by Norah Lofts
The lightened waggon rattled along; even the older horse was now headed for his stable, his manger, and the paces matched better. And Henry knew why this stretch of road depressed him. With no need to urge or guide a horse he had nothing to do but think. Ordinarily he could avoid much thought by flinging himself into work or sleep. Too much to remember; it didn’t do to remember.
The road curved slightly and he saw, coming towards him at a smart trot, very different from its usual sedate movement, Mistress Captoft’s mule. No mistaking that unusual silvery grey. And astride it Godfrey, his hair all aflutter and some rags too. And what in God’s name had happened to his face?
He’d taken a fall. Naughty, over-venturesome boy! Yet he was not riding like a boy who had been thrown. He wheeled the mule expertly so that he was level with the seat of the waggon which Henry had brought to a halt. His nose looked crooked, there was blood. And when he spoke it sounded as though he had a heavy cold in his head.
‘Change with me, Father. Go and save Mamma-Captoft from those horrid, rough men.’
‘What men?’
‘They were rough with her. You go. I’ll take the waggon.’ He was already scrambling out of the mule’s saddle on to the waggon seat.
Henry was capable of thinking quickly when he had to. Abductions were not uncommon. In fact when Robert was lost everybody’s first thought was that he had been stolen. Violent and lawless men did take people and hold them to ransom, sending messages—such and such a sum, in hollow tree; under a stone. It had never yet happened at Intake; but there was a first time for everything.
‘Which way did they go, son?’
If into Layer Wood a difficult search and perhaps futile.
‘Into the village.’
That sounded strange. Local people didn’t abduct local people in broad daylight. Still, they could have set off in the direction of the village, then veered off into the woods.
He was now on the mule; saddle too narrow, stirrups too short.
‘Father, hurry!’ Godfrey said. Henry set the mule to a gallop.
The boy, with many knights among his ancestors, shouted, ‘Take a pitchfork’! But by that time he had set the horses in motion and his snuffly voice did not carry above the clatter of twelve hooves and the creaking of wheels.
The people of Intake, like all people faced with the unknown and the awesome, sought comfort and courage in human company. Clustering and murmuring like a swarm of bees, they moved from the river bank into the village, into Bert Edgar’s yard where the firewood was stacked and ready. Somebody brought a brand from the kitchen and set it alight. The warmth and the brightness dispelled some of the dread. A spirit of hysterical hilarity began to grow. They had all seen an amazing, a terrible thing; they were all acutely conscious of the Devil only just across the river but here they all were, untouched so far. Survivors. Johnson, a man prosperous enough to own a horse, took his son and another man to his place, next door to Edgarsacre, and came back with a cask of October ale—last year’s and very potent. That struck the right note. Make a feast of it; fetch mugs, fetch food. Everybody bring what was available. Unrecognised, a feeling of competition sprang up. The bee-swarm scattered—but nobody went alone through the deepening dusk. You come with me to my place, then I’ll go with you to yours. Even men felt that way tonight.
At Hodgacre, Bet Hodge said to Jill Edgar, who had accompanied her, ‘I’d better just look in on the old man.’
Holding a lighted candle she opened the door of the room she so coveted. Selfish old pig, he refused to share even with his eldest grandson, a quiet boy who did not snore.
‘And about time too,’ the old querulous voice said. ‘Here I laid, stiff as a plank and nobody to bring me so much as a drink of water.’
‘Thass wrong, Granfer. I looked in time after time. You was allus asleep.’
He gave an inner chuckle. She could be lying. She could be telling the truth. If she had looked in that was proof that he’d made a good mommet, mounding up, under the bed clothes what, from the door, could well be mistaken for a sleeping man.
‘Is there anything you want now?’
‘Is there anything I want,’ he echoed sardonically. ‘Yes. My dinner. Four rashers, cut thin and well frizzled and two eggs, turned in the pan. You should know by now.’
