A Dinner of Herbs (The Bannaman Legacy)

by Catherine Cookson

  And the answer came, ‘Of course I am. I should be; I spent three hours here last night digging it. It’s just beyond that gap there. I covered it up.’

  Then came a low hiss-snapping rejoinder, ‘Don’t use that tone to me.’

  There followed a pause and the mumbled reply was inaudible.

  A voice came again, saying, ‘It’s the wrong time.’

  ‘Not to my mind,’ was the answer. ‘Couldn’t be better. Most of them are at the barn dance.’

  The barn dance. Peter nodded to himself. That’s where Bill and Jane must be, and the child with them. The barn dance. Yes, of course. But why hadn’t Kate known of their going? But then, why should she? She mightn’t see them from one week’s end to the other.

  The words came as if from right beside him now. ‘’Tis in here to the left. I widened the gap meself pulling some of the brushwood up so there would be a bit more light.’

  There was a pause now in the talking but a scuffling of feet and a movement as if something was being carried. And then quite suddenly Peter pulled the boy’s face tight into his belly and turned his own head towards the thick undergrowth, oblivious that part of it was a holly bush, the leaves of which were pricking his cheek.

  His body took on a ramrod stiffness as he felt the figures almost brush past him carrying a weight between them. Then the branches of the very bushes against which he was standing moved by the pressure of the bodies turning at right angles from the path.

  There was an interval of about thirty seconds before he heard a voice saying. ‘Bring the pony in here,’ and another voice answer, ‘There’ll be nobody along there the night. The late shift doesn’t come up until ten.’

  ‘Bring it from the path.’ The words were low and gritted.

  There was the sound of a grunt, then he was conscious of a figure passing close to him, but he didn’t turn his head to look in its direction. But when the horse passed him its body sweat wafted over him, so close was it to him.

  It wasn’t until he heard what he realised was earth being shovelled that he moved cautiously onto the path. The boy was by his side now, his body shivering with fear of he knew not what, only that there was something disturbing his father. And when the hand came on his shoulder the pressure told him that he was to stay where he was. But no sooner had his father stepped into a gap in the brushwood than he almost leaped after him and the crack of landing on a small dead branch echoed like a revolver shot through the night.

  Peter did not stop to chastise his son; it was too late. A lantern on the ground, though shaded, showed up the scene: he was in a small clearing, and there before him were two men, one on each side of a hole in the ground. The hole wasn’t all that deep, for he could see that in it was a body, half of it covered with soil, but the face still exposed looked startlingly white yet at the same time had a hue.

  ‘My God!’ The words came out on a thin whisper, for he knew he was looking down on Mr Roystan the smelting mill clerk, the man who was supposed to have run off with the wages. As he made a dive for the man nearest to him he let out a yell, crying, ‘Feeler! You bloody swine, Feeler!’

  As the shovel was raised to come down on his head his fist caught the man under the chin, and his boot in the lower part of his stomach, which sent him reeling. Then crouching like an animal now, he peered at the figure standing at the other side of the hole. He was in the shadow out of the light cast by the lantern and so he couldn’t make out his face, at least not at the moment. But then the moon, coming from behind a scud of clouds, gave sufficient light for him to recognise the tall figure, and his mouth dropped open before snapping closed with his teeth grinding together.

  ‘You! You murdering sod, you!’

  The boy now watched his father step back in order to take a jump over the narrow grave, and he cried, ‘Da! Da! Oh, Da!’ Then he screamed as he saw the shovel leave the tall man’s hands and come right across the side of his father’s neck. He now put the fingers of one hand right into his mouth and bit on them as he saw his father fall almost on top of the little man who was in the act of staggering to his feet.

  Running to his father, he knelt by him, crying, ‘Da! Da!’ but when a hand lifted him bodily upwards by the collar he turned, screaming and kicking at the tall figure until his mouth was clamped shut and his hands gripped tight. Then he heard a voice say, ‘Pull yourself together. Get him covered up and we’ll deal with this one. My God! For this to happen. D’you hear? Pull yourself together! I’m talking to you. Get it into your head, if you don’t want to hang at the end of a rope, finish the job.’

