by Norah Lofts
Joanna laughed again.
‘Once I tried to be one.’ She began on the story of her futile attempts to make magic brews so that she could turn herself into a wolf—like the old woman at Nettleton in Tom’s story—and go to Moyidan in the night and scare Young Richard into behaving better to poor little Robert.
‘I could see how unhappy Robert was, though Moyidan is five miles from Knight’s Acre. Henry didn’t believe me. But I had seen right.’
That kind of seeing, she decided, was something she had outgrown. Homesick as she had been, and still was, for Knight’s Acre, much as she had thought about it and during the last few days talked about it, calling it so vividly to mind and describing it, it had been just the ordinary eye of memory that she had used.
Supper came and Lady Agnes was sufficiently restored to complain both of the quantity and the quality.
‘Very meagre,’ she said, surveying the food—enough by Knight’s Acre standards to keep two people for four days. ‘I can see what is happening. Everything will be saved towards the wedding feast. We are all to go hungry until Maude is married. And this venison is green! It needed two days in the ground to sweeten it. Eaten like this it is very bad for the bowels.’ Nevertheless, she ate her share and a good portion of Joanna’s slipped unostentatiously on to her plate. Lady Agnes noticed but did not protest. The girl would have her reward. But not yet! The melancholy mood had lifted and the old woman thought that if she could survive starvation until after the wedding, and if Joanna could continue to be in disgrace, she was good for a long time yet.
Next morning they learned that the time of threatened scarcity would be short. Maude was to be married on Twelfth Night.
‘Indecent haste,’ Lady Agnes said when the girls had gone giggling away. ‘I suppose my lady was afraid the bridegroom might take a fit from excitement! It would be scandalous were it not well-known that Maude has never done a thing, or thought a thought, without her mother’s permission. She is a virgin—and likely to remain so.’ She sniggered.
For some reason which she did not understand, Joanna disliked that kind of talk. It was part of the falsity which pervaded this kind of world. Outwardly so prim and proper, and in company behaving as though they were all the Virgin Mary, no less, in the privacy of the solar they let themselves go with sly hints, a special tone of voice, even a peculiar kind of smile.
Puzzling to a country-bred girl whose knowledge of sex was as simple and straightforward as the act itself, as performed by animals. Bull mounted cow, boar mounted sow; the female swelled with her burden and delivered it. With people something more was involved, fondness, loyalty—all that Joanna felt for Henry and now hoped that Henry felt for her; but none of it funny. So why should the prospect of poor Maude’s endless virginity make her great-aunt cackle in that special way? Never mind. Amusement, however ill-justified, made for good humour; and this morning good humour was needed, for the insufficiently earthed venison had had the predicted effect.
‘I’d like my box again. I have decided to give Maude my pearls. With the wedding so hasty, she will have few gifts. Few guests who are not already here. I am a member of the family and must make the best show I can.’
Joanna opened the chest within the chest, brought the box and laid it on the bed. Fumbling amongst her treasure, Lady Agnes muttered on, ‘Too good really; it is a sacrifice. If they are quick enough and haste seems to be the order of the day, Maude will wear the Shefton diamonds. But no better pearls. And of course these will be hers, when the wife of his eldest son wears the diamonds and… ’
Abruptly she became aware that she had lost her audience. The girl stood there, looking exactly—curious the tricks one’s memory played—exactly like a knight who, in the mêlée with which a formal tournament often ended, had been transfixed by a lance; held upright for a moment in the saddle by the weapon that had killed him. Just for a moment, there, and yet not there. Before he toppled.
She said, ‘What is the matter?’ and knew the answer to the question even as she asked it. It was pain; that terrible griping in the bowels which resulted from the eating of green venison, inadequately earthed. The girl had eaten less of it, so her attack had come later…
When she said, in a dazed way, ‘I must go,’ Lady Agnes knew why and where.
But it had happened again. That inside eye which Joanna had thought outgrown. Seeing again.
There, far more real than the room, the bed, the old woman handling her treasures, was the Knight’s Acre kitchen, all cluttered, muddled and Henry, thinner, older and in some way hurt, trying not to limp. No time to lose.
