Scarecrow

PART I

‘Go to sleep or the sandman will come!’ laughed Peter’s mother. Her face was very close to his, and he noticed the fine wrinkles around her eyes when she smiled.

She reached across the bed and tickled his neck, and he laughed trying to trap her hand between his chin and shoulder.

‘Don’t want to sleep!’

‘Have you had a good time today?’ she asked.

‘Yeh –playing in the fields – down by the stream. Ma?’ he made the word like a question. ‘Why do I have to go to sleep? It’s still light’

The light was still bright even though it must be after ten o’clock. The windows of the one-room cottage were pale grey. You could see the leaves of the tall trees in the churchyard.

‘It stays light until very late in the summer’ said his mother. ‘But if you don’t sleep then you’ll be tired. You have to help your dad in the morning’

She looked over to see her husband in the chair by the fire. Their bed was on the other side of the room and some boxes and the wardrobe. It was difficult to live all in one room, especially since Peter had come along. Her husband was asleep, his head bobbing on his chest. He had been tetchy and disagreeable again that evening.

She thought she would talk to Peter and make him tired that way. She asked: ‘What did you do at the stream?’

‘Floated sticks, paddled up to our knees. Biddie…’ this was one of Peter’s friends – a lively girl, ‘…Biddie fell in the water’

Peter laughed, then yawned big and wide.

His mother patted his forehead. So he was tired.

The boy straightened his head on the pillow and looked up into the ceiling of the cottage.

‘Who is the sandman, ma?’

‘I’ve told you. A man that wanders the night. When he sees children that are awake who should be asleep he sprinkles special sand in their eyes and it makes them sleep, and dream wonderful dreams’

‘Why is he frightening?’ Peter still looked up into the ceiling trying to imagine, not looking at his mother. He yawned again.

‘He’s not frightening. If he comes he’ll make you sleep. He’s there to make sure that children go to sleep early’

‘Is there really a sandman?’ said Peter, his voice quieter than before.

‘Oh yes’

‘Ma?’

‘Yes’ she sighed. It was like this every night in the summer. The boy just could not switch his mind off.

‘Who is the sack-man?’

‘He’s much worse. A terrible creature that roams the villages at night. He carries a sack to take bad children away’

‘Does he come to Earls Court?’

‘No Peter - because the children here are very good and never misbehave’

‘I’ve seen a man who’s not the sack-man. He has hooves for feet and a beard like a goat – and narrow eyes’

Peter yawned again.

His mother looked at the boy. Where did he get these ideas – he was so imaginative!

She wanted to ask what he meant but saw his eyes begin to close and his head tilt back slightly. He had the vulnerable look of sleep already. She would ask nothing now for risk of waking him up again.

*****************************

‘It’s hot’ said Howard dropping his bag down. He blinked his eyes. He could see almost nothing in the darkness of the cottage, after the bright fields, the dusty lane. His face was stinging with sunburn. He’d not drunk enough so his head felt a little tight – like he would get a headache.

Mrs Van Dijk was out in the back, in the kitchen yard.

He looked around. There were books on the table – more manuscript paper with her neat looping handwriting. Some pictures of plants and flowers.

‘Did you get much done?’ he shouted through the open back door.

‘Something. Not much. I kept wasting time with people stopping by to talk’

He smiled. ‘It’s your fault for talking’

She came in smoothing her dirty hands on her skirt. On the back doorstep was a basket with small radishes and carrots. She had tied her hair back with a wide band.

‘Do you want to eat?’ she said.

‘Now? Isn’t it early?’

‘You said you’d tell a story to the children….’

‘Oh!’ he put his hand to his forehead. ‘I’d completely forgotten. When?’

‘At four. We can eat now or later – after you’ve told the story’

He sat down heavily. He’d forgotten! And now he was really tired. It was quite hard to tell a good story – to the get the children involved. He hadn’t even decided which story he would tell. There was an hour to decide.

Mrs Van Dijk poured him cool water. He looked down at his hands which were red and scratched from cutting a big holly tree, then took the cup and drank the cup dry, noisily. His eyes were getting more used to the darkness.

He noticed that the wall above the bookcases – the wall that formed the partition to the bedroom – was covered in pictures.

She saw him look.

‘They’re some of the last pictures for the book. I’m trying to match the pictures to the descriptions. Some of them don’t match’

She came to sit. ‘It’s just the last stage of the book’

They’d been back from Amsterdam for six months. Immediately after they’d arrived home Huygens, the book’s editor, had been very complementary, probably because of all the difficulties and dangers of Mrs Van Dijk’s kidnapping by Absolom, the Armenian trader. But a month later had arrived a list of changes that had to be made to the manuscript, some of which were the mistakes of the original author, Dr Wroclaw. So now she was working hard and felt under pressure. She had not been collecting herbs or been out amongst the farms doing blessings and healings for weeks.

‘You’re a good story teller’ she said. ‘There are not many people who do it anymore. When I was a girl my uncle told us stories, and there was an old lady who told stories in Paris’

‘They’re just children’s stories’ he said. But she had persuaded him to try. The first had been the story he liked the most – Jack and the Magic Beans. Then there had been some of the stories of Sindbad. He liked it. If things were quiet – like at this time of year – it was something nice to do.

‘The kids in the village really look forward to them’ she said insisting. ‘One of the boys came along earlier – asking when the story will start’

‘But you like them – the stories?’

‘I like listening’ she said.

It was true. She would usually stay around when he told a story, sitting at the back or by the window. She’d usually be looking at something else while she listened, but he could tell that she was listening.

‘I’m not sure what story to tell this time’ he said.

*****************************

Four children arrived at the cottage before four. Howard, looking out of the bedroom window, saw the shiny hair of their round heads clustered around the door. They were talking loudly, and one shouted down the lane to another boy who was slowly making his way past the cottages. It was very warm because the sun was strong and low, shining into the front of the cottage. Light streaked across the bedroom and the living room.

They had had to move the table and big chairs back to make space for the children to sit. Howard always arranged it in the same way with him sitting a little above the kids on a stool, his back to the fireplace, and the kids sitting cross legged facing him.

But he’d forgotten about the noise that even five children could make. They shouted and laughed at the same time. That was the hardest thing – to calm them down enough to capture their imaginations to even begin to tell them a story.

Peter, from one of the cottages along the lane was one of the first in. There were two other boys and two girls. They were excited, talking to each other about playing, and also saying one word over and over – a word something like ‘busten’ – then laughing loudly.

Mrs Van Dijk had already retreated to the back. If they were good she might bring them cups of water during the story, but usually it was Howard’s responsibility to control them. Howard watched the children shout and talk, with something like despair. They weren’t listening to him at all. He looked across at Mrs Van Dijk and she raised her eyebrows as if to say well it’s your fault! She looked at one of her papers and settled into the other small stool by the window.

‘Busten, busten’ shouted one of the boys whose name was Henry. He jumped up and down and said the words again, this time holding his hands up to his chest as it to make breasts.

‘That’s enough’ said Howard shaking his head. ‘Would you be rude like that at home?’

He turned to the other boys. ‘What is this busten anyway – what does it mean?’

The boys giggled. They sat down at last. Then the girls sat as well. They sat so close to his stool that Howard’s boots were almost touching their feet. He gestured for them to move back.

They were still whispering, making the outrageous busten sound with their lips.

‘Well what is this busten? Where did you hear it? It doesn’t sound like an English word’

‘We heard it today. Henry heard it’. Several of them said at once.

‘Tell me Henry’ said Howard, trying to look kindly. Henry looked down at his feet. He was quiet, embarrassed to say anything. The others became quiet too.

Howard thought he would start. Henry’s story would have to wait until another time.

‘This is a story of a soldier returning from the war’ said Howard. ‘He’d been a brave soldier, but now after the war he was poor. The story is called the Tinder Box’

‘What’s a tinder box?’ asked the smaller of the two girls timidly. Howard knew her name was Biddie.

‘It’s a box, Biddie, with some flint to help you make fire. People had them before we made matches’

‘Matches are magic’ said Peter loudly. He looked at his friend Henry.

Howard thought he mouthed the word busten again. They were so excited and ready to laugh in that suppressed way that children laughed! There was nothing Howard could do as a storyteller. He would have to get this out of them or he wouldn’t be able to continue.

‘Come on Peter, you tell me, what does this word mean?’

Peter giggled and held is feet. His face was red with wanting to laugh. ‘It’s when….it’s when….a scarecrow wants a wife. A scarecrow wants a wife! A scarecrow wants a wife!’ he laughed and chanted.

‘But scarecrows can’t want anything’ said Howard good humouredly, trying to smile. ‘They aren’t alive!’

The kids looked at each other nodding and smiling.

Biddie said: ‘But Henry says he talked to a scarecrow, and the scarecrow said that he was looking for a wife’

Howard looked at Henry. It was such an odd idea – a boy talking to a scarecrow.

‘Did you talk to a scarecrow, Henry?’

The boy wouldn’t look up.

Just children’s imagination! Howard waited a second. The mood had calmed down a bit. Time to continue the story.

He started.

A soldier came marching along the main road. He had his knapsack on his back and a sword in his scabbard, because he had been fighting in the war and was now coming home. He was tired and had seen many terrible things in the war. He wanted nothing more than to have a full belly and a safe and comfortable place to stay the night.

But an old Witch met him on the road. She was very strange to look at with a long nose and a great long chin that hung below her tummy.

The kids sniggered. They looked up at Howard imagining.

‘Good evening, soldier!’ said the witch. ‘What a nice sword and knapsack you have! You are a fine soldier! You must have plenty of money!’

‘Thank you, old witch,’ said the soldier. ‘But I have very little money’

‘Do you see that great tree there?’ said the witch, pointing to a tree beside them. ‘It’s hollow. If you climb up to the top, you’ll see a hole through which you can let yourself down into the depths of the tree. I’ll tie a rope round your waist, so that I can pull you out again when you call’

‘Why should I go into this hollow tree?’ asked the soldier.

‘To get money, riches and wealth!’ answered the witch. ‘Listen! When you reach the bottom of the hollow trunk you will find yourself in a large cavern. It’s light down there, because there are more than three hundred lamps burning. Then you will see three doors, which you can open–the keys are in the locks. In the first room, you will see a great box in the middle of the floor with a dog sitting on it. The dog will be sitting right on top of the box. The dog has eyes as large as saucers. But don’t worry about the dog. I will give you my blue apron, which you must spread out on the floor, and then go quickly and pick up the dog and put him on the apron. Then you’ll be able to open the box and take as much money as you like. There is copper in the box. If you would rather have silver, you should go into the next room, where there is a dog with eyes as large as wheels. But don’t worry about him. Just put him on my apron where it’s spread on the floor, and help yourself to the money. If you prefer gold, you can get that too, if you go into the third room. But the dog that guards the box there has eyes as big as round windows! He is a savage dog, I can tell you, but don’t be afraid of him either. Again, put him on my apron and he won’t touch you, and you can take out of the chest as much gold as you like!’

Howard looked down. All the kids were fascinated, their eyes turned to him – their talk of scarecrows forgotten.

*****************************

The wind began to blow and the curtains in the windows of the living room in the cottage billowed inward. It fluttered Mrs Van Dijk’s papers. The breeze cooled the room, crowded with children and the storyteller Howard.

‘What did the witch look like? How was her chin so long’ asked Biddie. The little girl was shy, looking up at Howard sideways her fingers turning her hair.

‘She was old and strange, with a long nose. But her chin was even longer and turned up at the end - with a great spot also’

‘Ugh’ said Biddie.

‘And the dogs – they have big eyes?’ said the quiet boy Henry

Howard said: ‘you’ll find out about the dogs in the next part of the story. You have to be patient’

So he resumed:

The soldier was suspicious about the copper, silver and gold so he said: ‘But what shall I give you, old witch? Surely you aren’t going to let me take copper, silver and gold for nothing?’

