“The trees are undressing,” as Thomas Hardy wrote in his poem Last Week of October. Today, burnt-toffee and russet leaves litter open farmland, one moment absinthe-green, the next treacle-dark as deep shadows pass over wet grass and the sun is switched on, off, on, off. A dog barks. Rooks kaah, kaah. There is the low moo of cattle from the farm. The scent is sour-apple-sweet with a hit of wood smoke.
I pass through the kissing gate festooned with spiders’ webs, and stop to watch a murder of crows in an oak tree open their tatty-cloak wings and scatter in different directions.
The air changes as I walk up Slaughter Hill. The wind picks up, a plectrum plucking branches, rolling and whining, racing over the fields. There is a sulphur cast to the sky flaring to electric green, and pastel crayon shades on the horizon: grey, pink, orange.
Slaughter Hill was the site of a skirmish during the English civil war; according to local legend the valley brook flowed red with blood; a sword was discovered in its bank in the 1940s. However, Slaughter Hill may be a corruption of “Sloe Tree Hill”, as blackthorns grow here. These are trees of ill omen, cantankerous crones; it is believed witches’ staffs and wands are made from blackthorn wood. The tangled thickets before me display yellow, spoon-shaped leaves, soon to disappear, leaving twisted charcoal skeletons. It has been known for blackthorns to live for as long as a hundred years.
I tentatively touch the vicious spines; although not poisonous, they can snap off and enter the flesh. In some versions of Sleeping Beauty, I recall, the prince loses his sight when he tumbles upon the spikes that surround her.
Sometimes butcher birds use these trees as a larder, impaling their prey on the thorns. I look closely, but see only a song thrush tinged with speckles, feasting on the deep-blue sloes, glistening in a sudden shaft of sunlight, reminding me that in March, when hedgerows are still stark, the blackthorn will have blossoms of rich-cream.
