Bella and the Angel - part 1

Bella in the Wych Elm

Them bastards have wedged me in tight, can’t move an inch. My head is killing.  If I could just draw a proper breath I might be able to think straight.   Stuffed something in my mouth ain’t they?  Me and my big gob, should’ve learnt to shut it at the right time, never did.

Hear that?   Not a dickie bird.  They’ve gone and left me.  Left me here in the bleed’n tree.   I should feel angry.   I did, when that little bloke said there ain’t no such thing as angels.  I tried to tell him, angels ain’t nothing to do with heaven and all that shite.   He wouldn’t listen though, kept saying that he’d been left for dead in the mud and if there were angels he would’ve seen them then.   He went to hell and came back, he said, nearly died in a field of mud, he said.  I never should have laughed and said we’d all done that.  He didn’t know what I was thinking though, did he?   He didn’t hit me, it was the other one with the funny accent; and I thought he was the nice one.

Oh God, or whatever you are, why does everything have to hurt so much?  It’s so bleed’n dark in here.   Not so bad if I try and breathe through my nose, getting a bit more air now.

Stuck in a tree, my own fault, should never have told them about it.  Though you could tell they were looking to do me in.  Hate at the back of their eyes, a sneer in their smiles.  Seen it all before of course.  Men who want to vent their anger, full of the need to kill, one war not enough for them.

I’ve been beat up before, had that moment before it all goes black and you think, so this is how I die.  You kind of relax into it then, and I’ve been lucky.  Still here ain’t I?   Well just.

Still here, shut up like a witch in a bleed’n tree.   I used to see faces in the trees when I was little, trees all around when I was young, before I lived in the city.  Trees and mud and water and stones, and wind and all that, all this.  It’s like I’ve come home again.

I was never scared of the trees.  I used to feel bad snapping twigs, like I was snapping the fingers and toes of the trees.  I’d hear the clean snap of the wood then feel a tremor, like I was hurting the land.  Mam said I was daft when I told her things like that.  I thought as a grown up she’d know all about it, the faces and voices in the trees and such.  Turned out no one thought I should talk about things like that, so I stopped.   Still thought about it though, can’t stop your thoughts, can you?

Faces in the trees, did they want to get out?  Don’t think so, might have been spirits, angels I reckon; they looked out for me, kept me company more than once.  I felt close to them.

Can’t get much closer to the heart of a tree than this; shoved into its hollow with the toadstools and woodlice and small wriggling things.   The bones of it all around me, holding me tight.  Got my head hard against the inside of this old tree, I can hear it creaking, hear small things scuttling around it, snuffling, smelling the clues in the ground.  They know more than I ever will, know that I’m here, know about all the dead and living things that are here.   There are some things only I know about though, all those pictures in my head, where will they go when I’m dead?  Will the tree soak them up?  Will the small creatures that will eat me, absorb them and run away with them down into their burrows?  Will they bury them deep underground so the earth will take care of them?  What will be made of them?  Will they ever be seen again?  Will anyone listen?  Will anything ever hear me again?

Knocking Down Idols

Hurrah!  It’s a holiday.  That’s what Mam said and she got me up early special.  She gave me an all over wash and washed my hair with soap and rinsed and rinsed it.  All this in the morning before the sun was properly up.  Never been this clean before.  Even my drawers are fresh off the line.  When the sun was up I sat on the step with a bowl of warm milk with bits of bread in it to eat and Mam sat behind me with her legs either side of me and combed and combed my hair.  It hurt like anything, but it was nice too, like she was stroking me.  The sun was warm on my face and my head and I sort felt a blessing come over me.

Me and Mam live in our tiny home together, a hovel she calls it.  Only one room but it’s fine for us.  Mam takes me to work at the Blizzard’s house sometimes; she does for them, cleaning and that.  I wait for her in the kitchen; it’s huge, bigger than our whole house.  I say our house, Mam says it belongs to the Blizzards, so I ought to watch my ps and qs around them or we’ll be turfed out on our ear.  I try to picture that, old man Blizzard marching down here with his pitchfork, sticking it into my ribs then tossing me out of the door and into the mud, me lying on my side with my ear and my face in the cold, thick mud.  I don’t think he’d do that, he’s always nice to me when I see him, but it’s best not to argue with Mam.

