17: Imbolc
Cass gatecrashes the Imbolc orgy and discovers more secrets in the catacombs. This is Marsh Witches of the Godless Florin.
Previously: In her search for the Godless Florin necklace, Cass found a polaroid of her mother at 5 years old, standing next to her father as an adult - an impossible photo. Still, she is determined to unlock the Storium and be rid of her mother.
Contents: Prologue, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
February 2nd 1993
“Spring’ll be early,” said a bundle of reeds as it walked through the kitchen door, followed by Netty and then Anya. “Hard to believe it now but true.”
Netty dumped the large bundle on the table and stamped the snow from her boots.
“Larks are singin’. Early spring on the way,” she said, “And early spring means this blasted snow’ll go. Can’t be doin’ with it.”
“But it’s so pretty,” said Anya removing her boots.
“I need my sunlight, or I shall wither,” said Netty.
Anya looked down at the table.
“What will you do with them all?” she asked.
“Well, see, these ones are for Brigid’s crosses,” she prodded the shorter green field rushes. “And we’ll weave this lot into baskets.” She inspected as she spoke. “Baskets for puttin’ in seed heads, rose hips,” she counted on her fingers, “dried flowers, herbs, milk, eggs, snowbells, -”
“Snowdrops,” I corrected.
“Well, I call ‘em snowbells.”
I rolled my eyes. Anya was looking confused. I sighed and found myself explaining.
“It’s Imbolc. You make crosses and fill baskets with stuff for the goddess of Spring.”
I went to the pantry to find coffee, watching Netty through the window as she began separating the reeds out, counting them under her breath, two at a time, sectioning them out by length and width. Happy with her arrangement she tied a pinnie round her waist and took a pair of secateurs from one of the iron hooks by the back door.
She went on, “Brigid brings fertility to the land so you wanna show her you’re ready for it. Show her you’re ready for the sun on your face. How’s that sound?”
“Magical,” nodded Anya, enthusiastically.
“And that is what it is,” said Netty. “Okay. That’s enough for me to get started and them ones’ is for you to make Brigid’s crosses to hang one at every door in the house to show her that she’s invited in. Now, you grab them and come by ‘ere.”
Without looking up, Netty called to the pantry, “You joinin’ us, missy?”
I came out with a pack of biscuits and instant coffee powder and sloped to the aga. Netty persisted.
“Was a time you’d sit and make little crosses for every door and every window. We had to giv’em away there was so many. Be good for ya gal.”
“No, you’re alright,” I mumbled, pouring boiling water into a mug.
Netty looked into my eyes and tilted her head. “Got a headache? ‘Elp yourself to some bark.”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
I opened the ginger nut biscuits and ate one loudly. There was no other way to eat a ginger nut. Roose came and sat next to me, looking up hopefully for a crumb worth catching. Anya and Netty were deep in lining up, counting, bending, and snipping. I watched Anya twist her lips in hungry concentration as she copied Netty’s cross, fold for fold.
“Wait, I think I’ve messed it up,” she said, looking down at her chaotic spokes and tilting her head to find the mistake.
Leaning against the countertop, I could see she hadn’t turned the cross before adding the next stem. I could’ve told her; gone round to her side of the table and shown her how to correct it but instead I put another biscuit in my mouth and opened the cellar door. I threw the darkness into cold white light but paused at the top of the stairs. The headache was clawing at my skull. I turned back. In the pantry, on a middle shelf, nestled between jars full of leaves, twigs, shrunken flowers, and petals was the willow jar. I unscrewed the metal lid and removed a thumb sized piece of brown bark. I put it in my mouth and bit down. Netty called from the table, “make sure you put the lid back on.”
I tutted, having left the pantry, and went back in to seal the jar.
The catacombs’ earthy sweetness lifted to meet me. Last nights red wine bottles stood around a pile of papers on the floor, and I cleared them to the bottom of the steps, ready to be carried back up later. I finished my coffee and held the empty mug in the fountain. As I swallowed the silky cold water it filled my chest and I felt cleansed.
I had retraced my steps to find the impossible polaroid but it was nowhere to be seen. With the photo and the necklace lost I pursued my quest to learn something about the Storium from dad, the only way I could. I put a classical album on – Winter Dreams – Tchaikovsky by the Boston Symphony Orchestra – and gathered the papers I’d started to read last night. There were invoices, auction dates and lists of items he was interested in buying or selling. Some pages contained drawings of auction items he had admired but not bought. He was a good draftsman. On one lined A4 page was a biro drawing of The Virgin Mary statue. Next to it he’d written.
