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From outside comes the sound of Michael unlocking the door. Kate turns her short-sighted gaze on me. “Oh lass, we’d all fain let you out if we could, but what would your father do? Our lives wouldn’t be worth the living, if we still had them to live.”
Michael stands in the doorway, listening. “Best be careful, Goody Kate,” he says with a grin.
I could have warned him, had I been so inclined, that it is deeply unwise to antagonise Kate, but I do not, since it will be a pleasure to ponder the frightful things which she will now do to his food.
“I thank you for your advice, lad,” she says to him as he pulls the door to. “For certain it will guide my actions.” Michael gives a self-satisfied laugh.
Sunday comes, and I am not even allowed to go to church. John comes over again afterwards. I hear his horse, which has a distinctive, petulant whinny, and I catch a glimpse of him arriving as I peer out of the awkward angle of my window. My father, whom I can hear coughing and wheezing upstairs, does not go down, and no one opens the door to the visitor. After a while John gives up hammering on it and instead stands shouting up at the battlements. Eventually he comes round the tower looking for my window. I rap on the glass and finally he sees me. He stands up in his saddle, then ducks, as a stone flies off the battlements at him. I can hear my father shouting above, “Give that bow to me, lad, if you’re too lily-livered to use it! What, you’ve never shot a parson? What have you been doing all your life? Call yourself a henchman?” An arrow hisses past my window, and another, and I recoil in horror, then realise as they land quivering in the grass that they are not intended to hit John – my father’s aim is better than that – but merely to cause him to go away. He does not go away, however. He sits there for a long time, arms folded, whilst arrows fly past him, then he turns his horse and moves away to the edge of the woods, a one-man siege.
By Monday I have had enough. I have looked at all ways of escaping. It might well be possible to break my window with the warmingstone from my bed. My bedsheets tied together could possibly reach near enough the ground for me to jump. The problem is that the tower is too well guarded for me to get away. There is always a watchman on the battlements, and they fear my father too much to turn a blind eye. I have considered bribery, and ponder what it would take to bribe somebody to leave the door unlocked. What can you offer someone, to risk their life? Do I indeed ever want anyone to risk their life for me again? In the end, when it happens, it is in an unplanned way. Kate brings my supper on Monday evening, and tells me that my father and his men are to attack Low Back Farm again tonight, under cover of darkness. They believe that today’s rough weather, which is rapidly turning into a wild night, will enable them to creep right up to the farmhouse undetected.
“If everyone’s going down to Low Back Farm, who’ll
be on watch?” I ask her.
“Leo, that slitgut, him as should be off tending t’cows.” Before she has finished speaking, I have made up my mind.
As night falls, I can hear them preparing for the attack. Swords scrape and tinderboxes click. The smell of hot tar rises up the tower walls as arrows are wrapped and dipped. I offer up a prayer for Verity and James, then rip the sheets off my bed, drag the clothes press against the door, retrieve the warmingstone and wait for it to become silent outside.
It takes a long time. My stomach churns with nervousness as I wait, straining my ears. Raindrops beat against my window, driven by the wind. I can see nothing beyond the wet glass but a great darkness full of moving shadows.
The gale battering the tower becomes too loud for me to know whether or not all the men have gone. I can only hope it is also loud enough to cover the sounds of my escape. Kate will be asleep in her room behind the kitchen hearth. Germaine, I do not know. I just hope she is off on one of her unexplained absences.
For a moment I cannot do it. I hold the green granite warmingstone, and can think of nothing but how expensive this fragile glass was, and how cold my room used to be before the window was glazed. I listen. Will Leo really be on the battlements in this weather, with no Scots likely and no one to check his vigilance? What will he do if he sees me? It is, after all, for his sake that I am imprisoned here. I swing the stone high above my head, and bring it crashing against the window.
In a second it is gone, precious glass smashing and tinkling away into the night. I am almost knocked back against the bedpost by the wind roaring in. Now I must hurry. I stuff the knotted bedsheet out of the window, but it blows back over and over again. When it is finally out, it will not hang down. I think of Robert climbing the wall on his swaying rope ladder, his face at the window, my hands pushing him and the terrible injuries he sustained when he fell. The height and the precariousness of these walls seem suddenly fearsome and impossible.