I’m going to the fair with the Blizzard children, that’s why I’ve got to be so clean, so I don’t show myself up.   The Blizzard children are older than me and they’re not as nice as Mam thinks they are, especially that Ernie, but I don’t care today.  Mam’s tied some coins in a handkerchief for me and I’m going to see all sorts!

We’re not going for the crabbing of the parson, Mrs Blizzard doesn’t approve and Mam is like me with her, she won’t argue with Mrs Blizzard.  I was in the kitchen when they were talking about it.  The people in the village throw crab-apples at the parson, I don’t really know why.  Maybe because it’s the day the parson from donkey’s years ago sent off St Kenelm’s body to some bigger, posher church, maybe everyone’s still cross about that.   Maybe there should be a day for everyone to get a good telling off; I seem to get one most days.  Mam can’t come, even though it’s a holiday, she’s got things to do and is getting a rest from me.    

I was in the churchyard yesterday, well, most of the village was, getting ready for today and that.   Mam didn’t come to that either, she hates church.  I only go if one of the neighbours calls to take me.  She said, not to tell the Blizzards, but if that parson came round to ours, never mind pelting him with crab-apples, she’d throw a bleed’n great cabbage in his face.  She says he looks down his nose at us and he’s not the only one.

He looked down his nose at me yesterday.  I was down at the spring behind the church, watching the others tie their wishing rags to the clootie tree.  I wanted to wish for lots of things, but Mam said she’d have my guts for garters if I tied anything to that tree.   So I was just standing there watching the others, when this shadow came over me and I looked up and it was the parson standing there, looking down his long nose at me.  ‘Isabella Limb,’ he says, I didn’t say anything as I’d forgotten my name; everyone calls me Bella or Bell or You.  Anyway, he put his hand on my shoulder and says, ‘Isabella girl, you weren’t in church yesterday were you? ‘

I’ve never spoken to the parson, so I don’t know how he knew my name, but I’m a quick thinker so I told him I had been there, right at the back and that I’m so little he probably didn’t see me.  Mam would have been proud.  The parson gave me this frightening look, I thought he must have the devil in him and I knew he could see right into me and all my lies wiggling around inside.

‘You need to get down on your knees and repent girl, and while you’re down there say a prayer for your mother’s soul, you’re her only chance of saving it from eternal damnation. ‘

He was waving his bony finger at me and I could hear the Blizzard children laughing at me, but I wasn’t going to cry.  I wanted more than anything to pelt him with crab-apples or cabbages or something.

Mrs Field, whose husband works on the Blizzard’s farm, heard and came over and put her arm around me.  That made me feel a bit sick, I hate people feeling sorry for me.  She said that my Mam was doing her best to bring me up right and that it is hard for a widow woman to make ends meet around here.  She was staring the parson in the face and he said that his duty was with the soul not the body.

I felt all shaky and needed to go, so I ran off up the hill, through the graveyard and into the meadow.   The grass was so long that it was higher than me.   I pulled down my drawers and just went, I had to.

I was empty and full; full of feelings there are no words for. I whooshed through the grass, I didn’t care that it was cutting me.   I heard a sound rising above the swishing of the grass and was surprised to find it was me.  I was making a sort of cawing sound each time I breathed out; it was like it was coming from a place so deep in me I didn’t even know was there.  It was so hot and my throat hurt so I headed back towards the trees of the graveyard and the spring.

It was cooler under the trees but I could hear voices down in the dip where the spring was so I made myself a nest in the grass and lay in it.  There were blue patches of sky above me but it was mostly trees.  They were swaying their branches and leaves for me, cooling me down.  I listened to their soft woody song and felt them tell me not to worry about mean people; they were nothing to do with me.

I could hear some voices, down by the clootie tree I suppose.  It was Ernie Blizzard, I’m sure of it, trying to scare his sisters, I bet.  He said that they were standing at the very spot where a little boy called Kenelm had woken from a nightmare to find the man who was supposed to be looking after him digging his grave.  ‘Please, please, don’t kill me; I’m your king after all.’  The man had just laughed at him and said, ‘You?  You’re just a snivelling little boy,’ and then sliced his head clean off.  ‘Do you know who gave the order to have him killed?  It was his own sister, the one who should have loved him most.’  Ernie was laughing in a nasty way and then I could hear him running after his sisters who were screaming, I could tell they were pretending though.

I thought I was empty, but I rolled on my side and was sick.  It was just yellow water, the colour of grass in the sun.  I wondered if the spring that had risen next to poor Kenelm’s body was the ground being sickened, wanting to say stop and, no, no this is a really bad thing that has happened.

