Fair Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Day after day they went off together and came back with hare, little red squirrels, quails and a pheasant. I sat beside him one day and plucked the pheasant. Its tail feathers were vivid and glossy in the pale sunshine. Molly would have been clumsy and squeamish but Tilda knew exactly what to do. I watched my tough sun-browned fingers dance like little needles across the bird’s scaly back and the pile of coloured fluff rose in the breeze. I felt Vespasian’ eyes on me but I was too nervous to meet his gaze.

  Then the weather closed in and it rained for a week. We had begun repairs on the house, working hard each day until sundown. There were solid doors we rehung that now we could shut. We wedged them to keep out foxes. Now beside the broken walls there were spindly twig fences, tall enough for safety if not for warmth. We continued to live close together in the kitchen but it was a wide room and clean now, a warm hearth with a big fire and pots hanging over the flames all bubbling with wonderful smells.

  We met no one else under the greenwood. Whatever exiles wandered these great forests, we saw none of them. If they saw us, they kept away. We were too far into the depths for farmers grazing their animals or coming in to collect kindling or chop wood. The king never came to hunt here for it was too near the city to which he had licensed partial self rule under law. He preferred the north. We were left alone. Gradually, stick by stick like the walls, we built our lives. We piled stone, packed with mud and wood, and so stretched our living into other rooms. Now we had a new shared bedchamber, the boys two to a bed and a straw pallet for me to cuddle into on my own. We still ate in the kitchen but used the great draughty hall for hanging meat, storing food and stacking wood to dry. The hens stayed with us in the kitchen but now we let them wander free outside during daylight. We had no cockerel so no chickens were hatched but our hens were young and fat and in a week, gave us enough eggs to scramble.

  Vespasian slept apart. He took a small space which had once been little more than a cupboard or pantry, but now he made it his bed. It was a mattress found already in the house and Gerald helped him pull it into the place of his choice. On a knotted rope slung between heavy wooden sides, it was stuffed with goose feathers, which Richard helped me shake once a week. Once well filled, the feathers had become damp over the years and now collected into lumps which could not have been much more comfortable than my straw and leaves. On fine days, I dragged it outside to air in the sunshine. Tilda seemed determined that Vespasian would sleep well, even if it was alone. Indeed, the bed seemed big enough for four.

  She had hoped, though undoubtedly timid and a little scared, that he might take her into his bed since Isabel could no longer share his nights. Tilda retained a surprising ignorance which I found endearing. Though a country child and surely experienced in the mating of animals, there were nervously ashamed confusions within her timorous imagination. With the medieval lack of privacy which so troubled me, Tilda had watched Vespasian take Isabel to bed. She had watched surreptitiously as he had slipped his hands under Isabel’s camise, long fingers lifting the skirts, his eyes focused unblinking on her body. Tilda had gazed across the deep gloom at the contrast between his sun darkened hands, the sudden flash of the gold and ruby ring, and the startling white of Isabel’s breasts, slim back and buttocks. Even when drunk, Vespasian had always remained fully clothed and utterly silent. Isabel, soon undressed, had sighed and moaned a little into his shoulder. Tilda had sighed too while curling deep into her straw pallet. But Vespasian clearly did not intend Tilda to take Isabel’s place and he made no move towards her. Tilda was sorry but I was not. I doubt I could have coped but I admit I was surprised at his reticence. I supposed his easy coupling with Isabel was bred from a different past and perhaps he rescued her from a life of child whoring, just as he had rescued us all from the risks of homelessness. He had certainly made careless use of Isabel, yet intended no such repetition with Tilda. I wondered, momentarily uncomfortable, if he found us unattractive. I wasn’t sure if this man was capable of respecting Tilda’s innocence, but when she blushed and reached out, shyly touching his hand or brushing carefully against him, he smiled and moved silently aside. Tilda wore dull faded lavender and the round neckline was high and modest. There were no laces to leave loose or belt to tighten. When she tugged the neck a little lower and tried to push out her breasts, fluttered her eyelashes or wiggled her hips, Vespasian looked away, the dimples twitching at the corners of his mouth. Whatever the reason, he now slept alone.