There is a lull in the gale. Is this the moment to go? No one appears to have heard me so far. The bedsheet whips round and catches on some shards of glass. I free it, prise the fragments out, check that the other end of the sheet is still firmly knotted round the leg of the bed. There is a sound from above. I must just go, never mind the sheer drop and the frightening fragility of the knotted sheets. I drag my cloak round me and climb backwards on to the deep windowsill. The wind rips at my skirts and I feel as if I am being sucked through the narrow aperture before I am ready. I kneel there, holding on to the sheet and the window-ledge, staring back into the room, and as I do so, the clothes press which was jammed against the door starts to move. It judders along the floor towards me. I stare at it, paralysed. Someone is coming in, and I hadn’t even heard the key.
With the opening door, the gale rushes right through the room. Hangings rattle and ash swirls. “What’s the matter with this door?” enquires a voice. “I knocked, mistress; is everything all right?” With a final push, Leo enters. “Sweet Jesu!” He rushes across the room and grabs my arms as I frantically try to lower myself out.
“No!” I hit out at him. “No! Let me go, Leo! Let me go at once!”
Almost effortlessly he drags me back in and sets me on my feet in the chamber.
“Leo, how dare…”
“Shh.” He goes to the window, pushes the knotted bedsheet out again and watches it spiral around the window space as the wind catches it. Then he crosses to the door, holds it open for me and bows. “An easier way, mistress. I heard nothing, with this terrible wind blowing.”
We look at one another. All manner of things are in that look, acknowledgements of deeds done and faith kept. Leo looks away first, as he unhooks a piece of hessian twine from his belt. “Come on, lady, out with you.” I step on to the tiny landing that leads to the spiral staircase, and watch as Leo loops the twine round a leg of the clothes press, then hooks it under the door. “Anything more you wish to take?” he asks. I look back, and shake my head. I have all I intend to take bundled into a large pocket attached at my waist. I watch as Leo closes the door and locks it, then pulls both ends of the twine so that the clothes press scrapes back into position, barricading the door on the inside.
“Thank you.” My voice is hoarse. I have to clear my throat. “Thank you, Leo.”
“Come lady, we’d best get you moving. I’ll saddle a horse. You’ll be going to the parsonage?” I nod. Down in the blowy barmkin, whilst Leo puts my sidesaddle on Germaine’s little mare, Mattie, I stand and watch my bedsheet high on the tower wall, flailing about in the rising gale.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_07eb223c-969c-5427-9075-f9b0a898d59f)
If I had not gone to stay at John’s, everything would have been different.
For my first few days at the parsonage, I am filled with melancholy. I miss my home, my room, the rhythms of life on the farm. I have to remind myself that I was a prisoner there, and that the past week was intolerable. On the many occasions in those first few days when my father comes beating at the parsonage door, only to be turned away, I feel almost glad to hear him, simply for the familiarity of his rage. From a small, high window I watch him walk back to where his horse is tethered at the trough on the green, and I see that he has a severe limp, presumably from his latest encounter with James and the men of Low Back Farm.
My mother does not visit me, but instead sends such of my clothes as I might need for a short stay, and a note berating me for supposedly risking breaking my neck by climbing out of the window, and commanding me to mind my tongue and under no circumstances to speak about the deaths of the two strangers.
The day after my arrival John and I sit in the kitchen where Mother Bain is baking bread. Smoke rolls through the late afternoon sunlight as she lifts out trays of flat, black loaves from the bread oven, and tips them on to the wooden rack. The bitter scents of smoke and rye fill the kitchen.
“I’ll mull some ale.” John looks tired. He has been up half the night with one of his parishioners who is dying of consumption. “Will you have some ale?” he asks Mother Bain.
“Nay lad. The bread’s done and I’m off to lie down. I daresay the pair of you are safe to be left?”
This has become a joke between the three of us. John watches her go to her room behind the hearth, which she took over when James left, since stairs have now become too much for her.
