by Norah Lofts
For some reason Henry found himself unable to touch it. He’d managed to drag Walter’s corpse to its secret, unhallowed grave; and Tana, with her neck broken, he had lifted up tenderly. With this he should have been able to deal but could not; there was no sorrow or grief to mitigate the nauseating repulsion.
He must have a blanket and to go home for one would mean questions.
Questions were already there in the kitchen. In the precise, rather delicate diction which Griselda had learned from Lady Sybilla and, except when angry, had always used towards her child, Godfrey said, ‘What was that all about, Janna?’
‘Nothing for you to bother about, my dear.’
‘Who hit somebody with a stool?’
‘I didn’t understand either,’ she said, untruthfully. ‘Your father is seeing to it. Everything will be all right. Finish your stew and have an apple. They’re the last we shall see this year.’
Thank God he was easily distracted. Pray God Griselda had run away from Knight’s Acre, and from the priest’s house, and would be found dead. She’d eaten nothing for days—and Robert, whom Joanna could now remember in a dispassionate way, had eaten well—and yet died from one night’s exposure. It could happen again.
‘Why did father say bar the doors?’
‘It is safer so.’
In the priest’s house Mistress Captoft said, ‘I blame myself for leaving you. But you sent me.’ He seemed rather more ill than split lips warranted. Shock and a fall.
‘You must go to bed,’ she said. She offered her arm, her shoulder, since he moved so slowly and so feebly.
‘I can walk, my dear,’ he said. He could. The fall had not injured him; but every breath was a pang.
Two hot bricks, wrapped in flannel, one at his feet, one at his back. Now a wine sop; red wine, because he had lost blood. Not much, thanks to her prompt action.
She had the wine, warmed and sweetened—but no spice, no pepper to sting his hurt mouth—and was cutting the best, whitest, manchet bread into tiny cubes when another knock sounded on the door. The mad woman again? Mistress Captoft snatched up the heaviest ladle she owned, went to the door, and opened it just enough to enable her to strike. Tit for tat. Mistress Tallboys had attacked, unprovoked…
It was Master Tallboys. ‘May I borrow a blanket?’
‘You found her?’
‘Yes. I need a blanket—if you would be so kind.’ Understandable, it was a night of frost and so far as Mistress Captoft remembered the mad woman had come out with no cloak. She hurried upstairs and snatched a blanket from the chest which held several. Then she hurried back to the kitchen and was enraged to find that during her brief absence, the red wine had boiled; which meant that it had lost all virtue. She had to start again.
In bed Father Benedict was comfortable if he did not take a full breath or shift about. Mattie put another pillow in place to raise his head and spooned in the sops-in-wine.
She talked as she did so. ‘Master Tallboys found his wife. Where I did not stop to ask. It is a curious thing; I was always against the cruel treatment of lunatics… Now I hope he locks her in, gives her bread and water and beats her when she is obstropulous.’
‘I was to blame. For not heeding you.’
He thought: Most women would elaborate upon that theme, say Didn’t I tell you? or: Serves you right. But not Mattie. She combined good sense with good nature, a sweet disposition with a talent for management. It was a pity…
He did not pursue that line of thought.
What had been Griselda, bundled into a blanket, made a lighter and more manageable load than many that Henry had shouldered; but it was horrible and he tried to divert his mind by thinking about the future, how decent privacy could be maintained. He wanted nobody to know the truth; it was so shocking. Some kind of stigma attached to madness, while ordinary illness and death were accepted as commonplace. What Jem Watson knew, Intake knew, and all that Jem knew was that Griselda had been ill, screaming with pain on Tuesday and that Henry had fetched her some medicine from the doctor on Wednesday. Everything, so far in good order; even to Griselda having grown quiet. But would Father Benedict, would Mistress Captoft talk? Would Godfrey grow up and one day hear, from some long stored up tale, that his mother had gone mad, attacked a priest with a stool and then set herself on fire? A taint like that could cling through generations!
