Green Eyes, Green Mushrooms
by Sarah Das Gupta
The sun shone on the red and gold pennants flying proudly from glistening golden poles. Tents, striped blue and silver, stood at either end of a large field. Tiered seats were filled with cheering crowds of peasants. The men wore knee-length tunics of grey and russet, woollen hoods, long boots and dark hose. The country women sat in the warm sunshine in their long dresses of home-dyed wool, wimples attached to coarse linen headdresses. The top tier glistened with the bright colours of lords and ladies, their jewelled clothing and coronets glittered in the midsummer light.
At the call of a trumpet, Sir Warren Fitzwilliam, Lord of the Manor of Helmswood appeared, at his side his daughter, the Lady Alice. They took their seats on gold plated thrones on a dais raised high above the common crowd. Behind them, silhouetted against the intense blue of the sky, stood a grey castle. Flags, adorned with the Fitzwilliam crest of two lithe black panthers, flew from the turrets. Down the middle of the field, stretched the lists, a barrier consisting of poles and brushwood separating the jousting knights.
A second trumpet call was met by tense silence as a knight in silver armour entered the lists. His magnificent chestnut charger pawed the ground in eager anticipation. Entering the arena, the Silver Knight bowed before Lady Alice. Her long blond hair shining in the sun, she untied the pale blue scarf round her neck and tossed it down to the knight. The silk cloth fluttered into his mailed hand. As he fixed the favour to his helmet, the crowd cheered.
In response to a trumpet summons, a Black Knight appeared at the other end of the field. From head to foot his armour was black; his horse too was black as coal. Only the knight’s tabard carried a crest of a lion rampant on a blue background. The crowd recognised the coat of arms of Sir Geoffrey de Manville, a local baron with a reputation for greed and cruelty.
At a sign from the herald, the knights charged towards each other. The sound of galloping hooves echoed on the sun-baked turf. Their lances gleamed like silver as each knight lent forward, poised to deliver the fatal blow. The Silver Knight took a heavy thrust on the chest which knocked him back but not before he had landed a powerful blow on the side of his opponent. The Black Knight toppled heavily to the ground, his horse galloping on into the open field. Cheering broke out as the crowd saw their favourite had triumphed, the blue scarf still flying from his helmet.
° ° °
Sir Geoffrey de Manville was in as black a mood as his defeated champion’s armour when he rode deeper into the forest the next morning. The trees had become thicker and the atmosphere darker as he rode further into the greenwood. A pair of black crows suddenly flew out of a bramble thicket. Sir Geoffrey’s horse shied, nearly throwing him into the thorns. Thick ropes of ivy trailed from the pine trees as if prepared for a mass hanging. A hare ran across the grass ride. Geoffrey hastily crossed himself, shapeshift hares were never a lucky sign.
He rode into a glade circled by tall ash trees which cast long shadows across the grass. Beside the trees stood a thatched cottage, more of a hovel than home. Nailed to the walls were dead rats and crows. Flies buzzed around rotting intestines. The smell of death and decay filled the air. Dismounting, Sir Geoffrey tethered his horse to a tree and knocked loudly on a shabby door. An old woman opened it; beside her stood a black cat, its amber eyes blazing in its head, its tail twitching. Dressed in rags, dark strands of hair hung over her shoulders. Her face was yellow as old parchment but her green eyes pinned Geoffrey to the spot.
‘Why do you travel into the greenwood and disturb my rest, my lord?’
‘I need your wisdom and the Devil’s power over my enemies.’
‘You must first look in the glass.’ Muckle Meg opened the door wider, inviting him to enter.
Geoffrey shivered as he looked round the room. A row of skulls stood on a shelf at the back. On a table phials and bottles of odd shapes held liquids of blue, magenta, and slime-coloured green. Strange herbs grew in wooden boxes below the single leaded window. A large, black cauldron stood next to a dying fire in which the last blood-red embers flickered in the strange half-light.
‘Look in this mirror,’ she held an old, wooden framed glass in front of him.
Sir Geoffrey suppressed a gasp as the face of Lady Alice looked back at him.
‘She is your enemy. She is why you venture so far into the forest. Do not ask how I know these things. I understand time- all that has happened, all that now happens and all that will happen.’
