by Paul Hazel
rather more thorn wine than he was used to Okanuck had
floated down to the third-story window and waved at her.
Of course they were not the same hounds. Sometimes,
in the long summer darkness, he had slipped into the side
yard where they were buried, one generation after another,
still keeping watch. Through the trampled earth he had
renewed his acquaintance with their bones. At first, thinking
he was a hound himself, come nosing and pawing, eager to
disinter them, they had only whined mournfully. But in time
they had grown fond of him and looked forward to his
coming. Like Okanuck they had thought themselves well rid
of the skinny young man their mistress had married and who
had to be buried himself soon after, ten miles to the west and
south in the cemetery at Greenchurch. The hounds, although
they had no sense of human beauty, suspected nonetheless it
was her physical attractiveness that drew Okanuck again and
again to the grass-covered mound a hundred yards from the
house. She is old now, they had told him. Unsurprised, he
had nodded. Better than most he knew how these English
perished. He had never gone back to her window. And yet
The Hill and the Tower
4 9
sometimes he saw her face in the airy darkness, her red hair
disordered on her pillow.
But though he skirted the farm, Okanuck came in sight
of it. It took him only a quarter of a mile out of his way but
then it brought him nearer the far end of the village than was
absolutely necessary. Even at this hour there were likely to
be men on the road. With a kind of wondering sadness
Okanuck turned. He unfolded his wings. Their broad edges
caught the air with a thump. Reaching out in a series of
sharp, increasingly distant handholds, Okanuck pulled himself into the sky. Woods and fields wheeled away under him, their particular landmarks diminishing, even as the land itself
swung more fully into his sight. In the deep evening air the
little darkened farm slid far behind.
John Chance leaned back in his chair and regarded the
cluttered yard beyond the rough front steps of his cottage.
Because of his years he was not always certain where he was
in time. It was far easier and, to his thinking, more to the
point to keep watch of the seasons than to weigh his mind
with the useless addition of dates. The years kept piling up
no matter if he wished them to or not but between one and
another there was never much to tell them apart. On the
other hand, the seasons and the weathers that rushed along
with them meandered and changed: gales howled in Black
Wood, yellow leaves fell like showers of gold and under the
crusts of rotted snow the green spikes of deer grass lifted
their heads. Great things and small pressed themselves on his
attention but the only firm conclusion he was willing to come
to was that the winter advanced and receded and that the
summer followed spring.
John Chance glanced out at the evening. He knew more
or less it was April but he remained uncommitted as to
whether it was precisely this April or some other come
blowing from his memory. He had the impression, however,
because he needed a blanket wrapped about his shoulders,
that he was old. Very old, he thought with a deep, clear
pride. For a second time the awakened breeze brushed his
face and he looked up.
Okanuck grinned at him.
“Now it’s the end of the world, is it?” Chance said,
5 0
W IN TER IN G
smiling back. “The impatient dead coming in from the hills,
eyes filled with murder.”
Okanuck went on grinning. They liked one another well
enough to joke at each other’s expense and gladly traded
wounds, unharmed by an honesty that would have parted
lesser friends. Though not the sort of thing he would have
denied if pressed, Okanuck never cared to be reminded he
was dead and so the old man never failed to find a way to
mention it.
“I thought I’d find you dead as well,” Okanuck answered.
“No. Not yet.” A sly triumph showed in Chance’s eyes.
“I’ve made April and still hope to make one more.”
Okanuck looked with gentle disapproval at the old man’s
crippled legs. “It’s not the life I'd dream of,” he said kindly.
“Hell, it’s life,” Chance said. Enjoying himself, he leaned
farther back in his chair. “Besides, Wyck’s come back again
and I’ve a mind to see one last time what he’s up to.”
Okanuck grunted. “Which one is he now?”
“William— or so Morag thought, poor man. And he had,
for he showed me them, a bundle of letters all signed with a
great scrawl of a W, which might have been for William as
much as Wykeham.” Beside him on the steps was a half
empty bottle. Chance reached down for it and when he had
had a taste of the whisky he passed the bottle sociably into
one of Okanuck’s large clawed hands. “And the man, Longford,
called him that,” Chance said, “coming around not a month
ago when there were still patches of snow in Black Wood,
saying Master William this and Master William that, as
though he knew him already. Wanted me off the property, he
said, in William's name. It took me a moment or two at first
to figure out just who he meant. But it’s likely it’s William.”
