In the credulous squalor of medieval Yorkshire, a peasant girl is accused of being a sorceress. The suffering inflicted upon her by male superstition sparks a spectacular and terrifying retort which initiates the legend of Sycorax. Many years later, the story is recounted by Edmund, a flawed monk at Byland Abbey, who sets out to write a history of the witch as a penance for lascivious fantasies. In the process, he uncovers a brutal and eerie tale in which he becomes fatally involved. Not just a trip into another epoch, and more than just another supernatural thriller, this cunning mock-translation of the medieval tale of Sycorax reveals that the compulsions and delusions examined are endemic in us all today.
In the credulous squalor of medieval Yorkshire, a peasant girl is accused of being a sorceress. The suffering inflicted upon her by male superstition sparks a spectacular and terrifying retort which initiates the legend of Sycorax. Many years later, the story is recounted by Edmund, a flawed monk at Byland Abbey, who sets out to write a history of the witch as a penance for lascivious fantasies. In the process, he uncovers a brutal and eerie tale in which he becomes fatally involved. Not just a trip into another epoch, and more than just another supernatural thriller, this cunning mock-translation of the medieval tale of Sycorax reveals that the compulsions and delusions examined are endemic in us all today.
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Overview
In the credulous squalor of medieval Yorkshire, a peasant girl is accused of being a sorceress. The suffering inflicted upon her by male superstition sparks a spectacular and terrifying retort which initiates the legend of Sycorax. Many years later, the story is recounted by Edmund, a flawed monk at Byland Abbey, who sets out to write a history of the witch as a penance for lascivious fantasies. In the process, he uncovers a brutal and eerie tale in which he becomes fatally involved. Not just a trip into another epoch, and more than just another supernatural thriller, this cunning mock-translation of the medieval tale of Sycorax reveals that the compulsions and delusions examined are endemic in us all today.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780720617894 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Peter Owen Publishers |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2014 |
| Sold by: | INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 220 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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Sycorax
By J.B. Aspinall
Peter Owen Publishers
Copyright © 2006 J.B. AspinallAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7206-1791-7
CHAPTER 1
The Transgressions and Penance of Brother Edmund
I am Edmund of Byland. I surrendered my surname to God when I came here as a novice in 1413.
The younger son of a yeoman tenant of this abbey, I learnt Latin at grammar school in York and at one time seemed likely to progress in scholarship and make my people proud of me. But even before I had fully attained manhood I was a hapless sinner, given to drink and fornication. This disqualified me from the Chantry school in York and returned me disgraced to my father's estate where for two years I wallowed in further lewd and drunken godlessness, until the scandal arising from my conduct and the exasperated intervention of my father constrained me to submit to God and enter this abbey. The fact that I took refuge here (though under a degree of compulsion) for the protection of both my body and soul is the first major irony supplied by my history for the sardonic entertainment of Satan.
At the time when I lost my surname I also hoped to discard all my antics in Satan's dominions, for I had come to fear both the temporal and spiritual consequences of such error. In general, for many years, I found tranquillity here, in duty and abstinence. But the lovely, soothing ritual of the abbey never managed to dispel a sinful residue of my adolescent self, a poison smuggled inside me. Sixteen years later Satan was still able to use me as a duct whereby he might bring his monsters into the holy haven: when I was sleeping, or if I had been swallowing this abbey's excellent wine, or was otherwise made unwary. Sometimes even when I was at devotion they posed and leered before me and my brain was helpless to exclude them.
Peasant lasses I blithely swived in my youth came as succubi and incubi, shameless and shaming demons. There was Nell with her gaptoothed grin, Malkin spry as a weasel, Nance who gave such raucous grunts of greedy glee. They all came smiling to lean over me or squat under me, hoisting their skirts from their pudenda. Notable among them was Luce, her auburn hair and pale, soft belly, with whom I had been taken in flagrante delicto and beaten almost to death by her husband, sub-tenant of our water meadow.
After years of confession and countless trifling penances, along with the conscientious consumption of lentils, lettuces and other known depressants of lust, had failed to prevent recurrence of these filthy visitations and end my torment, I undertook, with the prompting of Abbot Fabian, a more vexatious and time-consuming penance: a history of the Slatterdale witch, Sukie Trothers, later known as the Fiend Sycorax.
