John Saturnall's Feast

by Lawrence Norfolk

  A boy wearing red was striding down the line. A year or two older than John with a broad flat face and thick black eyebrows that met in the middle, he looked them over disdainfully.

  ‘Dole's already handed out,’ he told them. ‘No beggars in the line.’

  ‘Beggars!’ retorted Josh. ‘We have goods for Master Scovell and papers for Sir William! And this boy is here to join the Household . . .’

  Two porters sitting on their baskets looked up at John, impressed. But the kitchen boy took in his stained shirt and breeches, his filthy coat and hair and gave a burst of incredulous laughter.

  ‘This little raghead? In the household . . . Ow!’

  A short bald man in red kitchen livery had marched up behind the boy and slapped him on the side of the head. John tried and failed to suppress a grin.

  ‘Mister Underley's already thrown you out of the jointing room, Coake! Now you're in the yard. When you're told to count heads, count heads! Understand?’

  The boy glared up resentfully then nodded and backed away. The bald man turned to Josh, a long chain of keys jangling from his belt. Josh eyed him evenly.

  ‘Good day, Master Josh.’

  ‘Good day, Master Henry.’

  ‘Good winter was it, Master Josh?’

  ‘Adequate, Master Henry.’

  Suddenly the pair laughed and embraced.

  ‘This is Henry,’ Josh announced. Ben and John looked in bafflement from the tall grey man to the short bald one. ‘Henry Palewick. My brother. Henry's the cellarer here at Buckland Manor.’

  Henry Palewick glanced around at the jostling horses, carts and pack-men. ‘World and his wife pitched up for the dole this morning, Josh. Had to knock a few heads when we gave it out.’ He sucked air through his teeth. ‘Not sure I can push you up the line today.’

  ‘Waiting's no problem,’ Josh said airily.

  ‘I'll have to choose the moment, see?’

  ‘Don't want to cause no vexation, Hal.’

  ‘Didn't say it'd be a vexation, did I now?’

  ‘We'll wait, Hal,’ Josh said firmly. ‘Don't vex me none at all.’

  ‘Did I utter any such word as vex?’ Henry sounded irritated now.

  ‘The only vexation here comes from your assuming. You follow me right now.’

  With that, Henry Palewick took the bridle of the piebald and led the horses forward. Men and animals shifted aside in deference to the liveried man.

  ‘This is more like it,’ whispered Ben to John.

  At the front, a man in the green of the Household scribbled in a large black ledger on a trestle table and barked answers to his clerks, who addressed him as Mister Fanshawe. He nodded to Henry Palewick.

  ‘Now who's for what and what's for who?’ Henry asked Josh.

  ‘My lot's for Master Scovell,’ replied Josh. ‘Ben here's got a package too . . .’

  ‘From a fellow in Soughton,’ Ben interrupted. ‘Master Scovell's been waiting for it since ages. So this fellow said.’

  ‘Did he indeed?’ Henry eyed Ben sternly.

  The actual words spoken by the dark-faced man had been rather different, and delivered with a low chuckle. He's been waiting/or this since Eden . . .But Ben thought it prudent merely to nod.

  ‘Well, we can't have Master Scovell waiting,’ Henry continued testily.

  Mister Fanshawe shuffled papers and directed his scurrying clerks. Beside him, Mister Wichett in red did the same. Neither acknowledged the presence of the other. A team of clerks was moving up and down Josh's horses, opening panniers and chests. As Ben Martin's oilcloth package was pulled out and passed up, John was shoved from behind.

  ‘Watch your step, Raghead,’ hissed a voice. John turned in time to see the black-haired kitchen boy glide away. Then Josh took out the letter.

  ‘Got a message,’ the driver declared. ‘It's for Sir William.’

  At the words ‘Sir William’ a lull seemed to fall on the clerks. No one jumped or exclaimed. No one gasped. But the name seemed to thrum in the air. Mister Wichett looked up, as if evaluating the sunshine overhead. Mister Fanshawe rubbed the bridge of his nose. On ceasing these manoeuvres they exchanged the briefest of glances. The hint of a shrug from Mister Wichett was Mister Fanshawe's prompt.

  ‘Anything for Sir William is Household business,’ declared the Clerk of the Household. ‘He'll have to see Mister Pouncey.’

