The Stones of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston (illustrated by Peter Boston). (NOT COMPLETED YET)
Title: The Stones of Green Knowe.
Author: Lucy M. Boston (illustrated by Peter Boston).
Genre: Fiction, children's lit, YA, fantasy, time travel, historical fiction.
Country: England, U.K..
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1976.
Summary: Roger d'Aulneaux, a son of a Norman settler and the first child to live in Green Knowe (in A.D. 1120), loves it with such devoted pride that he longs to know it will endure. Then he finds his own magic that will take him forward to check on its safety hundreds of years ahead, and meets Toby, Linnet, Susan and Tolly, who love it just as he does.
My rating: 8/10.
My review:
♥
♥ The hall his family had lived in till now was log-built, solid and dark and smoky. Its walls and rafters were painted in bright colours, but the smoke from the fire in the centre of the floor blackened them as it curled its way up to the hole in the roof which served as a chimney. If, on a bitterly cold day sitting on the river bank with his fishing-line, Roger thought of the great comfort of being back again in the house, the smell of wood-smoke, and food, and people, and wet dogs, and straw and stable (for the four white oxen and the best horses had their stalls in with the family), came to mind at the cosiest thing imaginable.
♥ "No sensible man," Osmund said, "expects peace to last. But I hope this new house will."
♥ She told him the old Saxon legends and stories, in which often the Normans were the enemies and did not always get the best of it, and she told them in her native English which best suited their racy style. This had to be confidential between her and Roger, as the lady Eleanor did not approve. In Norman families French was the proper language. English was for the natives, the lower orders. But the grandmother too was proud of her birth, and she loved her native land as a conqueror never could.
♥ The mason handled the stone lovingly.
"There's good stone and bad stone," he said, "you could say it's living. Put your hand on a natural boulder warm in the sun, you can feel it's not dead, like bone for instance. The sun makes no difference to bone. Some pieces of stone are by nature bad, you can't do anything with them, and some are solid and loyal and will last for ever. Besides that, stone takes something form what it is used for. I've got a piece here that's going into your wall. It didn't come from the quarry but from a stone merchant. It came out of a little church that the Vikings burnt down. It has got a Saxon cross on it. I'm keeping it for the upper room."
♥ His younger brother Edgar was at the Abbey learning to read and write in Latin, and one in the family with this useful knowledge was considered enough. If Roger could ride, hawk, shoot, count, say his prayers, play his flageolet and mind his manners, that was all that was required form the lord of the Manor's second son, and of these perhaps manners were the most important.
♥ It is said that the dog on its own ground always wins. In the end the intruder limped off and Watchet, bloodied from tattered ears and a ripped shoulder, returned with a panting happy grin and bright eyes to Roger, having enjoyed himself greatly.
♥ The forest had its own sinister population. More dangerous than wolves and bears was the wild boar that hid in the marshes.
Early in the morning when Roger relieved the shepherd form his night-watch and was alone under a sky streaked primrose and lilac by the sunrise, he felt that he, a human, as the rare occasional creature, while the whole world teemed with millions of other species living out their different lives, apparently with enjoyment but never without most watchful care.
♥ When he turned his back to the window and looked at the inside, it was shadowy and uncertain in the dusk, and as Roger held his breath it seemed to him that, less than half finished as the house was, the future was already there.
♥ The hearthstone was to be laid next morning and he was to be present for the ceremony. The hearth from all time was the centre and heart of the family. Under it would be placed a piece of silver, a piece of iron, and in a cavity a live toad. The silver was for wealth, the toad (because it was believed to live for hundreds of years) for permanence, and the iron to keep away the Little People, a smaller race of men who lived here before the Romans drove them out. They had lived in green knowes, which were dugouts roofed with a dome of turf, looking inconspicuous like a natural mound. Though they were small people they were good friends to have and bad enemies, for they could do magic. You never knew where they were. There might even be some in the forest still. Woodcutters told strange tales. Fortunately the Little People were afraid of iron. The old English name for the village was Green Knowe, but the Normans called it Turbeville, village of tuft. In the end, as Roger was to find out, the old name was the one that survived.
