by Norah Lofts
She had money. Throughout her widowhood her income had exceeded what she spent. She could have gone to Amsterdam and set up house at a moment’s notice. This was a more expensive enterprise—but rents were due to her at Christmas.
Presently it was evident to her sensible eye that, despite harassment and lavish expenditure, the old house would not be fit for occupation before Christmas. The next date worth noticing was Twelfth Night. The eve of the Epiphany. Again an apt date, for it marked the end of another journey, that of the Three Wise Men from the east with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
‘Your room and mine, David, should be ready before then,’ Mistress Captoft said. ‘And by that time we should have found a name.’
They had decided against Hostel—a bit on the religious side; Refuge smacked of charity; Infirmary sounded as though only the sick were welcome; and Home indicated a permanence impossible to provide.
‘I have thought about it, Madam. Sailors’ Rest. If you like it I could do a bit of a board to hang over the door, for the sake of them, like me, who can’t read. Not that it’ll be needed. The word’ll spread like wildfire.’
‘If we are to open by Twelfth Night, David, you and I must move in well before. There is still work to be done and men must be harried—or bribed—to lift a finger over Christmas.’
Twelve Days of riotous idleness celebrated a winter festival which was far older than Christmas and which was still observed by those who lived in great houses and by those who lived close to the land. The winter ploughing completed, the pig killed, there was little to do in that dead season. In towns and among people who worked for wages the custom was dying out; but a pretence was kept up and any man who did so much as drive in a nail between midday on Christmas Eve and Twelfth Night was conferring a favour which must be returned in the form of extra wages or a gift.
Mistress Captoft began to pack again, watched by Katharine’s gloomy, increasingly wild eye. David painted his gay and eloquent sign-board.
Stordford was one of the great houses where Christmas was kept in traditional fashion. The holly, the ivy and the mistletoe brought in and hung on the walls. The Yule Log, a great tree-trunk, dragged to the hearth, there to be kindled from a piece carefully saved from last year’s; it would smoulder throughout the night, be prodded and encouraged by the application of thinner, more easily combustible wood into a blaze. It would last through the Twelve Days and would leave a charred fragment from which next year’s Yule Log would be kindled. At Stordford everything was ready, even to the boar’s head, stripped down, cooked, reconstructed, with burnt sugar whiskers, blanched almonds for teeth and preserved cherries for eyes. But although Lady Grey’s preparations were as thorough as usual, her mood was far from festive; she had Lord Shefton to face with only the feeble excuse that she had known nothing, that she and her husband had been grossly deceived.
Immediately upon the receipt of the Bishop’s letter confirming the truth of Joanna’s story, she had proposed sending the wretched girl away but Sir Barnabas said that would not be honourable; they had engaged themselves to keep her until she was fifteen or married and, although the girl had been secretive and the Bishop negligent, they must stick to the word of their bond. On any matter concerning codes of behaviour she deferred to him. She then visualised the horrible embarrassment of breaking the news to Lord Shefton when he arrived with the marriage contract and the ring. He must be forewarned. ‘I shall write at once,’ she said; adding hopefully, ‘It may be that in the circumstances, his Lordship may wish to cancel his visit altogether.’
‘My dear, that would be unwise. There is no need to ruin Christmas.’ He named two of his other guests—both valued business associates—who were very anxious to meet Lord Shefton.
‘But imagine how he will feel! The very sight of the wretched girl makes me sick.’
‘He should have a stronger stomach, at his age,’ Sir Barnabas said, easy-going, as always. She knew for a certainty that she would have the distasteful task of breaking the news and facing the first brunt of his Lordship’s displeasure. Once that was spent, Barnabas would appear, probably with a joke: Well, who can now say that no female can keep a secret? That kind of thing.
At Intake the hostility towards Father Matthew continued. He could understand the withdrawal of hospitality: the loss of their pigs, the necessity to buy fresh stock, had hit them hard. But a seat by the fire cost nothing, nor did civility. He still made visits but he was never invited into any house and nobody showed a disposition to chat with him. Possibly they blamed him for encouraging the idea that Mistress Captoft was a witch—and he still believed that he had been right. Nobody had told him that she had been saved by a rope, so he regarded her survival as supernatural. Innocent women drowned, witches swam. Certainly they blamed him for not being present; perhaps they thought that merely by being there he could have frustrated the Devil.
Maybe they were resentful because his pig was alive and well.
Some of them had already replaced their stock, at fearful cost, winter prices, pre-Christmas prices. (Some nights and days of iron frost had killed the disease, though nobody knew that.) Father Matthew knew that there were pigs in the sties again—he could hear them—but even when he tried to take a friendly interest in new pigs, he was rebuffed. Never once asked to come and look them over.
The witch-swimming had had two indirect results. Young Hodgson was still lame and Bert Edgar’s jaw had—and always would have—a lump about the size of a pigeon’s egg. Did they blame him for these things? Attendance at Mass, once so much improved, dwindled; was reduced on one Sunday morning to Master Tallboys, his son, his shepherd and the old woman called Ethel.
