The Silver Hand Chap 3

This from the third chapter, where Asfrith Weaver has gone to the Garth as body servant to Ingrun......

As she walked across the yard in the cold, flat, light, and stepped under the low doorway of the chamber, Assie felt herself grow a little lighter and more peaceful. The harrow was the heart of the Garth, and it made her feel safe and calm just to step into the dim light of the round stone chamber. A small red candle burned on the stone shelf, and the colourful cloths and the snowdrops set out there, shone in the light. The green and white of petal and leaf was so beautiful, it caught her breath and reflected it back to her in rich deep colours. There below the altar lay the Hammer of Thor. Solid and heavy. A reassuring reminder of what she had always been told. “Once called, Thor comes”. She looked up then. The priest had caused a new image to be placed in the harrow, high up on the wall. There hung the Christ on his tree, nails riven through his hands and feet, blood dripping from the holes, his face contorted and white. Fr Eldgrim kept trying to explain to her about the death of God. It seemed to her that he could think only of death and forgot what even the flowers knew as they drooped and dropped their petals.

She liked better the Easter idea, of the God coming back in the green. That’s what the whole of nature does. Comes surging back green, new and fresh. The crocuses were open wide now, their pale purple and white unfolded to the early spring sun. Their joyous bursts of colour seemed more like the act of a God than this horrible torture and dying. Assie turned from the cruel and brightly painted rood, and looked to the corner. Here was a sight that was as it should be. The Norns, the Three Weavers. What Was, What Is, What May Be. Erd, Werdandi Skauld. Before them burned a guttering lamp. A warm, soft light filled their corner from the quiet flame always dancing. They held the web of all life, in a thread that passed from hand to hand. Assie stood staring for a moment. The old words whispered themselves through her lips. She watched the sudden light as it poured through the window, taking part in the shifting changes of sun and cloud outside.
Lady tall, Lady white
Take the thread, hold it tight….
The trees outside were changing in a slow, quiet movement that was apparent only as thick, sticky buds on the trees. Soon it would carry them forward through a whole year, fresh green unfurling into the deep colour of summer. And while the trees unfolded their majestic cycle of a whole year, the clouds were flying overhead in constant restless change. The river flowed broad and steady past the orchard edge, it shifted from minute to minute. A sparkle of light across the deep pool, the flight of geese casting shadows. In every instant a change.
Lady true, Lady green
Weave us well, weave our dreams.

Lady fair, lady red
we will go where we are led
Assie stood with her eyes half closed, murmuring the song as she stood. She let the light saturate her and allowed her mind to move out into the changes that revolved around her. There she was in the centre of the spinning days and nights, seasons, sunlight, wind and water. Not standing but in movement herself, shimmering and singing, the cold wind blowing right through her empty bones.
Lady White, day and night .
Green and red, hear all I’ve said.

And let......
Assie paused. Normally at this point in the song you had to slip in what you most wished for. Singing it had carried her right back to the starry night sky at home. Standing hand in hand with her mother, under the first showing of the new moon, making their wishes. Laughing and joking. leaning into her mother’s side and wrapped round in her cloak she had always felt warm and held.

She longed with all her might to be back there, with her mother, standing under a clear night sky, wishing on the stars. But the thought passed and another took her. Her mistress stood before her now, swelling and softening as the new baby grew inside her. She thought of the delights of a little newborn. She remembered suddenly the hot smell of her little sister’s head. His mouth opening like a bird’s as she looked for the breast.
Ingrun’s baby be strong and......
“Well child. Asfrid is it not? That’s a pretty song. Sing it again why don’t you?” Assie turned at the voice. Cool, low and level. A shiver ran up her back. She looked up into the steady blue eyes that held her and found that her voice had entirely gone. She mouthed sounds but no sound emerged. “Come now child. You were singing gaily enough a moment or two ago” Assie shook her head. She clasped her hands behind her back, the two sweating palms meeting. “And why then do you sing before God a song so unsuitable that you can not sing it to me. You must pray to the virgin properly or not at all.”
“Who is the virgin?”
‘she is the mother of God of course!”
“What’s a virgin then?” The Priest went a darker shade of red.
“A woman who hasn’t know a man”
‘then how does she manage to have a babby?”
‘she is the Mother of God, not of some human child. Of course she is pure.”
‘the God’s don’t care about pure….. I never heard of no virgin Godesses!”
“You brazen creature, to stand in my chapel, uttering profanities!”
“It in’t your chapel, whatever that is. It is the Harrow for the Garth. It’s our holy place. What are you on about?”
“Stupid girl. You understand nothing. Nothing at all. How can I explain? How can I make you understand…..?” Fr Eldgrim, in his flapping black garments, was clearly giving way to rage and frustration. Assie bobbed a little curtsey and fled.

