BY FRANK MILLARD

It was upon one cold bone-locked day of drizzle, curses and spitting naves, it was in low fast clouds full of rain and darting swifts that Fortune’s wheel turned and a king tumbled from his throne.

Sometime between men and worms a drear band of horsemen exchanged words through the horse-steam, armour stained and dented, muddy livery peeled in ribbons.

The king’s son was among them: tousled and sickened, head bowed, plume broken, surcoat stiff with blood.

Orphaned and disinherited in an hour.

His father’s head was a trophy on a pole

Smudges, blushing gulleys and cloven harness,

flying crossbow bolts and a drawing of swords, a scream, a hollow and horrible echo, a ghastly clamour and ruin of metal.

Swords and axes bludgeoned in the mist as the young man was plucked from blood and blade into the foggy cloud.

Autumn

All through the spumy afternoon stone kings and queens looked skywards.

Censers swung and the autumn fragrance of bonfires pervaded everything.

Spires appeared, flying westwards through the milky void,

And downcast ladies lifted their skirts to kneel in sanctuary.

Moisture fogged the windows, and smoke billowed, as Warin mud-splashed past the gates of a walled town. He did not see the vils and the shadows as he past them in the gloom, but he heard the peeling of bells, and urged his horse away and onward.

Huge rolling grey-green oaks surged in the storm, spewing leaves

Storm squalled.

Rain slashed colours in the grey.

Rooks turned above the treetops.

Wet parti-coloured leaves dripped into the grass.

Found in a bed of acorns a young shepherdess half carried and half dragged Warin to her shelter in the forest where he slept long and deeply as the rain and the currents of change at work in the world washed away any trace of him.

The old autumn floor, the muddy meadow and the leafy lanes were garnished with a velvet glistening of hoarfrost.

The young king and the shepherdess fell in love with one another without either one of them wishing to do so. Both had nothing, she by choice and he by force of circumstance. They flung themselves into each other’s abandon.

Mirror ripple.

In the high beech trees

and the rough red bracken

I shall be true to the open sky.

Hedgerows

(plashed with yellow)

half undressed at dusk.

Down the steepy leafy lane

a cycle bell trills in the foggy twilight.

A new season prunes back opinions

and washes away the labels.

“An open book”

she declared from her position on top of the sideboard.

Hietheleste dangled her legs over the edge.

Her feet were as warm as fire-side cats.

Twin slippers of Indian scarlet hung from her toes.

Dark eyed and wild,

Raven-haired and serpentine.

She wore silver earrings and kept a dagger beneath her pillow.

The be-slippered feet cruised earthwards and came to rest like two poppies on a French canvas.

Unlace me, my darling.

Deliver me of harness

and unburden me of plate.

Unshell me out of pauldron and vambrace.

Thread me with your mind

amid the tumbling of colours.

Stab me with kisses.

Lay me on the autumn earth

and clothe me with your nakedness.

The solar, the garderobe and the drawing-room were dagger cold that Michaelmas term – that piled the leaves up in the pathways and froze the bell in the spire.

Winter had split the guttering and the pipes, had reddened the schoolmaster’s nose and had frozen the tea in the pot. But had not harmed Warin and the shepherd-maid – foetal-warm in their bower of wicker and snow.

The hearth light flickered, the days grew colder, the eyes of the shepherdess embered through the gloom. Warin stared back at her and into memory…

The palace was a box of courtiers – like coloured sweets in a stone jar.

It was a draughty delicatessen full of the pot-pouri scents of sweet-straw and wild flowers scattered over the rush-covered floors, the fragrant wood-smoke of apple and cherry logs, and the taste of raspberries, pastries and peaches in wine.

Into those capacious tapestried halls came wild Clara (with her hair ribboning down) loved amid ermine and strawberry leaves.

Is it only her eyes that are left…

Shinning from the face of the shepherdess?

The seed of the pattern celestial is everywhere

and everywhere is everywhere reflected.

So from the study of our own untidy lives

we may determine movement in the heavens.

But what does the sparkle of black stars portend?

Alignments across a hall – a hovel?

Is it really the world that changes or just our perception of it?

Old friends turn daily into strangers.

Opinions and attitudes change.

“Only the questions change”

said the shepherdess

“the answer remains the same.

Be as you are.

You cannot ever be anything more nor less than what you are.

Find yourself, know yourself, be yourself

this is wisdom.”

Winter

A pied landscape

tides of snow

mouthfuls of winter

armfuls of chill

tufted islands of grass

and a dark, powdery, misty, mystical green.

Flame and tallow

snow flurry and stinging toes.

A solitary bell strikes the hour with the resonance of frost

As a white queen sits down to write.

Lanterns and torches gutter

an evensong choir shiver under a spell of ice.

Ladies-in-waiting play ragman roll in the great hall

and snowballs fly

as well-wrapped squires and clerics

roast chestnuts in the watchfires.

The snow is a conspiracy of softness and sharpness..

a bleaching of battlefields and an erasing of highways.

