Forsaken
1. Come What May
The young woman stood in the centre of the crowd. Her long blonde hair, left loose and tending to curl languidly down her back, blew gently at the tug of the breeze. Her eyes, a beautiful shade of blue, were wide, full of hope and excitement as she watched the approaching man. In her eagerness, her fingers gripped the material of her plain white dress, toying with it briefly before she regained her composure, affecting a look of serenity. A smile played across her lips, mirroring the joyous mood portrayed by her eyes. This was her moment. Today she was the Queen. And when the man with the wreath of flowers reached her, she curtseyed low, allowing him to place the crown of nature upon her golden head. Smiling, she stood up, and surveyed her subjects.
"Today is the first day of summer," she said, her voice as sweet as a nightingale's call. "A time for growth and prosperity. Let no man work this day, nor any child attend his lessons. Today we celebrate life, the victory of the sun over winter's harsh grip, and the beginning of the season of plenty. Let us eat, drink, sing and dance for as long as the sun graces the sky. Let the celebrations commence!"
Instruments were brandished from the musicians in the crowd. Flautists and pipers began to blow, the sound of wind-made music filling the air, each tune different, each complimenting the others in some way that could not be described. Meanwhile, a mandolin player strolled through the crowd which was slowly starting to disperse, lazily plucking the strings of his well-crafted instrument.
A group of young women clustered around the May Queen. They, with their unbound hair and cheeks made more rosy by the rouge painted on them, were all candidates for next year's festival, and they fawned over the May Queen, offering to serve her, to fetch her a drink, or a favoured treat, as if she was the Virgin Queen herself.
As Meg watched them flapping and fawning, she snapped open her fan with a brief flick of her wrist and used the delicate, lace-trimmed accessory to blow a little cool air across her face. Inside her stomach was a familiar prickly feeling; not anger, but irritation. Many things irritated her. Today it was the heat, which had come early to London for once, and the puerile toadying of the young women as they attempted to curry favour with the Queen.
Beside Meg, another woman stood, a wistful look in her doe-brown eyes. She sighed as she watched the Queen, and then turned to her companion, not even bothering to hide the smile that graced her rouged lips.
"She is so beautiful, isn't she?"
Meg shrugged, the cambric-slashed shoulders of her long green linen dress rising almost to her ears. "I suppose. If barely-dressed virgins are your thing, of course."
The woman ignored her tone, and gave another sigh. "When I was young, I used to dream of being the May Queen. Every year I would come to the May Festival and watch from the edge of the crowd as the Queen was crowned. And every year I saw my own face on hers. 'Soon,' I would tell myself. I knew it would make my mother so proud, if I was chosen."
"I envy you, Clara," Meg admitted. "I would have given anything to have such innocent dreams, when I was young."
"Why? What did you dream of?"
"I used to dream that I would wake up and find my father dead in his bed. Or that I would come home from working at the docks and find my mother standing in the kitchen, cooking my favourite stew, just like old times."
Clara offered her a genuine look of sympathy. "I would give you my childhood dreams, if I could."
Meg smiled. Clara was the most selfless person she had ever known, and she knew that her friend sincerely meant every word she spoke.
"I know," she replied. "But enough of my melancholy. You heard the Queen; today we are to celebrate. What should we do first?"
"Oh, I would love to see a play!" A girlish excitement spread across Clara's face, like the morning sun spreading across an open field. Clara loved plays, and had once confided that it was her greatest wish to visit the Globe Theatre, to watch the actors upon the stage. Meg cared little for plays – they were all foolish make-believe, and she had little patience for such frivolities – but she would endure one, if it meant her friend's happiness. "I hear there's a troupe of actors at the stage in the Grey Mare's Inn-yard," Clara continued.
"You want to return to the city so soon?" Meg gestured around at the open field, where dozens of stalls had been set up, selling everything from small bags of candied local delicacies to exotic perfumes and ornate jewelry. "The sun is shining, the music is playing, and the air is fresh. Wouldn't you rather spend a little more time out here, away from the reek of the Thames and the tanner's yard?"
"I suppose it would be nice to look at some of the stalls," Clara admitted. "The actors will be there until night-fall, so there's no real hurry."