I rolled onto my back to watch the faces in the trees.  I thought about my father.   Why hadn’t the ground been sickened by his death?  He had worked with the horses on the Blizzard’s farm but got killed when a big horse rolled on top of him.  I can’t remember what he looked like, but I remember being happy when he was there.

Strange that a little boy who had died over a thousand years ago still got remembered by everyone, even though his bones had been taken away.  Nobody talked about my father and his bones were in the graveyard.  Who decides who gets remembered and who gets forgotten?  There’s dead things everywhere, once you start thinking, all those little bird skulls and mouse bones sinking into the ground, all those old trees and plants, me too one day.

I could see bits of the church through the trees.  It looked pretty from a distance but it has stone monsters on it; they have fierce faces and don’t sing.  The angels are on the inside, but that’s no good when you’re on the outside.

I listened to the songs of the trees and the wind and the water.  Angels, my angels in the trees, were watching over me, letting me know I was one of them.

Clootie Tree

Even the moon is trying to hide tonight, ducking its brazen head behind the clouds, watching me from behind its curtain.  It thinks I should be glad for that little bit of light, but I can find my own way.   I don’t need you, do you hear me?  Oh yes, I know you’re looking, like you were on that night when Blizzard took me into the high field.  You stared right down at me through the whole thing, you just looked straight at me like it was nothing, just shone down like you do on the water and the church and everything, and it was all the same.  You look down from your high and mighty place and see it all.  Bet you were watching when they cut that little boy’s head off, that king, saint boy, Kenelm.   That was here, so they say, right here.

Ha!  Got here by myself, without your help.  Tricky though, lots of sharp things digging into me and all those roots from the trees rising above the ground on the path, but I didn’t fall once.

It’s even darker down here in the hollow; but there’s the spring, all mushy and muddy and, yes, the constant trickle of pure water; Kenelm’s tears, maybe, or the kind earth weeping for all of us broken and hurt ones.  I’ll paddle my poor feet a moment, soak the thorns out, no shoes for me.  You’d think Blizzard could run to an old pair of boots for me, all that bleed’n washing and cleaning I’ve done for that family, but no.  Think he likes me running around barefoot.  Said that I looked like a fairy, standing there on the muddy ground under the moon with the new green of spring and the silver of the trees all around.  Said I was a creature of the earth.  I ain’t no creature; no more than he is, the great snorting, hairy beast.

They say that this water is magic, won’t do any harm to drink some, I’m thirsty after walking all that way in the dark, twice as hard at night.  They say the water cures you, won’t cure what I’ve got mind.  Might settle my tummy though, can’t keep anything down.  I’m running to skin and bone, have to stop whenever I lift something heavy cause I go all woozy, never been like that before.  Old man Blizzard’s doing for sure.   A little bud sprouting deep inside me, stirring everything up.  Stirring up a hornets’ nest if it grows much bigger.  Nothing I can do about it.  Only this, tie a rag to the clootie tree.  Stupid I know, my mother would laugh her head off at me, bet she’s up there with the moon, looking down, having a good laugh.  Maybe not.

Still, it’s worth a try.  I’ve ripped off a little strip of my skirt; the skirt Blizzard tore off me that night.  Just a scrap of dirty coarse material, the colour of mud.  No one’s going to know it’s mine in the light of day, won’t even notice that there’s a new rag there.  St Kenelm’s day is coming soon, so there are lots of rags here, more than I’ve ever seen.

I can guess what most of them are asking for, all of them as desperate as me.  All the boys gone for soldiers, only a few left in the village now.  None have come back, some are already dead.  I see them lying in neat rows on top of a muddy field; the moon kissing their faces until they are made of silver and all of their flesh has gone, leaked into the earth.

My little scrap is like a left over leaf from autumn hidden on a blossom tree, invisible.  Everyone sees the abundance of bright, new flowers.  Sounds happy, but this is a tree covered in sorrow.

The clootie tree is small and scruffy.  I like that.   All the tall grand trees stand around it, like they are protecting it, they are full of strength and knowledge, but it’s the small common one that has the magic.

I’m not quite sure how you do it, but if I think really hard about what I want to happen and I tie my rag onto a twiggy bit of branch at the same time, it might happen.  It might put things right.

http://www.abctales.com/story/philipsidneynoo/bella-and-angel-part-2