The landscape is haunted with whiteness, obscured by movement.

Skeletal apparitions emerge for an instant..

and then whiteness, whiteness and the grey wide sky.

A blur in the turning skies… wrapped in cloak and liripipe, tied about with furs

I return with dry tinder to the woodfire, spitting kettle and you.

Even in the deepest sanctity of winter.. spring does not sleep

but shoots from every branch, ignites in the hedgerows

and erupts beneath the brittle earth..

where slender white-green spears and spirals

shoot like little rockets into this world.

Warin stood high in the Cathedral stillness on Brightshadow Downs

a speck, a spark, a distraction on the lithe white body of the earth.

Snow powder spumed along the drifts

trees and bushes hung with sparkling snow

(icy spires)

in the bright azure sky.

(The complaint of the Shepherdess)

Snow

falling

rising

gusting

swirling

The shepherdess rode her palfrey full tilt through the bracken and the jangling mists with clinking harness and a silver spray of snow.

The terrifying sorceress wept as she flew through the world

and a dog barked in the woods.

Snow was blowing in her face as she sang this song..

“Oh how I hate you

and the agony of pleasure.

My throat is parched with cold,

my cheeks are singed with frost.

I have spent the whole day and the long blizzard night

emptying the grimmoires

and weaving all the spells that I could find

that might keep me from loving you.

For love is suffering

though a suffering akin to paradise

and a bed of roses has thorns.

Although I cannot forgive you

neither can I forget you

or tear you out of my soul.

If I cannot be rid of you

I must have all of you

completely..

Consume you utterly in the ravenous jaws of my lust,

peel back the layers of your being,

know and cherish every part of you

and hold you ever tighter

each time your phoenix returns to the flames.”

(Warin’s reply)

“I am lost in this dark unending white

a sifting of snow

more confetti for the frigid earth.

The night is snow high peaked,

and in the morning

fresh print on the snowy page.

Brush these old leaves of snow,

pick away tired opinions.

This strange new life,

these inspirations..

a secret spring.

You tell me that I have chewed away your long fingernails with your angry teeth

and that I have put your hair in disarray in my absence.

I cannot answer

I must not show weakness

a power holds us both in thrall.

Snow blows the night about.

Sleepless, I count your straying sheep on the hillsides.”

Spring

I see it is not snow upon your boughs

but the pale delicacy of spring.

At last

with the passing of winter

the earth broke its silence..

Horns were heard in the forest,

pilgrims made their way to Canterbury,

tinkers to country fairs.

New colours burst into the open

in floods of new light.

Plump sallow-haired girls

with chapped lips and streaming noses

rode the march wind down.

After the raw cold of winter

welcome back to the sky.

To squeeze the world a little

and taste the juice of life.

Every century walks with you.

Perception is your reality.

Secret love sequesters itself

within your hermetic gaze.

Curtain walls drawn all around,

eyes portcullised in the afterglow of kissing.

Into this tidy fortress of love

none other may enter.

All is rural quiet beyond the ramparts.

A jack and sallet for the scarecrow,

nettles through the broken siege engines.

Bows splinter and pikes rust,

bombards fill with bird’s nests.

Ploughs ride the downs

Great gliding deities

Sail through the sky

Passed majestic ice flows and incredible space-scapes

in the immensity of the azure.

After the raw cold of winter

welcome back to the sky.

Linger with sharp and smoky greens my morning

while I lay me on your drenched pillows

and walk me in the violet rain.

Your lawn is a sponge today.

Towers and spires swim above the clouds.

Swimming in and out of sleep

you return to me

as fresh as lemon peel.

On warm-hugged pillows

gather we each other up

moist and languid

knees and arms.

Sometimes between dreaming and waking

there is no divide

nor any between us my love.

There was a new quality in the air when Warin awoke

a new light

freckling on the face of his lady and glinting in her hair.

Carding combs glowed in the bright mote-drift.

Skylarks piped high over these pages.

“What emphatic sword-swish smile

amid these bluebell cups and I

comes swimming through this English glade

swollen with cow parsley and May?

All the world waved its banners.

Warin (dizzy with lavender) wandered in the sweet spray of twisting fountains

and found parks and gardens sequestered in the blue misted woodland.

Soft wind blew among the ferns and pattered on conservatory windows.

Warin lost himself amid poplars, lakes and terraces.

Chinese lanterns hung in the trees

and buttercups shimmered in the river meadows.

In a moated summerhouse (a wooden castle of sunny contentment) Warin spoke with the shepherdess late into the afternoon.

But one morning Warin awoke without her…

The house shook in a summer storm.

Branches threw themselves against the walls and doors in the sopping wind.

Rain rammed against the thatch,

smattered and chattered upon the windows

and spat down the chimneys.

He fumble-felt around the bed for her with his ringless fingers

and found himself the bedfellow of panic.

The signet had gone with her out into the world of his enemies.

