St. Edmund Wood

by Caitlin Luke Quinn

  Everheart Books Edition

  Copyright © 2013 Caitlin Luke Quinn

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This edition is published by arrangement with Caitlin Luke Quinn

  everheartbooks.com

  First electronic edition

  Created and distributed by Everheart Books, a division of Central Avenue Marketing Ltd.

  St. Edmund Wood

  ISBN 978-1-771680-01-1

  Published in Canada with international distribution.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Meghan Tobin-O’Drowsky

  Cover Photography: Courtesy & Copyright iStock & PetarPaunchev

  To Susan, Kathy, Annie, Robbie, and Stephen, my sisters and brother who watched me scribble over the years,

  and to the three ‘C’s’ – Christine, Colleen, and Cheryl, my cousins who starred in a few of my plays...

  St. Edmund Wood

  Chapter 1

  The story insofar as anyone cared began with a conversation shared by two strangers as different as night and day, struck one evening in a rattling, noisy coach from London. The elderly woman of means put aside her copy of Fordyce’s Sermons and assessed the young lady through spectacles, nodding.

  “You’ve been to London for the season,” the woman pronounced.

  The girl sitting opposite shook her head, though it was barely a movement, and resumed her vigil on a rural landscape far more entertaining, it appeared, than this curious traveling companion or the book lying open in her lap.

  “Can this be so? Who are your parents, my dear? Why would they not consider bringing you out?”

  “It was not a question of what they wanted for me.” The voice was high and clear, soft, but not the childish or nasal kind. It was a voice that inferred confidence, even contentment.

  “Ah…” Eyes darted up and down. “Well, I see that you have an eye for the latest fashion, for if I’m not mistaken that dress is very much like the one Mrs. Beaulieu wore on the Glorious Twelfth when she joined the Duke of Clarence and his hunting party!”

  “Is it? I didn’t know.”

  “Oh yes; the sash is above the waistline, and affords a freedom of movement you modern girls so love; and you do have an uncommon beauty, my dear! Well, it is a shame.”

  The girl smiled now, and offered another imperceptible shake of the head. The coach slowed and began its descent through a wood and into the valley where a village clustered around the walls of a castle standing at the Welsh Marches. The bleating of the post horn made the woman pause only for second.

  “We should be approaching Ludlow, I think, for I see the towers of the castle!” she exclaimed.

  “Knowstone!” the driver shouted.

  “Oh…” A disappointed sigh. Not that anything more need be said of a village in the middle of nowhere beside the ruins of a castle without a name and its lord forgotten.

  The coach made its way up and down the streets of the village, careening and tipping as the corners grew tighter and narrower than the last, until it groaned and creaked to a halt at the common room door of The Castle and Motte. The considerable noise and the lantern light woke a gnarled creature asleep on the stoop. It stood more upright than customary, swaying back and forth while a palsied hand groped for his bench to steady unwilling thirty-year-old legs; here was a commentary on the local economy; here was a man brought to a sorry state by life and liquor.

  The fellow now stared blindly into the carriage lanterns, trying to bat them away as if they were insects.

  “Here! What’re you doing? Weren’t expected until tomorrow!” he gasped.

  The driver threw down a penny and waved him off. “Knowstone, Miss!” he then called and rapped hard on the coach roof. A moment later the coach door opened and the girl disembarked, her face obscured by a dark green hood. She waited as the footman brought her trunk down and when asked where she wanted it, pointed toward the public house door. The creature caught sight of her face when she approached.

  “You! You came back!” he growled. “Isn’t true you be dead! Isn’t true at all!”

  Having said this, the creature moved away, watching her suspiciously. The coach drove off, and then disappeared into the wood, becoming a speck of light on the horizon until it was swallowed up in the trees. The girl remained, looking down the lane to her left, then her right, then left again. The church bells rang the half hour and were ringing seven o’clock when the creature lost interest in her and settled under his cloak for the night. The girl was still there.

