“Thei clepe hir a wise womman in the toun and a witch in the scole. In hir owne vale thei clepe hir the lady, and thei sende for hir bifore the preest and ageyn after he is goon.”
As the valleys of the High South tell it
In the winter of 4419 the Mere Wold vale did everything it had always done. The field that was left was left. The well was not drawn after dark. The bread went to the boundary on its day, and the Lady was sent for and paid in kind, as she always had been. Nothing was forgotten and nothing was broken. The valleys tell that part slowly and plainly, so that nobody can say afterwards that the vale was careless. And the terms stopped holding.
On the other side of the arrangement something had altered, and nobody in the vale had been told. That winter the road was cut, and it stayed cut for three months. What befell while it was shut the valleys tell in few words, and never in the same words twice. By the end nine households had gone out of the vale, and none came back. The hamlet at the vale’s head has never been lived in since. It stands empty yet, and a Mere Wold man will point up the vale towards it without turning his head.
Terms were made again in the end, and they are the terms the vale keeps today. Ask a Mere Wold man what he does and he will tell you exactly. Ask him why and he will not say. And when the valleys say that the Lady carried the vale through that winter, they do not say whether they mean the woman or the power, and it is thought ill-mannered to ask.
What is known
The Lady of Mere Wold is one name for two parties, and both are there today: the woman who keeps the terms of the vale, and the power with which she keeps them. In the valleys of the High South, a woman who treats with the spirit world more readily than anybody can account for is acknowledged as a Lady, and takes the name of her ground. She is paid in kind and never in coin. In anything that touches the land she outranks the incumbent, and when a district sours it is she who is sent for, before ever the Water Court is troubled. She holds neither office nor licence, and so no official thing can clear her should her valley sour; her one protection is that her district lies across four or five parishes.
Whenever the Concord of Saint Winnow is asked whether a capitulation, that is, a district’s settled acceptance of a power’s terms, is permanent, it answers with 4419: permanent on our side, which is to say that the people remain bound whatever the power may do. Oxford holds the Ladies under tolerated custom. Cambridge has twice attempted to set the practice down and has produced two accounts that contradict each other.