The family gathered together to watch the laying of the hearth, the lady Eleanor with the grandmother and the girls at the top of the steps, the boys on ladders and beams. Some planks were put across for Osmund, the master builder and the master mason to stand on, and the big hearthstone was hauled up by manpower on the pulleys and lowered into place. When it was straight and set, and the master builder had raised his hand in sign of approval, Roger crossed the beam to where his father stood and dropped on his knee in sign of obedience and loyalty. Osmund kissed him and afterwards his wife and daughters, and everyone went away for a special breakfast with a double ration of mead for the workmen and serfs. Then work began again.
♥ Roger, watching him dangle from his tongs a strip of red-hot metal, of which he was making a ring in the shape of a coiled snake for a sword belt, asked him who had first thought of such an unlikely way of treating rock, for he knew iron came out of rock.
"One of the old gods it was who first showed men how to do it. They could never have found out for themselves. That's why there's magic in it." Olaf deftly manipulated the almost liquid metal thread. "You'll have heard of Weland's magical sword, so thin and pliable he could circle it round his body. And of Excalibur, King Arthur's sword."
"And then," said Roger, who had heard it from a travelling scholar monk, "there was the Emperor Constantine who had his stirrups and bridle-bit made out of the three nails of the True Cross."
"Ay, maybe, but that was Christian magic. There's older than that. Much older."
"Can you do it?"
"Some, my father taught me. But it's dangerous stuff. The priests don't like it. They treat iron as if it was ordinary. So do I, mostly. But I know what I'm handling."
"Couldn't you do some little magic for me? ..Can't I stay and watch?"
Olaf plunged the glowing ring into water. When it had finished sizzling, his blue Viking eyes looked for the first time straight at Roger.
"What's secret is done in secret," he said.
♥ It was no surprise to Roger that magic dwelt in so many things-stone and wood, and iron and wells, and hawthorn trees, and rings and cups, and even sometimes in woven cloth. Old tales were full of all these things, and old tales handed on by word of mouth from age to age were believed in as the gathered knowledge of the human race. There was no limit to what might happen. Although Roger's world was small and he had never yet been farther than a day's ride from home, if you lived on the outskirts of a great forest through which there were tracks here and there but no through road, and if all the tales you heard were of invaders and raiders and giants and were-wolves and magicians, and if you lived on a river big enough for merchant ships to row up form the sea going to inland market towns, bringing with them strange men, strange tales and rumours of wars, there would be no lack of excitement.
All these free reaches of the imagination were centred for Roger in the new house that would stand to repel invaders, to receive heroes, to outlast perils, to withstand in its living stone walls the evils of witches and demons. And now he who would live in it would fittingly own a knife with magic on it.
♥ Roger offered him a silver coin, but he refused it. "Magic that's crossed with money goes bad."
♥
♥ "Now, among them there had been a certain sculptor famous for his craft. He had carved over the chancel arch the scene of the Last Judgement, the righteous rising up to heaven on one side and on the other the lost souls being thrust down into hell. In the centre was God the Judge with lightning in his hand. Now this sculptor could make stone come alive, so that people could not look at his carving without a feeling of holy fear. But the wicked baron that was sheltering there cared nothing for such things. As long as he stayed in sanctuary he was safe from his enemies, and he thought that surely money or blackmail or trickery would get him free. So he made himself as comfortable as he could for a night in the church. The place he chose for sleeping was the bottom step leading up to the chancel, because it was raised above the draught that blew along the floor from under the outside door. Little he thought of the Last Judgement just above him, but he cursed and swore at his enemies as he folded his cloak for a pillow and laid himself down, and he cursed again at the screech owls that sounded like demons besieging the church outside, and he cursed God Almighty for full measure.