  “Why don’t you go home?” the creature muttered.

  “It’s too far to walk with the trunk; I have to go through St. Edmund Wood.”

  He cackled, adding, “Best not go through St. Edmund Wood at night! Safe for no one—not even you!”

  A moment passed before the girl answered. “I can pay you a ha’penny if you’ll escort me and bring the trunk.” The offer was conveyed in a voice now unsure and tremulous. The self-assurance of an hour past was gone.

  A bright coin shimmered in the lamplight, the comforting sound of metal jingling at the bottom of a purse made him game for only a second. He made ready to accept the offer and a clawed hand appeared from under the threadbare cloak ready to take it when he paused and shook his head. “No! I daren’t—not worth risking my bed and board!” The creature sighed with relief when he heard the chink and rattle of coin against coin and the snap of a purse clutch. It meant he was free of an obligation.

  “Suit yourself,” the girl replied, meeting him gaze for gaze. The creature looked away first. Then, as if to herself she sighed, “I don’t understand; Cook should have been here to meet me…”

  The girl might have spoken to the wind, for the creature was snoring, his breath making clouds above them. She watched in fascination for a moment and then tried the public house door. Of course it would be unlocked; sunset was but an hour past. She took a breath and went in.

  “Christ and all His Saints!”

  The innkeeper heard the door slam and came out to greet the new customer, but stopped just short of the hearth when he saw who it was.

  She had pushed back the hood of her cloak and the men in the common room turned from conversation and ale to offer appreciative stares. Only a young clergyman taking his supper seemed disinterested, until he noticed how silent the room had become and looked up. He pushed aside the books and papers that perpetually cluttered his usual table in his usual corner beside the hearth and reached for the bottle of wine, throwing a glance at her.

  “Who’s she?” he asked a man nearby.

  “A ghost.” A cryptic response, that, but the clergyman shrugged and looked about and frowned, seeing how the men leered and whispered among themselves.

  “Why should you come here?” the innkeeper demanded of the girl.

  She took a tentative step forward, as if the wooden planks beneath her light step would give way. “Cook was supposed to meet me. I’ve been waiting for the better part of an hour. I’ve come for supper.”

  “Supper was an hour ago, Miss!”

  “Please, I’ve come a long way. Even some bread and butter, a cup of ale.”

  “Didn’t you hear me?” the innkeeper hissed. “Supper’s done! There’s nothing to be had!”

  The young woman kept her gaze on the innkeeper. When he didn’t budge, she took a booth under the
stairs and there she sat for longest time, staring down at her hands folded neatly on the filthy tabletop.

  “It is your bounden duty to feed the hungry,” she spoke up as the innkeeper brushed past to answer the town magistrates bellowing for more ale.

  “Don’t tell me what my duty is!” the innkeeper growled.

  “If I was a clerk from London or a shop keeper from Carlisle…”

  The innkeeper threw down his towel and spun about, grumbling about the importance of some people. He grabbed a plate of meat and cheese from a table near the door, food that had been sitting out for most of the day, if not picked over by rats or humans. A pitcher was slammed on the tabletop so that it sloshed and spattered the girl’s cloak, the plate thrown down with a clatter. A tin cup tossed at her spun like a top until she reached out to steady it.

  “It’s gone bad,” she spoke up after a glance at her supper.

  The common room fell quiet. All eyes turned in her direction.

  “It’s gone bad,” she said again, this time meeting the innkeeper’s smirk with a sad, serious stare.

  “It’s all I have at this hour,” the innkeeper snapped. “If you wanted supper, you should have come at supper time.”

  “That’s no fault of mine, sir. I’ve no say over the weather or the roads,” she replied. Her eyes lighted on the clergyman and nodded in his direction. “Ask the vicar; I’m sure he’d agree.” A serving girl passing by shook her head at the clergyman as if to warn. He pretended interest in the Bible open on the table and avoided the other girl’s large eyes boring into him.

  But he did want to know what color those eyes were.