‘Yes, I am!’ said the witch. ‘I’ll take none of it! All I ask is that you bring me an old tinder-box which my grandmother forgot last time she was down there’

‘An old tinder box!’ said the soldier and he held his chin while he thought. Was the witch trying to trick him? But then he thought of his empty stomach, empty pockets and lonely life, and decided that he would go down into the strange tree.

‘Tie the rope round my waist!’ said the soldier to the witch.

‘Here is the rope,’ said the witch, ‘and here is my apron. Remember to lay it down for the dogs to sit on!’

Then the Soldier climbed up the trunk, let himself down through the hole, and found himself standing, as the Witch had said, underground in a large cavern, where three hundred lamps were burning.

The soldier opened the first door. Ugh! There sat the dog with eyes as big as saucers staring at him.

‘Good dog!’ said the soldier, but he was frightened by the dog which was truly terrifying with its huge eyes. The soldier built up his courage and picked up the dog and put him on the witch’s apron. Then he took as much copper from the box as his pockets could hold and shut the box. He put the dog back on the box, and went into the second room. Sure enough there sat the dog with eyes as large as wheels. It was an even more terrifying dog.

And then gathering his courage again he put the dog on the apron. When he saw all the silver in the box, he threw away the copper he had taken, and filled his pockets and knapsack with nothing but silver.

Then he went into the third room. Most horrible – there was a dog with eyes as large as round windows.

The soldier was horrified, because he had never seen a dog like this before. But with courage he put the huge dog onto the apron and opened the box. Wow! What a heap of gold was there! With all that gold the soldier knew that he could buy a whole town - all the food and wine that he could ever want or need. Now he threw away all the silver with which he had filled his pockets and knapsack, and filled them with gold instead. And not just his pockets, and knapsack but even his cap and boots, so that he could hardly walk. Now he knew that he was rich! He put the huge dog back upon the chest, shut the door, and then called up through the hollow trunk of the tree:

‘Now pull me up, old witch!’

‘Have you got the tinder-box?’ the witch called down.

‘Blast!’ said the soldier, ‘I’ve forgotten it!’

And so he went back to find the tinder-box. It was a small old thing and the soldier wondered why the witch prized it so highly.

The witch pulled him up by the rope, and there he stood again on the lane, with pockets, knapsack, cap and boots filled with gold.

‘What do you want with the silly little tinder-box?’ asked the soldier.

‘Nothing to do with you,’ said the witch angrily. ‘You have got your money now give me my tinder-box’

The soldier who was deeply troubled from the war, and was often too quick to anger, said ‘Tell me at once what you want to do with it, or I will draw my sword’

‘No!’ screamed the witch making a terrifying noise. In that moment she seemed to grow huge and her eyes began to glow red.

The soldier was so frightened and disgusted by the strange woman that he drew his sword and a terrible fight started. At the end of the fight the witch’s head lay in the grass, cut off by the angry soldier.

Howard paused. He wondered if the story would now frighten the children. They sat silently staring at him with their large eyes. None of them even blinked. Mrs Van Dijk looked up from her papers by the window and smiled at him. This was the shocking part of the story.

Peter was the first to say something. He raised his hand as if he was asking a question in school.

‘The soldier cut the witch’s head off?’ He could hardly believe it.

‘Yes’ said Howard. He looked sternly down at the children.

Peter asked: ‘what did the soldier do next?’

‘He tied up all the gold in the witch’s apron, slung it in a bundle over his shoulder, put the tinder-box in his pocket, and went down the sunny road towards a town’

The children stared up at Howard, their eyes still wide, shocked by the violence of the fight.

*****************************

Howard wanted to go on telling the story but there were voices outside. Mrs Van Dijk looked up from her papers and turned to see two broad and blond haired men walk up to the door. The door was open to encourage the breeze to cool the house. Mrs Van Dijk recognised one as the father of Henry – one of the children listening to the story.

‘Hello’ he called, holding the door and peering around into the room. He had a kindly wrinkled face with light eyes. He didn’t look like a Vale man, and Mrs Van Dijk thought that he and Henry probably had Dutch or Danish ancestry.

Howard said hello. He felt slightly embarrassed in the way that he was sat – telling stories to children. Maybe it was because it was not a very masculine activity. But the two visitors were smiling.

‘I’d like to listen as well’ said Henry’s father, ‘but we have to take Henry home’

Henry’s family lived away across the Vale in a farmhouse north of Stathern, under the escarpment. It was a few miles.

‘There has been something taking chickens and disturbing the sheep’ said Henry’s father. ‘I don’t know if it’s a fox or a wolf’

Howard stood up. The spell of the story was broken. The kids began to look around – as if they were waking up.

‘Wolves are very rare this time of year’

‘I know, but there is something about. I don’t want Henry wandering at night’

The kids were standing up. The story was over.

‘I’ll tell more of the story tomorrow afternoon’ said Howard. He didn’t like stopping half way through. This was a long story though. He would have to re-establish the atmosphere – but he could do it perhaps tomorrow.

The kids nodded. They liked what he’d told so far. They would come back.

‘Come at four tomorrow then’ he said, straightening his back. He took the stool and put it back by the fireside.

Henry’s father and the other blond man took the boy out and the other kids followed.

Howard stood on the doorstep watching the sun setting through the big trees and then went back into the cottage where Mrs Van Dijk was still reading by the window.

‘It’s a strange story’ she said looking up thoughtfully. She held a pencil in her hand.

‘The Tinder Box?’

‘Yes. Very odd. Is it set in the summer?’

Howard came to sit with her. The trees on the far side of the churchyard were dark against the brightness of the west.

‘I don’t know. It can be set at any time’

‘I think it’s in the summer. It’s funny – when you described the soldier walking along the lane at first, I thought it was a happy image. I thought he would be happy to be free from danger and fighting’

She smiled and put the pencil down. ‘But the witch is so strange and the hollow tree!’

‘When I was a boy, when I first heard the story’, Howard said, ‘it was the dogs that I found strange. Their eyes! The dog with the eyes as large as saucers…’

‘You heard the story when you were young?’

‘An uncle used to tell me stories – and the other kids’

Mrs Van Dijk looked out of the window. It was very peaceful with the trees swaying.

‘I’d like to go for a walk tomorrow – in the morning’ she said sleepily.

*****************************

The wind that had cooled the Vale slowed and stopped in the night and it became warmer.

Howard got up early and sat in the living room while the kettle boiled for tea. He looked out at the churchyard trees and the blue sky beyond. Warm humid air leaked through the open window.

It will be really hot today, he thought.

Mrs Van Dijk had decided that they should walk west over the fields towards the river. She had a desire to be outside after days of working on the book. It had been listening to the story that had made her want to walk – not the part about the gold or the dogs with huge eyes – but the simple part where the soldier had been walking happy and free coming home in the summer after the war. She had imagined an empty dusty lane, a low slope and big old trees. She hadn’t recognised the description of the witch as an ugly, malign woman – mainly because she was in her own way, in the traditional Vale way – a witch herself. But these images of evil witches were sometimes misogynist, and came from central Europe. This wasn’t the way that English people generally thought. Anyway she was tired of reading and checking all the time. She wanted to get out, broaden her horizons a bit.

They left the village, walking at the edge of a large wheat field on a minor path that was marked only by flattened grass. The wheat was still green and stiff, growing only to the height of their knees. But the margin of the field, an old hedge, was filled with chirping birds and pricked with the stems of cow parsley and ragwort. The cow parsley was in blossom – small white undistinguished flowers that gave off a sweet, fruity scent that was heavy in the air. It was almost intoxicating.

‘Summer happened so fast’ said Howard, grinning into the sun. ‘It was cold a few weeks ago and the hedges were still brown. Look at the trees – they’re massive!’

The trees were huge with foliage. Around the far margin of the field they looked like hemispheres of green with deep blue shadow underneath. High above them in the south, the humid air was spawning white masses of delicate cloud that might, later in the day, make rain. They began to move towards the north and one slope of the escarpment already had a dark shade moving over it.

‘Do you think it will rain, Lotte?’ he asked Mrs Van Dijk.

She didn’t answer. She was struck too by the heaviness of the summer, its healthy and prosperous look, fresh and new but also filled with more life waiting to burst out. Perhaps it was the big trees and the smell of the cow parsley.

‘Maybe it will rain, but later’ she said at last.

They started walking again, past the wheat field into a fallow field that was quite tall with uncut grass and starred by yellow buttercups and celandine. Spherical dandelion heads were releasing fluffy seeds like grey snowflakes that drifted over the grass. It was so hot that they sat down, and it was immediately cool in the grass close to the ground. There was the smell of the night still amongst the damp stems.

‘We should have brought water to drink’ said Howard. ‘But it’s such a surprise. It’s almost as if I don’t know the place. Summer has come so quick. It’s like a foreign place – like the Vale I used to know but slightly different. Maybe most of the change happens at night – because I never notice anything happening – just the result of the change’

Leaning back on his elbows, he watched a tall buttercup flower flutter against the sky and imagined what it would be like to be a mouse or a bee, looking up at the yellow flag of a flower far above. How long would it take, just to cross a field this size – what adventures would you face?

The clouds were coming over now – grown huge in the time that the two had spent walking. They were big white masses, elongated and pointing toward the north.

‘Don’t you think they look like the keels of boats – huge white boats? And we’re at the bottom of sea looking up at them passing over?’ said Howard.

‘I always looked at clouds and tried to see faces in them’ she said. ‘But I can see the boats too. I was thinking of the kids at your storytelling again – what that little boy Henry was saying about talking to a scarecrow. It’s funny what kids say’

‘No stranger than seeing the keels of boats in the clouds’ said Howard laughing.

By chance, there was a scarecrow in the next field – a dense crop of bean plants that was sandwiched between two rows of tall trees. The figure at the far side of the field looked like a poorly dressed man leaning over slightly, wearing a white shirt. His head was a spray of hay. Whoever had made him had not tried hard to make him lifelike.

They walked up a narrow path between the bean plants toward the figure. The smell of the beans was strange – not fresh like grass or wheat, but more like a herb. The mass of plants was dense with dark shiny leaves and the young shiny pods of the beans. These were the pods that the farmer wanted to protect from birds. There were no birds in the field so perhaps the rather poor scarecrow was working.

It was very unconvincing close up: its trousers – they looked like a pair of very old farmers’ trousers – had been tied together at the bottom around a single pole that formed the backbone of the scarecrow. The pole was inclined so the whole figure looked like it was leaning to the side like a drunken man. The white shirt of the top was tucked roughly into the trousers and the arms were just a cross pole stuffed and supported by more hay. The hay had burst out of a hole in the shirt.

Howard was perturbed by the lack of work that had gone into the head. It was just a spout of hay with no mouth or eyes.

‘Perhaps you don’t need to make a face’, he said. ‘Perhaps just a body that looks like a man is enough to scare off the birds?’

Mrs Van Dijk looked up at the figure, squinting into the sun. It was taller than she was. She was trying to imagine being convinced by the figure, convinced enough that a child could hold a conversation with it.

*****************************

PART II

Clouds gathered as they walked back, darkening the fields. It no longer seemed like a bounteous, summer-heavy land, but there was an intimation of autumn in the air, with the sudden gusts of wind and drops of rain. The big trees shivered and shook, and there was distant rumbling of thunder in the south. They smelt thunderstorm rain on the wind.

At the cottage a woman was waiting for them, standing on the doorstep under the eaves, watching the first big raindrops coming. She came forward when she saw Howard and Mrs Van Dijk walking up the lane. She was clasping her hands together looking a little anxious. She asked if it would be alright for her to come and talk to Mrs Van Dijk about something.

In the living room, Mrs Van Dijk lit two candles because the thunder-dark had already filled the rooms of the cottage so you could hardly see. Howard rekindled the fire.

The woman was restless and wouldn’t sit down at first.

‘My husband doesn’t know I’m here’ she said in a quiet voice. She was still clasping and unclasping her hands.

‘You met him yesterday – Henry’s father. I’m his mother, Mrs Morton.’ She held out her hand to shake Mrs Van Dijk’s then at last sat down, smoothing her light dress over her knees. She wasn’t prepared for heavy rain in such a dress, Howard thought, and her farm was a few miles away. She’d get wet for sure.

