‘Reckon you’ll be hunger bitten if you’ve walked all from Bodenham this morning. Hereford born you say? I been there once, when I was more of a one for striking out.’
He dropped me at the top of a long steep hill and pointed out the way. ‘You’ll reach Bromyard easy enough. You bide there tonight lass. There’s all kinds of rogues on the wastes beyond, it wouldn’t do for an eyesome wench like you to be wandering uncompanied over by Bringsty. Promise me? I won’t sleep tonight without your word on it. Bad enough you travelling alone at all.’
I promised and thanked him. It was a good sign to meet such kindness on the road so soon. I leaned a little on a gate at the brow where he turned off. The sun was high and warm and before me the world dropped away in embroidered shades of green and then rose like piled clouds as far as the Welsh hills. Despite all the sorrow of the past days I felt my heart lift at the promise such distance offered. Somewhere beyond the mountains the sun licked at the sea. Perhaps one day I should see it. In Boult’s book I had read the story of a queen called Dido, but I had not returned to it because it was so sad. When her lover left her she built a pyre high on the hill above the sparkling bay and gored herself upon a sword. Oh Dido, I thought, looking at the blue-grey horizon, why did you not go after him? The wind off the waves must be something indeed. I swore I should not be so weak; I would wear out iron shoes and still I’d search. High on the hill all the world was open before me, all the roads I had never known.
15
Heeding the carter’s warning, I found a dry hollow in the split of a double hedge about a mile before the town. A badger or a fox might sniff me out, but no man would find me unless they were hedging by moonlight. It was such a dry night there seemed little point in paying for a bed or risking chatter; I was weary with walking and all the watchful hours of the night before. On either side the tangled dog rose and field maple walled me in. The small birds ceased their fidget prayers and a fall of crows some way off cawed themselves into silence. Above me the sky greyed into night and then, slowly, stars winked out. I searched out the northern star that never wavers. That way, I thought. Somewhere perhaps he was star gazing too, lifting his finger to thread the constellations. I lifted mine to touch his. ‘Come look at them Martha,’ he would say on nights like this, taking me with him to lie down together under the moon. ‘They’re the light from heaven coming through. It’s like the Lord himself poked the screen with nails to give us just the glint of it.’
‘So then,’ I’d answer, ‘when we die, will Saint Peter whisk the cloth back, to give us the dazzle whole?’
‘Maybe,’ he’d say, shifting onto his side next to me, and pulling at the laces of my bodice, ‘but I think he’ll rather let it happen slow; like this,’ and he would tease open the fustian and push aside my shift, so that my chest gleamed naked, ‘St Peter will give me a glimpse of heaven and I’ll crane close, like this, and rest my fingertips, so, on the cool white stone and burn so to enter that my lips will make the alabaster blush.’
‘Blasphemer!’ I’d laugh at him, lifting his head, ‘You make me into an old carved image in a church.’
‘Oh my honeycomb, I could kiss you till my lips bled.’
I shooed the dream away. Why did I torment myself so? ‘You will not let him sleep softly in the earth,’ Sally would have said, ‘you’ll make his soul restless with your grieving.’ But I knew why. The ache it stoked and left me in was only partly pain. At first I told myself that if I could only have his ghost then I would cradle it, draw it so close I could breathe it in. But if he was living – ah, then, there was a promise in it too.
I slept better that night than I had in days, although I woke up stiff and wet with dew. My first thought was to sell the candles in my pack. Bromyard was too small a place to profit well and without suspicion on the chain, but there’d be a chandler or two and the candles were heavy. I was shown a locked narrow door just off the square.
‘You wait there,’ my guide said, ‘he’ll be up by and by, if the ale hasn’t turned his guts.’
It was a slow town for waking. I sat down on a post under the market house and watched the door. The morning was fine, but there were rags of cloud. I should not linger if I wanted to reach Worcester before dark and avoid a drenching.
When the door finally opened it wasn’t by a man but a young woman with a baby on her hip. She laid out the candles carefully on her counter and gave me a good enough price.