"The sacristan came in in the early morning to prepare for Mass and there he found the baron lying dead, his body twisted and blistered and scorched black as if by lightning. It was difficult to find anyone brave enough to carry out the corpse that looked like the black Devil himself. However, because, though damned, the baron had been of the royal family, the Bishop decided, so as not to give offence, that he should be buried in the churchyard. A stone coffin was ordered for him. It was my father who made it. It took six men to move it on rollers to the shallow grave, and pulleys and levers to put it in. Then the corpse was laid in it, and six strong men heaved the monstrously heavy lid on top. Everyone was relieved when this evil creature was so securely boxed up and buried.
"Well, a month later it was All Souls' Day, and at Vespers the church was lit with a thousand votive candles and packed with people praying for the souls of their dead. There was solemn singing in the choir but outside the owls sounded like devils hooting and cheering, and things bumped against the glass of the windows. The congregation began to look round and forgot their prayers, and then they heard a human laugh as shrill as a horse's neigh, like the laughter of terror. And what was worst about it was that it had in it something of gratification. Also, to some of the congregation it was recognizable. It was in vain afterwards that the priest gave the Benediction and said, "Go in peace." Nobody cared to go out. The choir however followed the clergy out into the vestry and thence into the churchyard, the men clutching each other in terror. There they found the soil thrown back and the stone lid of the coffin open. The body had gone. Not a pleasant thought that that was roaming about."
His hearers let out their held breath and shivered. Then one added, "It's be hoped that coffin was never used again, valuable as they are. Think of that lid now. It would be a fine piece of stone, very useful. A good threshold stone."
"No, no," said two or three voices. "Don't say such a thing. Stone remembers."
An old man, who had been asleep, picked up at the last words.
"I remember the Stones," he squawked. "They used to stand not far from here, on a bank beside the way to the Abbey. My grandfather lived here and he used to tell of them. Are they still there?"
"What manner of stones would they be?"
"Why, the Stones. Surely you've heard tell of them? Very old, they were. Sort of tooled, but not with iron; and strange they were. Two of them standing out alone on a grassy hill at twilight, it gave you the jumps to see them. Always called the Stones they was, but nobody knew what they were or how they came here."
"I know the way to the Abbey well enough," said another, "but the forest has encroached a fair distance on this side since it became the King's hunting. Maybe they are just lost in the undergrowth. No one round here seems to remember them. But then everything has changed since the Normans took over. Even the lord is not from here. Who would remember?"
♥ The snow continued for a week, and the builders left their flimsy huts to take shelter in the Saxon hall where there was little enough room already.
The high table at the end of the hall was a step up from the mud floor of the main part, on a paved dais that could be kept clean. The table always had a clean linen cloth, and though the family ate with their fingers, table manners were very particular. Serving, eating and drinking at the high table were done with great style, not unlike the coming and going and genuflection of servers in the Mass. Behind the high table were two curtained fourposter beds, one for the grandmother and the girls, the other for the lord and lady and any important guest. Where everyone was so crowded together, it was the bearing and manners of the lord's family that distinguished them from the crowd with whom they mixed so closely.
"I shall be glad," said Osmund, sitting with his harassed and complaining wife just above the jostling and steaming mob, "when we have the new hall and this overcrowding can never happen again. We are herded like sheep."
♥
♥ The sun poured in through the windows and brought in with it the smell of sweet briar. Musicians played while the dishes were carried by pages in new clothes. It was a new way of living, it took Roger's breath away, but at the same time he had a sneaking regret for the boisterous enjoyment, the cracking of rude jokes and gales of laughter, that were going on in the old, dark fusty place where he had grown up. You could never have your horse with you here upstairs, nor wake up at night to see the shadows of the wide horns of the oxen thrown on the wall by the firelight. All the same, the grand new house was a proud place. His only real regret was that as it was spring they did not have a blaze in the new fireplace.
♥ "Do we sleep in here tonight?" asked the Earl's son.
"Certainly we do," said Osmund. "The beds are new and good. I think you should sleep well." But he blushed a little, suddenly realizing that till now he had slept with the animals. The Earl would think that quite barbarous, and indeed so now did he.
