by Anya Seton
They could smell peat smoke from the priest’s chimney hole and a whiff of roasting goose. Nobody had eaten since dawn before they climbed Kirkstone Pass, and the farmstead near Windermere which had sheltered them last night would furnish them no breakfast but moldy clap-bread.
“That old lump o’ suet has a fire, an’ I’ll make him let us in if I have to beat his door down!” Wat suddenly shouted.
But Wat had no weapon which would budge the barred vicarage door or reach the windows, which were high up and shuttered fast. He and Simkin pounded and shouted to no avail. A bitter wind rose, whistling from the mountains, bringing with it silver needles of sleet. They crowded together inside the church, shivering, too cold for speech. Wat eyed the sanctuary lamp glimmering above the altar. From the candle inside they might start a fire, but there was nothing flammable in the church except two wooden prayer seats.
“Bigod, Goddamn—” Wat muttered, while his own teeth began to chatter.
The women huddled in each other’s arms, striving for warmth. Simkin stamped up and down the only aisle, his feet numb.
Ursula thought how dreary a death this would make, to starve from cold and hunger in the savage uncaring North. She had begun to burn inside, and knew that an ague was upon her. Her knees wobbled so that she could no longer stand, and she slumped down on the dank paving. From instinct she looked towards the little wooden crucifix on the altar and began to pray.
Her aunt’s collapse frightened Celia out of the exhilaration she had been feeling. She chafed Ursula’s wrists distractedly.
Wat glanced at them both with exasperated pity while he thought of desperate plans. There must be some cot, some hamlet nearby, even in this forsaken country, which he could ride to. The priest had mentioned Brampton, whatever that was, it must be nearer than Naworth. He thought of returning to the shepherd’s hut at Pattersdale, but that would take all night, and scant hope of help there anyway. And how to leave the women. Lady Southwell was ill already. That he could hear from her moans and prayers through the darkness.
“Sim!” he said to his son. “Stay here wi’ ’em. I’ll have another go at the keep.”
Wat strode out into the sleet, spurred by the need for action of any kind. He shook his fist at the vicarage, and groped his way back to the great looming fortress. He again found the bell-rope, and listened to the jangling clamor inside with impotent fury. There was no response. As his arm dropped he felt a touch on his elbow.
Wat started, then crossed himself, for he saw a pale shape beside him. It seemed to be a woman’s shape, with long dark hair and a light robe.
“Whyfore d’ye make such a din?” it asked in a plaintive voice. “Is’t the Scots? Are the mosstroopers raiding tonight?”
Wat’s scalp ceased prickling, he forgot even his physical cold in relief that the apparition spoke good English.
“No, Lady,” he said, “there’s no raid, we’re but a party of Southerners bound for the Dacres at Na’orth. We’re frozen, starving, benighted.”
“I’m a Dacre,” said the woman in a sad murmurous voice. “Bluidy Bess, they call me here, though I was born a Neville, and ha’ lived in London Town. My mother was half Southron. I like Southrons.” Her voice trailed off, and she seemed to be turning away.
Wat grabbed her by the long woolen sleeve. “I’m a Southerner,” he cried sharply. “We all are, we need help. Where do ye live, Lady?”
“In there . . .” she answered as though astonished. He felt her arm raise as it pointed to the fortress. “Wi’ blind Janet.”
“Take us in!” commanded Wat, wondering if she were truly feeble-witted. “How’d ye get out—not through that portal.”
“Nay . . .” She shrank from his detaining hand. “My own secret way—when the three kings don’t watch me too close.”
“Oh . . .” said Wat, and pondered a second. “Well, it so happens, Lady, them three kings’re friends o’ mine, they want ye to take me inside.”
There was a long pause, during which Wat tried to control his fretting. If she slipped off into the darkness, or if he held her forcibly, there would be no further hope.
“’Tis very cold out here,” he added, “the kings don’t want ye to get cold.”
“Don’t they?” she asked with childlike surprise. “Yet they’re cowld, you know, Oswin in particular, King o’ Strathcylde. He’s cowlder than the snows on Blencathra. For here is his own kingdom.”
“Aye, no doubt—” said Wat, swallowing, “and I’m a guest in his kingdom, he longs to welcome me!”