"Good."
She linked arms with her friend and they set off through the crowd, dodging the children who raced around shrieking happily with bags of sweets in their hands. The air was full of excitement, but there was also a sense of relaxation and fun, and Meg found it hard to nurture the prickly feeling within her stomach. Very soon it was gone entirely, and she found herself smiling as she listened to the pipers playing their tunes. Even when she saw some of the young women with their loose hair hurrying to and fro, no doubt on errands for the May Queen, she couldn't find it within herself to be irritated with them.
"Sometimes, I wish I could wear my hair like that," Clara said, her eyes following one of the young women. Her raven-black hair, like Meg's light-brown hair, was pulled into an elaborate chignon at the back of her head, in stark contrast to the young unmarried women who could leave their hair loose, and the older, married women who wore their hair frizzed in homage to the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth.
"It's just hair," Meg said in a dismissive tone. She didn't see why women made such a big deal about it; when she was a child, forced to work at the docks by her lazy, alcoholic father, her hair had been cut short, so she could pass as a boy. Only when her body had started to develop curves had that disguise failed. And when her curves had continued to grow, her father had pushed her into a new line of work. One which made wading through fish-guts and seaweed seem like the grandest job in the world.
"Oh, I know. But it's not the hair I'm thinking of, but of simpler, more innocent times. It's not so much the hair, as the statement. 'I am pure and unmarried.' That's what the hair would say, if it could speak."
Meg did not reply. Times had never been simpler, and they had never been innocent. Winter flu had taken her mother's life when Meg was barely seven years old, and now all she had of the woman were hazy memories of a smiling face and bowls of hot stew during cold nights. With Mother gone, Meg had been forced to play surrogate-mother to her younger sister, Anne. Her father had worked in an abattoir, but he sometimes drank so much that he failed to wake the next morning for work, and the family often went weeks without income.
That was when her Father had cut off Meg's hair, dressed her as a boy, and dragged her down to the docks to work with the other boys, sorting fish, de-scaling and gutting them, cleaning them ready for sale. If she was lucky, some days she'd be allowed to mend nets, which at least meant her clothes stayed a little cleaner. But whether she was mending nets or gutting the day's catch, she could never completely get the smell of fish out of her clothes or her hair. These days she avoided the docks, because a single smell of fish was enough to bring it all rushing back to her; the bone-chilling coldness of winter mornings, the glassy-eyed, open-mouthed stares of the haddock and herring caught in the nets; You are caught too, just like us, they seemed to say, mocking her even as she spilled their guts into the stinking Thames.
But that had been long ago. It had been a different Meg who had stood knee-deep in entrails and fish-slime, her skin roughened and cracked by the water and cold. The Meg of today was standing in a field of fresh air, in the company of her best friend, with lively music to listen to. She mentally pushed away memories of family and fish, and looked around for a perfume stall. Though she cared naught for hair, she knew just how powerful perfume could be. The smell of jasmine, or of musk or of honeysuckle, could take the mind of a man to another place, just as the smell of fish took her to another place. But perfume was far more pleasant than fish, and she was starting to run out of her favourite scent.
They passed a Maypole in the centre of the field, and stopped to watch as young girls in their early teen-years skipped around it, each one holding the end of a long green or yellow ribbon that was tied to the top of the pole. Their feet were bare and their long hair flowed behind them, dancing to each skip of the feet.
"I wonder if they would dance around the pole like that if they understood what it symbolised," Meg said.
"Probably," Clara replied. "It's more fun to partake than to watch. I remember dancing around the Maypole many a time, when I was their age. Although one time it had been raining the night before, and all the slugs had come out. I stepped on so many that my feet were black by the time I'd finished dancing."
Meg laughed as the image of her friend stepping on slugs insinuated itself into her mind. Laughter was something that had been absent for much of her youth, and it was one of the reasons she loved Clara so much; the things she said were not intentionally funny, but they usually made Meg smile, and sometimes made her laugh. It was a rare gift to be given.
But by the time the dance around the Maypole had finished, she had forgotten about her humour, and the irritation had returned to the pit of her stomach. She felt a trickle of sweat run down the side of her temple, and she angrily snapped open her fan once more, wafting it in front of her face with more aggression than usual.