Mrs Morton accepted a cup of tea and leaned forward with her elbows on the rough table. She had thin brown hair brushed back from her face, leaving a broad white forehead.

‘Would you like something to eat’ asked Mrs Van Dijk. She knew that the woman was troubled but also knew that she wouldn’t necessarily talk about it. It was sometimes hard for women to talk about problems. She guessed it must be something about the boy Henry.

Howard went out to the yard to get some wood in before it rained heavily. As he opened the back door a boisterous wind suddenly entered the room charged with stray raindrops. He stood on the doorstep looking out. It was so dark in the east over the escarpment that it looked like night had already fallen. A flash of lightening brightened the sky for an instant like a light flashing behind a lampshade. A few seconds passed and then the clap of thunder. So the storm was still miles away.

He lifted four large logs in. In the dark the two women were already sitting either side of the table, the candles between them. The candles flickered.

‘Howard’ said Mrs Van Dijk sharply, hugging her shoulders. ‘Shut the door. It’s cold’

‘And so you want to talk about Henry?’ she turned to Mrs Morton.

The other woman nodded, her mouth full of tea. She looked down, swallowing, marshalling her thoughts.

‘He’s never been a problem, but something worries me now. Henry’s father says I shouldn’t think about it. But the boy has changed in the last few weeks. He’s more quiet and withdrawn. He says he’s frightened and can’t sleep. I have to sit with him every night until he goes to sleep’

‘Do you mind if I stay in the room and load the wood’ said Howard quietly to the women.

Mrs Morton nodded. ‘Oh it’s all right. It’s not a secret. You know something about it anyway. The thing about the scarecrow’

‘Peter – his friend – said that Henry was talking to a scarecrow?’ said Howard.

‘Yes. That’s right. He said this a week or so ago to me. He won’t explain what he thought he saw – or heard. Not in detail. It’s frustrating’

‘Has your boy ever imagined things before?’ said Mrs Van Dijk. ‘….you know that kids commonly have imaginary friends? Their imaginations are very strong’

Mrs Morton sighed. ‘Yes – I know that it could just be imagination. But this new quietness he has – also his fear of the dark – of going to sleep – I’m sure it’s related. Besides…’ she almost choked. Howard thought she might be about to cry.

‘…besides, I don’t like to think of him hearing things – talking to a scarecrow. To me it’s very frightening. To think of a little boy…I have terrible images and fears of this…’

‘Has he shown you the field – the scarecrow – that he thought he heard talking?’

‘He won’t show me anything. He doesn’t want to talk about it. The strange thing is that when he first mentioned this – talking with the scarecrow – he didn’t seem frightened at all. He was quite cheerful when he mentioned it to me. Now he’s become much quieter and more fearful’

‘Can you remember his exact words?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk.

‘Some. It was when I was putting him to bed - a few weeks ago. He said that the scarecrow said that ….the country of the Vale is good and bountiful, a place to settle and live…’

‘The word bountiful is unusual for a little boy to use’ said Mrs Van Dijk. ‘Did Henry say anything else?’

‘He says that the scarecrow said much more to him, but he can’t remember what. Or won’t remember’

‘Would he come and talk to me?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk.

Mrs Morton shook her head. ‘He’s so sick of me asking – of me fretting and worrying – that he won’t say anything anymore’

‘Why did you come now and not earlier?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk. ‘I mean maybe he would have explained things if we had asked him earlier’

‘I thought I could deal with it myself’ said Mrs Morton. ‘And there is something else. Peter’s mother – she lives down the lane here in Earls Court – I spoke to her yesterday. She says that Peter has seen a man with hooves and a beard like a goat – and narrow eyes’

Mrs Morton shivered. ‘I don’t know. Maybe there’s someone out there’, she said raising her eyes to Mrs Van Dijk.

*****************************

Mrs Morton didn’t stay long. Like many Vale women she was a farmer and so very busy and also conservative and embarrassed about revealing her problems or the problems of her family. She didn’t want her husband to know that she had been asking for help. She didn’t want anyone to know.

Mrs Van Dijk watched her walk quickly down the lane. She had said that she had other business in the village and would soon be going home on a cart, perhaps before the big thunderstorm came.

The storm was still thundering over the escarpment and hadn’t moved much. It was like a black bank of cloud in a wave breaking against the hills. Mrs Van Dijk shuddered, imagining the cold rain splattering against the high beech trees, and went back into the cottage.

‘It’s not unusual for children to imagine things. Country kids are full of stories and myths. The country is full of stories that are the products of imagination. Some are metaphors’, she said.

Howard sat by the fire watching the rain-wet wood splutter. He thought of his own ideas of being an insect or a mouse in a great field of buttercups, also of his idea that clouds were like great ships sailing across the sky.

‘But sometimes people go too far’, said Howard ‘maybe things like this are the early signs of madness? I know what Mrs Morton means too – it’s frightening thinking of a child talking to a scarecrow. Even the word scarecrow is strange. You know I didn’t understand it at first – the word. I thought that the ‘crow’ part represented the human figure – a man transformed into a crow – but then I just realised that it meant that the figure was designed to scare crows!’

‘We could try to talk to the boys this afternoon – when you tell the story’

‘Oh I forgot again. Maybe the kids won’t come because of the rain’

‘They’ll certainly come if it’s raining – the ones from the village. Maybe little quiet Henry won’t come’

Another rumble of thunder rolled over the fields from the east and Mrs Van Dijk sat down to read the next part of her manuscript. Howard stared into the flames trying to remember his own imaginative days as a child in the fields. Could he have imagined a talking scarecrow?

Mrs Van Dijk frowned at the text in front of her. Some of it was her own handwriting, some Dr Wroclaw’s original handwriting. She was perplexed by Wroclaw’s inconsistencies. It was really annoying. The reason she had posted the pictures of several plants up on the wall in the cottage and their corresponding descriptions was that some of the descriptions didn’t match the illustrations. In fact they were very different. This was something she hadn’t noticed, but Huygens had seen it. He had been right, and now she knew that the manuscript had quite a few errors. It would be hard to sort out. How could she tell if the illustration was right or the description? It was alright if they were Vale plants that she knew – but what if they were Carpathian or Scandinavian? She was depressed about this.

The thunder rolled again. She looked at the trees over the churchyard – they were threshing around but the sky wasn’t dark.

She couldn’t think of a solution except going to Nottingham or Oxford and trying to research the five or six plants that had inconsistent descriptions and illustrations. But that would take ages.

She sighed and her mind began to wander about the strangeness of children’s imaginations. When she was a girl, her mother had said that there were things in the night that would get little children if they didn’t go to sleep – or if they didn’t obey their parents. Mothers and fathers wanted their children to be disciplined and so would introduce these ideas – of bogeymen, sand men, sack men – into kids’ heads. But if the fears became worse – unmanageable – then they would try to undo the damage. It was strange – parents would suggest the existence of strange supernatural beings as a crude way of controlling their kids – but then say they didn’t exist when the kids became too frightened.

She remembered the legend of the sack man. In Spain he was called el hombre del saco – and there was something similar in the Netherlands – a mean, ugly and skinny old man who would catch and eat the misbehaving children he collected. He carried a sack on his back and collected disobedient children to eat or sell. He was a child-snatcher or child-catcher. Perhaps this was really what Mrs Morton was frightened of – that there was a real man out in the Vale, trying to take children away. But it didn’t seem likely.

She looked back at the text before remembering why she had sat down. It was really difficult to concentrate. She thought she would go and talk to Howard. Not for the first time she regretted being involved in the Flowering plants of Northern Europe.

*****************************

Mrs Van Dijk had been right: all the kids who’d come to the story the day before came again, except for Henry. There was another boy that Howard didn’t recognise who sat at the back. Mrs Van Dijk quietly began looking through her notes for the book, while Howard resumed the story. He hoped that the new boy knew something of the part he had told the day before.

Howard began:

After chopping the witch’s head off, the soldier who was rather cruel and heartless, went into the nearby town with all the gold that he had collected from the underground cavern under the tree. It was a nice town! He went into the finest hotel, ordered the best room and his favourite dinner. Now he knew that he was a rich man!

The next day he went to buy new boots and fine clothes. Now, instead of a common soldier he began to look like noble lord, and people told the soldier about all the great social events of the town and the King, and what a beautiful Princess his daughter was.

‘How can one get to see this beautiful daughter?’ asked the Soldier.

‘She’s never seen at all!’ the people of the town told him. ‘She lives in a great copper castle, surrounded by walls, towers and turrets! No one except the King can go in or out. They say that it’s been foretold that she will marry a common soldier, and the King will not accept this, so he keeps her locked up’

‘I would very much like to see her,’ thought the Soldier, his mind filled with ideas. But no one knew how he would get permission.

The soldier began to live very extravagantly, going to the theatre, and to restaurants every night. To his credit he gave poor people lots of money, which was very nice of him. This was because he had been poor and he knew how hard it was not to have a penny in the world. Now he was rich, wore fine clothes, and made many friends, who all said that he was an excellent man, a real nobleman. And the Soldier liked that. But as he was always spending money, and never made any more, at last the day came when he had nothing left but two pennies, and he had to leave the beautiful room in which he had been living, and go into a little room under the roof, and clean his own boots. None of his friends came to visit him, because there were too many stairs to climb.

It was a dark evening, and he could not even buy a match to light his candle. But suddenly he remembered the tinder-box, which he had taken from the hollow tree. He found the box with the flint in it; but just as he was making a light, and had struck a spark out of the tinder-box, the door burst open, and the dog with eyes as large as saucers, which he had seen down in the tree, stood before him and said:

‘What does my lord command?’

‘What?’ shouted the Soldier, scared at first. But then he realised why the tinderbox was so valuable – when he struck the flint a dog would appear and do anything he wanted! He could have whatever he wanted.

‘Get me money, and quick!’ he cried to the dog, and off it went and then back again, holding a sack of money in its mouth.

The kids in front of Howard gasped for the first time since the story had started, realising the importance of the tinderbox. Howard paused for a little, while they sat thinking. Mrs Van Dijk was looking up, vaguely smiling in his direction – whether it was because of her book or because she’d been listening to the story he didn’t know.

She stood up suddenly leaving her papers on the table by the window.

‘Would anyone like some water or milk – and some oatcake?’

This was addressed to the children. They turned round to look. Probably they’d forgotten she was there at all. They nodded. Cake – whatever type – was always welcome. Howard didn’t mind because he thought the story had come to a sort of natural highpoint. He liked ending at some significant point in the story because it made the listeners much more likely to want to listen more. The idea that the tinderbox – just an old tinderbox – might be more valuable than all the soldier’s gold was a good feature of the story. Perhaps a metaphor – to use the word Mrs Van Dijk had used – for the idea that sometimes old trusted things were more valuable than money.

Mrs Van Dijk brought water and milk and cakes and laid them before the children on the floor. Peter – the boy from down the lane in Earls Court – was standing looking curiously at the books on the shelf and the pictures and writings on the wall. He’d always been interested in the cottage where Howard and Mrs Van Dijk lived because it seemed to him exotic – filled with books and pictures. They always got interesting visitors too – not like his own family.

Mrs Van Dijk showed him one of the larger books – a huge leather bound volume called the ‘Magic of England’ that she used sometimes as a reference for herbs and cures. She put it on the table and let him open the book. The little boy gasped and nodded at the drawings and the fine print – the amount of information that was surely contained within the book’s pages. His small hands turned page after page delicately like he was looking at rich cloth or jewellery.

She watched Peter’s eyes follow the text of the book and wondered if he could read well. He seemed an intelligent boy. She wanted to ask him about the scarecrow that Henry had said he’d seen. Also she wanted to know what busten was. Mrs Morton hadn’t mentioned the word but it had caused so much hilarity the day before! What was it to do with the scarecrow? So quietly she asked Peter if he’d seen the scarecrow. The boy didn’t look up from the book, and seemed unconcerned and not troubled much by the question. He certainly wasn’t reserved like his friend Henry. Peter only stopped to take a piece of cake. Crumbs dropped from his mouth as he said: ‘Henry says that the scarecrow talked to him, in the fields near his house’

‘And was he frightened?’