‘You from far?’ she asked, as I carefully counted the coins into my purse.
‘Hereford,’ I told her, ‘to join my brother in Worcester.’ The story came easier today and when she smiled I was encouraged. ‘My father was an ironmonger,’ I continued, ‘had a fine shop that I helped him in, but he died and all was owed and taken. I’d been near despairing till John, my brother, sent word to come…’ Then I stopped, affronted – the woman was grinning at me outright.
‘You’m not so good at lying, are you lamb? You’m never worked in a shop, or you wouldn’t peer at the coins so, as if they were magic counters. It’s all right, don’t take on, it don’t bother me none what your story is.’
I looked up at her. She had bold, quick eyes and though she was laughing at me there seemed no malice in it. I smiled back.
‘You ain’t from Hereford, neither. Never been to town on a market day I’m guessing.’
Not as a free woman, I thought. ‘How do you know?’
‘The way you wear your purse for one. Where any passing fool could grab it. Keep only the money you might need at once to hand. Stuff the rest in your boot or some such. Are you going to Worcester in truth?’
‘I am,’ I said, ‘I’m looking for something.’
‘Someone more like.’ She leaned over and patted my cheek. ‘Forget him.’
I gave her a tight smile at that and turned to leave, but she called me back.
‘It’s a bad road.’ Her shrewd eyes were weighing up my chances. ‘A dell like you is easy pickings. It’s not safe for a woman.’
I nodded. ‘I’ve been told so.’ Again, I turned to go.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘My father is taking a load to the city. There’s a few of them going, there’ll be men alongside. You seem a sweet wretch to be wandering the wastes up there. I wouldn’t want to hear of a fool found dead or a girl badly used when I might have prevented it.’
‘God bless you,’ I said, ‘but—’
‘—No buts,’ she said sharply. ‘You’d better learn to take help. You’ll need to, if he takes a while finding.’ She gestured to me to follow her. ‘Come through here. You can help me hitch the horse while the old sot eats his dinner.’
I held the baby for her while she covered and roped the baskets. She was a widow, she told me, her husband had died a year before, soon after the baby was born. I was sorry for that, I said.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s a pity, and the child not having a father. He was a good man all in all, my William, never raised a hand to me, but he was a dull hick all the same. A mite too fond of a cockfight and a prey for any passing doxy caught his eye.’
‘You’ll marry again, surely? You’ve such a pretty face.’ It was true. Her cheeks were scarred with pox but she fell into smiles easily. They belied the sharpness of her glance.
She pinched my cheek. ‘I thank you for saying so, stranger, and truthfully there’s one or two have been calling to tell me the same, but I think they fancy the business as much as me. Why would I marry and give over my body and my bed again, aye and my gold too, when it can be all my own?’ She took back the baby and rubbed her nose on his so that he giggled, then glanced down at my hand. ‘It’s a fine thing to be a widow.’
Perhaps she was two, three years older than me, but she made me feel a green girl. I blushed. ‘If he has died,’ I said simply, ‘I think I cannot go on living.’
‘Don’t be a goose,’ she said. ‘Mind the baby while I fetch the horse.’
Her father said barely a word to me when he came out, merely jerked his
thumb at the board after he had climbed up, all the while muttering to his daughter that she should keep her charity for works of her own hands and not be asking him to do it for her and had she packed him food enough?
‘I have,’ she said, ‘and mind you share it with my friend. You are my friend now,’ she said to me as we left, ‘and I’ll pray Fortune smiles on you.’
It was almost noon by the town clock. I assumed the rest of the party must have gone long since, but it turned out they were as slack as my benefactor; we were kept another half hour for a dozen cheeses to be added to a farmer’s wagon. Besides the chandler and the farmer and his wife there was a draper with an over-laden nag, another man whose business was never made clear to me, but whose mount was fine enough to do the journey twice over in the time we would take, and five or six walking – two of them labourers with staves whom I was told would leave us once we were safe over Bringsty.