And then, suddenly everything changed. Led by Ethel, getting lame, poor old woman, almost the whole of the village came trooping in.
It was understandable, the priest thought as he went through the ritual, that a woman, weakened by age—and possibly some privation, for in hard times the old and the young were the first to suffer—should need a stick to lean upon. But need she strike the floor with it from time to time?
Ethel had said, ‘You all listen. Every time he say a word different, I’ll bang with my stick and you count.’
Quiet and stealthy as bloodhounds they were now on his trail. On the way home there was a bit of an argument about numbers. Six times? No, five. You went to sleep and missed one. How could I go to sleep standing up? I ain’t a horse! Old Hodgson, that recognised good hand with a tally stick, said seven. And with that, in itself a magic number, most people were inclined to agree. Seven times Father Matthew had said words wrongly. All their suspicions were confirmed.
They had no intention of swimming him. No story, however far-back-reaching, told of a man being swum as a test.
It only applied to women. The test they intended to apply was very old.
And no need in this case to send two men. One little girl would do.
The little girl, the first of Bert Edgar’s unwanted daughters, knocked on the door of the priest’s house—once so stoutly guarded by Mistress Captoft—and said to the ugly boy who opened it, ‘Father’s wanted. Down in the village.’
She had been told what to say and she had learned to be obedient.
It was another bitterly cold evening. Streaks of red sunset, no warmth in it, merely the promise of frost again—were just visible beyond the stark black trees.
‘Who is it?’ Father Matthew asked, already reaching for his cloak. It was good and warm, lined with coney fur.
‘I don’t know. I was sent to say, Father’s wanted.’
‘Somebody took ill?’ he asked, thinking about the stole, emblem of unworldly authority, and of the Host to be brought from the church.
‘I don’t know,’ the little girl said again. ‘I was sent to say Father’s wanted. And I said it, didn’t I?’
He thought it as well to be prepared.
Old Father Ambrose had carried all that was necessary for the administration of the last rites in
an ancient, broken down basket; Father Benedict, on those errands from which even Mattie’s vigilance and doses had not protected him, had gone out armed with a stout leather satchel. Father Matthew had a container even more suitable; a bag, beautifully embroidered. For before he was appointed to the living at Intake he had held subservient offices and some kindly women had felt sorry for him, so rustic, ill-provided and temporary. One of them had given him his cloak, another had embroidered the bag.
Out in the cold, holding his bag in his left hand, Father Matthew lifted the right-hand side of his cloak and enclosed the little girl in it.
‘Walk close to me, child,’ he said. She was clumsily wrapped against the biting wind but he could feel the sharp bones of her shoulder.
‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked.
‘To home,’ she said, her voice very small. It was not a question to which “I don’t know” would suffice as an answer, and yet in replying properly she felt she was disobeying her orders. Father Matthew was rather fond of children. So he asked her name, trying to overcome her shyness. Her name was Emma and she felt obliged to say it; asked how old she was she could rightly say, I don’t know.
Innocent decoy, she led the way into Bert Edgar’s yard and recognising it he thought, No wonder she is so thin! In a time of shortage, as this was, Bert Edgar was not the man to deny himself in order to see that his children were fed. It took little time to cross the yard but Father Matthew had time to think that when he last saw Jill Edgar she was pregnant and might now have miscarried and be at death’s door. All those poor little children, he thought.
His guide opened the door and said, with curious formality, ‘He’s here.’ He stepped into the kitchen and found himself confronted, as Mistress Captoft had been, by the village Elders.
There were more candles than usual in a farmhouse kitchen. And a fire heaped high and bright enough to make the candles unnecessary. Seven men, stern-faced, at the table.
He knew, from the friendly days, about the Elders. How they had decided to buy a new bull; how they had decided to swim Mistress Captoft. He had never seen them in session before, had not even known who, exactly, composed this body of authority. Now he recognised them all; ordinary peasant farmers, so like his own father, brothers, cousins that he had instantly felt akin to them and they, he thought, with him. Now something had happened to them—not unlike what happened to him when he officiated at the altar. It was something there was no word for. It was the thing, not of this world, which had been conferred upon him at his ordination, the thing which Mistress Captoft had with one word, ill-chosen? Well-chosen? Yes, well, since the intention was to insult, insulted.
Old Hodgson was active again and was the Eldest Elder. Sawyer, now so daft as not to know Christmas from Easter as the saying went, had been asked to stand down. No difficulty there; he had not even realised that he was being thrust aside.
The word for which Father Matthew fumbled, narrowing his eyes against the light so sudden and so brilliant, was power. These seven simple men were invested with it; not as he had been, when ordained, but power none the less. Seven men, of one mind, that mind governed by the most resolute character.
In this case Old Hodgson. In his opinion the priest had been largely to blame for the ordeal inflicted upon Mistress Captoft, and so deserved all that was about to happen to him. And more.