She had been undecided which little cask of home-made wine to take to the feast; the pale, flowery cowslip or the rich dark blackberry which she had been saving for the old man’s funeral feast. Now she knew that it was safe to take the blackberry; the old man was tough as hickory wood; he’d live for years; she’d have time to make more and see it well-ripened.
On some of the farms the pigs were feeling as neglected as Old Hodgson had pretended to be. They squealed and were fed.
The young nimble men who had run, with ropes, to dredge the witch, dead or alive, out of the water, said that they’d seen nothing. One minute she’d been there, bobbing on the surface of the water, the next she’d been in the thicket. Later this story was to be embellished and, passed down through two generations, it included a vivid picture of the Devil, cloven hooves, horns, tail and all, leering out of the thicket.
One thing was certain, even at the end of this confusing day. Mistress Captoft was being punished, wherever she was. Satan, Old Scrat, might have saved her from the water, from the fire, but everybody knew that those who sold themselves into his service were in the end abandoned. He was the Father of Lies, the past master of deception.
The impromptu feast was well under way when Henry arrived. The grey mule was over-fed and under exercised; urged on by a kick or a slap it would gallop a bit, then begin to blow, a warning sign to anyone who knew anything about four-legged things; breath must be recovered, then the easy, ambling pace resumed, more urging, a short gallop and blowing again. The younger of his two horses, despite the miles it had already done, would have been a better mount, Henry reflected, blaming himself for not thinking of that before. But at last he was at Intake, the lane going on towards the village, the track diverting to the right, towards the church, the priest’s house and Knight’s Acre itself. And there the mule who, for years, had turned here gave proof of its breed’s proverbial stubbornness. Nothing would budge it.
Angrily, Henry dismounted and continued his journey—about a quarter of a mile—on foot. He intended to go from house to house asking whether anyone had seen or knew anything of Mistress Captoft. He was spared that tedious business by the light and the noise coming from Bert Edgar’s yard.
It was, he thought, like a scene from Hell. Faces reddened and distorted by the glare; drunken laughter; the smell of meat being toasted at the end of pitchforks or sharpened stakes. Amidst so much noise one voice, however loud, would be lost. He walked to the fringe of the crowd and brought his work-hardened hands together in a clap. Those near enough to hear jumped and fell silent and the quietude ran, like panic, through the rest. Suddenly everyone, except a wailing baby, was silent and staring towards Henry. At any time he was a good head taller than any one of them and now that most were sitting or squatting he loomed enormous and, with his face lit from below, not unlike the Devil they were dreading. And it was only Master Tallboys! There were gasps, even sniggers of relief.
‘Does anybody here know anything of Mistress Captoft?’
The Intake dumbness clamped down; what you didn’t say couldn’t be held against you.
‘She was taken from my house,’ Henry said, ‘and roughly handled.’
He was not accusing them. He still couldn’t believe that any Intake men would do such a thing. He’d come here for information, possibly help, if Layer Wood had to be searched. And a fine lot of help he’d find here, he thought, looking at the blank faces, the drunken faces.
‘Did anybody see strangers?’ .
Somebody hushed the baby and for a moment the silence was not just merely an absence of sound but a positive thing. Then Jill Edgar, down-trodden for years but now borne up because she had been first at Bert Hodgson
’s good blackberry, said, ‘She was took for a witch and swum.’
That broke a barrier. Varying voices intermingled to tell the astounding tale; the fair trial, the test and the Devil himself snatching the witch away into Waste Wood.
Henry listened to the babble sceptically. When he was young and impressionable Walter had derided anything that could not be seen and handled as nonsense. Even Sybilla herself could never get him to Mass. Hell, he said, had been invented to make people behave and Heaven to cheer up their miserable lives. As for witches and warlocks and ghosts, for them Walter had only one word: Rubbish.
So now Henry thought only in practical terms. That poor woman somehow struggling out of the water and finding herself in Waste Wood, where she would find no shelter, no succour. She’d be drenched and half drowned; she’d die of exposure in this bitter wind.
