THE SONG OF THE STONES

“Long ago, five hundred years or more, on a winter’s day at twilight, a young man entered the church with a young girl with ivy leaves in her hair. There was no one else there but the stones. No one to see him strangle her but the stones. He let her fall dead upon the stones and no one saw but the stones.”

Part One

I was born in Avebury, a true child of the stones, born within the great circle as were my Father and Grandfather before me, and then my infant form was carried around the circle and shown to each of the stones in turn. Of such things were good fortune made in that place and these acts of my parents were intended to bless me with the gifts of the stones. So it was with me, I was the child that every man of Avebury wished for. My hands knew how to carve as soon as chisel and hammer were placed in them, I could see the creatures that dwelt within each block and free it from its prison. More than that I could hear them. I could lie back against the great grey sarcens and dream their long, slow dreaming, I could hear the whispers of the things that I carved as I caressed them with the tools. They were mine and they were within me.

In other parts of my life also I seemed to be well favoured and fortunate. I was young, strong and handsome and when I was not following my calling and carving sweet stones for the monks of Avebury I would explore the woods and fields of a gentle, green landscape with Tilda, my cousin and companion. A few years younger than I, Tilda had eyes as blue as the summer sky and hair the colour of the wheat that ripened in the fields. She was my friend, I loved her and we grew up together, inseparable.

The monks would have kept me forever carving crosses and angels, but in truth there was not enough work for one as skilled as I and they promised to write to any church in the kingdom recommending me to the masons there. I chose to go north, to York and to the great cathedral there. I chose to go to York for Tilda; she was to accompany me and wished with all her heart to see the North, the domain of the Black King. Her parents, who had too many daughters to worry over much about one of them, believed she would be safe with me.

We left Avebury just as winter turned to spring, as the snowdrops pierced the iron hard ground seeking the sun. In my pack were letters that neither of us could read but which were from the monks of Avebury to the Dean of the Cathedral and the Master Mason, recommending me to them as an accomplished worker in stone whose carvings glorified God and al his works. The journey was both arduous and wonderful, we travelled through a new and ever changing landscape as we passed through tiny villages and bustling towns, slept in taverns or beneath the stars. Yet the novelty and excitement of the journey was as nothing compared to the glory that was York.

As we entered through the mighty Micklegate Bar I heard the stone whisper welcome to me and then I was lost in the crowds and the cacophony. Never could I have believed that so many people could be together in one place and the sight of them, their noise, the very smell of them assaulted my senses. I was a world away from the green fields of Avebury as we crossed the stinking, turgid river and pushed our way, wide eyed, hand in hand, through the milling crowd. And yet all I saw that day was as nothing when first I laid my eyes upon the cathedral. They were still building it, they had been building it for centuries and would build for centuries more but despite the scaffolding, the dust, the organised chaos of the works, it was beautiful. Compared to this the weathered grey sarcens had been but the murmured, half forgotten dreaming of ages past. The stones of the cathedral soared and sang; they kissed the sky and glowed in the afternoon sun. And Tilda danced; she picked up her stained, travel worn skirts and danced between the half dressed blocks to the song of the stones that only I could hear.

The letters the monks had written opened the doors of the cathedral to me and by Easter, when the primrose paths would have been blooming in the woodlands of Avebury, I was trusted to cut and carve, shaping the golden stone to my will. My work was praised and admired as I carved angels and grotesques, pillars and pediments, columns and crosses for the ever growing structure. We lived among my own kind, among the workers in stone, wood and glass. Tilda kept our lodgings clean; she swept and cooked, crafting a snug home for us from the small barren rooms. She made friends among the wives and daughters of my peers, exploring with them the markets and shops of York. It seemed that we had found a place where we both could belong and I believed that we would be happy there.

Part Two

Tilda blossomed there in the north and I watched as she grew more beautiful by the day. As Mayday came to herald the summer she went out laughing with her friends to pluck a sprig of hawthorn blossom to place above our door and returned with bluebells, red campion and mouse ear entwined in her hair. I should have asked he to be mine then. I should have wound the ribbons around our joined hands on that very night and led her out to jump the Beltane fires with me. But I waited, wanting more than that simple country ceremony, telling myself that Tilda deserved better than that. But in truth I believed that it would demean me to jump a fire with a flower crowned country girl. In the city my ambition had grown, I had measured myself against my peers and had not found myself lacking. When I married Tilda I wanted the city to watch and envy, I imagined her with a golden diadem upon her head instead of a chaplet of flowers, I imagined marrying her in the great cathedral itself while the stones sang for us alone. And so I remained silent. We went out and watched others jump the fires before returning to our lonely beds. I do not know if Tilda dreamt that night but I did. I dreamt of my ambition, of wealth and recognition, never seeing what I was loosing until it was far too late.

As summer lengthened its days in blazing heat I threw myself into my work, chasing my ambition, working the long summer evenings with chisel and hammer until my arm burned and my hand bled for the glory of God and myself. I hardly noticed then that Tilda had become silent and thoughtful, that she spent much time away from our lodgings. I thought only that she was oppressed by the heavy heat of summer and sought refuge from it beneath the cool green trees that reminded her of home. When we, together with half the city of York, walked out early on Midsummer’s day to watch the rising of the sun I noted that people who were strangers to me smiled and nodded when they saw her; but I thought only that these were acquaintances she had made in the shops and markets and was glad she seemed so well liked.