For a moment his thoughts veered. How had Griselda set herself on fire? A fire was not so easy to kindle. Had she carried a lighted candle or flint and tinder? No time to bother about that; he must get this thing indoors, on to a bed, get it coffined with nobody knowing. He must send Joanna to bed. What to tell her?
He laid his burden down, somewhat short of the kitchen door, and rapped and called. The door opened immediately and there was Joanna.
‘Did you find her?’
‘Yes. Dead. Where’s the boy?’
‘I coaxed him to bed. Where was she?’
For years, suffering under the lash of Griselda’s tongue, they had shared a mildly joking resignation, saying she, saying her.
‘The less you know, the better,’ Henry said.
Joanna’s ruthless spirit spiralled upwards. Griselda, Henry’s wife, her enemy, dead. Her joy would have been complete had Henry not seemed so stunned and so stricken. ‘She was mad, Henry. Had been for a long time. I knew years ago. Not only by the way she behaved to me… Other things. Look, I have kept your supper warm. I only wish I had wine.’
And why should she not have wine? She had inherited a small fortune in jewels; bright stones which she and Robert had found in one of the rooms on the other side. Pretty pebbles, playthings, a childish secret until Griselda found them and Henry had said that if they were valuable they were Joanna’s and must be used to her advantage. Some part of this fortune was already invested with somebody called Sir Barnabas Grey, at Stordford, the place to which she had refused to go. The rest was presumably still in the Bishop’s hands and could be used to advantage here, if only Henry would agree.
For the first time that he could remember Henry had no appetite. Through every other extremity or exertion in his life, so long as he could remember, he had emerged hungry. But not tonight. Some of the sickening, charred meat odour clung to his jerkin. The kitchen was warm, so he removed the garment, seeing as he did so the three-cornered tear, called for some reason a hedge tear, which Griselda had mended. Neatly, expertly, but grumbling all the time; the eye of the needle too small or the thread too thick, the wrong colour; and why, if he must do something that tore his clothes, couldn’t he wear his leather coat? And how could one woman, with one pair of hands, worn to the bone, be expected to deal with everything? Only last week. It seemed a long time ago. And now she lay, silenced for ever, by the house wall.
‘Save it for tomorrow,’ he said, practically, rejecting the stew; ‘And go to bed. Forget all about it. Nothing to do with you.
‘She said, ‘Henry, you must not grieve. She was mad and would never have been better.’ It struck her that his stricken look and his refusal to eat might indicate sorrow. Perhaps once, before Griselda turned so sour and nasty, there had been a kind of fondness. Nothing much; nothing at all like what their marriage would be, once attained. On the thought of marriage her mind halted. There might, for all she knew, be some law about the age at which one could be married. But betrothals were different; a betrothal could take place at any time; she knew that from Tom Robinson’s talk. Mere babies could be betrothed and were, especially where property was involved. And a betrothal was practically as good as a marriage.
Tom Robinson. Her mind halted again. To him Griselda had been quite different, gentle and tender. He was a sick man, towards the end bed-ridden; yet never once had Griselda called him a pauper, never once had she complained about the extra work he made. Enlightenment burst in upon her. Griselda had loved Tom Robinson! Then why had she married Henry? The answer was simple; Tom had nothing, no home, no money, not even health. Poor Henry, Joanna thought; how I will make it u
p to him. Once we are married, as we must be, will be.
She was so engrossed in her own thoughts that she did not even wonder where the dead woman was.
*
Henry waited, fidgeting about uneasily, until enough time had elapsed for Joanna to be in bed and asleep, then he opened the door quietly and stepped out. He was halfway towards the body when he heard crying, wild, unrestrained, on a womanish note. He went rigid and cold sweat burst from every pore in his body. Oh God, it could not be! It was unbelievable that the faintest spark of life remained in that burnt out body.
Then he felt rather than saw some movement across the yard, near the out-jutting part of the other side of the house. It could only be John. He called and the desolate noise increased. John, weeping like a woman, stumbled towards the kitchen lights. He just managed to say, ‘Nick’s dead!’
