I take down the jar and count out twenty tiny black seeds. “What are they?” I ask.
“Henbane. Do you have an interest in medicine?”
I shake my head. He smiles. “He may sleep for two days, but he’ll be healing all the while.” He grinds the seeds together with an expert flick of the wrist, then tips them into a fold of parchment. “Show me the way then.”
We cut over the slope of Beacon Hill. I keep Saint Hilda to a walk while the Cockleshell Man strides behind me. Every time I come to the hermit’s cottage I am afraid of finding Robert dead. I sniff as I tether Saint Hilda by the door. I can smell his arm from here.
“Robert?” He is lying under the blanket as I left him. He half opens his eyes. They are bloodshot and vacant. “Robert, I’ve brought a healer to help you.”
“Aye.” He glances at the surgical instruments which are catching the sunshine in the doorway, and closes his eyes again.
We remove the bandages, easing them away with water from the beck, until just the splint and tapes remain on Robert’s arm. Yellow pus oozes out over the splint. The flesh is rainbow colours from purple to green.
“Did you set this bone?” the Cockleshell Man asks.
I nod. “It was a long time ago.”
“You did well. We’ll not have to chop off your handiwork, Beatrice, God willing.” He removes the leather bag from his waist and glances at me. “I could tell you to go, but you clearly have a talent for healing. This bone is well nigh mended. I could teach you. Do you want to learn some of the old ways that nature clears up putrefaction? You need a strong stomach.”
I have no idea what he means, but I am flattered that he praised my bone setting, so I answer, “Yes please. Show me.”
For a moment he hesitates, as if still doubting my stamina, then he upends the leather bag over a woollen cloth and pours out a stream of maggots.
I rock back on my heels. “Dear God.”
The Cockleshell Man is shaping the woollen cloth in his hands, easing the maggots into the centre, then he quickly applies it to Robert’s arm. “They work for infected ears too,” he informs me, glancing over to the far side of the room where I have retreated. “You just tip them in. Wash them out with salt water two days later.” He finishes tying bandages round the cloth, then supports the arm in a sling. He stands up. “I’ll come back tomorrow. Bring him wine and turnip broth this evening. No meat. No milk.” He walks out, his unused saw and knife swinging at his belt. On the trussing-bed Robert lies silent and unmoving, his eyes shut.
I scarcely sleep that night. When I do, maggots seethe in my dreams. Robert would not touch the broth and wine which I took him after my watch on the Pike. I could not stop looking at his arm in its sling, and my own skin screamed with horror. When I left him, it was very late, and the woods were completely dark. Robert seemed too vulnerable to be left alone. It felt like a night of evil, a night when such men as my father ride out.
It seems my father did indeed ride out last night, since Germaine is wearing a shockingly vulgar emerald brooch on her dress this morning. Verity, whom I have scarcely seen for days, informs her at morning prayers that green is simply not her colour, and for the first time Germaine seems on the verge of tears. She turns away. I realise she looks as tired as I feel. I do not brush her off when she asks if she can exchange her watch on Beacon Hill this afternoon with mine this morning. I know it is so that she can meet Gerald. In fact it suits me very well, because it means I can set off early for my appointment at the hermit’s cottage.
When I arrive, I find that the Cockleshell Man has been there half the night. He is lying under the window where the oiled cloth flaps in the chilly breeze. He says, “You’re just in time. We’re going to take a look at it now, aren’t we, Robert.”
I step over the threshold into the half-light. There is more alertness in Robert’s eyes than I have seen since I toppled him from the tower window. Together, the Cockleshell Man and I unbind the arm. The difference is apparent at once. Beyond the visual shockingness of the infestation, the flesh is swollen and puckered, and red shows where it was yellow before. The maggots are eating the poison. “Two more days,” says the Cockleshell Man. “We’ll check it again tomorrow. He’ll not be fit to move, to wash them off in the sea, so mebbe bring a block of salt, Beatrice, and we’ll use water from the beck.”