The Queen of the Silver Hand Chap 2

This is from Chap 2 - the story of the Handless Maiden begins to weave into the narrative here.....

The women sat before the fire and talked softly of the work to come when the shearing was done. As they planned the vats of dye, the spinning and weaving, Assie sat on the bench with Dotta at her feet, playing at cat’s cradle with Sissie. The thread was tied in a single loop, and held between the finger and thumb of each hand. Each took the thread from the other making a different pattern every time. They were very good at it and could keep the thread twisting and turning between their two hands for hours.

Dotta shouted and wriggled and reached up her chubby hands to join in, yelling “I want to! I want to!”  There was no shushing her once she got an idea fixed, so Assie held the little fingers against her own and they moved together, palm to palm. As she concentrated on calming her little sister, Assie could hear the quiet words of the women Seidr folk. Murmuring talk about things Assie knew of. The healers and workers of magic, a gathering of the northern hall, coming together as they did every year. It was Assie’s secret hope that one day she would join them. But something else had come into the voices. A tremor terrible deaths. Assie strained to hear merciless. She thought she caught the Priest’s name, Eldgrim, and then something low and urgent fire in the thatch.

“All were burned?”

Her mother’s voice was raised in horror and disbelief; Ingrun’s hand on her knee, leaning forward to sush her, and gesturing to where Assie and Dotta played. Fire. Dotta’s little fingers held up against hers, as they made a new cradle together. All burned. Her little sister was excited to be allowed into the big girl’s games and her bright curls seemed to tighten into knots with delight. Nothing left..

At last the murmuring talk of the women sank into a flat, unhappy silence. The news had chilled them both. The burning peat sank to a low ember, and as they had every night for as long as Assie could remember, they settled to hear a story.  Her mother looked long at Assie in the firelight and said

‘tonight I shall tell you The Handless Maiden”, and she began to tell a tale that starts like this.

Once there was a farmer who lived on a hillside near the woods.  His land looked over wide valleys and tall peaks, but it was hard land to farm.  He had only a small spring, and he and his wife had to work hard drawing water. They lived in a little wooden house that they shared with the animals, and were glad of the warmth in the winter. For a long time their life went on together in a cycle of hard days and dark nights, but in time a little daughter was born to them, and they loved her with all their hearts.

Assie caught the soft loving look that her mother gave her, and the back of her throat began to ache. She had listened to this story many times but tonight it seemed to take on a burden of love, and of sorrow that it had never carried before. The story of a little maiden who grew strong and straight. How her father made a foolish promise to a stranger. She always wondered how he could be so stupid. Couldn’t he see the trap that was laid for him? Her mother was coming to that part of the story now and her voice took on a lilting tone as she sang out the words.

As the farmer walked home from the market he fell in with a dark tall man on the forest road. If he noticed a smell of smoke and burning, he was too polite to say so, and if he wondered what such a man, wearing fine but rather dusty  and old fashioned clothes, was doing on the road, he didn’t ask.  He just said “Good day to you sir” and walked on. But the stranger fell in beside him and they went together for a little while.  The farmer sighed again and the stranger said

“You are not a happy man”

The farmer looked surprised:

“Indeed sir I have much to be thankful for, but life is hard and we struggle to get by”

The stranger smiled and said to him quietly:

“If you then could have anything you wanted, what would it be?”

“Oh sir, just to be comfortable, and never again have to worry about not having enough”

Again the stranger smiled, kindly and broadly:

“I could grant that wish for you, if you will give me whatever lies behind your house over there”

“If you grant me that wish you shall have whatever you want!”

They both laughed at the joke of it and walked on, down the path and around the outbuildings to the house.  And there standing behind the house, waiting for him to come home, was his beloved daughter.

