The Forbidden Path

by Jean Chapman

‘You keep your bloody saw off me,’ Mordichi screamed. ‘If the girl says it’s got to come off, all right, but she sees it first!’

  ‘Who is this girl he’s talking about?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Her mother was part gipsy, a “wise woman” she was called,’ Joe Abbott told him. ‘These men swear by her cures.’

  ‘Ah!’ the doctor’s exclamation of impatience brought a fresh outburst from Mordichi, and the rather reluctant comment from Joe that he had seen the wise woman treat and cure some terrible cuts his saw-milling gang had suffered over the years, as well as adder bites and chest ailments. The doctor gave him a withering look. ‘Why send for me, then?’ he demanded. ‘Am I going to be allowed to treat this patient or not.’

  ‘This woman is outside, doctor,’ Ruth Abbott said and, glancing back at Mordichi, asked, ‘Would it resolve this to let her in to look?’

  The doctor threw up his hands, ‘Aye, well, something’s got to be done quickly, or no one will have a patient to treat!’ He indicated the extent of the injury, the deep lacerations, as he momentarily released the pressure of the tourniquet he had applied to the groin. The blood flowed, then spouted alarmingly, before the doctor reapplied the staunching pressure. ‘How’s a woman going to deal with that?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘It will at least pacify the patient,’ Ruth added, and when the doctor raised no further objection she nodded to Cato, who reluctantly went out, to return seconds later with the herb woman and Mordichi’s two sons.

  ‘Look at it, Meg!’ Mordichi ordered between gritted teeth in a spasm of anguish. ‘He wants to take it off.’

  Belle had half expected the woman, Meg, to back away and leave matters to the professional, but she stooped over the leg, peering, examining. She straightened. ‘You’ll probably suffer less if he takes it off,’ she told Mordichi. ‘I can mend it, but how long it’d take, or how long before you could walk, is another matter.’

  ‘Take me away, and let’s get on with it,’ Mordichi ordered.

  ‘You can’t be moved,’ the doctor said. ‘Woman, think of the agony you’ll put him through!’

  ‘I’ll splint the leg, mister. I know what I’m doing. I can make him forget the worst of his pain - while he needs to.

  ‘I’ll have you before the court for illegal practices,’ the doctor exclaimed.

  ‘Oh, no, doctor.’ The crafty wheedling tones of a gipsy overlaid Meg’s voice now. ‘I’m only giving first aid and herbs as asked for, and preferred, by the injured.’

  ‘You really prefer this woman to treat you?’

  Mordichi decisively nodded his assent,, and Dr Robson threw his surgical instruments back into his bag. ‘I wash my hands of you, then, and all I can say is that it’s a pity we don’t still have a law to burn witches. But you watch your step’ — he wagged a finger at Meg — ‘you’ve not heard the last of this — and I should like to know the cause of an injury like that. What kind of industrial machine caused it?’

  Belle held her breath, waiting for someone to volunteer the information, but it was Meg who broke the tension by fumbling inside her bodice, bringing out a small cloth bag and asking for a cup and hot water.

  The doctor made a last gesture towards the tourniquet, but before he could make further comment Meg said: ‘I’ll release it when it’s time. I’ll know by the colour of the skin.’ He gave a snort of anger and looked at Ruth, as if to make a final appeal.

  Meg pointedly added: ‘I was learning the herbs and cures before I could walk, and went on learning until my mother died.’ Curiously, it was not the doctor she looked at as this remark was made, but at Joe Abbott, who seemed to brace to receive, and return, the scrutiny without change of expression.

  The injured man gave a loud groan. ‘Let Meg Silver get on…’ he cried out,’for pity’s sake.’

  ‘When that leg goes gangrenous, take him straight to the hospital, for I’ll have no more to do with it.’ Dr Robson snapped his black bag shut and left the room. Ruth followed him. Their conversation was brief, and she was soon back in the kitchen.