He walks with me to the door. “He’ll be fit to move by Allhallows, and home before winter sets in. I’ll guide him over the sands when the time comes.”
“Cedric.” We both turn. Robert is struggling to sit up.
“So you have a name.” I smile at the Cockleshell Man.
He grins and turns to Robert. “Aye?”
“I’ve nothing to pay you with.”
Cedric, the Cockleshell Man, concentrates on folding up the used dressings he is taking away with him. “It’ll not tek much imagination to know how you can pay, Robert,” he says, “you and your kin. If you’re in any doubt, then I daresay Mistress Beatrice will enlighten you.”
Robert lies back down, watching us. Cedric and I stand outside the doorway. Fish scales are shining in his beard today, and he really does not smell so good. “Master Cedric…”
“Cedric.”
“Cedric, I’m so grateful to you. I must pay you on Robert’s behalf.”
“Thank you, Beatrice, but nay, there’s no call for that.” He goes to step over the broken wall. I put out a hand to stop him.
“My mother…” I hesitate. He doesn’t help me. “Can you just tell me… the reason she comes to visit you… it isn’t because she’s ill, is it?”
He pauses, one foot up on the wall. “No, she’s not ill.” He stares at me for a moment, then he says, “Beatrice, be careful of yon Scot. It would be even worse than loving a Cockleshell Man, that would.” Then he steps over the wall and walks off into the forest.
I can pretend not to understand his warning – the idea of course is ridiculous – but this is not a day for pretence. My thoughts have centred round Robert for weeks. The improvement in him makes me feel physically lighter, as if his diseased arm had been a burden across my shoulders. I am glad he will recover, and, I tell myself firmly, I shall be glad when he is gone.
As for the strange and mysterious association between Cedric and my mother, that is something I shall think about later. I go back into the cottage. Robert speaks before I can. “I’d not have come raiding here again anyhow, Beatrice,” he says. “You know that, don’t you. Not now that I know you’re here.”
I start to clear up the wooden bowl of water and the washing cloths. “I suppose you mean you’ll just stick to raiding other places then. Is that it?” I ask. I cannot help my hostile tone, or tell whether it is in response to the Cockleshell Man’s warning.
Robert moves his injured arm. “Some things are out of my control, Beatrice.”
“So is this to be our last raid then, here at Barrowbeck?”
“As far as my people are concerned, once they hear about what you’ve done, I’m sure it will be, but there are plenty more along the border, the Armstrongs and Elliots, the Irvines and Trotters and Johnstones and the rest. I cannae answer for them. They’re a rough lot.”
“You’re a rough lot, Robert,” I tell him.
He smiles. It is such a shock. I realise I have never seen him smile before. He is suddenly human, real, a person with warmth in his eyes. I turn away.
He adds, “A lot may depend on whether you Englishmen come raiding us in the meantime.”
I think of the lords of Westmorland and Cumberland, and I am afraid.
Within a week the flesh of Robert’s arm is pink, and puckering into healthy scabs. Within a fortnight it is healing over, and he can stand unaided.
Chapter 12
We are always on edge for months after a raid. There are the obvious physical depredations to repair – houses burnt and needing rebuilding, temporary shelters to be constructed to tide the homesteaders over – but there’s also the grief and shock and lost
sense of security. That we ever felt secure is odd, since the constant keeping of watch implies a lack of security, but you can’t live in fear all the time. You forget; you fool yourself. You would go mad otherwise.
So as the weather grows warmer, the raid recedes into merely a bad memory. In the valley the grain grows tall, and our long-horned black cattle and flock of white-faced horned sheep grow fat on good pastures. Yet I feel distanced from the farm, my family, my household duties. I can see that my mother is puzzled by me, though not as puzzled as I am by her. I find myself watching her covertly. The shawl reappears in her bedchamber. She is charming but distant towards Father, abstracted round the house and dairy, often away. I find it impossible to imagine that she has more than just a friendship with the Cockleshell Man. They are both interested in healing, after all, so it would make sense. Yet at thirty-three she looks ten years younger, too young to be trapped with my father, and the secrecy which she and Cedric maintain would seem to suggest a possibility which I’d rather not consider.