  ‘I…I can’t. He almost did for me.’

  ‘My God! I’ll do it for you. Look, take this one here, and hold his mouth tight. God! When all’s said and done you’re a soft-gutted swine.’ The pressure temporarily gone from his mouth, the boy once more attempted to yell, but before he could do so something was again clamped over his mouth; not a hand this time, yet it was a hand, but not an ordinary hand. His head was pressed back tightly and he was looking up into a thin face, the mouth of which was open and with blood pouring from one side of it. When it began to drop onto his own face he closed his eyes and once again kicked out with his feet. The groan from the man made him redouble his efforts, but the last thing he heard before a great blackness overtook him was the voice appealing to the other man by name, and the words were to the effect that he was feeling bad and couldn’t hold the boy any longer. It was then the blow came on the side of his head.

  The tall man stood panting as he looked down on the small limp figure while cursing his companion. His words punctuated with oaths, he said, ‘Of all the bungling buggers, I’d have to rely on you.’ And the other man muttered, in defiance now that spoke of subservience mixed with suppressed retaliation, ‘You’ve been glad to rely on me afore. And I didn’t bungle this, it was yourself. You said you knew the right road he was takin’, but he diddled you. You seem to forget he didn’t come the Newcastle road: that leaked out to put people off the scent. There’s cleverer than you, it seems, mister. He came the open way across the moor, and it was me who caught sight of him else we wouldn’t have had him at all. Remember that, mister.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ the tall man growled. ‘And what have we got out of it so far, eh? Tell me that. Nothing, only a dead man.’

  The smaller man’s voice trembled as he said, ‘He…he wasn’t all that dead, I…I simply knocked him out.’ He looked towards the hole in the ground and the half-buried man and the soil that covered the body, and he gave a whimper like that which might have come from a child as he said, ‘Same as Hellier. You shouldn’t go that far. No need.’

  ‘And who’s to blame?’ The voice came at him again. ‘He saw you, didn’t he? You said he did, as plain as daylight. And what would have happened if he had come round? And, my faithful servant, let me ask you this: would you have kept your mouth shut? No, not you. So, he’s dead enough now, and God knows if we’ll live to see another day if that man’s voice and his boy’s screams have carried. So, put a move on and bring that brushwood. Get going, if you don’t want my foot in your backside.’

  Both men now shovelled earth into the hole, then collected small pieces of brushwood which they stamped on the loose earth. They next gathered some stones and threw them haphazardly here and there over the brushwood. ‘What if the earth sinks in?’ the small man said.

  ‘Well, it’ll be your job to come and put more stones on. Understand?’

  ‘But what if I’m seen in these parts?’ There was a tremble in the man’s voice now. ‘I’m rarely over here. They’d want to know…’

  ‘For God’s sake, shut your weak-lipped mouth. And now look at those.’ He pointed to the two prone figures on the ground. ‘What d’you think you’re going to do with those, eh? Bury ’em? You know who that is?’

  ‘Aye. Aye, I recognised him, young Greenbank, that was.’

  ‘Aye, young Greenbank. Well it’s a certainty he’s got to be that was, as you say, else God help
us both. Do you understand what I mean?’ He had spoken much more quietly, and the smaller man peered at him through the dappled moonlight, but he gave no answer, he just drooped his chin onto his chest and listened as his companion said, ‘There’s one thing we can thank God for: heavy rain often causes bits of landslides in this particular hole in the ground. Now, over with him.’

  ‘Wh…what?’

  ‘Well’—the voice was loud in its hissing—‘what shall we do? Leave him here to recover, and the lad an’ all? Get his legs!’

  It took them all their time to lift the body from where it lay across the narrow path and to the edge of the quarry. Then with a heave they let go of it and waited, their own bodies bent forward as they peered downwards towards the water.

