Gudrun’s Acre

29/09/2006

In 2005 we announced a short story competition, organised in tandem with the Luton Writer’s Circle. Over 200 entries were received - and this is the winner, a beautiful, evocative piece by Pamela Hodge.

Gudrun woke to the sound of the great beast roaring in the forest. Shivering, he crept to the wooden shutters and peered through a crack into the night. The moon was nearly full. It had been a frosty spring day and rime still clutched the earth. Gudrun’s land, beyond the cottage of wattle and daub, was a mass of silver tares casting moon-shadows. Gudrun lifted his eyes to the encircling forest feeling the familiar fear gnaw at his mind.

The beast, bigger than ten wolves, paced through the trees, its eyes so bright that light shone from them, cutting a path through the darkness. Gudrun wrapped his thin arms about his shivering body but in spite of his fear he was unable to take his eyes from the monster. Perhaps it was not truly a wild beast but a spirit. The thought chilled him even more. Such a spirit could only be bad. For two nights it had roamed the forest coming no closer than the edge.

Gudrun crept back to bed to huddle in the straw beside Wulfrida, drawing the ragged goatskins about his emaciated body.

Steve drove the tractor skilfully into the dark yard and, cutting the engine, leapt down and strode into the farmhouse, kicking off his boots in the lobby and grateful for the warmth of the Aga after half a night of ploughing. Jan was waiting up for him, her blonde head bent over the farm accounts. She rose swiftly and gave him a quick hug before reaching into the oven and lifting out a steaming pasty. The smell of pastry and onions filled the kitchen.

“How did it go, then?” she asked, pouring boiling water into the big brown pot. “Great.” Steve attacked the pasty, succulent with meat and potato. “I’m three quarters through the Home Field.”

“And...?” Jan watched him intently. Steve shrugged.

“I dunno. Can’t explain it but it happened again tonight. It’s so clear up there, Jan. One minute there’s just the earth in front of the tractor and the next... shadows of trees. Strange. Something to do with the moon and clouds I guess but a bit spooky all the same.”

Jan grinned at him. “If I’d said that you’d have laughed at me. Anyway, no clouds tonight, or hadn’t you noticed? I reckon it’s a time slip. Your dad always said the forest grew almost to the door at one time.”

Mention of his father brought a sudden silence to the room as they both remembered the gaunt old man, spending his final weeks sitting by the Aga, bent over with coughing and more like a famine victim than the big, cheerful farmer he had been. Whatever the authorities said, it was the sheep dip. Steve had sold off the sheep. He shook away the memory.

“Boys OK?” he asked.

“Mmm. Went off to bed like lambs after I had let them watch you from the window. They can’t wait to be old enough to help.”

Later, in bed with Jan breathing quietly beside him, Steve was suddenly overwhelmed by  the feeling of continuity. His sons to follow him farming Gudrun’s Acre, as he had followed his own father and grandfather. His ancestors had farmed this land before the making of the Domesday Book. Steve had done a project on it at school.

‘Gudrun, a free man. Son of Gudrun. One acre of land. One plow. One serf. Four swine. Ten goats...’ His thoughts in the past, Steve drifted into sleep.

 

Gudrun woke to a fine, frosty morning. With difficulty he crouched before the fire, blowing it into life and setting over it a pot of soaked grain. Beneath the goatskins Wulfrida stirred and made to rise but he gently shook his head and she snuggled down again. At any time now the child was due. Whether it would survive, conceived as it was during one of the longest droughts in living memory, Gudrun did not know. He could hope. He needed a strong son.

He had done the best he could, husbanded what little they had stored, went without himself so that Wulfrida would have more. It was heartbreaking to see the animals he had struggled to rear grow thinner every day, the land so starved of rai that nothing would grow. When the river ran dry Gudrun killed the beasts, salting down their thin flesh. He went each day to the sacred spring in the wood to fill his leather bucket. He took sparingly, conscious that he may invoke the anger of the Goddess. Each day he thanked Her courteously, promising a token should he survive.

Gudrun knew that the drought was almost over. At the last new moon, rain had fallen and new tares were growing on his land pushing up through the thicket of dead brambles. Each day he picked leaves for them to eat but the time had now come to clear the land and plough it, ready to receive the precious grain which he kept hidden in his thatch. But how could he do this? Without the oxen he used to share with his neighbours he could not use the plow.

Each day Gudrun knelt on his land, painfully pulling at the brambles, but he had little strength left. He could not hope to clear the land in time for the spring sowing. This acre had been his life and his father’s before him, the seasons of sowing and reaping, of fasting and feasting, the careful husbandry of the earth.

Weakly, Gudrun dragged himself outside the cottage and began to pull at the weeds.

“Ploughing again tonight, love?” Jan smiled up at him as he pulled on his jacket.

“Yes,” he answered, “I’ll finish Home Field and maybe Gudrun’s Acre, too.”