Not far past the town the road began to climb. Soon the fields gave way to furze and broom and high ferns. The old man had not said a word to me since we had left, although he had acknowledged the others with a surly nod, telling them when they asked that I was some waif his Mary had picked up. I noticed how his hand trembled a little on the reins and remembered my dead father – the bitter mornings after the brave nights. The road was packed and hard, but uneven as a river bed and he had to judge a course nicely through the half-patched holes, and ruts and ridges.
‘This is a road that would have given my father no end of business.’ I said, forgetting to lie. ‘He was a wheelwright out near Woolhope.’
The old man nodded without turning his head. ‘A good wheel is a beautiful thing,’ he said. ‘You’d best walk now a while; it’s too steep for passengers.’
I got down and walked. The sun was hot and the air was growing heavy but there was a lick of breeze as we climbed. Behind us the land rolled in warm green waves westwards, before us and on either side lay the manor wastes and downs; it was as though the world was a great bolt of cloth rolling open. High, high above, a pair of forktail gledes made slow circles.
‘Bloody carrion eaters,’ the man beside me said, following my gaze.
‘What a view of us all they must have,’ I said. ‘All the earth open below them. We must seem like mice scurrying hither and thither.’
‘They only look to see what they can eat,’ he replied. ‘En’t so different from us on’y worse, if you asks me, like lawyers. They’re after ripping and feeding off the dead.’
I glanced back up. ‘All the same,’ I said, ‘it must feel good, to glide on the breast of the wind as they do.’
The gentleman on the fine black prancer had crested the hill and now stood outlined on the brow waiting. The carts toiled and we sweated after, too hot for talking. At the top we waited for our breath to catch us up.
‘Look,’ my companion said, laughing, ‘your gledes have followed after us.’ I glanced where he pointed and laughed with him. The thought darted at me that I was happy; the world was wide and free and the people I had met were good and kind. The next moment I felt ashamed and I rubbed at my wedding ring.
‘That’s not good,’ the draper was saying, ‘carrion birds keeping by us, I don’t like that one bit.’ He shook his fist at them.
‘Oh peace you old dawcock,’ the chandler said, ‘they’re thick as grass up here.’
‘And we’re past the common now surely?’ I asked, climbing up again.
‘Past it?’ my companion said, ‘No, wench, it’s over beyond the manor lands.’
‘Is it so bad?’ I asked.
The chandler turned to me. ‘Don’t be worriting about it,’ he said. ‘Been quiet these past months. It’s an unkempt place is all; all kinds of rogues and hedgecreepers hid there in Queen Mary’s time, but it’s nigh cleaned up now. These folks,’ – he gestured at my companion and his stave – ‘talks it up to screw a bit of money from us poor traders.’
I smiled. We’d be well past the common by nightfall, even if it seemed we’d not reach Worcester till tomorrow. They were local men; they’d know a place to bide tonight. We’d need it, for the weather was turning: the shreds of cloud had knit into a mat that pressed the sticky heat into faces and our backs. It was a pale grey yet, but if it darkened we’d need shelter quickly.
Soon the land dropped into heathland that rose and fell beside the road in knolls and hollows. The great wide views were gone. There were dense thickets and paths that wound uncertainly into bramble and bracken and furze. At our backs the sky had still some blue but ahead it was thickening. Despite his words, I noted the chandler began to peer about him and he gripped the reins hard. One by one our conversations fell away; the horses stepped with pricked taut ears. But round us the birds were louder than ever – there was the high shriek of a buzzard and a song thrush trilled from a hazel tree. Close by, a cuckoo called and another answered it.
The chandler froze.
‘Get down,’ he said to me in a hoarse whisper. ‘Hide yourself.’
It was too late. There was a man at the bridle. There were men everywhere. A wagon had been drawn across the road. For a second the sun flared yellow against the stacked slate cloud. The scene was still as a painting; the light picked out our open mouths, the black horse rearing, the farmer’s wife with her arms lifted up as though in praise; the song thrush singing. Then the wife screamed and all was noise.