  Meg had already made a paste, and then a potion of a terrible-looking dark grey powder, but Mordichi swallowed it eagerly. Moving nearer, Belle saw the fully exposed wound properly for the first time, like a great ragged bite, flesh and bone torn by the power of the metal jaws. Meg beckoned Abe and Will Evans forward; both paled as they too had full sight of the injury. Quickly the woman instructed them to hold their father by the shoulders while she applied a dressing of pounded and bruised leaves of comfrey, mixed with the smaller leaves of self-heal between a gauze made of many cobwebs. She applied a piece of waxy linen over the dressing, her fingers seeming to assess the damage to the bone as she worked.

  Mordichi moaned frequently, but the sounds took on a distant, remote quality. Belle looked at him sharply and realised the potion was taking effect. His eyes were strange, dark, dull, bruised-looking. He was obviously already under the influence of a powerful drug. She glanced at Meg Silver with new respect, then started as a hand was placed on her arm. It was Ruth Abbott drawing her away. ‘There’s nothing more you can do. I’ll drive you part of the way home, to the path anyway… .’ Belle glanced at Cato, who nodded as if to a chance acquaintance, and she turned away.

  She half expected some kind of inquisition as Cato’s mother drove, certainly there were many questions in her own mind, but Ruth was silent until she turned the trap at the spot where the hardcored track to Glebe Farm ended.

  ‘I must go back to make sure those men are lodged well enough to nurse their father properly, and have the right food,’ she said as Belle stepped down from the trap. There was frank appraisal, each for the other, as their glances met, and they both smiled briefly. Belle felt the older woman’s smile held a little sadness - perhaps even a little compassion - for someone who had to tread a road over which Ruth Abbott had already travelled.

  It was not until Belle was walking the last hundred yards through the home meadow to Hall Farm that she realised that the storm had quite passed and thin sunlight was already making the ground steam - and that she had left her clothes at Glebe Farm. She hurried forward. She would go back to bed. If the storm had delayed her mother in the village and her father on his journey from the station, she could perhaps be upstairs before anyone saw her. She could get her clothes back some other time - it would be an excuse for another visit to Glebe Farm.

  All seemed quiet in the yard but, as she approached, the dog came round the corner to meet her, yapping his greeting, standing on his back legs to smell over her strange clothes. She stopped; this meant someone was at home - someone had released the collie from his kennel. She stroked the dog, trying to silence him, then she heard a horse moving restlessly on the cobbled yard, and a man’s footsteps. She turned to run behind the side of the stables.

  ‘Who is it?’ her father called. ‘Who’s there?’

  The dog pranced around her, obviously thinking it some kind of game, and she had to stop or fall over him.

  ‘Belle?’ Her father came quickly towards her. ‘I didn’t…’

  If Sam was unprepared for Belle’s appearance in Ruth Abbott’s servant’s clothes, she was equally unprepared for his shout of anger, his tirade of questions. It took some time before either could understand what the other was trying to convey, before Belle could begin to explain. At last she had to scream against her father as he grasped only one fact, that the clothes she had on had come from Glebe Farm. ‘Mrs Abbott’s clothes!’ he shouted. ‘Abbotts!’

  He came forward with what she thought was such an air of intended violence that she shrank from him, but he did not touch her - not her flesh…. He grasped the shoulder of the blouse and held it as if it made his flesh crawl, and yet he screwed and squeezed it like something he had to crush the life out of. ‘Get these clothes off! Get inside and get them off!’

  She tried to explain, telling a broken story of Evans in the mantrap, shouting that she thought Ben Langton had set the old trap — one that had always hung in
an old loft. He seemed incapable of attending to her monologue, for the sight of her in the skirt and blouse he took to be Mrs Abbott’s.

  ‘Where are your clothes?’ he demanded.

  She told of being caught in the storm.

  ‘I left you in bed - too ill to go to Derbyshire… .’

  She was chastened by his scathing look, a look which was to make a more lasting impression than any words or any blow, for it contained rejection. She knew that no longer would he trust her word or take her part. He had made a concession and she had betrayed his magnanimity. She saw that part of the rejection was also a sadness, was his loss too. For a moment his eyes seemed to hold a look of grief.

