The Ballad of John Clare

by Hugh Lupton

  “Come on.”

  They entered the wood. The trail of flattened flowers led to the clearing. There was a scene of devastation. Bluebells, campions, and white deadnettles had been trodden into the soft earth, there were heaps of wood chippings and every leaf was white with a layer of sawdust like flour in the workings of a mill. The air was full of the smell of sap and bruised greenery.

  “The woodmen have been hard at it.”

  Two great oak trunks, pale and stripped of bark, lay side by side the length of the clearing, like the naked legs of a felled giant. Lying across them were the drying, curled lengths of their bark.

  John stroked them:

  “Brandy-snaps for Tom Hickathrift.”

  Wisdom sniffed them:

  “Ay, but wanting in sweetness.”

  The fallen ladder was lying at the foot of a huge oak whose trunk rose twenty feet before its first branch jutted out from it. Thirty feet higher again it divided into two great knotted, gnarled boughs. John and Wisdom sheltered their eyes from the sun. In the crutch between the boughs they could see a ragged, slovenly nest of sticks and stems.

  “There it is.”

  John whistled between his teeth.

  “Tom Dolby must have been hungry if he reckoned he could climb up there.”

  Wisdom peered up through the leaves.

  “Ay, but an empty belly will go to any length to fill itself, John.”

  And John nodded, for he remembers well enough the hard times when a slice of bread and some dripping begged from a farm-house kitchen was all the comfort he had.

  Together John and Wisdom lifted the ladder and leaned it against the trunk. The top rung was level with the first branch. John picked up a stick with a spray of wilting leaves at the end of it.

  “You’ll need something to keep the birds away.”

  Wisdom took it and tucked it into his belt.

  Overhead there was a sudden shrill, melancholy mewing.

  “Peeeeio … …peeeeio.”

  From high above the tree-tops of the wood a buzzard was flying downwards with slow, measured flaps of its wings. It glided across the clearing to the nest with something yellow hanging limp and bloody from its talons. They could see the ribbed markings of its fanned tail feathers.

  “Peeeeio.”

  Its mate answered from the nest.

  John whispered:

  “Leave them one egg.”

  Wisdom took off his boots and laid them side by side at the foot of the tree. He adjusted the rope over his shoulder.

  “Ay, I’ll leave them one brother. Now, hold the ladder steady.”

  He climbed the first rungs and as soon as his feet were at eye-level John stepped forward to grip the sides of the ladder. When he’d got to the top of the ladder Wisdom swung the rope and threw the looped end over a branch high above his head. He fed the rope upwards until he could catch the swinging lowering loop again. He threaded the end of the rope through the loop and pulled it tight around the branch. Then he climbed the rope, with his curled toes to the rough bark, putting one hand over the other until he came to a branch below the one his rope was secured to. He curled a leg over the branch and pulled himself up so that he was sitting on it. Then, gripping the bark with his fingertips and the branch with his feet he pulled himself upright.

  He loosened the rope. He unthreaded the loop and threw it over a higher branch. He threaded it and pulled it tight. Again and again he scrambled from branch to branch. John watched him disappearing and reappearing among the green leaves as he clambered higher and higher into the tree.

  As Wisdom drew close to the nest the mother buzzard shrilled with alarm. She beat her wings and flew up. She circled the tree, mewing with agitation.

  John stepped back into the clearing. He could see Wisdom more clearly now. He was standing on a branch just below the divide of the two boughs.

  The nest was at shoulder height. Wisdom could see into its soft hollow, lined with grass and wool and lichens. And lying snug in its shallow cup there were four streaked and mottled eggs. He lifted an arm and reached into the nest.

  It was then the birds attacked, swooping and shrilling. With one hand Wisdom pulled the stick from his belt and waved it in the air to keep the buzzards at bay. With the other he lifted the eggs. They were as big as chicken’s eggs and warm against his palm. His knees were gripping the trunk of the tree. One of the birds screeched into his face. He pushed the eggs into his shirt, teetered backwards, dropped the stick and seized a branch to steady himself. Talons sharp as needles tore at his forehead. The blood poured into his eyes and blurred his sight. He punched the bird away. He had three eggs.