I daresay it seems a bland sort of penance: scratching out a book in this snug room, within sound of the bells and peacocks, the wind in the tall elms of Byland, safe from need, plague, wolves, trulls and whatever else folk are enduring out yonder. So I begin by pointing out what Abbot Fabian explained to me when he first broached the notion: that my penance and the book would together be worthless if the task did not involve an unusual degree of toil and even suffering. Rather than concocting some artificial hardship, such as inscribing the entire work left-handed, so disciplining my soul at the expense of the project, we decided it best that I punished myself as I benefited the book, by the rigour of my research.
My labours at my Byland desk with ink, parchment and candle are the least arduous aspect of my penance. In pursuit of the full truth I have suffered discomfort and peril, both physical and spiritual, in places where no godly or learned man would willingly be found. I have consorted with half-wits in sunless vales, drunkards in pig-huts, crones in the gutters of wicked towns. The worst of the hellish visions I confess and atone would be shrugged off as nothing – tolerated with the morning's hangover – by the boors out there on Satan's acres. Whatever it once was, my nature is now delicate, scholarly and refined: it has been as painful for me as for the holy man among the heathen of the Danube, to be sequestered with those yokels among the hovels of the North Riding of Yorkshire, enduring their belches and farts, the vomit-provoking stench of their proximity and the humiliation of their sodden familiarity. North Riding men of the vulgar class, whether in town or demesne, seem to count it obligatory to drink their flat, muddy ale all day long until unconsciousness prevents them. Their women are slovenly and immodest, only saved from harlotry – if then – by listlessness.
Remembering my disgusting secret self, I can endure contact with more blatantly disgusting humanity: but it is not the only hazard out there, nor the worst. God is in the Church and in those rare homes and hearts that have ousted the domestic fiend; the rest of the earth is pitfalls to Hell. The North Riding, in particular, even before the rise of the great Fiend Sycorax, was full of ancient evil: goat-footed demons and camouflaged goblins. I do not speak only of metaphor, of spiritual peril. There is a local tradition of fiends that have material impact: a red-eyed serpent that can drag you down through the rustling underbrush into the earth; a great bird that swoops to carry you kicking away; a black wolf that prowls the gorse moors and bracken slopes, ready to lope off to Hell with a sinner in its slobbering jaws. Satan can bite you to the bone in this terrestrial interim as well as claim you for eternity. Hildebrand tells of a German bishop who had a hundred menat-arms to guard him day and night in case the fiends of Satan should bear him bodily away.
But worse than any fleshly peril is the hazard into which I have plunged my soul in search of Sycorax. The fact that my task began as a quest for spiritual benefit is the second great irony with which my life has gratified the Fiend.
* * *
It all seemed very different at the outset, only a year ago. I can remember the cool fingers of the Abbot stroking my tonsure, as I knelt before him in shame and self-pity at my ignominious transgressions. Leaning from his stool to chastely embrace me, he let out a little moan of compassion. In his bleak private cell, after that confessional, we discussed the details of the project which was intended to be my purgation but which was to bring Abbot Fabian to a terrible death and myself to the brink of Hell.
'You entered the abbey young, Brother Edmund, and have no memory of the world out yonder except as an ignorant sinner. Now that you are strong in devotion and obedience it will benefit you to confront that world again. Once you are confident that you can repudiate its evil squalor it will cease to torment your spirit with obscenities that you were once unable to resist.'
He paused, but I said nothing. I wanted to say that I felt weaker and more sinful than other men – not fit to be let at large beyond the safety of the abbey. But I could not reject the Abbot's confidence in me, nor refuse the ordeal he proposed.
'Your spiritual need, dear Brother Edmund, though close to my heart, is not the only reason that I have chosen you for the task – or chosen the task for you. You are the most scholarly monk in Byland if I do not include myself. I rejoice to have a kindred intellect in my care, even if that intellect resides in such troubled flesh as yours, which is why I have not hesitated to offer you such friendship and esteem – indeed, partiality – as is not incompatible with our stations and the rules of our order.' He squinted his pale old eyes in the light begrudged by the narrow window and smiled at me almost coyly. 'I am confident that you are fully qualified for the task I confer on you, not just by virtue of your literacy but because your keen wits will enable you to avoid the superstitious ignorance which affects so many of your brothers.'