  “It’s all I have,” the innkeeper spat. “Find supper in Ludlow if my fare isn’t good enough!”

  “It is your bounden—” The kitchen door banged shut behind him.

  Conversation and music rose slowly in the common room until the incident was just another passing entertainment at The Castle and Motte, something to be recounted after church in the morning. The young woman was forgotten as she shoved the plate from her and drew the pitcher close. Glancing down into the pitcher to make sure there was nothing floating in it, she poured a cup and drank, screwing up her face.

  The serving girl stopped by the table, took from her apron pocket a fresh, warm sweet bun and an apple and placed them on a clean napkin. No one watched or knew; no one, save the young clergyman, the Reverend Mr. Nathaniel Godwin.

  “Bless you for your charity, Dorcas,” he murmured when the serving girl came his way. She pulled a second bun out of her pocket and let it roll on to his plate. “What’s her name?” Nathaniel Godwin whispered, taking a bite of it.

  Dorcas now leaned in as if to wipe up a puddle of grease and crumbs. “Witherslack.”

  Nathaniel pushed his tankard at Dorcas and watched the fresh ale she poured out swirl into a frothy head, making note of the name.

  Witherslack.

  When he left the common room at midnight, the girl was still sitting there, staring at nothing, waiting.

  “An excellent homily, Mr. Godwin!”

  Nathaniel ignored the praise offered by John Harrow, the Mayor of Knowstone and looked over his head at the worshippers slowly filing out of St. Ælfgyva’s Church, distracted by their soft voices gradually rising as they came down the path to the gate and went further still into the village and down Whitecastle Street, which ran the length of Knowstone and stopped at the outer curtain of the castle ruins and The Castle and Motte. He nodded absently to inquiries about his health or the new catechism class starting up and kept looking over heads and at every woman who left the church.

  “Perhaps you’d like to join us for the hunt next weekend?” Harrow asked.

  “I don’t see Mrs. Witherslack,” Nathaniel murmured, still looking about.

  “She’s right there, Mr. Godwin.” Harrow gestured at a woman shaded by a chestnut tree and standing apart from the other churchgoers.

  “Ah, that must be her mother.”

  “Do you mean Mrs. Burnley? She that was Mary Witherslack?”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s her name.”

  “How could you have known?” Harrow asked. “You won’t find her in church, Mr. Godwin, and there’s the truth of it. Something’s not right about her.”

  “What’s this?” John’s wife Katherine joined them, smiling prettily at the handsome young cleric.

  “Mr. Godwin was inquiring of Mary Burnley, dearest,” answered John.

  “Ah! Mrs. Witherslack’s daughter. She’s come back to Knowstone a widow and childless after eighteen months of marriage.”

  “Then perhaps you will accompany me on a pastoral visit, Mrs. Harrow?” Nathaniel suggested. “To offer comfort and friendship in her time of need.”

  “You’re a stranger here, Mr. Godwin,” John spoke up. “You’ll find that Mary Burnley only wants to be left alone.”

  “Left alone!” Katherine spat. “I’ll tell you what others in the village will not: that Mary Burnley is an example to the young unmarried girls of Knowstone. She is what they must not become! She is a lesson to be learned.” There was too much emphasis on the word ‘she.’

  “Indeed?” Nathaniel murmured.

  “Do you not think, Mr. Godwin, that widows should comport themselves in a dignified manner as befit their status, and not be all froth and lightness, to be in love with life?”

  “I would I knew what you meant, Katherine Harrow,” Nathaniel asked.

  He discovered her meaning on market day when he saw Mary Burnley walking through the village, with unkind stares and whispers following her.

  Her pale blue frock skimmed lightly over the dusty lane as if she were no more than a feather or soap bubble. She was nothing like the big boned, large breasted townswomen; she was round where a woman ought to be round, and her movements were graceful with economy. But there was a distinct sensuality to her person that hadn’t yet given way to the obese voluptuousness that sometimes happened when women married.

