by Norah Lofts
He had his share of peasant shrewdness as well as the credulity, stubbornness, conservatism of his breed; better not start anything of which the outcome was uncertain, better not say anything not absolutely necessary.
The black horse, his first exuberance expended, settled down to a steady trot which ate up the miles. But now the short day was ending and Joanna realised that she had not—as she had hoped—covered the distance in one swift ride. She was still in unknown country and at every crossroads was obliged to rein in and ask direction; worthless, because so far she had not encountered anyone who had ever heard of Baildon. On such a bitter day only people who were compelled to venture out were abroad; a woman feeding some cooped hens, a man milking a goat, a boy scattering scanty wisps of hay to some sheep in a bare pasture. She did not ask at houses because that meant dismounting and that she had done only once, for a most necessary purpose, and she was so stiff with cold that getting out of the saddle and then back again was painful, even perilous. So much so that at a place where a stream crossed the road, much like the water-splash in the lane to Intake, she let the horse drink but did not get down to drink herself.
At each divergence of the road she was obliged to rely upon her own judgement, holding to east as well as she could. She remembered that on that miserable journey to Stordford she and the bishop’s man had stayed for a night at a religious house which had a hostel for travellers; but either she had not reached it yet or, taking the wrong road, had missed it.
She knew from her experience of Stordford that large establishments kept open house for bona fide travellers, but although she saw several big houses, windows already lighted from within, she dared not ask hospitality; people in such places formed a close-knit network and she still feared pursuit, though she thought that thanks to the black horse she had, so far, outdistanced it. She knew that she was a conspicuous figure, dressed for indoors on such a day, a girl riding what was plainly a man’s horse.
And, in the fading light, the horse was becoming troublesome. Under-exercised since his arrival at Stordford he had accepted her as someone knowledgeable, smelling right and prepared to let him gallop. Now something inside his shapely head informed him that he was not being taken either towards his own stable or the one which was his temporary home. He expressed his disapproval of this procedure by tossing his head and occasionally jibbing, trying to turn.
Another crossroads. There’d been no sun all day, yet cloud-blotted as the sky was, there had been just that difference in the quality of the light to distinguish east from west, north from south. That shadowy guidance was now lost. A choice of ways and nobody to ask. Wrong! Out of the greyness more solid shapes took form; a well-head, a man with a bucket.
She asked the question she had already asked so many times: Which road for Baildon? And this time instead of the—Dunno; never heard of it—she received, in turn, a question.
‘Would it be Bury St. Edmund’s way?’
‘Yes,’ she said eagerly. ‘They lie in the same direction.’
‘Then I can tell you. I been there. Bury, not Baildon. Carried my boy there; years ago when he was a bit of a cripple… ’
Joanna had no time or inclination to listen to the marvellous story of how a crippled boy, carried to St. Edmund’s shrine, had been miraculously cured and was able to walk home.
‘Which way?’
The man moved his free arm and then said, ‘No. You and me’s facing different ways. Let’s see.’ He turned himself about. ‘To your right,’ he said. ‘Then sharp left. It’s a lonely road.’
It was also, mercifully, sheltered; great thickets of trees on either side acted as screens from the wind. Though she was now so cold as to be almost numb; the only part of her body that had any feeling left was where, between saddle and stirrup, her legs were warmed by the horse. She thought what a fool she’d been to rush out so ill-equipped, yet had she lingered to clothe herself properly she might have been intercepted, prevented from setting out at all.
Could horses see in the dark? One might think so from the way in which Henry’s old horse jogged home in the winter afternoons but then he might know his way. How long could a horse go without food? She was reasonably certain that she had snatched this one from his stable before the dilatory, Christmas-season service had reached him. Was his slowing down of pace due to his becoming weak from hunger or to his carefully picking his way. She bent stiffly and made encouraging noises, promising him everything, everything, if only he’d keep going and get her home.