‘Then you know why I want to destroy Alice Fitzwilliam?’
‘Men act for two reasons, love or money. For you it is wealth, land, power. You want your daughter to marry Baron de Crecy, the wealthiest of the King’s knights and his favourite. His betrothal to the Lady Alice stands in your way.’
‘You make this happen and I will protect you from the accusation of heresy and the cruel flames which await you.’
‘First you must follow my instructions. Take this basket. Go further into the forest and take the left-hand path which leads to a clump of black thorns and oaks. Pick a handful of the pale green Death Cap mushroom, ‘the deadly angel’ growing beneath the trees. Bring them to me.’
Sir Geoffrey walked out of the glade, following the left-hand path. Gradually the path narrowed. It seemed as if the trees were closing in on him. From the thick undergrowth on either side, mysterious rustling and squeaking sounds emerged; thorny bramble stems moved, though there was no breath of air. In the silence, he could hear the distant tapping of a woodpecker. The forest had its own secret code. Overhead the leafy canopy was so thick that only an occasional chink of grey sky appeared. At last, the path led to a grove of stately oaks, their gnarled trunks covered in green lichen. They looked like weary foot soldiers who had guarded the hidden glade for centuries. On one edge, was a clump of blackthorns. Geoffrey instinctively kept well away from the dark stems of ‘the witch’ tree.
Among the leaves, he could see circles of Dead Cap mushrooms. Some were just beginning to push through the leaf mould, others were over a span tall. These had sinister green tops, darkening towards the centre. The gills beneath were deceptively white and innocent. The stems widened towards the bottom and were growing out of little white bags which scholars and wisemen call volvas. Although Meg had assured the knight that these ‘deadly angels’ were safe to touch, he pulled on his leather gauntlets. Treacherous himself, Sir Geoffrey never trusted others.
As he eased the death caps out of the mould, each fungus moaned softly as the tiny white roots, like wriggling maggots, emerged from the black soil. Was it his imagination? The forest suddenly seemed darker as he hurried back with the wicker basket and its precious, deadly contents.
Sir Geoffrey arrived at the tumbledown cottage, just as a thunderstorm broke. Lightning lit up the glade and a deafening clap of thunder shook the hovel. Meg, sitting beside the remains of the fire, appeared unmoved by the storm. ‘The forest is angry,’ she murmured to the cat whose hair stood on end, his tail twitching. ‘Leave the mushrooms on the table. Everything will be complete when the harvest moon is full.
Geoffrey began to speak but Meg had fallen asleep, her straggly hair hanging over her wrinkled face. Geoffrey threw a handful of silver coins on the wretched table. Looking back as he closed the rickety door, the fire was burning fiercely, flames leapt up the sooty chimney. He could have sworn the fire had been dead only a few moments before. Shaking his head, he mounted his horse, no sign of the storm. The sun shone in a summer sky as he rode out of the forest. He didn’t notice the dark clouds on the horizon.
° ° °
The huge castle kitchen was a hive of activity. Spit boys stood either end of the giant hearth turning the great iron spit with carcasses of deer, pigs and chicken slowly roasting. Women prepared mounds of vegetables: peas, beans, cabbages and turnips to be served in pottage. At one end of the long table, plums, apples, damsons and pears were piled up in red, green and dark crimson pyramids, glowing like emeralds and rubies on large wooden platters. From the Buttery, butts of ale and casks of red wine were stacked up outside the Great Hall in readiness for Sir Warren Fitzwilliam’s lavish feast to celebrate the harvest moon and the safe gathering of the estate crops.
In the Hall the guests were already arriving. At the High Table, on a raised platform, Sir Warren was seated at the head with his neighbour, Sir Geoffrey de Manville on his right and Lady Alice on the left. Tables stretched on either side of the splendid room to the very back. At the top table the meal would include many delicacies- roast swan, venison, peacock, heron, partridge or crane. Another course might consist of baked quinces, damsons in wine or a fruit pottage. The lowly guests at the back, seated on rough, wooden benches, would be satisfied with vegetable pottage and coarse, brown rye bread, while Sir Warren and his guests enjoyed white bread, milled from the finest wheat. Only one guest perhaps had noticed an elderly woman servant in a russet dress of woollen cloth and a simple linen headdress, just one among the many servants busy in the castle that feast day. The same guest perhaps, who remembered the piercing green eyes which seemed to transfix the onlooker.
