Authors: Brian Bates
Wulf leaned forward and ran a freckled hand thoughtfully through his beard.
‘Well, there are many. Sometimes I collect the root-beds of wild iris, hunting especially for those in full purple flower, with veins of deep colour running through the petals. Also, I dig the jagged-leaf wild radish and the carline thistle—taking the whole plant, roots, petal-shaped bracts, white flowers and stems. Also white cowbane and dropwort are useful, especially when collected from mossy stream banks. I have taken yellow celandine for particular purposes, but only plants with four-petaled flowers on long stalks. The grey stems give an orange-coloured honey which is very powerful medicine. The blue, pink and purple hooded hounds tooth have especially potent leaves, which when crushed smell of mice. But the root, when prepared for sorcery, is very powerful indeed.’
Wulf paused, cocking an eyebrow at me. I was trying to commit to memory as many plants as possible.
‘Then there is hassock,’ he continued, smiling, ‘and yew berry, lupine, elecampane—preferably cut when it is at man-height—dwarf-elder, the heads of marshmallow, fen-mint, dill, lily, cockspur grass, horehound, bitter wormwood, starry stitchwort, woodruff, honey-scented crosswort...’
Wulf started to laugh at me and I realized that my face was twisted into a grimace of concentration. He had been talking so quickly that I was having difficulty in following his dialect, let alone recognizing and memorizing the plants.
‘The names of these plants mean nothing,’ Wulf chuckled. ‘They each have to be specially prepared, with plants known only to sorcerers. Even to begin to learn about the plants of power, you must collect and prepare them with me, not memorize their names.’
I laughed with relief. I could remember only about five or six of the plants he had listed and these were plants already known to the Mission. Indeed, for the monastic library I had transcribed sections from volumes of the classical Greek herbals. But I was interested in Wulf’s reference to plants of power.
‘Plants of power are important allies for a sorcerer,’ he said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘With their aid I can influence the life-force of a person.’
‘Life-force?’ The term meant nothing to me.
‘Life-force permeates everything, It is the source of all vitality. In a person it is generated in the head, flows like a stream of light into the marrow of the spine and from there into the limbs and crevices of the body. Power-plants help to control the channels through which the energy flows.’
I was intrigued by the idea, but could not conceive of its material essence. I tried to picture it as a liquid substance.
‘Is life-force like blood?’ I asked.
Wulf shook his head. ‘Life-force is visible only to a sorcerer. However, you do not need a sorcerer to be aware of your own life-force, for there are occasions when even an ordinary person generates vast quantities of it. For example, life-force increases when you are ill. Serious illness is a sign that spirits are attacking your soul. But usually spirits cannot capture a soul which is protected by life-force and at the first signs of danger life-force blazes into your head like a furnace. The inner heat is so great that your head will feel hot, even to the touch of others. If the spirits continue their attack, life-force flows down the spine like molten metal in a smith’s crucible and the entire body becomes hot. Even if the spirits successfully capture the victim’s soul, life-force continues to rage in an attempt to keep the body intact until the soul can be returned. But if a sorcerer does not intervene to recapture the soul, the sick person will burn himself out like a forest fire, and die.’
Wulf’s graphic account reminded me of a serious illness I had survived as a small boy. I had been so hot I could hardly breathe, and my head had felt as if it were on fire. Terrifying voices and demons had visited me. Prayers had been said for me, to no avail, but one night my father had brought an old man from the village who examined me by looking into my ears. He had poured an evil-smelling substance on to my head and body and then sung strange words to me. The following day I cooled down and gradually recovered completely. I remember my father telling everyone in the family never to breathe a word about the old man’s visit to the house, because we lived on monastic property and the priests would be angry.
It surprised me that I had completely forgotten the incident until now, but I said nothing about it to Wulf. I sat and watched him cleaning berry juice from his hat with dew-wet bunches of grass.
‘Did you see the slaves at Aethelwealh’s fortress?’ Wulf enquired suddenly.
I nodded, puzzled by the question.
‘Did you see the metal bands around their necks? These bands signify that the slave’s life-force does not flow freely into his body, for his vitality is controlled by his owner. And the beard and hair of slaves is cropped, for hair is one of the outward signs of life-force in a person.’