‘He was dying when he arrived, John.’ The statement sounded blunt and unsympathetic but it was true. John must have known, must have seen…
‘I kept—hoping. And he was—better. He was taking his food. He coughed without blood. Only this evening… We were talking about setting out. In the spring.’
You were, Henry thought; Young Shep knew he was dying. But then you always could believe what you wanted to. Did what you wanted to.
He tried to muster some sympathy but there was something distasteful in the sight of a man weeping like a woman. Sybilla’s death had broken Sir Godfrey in mind and spirit but, so far as Henry could remember, his father had never cried.
He wished he had wine; or good strong ale. He did what he could, helped John to a bench by the hearth and stirred the dying fire. Involuntarily, he remembered his own bereavements; Walter; the mother whom he had loved; and Tana. There were words of comfort, he supposed—the life everlasting, the resurrection of the body, but he had never been able to understand how that could be and the words would sound hollowly, coming from him. They were for the priest to say.
He said, awkwardly, ‘You did your best for him while he lived, John. You brought him home. Even when you were ill yourself, you nursed him.’
‘I owed him that,’ John said. Suddenly he stopped crying, wiped his wet face on his sleeve. ‘I took him to his death.’
‘That is nonsense.’
‘It is not! Nick didn’t come with me at first. Did you know that? He got himself married, settled down. He’d have stayed, making his beautiful songs—with only sheep to hear. And I knew—I’d seen for myself—what could be done, the rewards, the favours. I loved him, Henry. I wanted him to share. So I persuaded him. And he took this cold in Padua.’
‘That is nonsense,’ Henry said again. ‘He didn’t have to go with you. He wasn’t a slave. He could have stayed where he was—and caught a cold tending sheep.’
‘Hard as stone,’ John said. ‘You always were.’
Henry accepted that in silence. He waited a little, conscious of all he had still to do. Then he said, ‘You’d better try to get some sleep, John.’
‘Not there,’ John said, with a nervous start—like a woman again. ‘I couldn’t sleep across there! You… You haven’t seen him.’
Henry thought of what he had seen. But he seized the chance of getting John out of the way. He took up the candle and said, ‘Come along, then. You can sleep here. Come quietly, the boy sleeps lightly.’
Waiting again, to give John time to settle. Then he completed his grim journey, laid the blanket-wrapped bundle on the bed, locked the door again. From the far room came the sound of John, sobbing. Henry thought, without sentimentality—No tears for Griselda! But then what purpose did tears ever serve?
Next day was Sunday and Henry was early at the priest’s house. He wanted to arrange things as well as he could before it was time for Mass.
Father Benedict was down but not dressed yet. Wearing a voluminous woollen wrap he sat at the table, carefully easing tiny spoonfuls of bread and milk between his broken lips. He looked very pale.
‘I’ve come, partly, to apologise,’ Henry said. ‘I am indeed very sorry that my wife should have injured you, Father. But she was out of her mind.’
‘I know. Poor woman,’ the priest said, speaking carefully from the uninjured corner of his mouth. ‘I shall pray God to heal her.’
‘She is dead.’
‘God rest her in peace.’
‘God rest her,’ Mistress Captoft echoed. ‘But how, Master Tallboys? I thought when you asked for a blanket…’
In as few words as possible but well-chosen, as was customary with him, Henry explained.
Shocked out of being cautious, Mistress Captoft said, ‘Oh! How terrible. She must have brushed against the candle as she pushed past me. But how was I to mark that with Father Benedict on the floor and bleeding?’
Cautious, as he always was about any fortunate chance, Henry said, ‘Nobody in his right mind would dream of blaming you, Mistress Captoft.’
As he spoke he looked straight at her. He had inherited his father’s singularly candid eyes but whereas in Sir Godfrey the candid look had had nothing behind it but candour—often to his own detriment—Henry’s clear look was less simple. Mistress Captoft thought—I should not have said that: qui s’excuse, s’accuse; for she had seen that the straight blue gaze also said—But I would! Unless…
‘I should wish,’ Henry said, ‘that this should not be bruited abroad. I have my son to consider. People talk and exaggerate. I do not wish my son to be told one day that his mother was a madwoman who attacked a priest before setting fire to herself. If there were an enquiry…’
Sudden or violent deaths were enquired into by a Coroner. And unless violence had been seen to be done, or poison suspected, the process depended upon the priest’s willingness to bury. If he had doubts he was in duty bound to refuse and await the result of the enquiry.
