by Norah Lofts
‘Throw off your wet things and hug this about you. You’ll soon be warm. Food and drink are coming.’ Then, as though resuming the conversation which my entry had interrupted, he said, ‘That kind of thing means a lot to women. She may well ask what infirmary. Can we answer?’
‘There is a House of White Ladies near by.’
‘We’ll tell her that. The best of nursing, the kindest of attention. After all, the boy’s father’, he paused and swallowed, ‘was in his own bed, he had every care, and a physician, yet he died. She will believe, and feel that no one was to blame.’
The serving girl tapped on the door. She had gone by the time I opened it. I took in the cup and the platter and carried them to the freak who had wriggled out of his clothes and was wearing the coat as a cape. His own jerkin, I noticed, with a fresh little thrill of distaste, had been made for him; it had no sleeve on one side, two on the other. He snatched at the things I offered, taking the mug in the hand nearest his face, the platter in the other.
Watching his ravenous attack upon the food, Master Reed said,
‘There’s plenty more. Ask if you want it.’ He then gave one of his great sighs and set himself in motion. ‘I must break this to his mother. She might insist on seeing you. You know what to say if she does.’
‘I know, master. Maybe I should’ve softened the tale for you. It never entered my head.’
‘No, for me the truth was best. And I thank you for bringing it.’
He indicated with a jerk of his head that I was to look after the freak and went limping away. I pulled a chair into a position from which I could look straight ahead of me without seeing the man who was still stuffing his mouth like a man filling a sack in a hurry
‘What is the truth?’ I asked.
‘He died, alongside me in Winchester Gaol. November, December, cruel cold it was, the walls running with water and puddles on the floor. He took a cold and then a cough and it killed him. Not but what that was a mercy in a way; he’d have burned, otherwise. They’d got upwards of twenty witnesses and that was too much to overlook even though he did have friends in high places and the Bishop himself was inclined to give Walter the benefit of the doubt. He was so young, too, and had such a nice way with him, enough to make anybody wonder. But twenty witnesses and more. No, that was too much. And in broad daylight too?’
‘What had he done?’ I asked; though I knew all but the details of the answer, for I remembered that summer evening, the hasty angry words, the grandfather’s warning.
The man by the fire crammed his mouth and chewed loudly.
‘Mind, I wasn’t there. I was in the gaol then – for stealing – but never mind me. I only know what Walter said, and that wasn’t much, till they took his lute away he used to spend his time playing, only afterwards, when he was sick and heartbroke did he talk. And of course when I was turned loose I heard the talk. They’re talking about it still in Winchester; some feel a bit ill done by to have missed the burning.’
He chewed again and resumed his tale.
In Winchester there was always a fair on St. Luke’s day, and most often it was a summer day crept into autumn,‘St. Luke’s little summer’ people called it. This year was no exception; the sun shone clear and bright. There was a man who sold medicine, guaranteed to cure anything from a winter cough to the stone, and he gathered his crowd about him by banging on a drum. Twice during the morning Walter’s playing had stolen his crowd away before he had sold much, and about mid-day the man had approached Walter and protested. Walter had moved away, but the people had followed and within an hour the medicine seller had come to him again and suggested a partnership.
‘They say – but of course afterwards people will say anything – they say he offered him a fourth share, Walter to play and gather the crowd and then break off in the middle of a tune and let the man cry his wares. And they say that then Walter went white with rage and said, “Am I to play that you may gull fools? Devil take your pills and potions”. Fifty people claim to have heard him say that.’
He broke the tale and I heard him chewing. I also heard, from the other side of the house, some wild, most lamentable crying. I pitied Master Reed from the bottom of my heart.
The story went on. Within five minutes, before, in fact the medicine seller could get back to his stall, a bullock, running amok from the near-by cattle market, crashed into it, became entangled; and stamping, rolling, tossing its head, smashed every pill to powder and broke to fragments the thing which had been the medicine maker’s greatest pride and treasure, a big flask of Venetian glass, half full of red liquid which he claimed to be the elixir of life – the other half had been, he said, poured into the pills.
