To Sleep No More

by Deryn Lake

  ‘Debora!’ he said in a low voice. ‘Give the child to a servant. I want to speak to you privately — now!’

  She gave him a look that withered his heart; so full of repugnance and fear that, had he not been so angry, he could have wept.

  ‘Why do I repel you?’ he thundered, not caring who heard. ‘You were willing enough once. Do you remember — or is it something you would prefer to forget?’ He caught hold of her arm, pulling her close to him and disregarding the fact that the baby had started to cry. ‘Well?’

  She wriggled free. ‘That was a moment’s madness, Robert. I am a respectable wife, not a whore!’

  And with that Debora thrust the baby into Richard’s arms and ran off so fast that for a moment he stood transfixed. Then he collected himself and hurried into the house to deposit the frightened infant on an equally startled woman servant, before he sprinted through the trees and down the slope after her.

  As he ran, he thought, ‘I’ll rape the bitch. I cannot stand this a moment longer.’

  And all the time his heart was pounding with anger and misery, the turmoil of every emotion he had endured for the past few months.

  ‘If Debora won’t have me I’ll kill her,’ his thoughts ran wildly on. ‘Or else I will take a mistress and never put my hands on the slut again.’

  Richard stopped short, his mind suffused once more with sudden and unwelcome thoughts of Jenna. He could not think why he had hated her all these years, when really she was so beautiful and desirable.

  He must make amends to her, he thought. Perhaps take the odd gift of food and other produce. Surely he had an ornate comb somewhere that had once belonged to his mother? How well it would look with those lustrous black tresses looped about it.

  Richard started to run again, but with less enthusiasm than a moment before. If his frigid wife wished to elude him, then so be it. He knew a dark-haired witch girl with more charm in her little finger than insipid Debora Weston could aspire to in a lifetime.

  *

  That evening the valley was green and gold, the river water cool and clear, as it tumbled over little falls of rock, then skimmed like cream above pebbles the colour of milk. In its depths the calm, white clouds that passed overhead as gently as brides to an altar, were reflected like snowflakes.

  Benjamin, crossing the moat at Sharnden and wondering, as always, why this particular place gave him so much pleasure, decided to take the high track to Maighfield, where he could look down upon the Valley of Byvelham and marvel, yet again, at its unique beauty.

  Beneath him fields, every soft colour from jasper to emerald, swept away to hills that possessed at one moment the shade of plums and, at another, the sombre hues of ink and indigo. It was a marvellous evening; every scent, every sight, quite perfect, and somewhere a lark chanted a song of rapture to complete it all.

  Benjamin reined in his horse and looked about, glad that he must plunge down into the valley’s lovely heart as part of his journey home. From this vantage point, with the sheep little white dots and the cattle mere round brown stones, he saw that one dot, larger than the rest, was moving rapidly in his direction. As it drew nearer he saw it was a woman panting up the hill.

  With a lurch of his heart Benjamin recognised Debora and realised that, for the first time since their parting, he was alone with her. Full of misgivings, he walked his horse forward.

  As soon as she got within reasonable distance he noticed that she was not only out of breath but crying, her hair hanging in disarray down her back and the skirt of her dress ripped to festoons.

  ‘What is it?’ he called, urging the nag to the trot. ‘Debora, what has happened? Have you been attacked?’

  At the sound of his voice she stopped her frantic progress and stood, gasping for breath, watching his approach. Then answered, without so much as a greeting, ‘I’m running away from Richard,’ and burst into another flood of tears.

  The carpenter’s heart sank even further. He had no wish to be involved in Debora’s matrimonial difficulties. Not knowing quite what to say he remained silent, dismounting slowly and standing beside his horse.

  ‘Take me home with you,’ the girl continued hysterically. ‘Benjamin, you must protect me.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he answered, aware of his own abruptness. ‘Debora, you are Goodman Maynard’s wife. If he is being cruel to you, only your family can intervene.’

  She gave him a bitter glance, smearing the back of her hand across her face.

  ‘How typical of you,’ she said. ‘Benjamin Mist the dreamer. Always so kind and good — but prepared to do nothing.’

  He smarted beneath the insult, aware, perhaps, that there was a grain of truth in it.