‘No’

‘Did he say anything about the scarecrow?’

‘He said he was friendly and nice. The scarecrow said that the Vale was beautiful. A beautiful place to live’

‘Bountiful?’

‘Yes. B…B… Bountiful – that was the word’

Peter couldn’t say the word and stumbled over the B.

‘….and what else did Henry say?’

‘He said that the scarecrow was looking for a wife. I can’t remember the word but Henry said that the scarecrow was looking for a wife, a bustfrau or something, bustenfrau. I don’t know. Henry said the scarecrow said it over and over again. He said he was laughing’

Mrs Van Dijk nodded. Howard watched her, aware that the other kids were now curious and getting restless, wondering why the lady of the house was asking so many questions. They sat eating their cake silently, watching the exchange.

Mrs Van Dijk also wondered if Peter’s mother would get upset with her asking so much. She’d better stop. But she had to ask one more question:

‘Have you seen the scarecrow?’

‘I think he dresses up differently each day. He likes playing. He’s not frightening. He likes the summer. He has feet like a goat’

Peter said this last looking up at Mrs Van Dijk, as if he didn’t believe it himself and was challenging her to believe it. The other children were listening.

Perhaps it was time to get on with the story. Mrs Van Dijk patted Peter’s head and put the big book back in the shelf. She went back to her papers by the window.

She felt she’d learned no more about the man in the fields – whether he was a scarecrow or not. Children were so vague!

*****************************

The thunderstorm came at night while they lay in bed. It woke Mrs Van Dijk, the air blowing in and making the thin curtains billow inward like the sails of a boat. The cool air spiked with rain blew in. Mrs Van Dijk pulled up the covers. She was too sleepy to get up and close the window. Her eyes half open, she looked over the bulk of Howard lying asleep beside her, to the window. Lights flashed in the cloud over the trees – lightning shaded by the thick cloud, and rain was falling in straight stripes of silver. The leaves of the hedge outside were black, wet and dripping.

Lightning came again – still shaded by the thick cloud – and she saw the silhouette of the church tower and the indistinct trees. In the wavering light the tower seemed to shiver as if lightning had struck it. Wind came through the window. She pulled the blanket higher and pushed it over Howard. He was sleeping very deeply. She felt tiny drops of water on her face and then the warmth of the blanket made her drowsy again.

In a dream she was lying in a wood on a warm night on a low bed or chaise-long. There was no one around. It was such a warm night. There was music coming through the trees and singing. The music was flutes and horns and there were drums beating monotonously. She lay back enjoying the music and looking up at the black sky between the crowns of the trees, the music getting closer. There was a perfect sickle moon, white and pure hanging in the sky.

Crowds of men and women came running into the clearing around her. They rushed amongst the bushes chasing each other and shouting, holding bottles of wine. There were creatures that rushed amongst the men and women that were smaller, hairier with gleaming eyes. Their faces were bright with laughter, their teeth long and yellow. They came running at the human women to scratch their legs splashing them with red wine. The women just shrieked and ran on. There were musicians behind with long shiny musical instruments. They followed the screaming girls, the young men and the strange beasts with the laughing faces – out of the clearing – leaving Mrs Van Dijk alone.

She thought she woke with a crack of thunder and a long flash of lightning to see the leaves of the hedge outside bright for a second – and framed in the window was a figure in the lane looking toward her. Its face was narrow, fox or goat-like, with red hair. It laughed soundlessly and its mouth opened revealing long yellow teeth. Then the light went out and there was only dark in the bedroom.

She thought she should get up and shut the window. She was surprised that she hadn’t been frightened by the strange long-faced man in the lane.

‘Howard – will you come with me to Stathern this morning? It’s not raining’

The rain had gone and it was dry outside. Whatever rain that had fallen had already dried up. But then Mrs Van Dijk had slept longer than usual. She had a vague memory of the nice dream. But there had been something troubling too – about the dream – and she couldn’t remember what it was. She remembered seeing the curtains flap and a flash of lightning. In the dream there had been musicians and people chasing each other amongst the trees, drinking wine. It had been like a party.

It had made her think of an old legend – a  story that she’d heard as a girl.

‘Why Lotte?’

Howard was coming in from the yard at the back, carrying willow sticks.

‘Why what?’

‘Why do you want to go to Stathern?’

‘There’s something I want to show you’

‘I should work, really. I have some clearing to do’

‘You can come with me. The wood will be all wet today, the paths will be muddy. We can go and be back by lunchtime’

‘So it’s a mystery’

‘I don’t want to say anything until we get there’

*****************************

PART III

‘It’s something I forgot about and then remembered this morning’, said Mrs Van Dijk.

They were walking into Stathern amongst the farm workers’ houses, through the village gate. The village was bigger than Earls Court and there was more than one centre. By the church, just at the base of the escarpment was an ironworks and a shop. The lanes were sunken, with walls of Lincolnshire limestone, the houses old and decrepit.

But the church was beautiful, very square, small and compact, built of the warmly coloured limestone. Yews – the trees of the dead – surrounded the churchyard and long grass grew between the gravestones.

‘What is it?’ asked Howard. They stood in the shade of one of the yews keeping cool. It had been warm walking on the lane from Earls Court. They wished they’d brought water with them.

‘We have to ask the Reverend here. It’s something in the church’

The Reverend didn’t live in the church but in one of the small houses next to the ironworks. He was known in the Vale as a scholarly man who’d studied and read books on history and theology. Howard had seen and talked to him only a few times, but Mrs Van Dijk knew him better. Despite his role in organised religion and Mrs Van Dijk’s more traditional role in the Vale, the two got on well. The Reverend, whose name was Dachett, never mentioned Mrs Van Dijk’s work, nor her non-attendance at church. He was too intelligent and too much of a scholar to let religion get in the way of interesting history or literature.

They knocked on Dachett’s door and he appeared and greeted them in the doorway. He was a thin compact man with intelligent dark eyes and thick dark hair, though he was old. He had been the Priest at Stathern for at least thirty years.

‘Ah Mrs Van Dijk’ he said retreating into the dark hallway to encourage the two visitors to come in.

Their boots were loud on the polished floorboards. Dachett brought them into a sitting room at the back of the house where a small fire burned in a grate. There were books spread on every surface, and food and fruit in bowls and on plates. It looked chaotic.

‘I eat only cold food – fruit and vegetables – in the summer’ said Dachett apologetically, ‘to save time and cooking’. But it looked like he didn’t eat properly. Two books were open on the table. It was clear that Dachett had been reading when they had arrived.

‘Mr Dachett – we’d like to see the tile floor – the mosaic’ said Mrs Van Dijk biting into a big Vale apple that Dachett had given her.

The Reverend looked surprised. He closed the book absent-mindedly and looked at Mrs Van Dijk with his steady eyes.

‘I’ve not been down there for years. What made you think of it?’ he asked mildly.

‘I don’t know. I thought Howard would like to see it. But also there’s something that made me interested in the last few days. I had a strange dream last night’

Dachett frowned and looked even more scholarly. ‘It was a shock to find the mosaic of course. It means that the church was built deliberately on an older pre-existing building’

‘Perhaps a good foundation’, said Mrs Van Dijk.

Howard was getting slightly annoyed because he had no idea what they were talking about. He looked out of the small dirty window at the walls of the church across the narrow sunken lane.

‘A mosaic?’ he said.

‘We’ll show you’ said Dachett standing up abruptly. ‘…of great age’

They left the house and walked briskly up the slope into the churchyard. Dachett pushed the huge old door open. In the long space of the main church chamber light beamed in through the dusty air. The stone flags of the floor were rather poorly fitted together but smooth with the footsteps of years of worshippers. The air smelt slightly damp.

‘We have to drop below the floor level into the crypt. Follow me…’ said Dachett. He seemed happy at the prospect of going below ground level. Howard sensed he was really interested in the church as a building, rather than as a religious symbol.

There was a door at the far end under the tower that Howard thought would lead into the tower, but instead lead down in a straight set of steps. They went not more than a few feet down, but the smell was even more damp. There were old candles on a ledge at the bottom of the stairs and a box of matches. Howard immediately thought of the story of the dogs in the underground cavern below the tree– and of the tinderbox – and smiled to himself. He thought of mentioning it to Mrs Van Dijk but she was quite concentrated on the dark space before them. Dachett lit one of the candles with a large match and ducking his head down disappeared into the darkness. There was a line of stone pillars which arched up above forming a crude vaulted roof.

‘These pillars support the floor of the chamber of the church’ said Dachett slapping the heavy stone. ‘It was only a few years ago that people realised that there was a crypt here. People – even I – thought that the floor of the church was really the floor – if you see what I mean. Behind the door that we just came through, there had been a false floor and we all thought that the door just lead to a storage space. When I opened the false floor and saw the steps going down, I expected to find treasure!’

He laughed to himself.

‘But at first I found nothing special. Just this rather dark space – a traditional church crypt. The foundations of the church, of course’

‘There’s no one buried down here?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk.

‘No. I didn’t come down here for years. Not until we started to find jewellery and pots in the soil in the churchyard, when we were digging to build a new wall. I got the idea that there might be an old Roman settlement around the church. Then one day I came down here and I lifted two of the big stone slabs of the crypt floor and saw this…’

He moved forward into the far part of the chamber. Several of the floor slabs had been removed and piled up. A dark space, as yet unlit by the candle, was like a pool of black water. Dachett hovered the candle over the space.

They saw faint colours, blues and reds in the candle light below the main stone floor level. There was glint of glaze, and reddish soil clung to a surface in places. But there were definitely patterns to be seen. Faces and figures. Not drawn but fashioned from lots of small tiles or fragments of tiles. There was a sort of picture in the floor. What Mrs Van Dijk had called a mosaic.

*****************************

Biddie had walked out to the stream past the wheat field where she’d been helping her brother and mother weeding. It was backbreaking work. They hadn’t enough water so she she’d been told to go and fill the bottle at the stream – and bring it back for them. She looked back over the green wheat, but she knew that the others were resting, lying down amongst the stalks so that they wouldn’t be visible. It was as if she was alone.

She liked it. Boys always said that girls weren’t as brave as them, that they weren’t adventurous, but it wasn’t true. She knew she was as brave as any boy. She was as brave as Peter, certainly as brave as Henry!

In the shade under the big willows the stream was dark and slow between muddy and stony banks. She’d been told to get water where it was flowing – over stones or between narrow banks – because the water would be cleaner and better to drink.

She walked along the narrow path. The willows were so dense along this stream that their great trunks were the main influence on the way the river flowed. The strip-like yellow leaves were reflected in the glassy pools. But it was shady and cool. She listened for the sound of flowing water but heard nothing but birds twittering. She thought she saw a flash of blue, perhaps of a kingfisher.

But then there was calling too, or whistling, that didn’t sound like a bird. It echoed amongst the willow branches. Biddle stopped and held the empty bottle by her side. She looked up into the high branches screwing up her eyes because of the brightness.

The whistling turned to singing, or something like loud humming. A bush shivered on the far side of the stream and a pigeon flew out fast, startling her. She stopped. There was flowing water a little way ahead. It was odd – she felt as if someone was watching her. But there was water nearby and wanted to complete this task, and not be frightened.

She glanced over at the bush that had shivered and called, cupping her hand to her mouth.

‘Anyone there?’

She tried to keep the fear out of her voice. But she could see something white behind the bush – something indistinct. There was a rush of words – half shouted, half sung from behind the bush – and then there was laughter. She thought it didn’t seem frightening. There was something friendly in the sound of the laughing.

A man’s head popped up from behind the bush. ‘Hello’ it said.

Biddie looked across not sure whether to say hello or not. She raised her hand, but then thought she should go along to the flowing water.

‘Hello – what’s your name?’ said the face. It smiled and the smile was odd. The mouth was narrow and the chin long. The teeth were long too. But the smile and the eyes were friendly.