There! All in one moment he had promised away his happiness and his future. Just as she had this afternoon. The thought of her own heedless promise rose in her mind unbidden, and stayed there like ice. But she had made a better bargain hadn’t she? It was so hard to be sure. She would be leaving her mother, maybe that was a betrayal. Her mother seemed to want her to stand on her own two feet, like the little maiden standing in the circle of salt. But that was later in the story. First a year must pass, they must go off to market and buy all kinds of trinkets and luxuries. And the farmer’s promise must weigh heavy on his mind. Her mother’s voice continued weaving the familiar pattern; the passing of time, the farmer’s bargain reaching its time.

When they arrived at the farm, the farmer trembled as he opened the gate, lest the stranger be already there waiting for them.  His wife saw his hand shake and said to him

“What ails thee dearest?  Do tell and we shall do all we can to put all to rights”

“Alas” said the farmer “ I fear you cannot. A year ago today I made a bad bargain.  I promised my daughter to a stranger who told me that he had the power to make our lives comfortable forever.  And tomorrow he will come to close the deal”

At that the farmer’s wife fell to weeping and shouting. She berated her husband for a fool and an idiot, and railed at him all night long. But the daughter stood very calm and quiet.  And when her mother was exhausted, she simply said

“Father, mother, do not worry. Let the stranger come. I will be ready”.”

Her mother’s voice soothed Assie as they listened and watched the fire burn down to embers. The girl in the story was ready to meet what came. She didn’t flinch or turn away, she didn’t blame or curse. She stood strong and did as she needed to. Her mother’s voice tonight seemed rich and full, a music all of its own, Assie looked up and caught the dark depth of her eyes.  Through the words of the story she could hear her mother say very plainly. “I love you my dearest. Be strong and true. Be faithful”. She lost track of the story then, all that she could hear were her mother’s loving thoughts and her single powerful wish. She closed her eyes and replied in the velvet dark of her mind, as the coals on the fire died. “Erd, Werdandi, Skauld, Three Norns who weave our fate, I will be faithful. I will be strong.” Quickly adding “protect and keep me safe” as she remembered Fr Eldgrim.

Queen of the Silver Hand - Chap One

Decided to post some extracts from my novel in progess as I work on it, just to give it a bit of an airing and let you all have a sense of what I am doing. I have been banging on about this book for so long. Time to get it out into the open!

The extract below comes from what may be the first chap - when Assie makes the promise that carries her into the action of the novel..... Though I may dump in and kick in a bit later in the story, not sure about that. Comments v welcome!

Assie raced through the morning as fast as she could. The two ewes were milked in a flash and the yard had a scanty clean. And if there was a little less milk in the buckets than usual Assie didn’t trouble herself too much about it. She poured out a little onto a stone for Flea to lick up and went to her last job; taking the scraps and mess to feed the pig. It always smelt terrible in the pig’s muddy corner of the field, but she liked the old sow, with her snuffling snout. She had bright, thinking eyes and gave out knowing looks when she was fed. When all was done, Assie led Sunna out quickly, wanting to get away before her Mother could spot her and find another job for her to do. Together they walked out of the field and set off towards the pool that stood below the buildings. Assie scrambled onto her broad back as soon as they were past the gate, urging Sunna on. They were both in high spirits in the morning sun and soon they were trotting down over the soft peat towards the water. Assie shouted “now Sunna, go!” and they galloped along the water’s edge, churning up the mud and sending spray flying as they went. They pulled short as they came to the stand of twisted mountain oaks that stood at the head of the mere, Assie laughing and Sunna snorting and flicking her ears.

“A fine morning for a gallop in the clear air.” The voice startled her and she turned quickly to see who was there. Under the knotty branches of the trees, a woman sat very upright on a fine grey. She was quiet and pale. Dressed in soft grey wool, her dress tied up around her waist to show a pair of felt britches just like the ones Assie wore.

“I am a friend of your mother’s Assie. Do you not recognise me?”

Assie frowned a little. The face was familiar. She wore a dark shawl, but Assie could see curls of fiery copper around her face. Someone she had met before. At a gathering at the Garth maybe, in the weaving sheds or the kitchen.

“It’s a fine day anyroad and I have something to celebrate.”

“What is that then?”

