Half a dozen men were gathered by the farmer’s cart, hitching a nag to it. At first I shrank back with alarm, thinking them the wild men of yesterday, but from their garb and manner it was soon apparent these were townsfolk sorting the wreckage. A little further off there was a dray pulled up and two men were clumsily lifting a bundle onto it. I swallowed. A body; there were two more already on the wagon. Three dead. More perhaps. I thought myself numb to pain, but the sight made my eyes well up. Such good people. What kind of a world was this where men would cut you down for a bit of cloth or candles or cheese? The flame of a life pinched out in a moment. I remembered how the chandler had tried to save me, his daughter’s long-suffering affection. Had she woken fatherless?
When my heart was steady I forced myself to look again. There was no sign of the chandler’s cart or any of the horses. All had been taken then, to the last jot, my own poor bundle among it. The outlaws would be long gone by now. Had they spent last night counting and carousing, did they wash the blood from their hands before they tore into their meat and ale? I spat at the ground: ‘may your flesh fester and fall from your bones,’ I muttered, ‘may your wounds canker, your teeth rot in your gums, your eyes cloud into sightless jelly.’ I looked down at the ruin of my skirts; what good was cursing? It could bring nothing back, not the life I had begun to kindle, my spark, my flicker of a child. I had nothing now.
The dray ambled off and the road was left empty under the blue sky. I should have stepped out and hailed the men as they left, let myself be taken back as a witness. It was the good and Christian thing to do, but I could not do it. In my head I watched myself call after the cart, saw the men halt and wait, saw them figuring to themselves what had been done to me as I drew close and they saw and smelt the blood. They would find me a blanket and place me upfront where I should not have to see the dead. In the town there would be pity and questions and a clerk would be sent for to take a deposition. Even if I bore all that it would be days and days before I could head north again. What little I had left would all be gone. Worse, for sooner or later my story would tumble from me and a message would be sent to Hope. I imagined Sally weeping over me, Meg burying her head in my bosom, but it was too late for that. It was not them I would return to, but to Boult.
I could never go home. Not until I had found Jacob, likely not even then. Somehow, I began to understand what I had done. I could not go back. As softly as I could I withdrew further into the common, where no passing traveller on the road would see me.
I had nothing left but my satchel, that held the book and the chain and Jacob’s knife. Worcester lay only a few miles off; I could rest there and buy new clothes. ‘Collect yourself and go,’ I told myself, over and over I said it, but my legs buckled at the thought of faces and greetings and talk. To think, only two days since, I’d looked across the waves of hills and believed I could cross oceans! How could I have thought myself fit to chart a course across the country? Jacob was right. I was proud and restless and it had ruined me. I had thought myself brave, but I was prey for any passing rogue; I was easy meat; even the gledes, the red kites circling above me knew it. At least in this wilderness I could be alone awhile; I turned into the thickets and tangle of the common and gave myself up to the meandering paths of outlaws and of beasts. I knew how foolish it was, how little my life was worth in such a place, how I might simply starve. I think I partly wanted to die, or at least to hand my fate to fortune and take what chance was given me. It seemed in some mad way a reparation.
It was a strange country, of sudden empty hollows and dense briars, thick spinneys that it seemed a weasel could barely thread through and then a sudden spreading oak. More and more my vision rolled and blurred and I had to pause for the earth to steady itself, until I began to doubt whether I was in some other world. Near noon I found myself stepping into a blazing clearing with a weed-grown cottage set back against a bank. There was a deer standing in the open door and birds sang in the thatch as though it were a fairy house drawn from a tale like those my grandmother wove for me; made by the little people to trick the traveller into their kingdom under the hill. But the deer pranced off and inside it was real enough, with a pot of oats in a corner. I ate a handful of them and the weevils too, reckless of the gripes they might give me; at least retching would keep me from thinking. Then I lay down in the sun and slept.