Biddle decided to walk along, but also talk to the man.

‘Hello’ she said quietly looking at her feet.

‘What’s your name?’. More of the body of the man appeared. He was wearing a dirty white shirt.

‘My name is Biddie’

She continued walking slowly, brushing the long grass with her free hand. The figure came from behind the bush and followed on the other side of the stream. She thought he looked odd – not tall and very slight in build – and his face so narrow and long. His hair was red and bits of wiry rough beard were tufted on his face.

Biddle thought he looked like a fox.

The fox-man smiled at her again showing his yellow teeth.

She asked him his name, standing a second, holding the bottle to her body. She looked shyly at him over the water.

The man didn’t answer her question. He said some nonsense words and then started to sing – a happy, funny-sounding song. He waved his arms above his head in time to the song, his eyes always fixed on her.

‘I live by this stream’ said the man. ‘This is a wonderful place – full of food and water. A perfect place to live’

Biddie nodded and leant down to collect some water in her bottle.

There was a splash and suddenly the man was sitting on the bank of the small pool. She was momentarily distracted and water was flowing over the top of her bottle and it was cold on her hands.

The man was really like a fox, she thought, because his face was so narrow and his nose and his mouth was like a snout. He was sitting and he had rolled up his trousers so that his red knees showed. His lower legs were ghostly white in the dark water. The man paddled his legs and the water swirled.

‘Good water to drink!’ said the man

‘You’ll get your boots wet’ she said, lifting the heavy bottle and putting in the cork.

‘I have no boots’ aid the fox-man. Then he started to sing I have no boots, I have no boots in a strange high voice.

‘You can’t go barefoot!’

‘Oh yes I can’

Then the fox-man lifted his feet out of the water and she saw why he could not wear boots.

*****************************

In the church crypt they looked down at the faint images in the mosaic. The light from the candle was reflected up by the glaze of the fragments, but their colours were surprisingly bright for something so old.

Howard could make out a strange looking figure. It was standing, with its legs oddly bent. Its head was turned toward the viewer and was wide mouthed, but with a long snout-like nose. The eyes were slits – tilted up from the nose. There were short horns curving from its broad forehead amongst sprouting red hair.

Dachett said, looking down at the figure and kneeling beside the opened bit of floor: ‘Faunus was worshipped across the Roman Empire for centuries. He is a half human – half goat. From the head to the waist is the human half, but with goat's horns. Below the waist he’s a goat with hooves. The Romans believed that Faunus attacked or frightened men travelling in lonely, remote or wild places.

Howard tried to see the legs of the creature – they looked hairy, but with thick hair like on a dog or a cat, not like a man. The hooves were not clear.

‘Faunus is also the spirit that the Greeks called Satyr. In Greek history the Satyrs liked drink and women. They would chase women!’

Dachett flicked some of the clay from the surface of the mosaic with his finger. He looked up at them. Howard thought it was odd that Dachett wasn’t embarrassed about talking about satyrs chasing women. But then he wasn’t much like a Priest. He was more like a scholar.

‘Is this mosaic Roman?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk, her head tilted on one side, admiring the image.

‘I think so. Faunus is known from other Roman ruins so I think this must be Roman. Can you see he’s holding a glass of wine?’

He pointed with his little finger. The figure had a glass but not in a hand – more like in the front hoof of a horse. It wasn’t clear how it could hold a glass or a bottle. But the face of the Faunus was very clear and frank – the way it looked out directly at the observer. It was like it had some life – as if the person that had made the mosaic long ago had had a very clear idea about the Faunus character. Perhaps he had based his picture on the face of a real person? Perhaps he’d seen the real Faunus.

‘The fauns liked to drink at parties held by Dionysus in the woods. There would be a lot of wine and there would be nymphs’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

‘Did you study Greek and Latin at school?’

Mrs Van Dijk didn’t answer. As her eyes got used to the light she saw other figures behind the main one, some obviously other goat-men, but also human men and women. There was a line of trees. Perhaps it was picture of the Vale as it used to be before the Vale villages, before the churches and the fields. She was thinking of the stories that she’d studied in Latin as a child. She wanted a break from the Flowering Plants book and she thought she would try to find the Latin text on her bookshelf in the house in Earls Court. It was the Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid.

*****************************

Some children came for the last part of the story in the afternoon. Henry wasn’t there but Biddie and Peter were waiting quietly on the doorstep. News of the story had spread. Two of the children were from farms out in the west toward the river.

Biddie, a girl who was so small that Howard had hardly noticed her before, tugged on his sleeve as Howard sat down positioning his stool in front of the expectant faces.

‘My da will come and see you after the story’ she said, looking earnestly up at him.

There were seven other children. Mrs Van Dijk had gone outside into the back garden to read, taking a book about the Romans with her. It was still very warm.

‘Why does he want to talk to us?’ asked Howard.

‘I don’t know. Maybe because I saw the scarecrow man today – this morning’

Howard looked into the girl’s face but she seemed neither frightened nor concerned.

‘Alright Mrs Van Dijk and me will talk to your dad. Time to sit down now though – to hear the story’

Biddie sat neatly in the front cross legged, her bony knees sticking out. Peter the quiet boy was next to her.

Howard raised his hands for the children to be silent and adjusted his stool. He looked across the faces trying to meet all their eyes and then began.

‘Now you remember what happened in the story? Remember that a soldier had been coming home from the war, and he met a witch by the roadside. She showed him an underground cavern where dogs sat on boxes of gold, silver and copper. But the soldier knew how to trick the dogs and take the gold and silver. The soldier killed the witch and carried away the money and an old tinder-box. He lived like a king in a town, but spent all his money. Then when he was alone and with no money left, he made a wish by striking the tinderbox and one of the great guard dogs appeared. The dog said: ‘What does my lord command?’, and brought money for the soldier so that he was rich again’

The children watched him silently. ‘And now we carry on with the story’, he said.

Now the Soldier knew what a wonderful tinder-box it was. If he rubbed it once, the dog that sat on the chest of copper appeared. If he rubbed twice, the dog that watched over the silver chest came. If he rubbed three times, the one that guarded the gold appeared. Now the Soldier got back his wonderful apartment, and began to appear once more in rich clothes. All his rich friends recognised him again and were happy to see him.

One day he thought to himself: ‘It’s very strange that no one is allowed to see the Princess. Everyone says she’s beautiful, but what’s the use of that if she has to sit forever in a great copper castle? Can I not manage to see her somehow? What if use the tinder-box?’ and so he struck a spark in the box, and immediately there was the dog with eyes as large as saucers.

‘It is the middle of the night, I know,’ said the Soldier to the great scary dog; ‘but I would very much like to see the Princess for a moment’

Almost instantaneously the huge dog re-appeared carrying the Princess. She was lying asleep on the dog’s back. The Soldier kissed her while she slept, and then the dog ran back with the Princess.

The next morning, the King and Queen were drinking tea with their daughter. The Princess suddenly said that the night before she had had a strange dream about a dog and a soldier: she had ridden on the dog’s back, and the soldier had kissed her. She remembered it from the dream.

The Queen was worried hearing this, and the next night she made sure that one of her servants was watching the Princess sleep, to see if anything happened.

The soldier had a great desire to see the Princess again, and so the dog came in the middle of the night and fetched her, running as fast as it could. But the servant followed them. When the servant saw the dog disappear into a large house, she thought to herself: ‘Now I know where it is’ and made a cross on the door with a piece of chalk. Then she went home and lay down, and the dog came back with the Princess. But the soldier saw that a cross had been made on the door of the house where he lived, so he took a piece of chalk also, and made crosses on all the doors in the town. This was very clever, for now the servant could not find the right house, because there were crosses on all the doors.

But the Queen was an extremely clever woman and knew another way to catch the soldier. She took her scissors, cut up a piece of silk, and made a little bag. This she filled with grains of sand and tied it round the Princess’ neck. Then she cut a little hole in the bag, so that the grains would empty out wherever the Princess went.

In the night the dog came again, took the Princess on his back and ran away with her to the soldier. The soldier was now in love, and would have liked to have been a Prince, so that he could marry her.

The dog didn’t notice how the sand made a trail from the castle to the soldier’s house.

In the morning the King and the Queen saw plainly where their daughter had been, and they took the soldier and put him in prison. They told him: ‘To-morrow you will be hanged.’ The soldier was suddenly terribly sad, also because and he had left his tinder-box at his apartment.

Next morning the soldier could see through the window how people were hurrying out of the town to see him hanged. He heard the drums and saw the soldiers marching. Just below his window was a shoemaker, with leather apron and shoes.

‘Shoemaker!’ called the soldier. ‘If you run back to the house where I live, and fetch me my tinderbox, I will give you four shillings. But go quickly!’

The shoemaker’s boy was very happy to earn four shillings, and got the tinder-box and gave it to the Soldier.

Outside the town a great scaffold had been built, and all around were the soldiers, and hundreds of people. The King and Queen were sitting on a magnificent throne opposite the judge.

The soldier was already standing on the top of the ladder; but when they wanted to put the rope round his neck, he asked for one simple request. He would – he asked – like to smoke a small pipe of tobacco because it would be his last pipe in this world.

The King could not refuse, and so the solider took out his tinder-box, and rubbed it once, twice, three times. And suddenly all three dogs appeared – the one with eyes as large as saucers, the second with eyes as large as mill-wheels, and the third with eyes as big as round windows.

Howard paused and looked at the children. There was a sudden mood amongst them in support of the soldier. The kids wanted the soldier to escape, whatever he had done.

‘Help me so that I won’t be hanged!’ shouted the Soldier to the dogs. Then the dogs ran up to the judge and to the King and Queen and they were so frightened that the King shouted: ‘good Soldier, you shall be our King instead of me, and marry the beautiful Princess!’

Then they put the soldier into the King’s coach, and the three dogs walked in front, growling.

The Princess came out of the copper castle, married the soldier and became Queen

And the soldier lived happily ever after, but always kept the tinder-box under his pillow when he slept.

Howard noticed that Mrs Van Dijk had come in from the back garden and was standing by the stove. She smiled and spoke to the kids who were turning to each other to talk, like they’d suddenly woken up.

‘Would you like milk? And some cake?’

The children nodded vigorously. Listening to stories always made them hungry.

*****************************

Biddie’s father came after the children had gone but was in an agitated state. He stood in the living room talking in his loud voice. He hardly noticed Mrs Van Dijk, but talked to Howard.

He was a stout man with fat cheeks who seemed on the verge of panic.

‘I don’t know who to believe’ he said looking vaguely over at Howard. ‘Biddie said she talked to some strange man in the woods. She said he was friendly and he was singing. But I was with my son – in the wheat a little way off – and we heard nothing. No singing’

‘Biddie seemed well’ said Mrs Van Dijk. ‘When Howard was telling the story just now’

The big man noticed her for the first time. He peered at her. Mrs Van Dijk thought he might have weak eyesight.

‘She seems all right but there are people in the village who are saying that there is something strange out in fields. Something supernatural’

He looked at Howard and Mrs Van Dijk perhaps waiting for a reaction.

‘…We are meeting now’ he said. ‘At the house down the lane…’

‘To do what?’

‘To decide what to do. I was told to invite you, Madame’

Peter’s house was three doors down. There were five or six people sitting and standing in the one room. Mrs Van Dijk and Howard stood at the back. The house was a similar design to their own but with no interior walls so Peter’s bed was on one side of the room and the parents’ at the other. A stove steamed in the centre and a fire glowed red. It smelled of baking.

Peter’s mother stood and spoke. Her husband, William, who was known for being taciturn and opinionated, was beside her. He looked angry.

‘I wanted to say that we are worried about our children’ she said. Her voice trembled a little. Her hands were clasped into fists.

There were two other mothers, and Biddie’s father, but Henry’s mother Mrs Morton wasn’t there. Even though she wasn’t there, her fear of the creature had been transmitted to the parents of Earls Court. Howard had attended meetings like this in the years when the wolves were bad, and the men of Earls Court had organised themselves into hunting parties. But this was quite different. The presence of the wolves had always been something you couldn’t ignore – dead cattle and sheep, farm dogs that had been attacked. There was no obvious sign of attack – only children talking vaguely of conversations and meetings with a strange character out in the fields.