“We should get a chaperone for you,” John says when she has gone. “It’s well enough to joke, but your being here is a very different matter from Verity’s being here. I don’t think it can be entirely unknown to people that you and I have some fondness for each other.” He pushes the poker into the fire to heat. “I want you to stay. I want you to stay as long as you’re willing to, and I want there to be no whisper of scandal to spoil it.”
I do not distress him by telling him that there is already considerably more than a whisper of scandal surrounding my presence here, amid speculation about my imprisonment and escape. I have seen groups of villagers on the green casting curious glances at the parsonage, and we have had a stream of visitors here these first few days, bringing pies and puddings. They say it is to welcome me to Wraithwaite, but I know it is in fact to see the state I am in, since my father’s notorious temper appears to have driven yet another daughter to seek refuge here. On the occasions when my father comes galloping up to the parsonage door, a surprising number of people appear to have business requiring their attendance on the village green. John goes out and talks calmly to him each time, locking the door behind him, and in the presence of so many witnesses there is little my father can do but eventually leave.
“Surely Mother Bain is adequate as a chaperone,” I reply. “Unless your designs on me are more drastic and immediate than I anticipated.”
John smiles. “The problem is that Mother Bain has failing eyesight and hearing, and is also seen as somewhat unorthodox, with all her soothsaying and predictions. I think we need a woman of narrow views and a reputation for utmost propriety. The widow of one of the strangers who was killed in the woods has journeyed to Wraithwaite, looking for work. She is destitute now that her husband is dead. I spoke to her. She seems exactly the sort of person we need. Her name is Widow Brissenden.”
I stare at him. “You spoke to her without consulting me, John? I have heard of this woman. They say she is truly dreadful. They say she is carping and narrow-minded and criticises everyone in her path.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, you know what people here are like, particularly about strangers. They’ll get used to her. She has relatives in Hagditch who speak very highly of her. She’s staying with them but does not wish to be dependent on them, which is admirable. One of her nephews rode over here to recommend her to me. It seems only sensible to take her on, since she needs a position and we have one to offer. Also, I almost feel we owe it to her, since her husband was murdered whilst here at the command of your father.”
I pace round the kitchen, feeling angry, yet not in a position to vent my anger. I am John’s guest, and also I feel partly responsible for this woman having become a widow. The thought of having her as a constant reminder of the attack appals me though. I stop in front of John. “Please do not employ her, John. I shall not be here for long. It does not generally bother you to flout convention.”
He pours ale into a battered silver jug and tosses in some cloves, a cinnamon stick and a nutmeg. “It only bothers me because it concerns you,” he says mildly. He takes a moleskin mitten, pulls the red-hot poker from the fire and plunges it into the jug. A hissing billow of steam pours out, searing our cheeks.
“The bishop is coming on Friday,” he adds, stirring the mixture with the poker then pouring the ale into our two earthenware mugs. “I want to take him to visit your father – he can hardly refuse the bishop entry – so that we can arrange Verity’s betrothal and marriage as quickly as possible. Time’s going on. She can’t continue like this. The bishop can impose fines on your father, or exclusion from Communion, if he continues to attack Low Back Farm. It has become ridiculous. He can’t go on refusing to accept the situation. I’d intended that the bishop should also effect your release, if you hadn’t already done so yourself.”
I take the warm mug from his hands. “I’ll come with you to Barrowbeck, John, when you go there with the bishop.”
“Is that wise? Your father could have you seized again, and then you would have to… er… climb out of the window a second time.”
“You doubt that I climbed out of the window?”
“Sweet Beatrice, I know you. You do not lie well. I think some brave soul succeeded where I failed, and let you out.”
I gaze through the smoky firelight. “You were a brave soul, John. I watched you standing there with arrows flying all about you.” I pause, made suddenly miserable by the recollection.
He takes hold of my hand. “Who let you out? Tell me. I shall say nothing to anyone. Was it the gallant Hugh?”
