Honour's Redemption

by Joan Vincent

  “Thank you for trying to help him. My father is very tired from our journey and he–he sometimes gets confused when exhausted.”

  When the woman’s compassion faded into grimness Ruth added, “If there is damage we shall see to it. I am Ruth Clayton. This is my father, Sampson Clayton.

  “You said ‘vicar’ to get his attention,” Peace said coldly.

  “Yes, my father is the new pastor of St. Cedds.” Sensing a menacing presence Ruth looked over her shoulder and met the chilling gaze of the gentleman who had quieted the near riot.

  “Thank you, sir,” she managed despite an unreasonable tremor of fear.

  “You are newly arrived Miss Clayton?” he asked carelessly.

  The chill that had fallen across the pub struck a note of panic in Ruth. For a moment it gnawed at her composure. She looked from one stony face to the next. Why was everyone so alarmed that a vicar had come to St. Cedds? Had he truly frightened them?

  Then Ruth saw Jemmy take her father’s hand. Watched Sampson look down at the begrimed lad and smile. “Please go with Jemmy, Father. I shall come in a moment.” Ruth watched them walk away and when certain her father would not bolt, turned back to the woman.

  “I am sorry, Miss–” She waited even though the silence dragged on uncomfortably.

  “Mrs. Jenkinson, Peace Jenkinson,” the woman finally said. “There is no need to be concerned about the damage. It was not of your father’s making.”

  While the woman spoke Ruth took a hasty look around the room. There was no sign of Lucian. If I ask about him it may only worsen the speculation Father has invited.

  “Is something wrong Miss Clayton?” asked the gentleman.

  Stifling the urge to step back from the man, Ruth gave a nervous laugh. “I just realized that I do not know the direction of St. Cedds.”

  “Yer not wanted here,” growled one of the rough clad men watching the scene.

  Peace quieted him with a glare. “Truly Miss Clayton, do you know the state of the vicarage? No one has lived in it these past five years.”

  “’Tis haunted,” someone muttered loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.

  The hostility in the pub was palpable. Ruth refused to be cowed by it. “Can any of you give me directions?”

  “I am barely two months come,” the man in the blue frock coat told her.

  Ruth saw his gaze flick across those in the pub and somehow knew he warned them to keep silent. She looked at the woman. “Please,” then very softly, “we have nowhere else to go.”

  Ruth didn’t object when Peace took her arm and pulled her toward the door. She prayed she just wasn’t being removed when they reached the street.

  Her prayer was answered when Peace spoke. “St. Cedds is about three miles from the edge of Whitby. You’ll see a signpost for Abbots Road. The coach passed it on the way. The vicarage and the church are in a large copse off the main road. Continue on Abbots Road until you see a large white stone block with a cross carved in it. Turn to the right and you’ll come to St. Cedds.”

  “I do not know how to thank you.”

  “Do it by leaving Whitby as soon as can,” Peace said coldly. She turned on her heel and hurried back into the Wise Owl to continue her interrupted conversation with the old woman, Sairy Jane. To Peace’s surprise she was nowhere to be seen.

  * * *

  Abbots Road, Whitby

  The wagon turned onto the infrequently used track and halted short of the marker stone that bore the sign of the cross. One of the men climbed over the bench into the bed of the wagon. He prodded the prone figure with his boot and then bent down and grabbed hold of the greatcoat.

  With practiced ease the man heaved Merristorm over the side of the wagon. Both men watched him roll over and end head down in what made for a ditch at the side of the road. “Shud I move ’m into them weeds?”

  “Ain’t no one comes this way.”

  “’Haps I should have ‘nuther go at him.”

  The smaller of the two took hold the other’s arm. “Burns didn’t pay us ta snub his candle. Jest ta give ’m a proper welcome ta Whitby,” he chuckled. “If’n he wants more he’ll come up with more blunt.”

  The words belled clearly in the quiet of the late afternoon. Lucian heard only the last couple of sentences but dismissed them as babble. He tried to move when he heard the crunch of turning wheels but sharp dizziness stymied the effort.