He had no knowledge of the ford. He knew that there was no bridge and that the only way for someone who could not swim was to go down to Bywater, hire a boat and cross the mouth of the river, land among the sand dunes and work one’s way upstream through the swamps and the trees. It could take days. There must be a quicker way. There was. Hire a boat, with men who would row in relays, and come upstream that way and land near the spot where she had disappeared. That meant getting down to Bywater this evening and setting out at first light tomorrow morning.
He stayed just long enough to ask two questions.
Where was she last seen?’
They could all answer that. Just by the first curve after the Steps.
‘Who fetched her from my house?’ Dead silence.
‘God damn you all,’ Henry said and set off for home, now running, now walking with his long loping strides which were almost as fast. He had actually reached his own ground when he saw a faint, bobbing light, heard his son’s treble voice call ‘Father’, and David’s deeper one shout, ‘Master! Master Tallboys!’ Henry shouted back, and the hero of the day burst into tears.
‘We thought… something had happened… to you. The mule… came home alone.’
‘Thank God, you’re safe, sir,’ David said. ‘Mistress Captoft, too.’
‘She mended my nose,’ Godfrey said, gripping Henry about the thighs.
‘You have had a day,’ Henry said. ‘Come on, up you get. I’ll give you a ride home.’
‘How is Mistress Captoft? Henry asked.
‘All right,’ David said. ‘Very quiet.’
They’d all had a day. Katharine had made a mutton and apple pie, ready to serve at midday. Joseph came punctually. Jem had not stayed for dinner; he said he’d come early to help load and steer and there was something he had to see to down in the village. So the three of them had waited, expecting Mistress Captoft and Godfrey—assumed to have gone for a walk—to arrive at any minute. It was utterly unlike Mistress Captoft to absent herself from a meal without warning. Joseph had become impatient and finally, unwillingly, Katharine had cut the pie. Then it was discovered that the mule had gone and Katharine and David had assumed that Mistress Captoft had taken Godfrey, riding pillion, to Nettleton. The observance of Saints’ days varied from place to place; she had probably been asked to stay to dinner there. Dusk began to threaten, worry to mount. Then, almost simultaneously, two things happened. Mistress Captoft, soaked through and unusually silent, had come in, demanding a bath.
She was a fastidious woman; she took at least six baths a year, using a cut-down cask. While the water was being heated and carried up, Godfrey arrived with the waggon—and a flattened nose and one of his last milk teeth hanging by a thread. Mistress Captoft, cutting her bath short, had dealt with the nose; tweaking it back into shape and fixing it with a plaster of linen, heavily smeared with flour and water paste. She had also plucked out the loose tooth, saying that it was no loss; it would have fallen out soon, anyway. After that the mule, empty-saddled, had come clattering into the yard; and then Godfrey had begun to talk about his father who had gone to Intake… about the two bad men whom he had hit with the poker and the one who, with that same poker, had broken his nose and practically knocked a tooth out.
Now, all safe again under one roof; everything would have been made plain except for Mistress Captoft’s unusual reticence and curious attitude. She gave Godfrey his due: ‘He behaved like a hero. You may be proud of your son, Master Tallboys.’ But she repudiated, absolutely, the idea of vengeance.
‘Godfrey said there were two men ‘ Henry said ‘Both from the village. Did you recognise either?’
She said, ‘No.’ Adding hastily in her mind· God forgive that lie; told in a good cause; to tell the truth would be to start a feud. Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God. Struggling home, soaked, muddy, her teeth chattering, Mistress Captoft had undergone a spiritual experience. God had, through the instrumentality of one grateful old man, saved her from the water and from the fire. In future she would belong to God and to Him only.
She said with unctuous piety, new to her and to Henry infuriating, ‘We must forgive, as we hope to be forgiven.’
‘A fine sentiment! My boy’s face was smashed in. Am I to forgive that?’
‘Yes. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’
She was equally secretive about the identity of her rescuer. Someone who had reason to be grateful to her, she said; and to name him might lead to trouble, the people of Intake being so ignorant and misguided. And, while praising Godfrey’s courage in going to her defence, she tended to make light of his hurt. His nose was as yet hardly more than gristle and, attended to so promptly, would show no sign of injury. To make a fuss, to put thoughts of malice and vengeance into his mind would be infinitely more harmful.