  ‘What do you want of me?’ he asked grudgingly.

  ‘That you take me to my brothers. My father may have turned me out but they still care for me. They will not stand by and see their sister abused in her own home.’

  ‘I do not want to interfere between man and wife.’

  She gave him a withering glance. ‘Then leave me. I shall walk alone to Cokyngs Mill.’

  Benjamin hesitated, then said reluctantly, ‘No, as you are obviously distressed, I will take you on the nag. But Debora ...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That is all I dare do. You understand?’

  She laughed bitterly. ‘Yes, I understand only too well. We were once betrothed — and you said you loved me. Now you have married the witch’s niece and everything has changed. The situation is perfectly clear.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

  ‘You will find out in time, no doubt,’ Debora answered as he lifted her on to his horse.

  *

  ‘It won’t come off,’ said Agnes, larding the ring with even more goose grease, and tugging at Jenna’s finger. ‘It seems to have settled on your knuckle.’

  ‘It must come off,’ answered her sister, with a note of desperation. ‘It frightens me. I’m sure it isn’t lucky.’

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘In the bluebell wood. It was lying in the dew-pond. It must have been there for centuries, hidden by water or leaves.’

  ‘I wonder who it belonged to.’

  ‘I know,’ answered Jenna softly. ‘I have seen the owner.’

  ‘You mean he is still alive?’

  ‘No. He is long since dead. But he comes to me sometimes. Once he stood outside here, Agnes, and looked at me across the pond. It was a daydream but I had the feeling that you were with him and when he looked at me, his eyes were mine.’

  Agnes looked confused, her mouth dropping a little. ‘I don’t understand. How could I have been with him, when he is a ghost?’

  ‘I don’t know. It is very difficult to comprehend. All of what happens beyond this life is a mystery.’

  The sisters regarded one another silently, until eventually Agnes said, ‘I don’t understand you but I love you, Jenna. You have always been good to me. Would you like me to play just for you?’

  Jenna glanced at the sinking sun and then said, ‘Very quickly, then. Benjamin will be home soon.’

  Agnes picked her lute from the table and began to play but, for once, it was an angry air, full of fire and fury, drowning any sound that Richard Maynard — walking silently from the river and out of the girls’ line of vision — could possibly have made.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Jenna, looking curiously at her sister.

  ‘I’m thinking about Debora. I believe she saddled Goodman Maynard with a bastard.’

  ‘I have never thought the child to be his,’ Jenna answered thoughtfully.

  ‘Poor Richard,’ said Agnes, and as if it were part of her, the lute’s song became sad. ‘I have never liked the man but I would not wish that on him.’

  ‘Nor I.’

  Agnes stopped playing and both girls turned round as from outside came a curious sound like a muffled shriek.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Jenna go
t to her feet and walked round the cottage but there was nobody there, only the wildfowl on the pond and the clumps of trees swaying in the evening breeze.

  ‘It must have been one of the creatures,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Not your ghost come for you?’

  ‘I hope not.’ Jenna kissed Agnes on the cheek. ‘I must go. Give my love to father.’

  ‘You will not stay and see him?’

  ‘No, Benjamin will worry if I am late.’

  And she was gone into the twilight, her black hair floating out on the cold little breeze that had suddenly come up from the river.

  *

  The bluebells that Richard had gathered for his wife drooped in their vase, and the child that she had given to him cried in its sleep. For two days the baby had had neither mother nor father to comfort him. The servants of Baynden, speaking in whispers, could only conjecture that there had been a mighty argument between the tenant and his wife, for some had seen the mistress running off towards the river, and others the master going after her in furious pursuit. After which Goodwife Maynard had never returned and was presently hiding out, so it was said, with her eldest married brother. A situation which, curiously, the master chose to ignore. If the word ignore could be used to describe such behaviour as drinking himself unconscious every night, speaking to nobody, and refusing to eat so much as a crumb.

  The atmosphere in the house was such that the youngest servant girl was in tears most of the day. And the baby’s nurse, not to be outdone, fainted with shock when the master shouted, ‘Take that bastard away from me. I don’t want it anywhere near, do you hear!’

