They were lucky that only Harry and Gareth had seen James’s kiss. Harry was momentarily horrified as he saw his friend lean down to kiss a lad on the mouth. He too had been caught up in the dance, but not quite to that extent, and he was about to pull James away when he saw Gareth lean over and whisper in the lad’s ear. As the boy stepped back, face burning, Harry realized it was Miss Richmond. Of course, he thought, she would never have been able to keep away from this. But thank God Gareth had separated them before someone else had spotted them. Although, God knew, given the warmth and openness in the pub, and the sensuality of the dance, perhaps no one would have cared.
* * *
Chapter 34
When the clock struck midnight, the focus suddenly shifted from the music inside to the outside of the Golden Lion, where a chorus of villagers had gathered.
“It is the night song,” someone shouted, and the door to the pub was flung open so the singers could be heard.
Rise up, Mr. Brown, we sing the night song in all the town.
We’ll tramp through your garden and march through your lanes
Our chorus will rattle your window panes,
the townspeople chanted, and then began the song.
“Rise up, Mrs. Johnson and gold be your ring
For summer is a comin’ today
And give to us a cup of ale and merrily we will sing
In this merry morning of May.”
After a few choruses aimed at the pubkeeper and his wife, the singers moved on.
The singing went on for hours. By the time the other Richmonds got down to the town square early the next morning, Gareth, his father, Lynette and the others had been around the town and back. Despite their lack of sleep, they were wide-awake and greeted the rest of the family with raucous good cheer, as though they were indeed townsfolk. Kate looked at her sister with amazement. She had never seen Lynette so alive. Her eyes were sparkling, and she was moving so freely in her boy’s clothes that Kate quite envied her.
Lady Elizabeth looked at James and Harry with surprise. “How did you get here, my lords?”
Harry laughed. “I expect the same way you did. It was a miserable journey in the rain, but I have decided it was well worth it.”
James felt it necessary to give a further explanation. “We were so intrigued by Mr. Richmond’s account, that we thought we should not miss this opportunity to—
“To follow my daughter.” Lady Elizabeth completed his sentence with dry humor.
“Oh, well, yes. I came to see Miss Lynette, and I found her and we had an evening…”
“Mother, it was an amazing night…”
“I can see that, Lynnie, and the ritual hasn’t even begun.”
“I don’t see how the horse can be any better,” said Gareth.
Mr. Richmond looked around and waved his arm. The sun was shining, making the drops of rain on the primroses, cowslips, and bluebells on the maypole shine like small diamonds. The flags were snapping in the breeze, and the silver gray leaves of the sycamore boughs that lined the front of the pubs gave the feeling they were in a wood. It did indeed seem like a climactic moment. But just then a great shout went up in front of the pub, like a hip, hip hooray:
Oss, oss, wee oss
Oss, oss, wee oss,
Oss, oss, wee oss.
And around the front came the first of the two horses.
Kate had never seen anything like it. She had seen maypoles and Morris dancers and Midsummer fires. But all those things were very English. But this fantastic creature looked as though it came from another place altogether. A black-tarred cloth was draped over a huge hoop on which was mounted a small mock horse’s head. And on top of the horse, from the middle of the hoop, the rider emerged, covered by a tall black mask, with features painted in red and white.
A young man dressed something like a Morris dancer and bearing what appeared to be a short-handled broom, led the horse out into the square. And then they started dancing.
Those who had been in the pub could recognize some of the movements, particularly those of the “teaser,” or young man with the club. The horse danced and the hoop swayed and the crowd sang.
Unite and unite and let us unite
for summer is a come un today
And whither we are going we all will unite
In the merry morning of May.
The drums were beating insistently, the first tattoo that Harry had ever heard that did not have to do with soldiering or killing or dying. They were beating in life, not death. As one of the drummers had explained last night, they were waking up the earth.
They sang “rise up,” to the pub owner and his wife again. They wandered slowly through the town, stopping at every window to greet an old woman or man. “Or else the old ‘uns would feel left out,” explained one of the townsmen next to Harry.
After every three or four verses, a strange thing would happen. The drums would stop, the singing became slower and more plaintive, and the horse would sink down.
The words they sang to this slower melody made absolutely no sense to Harry. But the tune…the tune struck a chord, with its sadness. It was almost sadder, in fact, because the words meant nothing.
The teaser slid his club under the ‘oss and then the club slid out. The young dancer grabbed his club and thumped the horse, and the horse jumped up, alive again after his short death. Harry felt like leaping up with the horse, too, and yet, when they sang another verse, just before the horse “died” again, he felt grief squeeze his heart for all the companions he had lost.
Oh where are the young men that now do advance
For summer is a come un today
Some they are in England and some they are in France
In the merry morning of May.