Wulf put on his black hat, pushed it to the back of his head and looked at me with half-closed eyes. In the soft light one of his eyes appeared strangely misty and his gaze made me feel distinctly uncomfortable.
‘You are young and healthy, Brand. You are generating abundant life-force, but it does not flow freely. You are blocking it.’
I laughed with embarrassment and self-consciously passed a hand over my close-cropped hair.
‘No, Wulf. Short hair is the custom for the brethren of my faith. My life is dedicated to Almighty God, but I am a slave to no man of this world.’
Wulf shook his head slowly, still looking at me probingly. ‘I shall arrange for you to meet Water Goddess. She will unleash your life-force.’
‘What do you mean, Wulf? What is the Water Goddess?’ I was as alarmed by his sly demeanour as I was by his reference to the goddess.
‘Water Goddess is beautiful,’ he said, a crafty gleam in his eyes. ‘She is soft and warm; she will wrap you in her silvery embrace and your spirit will rise.’
He made what I took to be an obscene gesture and I turned away from him in disgust, feeling my face flush with anger. I was acutely embarrassed by such talk. Sometimes I had whispered about such matters with the novices in the dormitory, but to discuss it openly with a stranger was shameful. I made much of undoing and restrapping my shoes, hoping that Wulf would drop the subject.
I could sense that he was watching me but I sat in frosty silence, staring at my shoes. Suddenly he squatted next to me and thrust his face into mine.
‘In this kingdom, a lover is called a neck-bedfellow, because after being with a woman you can virtually feel the bonds of enslavement around your neck.’ He wagged a forefinger sternly. ‘A woman will draw the life-energy from you and sap your strength. You are absolutely right to be so careful.’
I looked at him in surprise. His face, inches from mine, was creased with concern and sincerity. I had erroneously believed that he was going to mock my lack of sexual experience, but now he sounded exactly like Eappa, warning of the temptations of the flesh. It was all the more remarkable in that I had been told that pagan practitioners of sorcery used their status to indulge in disgraceful sexual licence.
‘Does this mean that, like the brethren of my faith, you do not lie with women? That you were joking about the Water Goddess?’
Suddenly Wulf’s demeanour changed and he looked down at the ground, shuffling about nervously. With horror I realized that I had embarrassed him and had risen half-way to my feet to apologize when I saw a sly smile spread across his face. I was caught between sitting and standing when he exploded into laughter.
I sat down and glared at him, feeling utterly ridiculous. He had led me to commit myself on a matter of considerable personal sensitivity and I thought him crass and inconsiderate in the extreme.
Still chuckling, Wulf crouched by my side and put an arm around my shoulders.
‘Do not worry!’ he chuckled. ‘If you are going to encounter Water Goddess, I shall give you advance warning so that you may seek forgiveness from your god.’
I turned towards him to retort angrily: he was struggling to control his mirth but as I looked into his eyes, I felt a wave of warmth from him, even affection. I laughed nervously.
‘We are taught to stay away from the pleasures of the flesh,’ I said ruefully.
He nodded gently, still with an arm around me. ‘Life-force pulses from Mother Earth when she is kissed by the Spring Sun and so it is between man and woman. Sexual love is essential for a free flow of life-force. Just as frost and fire create the worlds, so man and woman create life.’
Wulf clapped me on the back and stood up. ‘But we shall worry about Water Goddess another time. Enough about your neck—it is time to hunt.’
We gathered together our things and Wulf led the way into the forest. Our path snaked northwards through miles of dense forest, Wulf tracking animal paths barely visible in the thick undergrowth and moving with the superb agility of a deer. Above the tree cover the sky was a haze of high cloud and in air warm and moist as steam, my clothes clung to me in sticky streaks. I was soon hampered not only by my lack of forest walking experience but also by the nagging pain in my ankle; resting had not healed it and each step brought with it the awful memory of the horse-head dream.
