The Green Man of Avington (Stories/Historical Fiction) Page 2



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"He taught me to read the runes," she said. "First, I must prepare his body for the journey. There are salts and herbs to collect and linen to buy." She paused and looked sorrowfully at the emaciated corpse. "And I must take blood for the rite," she added. "Find a litter and an ass. We must be in Avington for Lugnasad." Wulfgar was yet more uneasy. Use of the forbidden word for Lammas Eve brought memories of the darkest days of his life. To be a fugitive was bad, to be a heretical fugitive worse. Was his pretty black-haired wife of less than a year - a girl born in the forest who had never entered a church - risking her soul? Yet, what if she were right and the Christian religion was the heresy? Were there any left in Avington who believed themselves protected by the Green Man? The community mourned Eadwig for three days. Each evening, tales were told of the man who was born in the year before William of Normandy declared himself King. Of his sixty winters, thirty-five had been spent in Avington beside the River Kennet from which fish sprang and where the oak woods were full of tame porkers. Eadwig had married the youngest daughter of Eafa the Sokeman who was born in the year King Edmund Ironside died but dispossessed by the Norman intruders. Eadwig and the girl who was to become his wife were driven from their paradise into Selwood where she bore Edith. Eafa was grandfather of both Wulfgar and Edith - the same Eafa who gave his name to that pleasant place beside the River Kennet. And on an island in that river, Cymmerprys Eyot, Eadwig must be laid to rest. Two brash young men, attracted to slender Edith, volunteered to escort the cortège. They told Wulfgar that hiding in a forest was not a man's life. The route from Selwood was uncertain. Wulfgar had been fifteen when they had followed the Wansdyke to the west. They had been aided by winter darkness and heavy rain - and hadn't to drag a litter behind an ass. Now, they must use subterfuge. Several of the fugitives in Selwood had met pilgrims who were on their way to King Athelstan's abbey at Malmesbury. Not far from there, they said, was a herepath, which ran straight as an arrow to the Kennet at Speen. Others, who had visited Bath recently, advised that a new place of pilgrimage was established at Reading where the Kennet also flowed. There was a herepath route but it would be better to seek out the port ways if they were to avoid soldiers. On the first morning of the journey, after being challenged twice, Wulfgar met a party led by a friar.
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