The end of the hall was curtained off for the bedchamber. The hangings were what the girls had been kept so busy all this time embroidering. These made a handsome background to the high table. In the body of the hall were tables and benches for the pages and the steward and other superior retainers, who would later make their beds on the floor. Roger as son of the house, though he slept with the pages, had his place at the upper end. He lay awake watching the shadows close down as the fire died. They waited in ambush under the timbered roof to rush out over the high walls, jumping back whenever a log collapsed and flared, lighting for a moment the beautiful arches; but they encroached more and more as he got sleepier. Watchet lying beside him dreaming some dream of his own, beat the straw mattress with his tail.
♥ The sun was setting. As it dropped behind the forest the shadows of the tees leapt towards Roger as if to take him captive. He knew that the extent of the forest was vast and unmeasured, only nibbled at here and there where men had made clearings along the rivers of enough ground to support small farms and hamlets. Now suddenly the forest seemed darker, quieter and more expectant, even watching. This was no place to be in after dark. Roger had sometimes ridden home through part of it at twilight after visiting the Abbey with his father, amid a clatter of retainers, but now he was alone, more than an hour's walk form home.
The sun dropped out of sight, and instantly it was twilight. Roger turned to look at the two stones where they stood in the little clearing he had made, at the top of a mound. They received the twilight as if they had never been parted from it, never been hidden; as if they were as old as the setting sun. And yet, they had no business to be there, they made no sense. They filled him with misgiving.
The afterglow of twilight faded out, and with the dusk a nightingale began to sing, hesitant at first but soon in full song, to be heard for miles. Roger took heart. The nightingale's song was as old as the coming of summer after winter. He did not doubt it had started with the creation of the world. He did not need to fear things for being old. It was rather a reason for loving them that they had been there so comfortingly long, like hills.
..Evening was closing in, and he was likely to miss supper, at which it was his privilege and his duty to wait on his father. He would be scolded for this breach of manners and perhaps have to go to bed hungry, but he felt a deep satisfaction. He had restored to their rightful position things that had a hidden meaning. When the moon rose it would shine on them as it had done long before, and when the sun rose it would find them there.
Roger bowed to the Stones that stood in the half-dark like two people, then he set off for home.
♥
When he had finished, his imagination, as well as his back, was tired. It seemed to him quite ordinary to sit down on a stone.
Before him spread a wide view. He could follow the course of the river through all the land he knew, from upstream, through the common land and the cultivated strips, the orchards and spinneys and the osier beds, and so into the blue distance. Away down there he could see the manor house, its new white plaster catching the sun. Its gable was as tall as the church tower. It dominated the landscape even though at this distance it looked no bigger than an egg.
Roger let his mind wander over the expanse, fixing the places that he knew, the trees that he recognized. In that wood was a heronry, under that cluster of hawthorns a badger's set. His thoughts ran on by themselves. The stone that he was sitting on was the same kind of stone as the Manor house walls. He supposed all stone was the same age, all dating back to the day of the creation when God made the earth, so that really the windows of his house, though newly tooled, were as old as the Stones. They could last as long into the future as those went back into the past. He passionately wanted the new house to be there for ever, as permanent where it stood as these stones on their hill. "I would like to see it," his thoughts ran, "a long time ahead, just to be sure, and to see who lives there then." His idle hands had plucked a dandelion head.
"I'll let this decide." He blew at the perfect sphere and a tuft of fluff flew off in a little cloud. "One hundred." He blew again and another tuft flew away. "Two hundred. Three hundred. Four hundred. Five hundred!" Only four threads were left. "I can't count those as hundreds. Say tens." He blew four times. "Five hundred and forty. I wish, just for half an hour, I could visit it in five hundred and forty years' time."
♥
♥ He hung around waiting for a moment when he could be alone with his grandmother. This was not easy in a house where everyone lived in one room. The girls were often whispering in corners, but the old lady was too dignified for that.
