by Leah Fleming
‘There you go again at my conscience but what else is there to do in these hills?’ pleaded the young vicar as he tried to keep pace with her up the steep fellside.
‘I smell trouble on the wind, vicar, and if you don’t guide the flock you were given, there’ll be such a scattering. Don’t be a milksop. Don’t let yer true friend down.’ Beth bent forward, her weathered face serious, stern, the sound of her ragged garments flapping like the beating of wings.
‘But I never wanted this parish or to be a blessed parson in the first place. It was dumped on me by the family. My mama wanted me to follow in her father’s footsteps to a bishop’s palace. She is so disappointed,’ came the hesitant reply.
‘Well, just stop bleating and mooching about like a lazy loon. Get off yer backside and stiffen yer sinews, stand up to the squire, resign if you must. You can start by finding out about this railway line. I hear he wants it shifting half a mile off his land so it won’t spoil his terraces and disturb his slumbers. That’ll mean trouble for Middle Butts pastures and Widow Birkett has enough on her plate at the moment. Make yerself useful for a change. For God’s sake wake up before it’s too late and this dale is ruined forever. Get cracking or you’ll wake up one morning and find yerself an old man before you catch on to what it’s all about. There, you’ve got me preaching sermons again! I’ll shut up.’
‘Be blowed if I’ll ever know what this life is all about. You have more answers than I’ve ever found in textbook or sermons,’ answered the young man with dove-grey eyes.
‘Then search for answers. You’ll never catch me across your church portals until you’ve something to say worth hearing. You may speak proper, spout poetry from yer pump, look like the Angel Gabriel in the stained-glass altar window but from where I’m standing, you should have had yer bottom leathered long ago.’
‘Oh, I did, I did and I still love a good spanking,’ quipped Ralph Hardy with a smirk.
‘Stop that smut! You shame yer calling and I’d rather manage on my own if yer going to take that tone with me. Go home, I’ll put the lambs to bed mesen.’ Beth leant on her crook and limped off ahead of him in disgust.
Ralph chased after her. ‘I’m sorry . . . please forgive me. I forget myself. Miss Wildman, you are the one person I can be honest with and I’ve gone too far again. You must see I am a hopeless cause.’ He pleaded with his grey eyes, fringed with thick black lashes, blinking nervously for her reply.
‘This is yer last chance, sonny. We all have to choose our path at the crossroads or stand there forever going nowhere. Yer time’s coming, vicar, and there’s no going backwards so think on.’
Ralph sighed with relief. He needed Bethany Wildman’s approval and her skill. She was a wizard with her fingers. She would soothe the devil himself in his torment as she stroked and massaged away his backache.
He looked back at her small hut, little more than a ling-roofed hovel to some eyes with its small window, earthen floor and simple fire hole. Inside it was plainly furnished with a boxed bed by the fireside. The iron and tin were polished into brass and silver and the plain deal table stained and deepened to an oaken hue. There was more wisdom and peace within these rough stone walls than ever he found in the empty vicarage where he rattled around on polished floors.
How did she guess he was on his last chance, sent out into the sticks to contemplate his calling, sent far away from the temptations of a busy city parish with its rounds of social visits and eager churchwardens’ daughters who mistook his interest in them as offers of marriage? At nearly thirty, he had narrowly escaped two breach of promise suits only through some fine feather-smoothing by the bishop. Now some discreet rope-pulling on the bells of St Oswy’s by Father, who had met Sir Edward Dacre by chance in the club in Leeds, petitioning him as a distant relative, had secured the position for his wayward son.
Still, he had to admit this hidden dale turned up many treasures; the beautiful landscape which he attempted to convey in his watercolour paintings, an amazing supply of trout which he could tickle out of the beck with his fingers, some decent horsemen to ride alongside at the local hunt and a bevy of beauties who gazed up at him from their boxed pews each Sunday. What more could a country parson wish for?
