Chapter IV: The Hunter Moon, AD 480
Potest ex casa magnus vir exire.
A great man comes from a hut.
* * *
Everything in Mister Merthen’s hut smelled like smoke and wet hay. At least that was how it smelled to little Uther. Merthen’s hut was round. Uther had never lived in a round house before, only square ones.
Mister Merthen had many round things. The broom he gave Uther to sweep out the rabbit hutch was round. The baskets stacked against the low mud wall of his hut were round. Even the big bronze stewpot in the middle of the clearing was round. Merthen stirred that pot all the time.
Merthen was always doing something. Sometimes he was carving a tool. Other times he was gathering water from the spring or twisting a leaf off a tree and looking at it. He seemed to like looking at things, mostly things he found lying around or growing in the forest.
Merthen was the busiest person Uther had ever met. All day long he puttered around. He even talked to himself, but not in the morning. As soon as he got up, Merthen would sit with his legs crossed and his eyes shut and just do nothing. Then he would go back to doing things.
Late one afternoon, Merthen twisted strips of bark and made a round thing. It was like a plate, but it had holes in it. He took some twigs and propped up the plate thing just above a pit filled with hot coals. Come to think of it, the plate thing had more holes than plate. Maybe it was not a plate at all? Was it a table?
Uther asked, “Is that a little table? Is that for me?”
Merthen laid a handful of shiny green leaves onto the woven frame. “No, boy. It is a rack for desiccating herbs. I am preparing mint for storage.”
“Will we eat it? What does desiccating mean?”
“It means to dry something so thoroughly that no water remains.”
Uther scratched his closely cropped hair. Sometimes his head still itched from where the lice used to bite him.
Above the smoldering fire, the air seemed to ripple. Uther followed it up past the top of the trees. A raven cawed somewhere up in the hills. Uther knew what a raven sounded like. He had heard them before.
Uther said, “I am hungry.”
“As you should be. You worked rigorously this afternoon. You will make a fine monastic one day.” Merthen curled his arm like a strong man. “Sine labore non erit panis in ore. There are tripe and crushed turnips in the skillet. Be mindful to thank the cow who gave us her organ meat.”
Just for fun, the boy hopped toward the dinner pail on one foot. He scooped a mound of supper into his bowl.
Merthen shook the drying rack, and dumped its contents into a carved bowl. He flattened out a square of linen. Onto it, he poured out the dried herbs. A woodpecker went rat-a-tat, startling the old man. A dozen mint leaves flew off his rack, some landing on the hot coals.
Uther asked, “Some people call you Merthen, but some people call you Ambrosius.”
With his finger tips, the old man picked up the four corners of the cloth. He created a fist-sized ball of herbs and crushed it. “I must confess to being rather inordinately well-endowed when it comes to pseudonyms. As I recall, my mother referred to me Lailoken, but no one else ever did. Ambrosius was the name I was given when I was baptized. I still use it professionally. Any more, most people call me Merthen, just like the town.”
“Merthen is a town? Where is it?”
“Down the trail aways. That was what the wild Britons called
Uther thought that was funny. Merthen said funny things, but not with a silly voice like in a puppet show. Merthen was not like most old men. Most old men were mean and smelled bad. Merthen did not smell bad, but he did smell sometimes. His breath smelled like garlic, and his farts smelled really bad. His armpits smelled like a shoe.
One of the fallen mint leaves in the hearth turned red and floated up on the rippling air. Uther waited to see if it would disappear or fall back down.
“My friends,” said Merthen, “call me Mister Merthen in jest, for they say I am older than the Roman cobblestones.”
“What does Merthen mean?” Uther took bite of stew and chewed it up. It was such a big bite, he had to chew it hard.
Merthen neatly tied up his crushed mint like a small bundle of wool. “I do not know, nor do I care to, just as long as it has nothing to do with dung.”