‘We should go out now – let’s get rifles, pick axes’, murmured Biddie’s father.

‘We should try to catalogue all the knowledge – about whatever is out there’ said Mrs Van Dijk quite forcefully. She disliked this kind of panic reaction. She also remembered the wolf hunts – and how many of them were a waste of time and only put people at more risk, by antagonising the wolves. They weren’t even sure that there was anything out there.

The people in the room looked blank. There was enthusiasm to take some action but no one was sure what to do.

‘I mean’ said Mrs Van Dijk, ‘we should examine what we think we’ve heard from the children. Is there a single example of an adult seeing this…’ she paused, ‘…spirit?’

‘Only children’ said Biddie’s father again, ‘no adult has seen it’

‘Well that might mean something’ said Mrs Van Dijk calmly. ‘Children have very strong imaginations’

‘But they’ve all seen the same thing’ said Peter’s mother.

‘Maybe not quite. They all describe a man. What did Biddie say?’ she turned to Biddie’s father.

‘She said he was like a fox. That his feet were strange’

‘…and there was something about a goat – a man like a goat. And hooves’, said another of the women, her voice rising. Howard wasn’t sure who she was. The people in the room all nodded and panic seemed to be in the air again.

‘Did Biddle say anything about hooves?’ said Mrs Van Dijk trying to be logical.

‘No’ said Biddie’s father. ‘She said he had strange feet and that he was barefoot. She was surprised that he didn’t wear boots’

‘This is what Biddie said about the man she saw?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk carefully.

The parents all nodded their heads.

‘There are times when children persuade themselves that there is something there which is not. Don’t you remember when you were children? Being out at night with other kids. A tree looks like a ghost and suddenly all the kids think they see the ghost in the tree. This might be the same. No one has seen anything – just the children. No one has come to any harm’, said Mrs Van Dijk

‘There have been some chickens stolen’

‘That might have been a fox. It could easily just be a fox. Maybe the children are just getting overexcited. Maybe another one will report that they’ve seen the fox-man or the goat-man tomorrow’

The parents grumbled, but nodded their heads in agreement. Biddie’s father had a pick axe handle in his hand that Howard hadn’t noticed before. He lowered it and propped it against his leg.

Howard said: ‘I think it would be better to think about things a little more. Gather evidence. Next time there is a sighting of the creature – if there is one – we can go out straight after. We might have a chance of catching it. It’s getting dark now. We’ll find nothing’

Howard and Mrs Van Dijk left after more discussion which seemed to be going nowhere. The party in the small house at least agreed that it would be better to wait until there was proper daylight.

Back in the cottage, they sat by the fire drinking tea. Mrs Van Dijk was thinking, her face very serious. Howard wondered how the visit to the church to see the character of Faunus in the mosaic had influenced her. It was odd but since the visit she’d said very little about it.

‘Do you think it’s a spirit, something supernatural. Like Faunus?’

Mrs Van Dijk smiled. It had been an idea that she’d had. Rather a nice idea – perhaps because of her dream – her Dionysian dream! It was not hard to go further and imagine that the woods had been invaded by the spirits of ancient Greece or Rome. The woods were so full with summer – with potential and promise. Like a stage in an ancient Greek play.

But what had the boy said – she couldn’t remember if it had been Henry or his friend Peter – that the woods – the Vale – were bountiful? Maybe both boys had said this – the word bountiful. This was not a word that Vale boys would normally use.

Mrs Van Dijk looked across at Howard. It was getting gloomy and dim outside. It would be night soon.

‘I think I believe them’, she said. ‘There is someone out there. It’s not imagination’

*****************************

Mrs Van Dijk did not dream that night and found it rather hard to sleep. She thought about how the boys had both said the word bountiful. It was such an odd word. It would not be a word that would have come from an imagined sprit. Also she remembered how the kids had laughed about the scarecrow and how it had wanted a wife. That was very odd. What was the word they had used? Bustenfrau?

Howard was asleep on his back, his head propped against the pillow. She looked at the faint square of the window. There was a grey remnant of the light of the day. A memory came back of seeing a man in the lane on a night like this – after she’d dreamed of the woodland party. She’d seen the face in the sudden flash of lightning. Now she was sure this was a memory and had not been a dream.

She sat up and watched Howard to see if she’d woken him. He turned, but his breathing remained steady. His arm was flung out over the covers.

She walked on silent feet to the door and into the living room. The tiles were cold under her feet but she didn’t want to look for her indoor shoes in case she woke Howard.

She lit a small candle and brought it to the bookshelves. The big books and the dictionaries were on the top shelf and there were new books on plants. The candlelight fell on the sheets of paper that she’d stuck on the wall and she felt momentarily guilty that she’d done very little on her book for days. But then she looked more closely, touching the spine of each book as she passed along the line.

A dictionary of scientific English, the first Dutch-English dictionary by Hendrick Hexham. Ah – here a German-English dictionary. It was smaller than the rest. She knew that she’d not thrown it away.

Sitting on one of the big chairs facing the faint glow of the fire she leafed through the book with the candle over her shoulder.

Busten, Bust, Bosten…. She looked through the Bs and the BUs. There was no Busten anywhere.

The wind moved outside and air surged in through the small window. An owl hooted. Mrs Van Dijk didn’t want to look out into the lane because she was frightened she might see the thin man with the face like a fox or a goat. But eventually she stood and turned, leaving the candle and the book. She wished there was a lock on the door.

But there was nothing in the lane. The tower of the church was very black and grey stars winked above it. Maybe it would be hot again tomorrow.

She returned to the book and leafed through a few more pages. Then she saw the words she was looking for:

Butzemann is a male scarecrow; a female scarecrow is butzefrau

Air blew in again from the window and the candle suddenly snuffed out. It was dark in the room and the dictionary’s pages were faint grey rectangles.

She put the dictionary back on the shelf and went back to the bed. Vale children would not know the German word for scarecrow! The man that the kids had seen – that the kids had talked to – was real. There was no doubt.

*****************************

‘You want to go out straight away, Lotte? It’s early’

Howard sat at the table in the living room eating cheese and bread. It was very early – the sun had risen only an hour or so before. There was no sound in the surrounding cottages.

But Mrs Van Dijk was excited. She had got her boots and her collecting bag. She’d put her magnifying glass in the bag and had already eaten. Howard could tell she had an idea because she was moving around the little room looking at things. Her face had a concentrated look. She had an idea and she wanted to test it out.

‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked again.

‘By the stream – just out of the village. Where Biddie met her fox-man…’ she murmured.

‘You think someone will be there?’

‘Not now’

‘But you want to look for traces? You think it’s a real creature?’

‘I do Howard’, she smiled at him and brought him his boots.

‘Come on!’ she said briskly.

It was cool amongst the willows and the wind brushed the wheat. They stood under the trees listening.

‘This is where they were weeding’ said Mrs Van Dijk. ‘If Biddie saw something it would have been near here. Her father said that the man was on the far side of the stream and Biddie on this side’

She walked along rapidly amongst the big leaved shrubs, butterbur and hosta. Where the stream narrowed she jumped, almost sinking into mud on the far side.

Howard followed, striding across. There was tall grass and a few mossy stones. It looked like the grass had been flattened here and there. Mrs Van Dijk looked at the wet ground, stooping over the dense blades of grass.

‘No mud’ she said, looking back at Howard. ‘Do you see anything at all? Anything that might have been dropped?’

‘No’ said Howard. He wasn’t sure what she was looking for.

They followed the flattened grass and came to a small pool of brown water surrounded by sprouting ferns. There was a tiny waterfall and the water busily chuckled into the pool.

There was a patch of reddish mud by the water. Mrs Van Dijk kneeled in the grass beside it and rummaged in her bag bringing out the magnifying glass. It flashed a ray of sunlight that beamed through the filtering leaves.

‘Ah. Look Howard’

There were two very odd prints in the mud and you didn’t need a magnifying glass to see them. They looked like a V shape with a rounded base and two narrow wings. The base part was more deeply imprinted in the mud.

‘What are they?’

Mrs Van Dijk said nothing and then mumbled ‘don’t know’.

She held the magnifying glass closer, at the end of one of the wings of the V shape.

‘Look – you see – little pointed imprints’

Howard looked. He didn’t understand.

‘They are nails Howard – the imprints of nails. He has nails!’

She looked down at the two prints nodding. Howard sensed she was pleased with herself.

‘Also he’s been in Germany’, she said obscurely.

*****************************

PART IV

‘He sat here’ she pointed to where the grass was flat. ‘Perhaps he dangled his feet in the water’

‘Where is he now?’

‘I don’t know – we could try to follow the tracks. His feet – the problem with his feet – is called ectrodactyly – an unusual condition of the hands and feet. I looked in a medical book this morning before you got up – the one on the shelf. Also he might speak German or have been in Germany for a while’

‘How could you possibly know…?’ Howard looked up amazed. She was putting her magnifying glass away in her bag. She smiled at him, embarrassed at her own cleverness.

‘He used the word Butzemann for a scarecrow – it’s German for scarecrow – when he was talking to the kids’

‘….and this condition of the feet?’

‘Ectrodactyly? It’s rare mostly, but common in some places in Europe and places in Africa. In Africa there is a band of people that are known to have only two toes’

‘So the man has feet like that?’

He pointed at the strange V-shaped imprint in the mud.

She said: ‘In ectrodactyly, people have only two toes and so their feet look a bit like pincers – or hooves. According to the book, they walk very well and can do all the things we can do’

Howard looked above him into the green branches of the big willows. It seemed a simple explanation, but the man still seemed odd and frightening.

‘Are there any other features of the condition?’

‘Their hands may also be lacking fingers or be like claws. They can’t get boots to fit them, so people with ectrodactyly often have to walk barefoot’

‘It might make it easier for us to find him’, said Howard.

He stood and brushed the long grass around the pool looking for patches of mud where the V-shapes might be preserved. There was nothing. In the summer the streams were very overgrown and the old paths were sometimes obscured by dense bushes.

He looked up again into the dense canopy of willow leaves. The air smelt of wild onion and garlic.

How would a man survive outside? Did he live in the fields and the woods? Why?

‘Maybe he was rejected by his family’ said Mrs Van Dijk – as if in answer to his unspoken thought. ‘Maybe he is an outcast’

‘Do you think he might be dangerous in some way?’

‘No Howard. He’s not hurt anyone – just tried to talk to people. He’s probably lonely’

*****************************

It rained all afternoon and in the evening – but it was very warm. Howard found that his forehead was damp with sweat well after dark. They only kept the fire going to cook food and to keep the house feeling dry inside. They lit candles and sat down after eating to read and look at the fire. Mrs Van Dijk had the German dictionary beside her and was holding her book, the Metamorphoses of Ovid. The rain glistened on the leaves of the hedge outside, lit by the feeble light of the candle.

‘I wonder if the legend of Faunus is something like a distortion’ said Mrs Van Dijk putting the book down.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean perhaps people with ectrodactyly existed long ago, and imaginative writers – the writers of the stories of Greece and Rome – created characters out of them’

‘So Faunus – the fauns of the woods – were a creation of someone who had seen someone with ectrodactyly?’ He struggled with the word.

‘Ectrodactyly might have existed then’

They sat silent. A piece of new wood began to hiss in the flames. The rain of the afternoon was being dried by the flames. A jet of steam appeared and the wood crackled suddenly.

‘I think I saw the man – this goat-man – a few nights ago’ said Mrs Van Dijk quietly. ‘It was when you were asleep. I was awake thinking, and I saw him through the window. He was standing in the lane. Or I was dreaming’

The unease that Howard had felt when Mrs Van Dijk had described the man’s feet returned. It seemed strange to have a man like this roaming the woods – and the village gate was not being closed or locked at night so people could wander into the villages.

‘Were you frightened?’