I dreamt that Meg pushed at my cheek. It wasn’t a dream; something had touched me; a shadow had fallen across my face. I sat up and the horse, for that was what it was, shied away. We stared at one another. There was no mistaking it – the fine black mare from the day before, with its saddle and bridle, but nobody on its back. At first, when I stood, she started back. Jacob, I thought, help me and I felt, I saw, how he would stand with his hand outstretched, letting the beast take its own time. So I waited for her to come to me and when she ate the oats I offered her I leaned my head on her neck as Jacob used to do with nervous horses and breathed soft and long, until I felt her blood quieten. It felt like a gift had been given me.
We stood like that a while and then I led her gently towards the trees at the clearing’s edge so that I could loop her bridle over a branch to prevent her leaving. All at once I felt her nervousness return. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘you are safe,’ but she was not happy. I followed her gaze. There, stippled with shade, was the body of a man, a youth, round his chin the black scarf our assailants had worn. I nudged him carefully with my boot. Dead. He must have been thrown; his neck was just a little askew. It seemed too easy a way to die after the violence on the road and the tempest which followed it. I crouched down. ‘You don’t deserve my pity,’ I said to his staring eyes, but when I lifted the scarf I saw by his hairless chin and the roundness of his face that he was just a boy. I closed his lids and stood back. He lay among the foxgloves and the ragged robin as though he were a pretty elf asleep. He was beyond any anger now. My first thought was to leave him resting where he was, but then I had a picture of crows sitting on his corpse, hopping up towards his eyes; I hauled him out to the open space before the hut. The horse watched me, her ears back against her head, but I talked to her softly and she went back to cropping the damp grass.
The effort of it dizzied me. I sat down in the shade of an elder tree and looked at him. He was slight, with a long face and yellow straw hair; his lips were curled as if about to smile. Perhaps he was sixteen, perhaps a year or two more, or less. I wondered if he had a mother living who looked to his return, who prayed each night for his soul; it was likely he had done things in a few months which would cost him an eternity of burning. Perhaps if I had seen him do them, perhaps with that smile at the edge of his lips, I would not feel the pity I felt now for his frightened soul, but I had not been present at his sins. There was only the skinny boy, dead on the turf. Poor knave, I thought, we all of us make mistakes. Hadn’t I let that dribbling lecher kiss me for a handful of tales? My sleep-starved fancy twined a rope from the dead boy to Boult’s slobber and my own misfortune. I could have waited, virtuous at my door for my sweetheart’s return, with our baby safe in my belly. ‘I am so sorry Jacob,’ I said wringing my hands and addressing the boy who was nothing like him. His mother would be weeping too, weeping and waiting. Why was it always our lot to sit and wait and suffer loss? Was he her only child perhaps, ripped from her before he had learned how to be a man? ‘I was alone, Jacob,’ I said out loud, ‘what could I have done? Could you not have sent me word, one word by your own hand or another’s?’ I conjured in my mind to find him wherever he was now, feverish abed perhaps, or not himself, raggedly haunting some distant town, but none of my imaginings rang true.
A cloud passing across the sun roused me; it showed the boy’s pallor. His soul was tugging to be gone. I would have to bury him; it was the only decent thing to do. At least after last night’s drenching the earth would be softer than before. I got to my feet to find something to dig with. My kirtle and petticoat stuck bloodily to my legs and stank of iron in the heat of the after
noon, although I was still damp down to my smock from the downpour. Moving at all was irksome. Before I dealt with the boy I needed to address my own misery. I glanced back at him. Although he was damp he was not bloody anywhere but his head. He did not need his clothes now. I said a quick prayer and set about stripping him. There was a look of Meg’s brother Jack about him, I tried not to think of that. The obstruction had barely begun to stiffen his limbs. There were no sores or marks of contagion on his body, I rolled him over to check. His shirt and hose I hung on a branch in the sun to dry and I covered his nakedness with plates of elderflower.