Joanna ran swiftly down the stairs and across the hall. The men guests had had a table set up near the fire and were playing some game with dice. The women, she guessed, were in the solar, busy with dresses and head-dresses. She slipped through the hall like a shadow, unseen, and into the vast courtyard with its many stables. The wind struck its first blow but she did not notice. She needed a horse and, above all, she needed to be unobserved. And she needed to be quick; no time for argument, explanation, even to stable boys, so she avoided any building from which came sounds of activity and ran on until she found a stable holding horses only. The one nearest the entry was a big black animal and his harness, freshly oiled and polished, hung on the wall behind him.
The gentle ambling palfreys which she and the Grey girls had ridden were always brought, ready to be mounted, to the door; it was two years since she had slipped in a bit or buckled a girth but she was too anxious to consider that she might have difficulty, that this was a different animal from Henry’s old farm horse or Mistress Captoft’s mule. Her confidence served her, communicating itself to the animal, who was of tricky temper and capable of taking advantage of the slightest hesitancy or nervousness. As it was he submitted docilely.
She had come to Stordford escorted by a man who knew the way and she had been too wretched, already suffering the first pangs of homesickness, to take any interest in her surroundings. All she knew was that the road she must take lay roughly towards the east. Straight into the wind. How rash, how foolish, how like a hen running round without its head, she had been to rush out dressed as she was for indoors; her velvet dress, provided just before she fell into disgrace; little kid slippers on her feet and on her head nothing but a head-dress which the wind snatched away and sent soaring—like the butterfly it was intended to resemble—into the hedge. But she excused herself; if she had tarried to dress for the ride, she could have been caught, prevented. And at least she had, by accident, hit upon just the horse for this venture. She steeled herself against the cold. Henry needed her and she was going to him, as fast as she could, on a horse that could gallop, the kind of animal she had never ridden before. And he had never carried so light a rider…
She was out in the world without a farthing, not certain of her way, depending upon the light for her direction on one of the shortest days of the year but fear—the sense of ill to come, defeat inevitable—had no part in her nature. Sir Godfrey—her father, though nobody knew that—had never gone into a joust or a serious battle expecting more than a trivial hurt; and Tana, her mother, had faced incalculable risks in her plan to get them both across the mountains, out of Moorish Escalona and into Christian Spain. The child of their union had been born as nearly without fear as a human being could be; and also without fear’s concomitant, self-concern; that she was cut to the bone by the wind mattered nothing.
At Intake Father Matthew was a bit fearful; of the weather… of the numbers who might come to his feast; of the possibility that no child would come. Still he had done his best and chosen the day when Master Tallboys’ gift of an old sheep and a bag of flour could be used to the best advantage. He had announced that on the Tenth Day of Christmas there would be a dinner for every child of Intake under eleven years old. Nothing careless about the date chosen or the age limit. A peasant himself, Father Matthew knew how the rules ran. So far as they could in their crippled state, the people of Intake would k
eep Christmas. Two, in some places three, days of full plates. Then would come the lean time, with what food there was being hoarded for Twelfth Night and given mainly to the men who must be strong on Plough Monday when work would be resumed. But even then, Father Matthew knew from his own experience, there would be something for the children; the greasy salty liquor in which pork had been boiled, a bone to gnaw, the tough outer hide of ham or bacon to chew on. Knowing it all he planned his time and his age limit with care. Any child over eleven was a potential worker, worth feeding.
Tim, whom everybody except Father Matthew had despised and rejected, again proved his worth; sound common sense; he could not, he said, in his thick-tongued way, make enough bread on the oven floor for so many but he could make pad loaves, one above the other, towers of bread, each layer separated from the next by a liberal sprinkling of flour. ‘And, sir, it’ll save cutting; they’ll just pull apart.’
The sheep, Tim said, was too old to be roasted. It must be boiled, very gently.