15th C, Rome. Exquisite. Bought by private telephone bid. Bastard.
He must have bought it eventually because there she stood - finger extended skyward. I put the pile back in their box and opened another – old auction catalogues. I moved to the next box – more of the same. Why would you keep catalogues when the auctions were done?
The next box was labelled ‘MM and SR.’ It contained research for his own books - “A Marsh Millennium” and “Saxon Rites in Third Century East Anglia”: papers; pamphlets; letters to contributors and other experts; photos; cover designs, signed for approval; a compliment slip from Faber and Faber – Congrats on your first edition, Charlie! - more drawings; timelines and photocopies. Guilt for never having read these books made me move on.
In the eighth box a red A5 exercise book sat on top of loose documents. On the cover he’d written, “1989. Storium: Book of Blessings”. This was something. He was obviously writing a third book. I flicked through and stopped when I got to a heavily marked list titled, Storium Timeline.
400AD 300 to 400 – Saxons - pagans from Germany and Scandinavia.
Oswyn - drawn to the fresh spring and May calves.
Vellum washed in the spring water *made words real*.
First known pagan bledsung Saxon blessing.
Oswyn’s burial site:
Archaeological evidence of temple over her grave indicates animal offerings > Human graves recorded in 18 locations close to her.
I shuddered and looked down. Beneath the smooth flag stones, etched in barely-there symbols and lines, were humans, all gathered close to their blessed Oswyn. I continued down the timeline and paused at the mention of Marsh Women.
‘Daughters of Oswyn’- tended her grave and guarded the spring. As the monastic site grew over the decades, these women were moved to the marsh.
Later known as *Marsh Women*.
Stephen had called Marian Pipit a Marsh Woman. Fascinating though this was, I scanned forward.
1141: Queen Matilda (mother of the Plantagenet kings) visited the Abbey. She ordered the binding of the vellum into 10 ‘Storia’.
The next few pages were written as prose, concerned with Sowen Harbour’s name.
Should the toponym Sowen Harbour derive from the veneration of Saint Oswyn, it invites comparison with the neighbouring ecclesiastical centre of Bury St. Edmunds …skip forward…. its nomenclature to the Norse chieftain Sweyn Haraldson … skip forward…by dint of his patronage of the Abbey in A.D. 1013, then the implications ….blah blah blah.
No wonder I hadn’t read his other books. I skimmed over the next few paragraphs to something more gripping - Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII, sacking the church and stealing the treasure.
To protect the Storium from the crown in 1539, the catacombs were filled with flint and rubble and paved to create a new floor in the cellar. The Storium remained hidden for 421 years.
I looked around at the cavernous void and imagined it filled to the ceiling with stones. How must he have felt discovering the false floor? How long did it take to dig out? I skipped several pages - the building of The Florin in the ruins of the Abbey - the industrial revolution destroying the wool trade – the impoverished village – and that book was soon finished. I reached into the box and pulled a blue exercise book up from the bottom. Opening it randomly, I read.
It’s a sort of addiction, all this, her. God how mediocre. Sometimes I wonder if I have any thoughts of my own.
It was like hearing him speak. I looked about for better light and moved myself out of shadow to better see his scrawl. At times the words tapered off and restarted again with no continuity or connection.
Had no prior knowledge of love until Jocasta. Distant parents. Low expectations of relationships. Jocasta is the most beautiful and terrifying creature I’ve ever met. An independent woman needs no man. We are all just extras in her show. A chorus line.… Jocasta is as much part of this marsh as the egrets and water deer. Eve and Netty too. Marsh women. Keepers of the spring…. To possess the Abbey and its keepers - that was just an illusion.
Tears are so powerful … People adore her… If they knew… If I were a better man I would break the cycle but she’s a bad habit and I fucking love a bad habit.
The next page was dated, June 15th,1990.
Madness. I can’t tolerate it any longer. She’s out of control. Came down this morning to find three more pages used. Now only thirty-two left!! My god. I have failed dramatically and lost two days. No more. That’s it now. The lachrymatory must be locked. I cannot allow this to go on. For what? She is insatiable. How have I let this happen? When I first opened the Storium there were over 200 pages left. A thousand years and now we have thirty-two. So ashamed. SO very ashamed.
Brigid’s crosses were hung from door frames, and baskets were laid on the velvet covered altar in the great hall. Eve baked and brewed, Netty helped Jocasta, Anya helped Eve, Lyle oversaw it all, and I stayed in my room, letting my blood boil.