He released his breath as he felt her sudden acquiescence. She began to edge around the fortress on the narrow strip of ground between it and the moat. Wat grabbed her flowing sleeve and followed. She began to go down steps just where the moat joined the rushing beck. Wat accurately judged that she had turned into some passage to the dungeon. The air became foul, the stone walls slimy as he guided himself with one hand and held her sleeve with the other. Suddenly they mounted again, and Wat with a spasm of relief saw the distant light of a fire. They crossed a dark chamber, and she stopped at the doorway to the inner firelit room.
“I don’t see the kings,” she said on a note of irritation. “You said they’d welcome you. You mustn’t lie to me . . .” There was something threatening in her change of tone as she added the last words, while Wat had his first good look at her.
She was slender, she was probably about thirty, she would have been beautiful except for the vacant look on her pale oval face and the fixed half-smile on her little mouth.
“The kings must’ve gone to bed,” said Wat. “’Tis late . . . Ah, who’s this?”
A stout aproned woman arose from a velvet-covered chair, and groped towards them. Her eyes were shut, and she cried, “Lady Bess, Lady—who’s wi’ ye?” in an anxious voice.
“A friend, good dame!” cried Wat heartily. “No Scot. I vow it on the Cross, but friend from the South, bound for Na’orth and in sore need of shelter.”
He muttered, “By your leave,” and grabbed a fistful of oatcakes which were warming near the hearth. “Glory be to Christ,” he continued between avid gulps, “I see ye’ve a red deer roasting on the spit!”
Bess Dacre watched him somberly as she stood with one hand on her chest tugging at the gray woolen neck of her gown as though to expose her left breast. “The blood’ll go here,” she said softly, tapping her breast. “Bring the blood, Janet!” She gestured towards the roasting venison.
“Anon, anon—Lady Bess,” said Janet. “’Tis not yet hot enow . . . Wull ye explain ye’re beesiness—” she cried in the direction of Wat. “I maun hear-r ye speak again. I’m blind.”
“God bless ye, poor woman,” said Wat with sympathy. The oatcakes relieved his lightheadedness, and he became practical. It did not occur to him to speculate on the presence of a mad woman and a blind woman as the inhabitants of Dacre fortress, he saw them only as a means of salvation.
Half an hour later Wat had rescued his charges from the church and assembled them by the fireside of the keep’s inner room.
Ursula lay drowsing on a pallet which Janet had found. Her violent shaking ceased after Janet gave her a noggin of the fiery liquid which they called something that sounded like “whiskybaugh.” Celia and Simkin devoured hunks of the steaming venison, drank noggins until Celia’s exhilaration returned, tinctured by a dream quality. Nothing seemed strange to her now, she was warm at last, she was fed, she watched with languid interest as the tall woman in gray wool came over to Janet and ceremoniously offered her breast, a white round breast with a raspberry nipple. Janet marked it with venison blood. The mark was a cross, with wavy lines around it; from the familiar offhand way that Janet drew the markings with her reddened finger, nobody could doubt that this was an established custom.
“It quietens m’ puir lady,” said Janet, with composure, from her velvet seat by the fire. “This was one o’ her bad days—an’ a’ that wranglin’ an’ janglin’ o’ the courtyard bell!” She turned a rep
roachful face in the direction of Wat, who had now regained all his strength and become curious.
He asked questions, and Janet answered him placidly. This was Lady Elizabeth Dacre, wife to Sir Thomas of Naworth Castle. She had often been a bit mad, but so were all the Neville family. Her brother, the Earl of Westmorland, had been imprisoned in London for trying to murder his father and wife, though this remained unproven. He had also been accused of invoking angels to assist in his throwing of dice. But these moments of folly were past. The Earl regretted them; he had repented. Janet obviously believed that any aberrations should be overlooked in so famous and powerful a family. She had grown up with Lady Bess at Raby Castle in County Durham; she had always known how to treat her, so it was natural that when the lady’s bad fits came on her, they were both sent to Dacre for a while.
“The three kings’ll mend her agen,” said Janet. “She’s descended fra them a’. An’ lang time ago she was King Oswin’s dotter!”
Celia’s interest in this narrative had been growing, even though she was fighting sleep and was conscious that Simkin had settled himself on the floor beside her. She glanced at Lady Bess, who was now seated in the other chair, her chin in her hand gazing idly at the fire.