  Then, when the weather cleared again and the sun came out and sparkled diamond glitter all around us, Vespasian told us he was going away for a few days. Because of the times we lived in and the way he had trained us, we were an independent band and not one of us complained. Stephen said he hoped wolves would come so that he could prove his own courage in Vespasian’s absence but Tilda secretly knew she would sleep badly until he returned. I was roused to curiosity. Tilda would not allow me to ask him where he was going but I managed to say, “Will you discover whether they’re searching for us, while you’re gone?”

  He looked at me strangely, as he often did these days. His fine black hose were threadbare and dust streaked and his glossy black hair was growing wild and long but the pride and arrogant confidence had not changed one jot. I thought he’d ignore my question, but he said, “That is precisely what I want to discover, amongst other things.” Then he frowned, which made him look dark and angry but his next words were mild and unexpected. “Do you have nightmares about finding her?” he asked abruptly.

  He often surprised me as much as I now seemed to surprise him. “Yes,” I said. “I do. About finding her and how she was and what she must have felt before she died.”

  Always within the recurring nightmare was Vespasian’s appearance at that same terrible minute, but I couldn’t tell him that. Instead, he told me. “And you’re troubled, because I was there at just that instant. A strange coincidence perhaps, to catch you as you fell? But clearly not soon enough to save Isabel.” I was absurdly nervous. Tilda nodded and looked down without the courage to speak. “Do not quake before me,” ordered Vespasian. “I have never beaten you, and it’s highly unlikely that I ever shall, in spite of frequent temptation. Stand straight, face me and I shall answer the questions you haven’t the courage to ask. This time I choose to explain something to you. There’s no reason for you to have more black dreams because of me.” Then he surprised me even more. “You see, I believe I know who killed her. These are people I had dealings with long ago. I was aware that Isabel had been manipulated into a particular – call it circumstance. I was following her to find those who were using her. But since I had chosen to follow in the shadows and remain surreptitious, I was far too slow and far too late. This was my fault. But I did not expect what I found.”

  I gulped. “Shouldn’t you tell the sheriff.”

  “That’s neither the way of life nor of the law,” said Vespasian with a faint smile. “You are irrepressibly naive. But I intend doing something else considerably more interesting.”

  I looked straight at him, summoning courage. “I could help,” I said.

  He stood up at once. His frown deepened into quick irritation. “Under no circumstances. And don’t consider meddling. It would be exceptionally dangerous for all of us. I have waited until you are all settled. You will therefore stay here and wait for me.” He walked away abruptly, and I felt foolish and rejected; a seventeen year old with the thoughts of a child, who imagined herself thirty one and wise.

  Chapter Eleven

  There was a hedgehog in the bottom of my bed and he snuffled from his winter hibernation as I awoke to rain leaking through the thatch onto my nose.

  Gerald was rummaging above my head. “It’s been dripping all night. How do you sleep through thunder and gales and rain streaming through the roof?” He peered down at me from the rafters where he hung upside down like a tousled marmoset. He was retying the thatch from inside. A hand came through. It was wide, short fingered, extremely grubby, and I recognised it as Wa
lter’s. He was presumably on top of the roof.

  “I never heard a thing,” I said. I’d slept sound and deep, and back in the twenty-first century.

  “You’d be no good if wolves broke in. You’d be eaten before you could squeak.”

  “Winter’s gone. We won’t get wolves now. If there are any at all, they’ll be after the spring lambs and the baby deer.”

  “Just as well for you.”

  “Leave her alone,” my champion, Richard, bouncing in from outside. He always stuck up for me. “She’s as brave as you. Maybe more.”

  “I wasn’t questioning her courage,” said Gerald, looking haughty. “Only her ears. When she’s asleep, she’s as deaf as the blacksmith’s wife.”

  I had dreamed of Molly again. She was struggling with dreams of me, as I was with dreams of her. Our identities were now so tangled, I had forgotten which life had more grip on my belief in myself.