‘No. Not at all. When I looked at him, I don’t think he saw me. His face was turned toward me but I don’t think he could see me’

Howard looked through the window at the black rectangle of the rainy night. He couldn’t even see the church or the big trees.

‘It must have been in the early morning or you wouldn’t have seen him’

‘I thought I was dreaming Howard’

Because he looked concerned she said: ‘I don’t think he is dangerous at all. When I saw him, his expression was rather confused – almost muddled – as if he didn’t know where he was. Confused and a bit frightened at the same time’

‘Why did he come here?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe looking for someone to shelter him?’

They went to bed, and Howard pulled the curtains for the first time for many months. The window had to be left open because it was so warm. The curtains moved in and out with the weak wind and streams of rain stained the dark red cloth. But Howard didn’t want anyone looking in.

*****************************

Mrs Van Dijk had been reading the Metamorphoses avidly for days. Long ago as a girl in school she’d had to translate parts of the poem into Dutch, but even though it had been a school exercise, just one of many Latin texts to translate, it still interested her. It seemed so strange. Stories of gods that did terrible things to mortals, turning them into plants, animals or even rocks and stones. A year ago she had found an incomplete copy of the Giunti edition of the poem in a bookshop in Oxford. It had been printed in Venice in the late Fifteenth Century and it had been cheap because some of the last part of the book was missing, torn away – and there were dark stains on some of the pages.

The visit to the church had made her want to read the poem again. Shortly after buying the book, she had tried to translate some parts into English. Her scribbled notes and ponderous sentences were still there, on pages interleaved with the printed text. She remembered that it had been difficult to capture the poem’s word patterns, and had given up after a few pages.

Now in the early morning, sitting by the window in the living room, before Howard was awake, she looked at the first of her scrappy pages. It was her translation of the very first part, the Invocation:

My soul [she had scribbled heart above the word soul] wants to sing of things transformed

to bodies strange and new! Great Gods

inspire my heart, for you have changed yourselves

and all things you have changed! Oh help me sing

in smooth and gentle tunes, from ancient days

when earth began to this present time!

She found this beautiful: things transformed to bodies strange and new. She remembered a part of the text which said that no-one would believe that a tiny egg could be transformed into a mighty eagle, if they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes.

Transformation ran through all the stories. Sometimes they described change that was terrifying – arbitrarily meted out by arrogant gods on small men and women. But they also seemed to say that transformation is natural in the world, and that it could be joyful and could bring a kind of peace. She liked the story of Niobe – of her terrible punishment for pride – the murder of all her many children, but also the peace that perhaps she felt as she was transformed to stone on a mountain. There was Arachne who in desperation after a weaving competition with Athena, hanged herself in shame. But then Athena, seeing her, felt pity and turned her into a spider. Lotte’s favourite was Echo who became so lovesick for Narcissus that it was unbearable and she sank into the rocks leaving only her voice to echo in the mountains. Lotte thought some of the stories described a kind of release from unbearable suffering.

But then she thought of Actaeon who on a hunting trip had seen Diana washing, and was brutally punished, just for this. She looked through the pages, wondering if she could find the words. She remembered that there was a particularly good description of the transformation.

She found it. She translated:

Diana gave the antlers of a mature stag to the head of Actaeon, lengthened his neck, made his ear-tips pointed, covered his body with a dappled hide, turned his feet into hooves.

But poor Actaeon’s mind was still intact, and he couldn’t speak. He was ashamed of his new appearance and knew he could never return home. But worse the hunter became the hunted and desperately tried to escape over hills and valleys. He was torn apart by his own hunting dogs.

Mrs Van Dijk looked at the Latin words on the page and then out to the grey sky and the church tower. She thought that perhaps things always changed, but also never changed.

*****************************

A few days later they saw the goat-man. The good weather had returned and the sun had raised up all the moisture of the rain and made the Vale very humid. Misty clouds hung over the trees in a pastel-coloured, almost purple sky.

They saw him walking quickly along a line of trees. Howard would not have noticed but for the speed he appeared to move, and the strangeness of his movement. Though he moved quickly it was in a rolling fashion with his shoulders hunched over a little. Howard could see that the man was looking around all the time. Howard called, and he thought the man saw him because he looked in their direction and then stepped backward into the wood behind him.

‘Did you see him?’ hissed Howard. Mrs Van Dijk was walking beside Howard, looking down at her feet.

She looked up, as if woken from a daydream.

‘Over there’ he said, pointing vaguely. It was so bright that he was squinting in the sun and he could see nothing where the figure had disappeared.

‘I can’t see’ she said.

‘He’s gone now. I’m sure it was the man, the goat-man. The way he walked – and he was very wary. He was looking around all the time. When I called him he hid’

‘Probably frightened’ she murmured.

‘Do you want to see if we can find him?’

‘He’s not a wild animal Howard’

‘But we should know who he is. It’s important – people are still scared. They won’t let their children out’

They walked to end of the line of trees and then followed a path through the trees rather than at the field edge, so they were concealed. Howard wondered if the man would move on, or stay. Where they walked they could see flattened grass and broken twigs. He had passed this way. There was a bottle propped up against a tree stump that was half filled with water.

‘Perhaps he stays around here?’

‘What if he is angry or violent?’ she said.

‘You said you thought he was gentle – or confused?’

‘Yes’ she said quietly, but she was uneasy with this pursuit. It seemed like a hunt to her. She would have rather the goat-man had come to them, of his own accord.

They walked the length of the wood and found a few other things that suggested that someone frequented the spaces between the trees. There was no makeshift tent, but there were places where the grass was completely flat and where branches had been bent over to give more shelter, or to hang things on.

But there was no goat-man.

They wandered slowly back across the fields feeling hot in the humidity and the misty sunshine. Looking back for a second Mrs Van Dijk thought that she saw amongst the tall wheat stems, the face of the goat-man, his eyes turned up, peering ahead of him.

By candlelight Howard and Mrs Van Dijk ate soup. It was so hot that they had left the door open.

The faint blue light faded in the west over the church.

‘I think he’s a soldier’ she said after a long silence. ‘A returning soldier’

Howard smiled. She was so surprising. All the quiet times they were walking along, she was thinking of some problem or other, perhaps about her book – while he was walking thinking of the surroundings. He saw shapes in the land, watched the clouds. It was different with him. Walking made him more expansive – he couldn’t concentrate on anything -– whereas she, Lotte, seemed to concentrate more.

But he had to ask.

‘Why?’

‘Because of the war in France. Men have been returning for the last year – all over the north. Have you heard?’

‘No’

‘It was a small war. This is maybe why he knows German. I noticed – when I saw him in the road that night, that he was wearing a uniform – old and battered – but definitely a uniform’

There was a soft cough in the open door behind them.

The returning soldier stood in the rectangle of darkness, his cleft feet on the doorstep.

*****************************

PART V

In the weak yellow candlelight he was very pale, his skin seemed almost white, but his hair which was short and wiry was orange. It stood up like a brush on his head and his beard was short and wiry around his narrow mouth. The light made the hollows of his face into deep shadows, under his prominent cheek bones and his overhanging brows. As Mrs Van Dijk had said, his eyes were close together either side of his thin nose, and pointed upward at the edges.

Howard had his back to the man and so he moved quickly, startled, scraping his chair on the tile floor. The man in the doorway took a step back so that he was only a thin silhouette.

Mrs Van Dijk was facing the door and she sat still, gripping the armrests. Her face was tilted up, lit by the candle, trying to look friendly and encouraging.

‘Howard’, she hissed, ‘He’s frightened. Don’t move’

‘Sir’ she said quietly. She sat forward in her chair. ‘Sir – why don’t you come in? We have tea and bread. You can sit by the fire’

‘Sir….’ she said again.

He stepped forward into the light. Howard turned slowly and saw that the man was indeed frightened. He was shaking and his thin hands were clasped tightly into fists. It was true that he wore a battered and old soldier’s jacket. The epaulets were hanging off and the buttons were almost gone. There was straw sticking from the front. The man smelt of the outside – like sheep smell after rain.

‘Come in’ said Mrs Van Dijk again. She rose to her feet and held her hand out – like she was trying to encourage a cat to come and drink milk from a saucer.

The thin figure came into the room and stood by the table. Mrs Van Dijk got up and carried a plate and tea to the table. She picked up a candle and put it by the plate.

Howard watched. He was not sure if he trusted the man. Where he stood the light fell on the soldier’s feet for the first time. They were very odd, pale on the upper surface but black with dirt below. It looked like he was wearing strange shoes that had been cleft in the middle. It took a second to realise that they were actually feet. The big toe and the little toe were elongated and turned sideways slightly. The toes in between didn’t exist. It looked like the man had two huge toes. The prints he had left on the tiled floor of the cottage – from walking in the rain – were the same as the ones they’d seen in the mud by the pool.

But then the man was sitting down and his feet disappeared into the gloom under the table. Howard heard the sound of a hungry man eating bread, forcing it down his throat, then gulping tea.

Mrs Van Dijk came to sit at the table opposite the soldier and watched him with kindly eyes. In the light of the candle she saw that his skin was remarkably smooth and fine, and that the red hair though rough and wiry was very normal hair. He was a young man – perhaps no more than twenty years old. His eyes were narrow and oddly slanted but he looked slight and innocent and young up close. His hands were compact – rather beautiful and small like a girl’s hands.

Howard sat in the chair and watched expecting the man to speak, but he did nothing but eat, his eyes were always turned up to Mrs Van Dijk’s as if he was waiting for some reaction, some sign of violence.

‘I talk to the children’ he said eventually, and very slowly. His voice was hesitant and guttural, rough sounding like it came from the back of his throat. He swallowed heavily – a chunk of bread – and sighed.

‘I talk to the children’ he repeated.

‘We know’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

His eyes were bright in the candlelight and looked beseechingly into Mrs Van Dijk’s, as if he didn’t want to be misunderstood, even though he was unable to express himself.

‘I’ve come back from the wars, overseas’

The soldier waved his arm out over the table to indicate the far sea. Then he looked at Howard.

Howard didn’t know what to say. The man seemed like a child.

‘I was a runner’ said the soldier. It was a new word that he seemed to have remembered. ‘A runner. In the rifle brigade’

He clasped his arm across his jacket in some ancient, half-remembered gesture of loyalty.

‘I took orders from one part of the battlefield to another. The things I saw, terrible things’

‘You must stay here tonight, so that you can rest and eat and get your strength up’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

*****************************

‘We didn’t ask his name’ whispered Lotte.

They lay listening. The young man had been so quiet, barely speaking. He kept his head curiously low all the time. When they had decided to go to bed, he had simply nodded and sat by the fire on the stone tiles. Mrs Van Dijk had brought a thick blanket for him and folded it twice to make a mattress, and then a second big blanket to cover him. He had wordlessly curled up in the blanket and fallen asleep almost in front of them. They had left to go into the bedroom.

The soldier whimpered in his sleep like a child, though he never seemed to wake.

‘He’s nervous about us’ she whispered again. ‘Did you see how he slept? I wonder where he sleeps usually’

‘I don’t know Lotte’. Howard looked into the dark of the ceiling. The soldier whimpered again, like a child who was being admonished by his mother.

White light leaked in through the window and the memory of the soldier asleep in the living room came to both of them simultaneously. Howard knew it was early but he got up and opening the door slightly, looked in. The big blanket was empty, folded lengthways over one of the chairs. In the other chair with his back to Howard sat the soldier. He had put on his soldier’s jacket. The light from the living room window was bright. In his hand the soldier turned the pages of a book. It looked like one from the bookshelf.

Howard knocked very quietly and went in to boil the kettle for tea. The soldier didn’t look up, but Howard knew he was acutely aware of him. The soldier’s strange feet were stretched in front of him. He flexed and turned their two long bony toes. The soles were black with dirt and coarse with thick skin. He evidently didn’t feel cold through his feet.

‘My name is Daniel Bridge. I am back from the wars’ he croaked. He looked up for a minute and then meekly back at the book.

Howard wondered what they would do with Daniel, but first he made tea.