The year lengthened and as the grain, the colour of Tilda’s hair, ripened in the fields my own work bore fruit within the cathedral precinct. I was made master of a small group of sculptors and the power was given to me to govern their work, to tell them where and how and what to carve, to touch each stone for them and tell them what angel, beast or plant dwelt within it and guide their hands to find the form hidden within. I believed then that the destiny I dreamed was a true one, that I would gain all that I sought and claim Tilda, body and soul, as my reward. I see now that I was blinded by vanity and ambition, by chasing the lesser prize I lost the greater. But at the time I could not see this, nor ever thought that it could be possible. Tilda had been at my side since earliest childhood and never did I think that I could loose her.

Of course I was well aware of the magicians of York, the city was famous for them and the Raven Banner, the magician King’s symbol, flew from every tower and hung upon every wall. Yet it meant little to me, I was not a Northerner, nor was I a magician and the Raven King upon his throne in Newcastle meant as little to me as my own king upon his throne in London. It was not so with Tilda, she loved the north, loved the romance of its dark king, its magic, its faerie roads and its danger. I will not blame her friends for this, she had been enamoured of the north from childhood; but I think that without the urging of those others she would never have sought out the company of magicians, nor would she have kept her adventures from me, I with whom she had shared everything.

Part Three

I knew nothing until an autumn day when the leaves upon the trees were turning brown and falling, brittle tears for a summer long gone and for all that would never return. Tilda had been out, beyond the city walls, collecting blackberries from the hedgerows and I saw her and her friends passing through Bootham Bar, the gate hard by the cathedral and walking down High Petergate. They were laughing, their lips and fingers stained dark with juice. At first they did not see me, so busy were they with their chatter and then, when they did, they fell suddenly silent. It was too late, I had heard enough, a seed of doubt had been planted within my heart and finally I began dimly to perceive that Tilda had a life beyond me, a life of which I knew nothing.

That night I pressed her and she told me more, telling me how they had been meeting secretly in the woods to talk about magic. How one of her friends, the young wife of a carpenter, had an aunt married to a magician and, in this way, a little knowledge had filtered down to my Tilda. I smiled then, I remember smiling and touching her face with my callused hand, for still I thought that these were but the games of maidens, the playing at magic and not the practice of it. I could not believe then that Tilda was anything but the simple country girl I had known all my life. And still I believed that I would be the one, when I was ready, who would show her all the wonders that life had to offer.

Yet, in the weeks that followed, as we sat by the fire through the long cold evenings it seemed as though a crack had appeared in a long held dam so that the water, at first just a trickle, soon became a flood. So it was that Tilda began to speak, a little at first and then more, of magic and faeries, of Raven Kings and trees. And so it was that this increasing flood of words began to wear upon me until discontent became anger and I could no longer bear hearing of a life, her life, that seemed to have no place in it for me. I who had always been the leader in our childhood games and her teacher in the ways of the world had become the ignorant one and I resented this new knowledge that she tried, unavailing, to share with me. The seed of doubt that had been planted that day at Bootham Bar grew into a twisted tree and as autumn turned to winter it bore the first of its bitter fruits. The night was the Eve of All Hallows, the night when the gates to Hell were flung open and the dead walked the earth, a night when all good Christians should have been safe at home.

On that night I returned from my work with the setting of the sun to find our lodgings empty, cold and dark. Seating myself before the chill hearth I nourished my anger as I waited for Tilda to return. Perhaps if she had returned sooner my anger could have been mollified, perhaps if she had talked of anything but magic the evening would have ended differently. It was not to be so. By the time she came through the door, flushed with eagerness and excitement, the sky was night black velvet studded with stars as bright as diamonds and I was burning with an ice cold rage that lay hidden behind my smile.

She saw nothing of it, so full was she of her own irrepressible happiness that she grabbed my betraying hand, talking already of magic, of things she had learned of which I had no knowledge. Laughing she knelt to make the fire and there, looking up at me, she told me to watch as she conjured a fire into the cupped palms of her hands, lifting it for my inspection before pouring the liquid light onto the kindling.

I could bear it no longer. The anger that leapt within me burst through the blazing mask. I remember shouting that she was an unnatural woman, an abomination against God; and as the fieldstones of the hearth murmured their disapproval I raised my hand and struck her. As she knelt before me, tears of rage and fear upon her cheeks I informed her coldly that I would have none of her witchery in my home, that she would either give up the practice of magic or she would leave.

She neither argued nor spoke as she gathered together her few things and walked, straight backed and proud, into that bitterest of nights, the waning moon cold in the sky above her, turning her golden hair to silver. I barred the door behind her and spent the remainder of the night seated beside her witch fire as it crackled merrily, mocking the events it had precipitated. The grey dawn found me still there, shrouded in my misery and loneliness, all my anger burned away with the fire leaving only the cold ashes to choke me.