  The sound that came to them now was of a soft thump, then the dislodging of rocks. But the rumbling lasted only a matter of seconds.

  They had both turned from the edge of the quarry when the sound of the boy’s choked cry and that of voices coming from the distance brought them crouching low. Quickly but quietly and still crouched, the big man moved towards the clearing, and seeing the boy about to scramble away grabbed him; then holding him as if cradling a baby, he kept his hand tightly over his mouth.

  The voices came nearer but their words were indistinguishable, and became more so as they then moved further away.

  The boy’s eyes were wide and he was looking up into the face of the man who was holding him. It was a different face from the one he had seen before, the thin face. This was a big face with heavy black brows and a beard, and eyes which looked enormous. He had no hat on his head and his hair hung down over his ears. It too was black.

  ‘Quick!’ the man hissed back to his companion, and straightening himself up while still keeping his hand over the boy’s mouth, he brought his other hand sideways onto the child’s head just below his ear. The body went limp in his hands, and he carried it to the edge of the quarry and dropped it over. He did not wait to hear its fall but, taking two steps to the right of him, he pulled at a sapling that was growing out of the side of the quarry, heaving it backwards and forwards. At last he wrenched it from the ground, then jumped back to the safety of the path.

  It wasn’t until he felt the ground under him shudder that once more he sprang back, and only just in time, for within seconds the loosened earth and rocks were bounding their way down to the bottom of the quarry…

  The passers-by, two miners on their way to High Stublick colliery, were on the track leading to Kate’s cottage when they heard the distant rumbling, and they stopped for a moment and one said, ‘You listen to that. That’s the quarry talkin’ again. Good job it didn’t speak when we were on its neck, eh?’

  ‘Aye,’ said the other. ‘Could have been nasty. Safer in the pit.’ And they both laughed.

  Two

  Kate was angry. She had made a pan of broth and mixed up some dumplings ready to drop into it the minute they entered the door, because although the days were warm, the nights could be biting. But the twilight passed into darkness and when they didn’t put in an appearance, she imagined that Bill Lee had been brewing up his own beer again, and this had set their tongues wagging loosely, and there they were jabbering away, recalling old times, older in Peter’s case, but nevertheless recognisable to both of them. But when ten o’clock came, which was far past her bedtime because she went to bed with the fading light and rose with the dawning of it, she became vexed.

  She had made up a bed for him on the floor near the fire: an old tick stuffed with straw could have the feeling of down when a man was tired, and a boy too, as they both must be after their day’s tramping. But when it neared midnight and they still hadn’t put in an appearance, her annoyance turned to anger; for although she reasoned that Peter had drunk so much that he had thought it better to bed down there than tackle the quarry road back, and the boy with him, nevertheless, he had put her out.

  She lay on her bed awake for some time until her reason said she couldn’t imagine the beer that Bill could brew would have the power to knock Peter out, for, him being a sailor, he was used to his rum and such.

  She dozed at intervals, but before the dawn broke she was sitting on the edge of her bed, her thin lips munching backwards and forwards portraying her anxiety, and asking herself why that odd feeling of foreboding that she experienced in times of crisis should be on her. Could anything have happened to them both? But what could have happened around here? True, the men at times were rowdy, although not so bad nowadays since they were living in respectable cottages and each with his stint of land. ’Twas only on the pay days, when they would go as far as Hexham one way or Allendale the other, that they got out of hand. And anyway, a man such as Peter could certainly take care of himself.

  She rose from the bed and blew up the dying embers of the fire and heated some goat’s milk into which she dropped some pieces of bread and goat’s cheese. But before she was halfway through it she found she had no appetite for it, and so, getting into her clothes and taking her shawl from the back of the door, she put it over her head, strapped it under her flagging breasts and tied it in a knot in the middle of her back. Then picking up a wicker basket she went out. What she would do, she told herself, was to take a stroll towards Bill Lee’s, but should she meet Peter and the boy coming back, she would show no anxiety, perhaps a little temper at their lack of consideration, but she would say she was out as usual gathering her herbs.