And some, he thought, as the horse sank down again, are bones bleaching in piles under the sun of Portugal and Spain. He felt tears running down his cheeks, and he could not have said if he was crying from grief or from joy, for the two feelings were so intermingled. There was such great joy in the singing and the dancing and the thought of the greenness of spring. It was most certainly a ritual of unity and coming together. There was no thought of rank or privilege, old or young, rich or poor, friend or enemy. And yet every time the chorus was sung, Harry felt that unique human grief for unity lost, for the separations that life inevitably brings.
At one point they stopped in the square again. Three young women from the village were clustered together opposite him, and he noticed that Kate Richmond was next to them, her face flushed with excitement.
“Where are the maidens that here now should sing,” sang the villagers while the three girls giggled and hid their faces in their hands.
“They’re over in the meadows, the flowers gathering…” There was a slight pause, and then the teaser grabbed the nearest girl as she shrieked with delight and thrust her under the skirt of the horse.
“Unite and unite…” sang the townspeople while the four feet under the hoop continued to dance. When the chorus was done, the girl emerged, her face covered in soot and all the people gave a great shout of satisfaction. When Harry asked an older woman next to him what it was all about, she told him that if a girl came out smudged with tar, she would be married by Christmas.
Someone, somehow, had gotten Kate’s name, for the next verse was sung directly to her.
Rise up, Miss Kate, all in your gown of silk
For summer is a come un today
And all your body yonder as white as any milk
On the merry morning of May
Kate blushed a deep red and started shaking her head as the teaser approached, but it was no use. She, too, was pushed under the horse and Harry watched her feet shuffle awkwardly until she found the pattern and rhythm of the dance.
When she emerged there was an even louder shout, for not only was her face sooty, but her arms and skirt were smudged with the sticky black tar that covered the horse’s skirt.
* * * *
; The dancing went on all day and into the evening. In the late afternoon, Aunt Kate dropped out and retired to the bench in front of the pub where she shared a pint with one of the old-age pensioners and listened to stories about the ritual. But the rest of them, tired as they were, kept going until it was all over.
There were a number of new verses added after the Miss Kate verse, but Harry couldn’t sing them. Every time he opened his mouth, all he could think of was “And all your body yonder as white as any milk.” At one point the dance brought him next to Kate, and she looked up at him and smiled unself-consciously. All he saw was she in a gown of silk and her body under it. He grew as hard as the maypole for a moment and wanted to pull her out of the crowd and into a private corner where he could love her. He was shaken by the strong surge of desire that swept through him and let the crowd sweep him away before he did something outrageous. He had no difficulty at all believing that the “Wee ‘Oss” might lead to a rash of babies exactly nine months after May Day, no matter what happened to the crops.
* * *
Chapter 35
Kate, knowing only the little that her father and Lynette had told them about the ritual, was unprepared for the power of it. It was not a power that manifested itself suddenly and strikingly, like the first sight of those great stones at Stonehenge. It was a gentler, more joyful power, but an insistent one, for all its softness. She felt the same mingling of joy and grief that Sidmouth had. The villagers of Padstow led their routine lives three hundred and sixty-four days of the year and then, on this one, because of their faithfulness to the tradition, they were able to create a space where dying and coming back to life, light and dark, the softness of flowers and the hardness of the maypole were remembered and celebrated.
She had been so caught up in the rhythm of the drums and her amusement at the young woman before her, that she had not realized she was about to be pulled under until it happened. It had been hot and dark under the horse, and being hidden gave her the permission to attempt to join the dance. The tarred skirt had moved up and down, and she could feel it sticking to her arm and leaving a residue. And when she reemerged, she felt freer than she ever had in her life: free of all practical concerns, free of all worries about accounts, and free of civilized constraints. When Harry Lifton suddenly appeared next to her later, she had smiled up at him in good fellowship. And then he looked at her in such a way that made her as hot all over as she had been under the skirt of the ‘oss. She realized anew how handsome he was, in a gypsyish way with his black hair and tanned face. He looked as relaxed and free as she felt. Had she been a village girl and he one of the fishermen of Padstow, they would probably have headed off hand in hand to some hidden place to indulge in that rite more ancient than the hobby horse. The thought of lying down with him in green grass, of feeling his lean body hard against hers, made her almost gasp for breath. As the tide of people swept her on, she tried to forget the image of her body and his body entwined together. And how could she even be thinking of such a thing when she wasn’t even sure she liked Lord Sidmouth!
* * * *
When the drums and the dancing finally stopped, it was almost ten at night. The Richmonds, who had been carried along by the energy of the villagers, were suddenly exhausted. The dowager marchioness had made her way back to Mrs. Couts hours ago, and now the rest of the family followed her. James, who had kept close to Lynette the whole day, walked up the hill with them. As they said good-bye at the door, Mr. Richmond, taking pity on James’s obvious reluctance to leave, invited him for a late breakfast the next morning. “I am sure Mrs. Couts won’t mind setting the table for one more. No, two. Do invite Sidmouth to join us also.”