"Curse this foul heat!" she said. "I don't remember when it was ever so hot at the beginning of May."
"At least it isn't raining," Clara offered, as she too took out her fan and began attempting to cool herself. Then, without warning, she let out a tiny squeal of excitement. "Oh, Meg, look over there!"
Meg followed her friend's gaze, and saw a stall that was dazzlingly bright. Lying across the dark blue table-cloth, and suspended up the supporting wooden posts, were dozens of hand-mirrors, all of them elaborately decorated around the edges.
"Come on," said Clara, taking her by the arm and dragging her forward with surprising strength, "I simply have to take a closer peek at some of those looking-glasses."
Meg was too hot and flustered to offer more than a feeble protest – But we can't afford a looking-glass, Clara! – and before she knew what was happening she was standing in front of the stall as Clara pronounced happy exclamations over each exquisite mirror. Meg had to admit, they were very fine mirrors, crafted from pewter and silver, and other metals she did not know the names of, all of them inlaid with coloured glass or precious stones.
The stall owner ran his eyes over both women, his gaze stopping momentarily at the top of Meg's corset, where the arch of her breasts could just be seen. Clara was oblivious to the man's glances, her attention completely focused on his wares.
"Women of your beauty deserve nothing less than the finest looking-glasses," he said. "Each of my glasses is hand-crafted, using the latest techniques from France, and will reflect every detail of your radiance."
"Clara," Meg said quietly, trying to whisper to her friend, "I don't think we can afford anything here. These are very fine glasses."
"How kind of you to say, milady," the seller replied with a smile. It was very rude of him to not only listen to her private whisperings, but to comment on them, Meg thought. But she said nothing, because sometimes her tongue got her into trouble.
"Perhaps... perhaps if we pool our money together, Meg, we might afford one," Clara suggested. "My grandmother used to have a hand-mirror much like these, and it was her most treasured possession. I'd have it myself by now, had the creditors not taken it when my father lost our business."
There was such hope and longing in the woman's eyes that Meg could not bring herself to say no. The seller seemed to realise she was wavering, too, and he quickly spoke up.
"I can see you ladies have a fine eye for quality," he said. "I'll make you the deal of the century. I have a mirror with me that was made by one of our apprentices. The glass itself is perfect, but the detail on the back is not quite up to our usual standard. I'd held little hope for selling it, and I didn't want to put it out on display with the others, but if you can tolerate its minor flaws it is yours for half the price of any other mirror here."
"We'd very much like to see it!" Clara said, before Meg could point out that its 'minor flaws' would probably mean it was ugly.
The man pulled out a wooden trunk from beneath his stall and rummaged around inside it for a moment. He came back up with a looking-glass, which he handed over to Clara. She held it up, to look at her own reflection, and then lowered it so she could see the detail on the back. Her happy squeal was all Meg needed to hear; she would soon be half the owner of a looking glass, whether she liked it or not.
"Look at this, Meg," Clara said, passing the mirror to her. "I think it's beautiful."
Meg accepted the glass, and looked down at the ornate back. It was a dull black lacquer, in which was set an iridescent stylised image of an angel. She immediately understood what the seller meant by flaws; the pieces of the angel's wings were not as perfectly symmetrical as they could be, and its halo was a little skewed.
"The material is finest mother of pearl," the seller said, as she ran her fingers over it, feeling the coldness of the shell. "You'll notice how well its lustre catches the light when you turn it, how beautiful the colours change. As I said, there are some tiny flaws, but one must be patient with apprentices. Take a look into the glass, and you'll see that it is the equal of any on my stall."
Obeying, she turned the glass around, holding it up to her face-height. Her own hazel eyes looked back at her, set within her pale face which had been whitened with makeup to give her a flawless complexion. Her cheeks were soft-pink in colour, the rouge she had applied having faded since the morning. Her lips, plump and full, maintained their redness, however; they were her best feature. God had blessed or cursed her with full curves, and her lips had not escaped that fate.