  Belle took refuge from the tears that threatened, and defended herself with another attack on Ben. At last the words, mantrap and Ben, and her cousin’s warning that the Abbotts had better look where they were putting their feet; began to have some meaning for her father.

  Ben at least seems to know where his loyalties lie,’ he said, his voice disciplined, ironic now. ‘And if there’s been some mischief, then I would think the two of you deserve each other’s company.’

  She half gasped, half groaned, as she realised he now intended she should go to Derbyshire.

  ‘GO and take those clothes off!’ he ordered, turning away. ‘It’ll give me pleasure to go and throw them back in Mrs Abbott’s face.’

  Sam could not forgive either himself or others; it was both his strength in revenge and a barrier to his own fulfilment. He pondered whether to take stick or gun with him, and he felt a constriction of throat, a pounding of heart, as he took this new hurt to himself. First his son and now his daughter had rejected him, not understanding he gave his love in the only way he knew, in discipline and in criticism when they had fallen short of his ideals for them.

  He took up the gun, and the sack into which he had pushed the clothes Belle had thrown down the stairs. He set off, ordering the dog to stay when it attempted to follow him. He wanted no company, not even his dog.

  He had learned to endure isolation from the time he was taken to his first hiring fair at eleven years of age. With a twist of straw in his buttonhole to show his availability for farm work, his clothes on his back, a piece of bread, cheese and a bottle of water in his pockets, he had been left by a stall, like any other purchasable commodity. Orphaned since birth, he sensed the relief with which his uncle had finally considered him big enough to make his own way in the world, one burden less in a crowded house, where an extra pair of hands only meant more food for another hungry mouth. He remembered watching his uncle’s retreating back and wondering what would happen to him if no one hired him. Other boys had gradually collected, until some fifteen stood huddled close but unspeaking. Farmers came to view, with the same professional eye they applied to any other beast of burden. Sam was the fourth to be picked out; perhaps his air of stoicism attracted a man who expected a great deal of anything who worked for him.

  Under this man he had learned the hard way, as the man’s horses did, to work and never rebel. On the second year’s hiring he had learned the price of trying to run away. He was caught, fined the sum of his year’s wages and returned to work the rest of his hiring for nothing.

  He was a silent, sternly handsome young man when he was finally hired by Mabel Hall’s father and encountered a caring kindness for the first time. It bred in him a possessiveness, for he determined that here was something he must keep at any cost. When Mabel, the youngest daughter, found he could neither read nor write — a boy on a remote farm easily slipped through educational requirements - she took obvious pleasure in being his teacher, watching his rapid progress until he far outstripped her capabilities.

  It had been a matter of incredulity to Sam that she should care, and he only gradually came to see what the rest of her family already knew — that she found him attractive and, as far as she would ever be able, in her undemonstrative way loved him. His world, he felt, had been stood on its head, his luck changed. He became accepted as prospective son-in-law and was grounded in home manners and farm management accordingly.

  His observations and dreams had made him feel that marriage would be something so exciting as to extinguish any other ambition for the rest of his life. Mabel innocently contrived to make him feel he had trapped his hand in the gate of heaven. Her nightclothes were on the whole more concealing than those she wore in the daytime, and she had perfected a system of undressing with her tentlike nightgown around her neck. In love-making, the gown was raised to the bare sufficiency to make the act possible, strictly out of sight beneath the bedclothes. In the early days he thought he might awaken some desire in her and ventured a few different caresses, but Mabel obviously thought such goings-on outlandish. She was dutiful, comely enough, but sexually sterile. He did remember his mother-in-law telling her daughters that ‘if there were no bad women, there’d be no bad men’. He felt Mabel made his more erotic instincts seem earthy and unclean.

  His in-laws lived only long enough to sec their grand-daughter take her first steps, then a bitter winter took them both. Sam had mourned them as his own.

  For a long time his life after was full with the management of the land that now belonged to him and his wife jointly, and he grew as protective about the farm as he had about the kindness he had first known there. All his hopes and affections lay within its boundaries. The impenetrability of the bridle-path had been part of his security.