“What three kings, Dame Janet?” Celia asked. “And when lived my Lady Dacre, King Oswin’s daughter?”
“Och—” said Janet, turning her pleasant rosy face towards Celia’s voice. “’Twas hunnerds o’ years past—whilst the Norsemen were harrying us.”
This was no clarification for Celia nor any of the listeners. But the girl whispered with a glance at the motionless figure in gray, “They’re d—, not alive then . . .?”
Janet hunched her shoulders. “She sees them, and I feel their chill when they coom.”
So, the three kings were ghosts, Celia thought! She was quite tipsy and this struck her as funny. She gave a sudden little laugh.
Bess Dacre turned her long white neck and looked at the girl. “There’ll be blood on your pap, too, my pretty lass,” she said. “And ’twill do you no good to lie wi’ my lord, let ye lust as ye will, and no matter his promises. You’ll come to grief like a’ his lemans.”
Celia did not understand. Wat and Simkin, both half drunk, paid no attention to this remark, but Ursula was roused by the sinister tone directed towards her niece. She remembered the offhand remark of the Cowdray steward. That the Neville wife was known to be jealous. Ursula raised her head and spoke to Lady Bess.
“My niece is a child, Lady—she comes north for no reason but to visit your mother-in-law with me. She has barely met Sir Thomas. There is naught between them.”
Bess listened and seemed to consider. She gazed at the pallet where Ursula lay, her large black eyes grew vague. Suddenly she rose in one lithe catlike motion. Ursula shrank and cried, “Jesu,” under her breath. She thought the woman was darting at her.
But Lady Bess glided past to the wall where a small harp hung on a wooden peg. Bess took the harp and returned to her seat.
“We must sing . . .” she said, nodding graciously towards the dim-lit other room. “The Kings wish music.”
She strummed the little harp and smiled the fixed half-smile again. Bess’s voice was low, it held no expression, and it sent new shivers through Ursula.
O! cauld and bare his bed will be
When winter storms sing in the tree;
At his head a turf, at his feet a stone,
He will sleep, nor hear the maiden’s moan
O’er his white bones the birds s’all fly
The wild deer bound, and foxes cry . . .
“Nay, nay, m’lady—” cried Janet, suddenly jumping up and groping towards her mistress. “Not that one, luik ye, we’ve guests this neet, they’re a-weary, we mun rest. Coom, hinny, coom . . .” She took the harp and put it back on the wall. “Here’s ye’re neetcap,” she said in crisp firm tones. They were all dazed, only Ursula, aware of pity and some fear, held her breath while Janet poured red venison blood from a dripping pan into a silver noggin and put it in Bess’s hand. The woman drank slowly, savoring each sip. Then she allowed Janet to propel her to a small adjacent bedchamber, curtained off by a tattered mildewed length of tapestry. In a moment Janet stuck her head around the tapestry. “Guid neet,” she said. “Keep the fire oop—there be turves i’ the basket, iffen the wood fails.”
Wat was snoring, his head resting on a sack of oats which he had brought back after feeding the horses and watering them at the courtyard trough.
Ursula too slipped back into an uneasy slumber. The young people lay under their cloaks on the other side of the hearth.
“’Tis not cold now,” Celia murmured. “I hope those three kings don’t come.”
Simkin was not interested in the three kings. He rolled closer to Celia, then suddenly heaved himself on top of her and covered her mouth with his.
The girl jumped and opened her eyes. She gave the bony young chest a push. “Oh, leave me be,” she said without rancor, “I’m too weary for games.”
The kiss meant no more to her than her aunt’s would have. It did not even awaken any memory of that other kiss on Tan’s Hill.
Simkin rolled off her at once, reddening. He had longed for that kiss. After the food and whisky, while the elders were talking nonsense, he had been growing frantic with anticipation, his loins ached, his head pounded, his manhood throbbed. Yet, when he touched her lips, and even before she shoved him, he had felt disappointment. Almost revulsion. He had never kissed a girl before, though the other stableboys at Cowdray were forever boasting of their bussings and tumblings under hedgerows. He wondered a little about his lack of interest in the dairymaids or the castle chamber wenches the other lads found so exciting. Celia’s delicate beauty, her mischief, and high station had penetrated his indifference on the first day’s journey. He was pleased to find himself in love. Yet he hadn’t liked the feel of her soft breasts beneath his chest, nor her moist warm mouth. It had been different with Roland. Simkin gave an unhappy grunt, turned far away from Celia and began to snore as loud as his father.
