Samhain's damned soul – Part 2
- "Come on, Torgil, It'll be good for you!", loughs Blodwen.
The baby in her arms seems to agree happily with everything mummy says.
- "But that is icy cold!", retorts the man concerned, shivering entirely nude, with water at his ankles.
- "Come on! Show some courage to your son!"
The daddy, his courage somehow numbed, cannot feel any more any of his extremities, bluish and shriveled by the cold, and pathetically points out that such a treatment may deprive his son of any possible sister or brother.
- "In spring, sap strenghthens up all the branches, my man… ", insinuates the roguish girl, while repressing a smile for her spouse's modest dispositions.
Torgil must obey. After several steps in the stream, he dives in the cold water. Then he rushes out of the stream and, dripping and blowing, runs to a young tree he had spent two hours to split along its height. He quickly passes between the two bows under the baby's alarmed looks and his wife's loving eyes.
- "Look, Tuismir!, she sings. The Goddess gives you a brand new daddy…"
Thus Torgil is reborn in Arda, expelled from the Goddess' symbolic vulva, purified, dripping from the world welling, nude and innocent for his first day.
Putting the baby in a basket of wicker and elm, Blodwen energetically dries her husband with a tartan of her clan. Then she gives a tender kiss on the blue lips:
-"Get dressed, quick!
- Am I to do this for every birthday?
- No, but whenever you behave not as I said!", she says with a playful tone.
- "Blodwen, don't take advantage at that !", retorts the husband while helping his wife to straighten and bandage the tortured tree.
- "Torgil, this is important for me, to protect my family as my ancestors did. The world is full of forces we do not understand. And the elders knew how to protect from them. I only ask you to find a pretty elm tree! We must re-plant it today, one year after his birth, and only you can do this! That will be your son's protecting tree, consecrated the day he came here. Everybody has one, even you! I planted an ash tree for you, the day we married.
- I never asked you to plant a tree for me! I can defend myself! Why perpetuate rituals you do not understand?"
Harshly stung, the young dunlending woman answers:
- "Who says I do not understand them?"
She adds sneakily with a vengeful smile:
- "See how traditions are good! You are cold? You are entrusted to run through the forest and find a pretty little elm tree to protect your son! See you! It is time I feed him up!
- Can't you feed him here?
- Are you insane? Breast-feeding here? You want me to catch a pneumonia?"
.oOo.
Ruminating on his resentment, Torgil swiftly strides the way, his hoe on his shoulder:
- "Can you believe that?"
The young father furiously shoots at a small stone that rolls before him on the way.
- "She's never satisfied! Summoning the spirits! Bathing in winter! And these trees, everywhere trees!"
But his irritation is not enough to warm him up:
- "Damn! I am freezed..."
His step slows down. Torgil is thinking, he cannot perform two tasks at a time…
- "By the way, how can I recognize a young elm in winter?…"
The steps accelerate somehow:
-"I shall ask Eothor, he will know for sure!"
The stride becomes almost merry:
-"Furthermore, he will take me to the forest with his cart, and back to my cots!"
Torgil's steps get back to a virile and determined pace:
- "After all, Arthadan tradition for a birthday, is to offer a round!"
His pace still gains some firmness as he gets away with the last bits of his guilt:
- "Oh bother! Anyway I must warm up!"
.oOo.
-" … Let's have a sip, death let's defy,
To the health of our Cardolan!
Since neighbour Araphor the vile,
Has brought forth his flag at a fault!
His despicable knights cause pain,
Coveting grassy hills and fields.
Haro you King of Arthedain,
Against thour arms let's raise our shields!"1
The pints rattle under the cheers ending the famous refrain. Young people drink greedily to the health of their beloved kingdom, under the jaded eyes of the Drunken Goose's tenant. Where beer flows freely, courage seems endless...
Yet a veteran, sat in a corner, is observing the youth with a bitter and disillusioned air, sipping his ale sparingly. He led a squad of Cardolan during skirmishes along the Menatar Romen. He made a difference at the siege of Amon Sûl. He was one of the few to survive the hordes of orcs and trolls of Angmar, which annihilated the Cardolan army on the Barrow Downs. His amputated leg reminds him of that every day.
So he leaves their youthful enthusiasm to the drunken brawlers! They will discover soon enough that petty politics of men, their futile hopes and selfish interests are only scattered brooks against the tides of their time.
- "By Bema2, these accursed Arthedain keep on plundering the country! I have seen another convoy this morning!