  The clip clop of the hooves and creak of the wagon were fading into the distance by the time Lucian managed to raise his head a few inches. Am I in a ditch? Where? Why? How?

  The stream of questions made his head whirl. His head slowly sank to the ground face down. He found his mouth full of dried grass and turned his head. The edge of the track was above him. Lucian debated crawling onto it so any passer-by would see him. Then he reckoned his feet were on the track.

  Lucian took a deep breath and winced. Damme, they must have broken a rib. Who did it?

  The fog shrouding his thoughts lightened. Didn’t know ‘em. Bought me drink . . . somethin’ in it. A few moments later Lucian realized he was slipping in and out of consciousness.

  Snuff his candle. Who’d want that? Nothing came but the image of a face with a sprinkle of freckles and a riot of autumn flamed hair. The green eyes burned with fury.

  Lucian dragged his too thick tongue across his lower lip and tasted something salty. An image of a fist coming toward him flashed to mind and he knew it was blood. As he hovered on the edge of consciousness he became aware of the cold seeping up from the ground and down through the air.

  ‘Haps this is death, Lucian thought. Faces began to swirl past his eyes—his father, Jasmine, Benen, Danbury, Goodchurch, Merristorm, Bellaport and then the green-eyes that bewitched lingered, stirred regret, not guilt. Ruth.

  * * *

  It was dusk when Ruth Clayton drove the wagon containing her family and all of their worldly possessions onto Church Street. A breeze had begun to kick up. It carried the tang of sea in its sharp cold teeth.

  Ruth pressed her elbows to her sides to try and conserve some body heat. It would only get colder as the sun sank beyond the horizon. She looked to see the sun but could not over the tops of the roofs. Panic swelled in her breast, tightened her throat. Tears threatened.

  With a sniff Ruth glanced at the precious cargo in her care. Her father sat beside her hunched in the pose of the empty-minded elderly parishioners she had visited for years in Blewbury.

  No matter that, Ruth thought. I shall love him even when there is naught left of that which made him my father. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Marietta push Jemmy’s foot away and glare at the lad. Her sister’s temper had flared when Ruth asked her to sit on the floor of the wagon with the boy. Now they squabbled like brother and sister over space.

  Ruth would have smiled but for the fear in her heart. Marietta was unaccustomed to the kind of work and frugality that awaited them at St. Cedds. A tremor ran through Ruth at thought of the empty vicarage. It will be full of mice. Ruth shivered considering the beastly creatures. And spiders which Marietta detests. She thought of the dilapidated shacks the poor called home and a wave of panic rose like bile.

  A gust of wind blew a smattering of dust and leaves into Ruth’s face as she turned onto Abbots Road. She tucked her chin into her shoulder. Even the weather is antagonistic, Ruth thought. Everyone we met turned a cold shoulder to us. Worse than that truth be told.

  Why did I think Father could conduct even a simple service? How am I to make a decent home in the wreck of a house, long abandoned by all accounts? And haunted. A hysterical giggle jittered in her throat but Ruth kept up the litany of questions. Why are the people of Whitby set against us? Even before they learn of Father’s condition?

  This is impossible. I can’t do this. Ruth allowed the thought to take hold for the first time. Hope floundered before the onslaught of a more than questionable future. She started when something brushed against her arm and settled there.

&
nbsp; Her father. In the back of the wagon Jemmy coughed. Ruth bit her lip. They were counting on her to show the way. Oh God, how am I to do this? Are we Jonah in your eyes?

  Ruth squeezed her eyes shut to ward off the tears. And then from the back of the wagon she heard Marietta raise her sweet voice in song.

  Though troubles assail us and dangers affright…

  Ruth recognized the song as one of the John Newton hymns her father loved. She joined her voice to Marietta’s.

  Though Friends should all fail us and foes all unite,

  Yet one thing secures us, whatever betide,

  The promise assures us, “The Lord will provide.”

  Ruth’s spirits rose as she sang the last line. They were still together. With God’s help they would—

  The thought fled at the sight of a man lying face down, his feet on the track, his face in the ditch. Despite the distance and the weeds and grass down the centre of the track and along the side she knew who it was.