Water clocks dripped away the hours of a showery afternoon.

Warin sat upon a hutch and grieved Othello-like

jealous of the day that held her in its arms.

But summer serves and kings have friends

And when the shepherdess returned

it was with stout men in harness

suns and swans stitched into their velvet caps.

We are all kings in our own countries.

We each have responsibilities to our own individual destinies

and owe respect to our fellow sovereigns.

Only as individuals

unsullied by faction or external persuasion

can we be even handed and compassionate to all.

The sun shines on all alike.

This is to find one’s place in the grand design

and when the jig-saw fits the universe is complete.

This is the beneficence of kings… positively.

But, to be a ruler?

A head on a coin,

a headless crown in a faceless crowd

far from the blithe beloved mob

takes a special kind of humility.

Summer

How can I fill these flat white pages with all the colours of Summer

and cut out the wonder of an English landscape with my keyboard?

St George’s flag

summer flutter.

Long golden hair running in the wind.

Near the churchyard gate they took their leave of one another

embracing each other from the saddle.

“I saw you this morning” said Hietheleste “riding through the vale on your bonny white prancer with a sprig of green in your hair

and I thought to charm the birds to sing above your lovely head.”

she clasped his hands together and said “God speed, my lord, God speed”

then all the people shouted “God save the king, God save the king” and “please God save our good and gentle king.”

The stately mounted figure departed and blurred in a score of eyes as it merged into the forest’s depth.

With all the pomp of an English summer’s day

the forest saw king Warin go

in purple rags and daisy chains of office

bedecked in gossamer and cuckoo-spit

and crowned with wild sunflowers.

Warin crossed the misty moors of Somerset

glad of towers and ancient beacons

and the cider-flavoured kisses of the shepherdess.

There was a Saxon church among the trees

and in the distance

long purple hills of honey-sweet heather

bright in the dreamy summer sunshine.

A summer wind blew

and turned leaves and tablecloths.

Petals and small twigs swam in the breeze.

Sticky wine spangled in silver cups,

and the sun peeled the skin from a dozen feasting warriors.

Warin’s allies rose and knelt as one

pledging themselves to England’s son

the servant of the realm.

The battle song of Warin the Gentle

A reluctant king faced the usurper with these words…

“Shake sand across the page

fetch my spurs

cut the twine

and unfurl my banner

in the meet wind of this hour.

To horse, to horse.

We ride for England’s liberty

with Britannia’s bright favours in our shining helms.

To arms my beardless knights and fleece-headed earls

it is time to climb into chain mail

buckle on plate

and ride with lances a’outrance

into the ghastly fray.

No words now

no more words

just bitter bloody death

the cruelty of sharpened steel

and the rape of all our principles.

And although our cause is just

there is no justice here.

So close your visors to reason

and cut off your mind with their heads.

Press forward..

numb slaughter

numb slaughter.

Here only the dead survive.”

Grim faced barons came encased in iron shells

like queues of archaic crustacea.

Lances and pikes,

pallets, bendlets and chevronels.

A semy of estoiles.

Mollets, crescents and suns-in-splendour.

Sailing ships floated among the twinkling spear tips.

Leopards danced in space with flocks of dragons and grimacing bears.

Teeth, claws and talons shredded the sky into coloured patterns.

Justice and liberty are more mighty than iron.

The commander of the traitor’s van-ward went over to Warin,

and the enemy were scattered and routed with hardly a fight.

With their adversaries dispersed, beaten and exiled into far-flung oblivion

the knights of the new royal household returned the king to his land

and also to his betrothed, Clara of Anstibury.

Clara and the shepherdess were one and the same

(as you’ve probably guessed by now)

which was just as well considering that king’s marriages to landless young shepherdesses have never proved popular among courtiers or royal uncles, and infant betrothals less than promising to the betrothed.

But, how does a sorceress view marriage to the captain of the faith in England?

The lady Clara Hietheleste de Anstibury answered thus..

“The great Mother has said..

‘Whoever denies Christ, denies me.’

The faeries that I meet dancing along the way sing..

‘We all know Jesus here,

as we always have,

better than many who wear his mark.’

There are many doctrines but only one God.”

Wedding Breakfast

In the pale ferny forest core

dawn ripe rowan berries

embered in the opalescent mists.

Eager in piked shoes came Warin to his bride.

There was laughter in the apple trees

that clarion blown day

when time struck light foot

upon the sunny isle of glass.

A lady in cloth of silver

with eyes as grey as goose

shone amid a celestial veil of thistledown.

Warm bright ruby glass

set in rose windows

blushed on the faces of chaplet-headed lovers

beneath Doulting stone in flight.

Warin brushed down his pendent sleeves

he looked nervously from face to face..

He saw no one but her.

The archbishop, Wallace de Tobin, crowned them in an hour.

Cloths of estate were held over their heads.

The sacred oaths of coronation were mouthed and meant

in every corner of every soul there present.

So, fortune’s wheel had turned with the pages and the clock.