Man in a Hole

Eager to impress the King, the young royal messenger, Cassian Attaway, had taken a shortcut.

What would, in mid-winter, normally constitute a two-day journey, he had determined to complete in one, but, late in the afternoon of the first day, he was dismayed to happen upon a thick, misty forest that he could neither bypass nor ride through.

But he was a spirited boy, lacking the years to have fostered the pessimism men tend to latterly acquire; he calculated that at a brisk enough pace, should the forest not stretch further than two miles, he might yet achieve his goal. So, reviving his conviction, he dismounted his steed and led her forward into the swaying mass of snowy trees.

Inside, the wayward breeze zigzagged snowflakes around the silvery brume. His horse's hooves crunched solemnly in the rimy soil, and there was no life, no life at all bar the occasional crow, watching from a groaning bough.

He was about a mile in when he stumbled upon a man in a hole.

"Hello, sir," he said.

The man looked up at him. He had gray, ratty hair and was dressed in peasant rags.

"Hello, boy," he said. "Are you lost?"

"No, I don't think so. May I ask what you are doing in that hole?"

The man lifted a shovel above his head. "Digging!" he replied cheerfully.

Cassian paused, then said, "What business does a man have digging a hole in a forest in the dead of winter?"

"This? This is for my wife, God rest her soul."

"Oh, I see. I'm frightfully sorry," said Cassian, with a bow.

"It's how it goes at my age," said the man, and stomped the shovel into the earth.

Observing that the man had dug what looked to be some way deeper than six feet, Cassian said, "Sir, by the King's decree, six feet is all you are required to dig, even in cases of those killed by the plague."

"What of it?" the man replied, without stopping.

"It can't be happy work for you. And you must be freezing."

"Both true," he said, smiling.

Cassian thought the man must be quite mad and decided to take his leave. "Well, I shall let you get on, then. I have a message for the Earl of Edgecote that must be delivered today."

"Edgecote?" said the man. "You'll not reach Edgecote going that way."

"Nonsense!" said Cassian. "I have a map that I've studied."

The man threw a spadeful of muck over his shoulder, spraying Cassian's boots. "Map or no map," he said, "put one wrong foot in the marsh and it'll gobble you up like a chicken. You and your mare."

"What marsh?" said Cassian, obstinately. "There is no marsh ahead!"

"But there is. Miles of it. All the more deadly in the winter when the frost will trick your trusting feet. Your best course from here is to go back out, then east to circumvent it. The quality of the earth will keep you on track. But about getting to Edgecote today? Not a chance." The man stopped digging and looked up. His eyes were a drained, pale blue. "And I wouldn't fancy your chances in this forest after dark, either."

Cassian looked up through the black, swinging branches at the dimming sky. Night was riding in fast.

"There's an inn," continued the man, "a mile west of here. My advice to you, lad, is that you head that way and resume your mission tomorrow—better a message delivered late than not at all."

Like most ambitious boys, Cassian was impudent, but not so much that his senses were obstructed to reason. He would arrive in Edgecote on time, at least, and he was sure there would be other opportunities to win the King's favor.

"Of course you're right," he said. "Please accept my apologies. It was unbecoming of me to question my elder, especially in his time of grieving."

The man smiled. "It's how it goes at your age," he said, and resumed his digging.

"I'll take my rest at the inn, then."

"Aye."

Cassian took his horse by the reins and began to lead her away, but stopped and turned, and said, "Sir, be cautious; if you dig any deeper, you may not be able to climb out." Laughter burbled up out of the hole. Quite mad was he, Cassian thought, but he was grateful to have met him.

It wasn't until Cassian arrived at the inn that he noticed hunger in his belly and weariness in his legs; as he approached, the aroma of forest herbs and hog roast swathed him like a warm blanket. He tethered his steed to a hitching post and entered the inn; to a lively atmosphere: a full house of roistering peasants, singing or dicing, or playing other curious table games, while ungraciously glugging spiced ale and pyment from leather jacks and tankards. A large log fire at the center sputtered embers over a red brick hearth and hissed pleasantly as it slung shadows up and down the daub and stud walls. Cassian, unnoticed by the patrons, approached the bar, where the innkeeper—who was a heavyset woman in a white bonnet—greeted him.

"What can I get you, love?"

"Oh, nothing to drink, thank you. Dinner and a bed is all I require."

"No bother," said the innkeeper. "Although I must say, you look frozen to the bone. Let me pour you something, complimentary to your board."

"That's very kind of you."