  He swung down from branch to branch, the furious birds circling and crying and worrying him with sudden swoops and sallies. But it was hard for them to get close now that he was enfolded in greenery.

  He dropped the rope to the ground. Soon his swinging legs met the top rung of the ladder. He broke another branch and held it ready, but the buzzards were circling the tree, crying most pitiful.

  John came forward to hold the ladder steady. By the time Wisdom reached the ground the mother had settled on the one solitary egg that had been left to her.

  John looked at his friend. Wisdom’s black hair was tousled and tangled with twigs and leaves. The blood was trickling down his nose. He pulled a rag from his pocket and wiped it away. Then he looked at John, his brown eyes shining beneath blood-caked eyebrows, and grinned a lop-sided grin of such deep merriment that John could not help but laugh aloud and punch Wisdom’s shoulder.

  Wisdom lifted his fists.

  “Easy John.”

  Then he patted the bulge beneath his shirt above his belt.

  “Be careful where you put your punches.”

  They both sat down on the end of one of the pale stripped trunks. Wisdom dipped his hand into his shirt and when he pulled it out his fingers were curled around an egg. John cupped his hands and Wisdom put it gently into the nest of pink calloused skin.

  “One ….two …three …”

  John felt their smooth, warm strangeness against his palms. He studied the red-purple mottlings on the white shells that had the faint green of a duck’s egg. He soaked in their beauty.

  “Now put them back!”

  He was speaking only half in jest.

  It was Wisdom’s turn to punch.

  “That’s one and sixpence you’re holding in your hands bau, that’s eighteen penny pots of ale. We shall get ourselves chirping merry tonight.”

  “Ay, give me your rag.”

  John slid off the trunk onto the ground. He set down the eggs. He pulled up some moss. He stretched out Wisdom’s blood soaked rag. He cushioned the eggs with moss and wrapped them up. Wisdom took the soft bundle and put it back into his shirt. He hid Ismael Boswell’s rope under a tangle of ivy.

  “Let’s go to Milton Hall and claim our prize.”

  *******

  All along the Marholm road they were chewing lumps of dry bread that John had brought in his pocket. After a while they came to a beech tree that threw its shade across the rutted road. They pulled the soft new leaves from it and laid them on their crusts. They bit leaf and bread together and chewed until their mouths were sweetened with the sharp nutty flavour.

  At the edge of Hayes Wood there was a scrubby heath of broom, hawthorn, hazel, whin and blackthorn, tangled with brambles and briars.

  John turned to Wisdom:

  “How would you like to see something not many clap eyes on?”

  Wisdom winked:

  “What, naked women John, takin’ a plunge and then running to dry themselves, then lying in the sun …and lovely Mary Joyce spreading her legs in the middle of ‘em …?”

  “What squit you talk.”

  “What then?”

  “Put the eggs safe, here on this tussock.”

  Wisdom took the bundle from his shirt and set it down in the long grass.

  “When I was at old Merrishaw’s I found it here one afternoo
n when I cut free from school …and year after year they seek the same solitudes, I’ll warrant it’s here yet.”

  “What are ye rabbiting on about John?”

  “Shhhhhh.”

  “It’d better be good.”

  John got down onto his hands and knees and Wisdom followed. They pushed through the scratching blackthorn into a waste of dead leaves. They crawled on until a wall of hazel blocked their way. John parted the branches and clambered through.

  “John, you didn’t tell me you’ve been hob-nobbin’ with boggarts and todloweries. Well, they say they brew a fierce ale ….”

  “Shhhhh.”

  There was thin grass beyond, and a cluster of cuckoo-pints with their spotted leaves. John turned to Wisdom, crouching like a creature in his lair.

  “A body could die here and never be found.”

  “Now I understand John, you plan to cut my throat and keep all them eighteen pennies for your own good self …”

  He loosened the neck of his shirt, gulped and whispered:

  “Spare me John Clare, I only buttered her once …and that was by mistake.”