Presently she began to worry about that turn to the left. Would she miss it?
At Stordford she had not been missed immediately. Lady Agnes knew what green venison could do. Then as time went on she suspected that Joanna had been dragged in to help with the wedding preparations. They’d need fresh garlands and even a girl in disgrace could be allowed to prick her fingers on holly. The fire burned low and presently her bladder needed relief. She began to shout and was either unheard or ignored. Weeping with rage and self-pity, she reached for her stick. It was no longer of use to her but she cherished a half-hope that one day she might hobble again and it always stood propped within easy reach. She seized it and beat upon the floor, upon the frame of her bed.
It was some time before the noise she made was noticed and then only by a servant, half tipsy, as was the usual state at this season.
‘Where is the demoiselle Joanna?’ Lady Agnes demanded. The woman stared stupidly. How could she be expected to know? She rendered the essential service and went away.
In due course one of the pages brought up the dinner—prepared for two, the old woman noticed. She put the question to him and he said, ‘With the others, I suppose.’
‘Ask your mistress to come to see me. At once!’
In the hall, dinner was already served at the high table and at his place, below the squires, above the servants, his own awaited him. Despite the at once, he saw nothing very urgent about the message and decided to eat before delivering it. Then for a time he could not find Lady Grey who, in her own words, was obliged to be everywhere at once, just now. A wedding at such short notice took a great deal of organising. When the message reached her she went at once and found the old woman alone, shedding tears of self-pity, rage and frustration. The fire was almost dead, now, and although the tray had been placed in its usual place, on a table near the bed, much of its contents was out of reach of Lady Agnes’ restricted motion.
Curiously, the urgent question was not immediately asked. Lady Agnes had never liked her niece-by-marriage and now, in her disturbed state, embarked upon a virulent, if slightly incoherent denunciation. It was deliberate neglect; to place the girl here so that servants thought they need do nothing. And then to withdraw her, leaving a poor bedridden woman to die of cold and hunger. Just because she had had a visit from the Chaplain, they thought, no doubt that she had made her will and the sooner she died the better. Well, they were wrong; she had made no will and, when she did, this piece of ill-treatment would be remembered.
Aunt Agnes must be soothed. With her own hands Lady Grey mended the fire, promised food, freshly cooked, to be brought up at once; denied all blame for what had happened, accusing Joanna as fiercely as she had herself been accused. Another trick, typical of that false little jade, to pretend to accept banishment from the hall, so cheerfully pretend to be so dutiful and then to do this. She was skulking somewhere. She would be found, severely reprimanded.
Only half-pacified, still unwilling to believe that Joanna, whom she liked, of whom she had become as fond as the limited emotion of old age would allow, had deserted her, Lady Agnes calmed herself enough to say, ‘She may have taken a fit and fallen somewhere. She looked—just before she left me—very strange.’
‘In all her time here, she has never had a fit to my knowledge. She is capable of pretending that, too!’ Horrible, hateful girl. And too leniently dealt with, Lady Grey now realised. She should have been cuffed and shaken, stood with her hands on her head, facing the wa
ll until she dropped, as Maude and Beatrice had been. But I was in a difficult position, Lady Grey thought, excusing her weak handling—she was neither my child, nor my legal ward. She chose, at this moment, to ignore the fact that from the very first there’d been something which had warned her that Joanna was not Maude, or Beatrice…
Even now she was not, however, sufficiently aware of the difference to consider the possibility that the hateful girl had, in mid-winter, left Stordford alone. She was hiding, sulking somewhere, doing her clever best—and even Lady Grey could not deny that in certain ways the wretch was clever—to make a confusion.
Outside the window the fading light changed; not a brightening exactly, a lightening. The first snowfall of the year. How wise to have settled upon Twelfth Night!
Downstairs again, giving orders, arranging everything, Lady Grey said, ‘Beatrice, go up to Aunt Agnes. She needs help; all her jewels are scattered on the counterpane; help her to sort them and put them away.’