By the third course the mood was festive. Raucous laughter came from one side of the hall. Toasts were drunk and goblets raised. In the minstrels’ gallery above the high table, the soft tones of lute and harp were drowned in the noise of riotous celebration below. Cheering broke out as a trumpet sounded. A huge pie was carried into the hall and placed before Sir Warren at the head of the table. This was the piece de resistance. An expectant silence fell, even on the rowdiest guests. Sir Warren stood for a moment brandishing a silver dagger, its blade gleaming wickedly in the candle light. He plunged the knife into the pie crust and a flock of small birds escaped to fly wildly into the hall. They fluttered above the excited guests. Many took refuge from the chaos beneath by perching in the rafters of the exquisite hammerbeam ceiling. In the excitement and confusion, who noticed the green-eyed woman replenishing the goblets on the high table from a flagon or saw the small glass phial in her hand? After over two hours of celebration, the guests began to disperse. The servants cleared the remains of the banquet and pushed the furniture back so that they could sleep, as usual, on the floor.
° ° °
Sir Geoffrey de Manville lay in his four- poster bed, looking up at the carved canopy above his head. Muckle Meg had said all would be ‘complete’ by the time of the full moon. That night, as he rode through the fields to Helmswood, the moon had been so bright that he had seen peasants still scything the barley at midnight. It had undoubtedly been a true ‘harvest’ moon in every sense. Although he was sure the old crone had been at the feast, Lady Alice had shown no symptoms of sickness. He thought of the Dead Caps under the ancient oaks. Their sickening green tops would be glowing in the moonlight, their maggot-like roots reaching deep into the primeval slime. Turning on his side, the merest twinge in his stomach made him sit up in alarm. No, he had eaten far too much. The meat pottage had been too rich, the red wine too heavy.It must have been in the early hours that Geoffrey woke from an uneasy sleep. Odd he couldn’t sleep. He felt so very tired and so very cold. He pulled the fur blanket around him. He had to get to the privy, urgently. He must have sat on the hard wooden seat for at least an hour. He heard the monastery bell ringing in the distance, as he staggered back to bed.
Now he was dizzy. The whole room was spinning round. The bed had turned upside down. He was dropping down, down into the moat. A horrible feeling of nausea had possessed him, yet retch as he might, he could not vomit. He summoned enough strength to call his servant, asleep outside his bedchamber. When he awoke, the sun was high in the sky. The doctor was standing by his bed, his wife and daughter weeping softly by the window. A priest mumbled the rosary prayer in the background.
Geoffrey felt a tremor in his right hand and a sharp pain in his arm. Looking down, he could see where the doctor had used the blade of a fleam to nick a vein in order to let blood.He could feel himself slipping in and out of consciousness. Desperately, in a lucid moment, he spoke to the priest, ‘Muckle, Muckle, ‘uckle, uck,’ his voice faded away. ‘He’s trying to say ‘Muckle, Muckle Meg, the old witch in the forest. She’s said to cure men of fever and worse. Although she does me little good, takes away patients with her spells and potions, I think we should call her. He’s sinking fast.’ The doctor spoke dully with little hope.
° ° °
The Physician’s boy urged his donkey into a reluctant trot. The animal seemed to dislike the forest as much as his rider. The path wound through the wood with whispering trees on either side. An old dog fox barked in the distance, a pheasant flew up from the undergrowth.
At last, the cottage came into sight. Shaking with fear, the boy knocked quietly on the door. Waiting for a while in the silence, he pushed the door open a crack. A brown hare ran out between his legs. Pushing the door wider, the boy saw the fire blazing, the skulls glimmering in the firelight, the strange phials and bottles reflecting blue and green shadows on the ceiling. The room was otherwise empty, deserted. He jumped back on his donkey which seemed more than willing to escape the forest.
The priest was murmuring the last rites, holding a jewelled silver cross in front of Sir Geoffrey’s closing eyes. Little could he know that before the dying man’s eyes was a circle of green mushrooms—their needle-thin roots, like maggots, slowly eating his guts.