- You're exaggerating, Eothor! They maintain order since our troops have been scattered. Without them, there would be chaos, like in Tharbad, where thousands of refugees are languishing. Their convoys are bringing food and medicines.
- But you're soft! You fraternize as if Angmar's victory was not their fault! Well hidden in their fortress of Amon Sûl, they have let us torn apart without moving their princely bottoms to rescue our valiant companies!
- You speak as if you had been there!
- I was fifteen, I could have gone along with my father and the company of mercenaries! My mother kept me from going! But now she won't hold me! We must prevent them from bringing north anything valuable!
- Yeah, somebody tried to oppose it, you know how he ended up! Luinril was hanged ten days ago, for attempting to take back Hir Eredoriath3's old grimoires going up noth to Bree.
- Let's drink to the memory of Luinril, our hero! He at least has opposed the traitors who attempt to annex the country!"
While beer streams rush in the exalted and thirsty throats, the door of the inn opens in a crash. A strong sergeant of the Arthedain royal army enters the common room, followed by his patrol:
- "Hey, you should calm down! Fellows inciting to riot? Come on, you scatter!"
The warlike tendencies of the small group are quickly dulled. Young people scatter themselves, grumbling against the occupier.
- "Hey, you, the leader! You certainly don't think to get away with that?"
Eothor, his chubby face scoring a strong determination, grabs a stool behind a table, ready to defend his life dearly, as his father in the Battle of the barrows. The patrol will make short work of this tall young man, awkward and somehow pudgy...
Torgil interposes with a conciliatory tone:
- "Come on, my lords! I am a recent father who just celebrates the first birthday of my eldest! Would you mind forgetting this misunderstanding on this festive day?"
The sergeant doesn't like hearing his king insulted, but he is a decent fellow. He snatches the opportunity to show the Arthedain magnanimity. Eothor, carrying no weapons on him, is left free with a warning he does not care.
.oOo.
The two friends go apart in an alcove, carrying the pitchers abandoned by their companions.
- "Thank God you came, Torgil! Otherwise it would have been a bloodbath..."
His friend does not mention the bluster:
- "I am angry too... You won't guess what she invented?"
Eothor slips a worried look towards Torgil. He is again going to talk to him about «Her». He is still going to complain about this girl, so divine that she is haunting his thoughts all day long. Eothor has always been madly in love with Blodwen, which in turn has always seen him as a protective older brother, a big clunky guy, the eternal best friend and stooge of the beautiful Torgil. The romantic giant, slightly paunchy, hides the immense injury of his life under the cheeky outside a voluble rhetoric, vindictive peacockeries that have now found their cause - the defense of Cardolan against its raptor neighbor Arthedain. But for the time, Eothor feels a strange uneasiness. He loves Torgil as a brother, and never yet has jealousy shown him its abject grin.
Yet tonight, Torgil's selfish attitude irritates him. Perhaps he even grudges him for saving him minutes ago. The young father unpacks his problems on the table as one empties a bottomless trash. Really, he does not deserve Blodwen, says the big lovesick for himself.
After the fourth round of drinks, in the inn that the patrol almost emptied, Torgil is still rehashing his domestic conflicts. But his friend has only one idea in mind: to teach a lesson to this little pretentious, unaware of his own luck...
- "You know what, interrupts Eothor exceeded, we'll go get your little tree!
- You'd do that?
- Of course! Aren't we friends?"
Here they are, Eothor at the reins, among potatoes sitting Torgil, who is soon snoring like a drunkard. Outraged, Eothor stops as soon as possible and digs the first young plant that looks a little bit like an elm.
- "That will do the trick for this selfish!", he mutters, depositing the plant in the bosom of the sleepy drunk.
.oOo.
Torgil is walking with a heavy step, sobering slowly into the misty evening air. Something in the tone of Eothor made him feel that his friend had had enough to do the dirty work for him. So he wanted to make the last miles by himself, the sapling under his arm, pacing the road in the middle of the moors with his hesitating drunkard step. Before him, hung on his hoe on his shoulder, oscillates the small lantern Eothor lent him.
Coming slowly to his senses, the young father mutters the obvious self-reproaches. True enough, he could have behaved somehow... Also true he should not have been ranting as he did...
Night falls completely, isolating the solitary walker in his bitter thoughts. For sure, he should not have gone to the inn. He should have directly fetched an elm.