Only the church itself was large enough to be used for this feast and in the morning Father Matthew made ready, placing upon the alter a bowl of flowers, sprung from some roots which Mistress Captoft had planted and left behind when she moved. They had never flowered before but this year, unaccountably, they did, braving the wind, elegant, delicate. A drift of white alongside the onion bed. A strange flower and unknown to him but he hit by accident on the name by which it was eventually to be called. Arranging them in a silver bowl—one of the gifts which Sir Godfrey had made to the church in memory of his wife—Father Matthew remarked that the drooping white petals looked like snowdrops. And as he spoke he cast a weather-wise eye at the sky. Real snow threatened.
Just across the track, in the sheepfold, Joseph was making preparations for the bad weather he knew was coming. Ordinarily only ewes about to drop lambs were sheltered from the weather but this year the old shepherd built an enclosure capable of holding the whole flock and his constant demands for more straw bales kept Henry and the waggon busy.
Once, as he unloaded, Henry caught a whiff of baking bread and savoury stew coming from the priest’s house and realised that he was quite hungry himself. His attempt at cooking had not been successful. He had not realised that pork taken straight from the brine cask needed a good soaking before it boiled and he was ignorant of timing; the pork had been difficult to carve and was hard to chew, the bag of dried peas boiled with it like little stones. He’d tried cooking a fowl on the spit; but he was ignorant of the need for basting and of the fact that even a wind-up spit needed some attention. He left it, turning as it should, and then went out to feed his animals; the un-wound spit became stationary, half the fowl was charred almost to a cinder, the other side almost raw.
The best of the spoiled stuff must go to Godfrey who was growing; next to Jem, an inveterate grumbler, next to Joseph who never grumbled—that seemed unjust but it was the way things went; Henry ate the worst, stuff which even his hearty appetite could not make palatable. Jem had not suggested, as he had done on a former occasion, that he should go home for his dinner, for food was not plentiful there, now; he had stayed at home on Christmas Day and the day following; he intended to stay home on Twelfth Night. That was all.
Now, as Henry smelt the proof that somebody in the priest’s house could cook, Joseph spoke of food, too.
‘I’ll not come to my dinner, Master. If I work straight through, they’ll lay snug tonight. Another thing, too. If the weather take the turn my nose tell me, maybe I shan’t be able to come down for a day or two, so I’d be obliged if you’d bring me a store of bread and cheese, a bit of frying bacon if you can spare it. Then I’ll manage. Oh, and a little flour, in case things get really bad.’
He had managed on his own in the past and could do so again. His diet was not quite so dreary as it might sound. The hard Suffolk cheese toasted well and a spade made a good frying pan. Given flour he could make dough cakes to cook on the stones that made his hearth in the centre of his now snug and waterproof hut. Over the willow branches which shaped and sustained it he had, working at odd times, plastered clay, inside and out; then he had turfed it on the outside, choosing a time when pasture was plentiful, so that the removal of some turf from the edge of the fold had not robbed them, his charges. In the turves there had been living roots, grass, weeds, wildflowers; they had reached out towards each other, woven themselves together in a tough outer hide, wind and weatherproof. Joseph as well as his flock would lie snug whatever happened.
Henry said, ‘Have you enough for today, Joseph?’
‘Yes, I was thinking forrard.’
‘So must I,’ Henry said. For even bread was running out now. Flour, too. Tomorrow he must take action about such things.
The children came trooping in, rather shyly, for this was something new and their Intake blood made them distrustful of innovation. The little girl, Emma Edgar, whose thin shoulder had put this whole project into motion, came in carrying a child, rather over a year old, on her out-thrust hip, the traditional carrying way for females who must carry a child unable or reluctant to walk and yet have one hand free for some other task. To her free hand another child clung.
After the briefest Benediction, asking God’s blessing on the food, that Father Matthew could remember from his seminary days, the meal began. Tim went around—important for once—distributing the circles of bread, crusty on the outside, spongy in the centre, so that they made natural receptacles into which Father Matthew, following, could drop—from a ladle which Mistress Captoft had not thought it worthwhile to remove—cubes of meat, some lean, some fat. He had spent an hour carving and chopping and removing bones. It must all be as fair as he could make it. The meat was dished up in a luscious gravy into which onions, long and gently cooked, had disintegrated; there were shreds of finely chopped mint, too, the whole thickened, almost glutinous with flour.