‘Well,’ the freak said in his soft voice, ‘that could have been accident, though they counted it uncanny that except to that one stall, the beast did no damage and was easily taken. In itself that would never have damned him. But next day…’
Next day the medicine man, with nothing to sell and a damage to avenge, took his drum and followed Walter round, banging loudly and out of time, spoiling his music. At first only a few people, who cared neither one way or the other, found this amusing, but presently even those who wanted to hear the proper music gave way and found the situation rather comic, and laughed. Walter stopped playing. He took some coins from his pocket and threw them towards the man with the drum.
‘Will that buy your silence?’ he asked.
The man scooped up the money and said ‘Aye’; then, as Walter began to play again, amended it to ‘Aye, for two minutes,’ and banged on his drum. The crowd laughed. Walter said, and this was what twenty reliable people were prepared to swear to, ‘Then there’s no help for it. Let your arm wither.’
‘And they say that it did. It fell limp and began to grow small. By evening it was dry and shrivelled as a twig. There it was, and no help for it. One day he was mixing medicine and banging his drum – the next helpless. And twenty people near enough to hear what the boy said. It was hopeless. The Church court had him first and they handed him over to the secular arm, and that meant the townspeople. And how they felt is shown by what happened to the bullock. They claimed that was no ordinary beast, but possessed of the Devil. They burned it alive, and those who hadn’t tasted meat in six weeks or seven forbore to touch a shred of it, though it lay there, open to all.’
How much to believe; how much to discount? I sat there and wondered.
At last I said,‘The boy himself; did he think he was guilty?’
‘How can I answer that? In the beginning I thought he was a thief, like me. In the end, when they’d taken away his lute and he was miserable and talked more he said… Yes, once he said that to feel strongly enough was to have power. I do remember that. I remember because I said that it was not so, because I felt strongly the wish to be shaped like other people; and he said what was done was done. And then he said that he wished… No, he said,“If I had the power they say I have, I’d wish one wish for myself, to be out of this, and free, in the open, with my lute in my hand”. And he had half of his wish, for presently he coughed and choked on the blood and died, and they did put his lute in the grave with him. Or so I am told.’
He went on with his supper and we sat in silence until Master Reed came in, looking like a man who had just been released from the rack. But his most immediate concern was to find a place for the deformed man to sleep. When that was settled and I ventured to offer a few words of sympathy, he looked at me steadily and said,
‘Poor child. With such promise too. But the two things sprang from the same root. And I know it. That made me less firm than I should have been. Poor Walter.’ He sighed again. ‘Maude should be here,’ he said. ‘Her mother’ll need her, and I need her, I’ve not been firm enough in the past, but over this I shall be firm. Maude must come home.’
VII
From the way in which Mistress Reed had behaved since Walter’s departure, and the wild cries with which she had received the news of his death I expected the
following days to be made hideous by the manifestations of her grief and by her efforts to escape it. I looked ahead and imagined that life at the Old Vine, never very cheerful of late, would become dreary in the extreme. For the first time I began to wonder whether there might not be something unlucky about the house itself, or about the family. I knew I was a long way from being the carefree, cheerful, philandering fellow who had come there to teach Walter his letters. However, I soon shrugged that thought aside as nonsense. I pitied Master Reed, and his daughter-in-law too, but Walter’s death had not harmed me; my future indeed looked brighter and more certain. And, I thought to myself, although Walter was buried, far away in Winchester, there would surely be a Requiem Mass for him, and surely Maude would be bound to attend, and perhaps she would feel some pity for her grandfather and decide to come home and gladden his last years. It was a frail hope, but I clung to it.
