I opened my eyes, too terrified to run. The creature stood facing the open hollow of the tree. It had its back to me. Now, as the moonlight fell full upon it, I could make sense of the nightmare I saw. It was no monster. It was a man, tall and powerfully built. Over his shoulder swung the hide of a stag with the horned head still attached. The beast was freshly slaughtered and the heat from the skin was still rising into the cold night air. I could see blood glistening wetly in the starlight. I could smell it.
“I am come to the doorway of the three realms. Give me leave to enter. Ka!”
The man pulled off his hood and tossed it aside. Then he lifted the stag’s head and placed it on top of his own head. The blood dripped down over his hair and skin. Gripping the two sides of the hide, he wrapped the steaming skin around himself, like a cloak. As he raised his head, the antlers reared upwards as if he was challenging the moon.
“Hear me, Taranis, lord of destruction, a great wrong has been done to you and to us your servants. Once your creature, your creation of despair and darkness, ruled this place. This valley was named for him. Your demon brought to all who defied you death in this world and torment in the world beyond. Every man learned to fear him and in their fear they turned to you and to us, your servants. But a century ago, on the eve of Samhain, the women came to this doorway. The women could not kill your demon, but they sent him into the twilight time, the place of the shadows, where the days pass unnumbered and the years pass unmarked.
“This night I enter the doorway to seek the knowledge that will call the demon forth again. Others have dared to brave the stag’s hide before me, but they perished before cockcrow, for they were not strong enough to bear your test and you destroyed them for their weakness.
“This night the hag Cailleach dies. This night Cernunnos, lord of fertility, is born. I have hunted. I have slain. I have taken his sign and his strength. As he is reborn this night, so shall I be.”
The man raised his great arms, fists clenched and bellowed up at the stars.
“Taranis, lord of the night, grant me the knowledge to summon your creation, the power to call him forth, and the strength to control what is raised from the darkness! Ka!”
The man bowed his head and in one swift movement ducked into the black hollow of the bull oak.
I stared at the place where the man had disappeared, too horrified by what I’d heard to move. Silence flooded back across the clearing. The trees shivered, holding their breath. Suddenly, as panic seized me, my legs started move. They were trembling too much for me to run and I managed only to stagger a few paces when I heard a loud rustling behind me. It was as if a violent wind had sprung up and was whirling the dry leaves, except that there was no breeze. I couldn’t help myself; I had to turn. I had to look back.
The clearing floor was still bathed in the ghost light, but it was no longer still and silent. Everywhere I looked, the ground was heaving. The leaf mould and newly sprouting plants were being pushed up as if a thousand moles were all trying to burrow their way to the surface at once. The mounds rose higher and higher, until suddenly they burst open, and insects began to pour out of them-beetles, worms, centipedes, engorged spiders, and great white maggots-all the creatures that feed upon the dead were crawling up from the dirt and into the moonlight.
It was impossible to see the ground, for every inch of it was writhing with the bloated insects and all of them were scuttling towards the great oak. The wings of the beetles clicked and rattled as they swarmed around the trunk towards the tree’s black maw. From inside the hollow I heard the man gasp as creatures began to slither into the oak tree where he lay.
Then, as the vast tide of insects swarmed over the bark and crawled into the hollow, the man’s moans gave way to a great cry of defiance and pain.
“I give my blood, Yandil, I give you my… blood!”
And from inside the cavernous hollow, his cry rose to shriek upon shriek of agony as if all the creatures of the grave were feeding on him, stripping his living flesh to the bare bone.
may day
the second of the three beltane fire days and saint walburga’s day walburga was born in the kingdom of wessex, england, in the eighth century. she became the abbess in charge of the double monastery of heidenheim, germany, ruling over both monks and nuns.
eXCITED BARKING JERKED ME AWAKE. Every hound in the Manor was yelping. And no wonder, for it sounded as if the hunt in full cry was thundering past our gates. I ran to the casement and looked down. Though it was barely light, the road beyond the Manor was crammed with outlanders jostling into Ulewic for the fair. Carts rumbled over stones. Tiny girls shooed great flocks of hissing geese. Old crones dragged bleating calves on long ropes, tangling them round the legs of the peddlers who struggled under the weight of their bulging packs.
In the long, heavy ox-wagons, women squatted among kegs and bales, chattering and singing. Children ran alongside, hitching rides and squealing with laughter when the wagon juddered over ruts. Young men scrambled across the ditches to the banks where the primroses bloomed, tossing handfuls of flowers to the giggling girls in the carts and snatching kisses from them as they hung over the sides. I longed to be in one of those carts, longed to have a boy fill my lap with primroses. But I knew no one would ever try to snatch a kiss from me.