  ‘That's your friend, ain't it, Josh?’ Ben piped up. Josh coughed and looked away. Mister Fanshawe cast an eye over his scurrying clerks, searching for one unoccupied. But all now were busy among the waiting porters and carters.

  ‘Can I help, Master Fanshawe, sir?’

  Coake stood eagerly at attention before the Clerk of the Household. A faint nod from Mister Wichett and a shrug from Henry Palewick served as consent to the kitchen boy's secondment. Josh handed over the papers, which were glanced at by Fanshawe then given to Coake. John watched the boy hurry off through the gate.

  ‘Your horses will be groomed and watered,’ Mister Wichett told Josh. ‘Clerk of the Yard'll settle your accounts. Move on through . . .’

  Bright sunlight shone through the mullioned windows. A lattice of shadows slanted over the floor. Rocking his heels on the boards, a sparsely haired man tapped a bony white digit against the papers in his hand. Mister Nathaniel Pouncey, Steward of the Manor of the Vale of Buckland, stood before a walnut table piled high with sheaves of papers, the topmost bound with white cloth tape. Everything was ready, Mister Pouncey noted with quiet satisfaction. Everything was in its place.

  The steward wore a dark green tunic with a wide white collar around which hung the chain of his office. Seated behind the sheaves, dressed as always in black, Sir William Fremantle regarded his most senior servant. Only the slow tap of his thumb on the arm of the chair signalled his impatience. Mister Pouncey eyed the thumb, then the papers tied with tape, then his order of business, then Sir William himself. His lordship's most senior servant was no longer required to avert his gaze but he still stood in the Lord of Buckland's presence.

  ‘The curacy of Middle Ock, my lord,’ he announced.

  The vacancy was the first item in their weekly meeting, the thirteenth meeting of the year, the fourteenth year of such meetings.

  The curacy lay in the gift of the Vicar of Callock Marwood, the steward explained, that benefice being an advowson from the Manor of Old Toue. Old Toue itself was, of course, no more than three ruined sheds in a field but the old demesne took in the village of Sarwick whose copy-rents were collected through ancient custom by a family [the Bells of Lower Chalming, as Mister Pouncey recalled] who were liable in part for the upkeep of the Poorhouse at Carrboro and who collected tallage in return from the village of Wickenden and also the corpse-tolls levied in the parish of Saint Brice's in Masholt. Unfortunately, few corpses passed through Masholt these days, Mister Pouncey reported, and the Wickenden tallage had never amounted to a large sum . . .

  He saw Sir William's attention drift. He had been steward since before her ladyship's death. A clerk before that. He had counted carp ponds in Copham and granted grazing rights in Grayschott. He had ranged through every hamlet, farm and manse of the Fremantle Estate, north as far as Soughton, south to Stollport, east as far as the plain of distant Elminster and west to the edge of the Levels.At the centre stood the Manor where gardeners tended beds that no gentleman saw and ostlers awaited the horses of visitors who never came, where three times daily the great horde of maids, coopers, blacksmiths, clerks and serving men and every other man, woman and child who wore Sir William's livery would cluster around the boards that filled the Great Hall and cram their mouths at his lordship's table. For the world of the Manor must continue unchanged, Sir William decreed.

  Yet beyond the closed gates a thousand quarrels flourished, Mister Pouncey knew. In the Vale of Buckland every yard of crumbling wall was someone's to build, another's to repair and another's again to dispute until the stones tumbled like the ancient halls of Old Toue. Ever since the firs
t of the Fremantle line had hacked his way through the wildwood and founded the Manor, Buckland's troubles had been making their way to his lordship's door. Once again, Mister Pouncey eyed the bundle in its white tape.

  The Bishop's Court could settle the curacy of Middle Ock, Mister Pouncey suggested. Sir William nodded. Repairs to the stables came next then a dismissal among the clerks. A new tally man would have to be taken on in the counting house next door, if his lordship would permit it. Next, Mister Pouncey moved to the perennial matter of the Forham rents.

  ‘Late again?’ queried Sir William. ‘Why this time?’

  ‘Sir Hector's claim to the Lordship of Boughton was revoked at the last Visitation,’ murmured Mister Pouncey. ‘An expensive mistake. And the Countess is not received at Court. Another indiscretion, I hear.’