  With all her reason Ruth wished to turn the wagon; to not go forward. She dare not take him up. Her burdens were already too great. Their resources were strained near breaking what with adding Jemmy. How could they take on more? Didn’t the Lord know all this? What was he thinking? She had to drive past him. She must.

  Chapter Nine

  You can’t help him without further endangering everyone, reason hammered at Ruth’s heart. You have no chaperone. No one to help you care for his needs. Do you want to lose the haven you secured for your family?

  Haven? Ruth snorted at the word. A house unoccupied for years and a town that didn’t want them. Perhaps even now the citizens of Whitby planned to remove them from the vicarage.

  Where would they go? What would they do? How could she provide for her father and Marietta?

  As the horse trudged and pulled the wagon ever closer Ruth watched the figure in the ditch for any sign of movement. You can’t leave a man by the roadside, her heart joined the fray. Not this man.

  It is because it is this man that you must leave him, reason argued. Nothing but disaster lay that way.

  Can.

  Can’t. Mustn’t.

  Ruth’s mind whirled, her gut twisted, and her heart thumped faster, harder. What if he was badly hurt?

  Marietta began the third verse,

  “When Satan assails us to stop up our path

  And courage all fails us, we triumph by faith.”

  You have to help him, said Ruth’s heart.

  “He cannot take from us, though oft he has tried

  This heart cheering promise, “The Lord shall provide.” Ruth sang with her sister and reined the horse to a halt at Lucian’s side.

  Jemmy scrambled to the side and looked over it as Ruth climbed down. “Cor, thet’s Mr. Merristorm.” He vaulted over the side and joined Ruth beside the prone figure. “Has he put his fork in the wall?”

  “He still lives,” Ruth assured the boy. The steady beat of Lucian’s pulse calmed her.

  “What do you mean to do?” asked Marietta.

  “Help the lad, of course,” Sampson Clayton spoke loudly in the dimming light.

  While Marietta held the horse, the rest of them wrestled Lucian’s dead weight into the back of the wagon. While they did so the sky began to darken. Devilish reason spawned resentment of the delay, the danger, the delight.

  “God will provide,” she whispered as she caught sight of the white stone upon which was carved a cross. The night was nearly upon them and they had so much to do before anyone could seek rest. “If only God would provide a meal and a warm bed.”

  “What’s that daughter?” Sampson asked from the back of the wagon where he sat beside Merristorm.

  “Nothing, Father.” Ruth looked back. “Has he come to his senses?”

  “Not yet.”

  A few moments later they passed St. Cedds—a Norman outline against the grey black sky. Then the vicarage loomed before them in the midst of a ragged and overgrown sea of grass and weeds. The house was larger than Ruth expected but the unscythed uncontrolled growth dispelled the solidity of the dark two story hulk that appeared almost cruciform with a wing to the right and left of a protruding main section. When a loud creak broke the silence followed by the bang of wood on wood Marietta clutched her arm.

  “It is just a broken shutter prodded by the wind,” Ruth told her tiredly. The air of abandonment about the place thickened her exhaustion and fear. How would she get through this night?

  “Odd fish,” exclaimed Jeremy. “It be haunted.”

  “There is no such thing as—” died on Ruth’s lips.

  Everyone but the unconscious Merristorm and Sampson gaped at the odd orb of light that floated behind a window on the upper floor in the right wing of the house.

  Marietta grabbed a hold of her sister’s arm. “We cannot stay here,” she protested. “Let’s go back.”

  “To what?” Ruth asked, anger barely restrained. “’Tis a trick to scare us away,” she added as the orb faded. She handed the reins to Marietta and jumped to the ground.

  “Please get back in the wagon,” pleaded Marietta.

  The orb, now two half circles of light around a dark centre appeared at another window and just as hastily disappeared.

  “Ye Gods,” Jeremy yipped. “Look. Up there—them windows.

  Ruth raised her gaze and then shrank back against the body of the wagon.

  A skeletal figure stood behind each of the two windows at the front of the house on the floor above.

