Esther M Friesner - Beltaine

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
ESTHER M. FRIESNER
A BELTAINE AND SUSPENDERS
I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU say, Olivia; it's no natural place." John Herrick, Vicar
of Staddle-upon-Truss, dashed the papers onto the pew beside him and lifted
his
well-chiseled chin in a manner straight out of the more popular female
romances.
To the casual observer, Father Herrick did not seem a typical servant of the
Lord, unless it were Lord Byron.
"You dropped one," said Telemachus Battle-Purfitt, frantically wiggling long,
pale fingers at the errant sheet.
The vicar retrieved the page and gave it a superficial glance. "Oh, that's
merely a copy of an especially intriguing passage from the Stilby-Nash. You
may
have it for your records, if you like. I've the original." He offered it to
Telemachus.
"No, no thanks, nonono, not to bother." Telemachus fairly gasped out the
words,
backpedaling swiftly until his shoulders were nearly pressed flat against the
bizarre mural on the parish church wall which he had been at such pains to
uncover and restore for these past seven months. Flakes of plaster clung to
his
jacket and blobs of freshly applied tempera stained his cuffs, but it did not
seem to matter to him so much as his successful escape from accepting the
vicar's paper.
"Do give it up, Father John," said Olivia Drummond in her clear, capable
voice.
In heavy walking tweeds and thick brogues, she lounged against another pew as
if
she were the squire of some rural seat come to exercise political bonhomie by
mixing with the locals at the pub. "He won't touch a thing that's been on the
floor, even if it is a consecrated one. You know our Tilly and germs."
A weak smile fairly doubled over Telemachus' meagre-fleshed face. "Just a
precaution," he quavered, scampering back up the scaffolding to the safety of
his scrapers and palette knives. "Mummy says one never knows, especially after
all those London mites trampling through the house."
Father Herrick stacked his papers smartly. "I don't know why your mother ever
agreed to take in so many city kids during the Blitz, old boy. Not if it was
half the strain you paint it."
A spark of alien fire kindled in Telemachus' shallow blue eyes, a fugitive
Bolt
of gumption striking his book-curved spine abruptly stiff. "Whatever her
personal feelings in the matter, Mummy has never been known to shirk the
performance of her duty."
"Too right." Olivia laughed until her skinny shoulders shook beneath their
burden of woven wool. "England expects, but Lady Battle-Purfitt forestalls.
Oh,
don't look at me that way, Tilly! You know I'd die before disdaining your
 sainted mummy's devotion to what's expected of her in this world. In fact, I'd
give a good deal to meet her. Admirable woman. She saved those poor little
guttersnipes from the German bombs all the same, whether she did it out of
Christian charity or because it went with the image of lady of the manor."
"They were just so . . . unsanitary." Telemachus shuddered. He daubed at a
badly
faded section of the mural with a camel's hair brush. "So precocious, too."
"Don't tell us again about how your mother caught a pair of them making the
beast with two backs in the pergol." Olivia strolled up to the scaffolding and
rested an elbow on the wooden frame. Telemachus gave a small squawk to feel
the
timbers shake ever so slightly and Olivia desisted.
"How could they?" Telemachus shook his head, patting his bedewed brow dry with
a
folded pocket handkerchief. "They were only infants!" A hot flush overwhelmed
his sallow cheeks. "And I do not wish to discuss such--such carnal matters
while
we are under this sacred roof!"
"Don't fret about Miss Drummond's choice of language for my sake, Telemachus,"
the vicar replied with a superior chuckle. "I am quite understanding, even if
the Church is not. Back to the soft. It always proves to he too much for your
urbanized souls, no matter the age. The ancient fertility of the land. The
Great
Mother's siren song. I'm not at all surprised. Your neck of the woods is rife
with nodes of chthonic power, Telemachus. Doesn't a day go by that some young
sprig of a folklorist isn't discovering a strangely isolated village in the
hinterlands whose inhabitants still cling stubbornly to the Old Religion,
bound
to the earth by more than a tenant's agreement, serving arcane and ageless
deities, worshipping the fructifying forces in ways that aren't quite C. of
E."
He lifted one corner of his perfect lips in a knowledgeable smile. "Don't look
so altogether scandalized, it's only good business practice to familiarize
oneself with the competition."