“It would be,” Okanuck said. “Leastways he’s been a
handful of Williams since the English came, since Bradford
anyway.” He drank the whisky. His eyes narrowed and he
stared into the web of the branches. He was trying to
remember the names that had been before. "They were
usually Welsh,” he said.
“Wyck?”
Okanuck nodded. “Names like Kyfarwydd or Gwalstawd.
Hard to say unless you were used to them but then he kept
hold of them longer, there being no need to pretend he was
anyone but himself.”
The Hill and the Tower
51
While Okanuck was speaking, Chance began to notice he
was colder. The whisky warmed his throat and belly so at first
he paid no attention. But gradually he felt a damp cold nosing
about his feet. He kicked at it lamely. He was not yet
frightened. But from now on, he realized, he would have to
be vigilant.
They both heard the crack of a rifle shot and they both
started. The sound echoed between the cleft of hills. Chance
jabbed the side of his shoe at the dark. What had been there
had gone elsewhere, ignoring him.
“There are poachers in East Wood,” he said.
Okanuck’s eyes were wide open. He could see only the
sky and the nearer trees. Somewhere in the dark men were
running, their sides heaving, stumbling because they had not
dared to carry a lantern. The paths were grown over or
blocked with timber. They heard a man swearing, far across
the wood.
“That would be Fred Norfolk for the mouth of him,”
Chance said. “And C
haron Hunt with him.” The wind backed
off, taking the sound of the men away with it.
In the stillness Okanuck let himself breathe again.
“You were worried,” Chance said.
“For a moment.” Okanuck gave him a sideways grin.
“But Fred Norfolk never did hit anything.” He spotted the
whisky and sat down with the bottle between his knees. His
toes dragged in the dirt. After that there was no moving him
and he began to explain why he had come.
Longford looked up from the text of the sermon he was
still writing and found his wife staring at him from their bed.
It was early and the lamp at his desk gave a warmer glow of
light than the little that came in the south window. Longford
had begun the work alone, beneath the stairs, on the dining
room table. But as soon as he had heard Plum stirring he had
gone up, seeking her help with one phrase or. another. He
had just finished reading aloud a particularly complicated
passage which she had already corrected twice.
“I shall go if I must,” she said on another matter
altogether.
“Dear Plum,” he sighed, relieved, aware that he could
not really have expected anyone else to do it and that even if
he had, she would have gone anyway. “You will tell him," he
5 2
WINTERKING
said, “that this is a special case and not how things will be
handled ordinarily.” She looked preoccupied. He cleared his
throat. “I’ll admit I might have been more forceful. It is best
to begin with a clear understanding. I’ve always said that.”
He looked back guiltily at his sermon, adjusting the spectacles
he only wore indoors and away from his flock. He said: “It
was just that I was caught unprepared when he told me about
the death of his friend.”
She waited to be quite certain he had finished. She knew
he meant well but it was one of his greatest faults that he
never knew when to stop.
“He won’t think, do you suppose, you actually are the
kitchen help?”
She met his eyes. “I shall be certain to tell him,” she
said.
Later he went down the walk with her and opened the
gate. He had put his spectacles in his inside pocket. His arm
wrapped around her, warming her in the morning’s chill.
“You don’t mind?” he asked again, assured now, needing
no answer.
Beside her he seemed to grow taller, his shoulders a full
foot higher than her own. Her chin was tucked down and he
could not see her smile. At a point where the street climbed
the first hill she looked back and found him watching. She
waved, already missing him.
At the entrance to the estate, there were two broad oaks,
already coming into leaf, one to either side of the drive.
There was no sign. Its lack had never puzzled her for she had
seen at once that the trees announced plainly, to anyone who
cared to look, that this was Greenchurch. The church on the
other hand— back in the village— though it shared the name
and was in fact a church and had been painted a shadowed
and peculiarly ancient shade of green, had a placard importantly
out on the lawn. It was not hard to imagine which had held
the name longer. The steeple in the village would have been
dwarfed by these trees. She squinted up into their leafy
branches, losing her sight among the clouds and countries,
the acres and deep green seas of the mounting oak-wood. A
kind of old-fashioned awe filled her. Going up the drive, her
face dropped to a human height again, she saw another face,
The HDl and the Tower
5 3
pale against the gray bark of the oak, and got a bewildered
stare in return.
The woman, who had been reclining, stood quickly.
There was a stain on the sleeve of her coat; her disheveled
hair, darkened by the shade, half covered her neck.