  Her eyes closed, Ruth calmed her nerves, reasserted reason. When she looked again the skeletons appeared to be mere sticks. Marietta’s soft crying raised her ire at the pranksters.

  “Oh, fie,” Ruth exclaimed and turned to the wagon. “We shall not let them frighten us away. Marietta, nothing in that house can harm us.

  “Jemmy,” Ruth reached up and touched the boy’s white-knuckled hand gripping the side of the wagon. “Go to the box we had the storage man open. Get me the lantern and the box of sulphur sticks.” A glance at her father who sat with one hand on Merristorm’s arm showed he had retreated to his own world.

  When Ruth lit the lantern it flared bright in the darkness. Determined to rebuke the pranksters inside she began to wade through the overgrown grass toward the front door. When a light appeared inside the house again, this time on the ground floor but well away from any windows, Ruth was furious. There was so much work to do and no time for this nonsense.

  “Watch out,” Jemmy called out.

  “Do come back,” Marietta cried.

  “Enough,” Ruth gritted. The lantern light showed the steps to be cracked and they sloped to one side. The front door’s paint had nearly all peeled off. She trod up then and reached for the door knob. Just as she did, the door opened with a shriek of rusty hinges and she was bathed by a bright light. Ruth gasped and took a step back.

  “Miss Sairy Jane?” she gasped.

  “What took you so long child?” the crone of a woman asked with a fearful glance to the left and right. “Didn’t ye know it were night?” Then she looked past Ruth to the wagon. “Why are they all still as statues?”

  “The ghosts,” Ruth said abstractedly. “What are you doing here?”

  Sairy Jane shrank back, white as milk. “Ghost,” she muttered fearfully. “’Tis past time yer come.” She grabbed Ruth’s arm. “Ye’ve got ta go up ta his bedchamber and open the window.”

  Ruth stared at the madwoman. This was worst than any ghost.

  “Come along,” Sairy Jane drew her toward the stairs at the end of the hall.

  A glance through the pair of open doors to the left showed a larger than usual sitting room. Through the door to the right a few steps further the lantern light bathed a chamber not tended for years. Upon the dust ladened table there was a setting for one with dusty clumps upon the plates.

  “I’ve alwas been housekeep’r fer ta vicar,” the old woman blustered as she drew Ruth towards the stairs. “E’en after he died I did me du
ties once the month.” When Ruth braced her feet and wrenched free the thin old woman held out her hand.

  “Ye’ve got ta open the winder–let his soul out, ye see,” Sairy Jane entreated. “Then the house be free.”

  Ruth backed up to the parlour’s doors. She raised her lantern. It, like the hallway, was clean with a faint hint of wax. Another odour penetrated Ruth’s whirling senses. “Is that stew I smell?” she asked in amazement.

  “Ye’ll get nary a taste if’n ye don’t go open the window.”

  “Be reasonable, Mrs. —” Ruth faltered and resorted to, “Sairy Jane. It is too cold for any window to be open this night.”

  The old woman edged closer. “Ye’ve got ta open it to let out his spirit,” she whispered. “Poor Vicar Kenton sickened at his supper. He somehows got to his bed. I had the eve off as my daughter was birthin’. No one were here to let his soul out and its been trapped ev’r since.”

  Ruth blinked at this explanation.

  “Are you all right Miss Ruth?” asked Jemmy from the open front door. He took a hesitant step inside and suddenly stiffened. “Be thet stew I smell?” he gasped.

  Sairy Jane backed towards a door beyond the stairs. “Ye ain’t getting’ none unless–”

  “I shall do it,” Ruth said. She hoped the rumble of her stomach could not be heard. Everyone was famished. What harm in humouring an old woman. “Which bedchamber is it?”

  “Turn right at the top. His be the door on the left.”

  Ruth nodded. “Go back to the wagon,” she told Jamey. “I shall come and help with Mr. Merristorm in a few moments.” She picked up her skirts and trod up the stairs.

  The landing at the top was pitch dark but for the light her lantern cast. Raising it Ruth turned in a slow circle. Two doors to the right, two to the left. The one on the other side of the stairs, she decided, had to be the chamber at the front of the house where the “skeletons” had danced.