Part Four

Many times in the following days and weeks I imagined the moment when she would return, I rehearsed my speech of forgiveness as I took her back and gloried in the gratitude that she showed me. Such thoughts were mere vanity and lust, and I the bitter sinner, for she did not return. I was forced to accept that she did not need me as I needed her and in the loneliness of those long winter nights I began to believe that I would never see her again, that I had driven her away and she was gone from me forever. It would have been better had this been so, but as fate was to have it I would see her one more time and on that night the twisted tree, nourished by my anger, was to produce the last of its poisonous fruits.

It was on the shortest day of the year, that which the common people call Yuille. It seemed that upon this night the whole of York celebrated, there was drinking and carousing in the streets beneath the Black Kings banner as the great fires were set to burn from sunset to sun rise, to aid it on this, it’s longest journey through the night. As the sun hung low, setting in the southwest, a group of people entered through Monks Bar, a cloud of ravens flying above them. They carried flaming torches and wore ivy leaves in their hair, the women among them laughing and twirling round as the crowd cheered their entry.

I watched, uninterested, as they passed by until suddenly, like a ghost from the past, a flash of golden hair caught my eye and I saw Tilda there beneath the chaplet of ivy leaves. As the young man who walked beside her swung her round and kissed her full upon her lips she smiled and raised her hand to touch his cheek with her fingertips and the look in her eyes was one such as she had never shown to me, not even in Avebury when we were young.

Feeling the sullen heat of anger deep within the pit of my belly I followed their little procession. Keeping her always within sight but concealing myself in the shadow and crowds I was unable to tear my eyes from their entwined hands and the happiness that shone from their faces stabbed like a knife into my heart. I followed as they moved around the line of the great wall toward the open space before the west front of the cathedral, watching carefully, awaiting my chance. And truly I knew not what I would do until fate led me to it.

My opportunity came before the very doors of the cathedral itself, closed though they were on this most pagan of nights, awaiting their glory three days hence when the birth of the saviour would be celebrated within their walls. The priests, Northerners to a man, were in the streets themselves, singing before the fires that would burn until the now dying sun was reborn at dawn. Nevertheless, it was before those shuttered doors that I saw my chance and took it, grasping my terrible fate with both hands clenched tight. The little procession broke up there amongst the great fires that burned and as the young man released Tilda’s hand and moved away to greet a friend I reached out from the shadows and drew her into the darkness. For a moment I thought she would scream, but then, beyond all wonders, she smiled in recognition and said my name.

I took her hand, drawing her down along the side of the cathedral and she trusted me enough to follow where I led. Such beauty, such innocence, my heart should have broken at that moment but instead it was hard and hot with an anger and a yearning that I thought would never cease. I led her to a small side door used by workmen, by carpenters and masons such as myself, a door I knew to be unlocked. She stopped me there, tucking tendrils of golden hair back beneath the ivy leaves that circled her head, asking me why I had brought her there, glancing back to where the bonfires blazed merrily, beginning to back away from the darkness in my eyes. I gripped her hand tighter, not caring that I hurt her and pulled her through the doorway and on into the dim, whispering stillness of the nave.

She pulled away from me there, swinging round to face me as the voices of the stones rose in my ears, a hymn to her beauty as the very walls of the cathedral rejoiced at her presence. She was not angry, nor yet was she afraid but her eyes were puzzled as she asked me again why I had brought her there, glancing toward the great, locked doors beyond which her lover waited.

I strode toward her and grasped her shoulders, gazing into her face. I asked her then if she loved him, the man with whom I had seen her. As she nodded in reply I knew that she would never be mine and my strong mason’s hands stroked her face and encircled her graceful neck.

I heard the stones scream as she died, I heard the dull thud as her head hit the paved floor, I heard the last gasp of breath in her shattered throat. And then, in the sudden, terrible silence, I stared down at the broken body that nothing could ever repair. Then I was gone, back out into the shadows and then into the light to drink in a tavern until I passed out across the table and escaped myself until the dawn woke me again to my living hell.

There is little more to tell, I waited for justice to be visited upon me. It was not. A cursory questioning of her friends showed her to have been involved with magic and magicians of questionable morals and the matter was quickly dropped. My bleak and empty life continued. I could have left York, I could have escaped my fate but it seemed fitting that I remain there, that I continued to work among the very stones that accused me every time I set foot into the cathedral, the only witnesses to my crime. Indeed it seemed that they and I were all that remembered Tilda, as the years passed her friends forgot her, the young man wed another, it would have seemed as though she had never been had not the stones sung the story of her death and my guilt to every man, woman and child that entered.

As the cruel tricks of fate would have it my ambition was fulfilled, I became Master of Works there, in that terrible place, a hollow victory for one such as I with no one with whom to share the glory. But it allowed me to reserve a place of burial within the church itself. I will be interred in the ancient crypt beneath the south transept and there, for eternity, I shall listen as the lament of the stones condemns me to hell. This is my choice, my punishment and my reward, to lie forever there as the song of the stones soothes me to sleep with the lullaby of my guilt.