Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

Tiny squeaks and patters in the roof were outriders from Forest, to be withstood by woodman’s vigilance.

Trees, like birds, had voices: one old gardener could hear the different replies of beech, willow, aspen, oaks, pine to the wind. Any tree, even when silent, had a story. Trees had lives, thus, like animals and, with the moon aglow, thoughts.Within each tree was a face. A woodcutter, felling an oak, saw a tissuous form escaping, hiding in air. Forest had recesses hinting at dangers, questions unanswered, perhaps unanswerable, save, of course, by trees, questions I never asked, fearing to be thought stupid.Words, when uttered, in unpleasant magic transformed private knowledge to the ridiculous.

I flinched at knowing too much, instinctively wanting trees, animals, people, particularly myself, to preserve mystery. On days still as paint, trees might yet stir and rustle, which, in tales, betokened presences, perhaps imaginary though watchful. Exploring, I glimpsed fleeting shapes and once heard distant drumbeats, or Forest’s heart. Forest was outpost of the giant, wooded North that had repulsed Rome. Southwards, in another forest, the German, Arminius, had for ever defeated the legions of Caesar Augustus.

So often had Charlemagne’s Franks invaded Livonia that when an uncle mentioned the Flight from the Franc, I could only imagine danger from a new Charlemagne.

Forest paths disappeared into fern and scrub. I glimpsed the woodpecker’s crimson crown, the yellow of a fallen aspen. In a clearing stood a lofty, irregular boulder, deeply grooved, with vague shoulders. We called it Fenris’ Grave, though villagers named it differently, incomprehensibly. Fenris? The wolf, son of wicked Loki, fated to devour Allfather Wotan at Ragnarok, the Last Battle, when the world shook with flame, sun and moon perished. I see from afar the downfall of the Fighting Gods . Heimdall, Valhalla’s watchman, had lost a hand chaining Fenris, to delay disaster. He also had nine mothers, an unenviable asset, the Herr General considered. Fenris might still lie under the dense, upright stone, struggling to wrench himself free. I cherished my engraving of an ancestor clasping Thor, though Father slightly spoilt it by relating it to an Estonian, anti-German caricature. Explanations killed. After dark the Night Mare rode the sky.Why? No matter.

The paths might be preparing surprise, perhaps ambush by Forest Uncle, immemorial Bear or some Master of the Forest, bark crusted or disguised as an elk. Where paths crossed in sudden embrace a patch of air, peculiarly colourless, might disclose a squat, grinning figure, greenish, unearthly, peaked face wrinkled as a map, with a riddle, warning or malicious joke.

When snow fell, servants chuckled that beds were being made in heaven; woodmen said that lightning created mushrooms.

Forest Uncle excited me more than lightning or Fenris. Wars occurred because people had once been bears, and Forest Uncle was more real than many visitors and relatives. Bears had actually vanished but, like Christ, might return. A cook was said to have been dismissed for ‘Bear Dancing’ in the library, regarded with awe and alarm in the kitchen, as though it were a temple of Loki and at very least storing strange knowledge. Our steward, Herr Max, grander and more aloof than Father, declared that the silence of books was terrible.

In Baltic legend people prayed for deliverance from Turks, little better than bears.Yet Forest Uncle, if capricious as God, protected trees, birds, animals and could glisten like the weather-cock over the stables, which could fly to the moon when dusk turned green. Conceivably, a prowler might stumble against him in darkness. He was known to have fathered a child in a distant village, as indeed had the moon. Undeniably, the folk there were large, shaggy, surly. The mother had died giving birth to ‘large claws’.

Once I saw, though never rediscovered, a tree stump, its surface flat as a plate, reputed to expect offerings to Forest Uncle, and a circlet of wild violets was undeniably rotting near by. Traditionally, he demanded the first fish or bird killed on St George’s Day. Under the Weeping Oak, by the Lake, virgins – very scarce, grumbled the housekeeper – were said to sing for lovers with dead fathers and full purses.

In Forest, silences were less than silent, shadows more intense. Kitchen folk spoke of a lost shrine to the Lady, washed once annually, reclothed, garlanded, standing rigid while a girl was drowned. Lake, wide, darkly fringed by thickets, thus covered scores of bodies, her silvery hazes the breath of the dead. Sometimes the water shuddered, as if a dripping head, scaled and unblinking, might break surface. Further away, in the Sound, children whispered about a snake encircling the world. ‘Rubbish,’ Mother said. ‘Nonsense, dear, but not rubbish.’ Father’s quiet tones implied rebuke.

Telephone wires streaked everywhere, to Reval, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Riga. Moscow? Better not ask.

From my Turret I saw the Pole star, which an ostler called Nail of the Sky, fixed above the giant tree or mountain upholding the universe. Once I saw, or thought I saw, a grey tower looming above trees but never rediscovered it, despite frequent attempts. Poems, however, showed that what did not exist could nevertheless be real, like the world-snake.

I read of the betrayal of Baldur, young and beloved, from whom our Baltic was named. Baldur, Redeemer, Shining One. Watching bundles of rain rolling in from the Sound, I rejoiced that he had survived Ragnarok, and I strove to connect him with those incessant in adult talk, in some Other World beyond the day: the Umbrella Bearer; the Cripple in the White House; the Champagne Baron; the Reichsmarschall; the Gutter King; the Moscow Ogre; Frau Simpson, the American. Adults were always busy, smiling, handshaking, whispering, allowing me to enjoy village auction-fairs, with rickety stalls piled with shoes, jerkins, old spades, scythes, querns, where dancers in broad black hats, red shirts, yellow skirts and breeches formed circles to croaks and squeals from queerly shaped instruments. Youths hitherto loud and boastful slunk into a certain tent I never dared approach, once hearing a woman’s voice from within. ‘You shouldn’t drink from the sea, darling; it’s touched by sailors ‘whatnots.’

Mindful of the farrier’s warning that the sky played tricks, I watched night swirling with polar tints, iced reds and greens, flimsy blues, billowing in masses, splintering into whites and yellows, flashing far away, simultaneously glimmering in our ponds.

Under certain lights, tree, water, bird, like portraits, were about to utter the extraordinary.

The estate was much diminished after Estonia’s secession from Russia, following an interregnum during which Berlin schemed for Baltic kingdoms, Estonia, like its sisters, a Hohenzollern Fürstentum , outflings of ‘Germania’ beloved by poets and singers.

My family and friends, of German ancestry, retained assumptions still feudal, our dependants the grandchildren of serfs. Though formally Estonian, the Germanic caste, High Folk, still considered itself proconsular. One neighbour had formerly been entitled to style himself Hereditary Imperial Councillor and sometimes still did so. Father once said that Germans were natural rulers, without disclosing whether he approved.

Whatever our failings, we were trusted more than the Russians: Whites or Reds, they remained Bear People, greedy, oppressive, unchanging.

The Manor was two hours’ drive from Reval and adjoined the Sound, tributary of the Gulf of Finland. Landscapes were placid, unremarkable, with grey islands, sallow plains of grass and rye, small hills darkened by Forest.

Father, austere but friendly, his grey beard like a harmless dagger, informed us that locals spoke a Finnish–Ugrian dialect. Of our domestic household only Herr Max was fully German. Mother was English, thus adding to my stories and words.Very pretty, she looked fragile as a vase; high wind might break her. Her green reticule, clasped in gold, must contain jewels, ‘compromising letters’, a flask of poison. She, like Father, habitually spoke German, occasionally French; we all had some pidgin Estonian. Nineteenth-century nationalism had revived Livonian languages, against Russian oppressors and German landlords.