I stand up and pull my hand free, finally giving up the battle to be gracious and conciliatory. “Oh please, not another of you making gibes about Hugh. I had enough of that from Robert.” I hurl the name at him deliberately, wishing to hurt him because he has engaged Widow Brissenden without asking me, and because the recollection of him being shot at makes me sick to my stomach, and because I do not wish to feel this way about anyone just now. It is too inconvenient. It is too demanding. I have had enough of it, and I know suddenly that with John it will be worse, because he lays claim to my mind, as well as to other parts of me. He is too clever. He could know me too well. If I let John into my head, how will I ever have secrets again?
He makes no response.
“How controlled you are, John,” I remark.
“It doesn’t come naturally, Beatie. Unfortunately it is part of my job. I would vastly prefer to go round shouting and hitting people.”
I am forced to smile. “Well, I have known you to do that quite well too. I apologise for my rudeness. Please forgive me.”
He stands up. “The fault was mine. I should not have questioned you.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, of course you have the right, with my father hammering at your door, and an endless stream of the residents of Barrowbeck begging refuge of you.”
“Truly, say no more, Beatrice.”
We are silent for a while, sipping the ale, which is too hot. Eventually I say, “The reason I wish to come to Barrowbeck with you is to visit Verity, John. I haven’t seen her since she moved to Low Back Farm, and I’m worried about her, particularly with my father’s temper as it is.”
John is watching me, sprawled in his chair, flushed from the fire. “I think your presence here is keeping your father occupied and saving Verity and James a deal of trouble. Yes. Come. We’ll keep you out of his way. I’ll be delighted to have your company, and I’d like the bishop to get to know you better too.”
On Friday the bishop arrives. He is a man of charm and humour. “So, I am to brave your father,” he says to me as we sit in the kitchen finishing the bottle of claret he brought.
“I hope it will not be too alarming an experience, my lord. I fear he is intolerant of the clergy.” I am deeply anxious about tomorrow’s expedition to Barrowbeck, and have already lost a night’s sleep over it. I excuse myself to go to my room to catch up on some rest. As I am leaving, the bishop says quietly to John in Latin, “So is the lady Beatrice to make an honest man of you, John?” I pause on the threshold. John is looking at me with an expression halfway between laughter and despair.
“Master John was my schoolmaster, my lord of Carlisle,” I answer the bishop, also in Latin. The bishop clasps his hand over his eyes.
“My child, please forgive me.”
“I fear it is I who will be begging forgiveness after you encounter my father, my lord, so please disregard it entirely.”
He stands up, so that from deference I must remain. “And the answer, Beatrice? What is the answer to my question?”
John is shaking his head, trying to silence him. I wish above all else that I were lying down in my room, and not having this conversation. I drop a curtsey and reply that on the contrary, his lordship has made a mistake, and that I am to marry my Cousin Hugh. It is whilst I am saying this, that I realise it is no longer true.
The bishop arrived in a red and gold coach most unsuitable for our country roads, and which was mired several times on his journey here, so we travel to Barrowbeck on horseback the following day. We go first to Low Back Farm, and find that James has begun building a fortified pele tower on to his farmhouse. His henchmen, led by George and Martinus, are moving blocks of limestone with pulleys, ready for the Irish builders to lay the foundations.
I stand in this familiar place, and breathe in the smell of first frost, and let the distress of the past two weeks seep away. The ground is getting colder. I can feel it like a great stone under my feet. Overhead, seagulls scream and head inland, a sign of fierce weather coming.
It is wonderful to see Verity again. John, the bishop and I stay for an hour, eating hot buttered wheaten cakes and drinking more wine. Verity has begun keeping bees, and shows us her trussed straw bee-skeps, and the workroom she will use for producing honey and beeswax candles and furniture polish. She is noticeably increased in size.
“Now madam, you must marry,” says the bishop sternly as we are leaving.
“Gladly sir, if you can obtain my father’s permission,” Verity replies irritably. “It is not of my choosing to live thus.”
“If necessary we will dispense with your father’s permission.” The bishop stares along the valley to where Barrowbeck Tower dominates the horizon. “Nevertheless, we will reason with him first.”
“God bless your efforts.” Verity’s expression does not indicate a great measure of confidence in them, with or without God’s blessing.