I feel that my normal life has been escaping from me while I have been concentrating on Robert. Things on the farm feel unfamiliar because I have spent so much time at the cottage, and even when I am not there, I am thinking about it. Robert’s improvement progresses along with the improvement in the weather, as spring turns to summer. I make a decision to visit him less often. He can heal just as well on his own. I go alternate days, then every third day, and take him enough food to last. The days I do not go I spend down in the valley, helping the homesteaders rebuild the houses which Robert and his companions destroyed.
Robert makes occasional wobbly-kneed forays into the forest himself, and sometimes kills and roasts a squirrel or rabbit. On the days when I don’t go, I feel as if the forest itself is calling me back, the raw smell of the beechwoods, the golden-brown mutter of the beck, the idea of Robert, gathering in my head, then Robert himself waiting for me, his eyes bright and his hair damp from his habit of lying in the water and letting it stream over him.
One hot morning when I do not go, travelling shearers arrive at our farm. We have been timing their progress northwards from Lancaster, so we are ready for them. The two men, brown and thin, set to work in the barmkin, and I go down to watch their impressive skills in action. I climb to the top of the barmkin wall and sit with the sun burning on my back. The men’s short, pointed shears flash in the light, moving with unsettling speed. The men strip sheep after sheep, the animals held firmly between their knees. These men are known to be daring and improper, given half a chance. Girls in the valley are warned against them. As I sit there, one of them stands up to stretch his back, then comes over to me and takes hold of my ankle with both hands, as if to pull me off the wall. His hands are stained dark by oil from the fleeces, and are soft as courtiers’ hands, with tiny cuts along the sides of his index fingers, from thorns in the wool. He smiles up at me. I look back down at him and say, “I’m the one who’ll be paying you, Master Shearer. Or not, as the case may be.”
He removes his hands from my ankle in a slow, deliberate caress, murmuring, “Well, lady, there’ll be no extra charge for this,” before returning to his work.
I lean back, propped with my hands behind me on the wall, and raise my face to the sun. The stones are warm, and rough with lichen under my palms. On the slope, insects buzz in the heather and bracken. I can feel my bones and muscles loosening in the heat. Suddenly there is a voice behind me.
“Beatie?”
I turn my head, startled. It is Parson Becker standing below, with his lightweight black summer robes hitched up round his middle with a piece of rope for ease of riding. “I brought you some books,” he says. “The ones I mentioned on Sunday. Don’t get down. I’ll come up and join you.”
I reach down to help him. “Those clothes aren’t meant for climbing walls in, Parson,” I tell him.
He smiles and loosens his collar, and scrambles up beside me without my help. “I’ve left the books in the gatehouse for you.”
Verity and I are amazingly well educated for girls. Mother said that if the queen could learn Latin, Greek and Italian, then so could we. We used to ride through the woods to Wraithwaite twice a week to be taught by old Parson Pattinson. He was always very strict and angry with us at first – he was only used to teaching boys – but later his attitude changed, and he spent many more hours with us than Father ever paid him for. When Parson Pattinson died and young Parson Becker took over our education, I wasted many a long afternoon admiring this beautiful new priest, barely hearing a word of what he said. I glance at him now, and wonder if he ever realised.
“I’m supposed to come and talk to you about marrying Hugh,” he says. I stare at him in alarm. This seems deeply unfair of Aunt Juniper. I feel angry. He sees my expression and pulls a face and says, “It’s simply that you and Verity both appear slow… unwilling even… to become formally betrothed to your cousins. That’s all. No one’s talking about setting a date for the weddings yet.”
I hunch my shoulders forward and stare at the shearers. “Betrothal is so final, sir.” I decide to be formal, to punish him; I know he values the informal friendship which has grown out of our lessons. “Verity and I are both needed here at the tower still. We’re really not ready to think about rearranging the households yet.”
“Or is it perhaps that neither of you really wants to?” John Becker asks.