“My girl,” Plum Longford said breezily, though the other
was no child, “you look as though you slept in the wood.” To
Plum’s surprise, the woman nodded.
"I’m not from this place,” the woman said quietly, in a
way that made Plum wonder if truly she had come from
anywhere. The woman blushed. “I wasn’t sure just where to
go,” she said, turning abruptly, taking a nervous glance up
the long slope of the drive. “It doesn’t feel right going up
there.”
“You mean it didn’t”— Plum helped her— “last night in
the dark?”
“Then too,” she answered.
Plum noticed that the woman’s small hands were clutching
a paper. Plum had met most of the village women but there
were always some, she knew, who hung back and now with
the reopening of the estate there were strangers coming
every day. Mostly they were men. But eventually, Plum
decided, there had to be women as well, hired for the
kitchen and housekeeping, though, under the circumstances,
she knew Tim would have preferred them older and, well,
more matronly. She found herself inspecting the woman’s
slender legs and laughed at herself.
“You’ll be wanting to see my husband,” Plum said, “for
he is in charge of the hiring.”
“I haven’t— ” the woman began.
“May I see that?” Plum interrupted her, for she was
accustomed to being in charge. She reached out for the
paper, expecting an employment notice.
“He gave that to m e,” the woman said but she let Plum
take hold of it. Plum turned the paper over in her fingers. It
was the steamer ticket to Bodp.
“I mean to exchange it,” Nora said, smiling. “I will rent
a box at the post office so I will have a place when they send
the money back. 1 have it all figured out. I was going to go
down to post it this morning but then I remembered it was
Sunday. But I will go tomorrow.”
5 4
W1NTERKING
“Who gave it to you?” Plum asked, astonished and trying
to find the beginning.
“The young man who was to come to live here.”
“Why?”
Nora closed her eyes as though she were looking for
something but wasn’t altogether certain it could be found
outside of her. “I am hoping,” she said, “it is fate.”
“And if it isn’t?”
Nora ran her fingers into her cider-colored hair, trying
vaguely to restore it to order. Among the brown strands,
Plum noticed there were little flecks of gold. Nora opened
her eyes and Plum became conscious again of their remarkable innocence. Somehow it touched her.
“I don’t suppose he knows you have come,” she said, in a
voice that seemed unlike her, almost embarrassed. While she
had mistaken practically everything at first, very quickly
Plum was beginning to readjust her thinking. Tim, she knew,
would have been scandalized. But her own view of life had
always been kinder and more tolerant for she knew the world
better. The truth was, she was eight years older than her<
br />
husband. "Look,” she said gently, “it is really none of my
business.”
“No,” Nora said. “He doesn’t know.”
They had begun to walk up the drive. Beyond the
sentinel oaks the light was brighter. Plum looked about.
The broad trimmed lawns had long ago turned into meadows.
The plantings of exotic trees, brought from Europe and the
Orient, had been left to grow wild. Only an experienced eye
would have marked them apart from the elms and maples.
Yet Plum half sensed their oddity. Who can say she doesn’t
belong here? she thought. Though if she were wanted, Plum
guessed, he would not have given her a steamer ticket.
Bod0 was in Norway, wasn’t it? Almost the other side of the
earth.
“I am Hannah Longford,” she said, “though my friends
call me Plum.”
“Like the heavy thing— ” Nora screwed up her face in
wonder. “You know, the weight sailors use to tell how deep
the sea is. Like that?”
Plum laughed. “That too! Yes,” Plum answered, deciding
she liked her without reservation. “And your own?” she
asked, still smiling.
The Hill and the Tower
5 5
“Nora.”
Plum waited for her to finish.
“Only Nora,” she said after a moment. “Now at any rate.
You see, I’ve run away from the rest of it.”
“You have a husband?”
Nora looked blank.
No, Plum thought, I shall not let it matter— I have
decided to be a friend to her. Plum began to walk a little
more briskly, trusting her body to keep her mind from
thinking. There was the good feel of gravel under her feet.
Out in the morning, rising over the trees, a crow circled,
eyeing them. It opened its black throat and cursed. Or
perhaps it was only the cough of the battered Ford pickup,
bounding around a turn in the drive up ahead of them. Nora
climbed up the embankment and hid in the trees. But though
she stepped into the grass Plum more or less held her
ground. It was Charon Hunt, of course, driving and another
man, his head averted, refusing to acknowledge he saw her or
not wanting to be seen. Plum waved at them. The truck
barreled past. There was a large canvas sack in the back.