I
But for the storm, I would never have seen her. A wild wind laid the pear-tree low, leaving a gap in the high hedge. When the sky cleared, the opening revealed a range of hills I had not seen before. They lay gentle on the horizon, as if some vagrant goddess of the track had wearied of her wandering and rested amongst the humming heather, until sleep, soft as September sun, silted her veins with gold.
Rolling contours shaped a rise of shoulder, a curve of belly, a sweep of thigh. Her tree crowned head was angled as if turning away from the town that pressed her flank. I too avoided that place – its noise; its gossip; its sympathetic glances – and rarely left the sanctuary of my cottage in the silent valley. I saw that a quarry had carved a scoop from her side. She too bore scars.
Now, when I scratched in my garden, I no longer felt alone. On days of pain, I would watch her from a bench beside the door.
When blood-red haws beaded the hedges, I cut a walking-stick and made cautious forays into the country. I wanted to see her from other angles. Yet she proved elusive: planes shifted; horizons receded; tree-tops obscured sight-lines. She was visible only from my cottage. I held this secret knowledge dear.
In solitude, my fancy roamed. Sometimes I wondered if I might, walking out some drowsy afternoon, forget the place I travelled to, and that from whence I came, surrendering my world-worn limbs to heather and to hill, and never wake until a hundred years had flown, with all their loves and wars.
One winter’s night I dreamt again that I drowned in mud. I hauled up the sash to swallow draughts of air, and in the moonlight, saw her breast slowly rise and fall. I never closed the window after.
April stirred the sap even in my crooked bones. I set out to meet her; half trespasser, half pilgrim, bearing a gift of dew-bright violets. I do not know what I expected to see or feel. I left my posy in the tangled copse of her hair, where windflowers starred the dark earth.
That night I dreamt I sank into the clay, and rose up cloaked in heather. My blood ran clear as rivers underground. I lay beside her and she turned her face to me.
When I awoke, she was gone. The hills were not the same. I cannot say why; I do not think I displeased her. Perhaps it was the town, with its enervating motion, ceaseless as the machines that clatter in the mill, faster every year. Perhaps she simply felt the call of the old white track.
But I will hide in my silent valley no more. I will travel the high-ways and the hollow-ways, to the horizon and beyond. I will walk without cease until I find what I seek: my goddess of the hills, or else, some other kind of peace.
II
Sloe-buds rimed the hedgerows when I set out from my home. What I pursued I could not explain; what I fled I could not outrun. I walked hooded and alone, leaning on a crooked staff, that bent so far to fore and aft it came out straight again. A compass kept my footsteps true; it was my brother’s once, before he shipped for France and lands beyond all maps, all stars.
The track’s tide bore me eastward, seeking skies as wide as seas. At dawn I met a cowslip girl, bringing pale-gold candles to brighten smoke-grey towns. The child saw treasures where my weary eyes found only dust and weeds. She named the wayside flowers for me: Jack-in the-pulpit, Daffy-down-dilly, Love-in-idleness. I dozed by a stile, and on waking found her gone – with my coat besides. I did not mind its loss, but went more lightly on my way.
I met the wheeling swallows as the path swept South, where the downs were rolling billows in a green grass-sea. A woman gathered rosehips, a baby bound against her heart and fading bruises on her arms. “There was a time of hurt”, she said, “But that is over now”. She made preserves and cordials, and sold them on the roadside; she swore that she would never be beholden to a man. She made a draught to ease my limbs, and would accept no payment. I had forgotten what it meant to walk without pain.
As the wayfaring tree began to flame, I turned my tramping westward. One night of rain in tangled woods I shared a mushroom-seeker’s fire. “None of the village-folk speak to me, since my three boys were lost”, she said, “They cannot find the words. But silence does not trouble trees; no more does any tongue. At least, none known to me”. She handed me a fragment, ghostly-pale, and bade me eat. Her voice wove through the threads of rain; half lullaby, half keening. I wandered wild in dreams where fear and grief were withered leaves. In her arms, my cold bones burned and all the darkness blazed.
The year waned, birds cried hunger, and frost whispered on the wind. The ridge-track drew me, ragged and footsore, to the high-lands of the North. In a snow-swept churchyard a headstone spoke a single word: Peace. One man’s claim to bliss, perhaps, and yet it seemed to me a cry for all this broken world. I stood still as the company, while Winter claimed us all.
Then a black-cloaked widow called me, gave me shelter, and a story. It was a tale told by the yews, whose dark sap is the blood of earth, whose deep roots listen to the dead. The telling held me spellbound, speechless as a child. I gave her my compass and took up my staff.
I stepped again upon the way that circles ever-onward, ever-turning and returning to the place where it began. Sloe-buds glimmered in the hedgerows as the old track led me home.