Cassian, who from his infancy had been groomed as a horseman for royal duties, was not accustomed to alcohol. However, he did feel—and deeply, for the first time in his life—that the day had defeated him. All boys come to know that day; and ensuingly its most available remedy.

The innkeeper smiled, her rosy cheeks puffing like polished apples as she poured him a measure of rum.

"What is this, m'lady?" said Cassian.

"Down in one, boy; you'll be right in no time."

Cassian did as he was told and knocked it back. He felt the alcohol chase the chill from his veins like wildfire.

"Better?" asked the innkeeper.

"Yes!" gasped Cassian, fanning his open mouth.

"... Another?"

"Yes, please," said Cassian, without a second's thought.

And so it went, right into the witching hour, and Cassian had exceeded his fill quite some time ago. By then, the patrons had acknowledged him and were taking much amusement in his crapulence. They teased him for his clothes and for his patrician vernacular—but in good and healthy jest, for they recognized his unworldliness, especially in the dear etiquettes of consumption. But things were about to take an unfortunate turn.

"I don't know whi... which of you peasants are his friends," slurred Cassian, "but there is a man in the forest, burying his wife. He's all alone in the bit... bitter cold. What kind of friends are you that you would let him do that?"

The men chuckled; one of them said, "He's talking about John." Another said, "Burying his wife twice? I can't say I blame him!" and they all roared with laughter.

"What do you mean twice!" said Cassian. "Hey! ... What do you mean twice!"

He felt a big, heavy hand slap his shoulder. A man—a giant of a man—sat down next to him; the other men quieted, apparently pacified by his presence.

"John's wife, Mabel, was buried in the cemetery last week," croaked the giant, "with every other woman who has died here. There's a custom in this land. If a man loses his wife—to sickness, to injury, to desertion—and if he is childless, or his children are grown enough to be self-sustaining, he goes into the forest and he digs."

"Why?"

"To end himself with his toil."

"He dig... digs till he dies? Alone, in a hole in the wintry soil!"

Cassian slammed his tankard on the table and stood up. "You mean to tell me that man in the forest is digging his own grave?"

"It's how it goes," said the giant. "There is no king's law that

enforces it, but in natural law, it is plainly written."

"What barbarous nonsense! What if a man does not obey it? That he covets his God-given life, even when it is ruined by calamity and loss? Do you shun that? It is a perversion of the Protestant ethic... An anti-Calvinism, I see here, that a man seeks not in his labor the hand of The Lord, but for the approval of a deviant parish that would have him buried maggot-meal and hell-bound before he could discover his salvation!"

The giant stood up; he towered above Cassian, but Cassian held stern.

"Let him alone," said the innkeeper from behind the bar. "What does a boy of his age know?"

The giant scoffed. "He knows the imperative of a precious message, don't you, king's mutt. So heed mine, now. In your haste, you mistake us. We men, in God-given manhood, hold two virtues above all else. Love and duty. Is it not in service of your manhood that you have come here? Is it not in service of your manhood that you confront me now? But tell me, who do you love? Who do you love that you would forgo all other paths for, including the path to salvation... Tell me, for who would you smile at your death when God's mercy is uncertain? Is it reasonable? Is it clever? But... is it your duty? I say salvation lies within, and the only road to it is to die as you have lived—die like a man."

Cassian was taken aback by his words. But the image of the weak old man in the hole came back to him. "You can ply your pagan filth elsewhere," he said. "Nowhere in the holy verses is it sanctioned that a man may kill himself, and surely not at the behest of swamp-dwelling heretics. No, The King shall hear of this, and he will put a stop to it."

"King?" said the giant, prodding Cassian's chest with a burly finger. "You speak of him as if he were God."

"Enough!" pleaded the innkeeper.

"Caution, sir," said Cassian. "King Charles is your king, and I am appointed to defend his name."

"A puerile tongue is your king tonight, boy. Go! Go to bed, rid your loins of your belligerence." The giant turned to leave, but swung back around when Cassian said:

"Don't call me boy, you demented oaf!"

Before the giant could react, Cassian punched him square on the nose. He collapsed into his chair, blood streaming from his nostrils. He looked at him with peculiarly amused eyes and began to laugh. "There it is, my boy!" he cried. "There's the manhood you seek!"

Cassian went to strike him again, but a couple of men caught him under the arms and dragged him out of the inn and dumped him on his belly in the snow.

"Bastards!" Cassian shouted after them. "Churls!" He got to his feet and brushed himself off. "I cannot allow this!" he said, and took his steed and galloped into the forest.