Then followed the resolute but discreetly conducted hunt for Joanna. Discreet because Lady Grey did not wish the name to be mentioned in Lord Shefton’s hearing; once it had been erased from that marriage settlement, and Maude’s substituted, it would have been in the worst of taste to remind him. So she shut him away with Maude, her father and a waiting woman named Mabel to play with the Tarot cards while the rest of the household played another game. Not hunt the slipper… not simple hide-and-seek but, under Lady Grey’s expert handling, just a game. Find Joanna.
Joanna was not found. What was presently discovered was that Sir Gervase Orford’s best, big black horse was missing.
Sir Gervase cuffed his squire about the head but otherwise took his loss lightly, saying, ‘Whoever snatched Blackbird will have his hands full and by tomorrow will be only too glad to turn him loose. The best example of biting the feeding hand I ever met with.’
Only Lady Grey made any connection between the disappearance of the girl and the horse. And, seeing further than Sir Barnabas she broke down, once the privacy of the connubial chamber was achieved.
Since her marriage she had never been the victim of self-pity; she regarded herself as a most fortunate woman but now she was sorry for herself.
‘Just when we were all so happy, this must happen. And you know what will be said—unless she is found and brought back immediately. That we so resented her behaviour—as regards Lord Shefton—that we bore on her too hard. Or even… even that for the sake of that half-dowry lodged with you, we did away with her. Such stories are not unknown. Years,’ she said, weeping, ‘years upon years, I have done my best. And now this! More than any mortal should be asked to bear, having done her best.’
Sir Barnabas said, ‘My love; you are over-wrought. Too much excitement in a short time. Too much to do. Such fancies, indeed.’ He patted her and made soothing noises, behaving towards her much as he would have done to a startled horse. It did not occur to him to feel any compunction about having left everything to her, even the breaking of unwelcome news to Lord Shefton. Gertrude had always handled such things, leaving him to be merry and carefree. When she continued to fret, weeping in the graceless way of one to whom tears did not come easily, he began to think about age; that process so rightly known as the change, when amiable women turned shrew and shrewish ones torpid, when slender figures thickened and sturdy ones shrivelled. Being fond of her, he thought: Poor dear. And made up his mind to be patient with her. ‘Come, come,’ he said, ‘calm yourself. At first light tomorrow, mounted men shall go in search of the little hussy. She cannot have got far. In this weather.’
The snow, which had begun in the afternoon, had thickened as night fell and the wind veered to the north and by morning Stordford and all the surrounding country lay deep under snow. Two feet deep, more where it had drifted. Any kind of search or pursuit was impossible now.
At Intake, though the clouds still threatened, the east wind still triumphed; as the knowledgeable said, it was too cold for snow. But it would fall as soon as the wind changed. Henry knew that he must make the best of this time. Take a sack of wheat to the Nettleton mill and while it was being ground, drive on into Baildon, where surely the bakers would be back at work.
Knight’s Acre had known its ups and downs but Henry could not remember a shortage of bread. Let this Christmas season get over and the first thing he would do would be to hunt for a good sensible woman.
Heaving the sack of wheat into the waggon caused a pang which exacerbated his general feeling that something was wrong with the world. With him? So when Godfrey asked, ‘Can Guard come?’ the answer was sharp.
‘No, he cannot. He stays here and does his duty. If you can’t bear an hour’s separation, you stay, too.’
The dog was already ruined; actually sleeping on the boy’s bed.
‘Guard, you guard,’ Godfrey said, climbing into the waggon. He wanted to go with his father, out of temper as he seemed this morning. And he cherished a secret hope that during their absence something might happen to prove that Guard was not ruined. A wolf perhaps… Unlikely; he’d never seen one himself.
Like most other people who did business with Henry, the Nettleton miller respected him without liking him much. A just man, a civil man, but cold and aloof.