Father Benedict deserved the high opinion, the high hopes which Mistress Captoft had once entertained for him. He had a subtle mind which, allied to his unquestioned abilities, would have taken him far, had he been born into another class or chanced to meet up with a powerful patron. Speaking with difficulty, not only because of his mouth but because talk demanded breath and to take a full breath still drove a sharp knife somewhere between his ribs and his stomach, he said, ‘I understand, Master Tallboys. So far as an enquiry is concerned… Even suicide will never be suggested. The act of self-destruction must be deliberate and a person even temporarily deranged cannot take such a decision. Of this, ‘he touched his mouth, ‘I shall say nothing. A man of my size, knocked down by so small a woman.’ He had his pride, too.
Henry had achieved—more easily than he had dared hope—exactly what he had come for.
‘There has been another death, too. The friend of my brother. He died, last night, of the lung-rot, in his bed.’
‘Both shall be buried with proper rites. On Wednesday.’
He named the day, not utterly at random. Time was needed, not only for the shrouding and the coffining—for those who could afford it—and the grave-digging, to allow this inner hurt to heal. As it must. Concealing this hurt from Mattie, who would have fussed, made plasters, made him stay in bed with a bag of hot salt applied to his side, was simply to spare her. And it could only be a bruise, gone inward.
Ironically, the one person in Intake who could have helped Father Benedict at that moment was Young Shep who lay stiff and cold with the blood of his last violent cough, stiffening on the silk.
Shepherds knew more about bones and bodies than any physician or any surgeon. Had Father Benedict been a sheep in Young Shep’s care and met with an accident, jostled against a fence or a gateway, and then—showing no outward injury—began to ail and take little gasping breaths, Young Shep would have out with his knife, tripped the animal over; once on their backs sheep were helpless and he would have slit it open, found the bit of broken rib bone which had pierced the spongy mass of the lungs and plucked it out. No such surgery was available to human beings: only crude amputations.
‘About
the laying out,’ Mistress Captoft said, seeing Henry to the door. ‘The old woman who once served Father Ambrose and now does my heavy wash and scrubs floors does, I think, earn a few pence by such services. She will certainly be in church this morning; she is one who never misses. Shall I send her?’
‘That would be kind,’ Henry said, thinking that if this thing were to be secret… well, while the old woman busied herself with Young Shep, he must do something about Griselda.
‘He shouldn’t be up and about,’ Mistress Captoft said. ‘I told him. I urged that he should stay in bed. But he is very stubborn.’
The old woman took her threepence and muttered, with an air of grievance, ‘Mistress Captoft said two.’ It mattered to her. She had always been poor but while Father Ambrose was alive she had been sure of a roof over her head—leaky as it had been. She had been sure of food, too, scanty and plain, but willingly shared, in fact when one portion was better than another, the old priest had insisted that she had it, pointing out that she worked harder than he did. Now all was changed. Father Benedict, having Mistress Captoft to serve him, had not wanted her and she lived on sufferance with a nephew-by-marriage whose wife took all her meagre earnings and grudged her every bite. Sixpence would have been very welcome.
‘My wife’s body has already been dealt with,’ Henry said. ‘Are the coffins spoke for?’
‘Not yet.’ It sounded mean—even to Henry himself—to think about what coffins cost; but the four nobles paid out to the doctor had left him very short of ready money. Griselda—mistress of Knight’s Acre, a Tallboys by marriage—must have a coffin by right but surely Young Shep could have gone to his grave wrapped in a shroud, as the poor generally did. But John, who never gave a thought to other people’s problems and evidently regarded Henry’s pocket as bottomless, had said that he wanted Nick properly buried, coffin and all.