Uther smelled hay, not wet hay, but burning hay. A single flame flickered in the thatch at the top of the hut. “Is that a fire?”
“Caco santi!” cried Merthen. “Fetch me a whisk broom straight away, the one with the long handle. Go boy!”
Merthen grabbed the ladder over by the wood pile and pushed it against the outer wall of his home. Uther scampered over with a broom in one hand. His dinner bowl was still in the other.
“That will do,” said Merthen. He dunked the business end of the broom into Uther’s half-eaten meal, then climbed the three rungs of the ladder. “Uther,” he said while whacking the flickering flames with the stew-laden broom, “go draw a bucket of water.”
The boy bounded off to the springhead dug into the side of the hill. It looked like a cave. If the roof burned down, maybe they would have to sleep in a cave? Merthen said there were caves nearby. Maybe they had bears? Maybe Uther and Merthen could go hunt them?
Uther filled a leather bucket and ran back. He found Merthen resting at the bottom of the ladder, rubbing the back of his neck.
Uther asked, “Did the fire go out?”
“For the most part.” Merthen took the water. “I need you to perch yourself at the top of this ladder. You need not be afraid. Up you go.”
Uther hopped up the rungs. “Afraid of what?”
Merthen, with bucket in hand, climbed as well. He nudged the boy forward onto the roof.
Merthen handed over the pail. “We need to douse the ashes. I want you to pour this onto the scorched area, but do it very slowly. Can you do that?”
“I think so.”
Uther shimmied up to the peak. Merthen held onto the boy’s legs.
Uther dribbled out the water just as he had been told. He heard a sizzle. A puff of grey smoke hit him in the face and he coughed. The sizzling stopped.
“Good job, boy,” said Merthen. “The precipitation on this cursed island is nearly incessant, and yet it is my roof which chooses to ignite. Hinc illae lacrimae.”
There was a lone deer drinking from the stream at the bottom of the hill. Uther stood on his toes to get a better look.
Merthen touched his forefinger to a patch of unusually pale skin on the boy’s knee. “What is that white spot on your leg?”
“It is white spot. I have one on my arm too.” Uther lifted up his right elbow with his left hand and twisted around to show it off. In the process, he lost his footing, and flopped down onto the blackened thatch. He tumbled toward the eaves.
“Halt!” said Merthen. He tossed away the bucket and clasped onto the back of Uther’s blouse. It ripped clean off, but the old man’s effort did slow the boy’s fall. Uther got his bearings and dove off the four foot wall into a stack of woven baskets, which tipped over and dumped him safely onto the ground.
Merthen’s ladder teetered to the side. He launched off it just before it tipped, then stumbled backwards, tangling himself in a pine tree. The ladder hit the rabbit hutch. They thumped around, scared. Uther’s favorite rabbit was a white doe with pink eyes. He called her Lady Ygerna. That was a pretty name.
Merthen, still hanging on to the torn-off blouse, asked, “Are you all right?”
Uther slapped his palms together. They were sooty. His bare torso was covered with shards of wet thatch. “I am dirty.”
Merthen freed himself from the pine and massaged his lower back. “I know a geezer who is going to be sore come morning. I am too old for this.”
“How old are you?”
Merthen, using the ripped up shirt like a rag, wiped the boy’s face. “I am quite the antique, which is why you must learn self-sufficiency. At my age, the king of death stalks my every turn.” He cleaned Uther’s hands.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I may expire at any moment. Death comes for us all, but I am especially susceptible.”
“With celery?”
“With what?” Merthen shook out the cloth.
“Mister Death’s celery.”
“Why would Death carry celery?”
The boy wiped his nose. “You said he had a stalk.”
“No, Uther, I said he was stalking me, like a fox hunting a gosling.” He spun the boy around and brushed the thatch from his back and shoulders.
Uther flicked off some of the hay stuck to his belly. “So,” he said, “Mister Death does not like celery?”