The charge—again delivered in that curiously legal and formal way, startled and dismayed Father Matthew as much as a similar one had dismayed and startled Mistress Captoft. The Elders had held preliminary meetings and decided to use the word wizard. There had been some argument about what form of accusation should be brought against him regarding Mistress Captoft; should he be charged with working with her and saving her from her rightful fate, or with using an innocent woman as a cover for his own activities and thus almost bringing about her death? Old Hodgson was for leaving her out of it altogether. ‘Surely there’s enough agin him without dragging that in,’ he said. But his was a lone voice. Old Gurth said, ‘But she was saved by a rope. Who chucked it if he didn’t? And why should he chuck it if he weren’t hand-in-glove with her?’ It looked to Old Hodgson as though the trial of the priest—for which he was as eager as anyone—might lead to more trouble for Mistress Captoft. ‘We got no proof that there was a rope. Only something the youngster said or made up.’
‘Then how did she get out?’
‘Willow root,’ Old Hodgson said. ‘I seen ’em, so hev you, this side of the water. Long and thin and grey. Woman that’d been dowsed like she’d been wouldn’t be in much state to judge. Got herself tangled in a willow root and took it for a rope.’
Old Watson said, ‘Well, if so. How did she get back to this side? Our Jem saw her, the very next day.’
‘Same way the priest got over there in the first place. Flew through the air.’ Old Hodgson saw that he must come to her rescue again.
‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘If you remember I was laid aside just then. Had a bit of time to think. And I fare to remember, when I was tiddler, my father, or maybe it was my granfer, saying something about a place, upstream a bit, where there was stones in the water, stepping-stones, like. I recall my mother telling me not to go near ’em. And I never did.’ If he must tell a lie it might as well be a good one.
There remained a difference of opinion. Out with the beans!
Each Elder came to the meetings armed with a few beans, some black, some white. With these, if an agreement could not be reached, votes were taken. The Eldest Elder carried, symbol of his office, a worn leather bag into which each closed fist dropped a bean in such a way that secrecy was maintained. White meant yes, black meant no and the matter upon the vote was taken had to be framed in such a way that yes or no could be the answer. Old Hodgson unwillingly produced the bag; it looked as though Mistress Captoft’s innocence must be questioned, after all; unless he could twist the words about a bit.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘we ain’t met together to try Mistress Captoft a second time. It’s him. So I’ll put it to you this way—Did he fool her as well as us?’ It was the best he could do.
They all wanted the case against the priest to be made as black as possible, so when the bag had gone round and come back to Old Hodgson and he tipped the beans on to the table, all seven were white.
He thought smugly; I not only make a good mommet. I got a way with words, too.
So now Father Matthew stood charged with being a wizard; with having overlooked one bull and forty one pigs; with garbling church ritual; with harbouring a familiar with trying to shield himself by accusing an innocent woman.
Like Mistress Captoft, he was given the chance to defend himself and he took it. He was particularly vehement about the boy, Tim.
‘I had temporary charge of a parish. A backward place.’
That should flatter these hard-eyed men, implying as it did that Intake was not backward. ‘The poor boy was living like a stray dog. Hunted about by other boys. Jeered at, stoned. One day, he came to me for shelter and I discovered that he was not the idiot they had taken him for. I could understand what he said and he could understand me. I took him in and he has been my servant ever since.’
Talking of Tim brought back to his mind the time when the village was friendly and Jem Watson, the first to see that evil picture, had remarked upon the resemblance between the strange animal and the boy.
‘I never accused an innocent woman,’ he said with some vehemence. ‘You—or your neighbours—did that. Poisonous brews, you said. And I agreed that she was an evil woman, that the picture was an evil picture.’
So far he had been dealing with them on their own level. But when he came to refute the charge that he garbled church ritual, he remembered that he was a priest, a member, however humble, of the vast, powerful Church. A King, Henry II, and St. Thomas of Canterbury had fought out a bitter battle about clerics being subject to secular law. St. Thomas, simply by being martyred and becoming a saint, had won. So now Father Matthew could say, with
confidence, ‘If you have any complaint against me, you should take it to my Bishop.’
The wrong thing to say at Intake, that curious community, born of freed serfs, told by Henry Tallboys’ great great-grandfather to go and hack little fields—if they could—out of the forest.
‘We don’t need outside interference, ‘ Old Hodgson said. ‘We hev our way of doing things. And we decided to put you to the test.’ And it was, in a way, a fairer test than that to which Mistress Captoft had been subjected. She could sink, innocent and drowned, or swim and be burned. No middle way. Whereas trial by ordeal offered a chance. Merely by submitting to it he proved his faith in his own innocence; and if that failed and his guilt proved, he would be regarded as sufficiently punished; the real test was the willingness to take the test; the real punishment crippled feet, or hands, for the rest of his life.
‘Red hot,’ Old Hodgson said. ‘To be carried nine paces.’ He indicated the iron bar heating in the fire.