It was not the first time Abbot Fabian had confided his views to me. His was a lonely and unpopular eminence at Byland, partly because of the stringency with which he had applied the Cistercian discipline and stamped out abuse.
'I find it regrettable that no original literary work has ever been produced in Byland. While our abbey has a valuable collection of documents, they are all copies of scripts that reside in other abbeys. I realize that this attitude of mine is eccentric within the Cistercian order. It is certainly not shared by any of your brothers here. Our rules have always promoted the virtues of physical toil and by this have avoided some of the abuses rife in more scholarly orders, but we have thereby become prone to other shortcomings.'
I said, 'Satan is ready to make a weakness out of an asset as soon as we blink.'
He poured me another minute measure of gooseberry wine. 'There is a body of opinion among the Fathers of the Church that original composition is an act of pride unbefitting a monk, who can best show his obedience by the faithful transcription of established authority.'
I said, 'I will eschew the pride of original authorship, Father, and be a humble collector and recorder of the testaments of others.'
He nodded approval. 'I am keen that such a book should be particular to Byland not merely because it is composed here but also because it treats a local event. I suggest that the subject might be some local holy personage whose words are instructive and deeds exemplary, so that the book can be of interest and devotional value even to abbeys outside the shire.'
* * *
Sadly, when I set myself to examine the Abbot's proposal I was confronted with facts which he was unable to refute. The North Riding of Yorkshire, as I have already indicated, is one of the most godless tracts in Satan's world and almost entirely populated by brutish sinners. Those with any claim to virtue have been discouraged, if not corrupted, by the prevailing nastiness: the best have seen fit to undergo the ordeal of life with prayer and submissiveness in the relative safety of holy ground, avoiding the Devil rather than wrestling with him and sheltering from noteworthiness as well as from temptation. The virtuous having adopted such a low profile, I thought it best, with the rueful approval of Abbot Fabian, to make wickedness the topic for my labour, so that if I could not give an example for those who aspire to Heaven I could warn sinners with a glimpse of some of the workings of Hell.
The Fiend Sycorax was so recent a scandal that her fame and power were still current in the region and the end of the story not yet known. This both attracted me to the topic and assisted my account by providing me with many witnesses to events, from those who knew young Sukie Dobson forty years ago to children visited by nightmare at the last full moon. It is a tale that corroborates the doctrine of the Church by illustrating the urgent danger to us all from the power of Satan working through the weakness of a woman. It is also a tale typical of the age in which we live, because at this time witchcraft is as widespread and flagrant as were any of the great heresies that in past centuries challenged the diligence of the Holy Inquisition. Thousands of moonlit sabbaths are celebrated throughout Christendom every week, with obscenity and blasphemy. Countless respectable country wives are versed in the witch's lore of herbs, use love-charms and potions, and at night put out little bowls of cream for the ancient demons that visit their sleep. Even as I write this account there is news of a witch in armour leading the armies of France to victory against our English forces, with the approval not merely of the French soldiery but of the Dauphin of France and his court and even of many French churchmen that have sold themselves to Satan and taken the side of the French. It seems that in Satan's world great nonchalance is being shown towards both God and Satan!
These grand matters of state may seem a far cry from Sukie Trothers and the plight of Slatterdale, but our wisdom, as well as our destiny, must begin at home. It is essential that we use what we know best to inform ourselves and each other of the dangers, under the guidance of Mother Church and in submission to the Will of God. The case of Sycorax is a microcosm of the entire assault of Satan upon God's purpose for man. By studying this matter in the great detail available we may gain an inkling of issues otherwise too vast for our understanding, as one might augur the whole calamitous harvest from the examination of a single diseased plant. So each of us may be helped to avoid damnation and shorten our sojourn in Purgatory and the whole of Christendom may avoid the wrath of God and the great plagues which have afflicted us.
Much of the history of Sukie Trothers is no more amazing than that of any prey of Satan, but before the story is over you will read of events that are bound to strain your credulity. It may be hard for you to credit that I have rejected large quantities of spectacular and implausible material, accepting only such as was verified by several witnesses, or came from witnesses I esteem reliable, or is in accordance with proven and established authority. If my judgement in such matters should be brought into question I would ask you to remember that, though devout, I am no mystic but disposed towards reason and logic. If there is a flaw in my account it will be that I have underemphasized the miraculous and looked for mundane explanations. I also fear that in the tone of my book and my commentary on events I may sometimes shirk my duty from soft-heartedness, letting my compassion for the silly woman Sukie Trothers hinder my detestation of Satan's darling Sycorax.