“As far as I know, the grim reaper has no preference pro or con in regards to salad greens.” Merthen looked at the roof. It was messy. “That will require a patch.”
Uther asked. “Which name do you like better, Ambrosius or Merthen?”
“I prefer Merthen. It is more unique. Ambrosius is quite common. Our king is also named Ambrosius.”
Uther shivered. “Why did your mother call you Ambrosius?”
“She did not. My master assigned it to me. I had another slave name as an adult: Pig Eyes.”
“That sounds funny.”
“And yet it brought me no merriment.” He carried Uther into the hut. There was a wet spot in the floor. The old man lowered the boy onto his cot. Uther’s teeth chattered. Merthen wrapped a towel around him. It was soft. It smelled like pine cones. Why did it smell like that?
“It is past your bed time,” said Merthen. “When you stay up late you get grouchy. I interviewed a number of the matrons down at the market. They informed me that young boys require a great deal of sleep.”
“Not me. I wake up all the time. I think I hear rats, but it is just you peeing.”
Merthen unfolded Uther’s nightshirt. “I fear my voiding is unavoidable.” He examined the collar. “What is this?” He stuck his pinky through two holes in the fabric. “Must you chew on everything? I shall have to darn this, yet again!”
“You could teach me to sew.”
“Oh, I shall.” Merthen prepared the boy’s bedroll. “You have to stop gnawing on things. It will not do, boy.”
“I know,” said Uther. He pulled on his night cap. “Could you tell me a story?”
“If you feel it would calm you, I will. Will it calm you?”
“Aye, it will. Tell me about Odysseus and the Cyclops!” Uther liked that story. It had monsters. The Cyclops was a monster, a giant with only one eye. He lived in a cave. Did the caves around here have any giants? They would need a big cave. Too small a cave, and they would get stuck.
“I cannot tell that story tonight,” said Merthen. “It is far too athletic. What about
“Is that the island where the man had a bull’s head?”
“No.
“Were there any giant monsters there?”
“There may have been a passing centaur, but they were of modest stature. Mostly, it was populated with humans called Greeks, but that was good. Zeus liked them because they could read, and they manufactured such nice pottery. I will teach you Greek someday.”
The boy brought his collar up to his mouth. He quickly pulled it out. “What did the Greek humans eat?”
“Dried figs and black olives. And they loved to go to the theater. Thus, Zeus erected his estate on their territory. You know, the Greeks named their capitol after Athena, the goddess of wisdom. What do you think of that?”
Uther reached down and removed a piece of thatch from his trousers. It was poking into his skin. “Did Athena live there?”
“As I recall, she resides on the moon.”
“Is your mother in
“Oh, no. She passed long ago.”
The boy stammered. “What happened? Where did she go?”
“It was not she who left.” Merthen picked his teeth. “I was taken as a slave when I was… well, your age actually. The Visigoth who caught me told me that my mother was dead. For all I know he was right. I have almost no recollection of her. Needless to say, by the time I returned to Britannia, she was gone.”
The boy yawned. “That is not fair. He should not have taken you.”
“What can I say? Suffering exists. The First Noble Truth is annoyingly accurate.”
Uther was not cold anymore. His cot was nice and warm. He closed his eyes. Then he quickly reopened them. “Where is your mother now? Is she on the moon? Is she with Athena? Maybe my mother is with her.”
Merthen noticed a ladybug crawling up his beard. He shook it off. “Throughout the world, there is a diversity of cosmologies that speculate as to the status of the soul postmortem, none of which, to my knowledge, involve lunar habitation.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” said Merthen, “that here are many things we cannot see. Ergo, it is possible, albeit unlikely, that our mothers are on the moon.” Merthen yawned. “Get some rest, boy. Tomorrow we shall go to market. We can visit Widow Blodwen. That will be nice, yes?”
The boy felt his eyelids drop. The hut smelled like ash and mint leaves. Merthen smelled like Merthen. That was a good smell. Uther fell asleep.
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