♥ "There were many stories about them in the old days before the Conquest. My old nurse used to say that if you went at full moon you would see the Devil sitting on one and his witch-wife on the other, but my mother said it would be the King and Queen of the Little People and they would grant you wishes, show girls their future husband, and that sort of thing."
"Dud you ever go and wish?"
"No, I never saw them, and when I heard of them it was already nothing but a very old legend. The story was that people used to take them offerings of flowers, and pour libations. They were so much venerated by the people that the Abbot of that time who was very stern and unyielding decided it must stop, because of course they were heathen things, not Christian. So one All Hallows' Eve he set off with a boy server to exorcise the Stones. But he had hardly begun when a pack of wolves came for him out of the forest and he was eaten up, every bone of him. The boy escaped by swinging the censer against the wolves' noses. But after that nobody dared to go for fear of the wolves, and after a while the Stones were forgotten."
"Why dd you never tell me about them?"
"Why, because if I had done you'd have gone straight to look for them."
"I've found them, Granny."
"You have? I might have guessed. Well, my dear boy, don't do anything to displease them. It is wise to be courteous to power when you meet it."
♥ It was hard to get at the truth. The clerk had to write down the judgement, which he did very slowly, as if to make it clear to the ignorant that writing was magic and to be treated with reverence and given time to work. Once it was written down it had absolute power.
♥ The courts lasted several days, for when free speech is a right people tend to make the most of the occasion. It had the advantage that in the evenings over supper Osmund was often very funny about it, being a good mimic and tired of being so solemn and severe in public.
♥ The Stones seemed to be waiting. Beside one of them a hare stood upright, steadying itself with one paw on the seat while it watched Roger and Viking approaching, then it went off with leisurely bounds from its long back legs. Roger knew that hares were magical, often spirits in disguise. He hoped it was not the magic leaving the Stones. He did not know if what they had once done they would do again, or if what he meant to do would offend whatever powers were in possession. He dismounted and did obeisance. He laid a branch of hawthorn in full flower before the Stones, for hawthorn was magic too. He poured out the river water as a libation, as to the old gods. He made Viking kneel-a trick he had taught him after seeing the Midsummer Fair. Then he stood on the seat of the King Stone and persuaded Viking to put his two forefeet on it as well.
♥ He cantered gently along through the common where the rabbits and foxcubs, the ducks resting on the river bank, the otters playing and the herons fishing took less notice of a horse passing by, even with a rider, than they would have done if Roger had been on foot. In the air there was such a wheeling and weaving of swallows at high speed that it was a wonder that Roger could canter through them without a collision. Sparrow hawks hovered motionless, regardless of the swallows, and partridges hurried their tiny young into cover. The world was teeming with life of every kind. Roger rejoiced in it, yet took it for granted. That was what his world had always been.
♥
♥ Viking answered with a loving nicker and from Toby there came a gasp of laughing surprise. Roger looked round to see what had amused him, but there was no one there, neither boy nor horse nor any sight or sound of them going away. Roger laughed too, rather bitterly, wishing he could share the joke with Toby. "Where is he?" he thought. "He must be here." Then he remembered. "It's not Toby who's done the vanishing trick, it's me again! It's always too short. Toby! Toby!" There was no answer. Five hundred and forty years is a long way for voices to travel.
Why had he not rushed back to the Stone and caught Toby up? Because the Stones were awesome and because his strict upbringing in manners to his elders had taught him to accept what was given and never ask for too much.
Roger rode home slowly, puzzled and truly lost in his thoughts. It seemed this shift in time could happen, but it was teasingly out of control. Here was Toby, the perfect companion, but to be with him was as difficult as holding water in your two hands.
♥ The forest was very beautiful. The budding twigs of each tree were warm and burnished and the hawthorn and wild cherry in full flower. On the ground the sunlight lay in long streaks, falling in some places on an acre of bluebells, in another on the fronds of new bracken. They rode past a herd of black pigs who grunted and nosed contentedly under the trees while the swineherds lay on the grass. Farther on was a heavy wagon loaded with timber and drawn by oxen. How could people manage without a forest? It was as essential as water.
♥
♥