Everything was under threat. The peaceful idyll would be disturbed by incomers, strangers already demanding extensions to the church school to accommodate scores of navvy brats and a new schoolteacher from the Pastoral Aid’s Educational Mission to the Deserving Poor. Even now, the teacher was en route to the post, no doubt with more expectations of his vicar’s role.
No wonder the Reverend Ralph Dalesford Hardy needed to seek solace for his jangled nerves. There was no harm in Beth pleading him to take a wife to service his needs but he loved all women too much to settle with just one. How could a woman of his class, some mealy-mouthed prissy missy, satisfy his hungry appetite for comforts?
Ralph Hardy worshipped at the throne of plump pink flesh, tender as suckling pig, savouring the floury juices of sex. He found the idea of making love to an overbearing woman quite off-putting; women like Miss Bulstrode, the headmaster’s sister, terrified him into a shambling cowardly retreat. She had eyed him up briefly on his arrival, when there was still some bloom to her bony cheeks, smiled weakly in his direction and scuttled back to her brother in the schoolhouse with scarcely a backward glance.
Loud voices and earnest opinions also made him back off towards the exit door when the squire’s aged sister, Miss Augusta, tried her hand at fixing him up with some of the county ‘gels’ during their coming-out season in the shire. All in all he was a social failure and preferred to prop up his favoured bench in the Fleece Inn to sup ale, listening to village men talking sheep, shop and fodder prices.
He tried not to let religion bother him too much. He had no time for ranters and radicals, baptist dippers and evangelicals. It was enough to say the Offices dutifully each day when it was convenient, fill in the parish registry, perform whatever service was required with half an eye on the gallery clock and keep out of the vicarage as much as possible, to discourage casual callers.
As he strode behind Beth up the grey fellside, over poor tussocky grass and rocky limestone pavements which were slippery after rain, he watched the shepherd woman limp. The cobbler in Scarsbeck had done his best to rectify the shortfall in her right leg by designing a clumpen boot which seemed to drag back her stride. It must be hard to be crippled but never once had he heard her complain. Her father, Simeon Wildman, was the Hall’s shepherd, tending the estate flocks over the fells, gathering them at each point in the season for lambing, clipping the fleece, spaning the lambs from the ewes, salving and tupping. When he died, Bethany picked up his crook and carried on and no one gainsaid it. She was too valuable an asset to the village to be turned out of the cottage which stood back from the crossroads of drover’s tracks, high up overlooking the hidden dale.
If truth were told, Ralph was a little afraid of her witchy eyes: one green, flecked with amber, and the other palest icy blue and duller. He wondered if her eyesight was really as clear as she claimed. What she might lack physically was made up for by intuition, sensitivity and cunning.
Sometimes he thought she was reading his very thoughts before he did. She pierced his soul with her harsh words. Had she been young and pretty he knew he would have steered clear of her path. She was a holy woman, untouchable, and he envied her certainty, her rootedness and farsight. Beth was a weather breeder; she scanned the skies accurately and knew things others could only guess at.
The first time he had passed her cottage on horseback. She came out quietly, observing the horse and rider; standing with a lamb shoved down her sheepskin jerkin. ‘Watch his fetlock!’ she said, and pointed to the lower limb of the horse. ‘It’s weakening.’ Ralph dismounted, examined the joint and sure enough there was a swelling and heat. He thanked her and introduced himself but she knew all about him and invited him in for a brew.
It was strange-smelling herbal tea, soothing o
n his palate and oddly relaxing. He found her presence disarming, relaxing his usual prejudice towards stern wild women with windburned cheeks and map lines of broken veins, hair straggling under a man’s flat cap. She looked as old as the hills, dressed as if from a bag of rags, yet dignified and regal at the same time, utterly confusing to his senses.
When she smiled the stern mask vanished as if someone had wiped a cloth over it. He found himself confessing his sorry life story and all his woes. How unsuited he was to the life of a clergyman. How misunderstood he was. Beth sat in a ladder-backed chair rocking gently, saying nothing, hands resting on the lap as the lamb squirmed and settled down her bosom. They were strangely beautiful hands for a peasant woman: long fingers, square palms, unlined and he knew then that this was the wild one, Beth ont’ Moor, ‘Crow Woman’, spoken of warily in the village out of earshot of the apothecary who did not hold with hedgerow medicine.