"Oh, for pity's sake!" Exasperation made Olivia's cheesy complexion acquire
just
the hint of color along the hatchet-blades of her cheeks. "The Great Mother
had
no more to do with it than my mother. These so-called 'kids' Tilly's mum
caught
having it off in the pergola were a hot young village stallion of about twenty
and the sixteen-year-old sis of one of the Blitz babies. She had dugs like a
pair of V-l's and the morals of a Corn Goddess! Lady Battle-Purfitt doused the
pair of them with the contents of her watering can, hauled them off to the
village church, and stood guard over'em with a loaded reticule until the banns
were read and they were safely married." She strode the length of the nave
like
Nelson traversing the deck of the Victory, then added, "Besides,
Kingsfield-on-Ouse is hardly the fertility-mad hinterland you're so daft for.
It's in Sussex!"
Father Herrick's classically handsome face remained impassive. "So is this
other
village I've been talking about. Lies within hailing distance of Kingsfield,
as
 a matter of fact, in a thickly forested part of the mountains, or so my
sources
say."
"Mountains?" Olivia echoed, her voice pitching itself all the higher to
reflect
her outright skepticism. She threw herself into the pew beside Father Herrick
and slapped the velvet cushions until dust motes streamed skyward. "Mountains
in
Sussex? Really, Vicar, next you'll be speaking of French modesty and American
etiquette."
"Mountains." Father Herrick remained firm. "I said it was no natural place,
did
I not? Yes, mountains, and bristling with the ageless, bearded giants of the
wildwood such as have not been seen on our shores since the misty dawning of
the
Druids' reign."
"Druids did not ever reign. You know as well as I that they were teachers,
healers, advisors to the chieftains --"
"Olivia, it was a trifle of poetic exaggeration on my part, no more," Father
Herrick replied.
"Like the mountains?" she countered archly.
He sighed. "You've no use for romance, do you?"
Olivia's raucous laugh had a barking undertone that had temporarily cleared
the
church steeple of its resident family of ravens many times before this.
"Rubbish," she said in brief. "Which is the sum of my opinion concerning
this."
With a jab of her brittle fingernail she skewered the slim pamphlet presently
lying dead-center between the two of them on the musty pew.
It was not a very prepossessing example of the printer's art, to be sure. Its
creamy paper was covered with a chain mail of rings left by the damp bottoms
of
uncounted pint measures. In places these careless attentions had caused the
ink
to run, yet one could still easily read the words, A Monograph Inquiring into
the Obscure Ritual Practices and Beliefs of Greater Ambrose Surlesard, with
Special Reference to the Mayday Cycle of Forbidden Rites, by Lord William
Stilby-Nash, 1848.
Gently Father Herrick rescued the document from Olivia's impalement. "Then I
take it you decline to accompany me."
"What? And miss seeing mountains in Sussex?" Olivia chuckled, a marginally
sweeter sound than her abrasive laugh. Then she turned suddenly serious.
"Look,
Vicar, I still don't believe the natter you've dished out about finding this
little gem of the printer's art in a barrow on Portobello Road last Sunday
fortnight, but if you're willing to lay yourself open to the finger of scorn
by
mounting an expedition to Greater Whatsis, who am I to pass up the opportunity
for a bit of an excursion ? I'm at least as keen a preservationist and scholar
of old folkways as yourself, although without half your opportunities for
 publication."
"And here I thought you did the work for love, Miss Drummond," the vicar
remarked with rather a nasty insinuating tone. What it was specifically
intended
to insinuate remained a mystery, but it was unarguably nasty.
"I think you ought to come with us, Miss Drummond," Telemachus put in, none
too
boldly. "Certainly after all you've contributed to the interpretation of the
mural. There is a connection to be discovered, I feel it."
"Perhaps," said Olivia, pushing off from the pew and lunging back for the wall
where the mural waited. It was just such a land-devouring stride that had
brought her afoot down from London to Staddle-upon-Truss, solely on the casual
comment of a friend who was, like Olivia, a spinster of independent means who
filled her life with the holy mission of seeking out and salvaging her
nation's
fading native traditions.
"Oh, look, a letter from Tilly," Rowena had said, holding the onionskin inches
from her nose. "His pa and mine used to go up to Scotland together to do
horrid
things to salmon. You'd probably like him, Livvie. Tolerate him, anyway. He's
clear mad on the old musty-rustles, too, and he writes that he's found
something
worth nosing into in the old church at Staddle. Won't say what, the mean
creature."