As we are leaving, James arrives back from chopping trees for winter fuel. He is riding bareback on one of the two carthorses which are dragging the huge pallet of tree trunks. He jumps down when he sees us, and I am struck by the change in him, as he smiles and asks if we cannot stay a little longer. He is clearly overawed by the bishop, yet he makes an effort, and converses with us, instead of retreating into silence as he would have done until recently.
John explains our mission, and we bid them an affectionate farewell and set off up the valley. I have told John that I shall visit my aunt whilst he and the bishop call upon my father. I have not told him the purpose of my visit. Behind us, from all along the valley, comes the dull beat of axes on wood, as logs are chopped for winter, and I find I am worrying about our own farms winter supplies. Has anyone thought of cutting trees for Barrowbeck’s winter fuel yet? My father will not have, since he spends his time roaming the countryside causing grief of one sort or another. Wood needs at least two months to season, before being burnt. Last year we were late with it, and the burning of green wood all but smoked us out of the tower. Then there is the root cellar. When I left, it was already piled high with parsnips and carrots, safely covered with black woollen cloths to keep out the damp, but has anyone thought to lift the first of the turnips yet and bring them in? Anxiety and homesickness overwhelm me. I think with a pang of all my summer’s herbs so lovingly cut, dried and hung on their S-shaped metal hooks, filling the root cellar with pungency. This winter I shall be a guest in another house, and it will not be the same.
We part company at the edge of the clearing. “Go carefully,” says John. “We’ll meet you back at James’s farm at sundown.”
I guide my horse on to a less-used path towards Mere Point, which will keep me out of sight of Father’s watchman on the tower. The path is strewn with bright leaves. Berries like jewels glow on the stripped autumn trees. This is my first time alone in the woods since I was attacked. I duck under the low-hanging branches and ride deep into the forest, and everywhere I go two dead men with their throats cut march behind me.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_bdd1e3f6-2e55-5af0-b415-963b429bcb6c)
At Mere Point they are also chopping wood. Hugh and Gerald, red-faced and sweating, are swinging their axes at a pile of tree trunks near the edge of the clearing.
“I’ll be along in a minute,” calls Hugh, as I head for the tower.
The sea is far out, distant and innocent-looking under a wide blue sky. Sea birds drop and swoop in the great space below the cliff, turning deftly and rising again on the breeze.
I find Aunt Juniper in the smokehouse at the side of the tower. She is standing on an old stool, hanging black sausages perilously over the glowing embers in the smoke-pit, where several sides of pork already hang. The atmosphere in the smokehouse is thick and greasy. Aunt Juniper looks round as she hooks the last looped sausage on to the chain, and turns the handle to trundle them along.
“I should be asking you to do this for me, Niece,” she comments, “since heights appear not to trouble you.” She climbs down and embraces me. Her face is blotched from the heat. “Are you well? Safe and well and in one piece? Welcome, my dear. I’faith, young women today, not willing to be locked in towers any more. I don’t know what the world is coming to.” She laughs. “Have you come to visit Hugh?”
I avoid replying, and instead wave to Hugh across the clearing as we walk towards the tower. Hugh wipes his face on his sleeve and waves back. Suddenly I feel very fond of him.
“I’m smoking the pork with applewood this year,” my aunt continues. “Your mother’s was so good last year. What is she using this year? Do you know? I have forgotten to ask her with all this business of Verity going on.”
“Rosewood and elder, I think.” I am glad to avoid more contentious topics as long as possible, but eventually the moment arrives when I am sitting opposite Aunt Juniper at the kitchen table, waiting for Hugh to come in, and there is no longer any getting away from it.
“Auntie, I am here to tell you something. I must say this to you first. I cannot marry Hugh.” I say it as fast as I can, then wait.
Aunt Juniper looks at me, then purses her lips and spreads her hands flat on the table. “Is it because of Parson Becker, Beatrice? They are saying you have a fondness for the parson… that you and he have a fondness for one another. Can this be true?”
Hugh comes in. I can see from his face that he has been listening. His hands hang tired and red from hewing the wood. He is unsmiling.
I turn in my seat. “I’m sorry, Hugh. You’re like a dear brother to me, and always will be. We’re too close to think of marrying. Please forgive me.”