Torgil feels increasingly guilty as he approaches his cottage, where Blodwen is expecting, he imagines with a wry smile. In those moments, Torgil hates to veil with domestic benevolence, what he -deep inside- considers as a weakness before his wife. He loves her, but he cannot stand her authority.
Suddenly a fork comes out of the fog, at the foot of a gallows. This is where Luinril's corpse is rotting in its suspended steel cage. A stench recalls that the corpse of the "Cardolan hero" is hung for only a few days. Torgil shivers despite himself.
-"If I had your courage, he exclaims exalted, I would put down these ridiculous beliefs under my roof! Instead I let myself pilloried by my wife, and I had to entertain the whole Goose about that! Cursed be wedding!"
A sad rusty creak from the suspended cage replies tersely. Torgil, surprised, launches derisively as to exorcise his own amazement:
- "Well, Luinril, come dance for my son's party! You should explain my wife to leave these spirits alone! Then we may get rid of these silly antics."
Torgil is relieved he made his complaints loud, although his eloquence is only manifested in the absence of his wife. He resumes his way in the fog with his meandering approach, vowing that never again would he bend to such absurd demands.
But it is unwise to invoke the dead during Samhain night. In the darkness without a breath of wind, the cage swings a sprightly pace. The head of the corpse, which has lost one eye, looks over the gaunt shoulder with a disturbing grin of satisfaction.
.oOo.
Early in the morning, Blodwen muses at the window. The fresh air tingles her nostrils but peddles humus and pine wood fragrances in pristine skies. The day is beautiful!
Joyfully, the young woman loads a barrow with appetizing food, she lengthily and lovingly prepared, some tools and the elm plant that her beloved husband finally brought yesterday. Then she wakes her little family up, dresses them warmly and briskly leads them behind the house, up to Torgil's tree, she planted above their welling.
Blodwen stands a Picnic table under the young slender ash, merrily humming a hills' old tune, while Torgil plays with their son, perched on his belly.
-"And what is this for?", asks the husband by pointing a wooden plate that usually serves to cram the remains to be swung to the pig.
- «Why, Torgil, for feast days, we lay the table for the poor, it's tradition! «
- «Not again, thinks the husband, still another traditional day! How painful customary acrobatics again must I attend to now to please the spirits?
The answer comes at once...
- "There, everything is ready! But first, a few formalities...", happily launches Blodwen with a nod to her son's address.
Torgil ducks his head, while small Tuismir claps his hands excitedly.
The family plants the sappling near the ash, just close enough to enjoy the protective force of the young slender tree, but far enough to develop its own personality without taking umbrage at its umbrella.
Tuismir is allowed to plant some crumpled apples at the foot of each tree. Then Blodwen puts a snack by the welling, that chuckles its eternal indifferent air between mosses.
.oOo.
Retracing her steps towards his two men, Blodwen leaps and pales, stopping short. Torgil follows the gaze of his wife and lacks fainting while Tuismir starts crying, awkwardly trying to reach his mother's skirts. A silhouette wrapped in a dark shroud is installed before the plate of the poor, apparently waiting for the meal to start.
- "Who are you?, Torgil launches with an unsteady voice while grabbing a spade. What do you want? »
The dark cap slowly turns to Torgil. An unbearable stench rises and grasps at the throat of the living, as if pestilential myriads larvae were blooming together to spread the foul moods of a dead unable to leave this world. Then rolls a sepulchral voice, the tone of which seems yet to seek for conciliation:
- "I was invited to the party. I come to received my share."
Torgil blanches, throws him a cheese and exclaims, waving his spade:
- "Luinril, take this and let us alone!"
The shape slowly gets up. The smells of corrupted flesh suggest what the dark coat still veils from view.
- "The share I owe by right is this life, stolen in the gap between the kingdoms of men and shadows.", says the voice with a tone without appeal, raising a raw index, with disgusting putrid reflections, which points to small Tuismir.
- "It's too late!, roars the young mother while coming in front of her son, her heart swelling with a lioness rage and strapped with a brazen insurance. The vows to the Goddess are pronounced and the child has a place in the kingdom of men!
- These vows were spoken in the wind of Samhain and the Goddess knew nothing of them. The protective tree that you planted is not fit for your son!"
Blodwen's confidence collapses suddenly. She turns her distracted and begging gaze to Torgil, who looks down not to cross it. She is not a shaman of clan Prenn Lûth, but she knows that nothing will prevent the lord of the night to take his due. Unless a sacrifice beyond human life... powered by a black resentment, Blodwen grabs Torgil's ax and with a powerful blow of despair, slices the young ash.