‘I’ll call back,’ Henry said. ‘I have to go to Baildon to buy bread.’
‘Buy bread!’ What an astonishing thing, for a man who grew his own wheat.
‘The woman who had charge of my house left—and took the maidservant with her,’ Henry said, giving an explanation, not a bit of gossip or a complaint.
The miller cast a glance at the lowering sky and said, ‘There’s no need for that, Master Tallboys. My missus is baking this very minute. She’d be glad to let you have a loaf or two.’
‘I wonder if she’d tell me how to make it.’
Again astonished, the miller said. ‘I’m sure she would. Glad to. Though I say it, she’s a dab hand at a loaf.’
‘Then I’ll go in, if I may.’
The miller looked at Godfrey and said, rather diffidently, ‘Would the young master like to come with me and see the mill at work?’
‘Oh, yes please,’ Godfrey said, answering for himself. Moving a bit stiffly, Henry went towards the kitchen door, cursing Bert Edgar. Whatever the injury was, it would seem to heal itself, he’d forget about it until he lifted something heavy. Then it seemed to re-open and pain him again for a day or two. There was no outward sign of injury and several applications of Walter’s horse liniment had no effect at all. When the pain was there it was there until it chose to go. Most jobs, thank God, did not provoke it; he could lift a forkful of hay, a shovelful of manure without strain.
The miller’s wife welcomed him warmly. She knew him, as she knew all the mill’s customers by sight and by name, and cherished a kind of romantic feeling for him. She thought him extremely handsome and his expression, which her husband thought surly, she thought was merely grave and rather sad. Not unlike—God forgive her if it was blasphemous—the picture of Christ on the wall of Nettleton church. (Griselda, years earlier, had felt precisely the same about Henry’s father and the feeling had saved his life by prompting her to do what she could for him when he was thrown out into an inn-yard barn to die.)
This morning she thought he looked, not less handsome but less well than usual. Certainly thinner. More lined. The man she saw most of—her husband—weighed, on his own scales, just over fourteen stones and had a broad rosy face. You couldn’t actually say that Master Tallboys looked pale, his face was too weathered for that, but she thought, in a slightly muddled way, that if he could look pale he would look pale. Maybe the cold.
‘Sit here, by the fire, Master Tallboys,’ she said and thought of mulled ale and ginger cakes, luxuries that a prosperous, childless couple could well afford.
Henry explained what he wanted of her—and his voice, which she had never heard close-to before, was just what she expected—beautiful.
‘My bread’s in the oven now,
’ she said, almost as though in getting it in so soon she had been at fault, ‘but of course, I could tell you.’
‘I should be deeply obliged.’
‘We’ll have something to warm us as we talk,’ she said.
Not that she needed warming; but he certainly did.
As he accepted her hospitality and listened to her talk, Henry looked about him and saw how comfortable everything was. It was a kitchen; cooking hearth and wall oven side by side along one wall, shelves of mugs and other crocks and kitchen tools along another. But because it was living room, too, the settles on either side of the hearth were cushioned and the table, now that the bread-making was over, wore a gay scarlet cloth.
He realised that in his own home two ways of life had always run alongside, the life of the kitchen, the life in the hall. Usefulness on one side of the wall, comfort on the other. Never really united as they were here. Vaguely he meditated the possibility of bringing his own cushioned settle into his kitchen but the thought of lifting made his pain worse. The sense of failure—never too far away—clamped down. He’d made a mess of everything he undertook. And, remembering the reproachful look his son had shot at him, as he climbed into the waggon after hugging the dog, he was in a fair way towards making a mess of parenthood, too.
‘They should be about done, now,’ the miller’s wife said. ‘I’ll show you how to test a loaf.’ She did so and was satisfied. Then, with an air of modest achievement, she withdrew all the loaves and ranged them, even and golden and sweet-smelling, on the table. ‘There’s another thing to remember, Master Tallboys. They must be quite cold before they’re stored away.’