My first thought had been to wash myself clean and scrub my clothing before dealing with him, but now I had touched his cold body I knew that I would not be happy caked with the dirt of the grave and would need to wash again. Much better to lay him to rest first. Round the back of the cottage I found a rusted axe head that made a fine spade and after seeing to the horse and my own hunger I began to hack a long trench. The turf came up easy enough, but it was hard going to scrape out enough earth for a body to lie in, even such a meagre one. I took the axe head in both of my hands and, kneeling, drew the blade towards me as though I were scouring hide. My shoulders ached and my head swam with faintness, but I kept at it, watering the wet earth with useless tears, for it felt in a way I did not wish to peer into that I was digging a grave for my own poor baby who would never be born, that I was scouring my own soul and body of hurt and pain. My brain must have been giddy still, or I would have worried that I would be surprised, but not once did the thought of it occur to me. Perhaps it was in part a fairy house and a fairy glade; we were alone in it, the boy and I. Nobody could come near.
At last I decided I could do no more, though it was more a furrow than a pit. The sun was gentle again, throwing long shadows to the east. There had not been a human sound all day. Death locked him stiff now, so that it was hard to arrange him in the earth with his face toward heaven, but with some indignity to us both I managed it, and I covered him over with flowers and earth and then the broken turf again, saying as I did so, all I could remember of the service, being all the priest and congregation he could have. ‘“We brought nothing into this world,”’ I said, ‘“neither may we carry anything out of this world.”’ I felt a guilty twinge then, scattering earth on his stripped body with his clothes hanging just behind me in the warm evening sun. ‘“Man that is born of woman has but a short time to live,”’ I went on, ‘“and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he flieth like a shadow and never continues in one stay. Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we shall die. That which you sow is not quickened except it dies: so is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it rises again in incorruption.”’ There was more, much more if I could remember it, but I trusted that would be enough to bend an angel’s eye to him. ‘Please God,’ I said, ‘he was some father’s, mother’s son as the dear Christ was yours; if he has not won it on his own, let their sufferings be enough to lend him grace.’
I stood up. Who could know if he was saved – or damned either for that matter? His things were very nearly dry to the touch, I could go now and wash. I walked across to the stream that wound and fell just beyond the spot where I had found his body. As I clambered down the bank I noticed there was a leather strap hooked to a branch, and beneath it a bag. Why had I not thought to look? Fumbling it open I took the loaf that poked down one side and ate a piece of it slowly, chewing till the sour dough turned sweet in my mouth. Too much at once would knot up my guts; I replaced it for later.
There was a hole where the water came up to my thighs. I watched the water swirl about my smock and then I took that off too and rubbed at the crusted blood; blood leaked from me still, as though my body could not stop its weeping. If I let the water calm itself I could see the thread of it curling away from me. Beneath my toes the mud was soft. ‘“Hear my prayer, O Lord,”’ I whispered, ‘“hold not thy peace at my tears, for I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. O spare me a little,”’ I said, ‘please spare me a little, “that I may recover my strength before I go hence and be no more seen”.’ Softly, softly the clay and the blood washed away and were picked up by the wandering flow of the stream.
My petticoat and my kirtle were madder red and the blood quickly rubbed from them, leaving only an edge line that would fade over time. I slung the boy’s bag over my shoulder and returned to where his dry clothes hung. Then I dried myself carefully and, under the gaze of the nodding horse, became a boy.
It was not by design. I donned the shirt and leather breeches, surprised at the justness of the fit, their ease for moving. Then I buttoned up the doublet and noticed bitterly how little a woman I was; even my still ripe breasts could scarcely be noted. If you could see your nuncle now, Meg, I thought, you’d think he’d found his proper self. It did not matter, I thought. There was nobody to see, and it was only till the things were dry. A few hours and then I could be my dullard self again, a dell on the high road, as Mary the widow had said, fruit for the picking. On display, for any passing lubbock to paw at, for any gang of loiterers to mock. I put the boy’s cap on my head and pulled down the brim. Who would know? Scrawny lads were everywhere on the lanes and roads, hither and thither alone and nobody marking them. In the flush of decision I took out Jacob’s knife and sawed off the great rope of my hair.