I’d been told not to be in that night, to go to The Case, to stay away from the ritual but I was in no mood to comply.
How? How had he let her use the Storium? And for what? Dresses? Jewellery? Pointless shit to impress the shallow people she invites on her retreats? All that history swallowed up by one woman’s greed. I couldn’t bear it.
From my window I watched the setting sun cast a deep crimson glow over Sowen Harbour - red amid the dusted barren marsh - blood on bones. Cars passed over the narrow bridge into the mouth of The Florin. There must have been fifteen or more, all invited for the weekend to be part of Jocasta Crowe’s Imbolc retreat, all presumably paying through the nose to get wasted in the castle. Why not? I thought. Why not, indeed.
I ate dinner in my room as people milled about the Florin, ogling over the grandeur, exchanging backstories, sucking the juice from their paid-for experience. I wanted to go out there and tell them all to fuck off, to go back to London, but I didn’t. I drank instead. An hour later the ritual began.
I went out to get a bottle of whisky from the cabinet and stood listening in the drawing room. The woody air, luxurious with incense, filled the hall up to the painted ceiling above me. The fire crackled, the coveners breathed in and out demonstratively, loudly, and repeated affirmations with Netty.
“I am energy, I am life, I am power, we are one.
I am energy, I am life, I am power, we are one.”
I moved quietly across to the Knowle settees and crouched into the corner of one, hidden in the high back and side, like a velvet forte. Where the corner tassels hung, a thin gap allowed me enough space to see through the gallery spindles to the ritual. Netty’s wild hair was adorned on one side with threaded green beads and an eagle’s feather, and she had drawn a line of black charcoal down the middle of her forehead. She stood behind the altar, back lit by the raging fire, front lit by the many flickering altar candles. Eve, all in black, with the same charcoal line, passed slowly around the circle of pilgrims, handing out unlit candles.
Netty said, slow and loud, “earth divine, earth divine, awaken ancients.”
Her voice was so like Jocasta’s that I blinked twice to be sure. The dramatic affectation was repulsive on her. I swigged from the bottle and sank into the softness of the corner, with my head pressed into the gap, like a child up past bedtime.
A short, curly, thirty-something woman in pedal pushers, went to the altar and lit her candle. She passed the flame to the second person in the circle, the second passed to the third and so on, until the circle was a ring of flickering flames. Eve took her place behind the altar, next to Netty, who looked up to the top of the oak staircase. Everyone followed her gaze and I shoved myself down into the cushions.
Netty loudly announced, “We call upon the light to return. High Priestess, your circle is cast.”
I heard gasps. At the top of the stairs Jocasta waited, just metres from me, absorbed by her adoring audience. Slowly, she descended, majestically adorned in a pure white bolero of swan and ostrich feathers, which bobbed gracefully with each step. Her long red hair hung beneath a feathered head-dress which made her look impossibly tall. A barely-there silk gown invited all eyes to enjoy the curves and lines of her practically naked body. Every inch of it, from her beaded ankles to her breasts, was on show beneath the whisper of silk. I thought I might be sick in my mouth.
She glided to her place between Eve and Netty and addressed the enchanted coven.
“Easily I glide,
Twilight in my wake,
Effortless we slide,
Gratefully we take.”
Netty picked up a slim, skin drum and holding it on its side she flicked it rhythmically with a small wooden beater, releasing a thrumming heartbeat, which echoed and danced.
Jocasta lifted a carved ivory goblet and said, “Brigid anoints you.”
Eve nodded and the curly woman came forward with her candle, which Eve fixed in the large spiralling candelabra next to the fireplace. Jocasta held the goblet to the woman’s lips. She sipped and then bowed her head, saying, “so mote it be.” Each person repeated the ritual - passing the candle, sipping from the goblet, bowing, “so mote it be.” And I knew that in the sipping and the bowing they pictured their desire – the thing they wished for most, and in saying “so mote it be” they commanded the Goddess to grant it. I swigged from my own bottle and wondered what vacuous shit the Goddess was cooking up for them.
When every covener was done, Jocasta sang with Netty. Together their voices entwined in a bewitching folk chant. I’ve heard it so many times. It feels ancient and divine, and I hate that I love that sound, and I hate that it touches something in me that longs for connection, that wants to punch my fists into the marsh sediment and feel for the roots I miss but never knew. It is otherworldly. I gulped whisky and sniffed.