“I”m ten. It were m’birthday yesterday. So now I’m nearly grown. And I can stay with me Ma. I don’t have to go to Garth.” The lady looked at her. “What do you mean, have to go to the Garth?”

“Fr Eldgrim came yesterday and told me I had to go, and I didn’t want to but he wouldn’t listen.”

‘Did he indeed?” the lady looked cross “well I am sure he had no right to be so high handed”

“No, he had not, and he wouldn’t even leave a blessing on the house when he left.” Now the lady looked really angry, though she said nothing.

“No, but I aint going to do what Mr Needlenose says anyroad!”

“Mr Needlenose?”

‘that Father Eldgrim the Magnificent Sneerface.” The grey woman started to smile.

‘that’s him. Mightymouth. Sir Givingeveryoneorders.” The sun broke out across the water and touched them with warmth as they both snorted and chuckled.

They subsided a little and the woman said, ‘so tell me Assie. Tell me the whole story of what Fr Eldgrim, servant of the Bishop, did to make you dislike him so”

“He came here yesterday and told me I had to leave and come wi’him and I didna want to and then he said.......” As they trotted comfortably around the lake, Assie told the whole indignant tale. As she spoke she threw some glances sideways and saw how beautiful and animated the woman beside her was, how she frowned and tutted when she heard of Father Eldgrim’s behaviour. Sighed at the account of the conversation with her mother in sheltered corner of the field. Clapped her hands at the description of how Assie and her mother had made up, and how at the end of that long day, Assie, her little sister Dotta and the yard girl Sissie all tumbled together on the bench eating her mother’s little cakes as they came hot off the griddle.

“You have a lovely family Assie. They are good and kind people.”

‘They are so – the best.”

“Would it hurt you then so much to leave them?”

“Oh yes! Only – if you’d come to Holmefold to ask, mebbe I’d have gone. It was Master Grimshanks ordering me round so high’nd mighty that med me say no.”

The woman stopped and turned quietly to face Assie. Sunna stopped too and the beams of bright sun fell across them through the birches.

Years later the scent of damp spring earth and the naked green of new leaves would bring back to Assie the rush of love that she felt at that moment.

“What if I said to you then Assie, that I would like you to come with me? To work by my side and help me to nurse my new little baby, like a sister, when she comes.”

Assie saw then that the lady was round in the belly. Just beginning to swell a little. She sat and looked straight into the eyes that regarded her gently and warmly. They were green and brilliant with the exact quality of light on the new leaves.

‘Then I would have said aye. With all my heart.”

“Good, then let’s go and ask your mother is she will allow it” Assie was alarmed at the brisk tone of the lady’s suggestion. She had spoken on impulse and not given weight to the words. Now they were being taken for true.

“But.... but she’ll never agree to me going off with a stranger.”

“No but when she sees that her old friend the Lady Ingrun requests that her daughter come as helpmate to Wide Ford Garth, I think she will give her consent. Don’t you Assie?”

Mulling about The Novel

Good meeting with my Novel Group last week. We get together around once a month. Mail out our work a week beforehand (ideally! - mine went out three days beforehand, but the others were very patient and managed to find time to read it). Then give each person between half an hour and an hour of discussion time. The theory is that the person whose work is being discussed doesn't say anything but just listens and sifts through what is being said by their 'readers'. We don't manage to hold to that rule very well, but we do seem to manage to avoid the position where the writer passionately defends their work from 'criticism'.

There was some very interesting discussion around the work of a member of the group who has just started a new novel. We were all very excited and intrigued, and immediately began to weigh in with suggestions and feedback. Then our wise old bird said 'don't listen to any of this, just keep writing and enjoy yourself. Finish your first draft and work out what you want to do and then test it out against what other people suggest'. Good advice about an early idea. So much better to play, experiment, write and write, until the idea has formed itself, rather than presenting the embryo to the crows!

In this meeting we had a lot of discussion about structure too. The need for the novel to progress not though 'brilliant' writing but through a shape and logic that is apparent to the reader. I find it hard to hold a sense of that as I write, which is why I always start in longhand. It seems to be easier to be critical of sprawling pages of green ink, and edit and streamline them, than to do the same with neatly typed pages on the screen that the computer has laid out and made sense of in all its digitally pre-programmed ways. And of course having a group of faithful readers in the Novel Group who are willing to say - 'this is a digression, this doesn't make sense, I didn't understand what you were trying to do here......'