Moving about amongst his young guests, Father Matthew reflected that his fears that after the humble feast he and Tim would have clearing up to do, were completely unfounded. A crumb of bread dropped was instantly retrieved; if a drip of gravy fell a finger dabbled in it, was licked, applied again, licked again until no smear remained. He thought: Well in one thing I was right; they are hungry.
Feed my sheep. Christ had said that. And in his seminary somebody had explained the symbolism of it. Father Matthew had never understood what symbolism meant; but he understood hunger and determined that during this bad time, and in any other bad time, children must be fed. He’d defraud the Peter’s Pence collector, sell his warm cloak and his beautifully embroidered satchel. He’d beg, cajole, threaten.
The candles on the altar took on a brighter glow as the day darkened, prematurely. Snow, looming in the offing for two days, was now about to fall.
He dismissed them with the briefest possible blessing and told them to hurry home. He expected no thanks—his own manners were poor—and was not surprised when they ran off. All except the little girl, Emma Edgar. The baby on her hip had gone to sleep, still sucking a gravy-soaked crust. The other child, crammed and half somnolent, dragged on her hand. Another man would have seen in her, perhaps, the symbolism of womanhood, burdened almost from the first by the claims of the helpless young. But Father Matthew’s mind did not work that way. He said, ‘Run along, Emma. You will be left behind.’
She said, ‘Father. Did you see? She was there, too.’
‘Who?’
‘Our Lady. Just there.’ Having no hand free the child jerked her head towards the slab of black marble, so distinct from the grey stone of the church floor. ‘All blue, with lilies.’
He saw that snowflakes were already falling, big ones drifting down with the apparent idleness that concealed real purpose, so he hurried her along, saying, ‘Yes, yes, my dear child. Now hurry along and catch up with the others. Ask one of the boys to give your little brother a pig-a-back ride.’
Then he turned back and looked at the black marble slab which, he had been given to u
nderstand, covered the last resting place of the Lady Sybilla, Master Tallboys’ mother, dead and buried in old Father Ambrose’s time; her death, if recorded at all, was recorded on a page in the Parish Book, so over-scribbled as to be illegible. For a grown woman, even a very small woman, the black slab was, Father Matthew thought, quite inadequate. More like a child’s grave covering. No mark identified it. Sir Godfrey, ravaged by grief—and remorse—had complained about his sweet Sybilla lying under cold stone: Tana had taken this literally and believed that his grief, all that now stood between him and her, might be eased if Sybilla lay under marble. So Henry had been commissioned to buy marble and the only piece in Baildon was this, left over from a job the stone-mason had just completed. The lack of inscription was due to the fact that, guided by old Father Ambrose, Sir Godfrey’s memorial to Sybilla had taken a more practical shape—the restoration of the church, the proper furnishing of the altar.
Father Matthew did not know that Sybilla had always brought what flowers she had to the church—a custom kept up by Griselda, faithful imitator; but he did know that lilies were the flowers most closely associated with Our Lady, even called by her name, Madonna lilies. And blue was her colour. He did not doubt that Emma Edgar had seen a vision. And what about those white flowers, springing up over-night at the edge of the onion bed? A sign of approval of what he was doing and intended to go on doing.
The thought flittered through his mind that the vision might be used to advantage; people would come to see the place and hope to see what Emma Edgar had seen; they would leave gifts on the black slab. Many places of pilgrimage had grown from such humble beginnings.
But the first person who must be informed was his Bishop and Father Matthew shrank from another interview with that unfriendly man: he would not believe; he would mock; he would say: Last time it was a witch in your parish, now it is a child who sees visions! There was a further consideration. Suppose the Bishop believed and the word spread and people came with their presents; in no time at all, Father Matthew would find himself pushed aside. He could not actually be displaced; only an act of gross immorality could rob him of his living but a man—or more than one man—with smoother manners and more learning would be appointed as custodians of the shrine. What little power he now had would be lessened and his plans would come to nothing.