Elation rose from the coven as the tears they’d imbibed took hold. Smiles and moans of pleasure broke free, and they began to move to the rhythm of the music, like an organism that is all heart and genitals. Reaching out, touching, stretching, and gliding, the circle became a web of writhing bodies, twisting, and gyrating. I stood and looked down now, certain I wouldn’t be noticed in the noise, but sound, no matter how loud it is, cannot make you invisible. Against the dark panelled wall, next to the oak door, Anya sat in the dancing fire light, watching the ritual from a settle and then she was watching me. Lyle stood by her, transfixed by Jocasta.
Words became moans from deep inside Jocasta’s chest, harmonised by others. A drone of hums, punctuated by animal noises and growling. They moved as one beast, getting louder and louder in their ecstasy.
Jocasta wailed, “I am mother earth. Drink from me!”
She was in front of the altar now, standing with her arms outstretched, eyes closed, head tilted to the heavens, as hands moved over her body, on and under her dress. The throbbing throng groaned and cried out and the beat became frantic and urgent.
The whites of Anya’s eyes seemed to beckon me forward. I floated down the stairs and soon I was in the mele, twisting and nodding along with the beat. A bearded man put his clammy hands on my face and smiled at me with glassy eyes. I weaved and turned, losing him, and my balance. I steadied myself on a delicate woman who held me up and stroked my arm.
“You’re so beautiful,” she said, “like starlight.”
I pulled away from her and tripped backwards. Reaching out for something steady I found the edge of the altar but as I grabbed it the velvet cloth slid from the polished surface and took me and the candles and goblet with it, all clattering to the floor. The beat stopped. The tears were spilt. Flames spread to the altar cloth and Lyle stepped over me quickly, clipping my shoulder with his booted heel in the rush, and stamping out the fire. I looked up to see Jocasta’s stony face and burst out laughing.
“You look like a chicken!”
Faces looked down at me, eyes glazed and rolling back in serotonin rushes, but not Jocasta’s.
“Leave now,” she said through her teeth.
“NO. I want some DRUGS!” I shouted up at her.
“Get up!”
“You get up.”
She tried to grab me, but I rolled to the side, into bare feet. People were kneeling down to me, stroking me, loving me. Jocasta moved swiftly round to the back of the altar, trying to regain authority.
“Please, everybody,” she said, “find a comfortable space to rest. We shall -”
But the ivory goblet, somehow still whole, lifted from the floor and floated slowly upward, suspended in air. The ancient figures carved all around the cup seemed to dance as firelight flickered through the fine ivory. Jocasta reached over the altar, but it drifted just beyond her stretched arm. Coveners watched with saucer eyes and glistening joy as the goblet lowered slowly and came to rest in my hand. I had the conch now. I was in charge.
“Got your intentions in have you?” I said as I made it to my feet, “What did you wish for? Money? Bigger tits?”
“Cass, don’t do this,” said Lyle with his hand on my arm.
“Get your fucking hands off me, Lyle.”
Jocasta’s voice was panicked and strained.
“Cassiopeia, you are making a grave mistake.”
Messy sniggers came from bodies on the floor, purring on clouds of pleasure.
I shook Lyle off and continued, “Cos I wasn’t invited. I’m like the bad fairy. You know, the bad fairy in that, whatsit.. what’s it called… the story with the uninvited fairy and the baby…”
“Sleeping beauty?” offered a woman, lying at my feet, smiling up at me.
“Right,” I said. “Correct. Who wants to know what my wishes are? Ask my mother. No fucking clue.”
From the back of the room a small voice said, “I’d like to know what they are.”
Lyle turned sharply as Anya said again, “I’d like to know your wishes, Cass.”
Jocasta slammed her palm on the alter. “Stop this! Lyle!”
“I’ll tell you Anya,” I slurred, looking into the goblet for any remaining drips, “Cos you asked so nicely. But keep it a secret. ’Cos otherwise it won’t come true. Okay?”
Anya nodded, failing to hold back a huge grin. Lyle watched the precious goblet as I flailed with it in my hand.
All eyes were on me.
I looked around the group and said loudly, “Okay then. I wish … that my mother wasn’t such a CUNT!”
Netty and Eve rounded the altar in one fluid movement and took hold of me. Lyle rescued the goblet, before I was wrestled back up the stairs to my room, with the coven waving me off.
Contents: Prologue, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
like an organism that is all heart and genitals.
🫰 🫰 🫰
Damn, I love Cass.