  John laughed. Wisdom looked about himself. John could see writ on his face that the place didn’t hold much allure for him, save only if he needed somewhere to lay low from the law.

  “Hey John, you could pass a happy day here – racing pismires.”

  Suddenly above their heads there came a song of alarm. A small brown bird was hopping from branch to branch. John smiled:

  “Ah, there she flits, we ain’t far away.”

  John crawled forwards and the bird’s song stopped as sudden as it had started.

  “We must be close, she always holds her breath when someone draws close.”

  He lifted his arm and pointed to a pair of rotten whitethorn stulps, pressed side by side, surrounded by tall grass.

  “What?”

  John crawled closer. He pulled a tangle of brambles to one side.

  “Look.”

  Between the stulps there was a cluster of dead oak leaves. It was only when Wisdom came close and looked down from above that he saw, deep-bedded inside there was a nest of moss and wool and grass ….and lying at the bottom of it six little eggs of a deep green-brown. John whispered:

  “Nightingale.”

  Instinctively Wisdom lowered his hand to scoop up the eggs, but John gripped his arm.

  “Leave these ones be.”

  Wisdom looked into his friend’s face and saw a resolution he would not mock nor challenge, for in it he saw what he loved in John Clare.

  “Ay brother.”

  He lifted his arm and turned from the nest.

  “I understand thee.”

  They made their way back between the hazel branches and through the thorn, and as they did so the mother bird began to sing again as though it was melody not air that she breathed. As though she had held her breath until she could hold it no longer and now was gasping in lung-fulls of song.

  Once they were back on the road Wisdom put the buzzards’ eggs into his shirt and they continued through Marholm and then turned their faces southwards towards Milton Hall. When they reached the western gate at Stamford Lodge Wisdom stopped.

  “I’ve played my part bau, the next is yours.”

  He handed the eggs across to John.

  “I’ll be waitin’ for you.”

  He sat himself down at the edge of the lane and pulled a broken clay pipe from his pocket.

  “I’m made uneasy John, by that Wishengro as wishes me ill. You’ll fare better on your own.”

  He pulled out a tinder box and struck a flame. A curl of smoke rose from the bowl of his pipe.

  “Good luck brother.”

  John nodded. Wisdom, in a cloud of smoke, slipped behind a clump of trees, patted down the grass and stretched out on the ground.

  John, with the bundle in his hands, made his way across the wooded park towards Milton Hall.

  *******

  “It’s Bill Henderson you’ll be after.”

  One of the grooms pointed towards a broad door that stood half open beyond the stables. Nailed to it, with their wings stretched out, were the dried up carcasses of a heron, a couple of kites and a barn-owl, remnants of the last season’s keeping. John crossed the cobbled enclosure and knocked. The stiff carcasses rattled and whispered with the strike of his fist.

  The Head Keeper, William Henderson, was cleaning the Earl’s sporting guns. He was sitting in the sunlight with one of them laid across his knee. The others lay side by side on a wide wooden table. He was still dressed in his Sunday best, with an old leather apron over his claret livery. Beside the guns his prayer book sat on a corner of the table. Behind him row upon row of traps and snares were hanging from iron hooks on the wall.

  He lifted his grizzled head, took off his spectacles, and nodded to John:

  “What are you after lad?”

  John held out the bundle he was holding in his hands:

  “I’ve brought some buzzard’s eggs.”

  Bill Henderson got to his feet. He laid the gun down beside the others, as tenderly as a mother might lay a new-born babe in its cradle.

  “Let’s be havin’ a look then.”

  John set the bundle gently on the table and began to unfold Wisdom’s blood-stained rag. Bill Henderson waved his hands at him:

  “Now, now, you keep your filth away from these guns … take them up to the far end of my table.”

  John lifted them and set them down again. When he’d unfolded the rag and revealed the cluster of three eggs wrapped in moss, Bill Henderson picked them up and weighed them in his palm. He put them down and put his spectacles back onto his nose. He leaned forwards and peered down at them.