When I dare to comment or interpret during the narrative that follows I trust that I do so with reference to the word of God as made manifest to me through the authority of the Church. If I err, as mortal man must, I am hopeful that my superiors will pity my simplicity and seek to correct the error rather than castigate the man.
As well as the history of Sycorax I shall relate my own adventures and suffering in pursuit of the truth. This is not from pride or the need for attention; nor does it otherwise contradict the assurances I gave Abbot Fabian about my motives. I am happy to know that another book is to be produced from this text, by another hand than mine: a properly written and illustrated volume that will reside in a library long after this present text is destroyed and my contribution forgotten. I am content if all reference to myself is removed from that official history.
It was in fact Abbot Fabian himself who suggested that I should include an account of my own experiences in the history of Sycorax. It should reassure my readers that I invent nothing, simply giving an account of what I have seen and heard: but this is not why the Abbot suggested it, as shall be seen later in this text. The third great irony, the third prong of Satan's pitchfork, is that in the course of my search for Sycorax I have myself become a witness to her story and she has become a terrible part of mine.
CHAPTER 2A Journey to the Territory of the Fiend in Slatterdale
The only person in Byland Abbey who had had even indirect dealings with Sukie Trothers (née Dobson) was Brother Denys, but I hesitated to approach him, though he would have been a logical starting point for my investigations. He was an educated man and had been held high in esteem by the previous abbot, to the extent of being an obedientiary entrusted with care of the library, but he had been relieved of this post soon after the succession of Abbot Fabian twenty years ago. At that time the mortal sin of sodomy was rife in the abbey. As well as by precept and objurgation, Abbot Fabian had excised the vice by transferring or expelling some monks, eclipsing the influence of others.
Far from resenting his demotion, Brother Denys had remained one of the few monks who spoke admiringly and gratefully of Abbot Fabian, dating his own salvation from that purge. It was not therefore from diplomatic delicacy, or any suspicion that he might resent me as the eventual usurper of his librarianship, that I hesitated to approach him. The problem was that in recent years he had seen necessary to do penance by delineating his old offences in ignominious detail, not only to God in the confessional but to any who could find no means to avoid being an audience. In any case I already knew – from past exposure to his self-castigating reminiscences – that a certain Brother Simon (transferred by Abbot Fabian to Rievaulx) had been a more immediate witness to the events known to Denys and would surely be less tedious and embarrassing to interview. I decided to keep Brother Denys in reserve and commence my investigations at the birthplace of Sukie Dobson in Slatterdale.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sycorax by J.B. Aspinall. Copyright © 2006 J.B. Aspinall. Excerpted by permission of Peter Owen Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,The Trangressions and Penance of Brother Edmund,
A Journey to the Territory of the Fiend in Slatterdale,
The Ale Wife Alys and the Beginning of the Investigation,
The Young Gentleman and the Shepherdess,
Brother Denys Betrays Secrets of the Confessional,
Brother Edmund Makes a Report and Receives a Reprimand,
The Arrest of the Witch Sukie,
The Interrogation and Condemnation of the Witch Sukie,
The Sojourn of the Witch Sukie in Pickering Gaol,
The Ordeal of the Witch Sukie in Pickering Stocks,
Brother Edmund Is Drawn to the Ale House in Nithermoor,
Mumping Night and the Bewitching of Brother Edmund,
The Homecoming and Wedding of the Witch Sukie,
The Comportment and Gruesome Death of Watkin Trothers,
The Comportment and Gruesome Death of Abbot Fabian,
The Flight of the Witch Sukie and the Advent of the Fiend Sycorax,
Mayhem Is Wrought by the Fiend Sycorax in Pickering,
Brother Edmund at the Trial of the Witch Alys,
The Expedition Against the Fiend Sycorax, 1414,
What Befell the Expedition at the Lair of the Fiend,
The Retaliation of the Fiend Sycorax,
The Triumph of the Fiend Sycorax, 1414,
The Bewitching of Brother Edmund and the Hanging of the Witch Alys,
The Expedition Against the Fiend Sycorax, 1431,
The Triumph of the Fiend, 1431,
Winter at Byland,