Eventually we followed a stream bank into a shallow ravine, until the path narrowed to a mere strip of chalky footholds barely covered by tufts of dry grass. The western face of the ravine towered above us to our left and Wulf stopped to point out a switchback route up the steep face of the hill. He climbed swiftly and I scrambled after him, clawing for footholds which frequently broke away under my weight. At last I pulled myself on to the grassy plateau at the top and stretched out on the ground beside Wulf, gulping air into my burning lungs. When I sat up, I realized how high we had climbed. On the northern horizon, rising above the tree line, I could see the tips of distant hills reaching towards a huge sky and as I watched, the high clouds pulled apart to admit glimmers of weak, pale, yellow sunlight.
After a short rest, Wulf led the way across the thickly turfed plateau. He walked slowly, apparently scanning the grass, until he stopped abruptly. In front of us a scattering of yellow flowers barely peeped above the grass, blowing in the wind. I had never before seen such plants.
‘What are they called?’ I asked tentatively, afraid to interrupt the intense concentration with which Wulf was surveying the flowers.
He bent down on one knee and plucked a sprig from the plant nearest to him.
‘Do not label them; just get to know them,’ he said. ‘Here, chew this piece.’
He handed me a leaf. I put it on my tongue and sucked at it cautiously.
‘Chew it!’ Wulf instructed, watching me closely.
I bit into it and immediately my mouth stung with an unpleasantly bitter taste. I spat it out into my palm.
‘What do you use it for?’ I asked, wiping my tongue with my fingers to relieve the burning sensation.
Ignoring the question, Wulf stepped carefully into the cluster of plants; squatting next to one, he cradled a leaf in his palm and laid the first and middle fingers together above the leaf.
‘See? It is too small,’ he said. ‘Take only those that are broader than your two fingers. We need the most vigorous plants.’
He pulled his knife from his leather sheath and, thinking we were about to cut some plants, I moved to a large plant three or four paces away and slipped my hand under a leaf near the base. It was almost as broad as three fingers. I grasped the top of the plant and unsheathed my knife.
‘No!’ Wulf’s sharp cry froze me and he leaped over and grasped my wrist. ‘First we must mark them.’
While I watched carefully he rested the long blade of his knife in his left palm, curled his fingers around it and with a sudden twist flicked the blade against his fingers. When he opened his hand, blood was seeping from the fleshy underside of his fingers and dribbling into his palm. The warning notes of nearby sparrows pierced my ears with unnerving clarity and a wave of apprehension stirred in my stomach.
Sheathing the knife, Wulf crouched over one of the yellow flowers, examining it closely, his face a mask of concentration. I watched him in trepidation, helpless to intervene. He rubbed his fingers against one of the leaves, smearing blood all along the stem and across the leaf. A stench of evil pervaded the plateau and, sickened, I turned away trying to control the urge to retch. Christian teachings and law expressly forbade blood rituals and in silent anger I berated myself for not having realized that I might be an unwitting witness to such abominations.
Wulf repeated the disgusting ritual with two more plants, while I stared determinedly into the distance, trying to separate myself from his activities. Then he rose to his feet and stepped away from the plants to stand at my side. I clamped my jaw shut, determined to voice no protest but simply to report all I could to the Mission.
Wulf calmly surveyed the expanse of yellow flowers. ‘We identify the best specimens and offer them our blood,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘When we have finished, we shall take only those plants marked by our blood.’
He pulled out his knife and again laid the blade across his left palm, then nodded towards my own knife. With horror and dismay, I realized that he intended that I should cut my fingers also. The evil prospect filled me with dread.
‘Why do we need to mark them, Wulf?’ I stammered, searching desperately for an excuse which would not offend him. ‘If we test them for size, then cut them immediately, we cannot forget which plants we want to collect.’
Wulf stared at me steadily, unblinking
‘Identifying them is not the purpose,’ he said in a voice as soft as the wind. ‘The blood is your sacrifice to the plant.’
I looked around in panic, seeing no alternative to a confrontation. ‘But the blood...I am not able to spill my blood on the plants. It is forbidden to those of my faith.’
Wulf arched his eyebrows. ‘Do you not offer blood sacrifice to your god, Brand?’
He gazed directly at me, his eyes confident, unwavering, knowing. Immediately I thought of the Eucharist, in which we take bread together with wine and, after consecration, they become through a spiritual mystery truly Christ’s body and His blood. But I could not believe that Wulf would know of our ritual—and even if he did, he could not understand it.