THE MAID OF ALLENDALE

The Hill

The winter hill rises high above the valley floor, down below the river, swollen with rain, streams like a white torrent past the untidy huddle of houses that calls itself Allendale. Upon the hill the girl walks, the plaits of her hair streaming out behind her in the bitter wind. Her hood, lined with vair fur hangs lifeless upon her back, ignored, unused, leaving her ears pink with cold. Upon the very threshold of womanhood she strides up the steep incline toward her goal. She has, she believes, 15 summers of life behind her. Tall and pale is she, like a reed in the wind, the Saxon blood of her ancestors showing clear in the blue of her eyes and the wheaten gold of her hair, in her height and in the supple strength that drives her to the summit of the hill where the stones of an ancient, forgotten people rise like snaggled teeth above the real worlds below.

Reaching her goal she feels herself free, stood there upon the roof of an empty world. She stretches her arms wide and turns, allowing the wind to catch her and turn her, laughing as her plaits, long to her waist, whip around her face. Then she lies, prone upon a recumbent stone, wriggling her body, arranging her long foals legs to accommodate the dips and peaks of the rocky landscape beneath her. She has been here many times before, this is her place, her refuge, she belongs here and the rock, arranged to her satisfaction, fits perfectly.

Upon the horizon a line of darkened threat promises snow, snow to carry upon the icy wind, snow to drift into doorways and pile like autumn leaves upon the familiar world of her home, a blanket of white silence across the hills and the fields of home. Yet the sky above her is blue and clear, and it is upon this that she sets her gaze, upon the dark silhouette of a bird that turns and wheels above her. It is a kite, its forked tail clear in the morning light. It is hunting, but there is little to be found in the barren hills as the smallest of the animals sleep their long winter through. The girl sighs to see it there, so free and so proud, the whole of the wide sky its kingdom, the whole of the world its domain. Beneath its wild eye she feels herself a small thing, trapped, crawling upon the surface like an insect, her world circumscribed and limited, her heart trapped and bound to a world she does not want. She reaches out her hand toward the sky, as though she could grasp and hold the free thing there, to make it hers, to make it her. To somehow, upon the wings of eagles, escape the fate that life has promised her.

For she is not free, she does not have dominion over the whole wide world. In fact, if the truth be told, her world is small and bound to be smaller. As the snow laden clouds surround the edges of the world so do clouds gather about her, filling the gaps in the wide horizon, shortening her gaze, filling her future with darkness and cold. She shudders at the thoughts that come unbidden into her mind, the promises made long ago in childhood, the betrothal that must soon become a marriage, the bars of a prison that would cage her forever to a man both rough and cruel. A man chosen by her father for that which he owned rather than that which he was, and she to be sold to him like a beast at the market, her wings clipped, her spirit broken, the glorious days of her life lost to the toil of work and to the children of her imagination, unwanted, unloved, the mirrors of a man she hated.

The kite swoops and glides, riding the growing wind. She shivers, feeling the cold deep in her bones, seeping up from the ancient rock beneath her, shuddering up her spine like the touch of a ghost. Rising she pulls her woollen cloak about her, sliding her hands beneath her arms for some slight memory of warmth. The day, she sees with surprise, is almost gone, the reddening sun sinking into the banked clouds of the west, turning them bloody as they rise like mountains above the distant hills. Finally she finds the hood where it hangs at her back and tugs it up over her hair, covering her ears, tickling her cheek with its russet fur, and with cautious steps in the growing dark she begins her descent from the peaks of her magic mountain to the valley bellow.

Allendale

As she approaches the small town she can see immediately that all is not well, all is not as she left it that morning when she left her tasks half undone to escape to the silence of the hilltop. The slow silence, the soft bleating of sheep, the quiet rhythms of life are in absence, instead all is chaos that she hears long before she sees. The cries of familiar voices rising up as she descends, shouts of anger, of fear that greet her as she comes into sight, the hurried gathering of sheep into hastily erected pens, the frantic whimpering of children as they clutch their mothers skirts in fear. She stands, bewildered amidst the confusion, her head turning first one way and then another as though looking for some familiar landmark in a strange town.