Something reflected in the background caught her attention. There stood beside a fruit-stall a man wearing a long blue cloak trimmed around the edges with red fox fur, which came down to the thighs of his breeches. A thin sword was sheathed at his hip, and the large white ruff at his collar ensured his head was lifted high. He was watching her. Even observing him through the looking-glass, she could feel the intensity of his gaze.
She shivered inside. The fur-trimmed cloak marked him as a member of nobility, so what he was doing at this common festival, and why he was looking at her of all people, she did not know. Moving the mirror a little, pretending to look at herself from a different angle, she squinted at the glass, trying to better make out the features of the man. His eyes, she thought, were brown, dark enough in shade to be indistinguishable from his pupils at this distance. His hair, too, was dark, though not as dark as Clara's ebony locks, and he wore a neatly trimmed beard and moustache on his face. He was very handsome, and the tan of his skin told her he was probably not a local, though he dressed just like a member of the local nobility.
Once more, the prickly irritation came back, winding its way up her spine and into her mind. She didn't know why the man was staring at her, but it was rude to do so. She lowered the mirror and turned her head in his direction, so that he would know she knew he was staring and would hopefully go away. But when her eyes fell upon the stall, there was nobody near it, only the plainly-dressed fruit seller hawking his wares. She turned back to the mirror, lifted it, and looked at it, but the man was definitely gone.
"Don't you think it's just perfect, Meg?" Clara asked. "I can tell you love it. What do you say, shall we buy it?"
"Very well," Meg relented. "I suppose we could buy it as a treat for ourselves."
"I am pleased to hear that," said the seller. "And I will be more than happy to wrap it for you, so that it won't be damaged before you get it home."
A short time later, both women left the stall, Clara clutching the hessian-wrapped package to her bosom as if it was her firstborn child. But Meg was pleased that her friend was happy, and she had to admit, it was a very nice hand-mirror, despite its flaws. Perhaps even because of them.
"This has been a good day," she declared. "I have stocked up on my favourite perfume, and we have bought ourselves a new mirror. I haven't had this much fun in a long time."
"You're in good humour today," Clara remarked. She sounded quite surprised about it, too.
"Am I not allowed to be in a fair mood?" Meg asked, with mock severity.
Clara smiled. "It makes a nice change. I know you're not particularly fond of festivals and merriment."
"Well, I like May Day. It's a Heathen festival, you know," she said, in her best feigned scholarly tone.
"A Heathen festival? Truly?"
"Yes, I read it in a book, once." It had been in the private library of one of her 'customers.' After the man had fallen asleep, Meg had found herself bored and unsatisfied. She couldn't just leave, because her presence for the entire night had been paid for, so she'd taken one of the books from the shelf set into the wall and read all about the history of England before foreigners had brought Christianity and forced it onto the local 'heathens.' "When people worshipped the old gods, Beltane, or what we know as May Day, marked the beginning of true summer, and it is the mid-way point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. It's one of the few festivals that hasn't been changed by Christianity or Catholicism."
"How scandalous! It makes me shiver, to think of such things." And Clara really did shiver, clutching the mirror more tightly as if it could warm her. "Must we talk of heathen gods and pagan festivals?"
"I suppose not."
"Thank you. Do you still want to come and watch a play with me?" Clara smiled, her mind already moving on from thoughts of heathens. "It will be my treat, since you agreed to the mirror. And I'll buy you a cup of spiced wine, too."
"That does sound nice," she admitted. It was rare for them to enjoy a drink together; normally, one or the other of them had to work nights. "Let's go and pay our respects to the Green Man, and then we'll visit the Grey Mare and watch one of the plays."
They stopped by the fruit-stall – Meg briefly looked around for any sign of the strange man who had been watching her, but there was none – and they bought a small bag of apples. Meg carried it, because Clara didn't appear to be loosening her grip on the mirror any time soon, and together they made their way across the field, to the edge of a lily-choked pond.
The effigy standing in front of the pond was easily ten feet tall. He stood on legs of woven willow branches, the wicker so dense that it was almost solid. Up and up his legs went, leading to a torso of branches, some of them still bearing leaves. Two long wicker arms hung down by his side, terminating in hands that had fingers of sharp sawed-off branches. Atop the body was the most fearsome aspect of the Green Man; his head was a mass of green ivy, spilling down like hair, and inside the jumble was a fearsome face, carved into a large piece of wood. The features were rough-hewn, the eyes large and bulging, the nose thin and the lips parted to show a tongue within. The Green Man's mouth was always open, ready to accept his yearly tribute.