  Her hair was tied up by dark blue ribbons. Nathaniel thought this an affectation, for locks of chestnut-colored hair escaped as she strolled through the square, danced and sailed in the breeze, caught the mid-morning sun and shot copper and amber motes. The morning was bitterly cold, but Nathaniel knew the rosy color of her cheeks and lips was no accident of the weather. Her light-colored, round eyes observed everything and nothing, for she was other-worldly. All these attributes came together in absolute perfection.

  The breeze suddenly gusted and took up one of those hair ribbons. She laughed and ran after it as it sailed and danced and then dropped at Nathaniel’s feet. She was quicker than Nathaniel and caught the ribbon in long, beautiful fingers.

  “Oh!”

  With that exclamation the girl stood upright, now face to face with Nathaniel, and pushed back her hair. They smiled at one another—one of those tentative smiles replete with sexual tension and curiosity—until she dipped in a neat curtsey and hurried on her way…but not before gazing back at Nathaniel, the brazen action of which made him smile all the more.

  “…it isn’t any wonder that her husband died poor!”Nathaniel shoved away from the lych-gate when he heard the comment from Katherine Harrow. She and her companion Anna Bigod were coming through the churchyard on their way to the church to polish the brasses and deliver clean linen.

  “He was a tutor, or professor—I heard he had no interest in money,” Anna sniffed. “Except when it came to spoiling her with a new frock, or trinket! Two and five for a pair of lace gloves from Florence! From Florence!”

  “Well, he might have left her something for a black dress!”

  “Good morning, ladies,” Nathaniel greeted. “Who needs black mourning cloth? Perhaps we can find something in the cupboards.”

  “It wouldn’t do any good,” Katherine sighed. “Mistress Burnley wouldn’t wear it—now, we’ll polish the brass and you won’t even know we’re here, Mr. Godwin.”

  Yet, as Nathaniel sat and wrote letters at his sacrist
y desk, their conversation intruded on his thoughts, the word ‘Mary’ catching his attention.

  “…she came to the choir practice as if nothing had happened and sang with us—again, as if nothing had happened! All smiles and sweetness, that one!”

  “You know, of course, why she doesn’t come to church?”

  “Not her father—!”

  “No, my goodness, no! All that learning in Oxford.”

  “Surely, not she? A student?”

  “Now that I wouldn’t know, Katherine. But her husband, the late Mr. Burnley, it is said, had a fondness for teaching women to be equals in all things, including education.”

  “As long as a girl knows her letters and numbers to keep the household accounts and scripture lessons to teach the babes, what else is there need of? She can get her husband by the usual means.”

  The women giggled here.

  Anna admonished, “Katherine Harrow, for shame! And I think there is something else: she has set herself up as a tradeswoman! She weaves cloth and sells it. She walks all the way to Ludlow to trade with the dressmaker and the church. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is her linen—Katherine Harrow, look what you’ve done! I shall have to boil it now to remove the stain! She’ll have to come with more linen!”

  Nathaniel went out into the sanctuary and saw the stain of red wine spreading over the fair linen on the credence table and held the untainted corner between a thumb and forefinger, feeling the smooth softness of the fibers. The quality of the fabric was exquisite and in that mitered corner he saw the initials ‘M’ and ‘B’ stitched almost invisibly.

  That evening as he walked to The Castle and Motte, Nathaniel remembered the bits of conversation and the feel of the linen. While he ate his solitary supper in his usual booth at his usual table in his usual corner by the hearth with his books and papers spread before him, he listened to the hushed conversations of the good men of Knowstone and knew they spoke of corn prices, the foaling of Sir Martin Frankewell’s prize Arabians, the price of wool and how much milk the Galthwaite cows would give—and Mary Burnley.

  “Perhaps someone would tell me what it is about Mary Burnley that gives rise to so much interest. I see she is quite beautiful, but aren’t there beautiful women in Knowstone? In Salop?” Nathaniel laughed, looking around at the patrons.