The blow when it comes is all unexpected and almost knocks her off her feet. Striking the back of her head with a fist of iron her father stands above her, red faced and furious, his hands like hammers, his face as dark as the night as he poured out his vial or wrath upon her, castigating her for a thoughtless and useless daughter who would leave her family to do the work her lazy bones would not, who would lay them all open to danger through her careless selfishness. She could make nothing of it, his words, though not unexpected, nor even unusual, were coloured now with a fear she had never seen in the great man before, a fear that in its unexpectedness, in its very impossibility, struck a terror into her own heart until she felt the trembling begin in all her limbs and the sharp sting of tears in her eyes.

It was not until she found her mother in the melee and huddled herself against that broad and practical woman that she found an explanation for both the chaos of the town and her fathers fear. There had been, so her mother told her, a man come running from the great monastery at Hexham, telling of an army on the move, destroying all that lay in its path, killing and burning, slaughtering the innocent and the guilty alike. The old people shook their heads and talked of King William's army of their youth, when the Conqueror harried the north almost unto its death, salting the land his armies had taken so that nothing would grow for many hungry years to come, so that mothers ate their children and men ate their dying wives just to survive that bitter winter. Others spoke of the Viking hordes that came down from the north to take the land as their own and establish the Dane Law in the north of England, in the country about York. But nothing was certain, nothing was known. The desperate messenger, running on foot, told only that which he had heard not that which he had seen and some said that it was all phantoms in his mind, will o' the wisps that would fade when daylight brought nothing but dawn.

Throughout the night the discussion continued and the girl, at last, fell asleep; her head pillowed upon her mothers shoulder, her little sister in turn held upon her own lap, her brother close against their mothers breast, a pile of uncomfortable sleep as they dozed through the night while the men talked, their arguments circling round, knowing nothing, deciding nothing, growing only their fear. The first false light of dawn found them in no better case, discussion had turned to argument and painful words were spoken, old grudges revived and relived with the urgency only fear can bring. Fists had been raised and arguments settled with blows, but still, of the mysterious army nothing was decided upon, not even its existence. This alone was soon and easily settled, a shepherd boy, used to roaming the hills with his pipe and his lambs, was sent out to climb the eastern hills to see what might be seen.

Until the boy returned there was little enough that could be done. Some sharpened weapons that had stood long unused, restrung the bows that had belonged to their fathers, fetched pitchforks and spades from barns. Whilst others spent time with their wives and children, playing, loving, fighting; whatever it was that gave these relationships their substance and their value. Others still took their few poor coins and buried them in amongst the vegetables and a few, pretending no fear and a disbelief in the phantom army, found sudden errands in Alston and Penrith. errands that could not be forsaken for imaginary enemies or for the first swirling flakes of snow. And so they took themselves off on mountain paths on horses or donkeys or on their own poor feet.

The boy returned as the snow began to fall in thick, heavy flakes that floated silent, down from the heavy ominous sky. He had walked, and he had seen. He knew and he would tell. Indeed there was an army, a great army, ranged across the mountains, their swords bright and their hands bloody. Unstoppable. The inhabitants of Allendale looked at each other, looked at their own poor weapons and, almost without a word, formulated a plan.

Their daughters, they said, let their daughters go and pacify the enemy, with smiles and with kindness, for who, they said aloud, would harm a lass, no move than a child? Though secretly they thought that there were always too many girls, and it was worth the loss to preserve the growing crop of sons. The girls themselves they praised, calling them brave, telling them they would return in triumph, that they and they alone could save their town. They called them Judiths, but in truth they were Lot's daughters, their virtue and their lives thrown to the mercy of the mob to save their guilty fathers.

Only their mothers wept as they arrayed their daughters, doomed brides in their finery, their beaded girdles, their white linen shifts beneath their woven dresses, their long tresses brushed fine and free. Virgin brides for a monstrous groom. Only their mothers wept, for their fathers stood stern and cold as their daughters followed the shepherd boy into the fastness of the hills, and none knew when they would see them again.

The Fairy

The girl, her best blue dress blowing about her slim legs, led her fellows, her cousins, her friends, up into the hills. They called her brave for she laughed as she walked, urging them on as though she could not wait to meet the fate that life had placed in her path. Indeed, this was not so far from the truth, as she walked the girl remembered the kite in the sky, how it had soared free above the earth, unchained, unhindered. As she walked she seemed to believe herself to be that bird, her russet cloak billowing behind her as she walked, becoming the red wings, the forked tall of that bird, and the open hills her boundless sky. For this was new, this walk into the hills to meet a nameless army was not part of the tiny, circumscribed life that had been planned for her. This seemed a new life, the doors of her cage flung wide for her to fly, to find an unknown future.