Read/writ/er

they are very entwined
it is a great excitement to play the interactions and complexities that connect them

Members of the group are: Alan McDonald,http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/writers/mcdonald/ ,Brighid Rose, Katie Jukes, Terry Simpson, Gail Bolland, Mandy Sutter http://www.mandysutter.com/
Char March http://www.commapress.co.uk/?section=authors&page=marchpage

Frantic Assembly's 'Othello' Lowry Theatre Salford 2nd Oct 2008

Frantic Assembly performed a heavily edited text that was cut right down the the bare bones of the story and did it in a very physical style with lots of dance or mime around the action.

The setting was a very seedy working men's club or pub, and they played on the ideas of gang (army) culture and race. The acting wasnt very good but the production overall was very pacy and visual and full of blaring music so it was fun and the students that we had taken liked it. Clearly well targetted at the 14-19 yr olds who seem to be the main audience for Shakespeare. School and college 'trips' are keeping most of these companies alive and the canny ones know it well!

The set was the big star. There was a leather banquette, a pool table and a fruit machine by the entrance to the women's loo - lots of play around who came and went out of that door! And then finally in the intimate scene between Emilia and Desdemona the set turned around to reveal them sitting on the loo seat sharing a joint.

The walls of the set moved steadily inwards as the action went on, so it became more and more stiffling, with no exits. When Iago got Casio drunk, they span the pool table round and round, and the walls undulated. Very dizzying. And when Othello finally staggered back from Desdemona's dead body, he took the walls of the set back with him, so the whole space exploded outwards. Very dramatic.

I missed the power of the language though. The text was so heavily cut and the acting so fast paced, highly choreographed and stylised that there was no oppotunity to luxuriate in the richness of langauge. Shakespeare for a visually literate, but linguistically deafened culture.

Maggie O'Sullivan's Reading at The Other Room Manchester Aug 6th

Maggie began by thanking the organisers for inviting her and saying that it was the first time she had read in Manchester. How can that possibly be true? Maggie is one of the very best and most innovative poets working in the North of England, and she only lives a short train ride from the city. It is an outrage, and thank goodness it has been corrected.

The reading was a great pleasure. I particularly enjoyed the extracts from A Natural History In 3 Incomplete Parts and from red shifts. It would be just perfect if she could somehow read with the texts projected behind her, as they are as visual as they are aural. I loved listening to her voice working through the changes, patterns and repetitions of the work.

It was like being underwater, underlanguage, listening to the stream rush past. Lots of fragments, debris, other organisms, all of them half glimpsed. Immersed in transformation and movement. I would recommend anyone who gets the chance to go and hear her read.

Stuart Calton was a good contrast. I found myself chuckling as he read. His work is political, sassy and satirical. What a good night it was!

Lee Harwood

I came to Lee Harwood's poetry unexpectedly, at a reading at Edge Hill. It wasn't the first time I had heard him read. There was another flustered and tense occasion when I arrived late, with my partner, at rather an intimate reading in one of those posh rooms in Cambridge. I couldnt find anything to latch on to at all, the long, hot journey and the self consciousness of arriving late talked loudly over his quiet, complex voice. The reading at Edge Hill was quite other. I heard the poetry for the first time and was touched, moved and challenged by it.

The context had changed, I had changed. The words sank in and stayed with me. I loved the collisions in his gentle, uncompromising and subtle voice. I began to understand more of the context of his work. And then I read The Long Black Veil. It made me cry. And has continued to fascinate me.

You can hear Johnny Cash singing the song that the poem refers to on You Tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28uW2E9p6Pk&feature=related
I spoke not a word/thought it meant my life/for I'd been in the arms/of my best friend's wife............Nobody knows/nobody sees/nobody knows/but me..... which echoes a key idea in the poem; what happens in secret between illicit lovers. The poem is in the form of fragmentary 'Notebooks' and uses a range of clever technical devices to keep working round that point. Nobody knows but me.

I have reviewed the Selected Poems for Chroma.
http://www.chromajournal.blogspot.com/
You can get Lee Harwood's work from:
http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/authors/harwoodA.html