“Gudrun’s Acre?” Jan sounded surprised. “I thought you were leaving that fallow this year?”

“Mmm,” Steve said vaguely. “That’s what I’d planned but I dunno. I keep getting this feeling I should plough it after all. See how I go.” And giving her a cheerful kiss he strode into the night.

 

Gudrun heard the roar of the beast coming nearer to the cottage and slid quietly out of bed to check that the wooden pole was holding the door fast closed. Fearfully he peered through the crack in the shutter. The beast was on his land. Bravely, Gudrun crouched behind the shutter. He hugged his shivering knees to his chest and stared through narrowed, frightened eyes into the night.

The moon was full but rainclouds were racing across the sky, now clothing the beast in darkness, now illuminating it. It didn’t move like a beast, Gudrun thought, but came on smoothly, sometimes rolling from side to side a little, its shining eyes unblinking. Its head was held high, tall and squared. How could that be when its eyes were so much lower down?

Almost forgetting his fear in his curiosity, Gudrun slipped open the shutter as the beast, now ranging from left to right of the cottage, came within his line of vision. Just for a moment, before the clouds moved swiftly across the face of the moon again, Gudrun could see that  what he thought was a head was really a sort of box, and inside that box... Gudrun slammed the shutter closed but not before he had seen the unmistakable shape of a man sitting within it. A man was riding the beast!

Terrified, Gudrun gave a low wail of horror and flung himself back into bed, holding Wulfrida to him and covering their heads with goatskins.

The growling beast strode back and forth across Gudrun’s Acre, now loud as it passed the cottage, now purring softly at the boundry of his land. The time seemed endless but at last Gudrun was aware of the lessening of sound. Shaking with fear he crawled to the crack in the shutter and looked out. The beast had gone. Gudrun could hear it muttering to itself in the distance.

Wrapping his hands about his head, Gudrun  collapsed on the dirt floor, moaning deep in his throat as he rocked miserably back and forth.

Steve enjoyed night ploughing, the chill of the night kept from him by the cab, the gleam of  moonlight on the turning  furrows, the rushing of clouds above his head. He’d decided after all to plough Gudrun’s Acre but it was only as he set the blades for the first furrow that he suddenly knew that, for whatever reason, it was the right thing to do. It didn’t take much time, this long, thin strip. The soil, soft and friable, crumbled richly away from the blades, quite different to the rest of the farm. His father had always said it was because this was the heart of the farm. Always had been. The only part of the modern farm that had been continuously cultivated. Centuries of careful husbandry. Manure from generations of grazing animals. Rotation of crops and the treating of the earth with reverence.

Steve looked back at the silver and black field with satisfaction.

 

Gudrun woke with a feeling of dread. The beast had trampled through his dreams all night and had wakened with him this morning. Wearily he blew the fire alive and set the pot of soaked grain to heat then, throwing a goatskin across his shoulders, he unbarred the door and stepped outside. For a moment he thought he had walked into a different world and leaned against the door post, feeling his knees buckle beneath him. He stared at his land. The beast, with its sharp claws, had torn away the tares and made deeply scratched furrows in the rich earth.

Gudrun stood for a long time, quite unaware of the cold or the tears on his face, until a hand on his shoulder made him step aside and share with Wulfrida the sight of row upon row of dark, frost-rimmed ridges. Wulfrida was quicker to act. She hurried to the fire, mixed a small amount of their precious hoard of flour with a little spring water to make a small cake which she placed in the warm ashes, and soon after watched Gudrun as he crouched by the first furrow making a nest in the soil for the Earth Mother’s offering. Now they could be sure of their harvest and somehow they would manage until the grain was ripe and golden.

Gudrun’s meagre body filled with sudden energy. Fetching his shoulder pouch he filled it from the bag of grain stored in the thatch.

Steve walked to the edge of Home Field checking the soil. Perhaps later today he’d start sowing. Lifting his head he was surprised to see a shadowy figure on  Gudrun’s Acre. At first he thought with a start that it was the ghost of his father, so thin and gaunt he was, but then he saw the thatch of honey-coloured hair, so like his own, as the figure rhythmically flung handfuls of shining grain on to the dark soil. He stood quietly and watched.

 Gudrun smelled the air. Already it was warmer and he knew that rain would soon come. Turning to walk to the next furrow, he glanced up at the forest. On the edge of the tree-line someone was watching him. Not a person. Gudrun could see clearly the trees through its body. A spirit then. Hastily, Gudrun offered up a prayer to the Earth Mother for protection. The thought came clearly to his mind that this was the beast-rider. He knew now that he was wrong to have been so afraid. The beast- rider had been sent to help him. His prayers had been answered.

Gudrun and Steve faced each other across the shining furrows. Gudrun lifted his hand in thanks and greeting and, across the years, Steve answered with a friendly wave. In the stillness, a new-born baby cried.