Going Round in Circles

The girl was walking the boundary hedgerow, her hands wrapped in the rough cloth of her skirt for warmth and to raise it clear of the mud and leaf litter. Her copper hair, tied at the nape, fell down her back like a fox’s brush and glowed in the autumn morning sun. Occasionally, she stopped, seemed to be listening. The onlookers - her family, the yeoman and his family and workers - were silent, waiting.

Crouching, she knew she had found the place. Here was such peace that calmed her, despite her grief. It was not present anywhere else she had walked in the fields. Turning, she gestured to the watchers, her arms spread wide in the shape of a cross. 

Leaving the yeoman’s workers to dig the grave, the subdued group returned to the farm where the woman, just twenty-eight, lay shrouded in the bed of the cart. Hair washed, combed and tucked beneath a fresh coif, clothes neat, eyes shut, she held her new-born in her arms. Her seventh child had come too soon. Her husband had been distraught. She was the second young wife he had lost in childbirth, and with her his longed-for son.

It was the girl, the eldest at eleven years old, who had taken command. She declared the baby would be named Dara. In the old tongue, and in the Bible, it meant an oak tree. She sent three of her siblings to collect plants and fungi from the hedgerows and fields. On their return, with the yeoman’s wife and the village midwife, who had already rendered last offices to the bodies, she selected what she needed. Leaves, twigs, berries, seed-heads, nuts, fruits and fungi were placed inside the winding sheet that was then wrapped around her mother and baby brother. She insisted that her mother’s arms be left unbound, so they lay at her sides covered with a cloth.

Overnight, lit and warmed a little by candlelight, members of the families took turns sitting in vigil to shield the bodies from any evil. Prayers were said, conversations about history and hope held with the dead and the living, caresses and kisses given. Some were fearful, all sensed the strangeness and finality of death, all sought solace in companionship, all wept. Moths swirled and circled in their hundreds, many settling on the pale sheet until it became a living mosaic. 

Morning dawned with strands of mist winding like snakes or eels across the fields. Fasts were broken with milk, bread, honey and cheeses. When the sun had driven off the mists, the small group of mourners set off carrying the woman and child on a wicker stretcher garlanded with foliage. They were all in Sunday finery of linen, wool, and leather, the yeoman’s wife and the midwife wrapped warmly in red woollen cloaks. On their heads bonnets, caps and coifs according to gender, age and status. The youngest children able to walk had leading strings attached at the shoulders so they could not stray.

The grave had been dug where the girl had chosen, against the field boundary hedge, in the shape of a cross, shallower than was customary, and facing west to east. The woman and Dara would face Christ on the day of Resurrection. They were laid gently into the ground, the woman’s arms outstretched. Into both of her mother’s palms the girl placed a perfect glossy acorn, chosen carefully from many she had collected to be ground into flour. Each mourner spoke their final messages softly to the dead: “Sleep gently my darlings,” “Rest in peace, and may your spirit be blessed,” “Let there be no evil where you lie,” “May you have light, joy, and peace,” “Return to Him who formed you from the dust of the earth.”

The small group then walked slowly around the grave letting fall soil, foliage, berries and fruits onto the still bodies. In silence, the mourners returned to the farm where firelight and good meats provided solace. There was comfort, too, in the telling of tales and giving thanks for life until the setting sun signalled the time for rest.

Over the next few days, it was agreed that the travelling family would remain at the farm over the winter. There was tree felling and coppicing to be done, the making of ditches, fences and hedging, horses, bullocks, cows, sheep and geese to be tended, and much drying, salting and smoking of food for the coming months of bitter weather. Long ago, the father’s family had been itinerant workers from Europe. They had toiled until they could buy land and settle in one place, although they still observed some of their ancient traditions. Just months before, the family had owned their own small farm but an inheritance dispute had almost ruined them. Now they were full of gratitude for the offer of work and sanctuary. 

Life took on a predictable routine governed by the course of the sun and the demands of the farm and household. Every day, once her work was done, the girl would run the short distance to the field, lie on the grave and press her face to the earth. Her secret, to be told to no living soul, was that she possessed the gift of seeing. She could see beneath the soil and straggly grass to the grave below, watch how her mother and Dara were transforming in their return to the earth. Nothing she saw repulsed or frightened her. The tumult of maggots, waves of mites, beetles, spiders, springtails, ants, centipedes and earthworms fascinated her. She loved their colours and marvelled at their unique patterns, saw that some were hairy, some smooth, some had scales. She saw how some had not arrived for the human flesh, but for the creatures feeding on it. She watched as one generation became many generations in the course of a few weeks. She saw, too, how flies and beetles emerging from the grave became prey for birds and bats. An entire world of birth, life and death was open to her and it seemed so perfect in its endless repetition.

Life came to her, too, above ground. Across the field appeared patches and rings of fungi of every colour and shape, blood-red, chestnut, fawn, violet, pink, orange, yellow and green. She watched as each one grew into its splendour, then collapsed and returned to the soil. She saw countless animals, birds, reptiles and insects, too. She collected edible fungi, crab apples, bullaces, cobnuts and hazelnuts, beech masts and sweet chestnuts, rosehips and sloes. Later, there was holly, mistletoe, clematis, dogwood stems, and other plants to decorate the farmhouse as St. Nicholas Day approached. She wove many into garlands and wreaths to be hung on doors and beams.

The yeoman and his wife were troubled by the girl’s preoccupation with the grave but her father, worn with grief and work, asked them to let her be. Her vigil continued as the weather worsened. When the frosts and snow came and the ground was iron hard for weeks, she came wrapped in sheepskins. She hardly felt the need of them as, beneath the ground, was warmth and life that comforted and protected her. As winter gave way to spring she began to see underground not just the familiar creatures but yet more teeming masses of living things too small to see with human eyes, and a web of threads spreading over and beyond the grave to connect every surrounding tree.  

At last, to her joy, she watched as both acorns split apart at the base. Tap roots emerged from the opened seeds, pushing down into the soil between her mother’s palms. The roots took up water and nutrients from the ground where her mother and Dara lay, their hair and intermingled bones and cartilage now almost all that remained. As the sun warmed the earth and sky, tiny shoots sprouted from the acorn tops and pushed to the surface through the soil, leaf litter and scattered petals of blackthorn and wild pear. When the first tiny leaves appeared, she ran to find her father and brought him to see the seedlings with as much excitement and pride as if she had grown them herself.

The roots descend, probing the soil.

First the tap roots, the anchors,

by-passing stones and bog oak,

shield bosses, rings and buckles -

scatterings of human history.

 

Fixed now for centuries, this tree

gives birth to a million rootlets.

They stretch and splay, absorb,

dive deep or skim the surface,

spinning a web as old as time.

 

They are never silent, these roots.

They sing their ancient songs

of wind and water, warn of harm,

pulse with coded messages.  

If only we, destructive masters,

took care to hear their calls.

 

IMAGE: www.pikist.com//free-photo-vuzuk

 

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