  Of course there weren’t many herbs to be got alongside the quarry track; nothing worthwhile grew in the brushwood that had sprung up over the years. Still, she was pleased that part was covered for it took the scars from the land. But over towards the spinney, beyond which Bill Lee’s cottage lay, there was a patch of meadow that on occasions seemed to give forth those herbs she needed, that is if once again they hadn’t let the young horses play in it. Anyway, should she meet up with her visitors, she could offhandedly tell them she was making for there.

  The morning light was bright and the sun was coming up over the hills when she reached a part of the quarry pathway that brought her to a standstill; for here she saw had been a fall and not the usual one. This then was what she had heard early on last evening, but she had taken little notice because there was always some noise from either the smelting mills or the mine. It was a joke, that one day Stublick miners would come up out of the bottom of the quarry.

  To get round it she had to make her way into the brushwood. As she did so she came to a part she decided had been flattened down by a number of feet. There were stones strewn about and fresh earth had been trampled here and there. It couldn’t have been gypsies, she told herself, else there would have been a fire. Yet they wouldn’t have been so silly as to make a fire here amidst all this kindling. She had to push her way through hawthorn and bramble to reach the path on the other side and she stood there looking down into the quarry. It had been a mighty big fall, bigger than usual. Well, that’s what the rains did.

  She was about to turn away when her eyes narrowed, and she moved a cautious step nearer the edge and looked down. There, to the left but not right at the bottom, what she thought her eyes saw brought her hand to her throat and she whispered, ‘No! God Almighty! No!’ Then with the agility of someone half her age, she was running back the way she had come and to the head of the quarry, and there, slithering down the path that had been made by the countless tracks of the horses and waggons, she came to the edge of the water. Skirting it, she stumbled over the strewn boulders and earth towards the latest fall, and when she stopped, it was to gaze upwards to where she saw once again, but more clearly now, what she had viewed from the top pathway, a small hand dangling from out of a black sleeve. But now she could make out the body which had been caught in the branches of a sturdy bush.

  ‘’Tis the lad. Yes, ’tis the lad.’ She heard her own voice like a high cry, and as if in an unanswered prayer for help, her eyes now lifted to the top of the quarry to where two blackened faces were peering down at her.r />
  Throwing the basket aside, she lifted up her arms and waved them frantically, at the same time crying, ‘Help! ’Tis a boy caught. Help!’

  For answer it seemed that both of the men leapt over the top of the quarry edge. Bounding from stone to stone and causing minor falls here and there, they were within seconds standing at her side. And they too looked upwards, and one of them repeated her words, saying, ‘God Almighty! He must have been passing at the time. We heard the rumble on our way in last night.’

  ‘Can…can you reach him?’

  ‘Aye, yes, we’ll reach him, Kate, we’ll reach him.’

  She watched them clamber up to the bush and gently extricate the small body from the branches. Then one man held the limp form across his arms while the other man got behind him and gripped his belt, steadying him on his descent towards the bottom.

  When they laid the boy at Kate’s feet she knelt by his side and immediately her hand went into his jacket and stayed there. When she looked up to the men whose silent gaze was asking her the question, she answered, ‘’Tis tickin’ slightly.’

  ‘Do you know him? Is he from round about?’

  ‘No, no,’ She shook her head. ‘He came to visit me with his father…yesterday.’

  ‘With his father?’

  She nodded her head and looked to the side where the boulders were spread far into the water.

  The two men exchanged glances before one of them, turning to her, said, ‘And you think he’s…?’

  ‘No other place for him,’ she answered; ‘he wouldn’t have left his boy, not like that he wouldn’t. He brought him to me to look after. They were on their way to Bill Lee’s to have a chat. Will…will you carry him back for me?’