The dark shape whistles like a wounded snake and screams with rage:
-"You choose to keep your son! But what would I do with this bum unbeliever?", bawls the mantle considering appalled Torgil, already won by a waxy, grayish complexion.
- "He promises to give you rest!", roars the woman in tears, trembling like a leaf ready to fly in the wind of Samhain.
.oOo.
Covered with icy sweats, Torgil is fencing against the oaken door. Finally the galgal's lock gives a deafening creak. Grabbing his lantern, the young man steps back precipitously, giving way to the shape darker than night, that enters the dome of the dead.
His wife warned him: "This is your last chance! You do what I promised in your name! Or we shall be separated forever!"
For this time he complies point by point. Illuminating a piece of parchment with his lantern, he tries to read the ritual begging the Lord of the Night to receive this distressed soul. He understands nothing of what he is reading, but slowly the doors are closing.
Suddenly a cry rings out:
- "In the Name of the King, who goes there?"
When the shadow passes over him in a raspy breath of frustration, Torgil falls backwards, dropping his lantern off suddenly. Overwhelmed by horror, he hears the groans of the slain soldiers quench one by one under greedy blows.
In the morning, the sergeant arrests him before the barrow. The patrol does not know what happened exactly, but three Arthedain soldiers were killed that night with Torgil's spade, who was found besides the dead.
.oOo.
Public order and justice are issues the royal legate of Arthedain does not take lightly, by these troubled times. Furthermore alarming news have spread about the barrows along the greenway, and led the old Hir of En Eredoriath to proclaim prudent measures and give full authority to the armies of Arthedain in his barony.
The suspect is accused of stealing the remains of Luinril and killing soldiers of Arthedain who were arresting him when he was trying to give the dead a burial. There is therefore no mercy to expect for the charges relate to both opposition to martial law and breaking in the dead's shrines.
Indeed, Torgil is sentenced to death.
Eothor attempts to flex the legate. In vain.
The grieving wife comes and begs for his life on her knees. For special measure of humanity, Torgil is strangled in his cell.
Then his body is shut and hoisted into the odious cage hanging at the gallows. Therefore he must not endure a slow death in front of his wife, but his remains will remind everyone that the justice of men does not accommodate with dead rumors.
.oOo.
A vigorous ash has very quickly grown under the body of the unfortunate, invading his cage in less than a year as if a late vow to protect its occupant had meant to retain him and surround him with tenderness. The neighborhood has been terrified.
It is said that at nights of red moon, a ghost calls for burial to all passersby.
.oOo.
Last night, the skeleton of Torgil was stolen. It is not known who did it.
Alerted, Blodwen came to mourn at the foot of the ash under the gallows, his two years old boy in her arms. Eothor, bearing his guilt around for months, took them in his cart.
On their way back, Eothor offers an elm sapling to Blodwen, who raises towards him, eyes suffused with tears, but overflowing with gratitude.
Tomorrow is Samhain and Tuismir's birthday.
.oOo.
Rhast spreads his arms in a gesture of helplessness:
- "Woa, whoa, whoa, I have nothing to do with this! You asked for the end! Reportedly, it's about that time that the barrows' inhabitants began to stir. But you should not believe everything you hear... Anyway you know this tree: the lonely ash, six miles north of Thalion on the greenway, just before the first barrow. When you pass nearby, nothing weird happens... most of the time..."
If you think about it, indeed a solitary ash, at a place called the Hangman's fork, stands huge and twisted, and metal bars are embedded in its main branch at a pole's height... But that does not prove anything...
.oOo.
NOTES
1 In 1409, the kingdom of Angmar launched a heavy blow on Arthedain and Cardolan, who united to resist. Cardolan'army was destroyed at the battle of Tyrn Gorthad, while Arthedain hardly resisted the assault at Fornost Erain and Weathertop. Cardolan's King was killed with his sons, and the kingdom lived in unrest, as Arthedain tries to re-unite the old Arnor.
2 Name that the woodmen, the Beornings and the Eothraim (and thus later the Rohirrim) gave to the Vala Oromë. This name comes from the anglo-saxon béme « trumpet ». Oromë blew his hunting horn while chasing Morgoth's beasts.[
3 The Hirdor of En eredoriath is a baronny encompassing Tyrn Gorthad and most of the South Downs.