A man pulled me roughly off the cart onto my knees, seized my wrist and began to wrench my wedding band from my finger. It was too sudden for thinking – I remember the look of concentration on his bony face, his two brown teeth; he barely seemed aware of me at all. It was the insensible focus of the fox; I felt a rush of fury and fear and bit hard into his thieving hand. He cried out, surprised, then grabbed me by the hair and kicked me, sharply, in the belly. It knocked the breath from me; the pain was jagged and yellow and sudden as the lightning that cracked the sky apart.
I could not breathe for pain. I felt it, I felt my belly break. I curled and fell onto my face in the baked mud, clutching at my middle as though to hold my rent womb whole. In the same moment I saw he crumpled too, with blood leaping out of his neck. I didn’t see who killed him, I didn’t care; I crawled through the confusion of shouts and legs into a fernbrake. Nobody stopped me. I followed a badger’s path into a growth of alder until it rolled me into a pit behind. I was being split in two. I tried to haul myself up to my knees and it set me retching. Behind me there was shouting still, then the sound of a man close by, groaning.
A single drop of rain fell on my hand and burst. Another. Then thunder ripped heaven open and its rivers poured down. I crouched on all fours like a dog in the alder bushes and the rain plastered my clothes to me and I wept for the pain searing through my stomach and for what it meant. For a while the ache would lessen and I would fool myself that all might yet be well and then it would return worse than before, like a knife that turned blade edge then blunt then blade again within my belly and all the while the rain washed down until a stream opened up a few feet in front of me. At last I was able to drag myself forward to where a lip of earth made a shallow cave. My satchel hung under me like an udder. The hollow beneath felt almost dry and I pressed myself into it, drawing my knees tight up to lessen the pain. It did not take long for the bleeding to begin. Again and again I thought of Mary the chandler’s daughter rubbing her nose against her baby’s nose and I thought of little Meg and the soft warmth of her hand and I sobbed and sobbed.
Not four months, not even that. Weeks back, I had half expected it to fail, to wake bloody and bereft, but not this, nothing like this, to lose the child out of my own doing. I could have bided safe, endured Boult’s pawings and cradled the promise in my womb. Like a butterfly’s wings, women said, when the child begins to quicken, like the flutter of silk wings within you; I had not felt it, it was only a dream yet. For years I had not thought I wanted to be a mother, had believed that what we had was enough; oh but now, at the point of loss, what a fierce longing tore a
t me! The rain hammered on the earth and on the trees and I moaned and rocked. Then the pain came so strongly that I could not think. I stretched out my legs and screamed and the clotted blood was warm and then as cold as the dripping earth and I scuffed it from me with my boots.
It was only much later, when the rain had stopped and the clear moon picked out the fringe of dripping grass that hung over the bank above me, it was only then that I could bear to think of Jacob, and how I had woven the joy of our meeting with this gift he had yearned for long before I had learned to welcome it. ‘It was for you,’ I said, ‘that I put myself in jeopardy, that I risked all,’ but the words felt insubstantial. Would he hold it a judgement on my striking out alone? ‘Oh Martha,’ might he say, ‘why could you not bide a quiet good wife? Look where all your learning’s brought you, your hankering after books and doctoring.’ However soon he softened and forgave me something would be changed between us; we could never be carefree as we were.
I hugged myself and whimpered at the cold indifferent moon and it offered me no comfort, none at all.
16
The morning was bright with innocence, as though washed of all knowledge of crime. At some point, perhaps, I had slept, I don’t know, but at length I became aware of the light and the need to move. The pain of last night was gone, or rather I was left with only its echo, and an ache of desolation as though my heart had been carved out with a spoon. It seemed to me I should go back to the road to discover what was left. It may be my companions had prevailed, but there was little chance of that. Villeins with staves were no match for such a band; they would have been cut down like corn. I shuddered. Perhaps it was not so desperate; perhaps they were merely stripped and bound. I had to hope so. I staggered back through the sopping grass and beaded scrub, crawling where I could not walk. When I reached the road, I stowed myself behind a thorn brake where I could watch unseen.
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