Wessex Tales: "Julia" (Story 11) Read online

  Chapter 3

  A four-mile run meant little to Cogimaglos, who routinely coursed with hare-hounds on the downs. Two miles behind Julia he left the main track to take a parallel course through woods where the leaf-mould of years lent a spring to his stride. The cool forest floor was unbroken by hooves and wagon ruts, and the perpetual shade eliminated the bracken and brambles which made running on the edge of the track difficult.

  It was to Cogi’s disadvantage that he had not spent years practising the arts of verbal persuasion, as Julia had. He was more devoted to her than his matter of fact manner led her to believe. He would marry her. It was as simple as that from his point of view, and if he had to undertake the toils of Hercules to win her, so be it. As he pounded down a game trail in the woods, Cogimaglos made a vow. If the Fates would give him Julia, he would drive an ox across the downs and sacrifice it to the god-in-the-hill, Cernunnos-Hercules.

  This deity had been carved in the flank of a hill long before by the local garrison at a time when the despot-emperor Commodus identified himself with the hunting prowess of Hercules. Local Britons, caring little for Roman myth, adopted the figure as their own Brythic god of the hunt, the stag-headed, club-wielding Cernunnos.

  Cogimaglos rebuked himself. Instead of launching into this futile run he would have done better to commission a druid to slow Julia down by invoking spirit powers. His frustration grew when the woods to his left gave way to marsh and he was forced to head back to the track she had taken. By now she must surely have reached the spring. Once past the marsh he plunged back into woods, and the trail disappeared to his right. At least his route was a straight line; Julia, riding two sides of a triangle, had further to go.

  Cogi was so preoccupied that he never saw the animal standing across his path until he was almost upon it. A ten-point stag stood still as a rock, sniffing the air between them, unafraid. By rights the beast should have melted away in the woods at the first whiff of man. Instead it just waited, and watched. Cogi slid to a halt and they stood, eyeing each other during fifteen heartbeats of time while the human caught his breath and tried to think.

  Religious belief was passing through interesting times. The new Christus-god in the floor was imposing himself on deities that had themselves been imposed on an ancient world of spirit powers. As the druids put it: all things that are, are alive. Spirits still spoke through a cosmos of gods, plants, men, rocks and beasts. They spoke in lightning, in wind, in the laughter of streams, in evanescent faces written in fire. Did not holy men go off to starve and freeze in wild places in hope of gaining insight or earning that spiritual enlightenment which only shamans see? Visions were induced by pangs of hunger or exhaustion, Cogi knew. Never taking his eyes off the stag he bent forward, resting his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

  Cogimaglos had spent his whole life among coloni who revered the spirits of their holy wells, the land and their animals. Many of his father’s best workers took advice from animal-spirit familiars. He had never encountered one personally, but he had once spent three months on the downs apprenticed to his father’s best shepherd, a man who never made a move without harking to spirit voices or searching for omens in water and clouds.

  Cogimaglos’s sudden stop was inducing bright flashes before his eyes. Was the path-blocking beast a vision brought on by exertion? Surely not. He caught his breath and the stag remained. He heard his voice addressing the stag: “Old Father,” he was saying respectfully, “I have to hurry.” The animal sniffed the air and pawed the ground. “I have to reach the holy spring at Fummel before someone else gets there.” The stag regarded him. “The fortune of my life depends on it.” The stag stood impassive. Cogimaglos stepped forward. Fifteen feet between them. Thirteen. Twelve. “If you are spirit, Lord, take yourself off and slow her down.”

  In a flash he recalled that barely a mile ago he had offered an ox to Cernunnos, more in a mood of grim determination than invocation, to be sure, but he had offered it. Cogi edged forward, determined to touch the beast and assure himself that it was real. “If you are spirit, Lord,” he repeated himself, “please speed me on my way and slow her down.” The stag moved his head up and down in the manner of his kind, the better to smell and see the man. Five feet between them. Four. Cogimaglos reached … and the stag leaped away, leaving Cogi the flash of its rump and a flick of soil against his legs as it sprang away among the trees. He could smell the beast in the air currents left in its wake, and the marks of its hooves in the rich loamy soil were real: water was oozing into some of the prints. Cogi had taken his eyes off the beast for no more than a second to look at its hoof prints, but when he looked back the stag was gone. He shouted into the rustling trees, “Grant me this one, spirits, if you will!” His echo still dwelt on the woodland’s tongue as he started to run again, invigorated, towards the Fummel spring.