Night had claimed the forest with iciest darkness; snowflakes burned Cassian's face, slingshotted from every direction by a bitter wind. Swerving tree trunks that rose from the blackness like specters, he ignored the repellent character of the brake, digging hard his heels into his mare. In his recklessness, it wasn't long before he was thrown from his saddle and put to sleep in a bed of thorny brambles.

Cassian awoke at daybreak, ailed head to toe: most tenderly in his head and his stomach where the alcohol was busy collecting its debt. He shook off the stiff vines, stood up, and looked around through bleary eyes. The wind and the snow had abated. The forest was a still tapestry of crystalline boughs under a faint blue sky. He called out to his horse. Then came footsteps from behind him, and he turned around, expecting only to see his companion cantering faithfully to heel. But there was a figure in a green robe leading her by the reins toward him.

"Sir! Many thanks!" shouted Cassian.

The figure approached and lifted her robe's hood to reveal a young lady with braided scarlet-red hair. Her eyes were different colors: one a limpid turquoise like an arctic lagoon, the other a burning, wild green. Cassian was taken aback by her unwonted beauty. "Please excuse me, m'lady," he said, and bowed. "I could not recognize you beneath your garment... I am Cassian, royal messenger to King Charles."

The lady looked him up and down and giggled.

"I had... Yes, it seems I had something of a misfortune with my horse... But she seems to be rectified now. I mean, you appear to have taken a firm hand with her; well done—she doesn't usually respond all that generously to strangers. Not that she isn't a well-trained animal."

Still, the lady didn't speak. She was fairer than a Greek andriás, and her lips shone like frozen cherries. The more Cassian gazed at her, the more entranced by her he felt; but the longer he spoke, the more he felt he spoke like a fool. His discomfiture won him, and he decided to take his leave.

"Well, I shall let you get on, then," he said, taking the reins from the lady's hand. "I have a message for the Earl of Edgecote that must be delivered today... But first, I must find a man—John, I believe his name is. He is trapped in a hole of his own misguided labor somewhere very close to here."

Much to Cassian's surprise, "Yes, he's over there," said the lady, pointing east.

"Is my man alive?"

"I should think not, sir. Would you like me to take you to him?"

"I would be most grateful," said Cassian.

The lady led the way. Cassian observed her curves gently rising and falling under her robe as she walked. Remembering his appointment, he willed his eyes elsewhere.

He was dismayed to discover that he was but a short distance from the man when he had floundered. And the man was indeed perished; a jumble of frozen skin and bones at the bottom of the hole. "M'lady, please," he said, "look away. It is a tragic sight; your eyes need not suffer for its beholding."

But the lady paid no heed. She stepped to the hole, took a little seed from her pocket, and dropped it. To Cassian's astonishment, an enormous oak tree sprung up from the hole and unfurled its grand branches high above them like a giant bird about to take flight. Cassian's horse reared at the event, Cassian fought to keep hold of her.

"You see?" said the lady. "A mighty oak. He must have been a brave man."

"What?" said Cassian, still struggling with his horse. "In God's name, who are you?"

The lady went to him and touched the mare on the nose; she immediately calmed down, and Cassian fell to his knees, panting.

"Look over there... an elm," said the lady. "That man was wise and patient. And over there, a sycamore... that man was inventive and ambitious. And, oh! My favorite! A horse chestnut—yes, I remember him. This was a kind man, a selfless man."

Cassian looked around, puffing clouds of frigid air. "These are men? You mean each and every tree in the forest?"

"No, sir," said the lady. "The men are in heaven with their beloveds, where they belong."

"I don't understand."

The lady looked down at him. She caressed his cheek. "You're not meant to," she said. "You're so very young. You aren't supposed to be here."

"I'm no younger than you are," argued Cassian.

The lady smiled. "There is nothing happening here that hasn't happened all over the world since the dawn of time, Cassian."

Cassian looked up into her eyes. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Everything about her softened him, weakened him, pulled him in like a leaf in a whirlpool. Listening to her voice was like lowering slowly into a warm bath. Is that love?

"You have duties," she said.

"Yes," said Cassian. "To the realms. Today."

"Go, then. You must go."

Cassian knew he had to. He orientated his horse southward: As the man in the hole had advised, he would go back out of the forest the way he came, then pivot east to circumvent the marshes. He took his leave without looking back at the lady, but once on safe and firm path to Edgecote, he relaxed in his stride and began to wonder what sort of tree the lady would make of him. An oak? A horse chestnut? He decided not to report the village's so-called customs, heretical as he believed them to be. He had much to learn, much to suffer -- and whatever the message from the forest, it was his alone to interpret, to burn, or to cherish. Many kingdoms awaited him.