I kept well away from the house all the morning and at twelve o’clock went in for my dinner. The square family table was unoccupied. The men, assembling at the long tables were quieter than usual and the serving girls, running round with bowls of meaty broth, had an air of suppressed excitement. The news about Walter had spread, I thought. The door behind me, the one which led into the main part of the house opened, and Master Reed, instead of entering, stood in the opening and beckoned me to join him.
‘Come here,’ he said, and stumped away up the stairs and to the door of Mistress Reed’s room. His face wore a strange expression, something only just short of pleasure as he opened the door and said,
‘What do you make of that?’
It was as though he were showing me something which, after long labour he had made, or, after long waiting, had at last achieved.
Mistress Reed sat on the edge of her bed, dressed as far as her petticoat; she held a comb in her hand and was slowly almost sensuously passing it through the length of her hair. She acknowledged our presence by the open door by turning her head; there was no interest, no recognition, no expression at all in her face. The lines which discontent, grief and anxiety had graved had all been wiped away, leaving a blank placidity. It was the face of a half-finished statue whose maker has not yet decided whether it shall portray joy or sorrow.
Having once looked our way she looked away again and resumed her slow combing. Master Reed gently closed the door and said,
‘She has been like that all morning. Pray God she stays so.’
‘Amen to that,’ I said. ‘Her father did.’
‘Aye. That’s the way it takes them. He turned simple when his wife died.’ He pondered for a second. ‘It’s not much of a life, but better than being crazed with grief; and easier for everybody else. I must set one of the wenches to mind her.’
In one way Mistress Reed was more fortunate than her sire; if the materials were put in her lap, or by her side, she would stitch away, contentedly, for hours. She no longer made anything, just worked away on long hems and seams, or did embroidery stitches without any design or pattern. One of the serving girls, glad of the easy task, devoted all her time to her.
On the third or fourth day Master Reed said,
‘We need a girl to take Phyllis’s place in the kitchen. And who has time to see to that? Not you. Not I. This house lacks a mistress. Maude should come home, now. She must come home.’
‘The question is, will she?’
‘Properly tackled, I think so. For one thing a house without a mistress is as tempting to any woman worth her salt as a ship without a captain to a sailor. For another, it offers her a chance to do something that would count as she calls it. To come home and look after the sick woman who, all these years, was never fair to her, is to return good for evil, surely. Yes, that’ll appeal to Maude. I’ll go to Clevely tomorrow.’
It rained in the night, and though the morning was fine a biting wind blew and the heavy black clouds rushing across the sky threatened more rain or even snow. I was in the weaving shed, settling some petty dispute when I looked through the wide window and saw Master Reed emerge from the house; so muffled in clothes as to be shapeless and wearing a woollen cap pulled over his ears and brow. Remembering how he had held close to the house all winter, and thinking of the inclement weather I went down and said unwillingly – because I doubted the outcome of the errand and felt that if it failed he would blame me – ‘Let me go, sir.’
‘No. You mean kindly, but you don’t have enough authority. Today I’m going to have it out. My mind is made up, and when my mind is set I mostly get my way.’
I realized, with a faint start of surprise that that was true. Mild and quiet as he was, this whole great business with its many aspects ran smoothly under his absolute authority; only within doors, with his family, did anything displeasing to him continue for longer than it took for him to notice it. He had given in to Maude’s whim, Walter’s waywardness, Mistress Reed’s insobriety, not from weakness, but from kindness of heart.
Well, I thought, all power go with you. I helped him into his saddle, and then stared at the evidence of his confidence in himself, another horse, saddled with Maude’s own saddle, and wearing a leading rein was led out. Master Reed took the rein, said ‘Come up, then,’ and they trotted out of the yard.
When I went in to dinner one of the maids was thumping about in Maude’s room, making it ready.
And faith, we are told, can remove mountains.