Hugh looks hurt and puzzled. He looks as if his pride is wounded, but I wonder if I am imagining that he also looks a little relieved. Aunt Juniper appears distressed and bewildered. “Is this attachment of yours to the priest something of a religious or spiritual nature, Beatrice?” she demands.
I opt for the truth. “I’m not sure.”
She shakes her head. “First Verity, now you, going your own ways. What’s happening to the world, Beatrice? I warrant the queen started all this, setting her face against good husbands, God bless her. I’m sure I don’t know where it will all end.”
Uncle Juniper comes in, hurls a log on the kitchen fire and claps me on the shoulder. “They’re real killers, my new dogs, Beatrice,” he booms. “Canst hear ’em, out in t’barn?” I smile and nod, and he goes to sit in a corner and scratch himself in private places.
Aunt Juniper leans her elbows on the table. “Beatrice, I would like to think you will not make any hasty decisions about this.”
Hugh turns away, flushing with anger. “Mother, she has decided. Your plans cannot always go to order.” He marches out.
Aunt Juniper watches him in astonishment, then continues as if she had not been interrupted. “You see how much you have upset him, Beatrice? I hope now that you will reconsider. ’Tis no wonder you have been shut up in your room, with such wilfulness on display. Have you and your sister no thought at all for the work and distress your behaviour causes? Marriage is a serious business, not a matter for idle preferences. In heaven’s name, what sort of income do you imagine a village priest will have? A lot of thought and planning goes into securing your futures and your fortunes, to give you the best security you can have. I don’t mind doing it. It’s no more than my duty. But Gerald already has to be found someone else, with Verity gone. I’m considering Mistress Fairweather of Hagditch. She’s badly pocked, but has fortune enough to make up for that, and is very young to have been left a widow. Gerald would make her – or anyone – a splendid husband.” She pauses, as if struck by an idea. “You wouldn’t consider…?”
I bite my lip. “I think I’m unfitted for marriage, Aunt. To anyone. Truly, I am not ready even to think about it.”
We sit in silence for a while. Hugh returns and pours elderflower wine and hands it round. He gives me a brief, rueful look, a glimpse of the old Hugh, which fills me with a strange pang of relief and regret. Aunt Juniper intercepts it. She asks quickly, “Would you care to come and stay here, Niece, rather than at the parsonage? Your uncle and cousins would protect you from your father. You need have no fear of that. You would be closer to Verity and to your mother. It would be a blessing for me to have another woman in the house. You could read Holy Writ to me of an evening, whilst I sew.”
There are voices in the gatehouse. We all look round. I have been half aware of someone arriving on horseback. Now Gerald enters, glancing behind him, holding out his hand to an unseen figure. A woman’s voice answers him, whispering uncertainly. Gerald steps back, vanishes, then returns with his arm round Germaine, forcing her forward. Aunt Juniper stands up, staring at Gerald’s arm. “What in heaven’s name are you doing, Gerald?” she exclaims. “What are you doing with that serving woman?”
He moves forward into the kitchen, and Germaine has no choice but to move with him. “I’m glad you welcome the presence of another woman in the house, Mother,” Gerald says. He kisses the top of his mother’s head. “Germaine is coming to live here. She is coming to stay with us.”
One look at Aunt Juniper’s face seems to indicate that this is a good moment to leave. I move round the table kissing each of them on the cheek, though hardly noticed by them in their shock-eyed immobility. I stroll out into the bright autumn afternoon, full of relief that my own mission is completed, overwhelmed by startled admiration for Gerald and Germaine, that they have dared to do this.
It is whilst I am mounting my horse outside the stables that I first hear the sound. I hear it, then it is lost again amongst the faint beat of axes that resounds all round the bay. I stop and listen, one foot in the stirrup. The sound comes again. It is different from the woodcutting. It has rhythm and resonance. It grows louder then fades, carried on gusts of wind across the water, two slow beats and three fast, the sound of a drum. I mount up. I cannot imagine what a drum is doing on a clear autumn day with winter coming on and no conflicts threatened, but it seems unimportant, and as my mind returns to the confrontation probably going on behind me in Mere Point Tower, I soon forget about it.