  As the children grew, it was Mabel who taught him another lesson - to feel guilt for taking pleasure in his growing daughter. Belle was the extrovert, and he saw in her the outward expression of all his own inhibited emotions. She joyed in contact with her father, never as a little girl greeted him without throwing herself in his arms, and each time, no matter how many repeats in a day, his heart almost burst with the happiness of her. But his wife had gradually restricted his pleasure by as many refinements as there were good intentions on the way to hell.

  He had struggled to get to know his son, but there was a wary reserve between them, as if Harry saw his father’s preference for the sister he himself adored. There was no resentment in the boy, only perhaps a caring ache for the freedom of spirit to throw himself into his father’s arms, instead of standing by, smiling, showing himself ‘the man’ under Sam’s scrutiny. Harry had gone to war, as mutely as Sam now grieved for him.

  Sam had welcomed the day his remaining child left the city school, thinking it would be a time when he could get to know the young woman who had replaced the child and become distanced from him. Now, with her deceit so blatantly proved, distance was merely the miles to Derbyshire he intended to send her.

  His anger stirred mightily again as he came to his boundary, to the path, where the haystacks spoiled by smoke and flames marked the far end of the fire-blackened trail. He walked slowly along the stricken length of hazel, blackthorn bushes and ash trees, until he came to where a side path formed the driveway to Glebe Farm, but now it was more road than path — as was the continuation of the bridle-way to the highway proper. Tons of large granite chippings had been laid and rolled solid by the Abbotts’ engines. Even the grass verges were overlaid with sharp stones, and he saw already the encroachment, the widening of a pathway that had been sufficient for centuries. It seemed to him a cavalier trespass, a creeping infringement of his world.

  He took a firmer hold of gun and sack and turned on to the driveway but, barely a few strides further, stopped in surprise. The little procession that came towards him looked like nothing so much as a funeral cortège. Two men carried what seemed to be a bier or stretcher, and a woman walked on either side.

  He shaded his eyes, for the autumn sun was already lowering, making the figures a more funereal black against the burgeoning orange. There was an almost uncanny balance in the figures, a harmony in the strange tableau: the men had the same stance and gait; the women a mutual tallness.

  He quickly recognised the men as the sons of the man on the stretcher, but the women puzzled h
im. There was a superficial similarity, a mutual tallness, and yet on closer inspection they were totally dissimilar. One had the dignity and self-assurance that a moneyed background and education gave. There was rumour of a lady doctor coming to Rodsborough, and Sam wondered if this was she. The other woman, he realised, taking stock of her black skirt and apron, her bright red crossover blouse, was little more than gipsy. She had a great mass of springing black hair and her complexion had the glowing brownness of one who lived continually in the open air. He felt all the enmity of the settled for the wanderer; everything about her suggested diddicoy, he thought, until she raised her eyes to him. They held an intelligence, dark and mocking.

  He just had time to register the thought that some stray oats had been sown there, when Mordichi raised himself up and pointed a skeletal, accusatory finger at him. ‘He’ll be the one who set that trap - or ordered it! Sam Greenaugh!’ His voice rose unnaturally high and wavered like a fervent ranter’s. His sons murmured and growled like two chained dogs, threatening revenge as soon as they were unleashed. Mordichi’s effort cost him dear, and he fell back with a great shuddering groan and lay arching his back in agony.

  The gipsy bent over him. ‘All right, mi dear, you’re all right, mi dear, your leg’s safe with me, safe in my hands, safe while these strong boys carry you home, safe with old Hepzibah’s daughter.’

  Her words had a rhythmic, hypnotic measure, and Sam stood back with a mixture of awe and detestation, but he could not help noticing that Mordichi’s gaze was on the woman’s face, complete trust in his eyes. The woman continued to talk slowly and soothingly, until her words were more like soft crooning, and she now referred to herself as ‘old Hepzibah’. The extraordinary thing was that Sam could imagine she was old, hump-backed and dressed all in black.

  He made an effort to pull himself together as he found himself thinking she was more witch than gipsy. Then, as she raised her eyes from the subdued patient to meet his gaze, there was pure sensual challenge in them that made his lips part in shock.