I gaze at him. “Is that relevant?”
He reaches out, and with unusual hesitancy for him, takes hold of my hand. “There’s plenty of time,” he says. “I’ve said what I was supposed to say. Now we can talk about something more interesting.”
We do not talk about anything more interesting. I look down at his hand, and reflect that he would not be making this fatherly gesture if he knew the thoughts I have sometimes harboured about him. The shearer who held my ankle whistles at us, and John laughs and lets go, then we watch the shearers in silence. Fine strands of wool drift by, and the oily smell of cut wool is in the air. The shearers’ tempered steel blades stab the sheep’s fine under-fur with speed and deftness, making the heavy outer coats peel elegantly away. One by one whole fleeces are thumped on to the slatted table, outer side up, to have the scraggings, the tail area with its dried droppings, pulled off and thrown away by Leo’s son, Dickon. He then eases away the inferior wool at the sides of the fleece and throws it into a basket. The top quality wool from the sheep’s backs is thrown into another basket.
Women from the village come and go in relays, carrying the fleeces to the beck to be rubbed with foamweed and rinsed clean. Men from the village move the sheep round the barmkin in an orderly manner, so that those waiting to be shorn are ready, and those already shorn are out of the way. Despite the bustle and the constant calling of the sheep, the scene is tranquil and self-contained, like the man next to me. The gentle wrestling of the amber-eyed animals, the soft mist of fine wool drifting on to our clothes, the stillness of John Becker, create a sense of peace in me, a feeling I had forgotten over recent months.
A bee blunders into the lace of my cap. I jerk back and shake my head, trying to dislodge it. John pulls my hair loose and shakes the bee free.
“Thank you.” We look at each other. “I have to go and get new baskets for the fleeces,” I say awkwardly, and tuck my hair back in. He nods. I swing my legs over the wall, and jump down, my face hot, and all around me the bees lose their stings and fade to burn marks on the heather.
Later John helps me organise the long tables in the meadow ready for the shearing feast at the end of the day. Aunt Juniper arrives and says, “You’ve got the parson shifting furniture? Good. I like to see a bit of humility in a priest.”
In the kitchen, when I am carrying out the beasting tarts to the tables, I ask her, “Who are you going to marry Parson Becker to, Auntie?”
She looks mildly shocked. “I daresay that one will please himself whom he marries.” She bites into one of the rich yellow tarts made from the milk of young cows who have
newly calved this year, and licks the sweet custard off her fingers, ignoring Kate’s possessive glare. “Why, Niece? Do you have a suggestion?”
I shake my head, and go back outside, to where John is talking to our neighbours, and stand with him and watch the sun sink butter-yellow into the sea.
That night I dream John Becker is shearing sheep. The blades flash and snap, and I watch as if in a trance. Then suddenly they slip and gash his upper arm horribly. I spring forward to help him, and for a moment he and Robert are the same person in my dream, but the shock has half woken me, and the image fades into the uncertain light of dawn. After a while I get up and pull on yesterday’s work clothes, pack some left-over beasting tarts into waxed cloth and follow my usual path through the forest.
Robert is sitting sideways on the trussing-bed when I reach the cottage. I have told him he must pretend to be dumb if anyone comes here. Now he teases me by mouthing, “Greetings, Beatrice.” I unwrap the food. He says, “You’re dressed like a peasant today.”
I look at him, clad in tattered breeches, ragged green jerkin and patched linen shirt, and reply, “Well, you look utterly elegant, my dear.”
“Where did you put my weapons, Beatrice?” he asks as we eat the beasting tarts. They seem very rich for so early in the day, and I reflect that this is just another sign of my general moral decline.
“I threw them into Mistholme Moss,” I answer him.
“What?” He looks incredulous. “I thought you said you’d buried them somewhere.”
“That was your clothes. No Robert, your weapons are at the bottom of a bog.”
I watch his despair, and for a moment I feel it myself. He is a person to me now, not just something to be repaired. I lick my fingers and lean towards him. “Let me see your arm. How does it feel today?”
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