shall fly the work we weave.What then is this, the web ye win?
What wood-beast waxeth stark therein?We weave the Wolf and the gift of war
From the men that were to the men that are.
So sang they: and much were all men moved at their singing, and there was none but called to mind the old days of the Fathers, and the years when their banner went wide in the world.
But the Woodlanders feasted them of Burgstead what they might, and then went the Dalesmen back to their houses; but on the morrow’s morrow they fared thither again, and Wood-grey was laid in mound amidst a great assemblage of the Folk.
Many men said that there was no doubt that those two felons were of the company of those who had ransacked the steads of Penny-thumb and Harts-bane; and so at first deemed Bristler the son of Brightling: but after a while, when he had had time to think of it, he changed his mind; for he said that such men as these would have slain first and ransacked afterwards: and some who loved neither Penny-thumb nor Harts-bane said that they would not have been at the pains to choose for ransacking the two worst men about the Dale, whose loss was no loss to any but themselves.
As for Gold-mane he knew not what to think, except that his friends of the Mountain had had nought to do with it.
So wore the days awhile.
XVI
The Bride Speaketh with Face-of-God
February had died into March, and March was now twelve days old, on a fair and sunny day an hour before noon; and Face-of-god was in a meadow a scant mile down the Dale from Burgstead. He had been driving a bull into a goodman’s byre nearby, and had had to spend toil and patience both in getting him out of the fields and into the byre; for the beast was hot with the spring days and the new grass. So now he was resting himself in happy mood in an exceeding pleasant place, a little meadow to wit, on one side whereof was a great orchard or grove of sweet chestnuts, which went right up to the feet of the Southern Cliffs: across the meadow ran a clear brook towards the Weltering Water, free from big stones, in some places dammed up for the flooding of the deep pasture-meadow, and with the grass growing on its lips down to the very water. There was a low bank just outside the chestnut trees, as if someone had raised a dyke about them when they were young, which had been trodden low and spreading through the lapse of years by the faring of many men and beasts. The primroses bloomed thick upon it now, and here and there along it was a low blackthorn bush in full blossom; from the mid-meadow and right down to the lip of the brook was the grass