  The hedgehog was no comfortable sleeping partner and probably flea ridden. I had fleas myself. The forest hosted a brilliance of insect life, parasites and crawling things. Molly would have been disgusted. Tilda cared very little. There were no rats and the mice were tiny, pink eyed and pretty. Birds still nested in the ragtaggle thatch and a large owl was protecting her egg in a big hole in the oak tree which shaded the kitchen window.

  Richard was trying to shave, using the propped surface of an axe as his mirror, his own small penknife as blade. There was not much soap and it was a little slimy. The knife needed sharpening. He only had one shirt and it was now so blotched, it looked as though it had been embroidered.

  “You should get Vespasian to teach you first,” muttered Gerald, uncomfortably eyeing the third graze seep blood down Richard’s stubby chin.

  “I did,” admitted Richard. “He said I was too young and he wouldn’t waste soap.”

  “Then at least hone your knife,” scowled Gerald. “And then I’ll show you myself.”

  “But you always cut yourself too,” Richard pointed out.

  “Then ask Hugh,” said Gerald. “He loves showing how to do things, and anyway, he’s the only one with a steady hand.”

  “Oh, Hugh,” Richard, dabbing at the fourth cut, callously dismissed our solid eldest. “It’s just that he’s too stubborn to admit it hurts him as much as anyone else. But he did mutter about growing a beard the other day.”

  There was no vellum left in any of the windows and we were back to shuttered draughts as we had been in London, but Tilda loved to sit and look out at the forest and its green shadowed tangle. For hours she sat alone by the kitchen window and waited for Vespasian to return. She wanted him back so desperately, and I tried to comfort her. Life was far more peaceful without him, yet, somehow, there was a dullness, as if everything was a little blurred and muddied. Nothing glowed with the same vibrancy, nothing dazzled. The sun had lost its balm. The routine slunk heavy and there were no moments of sudden delight.

  The weather did not improve. There were sunny moments but heavy rains and wind continued and Vespasian did not come back. We kept up the fires, since collecting fallen wood was easy now, but since it was mostly wet, the fires smoked and the house started to stink of it. Gerald and Walter fixed the thatches and I put another family of hedgehogs out into the wet forest patter where they rolled into scruffy balls of timid belligerence. Hugh caught a heron with Richard’s sling and we had stew for three days, mixed with wild roots, herbs and weeds. The next day was little more than broth but it was hot and perfumed and we drank it all the same. Without Vespasian’s expertise with bow and arrows, food was still scarce but Tilda was accustomed to the nudge of hunger, and now I was too. She pushed up her sleeves, country style, and the skin of her arms was golden tanned and most unfashionable. The chickens now laid every day and we had an egg apiece on every second, counting out our share but keeping some in the pantry in hope of Vespasian’s return.

  The well overflowed. Its blackened reek was clogged with the rubble of its broken stone rim, the rotten boards of its pail which had long since fallen in, and clambering weed and bracken. No one drank the water from the well. London’s water was never entirely safe to drink, the cause of biliousness, rashes and diarrhoea rather than quenching thirst. Ale was preferable. Even sweet mead or light wine was healthier. But this water was truly rank and putrid and no one even tried to lift it. Nearby was a forest stream that silvered over shale and darting minnows. It was the best water we had ever tasted. We collected it in two buckets a day and no one got sick. We took turns, since the buckets were heavy, but Richard always took my turn and I let him, or he would have been cross. He was awfully ashamed of his red hair, but he was proud of his courage, and he copied the chivalry Vespasian had told us about.

  I washed, sometimes, in that stream. It was cold with a shock of ice so bitter that it burned but I adored it. There was a pool where the water lay deeper and swirled into little green currents before drifting back into a shallow pebbled meander. Here I stripped under the sun’s warmth, the only time I dared be naked, held my breath as a man drowning, and plunged. The water reached my breast and as my lungs shrank, adjusted, and expanded, I sank to my knees and let the water rinse though my hair. We could not afford the hard Spanish soap that once we had stolen from the market but we used a soft soap of tallow grease, potash and soda. I mixed wild mint with mine and scrubbed the grime and wood smoke from my body.