While we were at dinner there was a short sharp shower; but immediately after, just as I was leaving the house the sun came out. I stood for a moment beside a lilac bush which had thrust a branch over the garden fence; it shimmered with buds, wetly green. Somewhere in the depths of the garden a bird was singing with passionate joy and the golden light lay everywhere like a blessing. I was suddenly certain that Maude would come home that afternoon, and that everything would be well. Anticipation ran, with the tickling thrill of a finger touch, all the way from my thighs to my throat.
Half an hour later it was snowing lightly, and when, in the premature twilight, my master rode home, alone, he was furred all over with white, even his eyebrows bore their little load.
I had imagined, from the length of his absence, that Maude had packed her goods, and that the return journey had been made with laden slowness. But the led horse’s saddle was empty except for the snow.
Master Reed replied to my unspoken comment,
‘I went on to Minsham and took a look at the sheep. Had to do something to settle my mind.’
He dismounted stiffly, and instead of pushing away my proffered arm, took it and leaned on it heavily.
‘It’s been a bad day, my boy. And a fine fool I made of myself, as you shall hear.’
I had made a good fire in the office and a pint of well-spiced ale in a pewter mug waited on the hearth. I’d had the poker in and out of the heart of the fire for the last two hours, and now I pushed it home again. By the time I had helped him to shuffle off his wrappings it was glowing red and I plunged it into the ale.
‘That’ll warm you, sir,’ I said, handing him the steaming brew.
‘It’s cooling I need. Feel that if you doubt me.’ He reached out his free hand and touched mine. ‘You’ll understand, if I can bring myself to tell you.’
My curiosity was lively; but the hand he had laid on mine was unnaturally hot and I remembered what the doctor had said about the danger of his being upset. I said as soothingly as possible,
‘I can see for myself that you are disappointed. Beyond that you can tell me as much or as little as you like.’
‘That’s right! Now you begin to talk to me as though I were a baby. That’s all I need after the day I’ve had.’
He sipped his ale and I saw the sweat break out on his forehead. He pulled at the neck of his jerkin, exposing his stringy throat. Another thought struck me.
‘Mistress Maude… she is well, I hope.’
‘How can I know? I tell you I never even… But I’d best begin at the beginning.’
Clevely had altered; he’d spott
ed the change as soon as the place came in sight. Upwards of fifty ewes gathered in a field for lambing, with a shepherd and a boy in charge; another man in the house-yard, and not a nun to be seen anywhere. And the old kitchen door was now fenced off and a new one made at the far end of the house, with a deep porch in front of it and a portress to answer the bell. He’d asked for the Prioress, which was mere courtesy, since everyone knew that she was now bed-fast; but it was not our old friend Dame Cecily Bracy who came into the cold little room where he was bidden to wait; it was a new nun young, not more than thirty, who said she was the Prioress, so favouritism must have been at work to set her so high at that age.
He explained the situation and asked to see Maude. The Prioress, in a manner as smooth as cream, commiserated with him of the loss of his grandson and the indisposition of his daughter-in-law, but said that it was impossible for him to see Maude.
‘Nicholas,’ he said, leaning forward a little,‘when she said that it was like being hit over the heart. I thought she’d taken the veil without a word to us and I might never set eyes on her again. Come to my senses just too late, I thought, and for the rest of her days the poor silly child will come and go, eat or fast, sit or stand according to the word of this high-handed, mim-voiced bitch. And that roused my blood. I said even a nun was allowed to see her grandfather; I said she could stand by and hear every word that was spoken; I told her they weren’t an enclosed order and if she didn’t let me see Maude I’d complain to the Bishop. She wouldn’t be ruffled; she said Maude was still a novice, free to see me or anybody else she’d a mind to, but I couldn’t talk to her today because she wasn’t at Clevely.’
He hadn’t believed that. He thought the Prioress quick-witted enough to have guessed what he wanted of Maude; and he thought of his five pounds a year; and he thought that maybe the Prioress had already seen that Maude was in two minds about the matter. So he as good as called her a liar to her face and accused her of not daring to let him talk to his grand-daughter.