So it was then that this small party of willing and unwilling victims found themselves before a sleeping army, arrayed like no other, Yet for all that she knew they might have been Danes or Scots or the killers of the Conqueror come again to harry them. Yet, after a moments pause, she saw all she needed to see. She saw that they were not Allendale, not her father and not her betrothed, and that, in itself was enough.

At their approach a man awoke, he turned and stood, looking at them as they paused, hesitant upon the borders of the barren, snow strewn encampment. His hair was long, longer than the hair of any man she had yet seen and it fell like water down over his shoulders, it framed his perfect face and shadowed the bottomless pools of his eyes. She was struck then, like an arrow had pierced her heart. He hand ached to touch that polished skin, to stroke the length of his hair and to mingle it there with her blonde tresses. Unable to resist, as though she were called, she stepped forward toward him, reaching out to take his face between her hands, lifting her lips to his and tasting the strangeness of him. The boys of Allendale had tasted of earth and straw, the men of beer and wood smoke; yet this strange soldier, when she touched his mouth with hers, tasted of pain and pleasure that pierced her deep within her body, that awoke her and stirred her as no man had done before. Withdrawing a pace she stared at him, drinking in the exquisite agony of his gaze, waiting until he stepped forward to take her in his hands, to press his mouth down upon hers. Biting, just gently, at the softness of her lips, tasting, just sweetly, the metallic nectar of her blood.

Then, helpless in his hands he showed her how to dance. Not yet the country jigs and reels of Mayday, this was a dance where she swung and turned at the touch of his hand, a puppet without strings, without will, without any purpose but that which her master gave. And around her sang the voice of the world, calling now to ravens and to sunlight, to snow and to rain. The world turned and turned and she turned with it, moved by the will of the fairy. For now she knew both who and what he was. The invisible strings that passed from he to her transmitted not only the movements of the dance that would set her free, but also the knowledge of the man with whom she shared this terrible intimacy. She knew his name, the name by which he was called and the secret name known only to himself. She knew the promises he had made and the lies he had told. She knew who he was and she knew where he came from. For the ancient barrows and hollow hills had opened at last and the ranks of the Sidhe had ridden out into the world to conquer and to take.

As they danced she knew more, for her conciousness expanded, touching all that made his world, she saw the world through his eyes, she saw the leader that he followed, the one he would follow unto death, who he would follow into hell itself, the young man that sat apart from the rest. No throne had he, no clothes or jewels to set him apart, yet his nameless rank was writ large upon his face and form as he watched the dance with a distant curiosity, making no move to intervene as she shed her woollen cloak and bled before all the world.

She did not notice when the other maids, the friends and enemies of all her life, ran from that place. By then she knew them not and cared not for what they did, caring only for the creature that moved her by his touch, tracing patterns and sigils with the motion of her feet and with the colour of her blood. But her dancing partner, the fairy who touched her, who controlled her every movement saw that they had gone, and knew at last that they were alone, none to see and none to speak. Laughing now he takes her, flinging her high in his arms, laughing with her as she flies and falls, showering them both with the blood that runs from her naked arms, swinging her in circles of wild abandon, dancing her to the very point of death and then beyond.

Beyond into a darkness where he places her, supine, upon a couch of autumn leaves, upon a winter rock upon a hill, upon a summer meadow. There he places her and there he leaves her, preserved for ever as pale and pure as moon light, a statue of a living maid, all done in cold hard marble. His to hold and his to keep, a prisoner in a cage of night.

The next day the men of Allendale venture up the hill. Brave now they need no girls to shelter them, and there they find the maid, all white and dead, laid in a pool of crimson snow. And the army gone, vanished into the morning mist like they had never been, leaving only the body of the girl as proof of their passing. Later her father would praise her for the good and obedient girl he had always known her to be. He would tell all that would listen that she sacrificed herself to save them all, and some, at least, would believe him. But no one mentioned, or even remembered, that on the way down the hill, her body limp and cold in her fathers arms, they came upon the body of a kite, fallen from the sky, its body marked with blood. Mobbed by ravens, one man said, and then they passed it by.