Whoever, long ago, had devised the Tallboys badge—the hare defending its young, and the motto ‘I Defend What Is Mine’, had not chosen haphazardly. Henry felt that the whole affair was an affront to him. No doubt everything the silly woman said was true, in a way saintly, but he could not feel so. Somebody had come to his house and taken away a woman who, though no kin to him, was living under his roof and therefore under his protection; and when a boy, little more than a child, had gone to her aid, somebody had jabbed him brutally in the face. Henry, who would have described himself as a peaceable man, knew that he would never rest easy until the insult was avenged.
There was another aspect, too. The people of Intake being so ignorant and—Henry rejected Mistress Captoft’s tolerant word, misguided—so bloody barbarous, they might try again. He couldn’t be on guard all the time and David was a lame man, easily thrown off balance. Therefore they must be shown, made to understand, taught a lesson.
Of his intention he said nothing to Mistress Captoft, suddenly so sickeningly pious. The thought did flash through his mind that the one person who would understand completely was Joanna—but she was far away.
In the morning he questioned Godfrey again. The white plaster stood out like a little white snout. On either side of it dark bruises showed. That anybody should have dared! Godfrey had nothing to add to his former account. Two men, one bigger than the other; he’d hit the smaller. ‘I lamed him, Father. I hope I hurt the other one too, before he jabbed me.’ He might, Godfrey said, have seen the men before, in church, but he did not know their names.
Henry waited for Jem Watson to come to work; get him talking and he might let slip something useful; but Jem did not come.
The whole village, except for Old Hodgson and the children who had been given only a sip of this, a sip of that, slept late that Thursday morning. Children got up and foraged for themselves on what was left after the orgy: Old Hodgson would have done the same but thought it wiser to maintain his pretence for at least another day. Lying wakeful, and hungry, he wondered about Mistress Captoft; had she found her way home?
One early morning sound was not heard in Intake, and when, thick-headed, bleary-eyed men eventually lurched out into their yards, they saw why. No healthy, hungry squealing pigs. Some dead, more lying down, waiting to die.
They all knew by the rule of thumb, taught by experience, that swine fever was catching and, called to inspect Bert Edgar’s pigs which were suffering from swine fever that wasn’t quite swine fever, they had kept their distance while uttering sympathetic or exclamatory words. But that the disease could lurk in a place where no pig was had not occurred to them and on the previous day, intent upon the trial, then upon the feast, they had given no thought to the matter; they’d leant against, brushed against the empty sty; some had even stood in it to get a bit of shelter from the wind. Then, after the swimming or after the feasting, they’d seen to their pigs. Now the incredible disaster had struck. This would be another year when bacon must be bought. Stunned, made apathetic, they stood about in groups, asking how? asking why? Because they’d made a mistake and fixed on the wrong woman—whom God, not the Devil, had reached out and saved? Curiously no suspicion now attached itself to Mistress Captoft. Superstition could swing like a weather-cock.
Into one of these miserable little groups Henry came. He was looking for a lame man. The other, the real culprit, the one who had jabbed Godfrey, might not be so easy to find but Henry was reasonably sure that a little pressure, or a little bribery, would persuade the lame man to give a name to his confederate. And he would be smashed into pulp.
There was a lame man, leaning on Nature’s own crutch, a forked bough. And there, too, was a man—recognisable Bert Edgar, who’d once worked at Knight’s Acre, with his left hand roughly bandaged.
‘You hit my boy,’ Henry said. Not quite a statement or quite a question.
‘What if I did? He lamed Ted. He’d hev lamed me. Bruk my thumb for me.’
‘All right,’ Henry said and began to loosen his belt.
His belt was the weapon that Bert Edgar used most often upon his wife and his unwanted children and he saw meaning in Henry’s action.
‘You hit me, and I’ll strike back. I still got one good hand.’