I was dressed hours before the rest of the family and paced impatiently up and down the great hall, desperate to be out there among the crowds. But my mother and sisters insisted on every pleat of their veils being pinned evenly. I think they did it on purpose to keep everyone waiting, knowing the May Fair could not begin without us, for my father, Lord Robert D’Acaster, owned the fair’s charter.
And it was my father who finally led the procession of our family and servants through Ulewic towards the Green. He strutted ahead with his fat legs wide apart like a little boy who’d wet his breeches. Despite the chill of the day his fleshy face was already flushed and sweating with exertion. My mother dragged on his arm, walking with her eyes downcast as if she was afraid of what she might see. My twin sisters, Anne and Edith, followed her, clinging demurely hand in hand. No one would ever think we were related.
I look like a boy, as my mother was always telling me, too short and too thin and too plain. I’ve my mother’s brown hair except that mine is curly, and as usual that morning, my hair refused to stay in its bindings however much the maids tore at it with combs. They’d grumbled and cursed, for they were sure my mother would blame them, but they needn’t have worried. She always blamed me for everything, why not that as well?
Anne’s and Edith’s hair, of course, lay smooth and obediently bound and coiled round their ears, just where the maids had pinned it. Both my sisters had inherited my father’s sandy hair and the pasty moon-face of my mother. And she guarded the twins’ virtue more closely than her own jewels. For my father was determined that neither should so much as raise her eyes to look at a man, before she was safely wed.
My father, resolved to keep his wealth in the family, had promised one of my sisters to his nephew Phillip. Which twin Phillip picked was immaterial to my father. But so far Phillip had resisted making his choice; he was having too much fun with their serving maids. At least I wasn’t on offer. Though I was only a year younger than the twins, I would never be offered to anyone. As my sweet sisters never failed to remind me, I was born under the Demon star and not even old beggar Tom would dare to take me to bed. I suppose I should have been grateful for that.
My cousin Phillip had wandered away from our procession before we even reached the Green. I could see he was already bored and was searching for someone to play with, for he constantly looked around him, winking and leering at any half-passable woman, ignoring the greetings and bobs of all others.
People said Phillip looked exactly like my father when he was young, but there the similarity ended, for my father considered fornication the greatest of all the vices. The servants whispered that it was a wonder Lord Robert had ever sired any children for he had never been seen to touch my mother affectionately and indeed often stared at her as if she repulsed him. He was constantly ordering poor Father Ulfrid to preach that fornicators and adulterers would roast in the hottest pit of Hell, even though Father Ulfrid tried to protest this pit was reserved for greater sinners. But if the sermons were intended to curb my cousin Phillip’s appetites, they had no effect, for he was rarely in church to hear them.
A great shout went up from the crowd. The prize ram, shorn and greased, had been set loose. Young single men, already stripped to the waist, shoved each other as they set off in pursuit, urged on by cheering girls. The ram, as if sensing what its fate would be, easily outmanoeuvred them at first, racing round the Green and through the carefully tended gardens, with the lads whooping after it, dodging the sticks and pots brandished by the shrieking housewives whose herbs ram and men were trampling. But eventually the animal tired and though, when cornered, it made a brave effort to charge its tormentors, the leader of the pack of youths grabbed its horns and wrestled it to the ground.
The beast, garlanded, was led into the churchyard. There, with one swift slash, its throat was cut, and steaming blood gushed out into a basin held beneath. The beaming victor’s face and chest were painted scarlet with the blood. Then he mounted a ladder placed against the arch over the church door. Dipping both hands to the wrist in the proffered bowl, he smeared the ram’s blood on the gaping pudendum of the naked old woman carved at the top of the arch, the one they call Black Anu.
“Ka!” the villagers yelled, cheering and whistling. And soon the ram was turning on a spit, sending sweet smoke into the damp air.
I turned to watch the acrobats. They had balanced a long pole on their shoulders and a little girl, dressed in scarlet with a tiny pair of wings fastened to her back, was stepping daintily along the pole as confident as a cat on a wall. She steadied herself, her twiggy arms outstretched. The tumblers began to bounce the pole on their shoulders. The girl jumped, flipped in a somersault, and landed, wobbling but safe, on the pole again. The villagers clapped heartily as she sprang down. Women stroked her golden hair and stuffed sweetmeats into her hands. Men pinched her cheek and tossed her a coin or two like doting uncles. Children gazed at her awestruck as if she was Queen Mab.
To screeches of raucous laughter, the mummers appeared, led by the Fool, who tripped over invisible objects with exaggerated tumbles, then