James’s face lit up, and he said his good-byes quite happily.
* * * *
All slept late the next morning, and Mrs. Couts’s breakfast was served midday to a very subdued group of travelers.
The two married couples were comfortably silent, but the four younger people were ill-at-ease with one another. James’s new-found confidence with Lynette seemed to have deserted him, and he felt as awkward as he had in the beginning of their acquaintance. And Harry, who found himself seated next to Kate, was unable to summon any of his easy charm and confined himself to such brilliant utterances as “Could you pass me the cream, Miss Kate. Thank you.”
It was as if all had been lifted up into a world greater than their own yesterday, and then dropped back down again with a collective thud. There were no words to describe the experience, yet they all tried, realizing immediately how flat their comments were.
Aunt Kate was very aware of the undercurrents at the table and rather amused. Perhaps it was because she had sat out and watched and then gotten some sleep after it all and so didn’t feel as much of a letdown. Her sharp eyes had not missed James’s kiss or the fact that Harry Lifton’s attention had been fixed on Kate.
She believed that James and Lynette were well on their way to a happy ending. James was perfect for her eldest niece. Despite their shyness this morning, the dowager was sure that when James formally proposed, Lynette would accept.
The more she thought of Sidmouth and Kate together, the more she was convinced they would make a splendid couple. Not that anyone else would come to that conclusion, she thought with amusement as she observed them this morning. But Sidmouth, with his fey charm, was just what the practical Kate needed. There was something that worried her about the marquess, however. His father had also been wild, but Harry underneath his devil-may-care exterior was far more intense than his father, she was sure. There was something eating away at him, and she was afraid that having recklessly cut a swathe through the latest crop of young ladies, he might pick one out at random, marry her, and make both their lives miserable.
She had never played matchmaker in her life, but as she watched Kate and Harry, she decided it was never too late to begin. Her intuition had ensured her survival on the streets of the worst neighborhoods. She decided she would trust it now and do her best to help her niece and Sidmouth to see the possibilities of a future together.
* * *
Chapter 36
The first week they were back in London was disorienting for all of them. They had experienced something timeless and far more real than the superficialities that surrounded them in London. The contrast between artificial politeness and the openness and warmth of Padstow was so great that they almost felt they had reentered an alien world, though it was their own.
Of all of them, James was perhaps the most disoriented. He had lived his life so properly, so dutifully, that he had never questioned anything around him. Otleys were unfailingly polite, properly reserved, married according to money and position, and brought more little Otleys into the world who would continue on the same way. Had he been away like Harry, his view would have been changed. As it was, until their brush with death in Yorkshire, James had never looked at his life from a different perspective. Coming out of the freezing world of the Yorkshire storm and into the warmth of the Richmond family had begun a change in James that culminated with the trip to Padstow. He came home feeling emotionally alive, and for the first time in his life aware of how dead to the world of feeling his family was.
His mother had been increasingly worried about his attention to Miss Richmond and his obstinate refusal to woo either of the two young women the family had picked out for him. His abrupt departure to follow the eccentric Richmonds to Cornwall to view some heathen celebration had driven her to summon her brother-in-law the bishop, and on his third day back James was summoned into the library by his mother and uncle.
“James,” his mother declared, “your uncle has something he wishes to speak with you about. I will leave you alone for a few moments.”
As Lady Otley got up to leave, James motioned her to remain. “I think you should stay, Mother,” he said mildly, but with the implied expectation that she would heed him. Lady Otley sank back down on the sofa, surprised at her son and herself. It was the first time he had assumed
an air of command since his father died.
“Now, what do you have to say to me, Uncle Herbert?” James was sure he knew, but was willing to play the scene out.
“Your mother summoned me because of her grave concern regarding the health of your soul.”
“My soul?”
“She informs me that you went haring off to Cornwall to take part in some…pagan rite.”
“I suppose it might be considered that,” James admitted. “It is, after all, a celebration that predates Christianity. But what that has to do with the health of my soul, I am sure I don’t know.”
“I knew Edward Richmond at Oxford. He is, at the very least, an eccentric agnostic. I cannot think that a friendship with that family to be at all healthy for you.”
“For an Otley, you mean?”
“Yes, James. And being an Otley is nothing to sneer at,” said his mother.
“I am not sneering, Mother. But I am afraid I am a bit weary of always being an Otley first and myself afterward.”
“The Otleys have always been a God-fearing, respectable family. And great privilege carries great responsibilities, James,” the bishop intoned as though speaking from a pulpit.
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