Ralph laughed at such notions as gatherers of green herbs dispensing wisdom and potions from their firesides; women who could mend a sick calf, heal a wound, stop or start a baby as the need arose, forecast the weather: surely witches by another name. The Church would have him steer clear of these dubious powers but her healing was stronger than his puny sermons would ever be and she talked common sense for all her fairy ways. She commented on his stance and diagnosed his aching back, promising to relieve his pain if he would visit her again.
Soon he preferred her quiet company to anyone else’s in the dale. He responded to her teasing honesty and fiery challenges to his behaviour but conveniently forgot her warnings when his loins were stirred by his entourage of adoring housewives. He kept clear of single girls since the unfortunate misunderstandings in Leeds.
What would she ever know of the lure of a full bosom, heaving out of a lace fichu, the tantalising glimpse of a deep hollow as he leant over the third tier of the pulpit? How could he help it if the good housewife then knelt before him to receive Communion, staring boldly into his eyes, willing him to remember their naked romp over her counterpane while he stared down her dress to watch her nipples hardening in response and the skin flush with a suffusion of sunset glow. Was it any wonder it took him all his time to keep his hands from wobbling the chalice and spilling the Blood of Christ down his surplice? How could he ever think of settling down when there was such a tempting array of tender morsels, begging to be nibbled, bitten and sucked by his eager lips?
The biting wind cooled his mounting ardour and he watched Beth and her dog prepare to round up the sheep. The dog slithered and snaked over the ground, ears pricked, waiting for instructions. Beth whistled and the dog raced forward rounding on the sheep in the time-honoured fashion, nipping and rounding any stragglers. The shaggy ewes called in their lambs, which dived for cover close into the safety of the centre of the flock. Recognising the familiar smell of the shepherd, the gathering made its way down the fellside and Ralph opened up the gates and closed them again, the fresh air clearing away his fantasies, sobering him up for the coming meeting.
The squire, Sir Edward, was hoping that the visit of the railway subcontractor and his team of resident engineers would reassure the village worthies and families against needless rumourmongering in the dale. It was hoped that perhaps some villagers might offer lodgings to the more respectable operatives and trading arrangements and deliveries might sweeten the bitter pill of their invasion.
The arrival of the surveying team, back in 1869, had caused enough division, rancour and suspicion. No one wanted this hidden dale bitten through chunk by chunk. Farmer had fought farmer to keep the track off their land. Most were tenants of Scarsbeck Hall and would have little say in the route. The squire had been their ally for a while but then the lure of wayleave fees, telegraph poles and modern communications, a chance to speed up estate produce to market and the promise of a passenger halt swung the balance in favour of the Midland Railway’s plans.
By this time it was rumoured that the railway company was blowing cold on the whole ambitious scheme but groups of landowners were now screaming for action and the first sods were cut down at Settle Junction. Their coming would mean more work for everyone including himself.
He would have to bury the dead, take sides in disputes, uphold the Christian values of family life and the sacredness of wedlock, refuse to christen bastard offspring. He blushed when he remembered his own effort in the pulpit last week; his throat had been as dry as his sermon to prepare the faithful for the onslaught with platitudes and false reassurances, like a padre on a battlefield.
It was no use; Bethany Wildman was stirring his heart with her warnings. It was unnerving to know that Scarsbeck was looking to him for leadership as their spiritual shepherd but he was no lionheart, just a feeble misfit. He hoped to God it was true that the Lord tempered the wind to the shorn lamb. There was a sick fear in his stomach that this idle shepherd would abandon his flock to the mercy of wolves. Perhaps the Wesleyan minister was more up to the job. Not that they mixed much.