When they arrived at the Green Man's feet, they found they were not alone. Four young boys were standing near him, hanging back and looking rather suspicious. They eyed Meg and Clara warily, but watched as both women dropped one of the apples from the bag inside the trunk that had been placed between the effigy's legs. It was already half-filled with tribute; loaves of bread, cups of dried berries, bottles of mulled wine, plates of sliced meat, even a small clutch of eggs; the food-stuffs were many and varied. The Green Man would eat well tonight.
"Go on, I dare ya!"
Meg overheard the whisper, passed from one boy to another. She straightened up from her examination of the trunk, and glanced at the children.
"What are you daring each other?" she asked.
The boys looked at each other, sharing a guilty expression around, but at last one of them stepped forward and spoke up, pushing his too-large hat up away from his eyes so he could see her more clearly.
"My Ma says the Green Man's real, an' tha' he comes out of the forest every May Day, an' if he doesn't get enough ta eat, he comes for naughty boys like me and snatches us from our beds."
"That's right." She aimed a wink at Clara, telling her friend to play along. The young woman merely rolled her eyes and hid a knowing smile. "I was walking down by the palace the other night when I saw the Green Man come striding out of the forest. I hid so that he couldn't see me, and watched as he searched the park for naughty boys. Finding none he returned to the forest, but he obviously knew to come here today."
"I told ya!" the boy shouted at his friends. "No way I'm touchin' him now!"
"Is that what your friends were daring you to do? Touch the Green Man?"
"Yeh."
"I wouldn't, if I were you. Once you've touched him he'll have your smell, and he'll be able to follow you wherever you go, like a hound tracking a deer."
"I hear, though," Clara spoke up, her voice pitched low and ominous, "that the Green Man only ever takes naughty boys. If he sees a good boy, who helps his mother with the chores and looks out for his brothers and sisters, then those boys taste foul to him, too full of goodness to enjoy, so he leaves them alone."
"Cor," said the boy, his blue eyes wide. "Really?"
"Really."
"But my mam's dead," another boy spoke up. He looked close to tears. "Does that mean the Green Man can eat me?"
"No," said Meg, elaborating on Clara's lie, "it just means you have to help your Pap, or whoever you live with."
"I will! I'm gonna go home right now and help my Pa!"
The boy set off running, and his three friends followed him, calling after him to wait for them. Meg and Clara burst into laughter, holding their sides as they struggled to draw breath. When at last they managed it they straightened up, and looked once more to the Green Man.
"At least there will be a couple of mothers out there grateful to us tonight," Meg said.
"Oh yes, we're practically saints," Clara giggled. Then she looked at the Green Man's face, and hugged the mirror more tightly to her body. "Meg... you were just joking about seeing the Green Man walking around, weren't you?"
"Of course!" she scoffed. "It's just a statue, Clara. Some of the city men go out into the woods a couple of nights before May Day, and make it out of willow trees. Then before dawn they come back and bring it out here, and stand it up with a tribute trunk, so everybody thinks he walked here by himself. It's about as real as those actors you're so fond of."
"I know. It's not real. But I don't understand why we give it tribute every year. It's not as if it's really going to eat what we leave."
"We do it because we've always done it," she shrugged. "It's traditional. Like the Maypole; you always used to dance around that, when you were young. Did you have to know why?"
"I suppose not. Though the Maypole was a lot more fun than the Green Man. Slugs not withstanding, of course."
Meg laughed, and took her friend's arm once more, leading her away from the pond. Just as she was about to recommend they make their way towards the Grey Mare, the wind picked up, blowing a cool breeze across her neck, and she swore she heard somebody whisper a single word; Meg.
She turned her head, and frowned. There was, of course, nobody behind her, and she put it down to a trick of her imagination. And when she thought she saw the Green Man blink his bulging eyes, she put that down to her imagination too. Because everybody knew the Green Man was just a legend, and wooden eyes could not blink.