It lay at my feet like a horse’s tail. For a moment I was appalled at what I had done. I saw Jacob’s confused, stricken face; he would never approve such rashness. ‘I am your good wife still, Jacob,’ I said to the vision, ‘but I must shift how I can.’ I gathered it up and threw it into the scrub. Then I thought of my body alongside his, the breadth of his hand when I placed my palm within it – how he could bend and carry me as if I were a bag of corn. How could I be a man? But men’s bodies were not alike, any more than their minds; if I could play the swaggerer the weakness of my fist and shoulders might be a jest, but that was all. ‘Have at you,’ I said to my shadow, punching like a bully fighter, kicking my leg high because the breeches said I could.
That was too much, perhaps that would come later. I crumpled down again and rubbed at my traitor eyes. ‘No more weeping,’ I said aloud. No more dwelling on what was lost. I must have courage and if I couldn’t find it in me I must counterfeit. What was I after all? Not much of a woman, I had scarcely played that well. It was vagabond boys who roamed the roads to find their fortune. I would be a boy; it would help me to forget myself, forget all this, until I found him.
The bag held ample recompense for the bundle I had left in the cart. There was a pretty dagger and a half dozen lengths of woollen hose, a whole cheese and a wrapped lump of ham. The hat the gentleman had worn. Two rings. A silver cross. There was money in four different purses. I emptied them into the hat. Two held only farthings and pennies but the other two were richer – one had four shillings and a half groat alongside its pennies; the last took my breath from me so that I had to stand and stare at all the winking gold. The king and all his court – a sovereign with his crown and a host of angels besides. It was more money than I had seen in all my life. It made me suddenly afraid and I began to pace my patch of turf, darting glances at the trees and bushes. Were there eyes watching me even now? I had been too tangled in my own misfortune to consider that the wild men of yesterday might return to find their comrade, or for that matter that the townspeople and constables might comb the common after the outrage, but now, with the tussock-strewn mound beside me and the gold lazily gleaming in the evening sun, it struck me that no band of cut-throats would let this lie. If they thought him absconded they would be after him; I had to hope they thought him taken, for then they would make themselves scarce. Still, I should not linger. Tomorrow, at first light, I would have to go.
‘And what to do with you?’ I said to the peaceful mare. Jacob would have known how much she was worth in money; I had no idea. More, much more than my life would be valued at. The saddle alone was a beautif
ul thing. But I could not sell her. She would be known at once as stolen. There was likely a reward posted for her. If I knew where and how to look, there’d be dealers who would take her anyhow, but even if I knew how to find them they would play me false as soon as winking. The proper thing no doubt would be to return her, but that was as risky as the other – there would be too many questions; I should be seized long before I could show myself to be honest. However much it pained me I would have to leave her to her own fortune.
I did not dare sleep in the cottage, but made myself a bed of fern a little way off, where I would not be seen. When I woke the sun had risen. For a while I lay awake and staring, unsure where or what I was, the clothes unfamiliar on my limbs. On a fallen trunk across from me a flecked dunnock lighted by a fledgling, passing food from beak to beak. The sight pierced me with sorrow; at once I was myself again, remembering. Or not myself quite – my short hair bristled at my neck and my legs looked long and thin in the breeches. I stood up, stiffly. I should have left already. It struck me how far there was to go, how little ground I had covered. What was I doing lingering here? Even now my husband could be rising from his sickbed, calling me.
A half dozen trails led from the clearing, deer paths, boar tracks, as likely to lead me to a briar mound as any human road. How far had I wandered yesterday? I had no idea. Not far, probably, I was too weak to cover much ground and as aimless as a blown leaf. Worcester lay to the east, that I was sure of, almost sure. Beyond that I had no idea which way to go, nor how far the wastes extended. I stowed the money about me and packed my own clothes in the boy’s bag and tied it to my back; the valuables I placed in my satchel. Then I went to the mare and unhitched her bridle and leant my forehead on hers to say goodbye. In a way I did not understand her coming had offered me comfort, even strength and I was grateful. Perhaps she felt the same. At any rate when I turned away she followed me, pausing puzzled when I told her to go back, and then approaching, nudging my shoulders softly with her nose.
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