  The Callocks were distant and troublesome kinsmen. Their quarrels and claims against the Fremantles littered the Manor records. Did the flicker of a smile pass across Sir William's hawkish face? There was a time he and Sir William had conversed at their ease. They had even played chequers to pass the hours during Lady Anne's confinements. Now the chequerboard lay in a drawer in the side-table, the pieces arrayed just as they had been when Mrs Gardiner's anxious face had appeared around the door. Lady Anne had requested his presence. She was bleeding . . .

  The steward moved on. The pigs of Wittering had rooted up hurdle-fences belonging to the villagers of Selle and no one could agree on the fine. One of the Manor plough-horses was fit only for pasture and the next horse fair at Carrboro was three weeks off. And the one-horse trap, the steward mentioned casually, required repairs. At that, Sir William's expression darkened.

  The vehicle had been a rare frivolity on her ladyship's part. Quite impractical on Buckland's muddy tracks, Mister Pouncey had argued at the time. But no expense had been spared when it came to Lady Anne: the new plantings, the East Garden glass-house, the windows in the chapel . . . Sir William had even refurbished the tower, repainting the brickwork and plastering over its ancient mosaics. Heathen views of the Vale, according to the foreman. Now the trap sat in the coach house behind the stables, no more likely to move from its station than the chequerboard from its drawer or the weeds from the East Garden. The glass-house would continue its slow collapse and the chapel tower would stand empty. The Solar Gallery would remain locked and the chamber at the end would keep its perpetual darkness. Perpetual, the steward reflected, but for Miss Lucretia's incursion last summer.

  ‘Have it made good,’ Sir William muttered.

  Mister Pouncey nodded. Now only the sheaf tied with white tape remained. Mister Pouncey took a deep breath. Sir William observed impassively as the steward undid the papers and broke the wax.

  ‘The Fremantle succession,’ Mister Pouncey announced. ‘As you know, my lord, I have pursued the task with which you charged me to the utmost of my diligence and abilities . . .’

  He had pursued indeed. The evidence of Mister Pouncey's pursuit lay spread over the long table in his chambers: the rolls and folios of brittle vellum and parchment. In the drawers beneath rested sheaves of letters in Mister Pouncey's neat hand, the copies filed in order up to the letters from the Garter King of Arms himself who, as their correspondence multiplied, at last signed himself with weary familiarity, ‘Segar’.

  But none of Mister Pouncey's correspondents had furnished a solution. His own researches had taken him into the depths of the Manor Rolls where his eyes had strained to decipher the hands of his predecessors as they listed the possessions and privileges, ancient rights and obligations of the Lords of Buckland. They had held Buckland since Caesar's time, so the family story ran. From Sir William himself a line of ancestors marched back through the centuries, the figures growing ever more shadowy, back to that first Fremantle thane who had sworn an oath to God then hacked his way down the Vale to light his torch in a miraculous fire. There he had raised the tower where he would be entombed. Now his effigy kept watch from Buckland's ancient chapel and that miraculous fire still blazed in the torch of the Fremantle arms.

  But that tale contained too the seeds of Mister Pouncey's present woes. For the oath sworn by that thane had been carved before his tomb as a Covenant to bind all future generations.

  As God's Ministers directed me, and .for the sake of his Son Jesus Christ, so I swear: that we and all our Descendants do keep these Lands and Hearths and hold them for our Sovereign King. Let no Woman take Fire to the Hearth, nor tend the Vale's Fires, nor give Nourishment save she be bid, nor rule in the Vale, nor hold Rights to a Virgate of Land, nor keep Retainers or Servants lest these Lands be surrendered again to the Enemies of Our Lord . . .

  If Mister Pouncey closed his eyes he could see the ancient copy that rested among the Manor's records, every stain and mark on the vellum. Every faded letter.

  Let no Woman . . . rule . . .

  There was the nub. In the rite of the Fremantle succession, Lady Lucretia ranked no higher or lower than the daughter of a Wittering pig farmer.

  ‘If it pleased God to take your lordship to his bosom today,’ Mister Pouncey began carefully, ‘I need hardly remind your lordship of the consequence. Lady Lucretia would be made a ward of court. That court's commissioners would hold the Estate, against whose chattels they might secure their debts as they did on the estate of the nephew of the Marchioness of Charnley. Or they might assign its rents to themselves as they did in the parish of Mere. Or they might seize it entire as they did at Old Toue . . .’