That had been enough for Olivia, and she had set off. The something proved to
be
the wall painting which she found Telemachus Battle-Purfitt in the throes of
restoring to its original brilliance. Father John Herrick was in splendid
attendance, digging up a wealth of documents and making frequent researching
forays to Oxford, Cambridge, and London while his milk-blooded curate tended
to
the spiritual health of the Staddlefolk.
Olivia was immediately fascinated by what she saw. Being Olivia, she
immediately
presented her credentials as an amateur student of old folkways and
preservationist of endangered cultural treasures. Her privately printed
collection, Neglected Stirpicultural Carols of Yorkshire, so impressed the
Ladies' Altar Guild that there was no need for her to follow it up by
flourishing Evoe, Aristaeus!: An Inquiry into Certain Chthonic Rites in
Somerset
Apiculture. Mrs. Threadneedle, the chairwoman, made haste to admit her to the
work site and even went so far as to mention her interest to the vicar.
They formed an unlikely triptych, those three-- the aging bluestocking, the
dapper vicar, and the skittish aesthete-- but at heart they were all cut from
the same clay. The ancient folkways of England called to them, albeit the call
came ever more and more faintly since the war, as the plowlands grew depleted
of
their young blood and the new generation swarmed over the cities instead. From
village to village Olivia Drummond traveled, grim as death with a hangnail,
ruthlessly hunting down the sui generis ram-gelding song, the rare swan-upping
work-chant, the dotty Oldest Inhabitant who, for a pint or two (or seven),
might
be persuaded to relate a venerable cradle tale that began, "Arrrh, them wunt
 go
far enoo tha' wheels, but th' piskies did frummish 'um t'be 'is gawthmodder's
cat an' britches."
Olivia had to admit, helping out on this church mural project was rather more
restful and just as fulfilling as jotting down dialect-and.spit-encrusted
ramblings. Telemachus was the only one to touch the painting itself, but as
more
and more of the work came to light he graciously permitted Olivia and the
vicar--to have a hand in interpreting the inscriptions.
"It still reminds me of the Bayeux Tapestry," she remarked, looking up at the
section which was completely restored. It was an understandable association to
make. The figures of men, women, and angels were all done in the Norman style,
long-fingered hands cupped as if to catch the words scrolling from their
mouths.
At their feet and over their heads were creatures divine and diabolical,
grotesques and fancies of the artist's mind, most of these scaled and
crawling.
"It reminds me of an infestation of newts we once suffered through the
vicarage,
before we got piped water," said Father Herrick. "Look, even the ones in the
sky
are just so many salamanders with wings."
"Do you think --" Telemachus stammered, "-- do you think they might be
dragons?"
The vicar sniffed. "Fairly pitiful dragons, if so. But quite in keeping with
my
theory concerning Greater Ambrose. Look here, Miss Drummond--" he rose and
approached the mural, picking up a slender lathe with which to indicate those
points to which he referred. "Your Latin is almost as good as mine, and
Telemachus took a First in Classics at Oxford. We all came up with the same
translation, did we not?" He aimed the lathe at a banner of text running along
the lower edge of the painting.
"'Here Saint Augustine departs from Estadium, having converted many,'" Olivia
read once more. "That would be Staddle, I'd expect. 'Here Saint Augustine
returns to Estadium, to warn the people. Here Saint Augustine relates much of
how he came to Ambrosius Magnus, and of the evil rites, and of the lizards.'
Hmm. Augustine may have done a bang up job of converting the Angles, but this
just sounds like he was a failed Saint Patrick. Must've run into a plague of
reptiles -- one of my Wiltshire informants told me he remembered something
like
that during spring thaw in the Jubilee year, although there were precious few
times that old geezer wasn't seeing snakes. When Augustine couldn't drive 'em
off, rather than admit it was due to some lacking of holy worth on his part
and
queering the whole conversion assignment, he spread scurrilous stories about
the
hamlet in question. Pretty good stories, if the folk here thought enough of
'era
to immortalize the incident on the church wall."
"But don't you see, Miss Drummond?" Father Herrick rapped his lathe so
vigorously against the wall that it snapped. Poor Telemachus yelped and
scurried
down to check his precious painting for damage. "Saint Augustine did not
  [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

upanicza.keep.pl