‘I came back on the boat across the sea, but in the battlefield I had lost my mind. The sound of the cannon was so loud. I saw many die around me’ said Daniel. ‘Fighting Napoleon’, he added, remembering.

Mrs Van Dijk came in, pulling a jersey over her head. She had heard the soldier’s voice. She sat opposite him, draping a small blanket over her shoulders and turning her gaze to him attentively. Howard waited for the water to boil.

‘I came to King’s Lynn on the boat, and at night in an inn all my money was stolen – the money from my work as a runner in the war. I couldn’t pay the price of the inn and I was chased away into the fields. They made fun of my feet. But these I’ve had since I was a boy and I no longer care what people think. Besides I was a good runner – quick and able to walk over the thick mud without sinking in. I thought that with my money I would find a wife and buy a farm’

‘I walked across the fields for two days until I came here. I had been told that this valley is bountiful with vegetables and honey and milk. I slept in barns on the journey and sometimes, if it was warm and dry, under trees. Sometimes I was chased away by people – when I passed through villages – and so I’ve lived in the fields and woods for a few weeks, never returning to the villages. I never saw people much. I stole food sometimes – chickens and apples. I found that I could talk to children that were working or playing in the fields, because they don’t notice my feet. Once I pretended to be a scarecrow. Most of all I would like to live here somewhere and find a wife’

‘I remember leaving the boat and walking in the lane over the big sea wall to King’s Lynn: my first view of England after the war. I remember being so happy and believing that the country would be mine – a country waiting for me to return – the path stretching into the distance in the sunshine’

He bowed his head sadly.

*****************************

Howard had a hard day ahead of him. There was a line of hawthorn trees to be cut back and two to be felled and their roots dug out. A farmer from by the river had asked Howard to work on trees for a full day because he had hired a small boat to take the felled trees to Nottingham. The farmer was notoriously tight fisted and refused to pay Howard for more than a day’s work, when it was really a day and a half or even more.

Howard winced when he saw the job: ten hawthorns in a line, some very old and gnarled, on a grassy slope decorated with shredded white wool.

He took out his tools and set to work, cutting the lower branches with a short saw and shears so that he could get at the trunk, and create enough space to swing the axe. Though it was hard work, it was work he’d done many times and so he didn’t have to think about it. As he cut and sawed his mind wandered to Daniel, the soldier.

He’d been with them now for a few days. He’d been quiet at first, coaxed by Lotte to speak haltingly; and then for a short time seemed to have poured out his heart describing his wishes for the future and the shameful way that people in the villages of Lincolnshire and Norfolk had treated him. Howard couldn’t tell if Daniel was naturally odd – in his quietness – or was strange because of the terrible things he had seen.

Howard, himself, had very little experience of war, having grown up in a period of comparative peace. In those days in England, there was no subscription and so only professional soldiers went to fight, but the wars of Napoleon were spoken of in the towns and sometimes in taverns, and in the street he would sometimes see British soldiers and hear them talk of the terrible wounds they had received, or avoided, or of the noise and clamour of the battlefield. He also knew of the most severe forms of anxiety that returning soldiers would suffer from. It was known as catatonia – where people seemed awake and conscious, but were unable to speak or react to anything around them.

Daniel was not like this, but he would be quiet for hours and this quietness meant that they knew very little about him. Howard thought that perhaps it was not the remembered noise of battle or catatonia that inflicted him, but suppressed anger at his fellow man.

A thin rain began to fall. Howard had cleared space for the axe and began to swing into the thick base of the first hawthorn. He always felt that cutting trees was wrong, and preferred to see himself as a harvester of trees’ broken branches, but sometimes he had to take the job of felling healthy trees. This old hawthorn resisted him, its thin bark concealed dense heavy wood that seemed to repel even the sharpest axe and clog the sharpest saw. The wood of the hawthorn was good for walking sticks, the handles of tools and even musical instruments. It would burn in a grate for hours giving out intense heat in the winter.

But he persevered and after a few blows, the tree revealed its deep reddish brown heart that showed that he was nearly through. He would soon be able to crack the last part open and pull the tree onto its side so that it could be dragged away and cut up.

His back hurt though from swinging the axe at an odd angle. He straightened up and felt a stripe of pain from the small of his back to his shoulder. He wiped his forehead with his hand and found his palm red with blood and green moss from the branches. In the fight with the tree he had cut his face without noticing. He dabbed his hand on his forehead and cheek and felt the sharp pain of the cut near his eye. Strange that he hadn’t noticed. So the tree had had its revenge and the battle had taken its toll.

Howard returned after a long day to hear sounds of shouting in the lane of Earls Court. He had passed through the village gate and stopped at the well cistern to dab water on his face and to drink. It was late and the rain had persisted most of the day. The walk back had been muddy and slow and his trousers and boots were wet through.

The shouting was coming from a group of men, their voices raw and harsh up in the lane – a few houses up. A bit of blue smoke hung over the group from the hearth fires that were being lit in the cottages for evening cooking so Howard couldn’t see who was shouting. But he thought he recognised William Massey – the boy Peter’s father – from his voice.

Howard took up his bag of tools and came up the lane. Massey was standing and shouting, waving his arms. A man was sitting in the mud of the lane. He was smeared with mud, his head down, trying to get up.

Massey was shouting again. As Howard approached, the group opened out. Two of the men Howard did not recognise. The other was Massey. The man on the ground was Daniel. He looked abject, filthy and wet with one leg in a deep puddle, his back against a low stone wall. One of his cleft feet was prominent, dripping with muddy water.

Howard felt his anger rise. Massey looked defiant but the other two men were more apologetic. They weren’t Earls Court men, but labourers that worked with Massey on the roads as stone breakers.

One said: ‘Will pushed him over. That’s all. He’s not hurt’

Howard looked again at Daniel. His soldier’s jacket was stained and dark with water. He looked desperate, small and vulnerable. How could William Massey have picked on him?

‘Why did you push him? What possible reason could you have? A soldier home from fighting for his country?’

Massey looked defiant. He was rubbing his hands together which were grimy with stone dust and mud. Howard noted the size of the hands and fingers, their huge square nails. They would make fists like hammers.

Daniel was still struggling to get up, his heel sliding in the puddle as he tried to gain a footing. His face was turned up, the grey light catching the red of his thin beard. He steadied himself against the wall.

Massey’s voice was loud, raw, but somehow childish: ‘Keep away from my wife and the other women – and the kids. If you know what’s good for you’

He lunged forward with his huge fists up. Daniel flinched. His grey soldier’s jacket was torn and open at the chest. He looked like a boy lost in a fight that he didn’t understand.

*****************************

Mrs Van Dijk was boiling with anger. She had planned to make food and was taking apples from the apple barrel when Howard and Daniel appeared. She had heard the shouting in the lane but hadn’t thought that it was anything to do with them. Now she sat by the window shaking her head and tutting, tapping her fingers on the table. The food was forgotten.

It had only been Howard’s calm words that had stopped her losing her temper and going around to William Massey’s cottage to shout at him. She looked at Daniel every few seconds taking in his forlorn figure sat by the fire, soaked in mud. She’d not even persuaded him to take off his jacket and put on some dry clothes.

He cowered, his head low. The ragged ends of his trousers dripped on the tiles. He was black with mud.

How could these people treat a soldier like this; someone that had fought, shown bravery, risen above adversity? She was so angry, livid!

Howard heated up soup and served it to them. Daniel ate as he always did, head down, eating as if every meal was his last. After the soup and some bread, he was persuaded to take some of Howard’s dry clothes. He washed his face in a bucket in the yard in the fading evening light, and came to sit by the fire.

Without his soldier’s clothes, Mrs Van Dijk thought he looked very different. Even younger than before. His thin face and eyes that turned up at the edges gave him an elfin appearance, quite childlike. Even the tufts of his ginger beard seemed young.

‘I am sorry’ she said for the fourth or fifth time. ‘I’m sorry for these stupid men’

Howard had described the ugly scene with the men around Daniel sprawling in the mud. Fighting was so ugly. Why did men fight?

‘It’s alright’ Daniel said.

‘It’s not’ she said stridently.

That morning she had been reading Ovid again, the story of Actaeon. This was a part she had not translated, so she had read it straight from the Latin: the horror of Actaeon’s death. The part where he was turned into a stag by Diana was alright, even poetic, but the part where Actaeon was running from the hunting dogs – that was horrible. He was betrayed and devoured by his own dogs.

How could your own kind turn against you!

But she said nothing.

In the candlelight and with the food warm inside them, Daniel began to talk a little more.

He had slept in the last few weeks in the woods, or in an old barn to the north near Henry’s farm. This is where he had seen the boy on a few occasions. When it had rained Daniel had tried to find shelter, but had not always succeeded. Sometimes he had simply slept out in the rain.

But Daniel knew how to make fire so he could cook. He had snared a rabbit or two. This was something he’d learned on the battlefield while he’d been away – in the early spring where it was so cold that you would freeze if you didn’t light a fire, and you had to live off the land when the soldier’s rations didn’t arrive.

If you could light a fire you could keep warm. Your clothes could dry and you could cook.

But sometimes it was warm and he would sit by a stream or in a field of wheat soaking up the sun.

‘Anything is better than the battlefield’ he said.

‘I was able to become a professional soldier by concealing my feet in a pair of big boots. They wouldn’t have taken me otherwise. I joined the infantry, the Rifles, but because I was quick I became a runner like Pheidippides who brought the news of the Greek victory over the Persians to Athens’

‘What does a runner do’ asked Howard.

‘Oh, he takes orders and news from one part of a battlefield to another. Sometimes it’s a good job because you get out of the trenches and breathe the fresh air; sometimes it’s dangerous because you are a target. Many other runners died’

‘But you survived?’

‘Obviously’

Daniel smiled for the first time it seemed. His face seemed bright in the candlelight, tilted up, remembering. But he was remembering his time in the fields of the Vale, not the battlefield.

‘On sunny days I sometimes saw kids playing. This was when I pretended to be a scarecrow. I said I was a scarecrow and that I was looking for a scarecrow wife!’

‘Yes we know’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

‘I sang a scarecrow song’

He looked concerned for a second.

‘I didn’t scare the kids?’

‘No’ said Mrs Van Dijk. ‘They liked it’

‘I was brought up in farmland’ said Daniel. ‘Near Norwich. My father was a farm labourer and I looked after cattle from a young age. But I wanted to see a bit of the world which is why I became a soldier. Now I want to settle down. I would like to have a son or daughter and pretend to be a singing scarecrow. I don’t want to live under trees or in hedges anymore, catching rabbits, cooking on camp fires’

Mrs Van Dijk had begun to like Daniel. Now she knew what to do.

 *****************************

The next morning, she went out leaving Howard and Daniel. Howard went to work in the yard and Daniel came out to help. It was sunny amongst the carrots and the leeks, and the bees buzzed. The stone wall at the back was bright with flowers.

Mrs Van Dijk returned. They heard her stoke the fire in the living room and the clang of the kettle as she put it on to boil to make tea.

She stuck her head out of the doorway.

‘Would you like tea? Howard, Daniel?’

Howard stood up and straightened his back. He would like tea.

Inside Mrs Van Dijk explained to Daniel that she had found him a job as a cow herder in a farm by the river. There were twenty cows and a big barn. Part of the barn was a room where he could live. He would receive payment. The farmer would keep him forever if he was good.

‘You can also carry milk around to the villages to sell. There is a cart’ she said.

Daniel was happy. He smiled into his tea showing his long teeth.

‘I found the right place after all. A bountiful place’ he said, pronouncing the word slowly.

They sat for a while listening to birds twittering in the back yard trees.

Howard smiled to himself.

‘When you make fire’ he asked turning to Daniel, ‘do you use matches?’

Daniel thought this an odd question. Anyone who had been a soldier or who had lived outside knew that matches became wet too easily to be used to make fire.

‘Why no’ he said, and he pulled from his pocket a grey box with a chain and a small attached hook–shaped object. He put it on the table between them.

‘I use this old tinderbox’

Howard nodded vigorously and Daniel wondered why.

 © M H Stephenson 2025