The Dacre keep settled at last into somber quiet.
On the next morning they set out north again. Janet directed them carefully, through the town of Penrith, on up to Brampton, and reminded them to stop at Kirkoswald Castle on the way. Old Sir William Dacre might be there; he seemed to favor it above all his seats. There’d be a steward anyway who would give them news and shelter if they were benighted.
“We couldn’t be,” said Wat laughing, “if ’tis only thirty mile to Na’orth.”
Janet snorted. “Ye speak lak a fule Southron, a mile her-re’s not like the saft easy ones doon ther-re, an’ our debatable land’s ne’er free fra danger.”
“What sort of danger?” asked Ursula, who still felt very weak, though her ague fit had not recurred.
Janet looked towards her kindly. “The ways’ll be clarty,” she said, “your horses mought fall, the brigs out o’er the becks, an’ evil men abroad. ’Ware the mosstroopers! The Maxwells’re riding I hear-r—ye’d be ripe plums for ’em. Your horses, your gold, and yon young lass to be ravished, you too, Lady, iffen they be fu’ o’ whiskybaugh, as they’ll be for sure.”
“Wat and Simkin will protect us—the Blessed Saints’ll protect us,” cried Ursula, crossing herself.
“Havers!” said Janet. “Luik ye, Lady. Stop by to see Lang Meg an’ her dotters ar’ter ye pass Penrith. Gi’e her a posy o’ the rowan-berries, it’ll please her. She’ll guard ye better’n a bushel o’ crosses an’ Paters—she was her-re afore they a’ coom to Cummerland. Iffen ye can count Lang Meg’s dotters a-reet ye’ll get ye’re heart’s secret weesh.”
“She’s as mad as Lady Bess,” whispered Wat behind his hand to Ursula. “Hasten, Lady, we’ve no time for this drivel.”
Ursula nodded. They had breakfasted on oatcakes and the remainder of the venison. Though it rained again, they were all fed, including the beasts, and she longed to be quit of the gloomy Dacre keep.
“Give our thanks to Lady Bess,” said Ursula, while mounting her horse. “I trust she’ll soon be better.”
Janet nodded in Ursula’s direction. “Ar’ter the fu’ moon,” she said calmly, “I gi’e her the bluid to drink—we’ve a pig for today, ’tis more like the bluid she hankers for. Time was when she tasted the other-r.”
“The other . . .?” asked Celia who had been listening with fascinated incomprehension, though aware chiefly of a headache, and that Simkin had not spoken to her or even looked at her this morning.
“Aye,” said Janet, “once ’twas her babby’s—puir wee bairnie—she loved it well, it died natural mind ye, and she got a taste o’ the bluid whilst she was trying to save it.”
“Blessed Jesu—” whispered Ursula. Her weakness vanished. She slapped her horse with the reins. “Come on, Celia—all of you—out of here!”
They hurried from Dacre, and cantered through the hamlet past the vicarage, where the old priest stood in the doorway of his house and stared at them impassively.
Wat scowled and shouted, “No thanks to you, old turdy-gut, ye’ve not got a churchful o’ corpses this morn, may the devil fry ye fur dinner!”
The priest hastily backed into his house, and slammed the door.
“They be’ent human up here . . .” Wat muttered, itching for revenge, but he urged his charges along the muddy lane towards Penrith, which it took them an hour to reach. In the small gray market town they paused only long enough to buy food at a cook-shop—a blood pudding the natives called “haggis,” more oat-cakes—and to confirm, mostly by signs, Janet’s directions towards the bridge over the Eden at Langwathby.
They continued in silence. The rain turned to drizzle. Ursula staunchly ignored a new fit of shivering and gave thanks that the mountains had receded, the going was nearly level. They crossed the Eden by noon and continued north until they came suddenly upon a huge cluster of standing stones, many stones grouped near a huge pointed one eighteen feet tall.