There had been several defections down Church Brow up to the main street, to the packed chapel and the arm-waving energetic Revivalist shindigs. It warmed bodies up on frosty Sunday mornings, no doubt, singing so lustily. He noticed the dismay of his saintly churchwarden, Ezra Bulstrode, who was his unpaid curate, choirmaster and organist, as he watched from his pipe organ loft over the dwindling congregation with theatrical anxiety. Nothing like this bit of a threat to put farmers’ bums back on their family pews, Ralph mused to himself as he returned to the cottage with Beth, cheeks aglow.
Beth grabbed a dusty overcloak from the hook on the door, threw her cap on the table and fished under the lamb basket for her battered straw bonnet; a weird concoction with black and blue feathers tucked into the hatband like a cockerel’s tail, tied under her jutting chin in a crumpled bow. This fearsome decoration was Beth’s token extra dressing-up for the gathering and gave her the nickname of ‘Crow Woman’ among the village wastrels and wags who loitered on the bench outside the ale house, clacking and gawping at all who passed by.
As they joggled down the track, Beth Wildman stared ahead grimly, chuntering softly to herself, as if preparing herself for some solemn speech. In her hands she sifted lambswool through her fingers like a rosary.
‘What’s bothering you now?’ asked the vicar.
‘I dunno . . . I got one of me feelings, summat’s got stirred up and I can’t shake it off. Trouble’s on the wind. I can smell it coming with the snow.’
Chapter Five
As daylight slid behind Whernside, as twilight shadows crept over the bony ridge of stone walls, darkening the valley, a steady trickle of bobbing carts and wagons dribbled down towards Scarsbeck. Across the fields in farmhouse kitchens there was a last-minute flurry of scrubbing off dung, flinging muddy clothing into the inner porches alongside caked boots and smelly jackets and a quick dunk in the water bowl to freshen up while the farm women, to save time, shoved sandwiches into a basket to eat on the road.
At High Butts, Blaize Lund rushed Sunter through his stew and dumplings, forced him into a clean stud collar and dragged him reluctantly to the front porch where Warwick sat on the cart impatiently, his Sunday hard hat pressing on his forehead making him want to scratch. Blaize hung back, posing in the hall mirror to titivate her own bonnet to the right angle, pulling down the net veil over her face to save what was left of her ravaged complexion.
After forty years of farm food, stout as a barrel, her figure, like her principles, was as firm as her whalebone stays, worn only on the most dignified of occasions of which this meeting was one. She jabbed a hat pin into her bonnet, buttoned up her thick jacket, for there was a bite to the wind, and out of habit tapped the weather glass noting with surprise that the mercury was rising ominously.
Sunter Lund sat stiffly beside his father, his head still aching with the screams of that silly brat cursing him. As they passed Middle Butts Farm, he looked out hopefully for signs of life; dogs shut in the byre barked a welcome and the gees
e hissed and fussed but the Birkett women had left earlier to pick up neighbours further down.
In Paradise camp, the resident engineer, Mr Henry Paisley, gathered his papers together nervously. He was not looking forward to tonight’s affray. When the poor buggers heard that the line was now altered slightly to accommodate Sir Edward’s requirements and that meant placing the viaduct right over their main street, they would be braying for his blood! The subcontractor had promised to do the explaining but he would have to show the plans and alterations and take the brunt of their ire.
What he would not be sharing with them was that it would all take much longer than expected. The ground was unreliable, tough to bore, workmen were still scarce and numbers at the camp were well under their estimation. It was just too remote a spot and Contract one would have to up the daily pay to seven shillings for skilled labourers to lure them up from Batty Green or down from Contracts two or three or even four; Appleby and the Carlisle end.
Not enough shovel and spade men meant delays and there had been too much of that already. The contractors were well over budget and Mr Hirst was sweating now in case delays cost him his profit. It was a hell of a difficult stretch to build with arches over ravines and a track to be carved around the contours of the mountainside. He did not blame navvies for preferring the bright lights of ‘Sin City’ at Ribblehead.
It was not much fun for him either, stranded in one of the smarter huts with Ben Robson, the other engineer, and his wife and baby, who squealed like a stuck pig all night long.