  “Ay, these have the look of buzzard’s eggs …but we must make sure of it before I part with the Earl’s money. First we’ll put them under the pump to ascertain that you ain’t painted a clutch of hen’s eggs …for I’ve had village lads try that caper afore …then we’ll set them against the Earl’s collection and make certain-sure. Follow me.”

  John followed him to the stable pump.

  “You work the pump arm I’ll watch the eggs.”

  John moved the pump arm up and down and as the water glugged and spurted Bill Henderson held each egg in turn under its torrent. The colours stayed firm.

  “Good, good. Now come with me.”

  He put the eggs into the pocket of his apron.

  John followed him to the back of Milton Hall. They made their way through the kitchen. Bill Henderson pushed open a door and suddenly the stone flags of the floor gave way to carpeted corridors. There was a wooden box full of leather slippers.

  “Boots off lad, stocking feet from here onward.”

  John pulled off his boots.

  “I ain’t got any stockings.”

  His bare feet were stained brown from the leather and were black with dirt between the toes. Bill looked at them and shook his head most sorrowful.”

  “These won’t do at all ….they’ll have to be washed. Back to the pump lad.”

  They went outside again. This time Bill Henderson worked the pump and John held each foot in turn under the chill water.

  “That’s more like it …”

  They went back to the kitchen. Bill nodded to the great open fire.

  “Dry them off.”

  John sat on a wooden stool and stretched his feet out to the heat as the cooks bustled about on either side of him. All around him copper pans of all shapes and sizes hung from the walls, polished as bright as mirrors and reflecting the flickering light. As soon as John’s feet were dry Bill threw him a pair of slippers.

  “Try these for size, they’ll fit you close enough I reckon.”

  John pulled the slippers over his feet and followed the Head Keeper through a maze of corridors. They came to a white door with a polished brass knob. Bill turned it and the door swung open.

  In front of him John saw a great hall, and at the far end of it a curving stairc
ase of polished oak. Portraits of men and women in gilded frames were hanging from the walls, their eyes stern or solemn or amused in equal measure. He stood dumb-founded, in amaze, as though he had stumbled into the court of Queen Mab, or had entered the pages of one of his chap-books: Beauty and the Beast perhaps, or Mister Fox. This was beyond all he’d ever known. For a moment he could not move.

  “Come on lad.”

  Bill Henderson broke the enchantment. He strode across the hall and climbed the stairs. John followed.

  Suddenly there was a commotion. Two little children with long curling hair, both dressed in linen smocks so that it was hard to tell whether they were boys or girls, burst out of a room and chased one another headlong down the stairs. Behind them came a harassed woman dressed in fine rustling silks. She hurried towards John, who stood aside to let her pass. For one moment she paused and looked him up and down with such an expression of distaste writ upon her features that John wished, for all the world, that he was anywhere in the world but here. Then she tossed her head and was gone.

  At the head of the stairs there was another door, Bill Henderson pushed it open and disappeared inside. John followed. Wonder followed wonder. He found himself in a study with great windows looking out across the park. There were shelves lined with leather-bound books, more than John had ever seen in the bookshops of Stamford where he has pressed his face to the glass many times and felt the hollow promise of a labourer’s wage mocking his ambition.

  It was to a polished wooden chest of shallow drawers that Bill Henderson made his way. Each drawer was marked with a letter of the alphabet. He took the little ivory handles of the drawer marked ‘B’ and slid it open. Beneath a sheet of glass there were birds eggs in rows, laid in nests of green felt, each with its label. Bill ran his finger down the glass:

  “Bittern, blackbird, black-cap, brambling, bullfinch, bunting …buzzard. Here we are lad, now then …”

  He reached into his apron pocket and pulled out one of John’s eggs. He laid it on the glass. The two matched perfectly.

  “Ay lad, there’s no denying it. ‘Tis a buzzard and you shall be paid according.”

  John looked down at the rows of eggs, every one of them was known to him, but he’d never seen them laid in rows before, like soldiers outside the barrack gate.