  Tilda missed stealing. It had been her daily work and she had been good at it. She felt she had been made redundant. She was not as good at housework as she had been at petty pilfering. I slipped into her memories. As a child she had been taught to sew and to embroider. She could grow rhubarb and make a pink marbled suet pudding that could feed a whole family for three days. Anyone could sweep a floor and truss a bed, but they each kicked their own pallets into shape and helped with the cooking. Tilda did not want to do housework and nobody told her to, though Hugh sniffed sometimes and considered giving orders. But he knew she would argue or ignore him, so he said nothing after all. The other children, except in Richard’s secret fantasies, accepted her as just another boy. But Tilda thought of herself as a woman, and in love with Vespasian. I believed him capable of cruelty but her thrill in him influenced me and troubled my nights. Just what Vespasian thought of Tilda, I was no longer sure.

  Gerald was practising with the smaller bow Vespasian had made him. The arrows could kill at a greater distance than the pebbles from his sling and he brought down a young male roe deer still in velvet. Tilda wouldn’t let me feel sentimental for the big brown eyes and soft wide muzzle. We roasted the carcass on the spit over the kitchen fire, taking turns to slow turn for this meat was too precious to boil. Tilda wished Vespasian was there to share it. Probably, so did Gerald. He would have liked the praise and the glory. If he’d been son to aristocracy or the gentry, he would have been taught archery among many other skills long before now, but as a slum brat and one of a pack of thieves, he had learned only how to steal. The little stag was delicious and his flesh kept us well fed for many, many days. Still Vespasian did not return.

  The boys had energy to spare, even Hugh who liked to play leader and was organising further repairs to the back walls. Osbert displayed some expertise with the mud plaster, but it rained too much and there was little time between storms for it to harden. Stephen had whittled himself a wooden handle which he attached to an old nail, making a good dagger and longer than his penknife. It was for skinning the wolves, he said, when he found some to kill. He planned a wolf pelt bedcover before next winter set in.

  Osbert, Gerald and Stephen went out looking once. Being vermin, wolf carcasses could bring a payment of up to five shillings. A fortune. But we were exiles, I reminded Gerald. “Don’t be a fool. Even if there are any wolves left, you couldn’t ask the sheriff for a bounty. They’d put you in gaol instead.”

  “I’m not officially an exile.” He pouted. “There’s no warrant. I’ve never been to court. I’m not guilty of anything. Besides, it doesn’t matter. I
just want to see the wolves. I want to shoot one.” But we didn’t see either wolves or boars, nor even foxes. We saw none of the lepers that made their isolated villages in the woods, nor other outlaws, wild men, hunting nobility, or indeed anyone at all.

  Tilda and I began to worry about Vespasian. The others thought he was invincible but it had been a very long time since he left us and I began to think he had been killed or taken by the law. One night I imagined him with his long, thin fingers flayed as Isabel’s had been. I saw the sun bronzed skin peeled back, the hardened calluses of his palm all removed, the sinews and muscle uncovered before whitened bone protruded. I had seen one of Isabel’s hands tortured and now I saw Vespasian’s. I heard him scream, long and guttural, and it was the echo of the scream Molly had once heard as she wakened in her own bed.

  I was not asleep and I sat up, horrified and doubled over with bilious cramps. Around me the shadows slunk low from the moonlight leaking through the slats of the shutters. I was partially dressed, still in my chemise, as I always slept. The boys were grunting in their shared pallets. The oldest slept in their braies but neither Richard nor Stephen had underpants and they slept naked. Stephen was quite unashamed as he jumped under his coverlet, all grubby knees and grimy feet but Richard was careful to climb into bed unseen by me. His adoration made him shy.

  No one woke. I watched them turn, grasping at each other’s arms as they moved and twisted, each pulling at the woollen blankets to snuggle more warmth than the other. I got up. I could hear a little eared owl calling shrill; witch’s warning. Peering through the shutters, I could see only the flutter of dark leaf. The creaking of the big door as I opened it did not wake anyone and I tiptoed barefoot from the house, closing the door behind me. I stood on the doorstep, stone polished smooth over the years, high enough to keep out mud and sudden flooding, and perhaps discourage insects. Before me the forest swept in endless marching black, flecked in moon gilded silver. Nothing moved, not even myself.