  ‘I know the kind of men who populate the Commission of Wards,’ Sir William retorted.

  ‘Even if Lady Lucretia were to attain her majority,’ Mister Pouncey continued implacably, ‘without a male heir, Buckland would escheat. It would revert to the Crown, which is to say the King's creditors . . .’

  On he went. Sir William shifted in his seat. But Mister Pouncey had spent many long hours poring over papers at his master's behest. Now his lordship could listen to his conclusions. Only when the black-clad man began to grimace did the steward fall silent. The shouts from the yard sounded faintly in the room.

  ‘There must be another way,’ Sir William said heavily.

  Of course there was, Mister Pouncey thought. Ever since the death of Lady Anne there had been a simple solution. The words danced on the tip of his tongue. Now, he urged himself, and heard his own voice speak.

  ‘My lord, there is a course of action.’

  Sir William looked up.

  ‘If your lordship were to marry again. If a son . . .’

  ‘No!’

  Sir William's voice boomed in the wood-panelled room. He glared at his steward. ‘I will not take another. Not for the Vale. Not for all England.’

  Mister Pouncey studied the floorboards. Sir William pushed back the heavy chair and stamped to the window. Mister Pouncey saw the broad shoulders slump within the heavy black coat. He would be toying with the heavy gold ring on his finger, the steward knew. Working it around and around.

  ‘Find another way, Nathaniel,’ Sir William said more quietly.

  The steward nodded, shuffling sheaves, ordering them for their filing among the Manor Records. Perhaps when his own bones were dust, Mister Pouncey wondered, some later steward would peer at the neatly filed papers from this day: the costings for the stable roof, the horse and the carriage. He would find everything in its place, the steward thought with satisfaction . . . Then he noticed the three creased pages which lay on the table. A panting kitchen boy had handed them to his clerk moments before his lordship had arrived. Mister Pouncey cleared his throat.

  ‘Forgive me, my lord. There is one other matter. A petition. It arrived at the gate this morning, my lord. From the parish of Buckland.’

  The broad-shouldered man turned from the window. ‘Buckland?’

  ‘It lies at the head of the Vale. Above Flitwick.’

  Sir William nodded, a curious look on his face. ‘I know of Buckland.’

  Mister Pouncey pursed his lips. He knew no more of the place tha
n its location, and the contents of the pages before him. Odd that the whole Vale could be named for somewhere so obscure. ‘The priest there styles himself the Reverend Christopher Hole. He asks your lordship a boon.’

  ‘What boon?’

  ‘A place, my lord. For a boy.’

  Not for the first time, the steward shook his head at the fantastical ways of Sir William's petitioners. Since the closing of the Manor, the Household had little use for boys and Scovell in the kitchens made his own rrangements. He was about to drop the papers back on the pile when Sir William spoke.

  ‘Read it, Nathaniel.’

  ‘ . . . therefore I beg this Boon of your lordship. This Boy goes by the Name of John Sandall. He was born of a Family long of this ‘Parish whose Mother made ‘Potions against those ‘Pangs which are the Legacy of Eve's ancient Foolishness. But this Summer we in the Village of Buckland .fell Victim to a more grievous Affliction than Birth-pangs or the monthly Gripings of Women. A new-fashioned Viper crawled into our Garden to set the foolish Souls of this ‘Parish against one another and against their ‘Priest. ‘Promising the Cures of our Children, this ‘Pretender led the biddable Souls of the ‘Parish against this Boy's Mother, condemning her as a Witch and driving her out to perish of the Cold.

  ‘But no Cure did this Hedge-priest effect. Instead, from Holy Rood Day till after ‘Plough Monday, we were subject to the Rule of a ‘Pharaoh. He calls himself Timothy Marpot and harks after that Zealot named Zoilus who long ago broke the Windows of our Church and the Nose if the Bishop alike. But when this Marpot burned the ‘Pulpit in our Church, the ‘People q{Buckland rose against him at last and that ‘Pharaoh turned a false Moses, .fleeing with his Followers from our Anger . . .

  Mister Pouncey saw curiosity cloud his master's features. An uncharacteristic expression.

  ‘A witch at Buckland?’ Sir William asked.