  Excitement supplanted misery at this unguarded remark and it was only a matter of hours before the opinion of Maud was sought.

  ‘I would have thought the facts spoke for themselves,’ she said, nodding wisely and putting her finger to the side of her nose.

  ‘You mean that the baby is not Goodman Maynard’s child?’

  By way of answer Maud asked another question. ‘Was not the Goodwife betrothed to another? And did not that betrothal end suddenly and strangely?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did not Debora marry Richard Maynard in what seemed indecent haste and wasn’t a child born seven months later?’

  ‘You mean ...?’ The nurse clapped her hand over her mouth in delight. ‘You mean it’s ... Benjamin’s?’

  Maud’s brown eyes snapped with triumph. There had not been such a good scandal in the village since Master Tom was seen holding hands with a fellow university student whom he had brought to the palace last Christmas.

  ‘I wonder what Jenna will say when she gets to hear of it?’

  Maud looked very knowing and lowered her voice. ‘I don’t think Jenna is in a position to say anything at all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Years ago I had a nephew that died.’

  Had the servant imagined it or did Maud hesitate minutely over the word nephew?

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I always thought that Jenna’s great-aunt put the eye on him.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  Maud looked slightly flustered as she answered, ‘It was not my affair. But I believed then that I saw the face of evil. And I believe that evil lives on in Alice Casselowe’s niece, and that she has cast a spell of unlawful love on Benjamin Mist.’

  ‘So Debora was forced to marry the master when Benjamin deserted her and left her pregnant?’

  Maud looked triumphant. ‘Of course. But it won’t take long for the truth to come out now. Now that Goodman Maynard has discovered the deception.’

  ‘Well God have mercy on them all.’

  ‘Amen,’ answered Maud piously.

  *

  The carpenter, going about his rounds on the nag, wondered why he suddenly seemed the object of so much interest and presumed it was because he had been seen taking Debora to her brother’s home. Not that he cared what people said, as long as Jenna believed none of it, though he was greatly embarrassed when Debora came to his door in broad daylight.

  He had returned home early to carve a table and, as far as he was aware, no one knew he was there. But Debora obviously did for there she stood, looking more than beautiful in the sunshine, her lips curling strangely as she smiled at him.

  ‘I have come to thank you for helping me the other day.’ Her voice did not sound quite as usual, he thought, having in its depth a throaty — and somehow suggestive — quality.

  ‘Come in. How did you know I was here?’

  ‘I saw you take the shortcut through the woods. I thought I would follow you and pass the time of day.’

  Something about the girl’s manner seemed different to Benjamin, but she came in and sat demurely enough in his favourite chair, looking up at him with a face transformed from the last time he had seen it, so frantic and tear-stained.

  ‘You are still with your brother?’ he ventured.

  ‘Of course,’ came the reply, in that odd low voice. ‘I would not go home to be defiled.’

  ‘Defiled? By your own husband?’

  ‘I do not love him,’ she said, standing up impatiently. ‘In fact I love another, who is far closer to me than he has ever been. But love does not interfere with wanting, does it Benjamin? You of all people should know that. You, who were bewitched into marriage, should know the difference between love and lust.’

  He was aghast, partly because the girl who stood before him had put into words the idea that had been worrying him for months.

  ‘What do you mean, I was bewitched? I love Jenna.’

  Debora laughed, putting her head back so that her throat arched like a swan’s before Benjamin’s unbelieving gaze.

  ‘Naturally. That is all part of the spell under which you have laboured these twelve months past. But, really, it is me you still love, Benjamin. It is me you still want with all your body and mind. It is me who will take you to a paradise that you do not even know exists.’

  She looked up at him and he saw, with a horrified fascination, that her hand had gone to the fastenings of her dress. He realised then that Debora — quiet, innocent Debora — was about to strip naked before him.

  ‘Don’t ...’ he said. But the words died on his lips as his eyes feasted on the curve of her high, tight breasts; the hand-span waist, unchanged by childbirth; the delicate hips and legs.

  ‘Debora,’ he said, then added stupidly, ‘You are very beautiful.’

  ‘Beautiful for you,’ she said, still in that strange deep voice, then without another word sank to the floor. Before he could stop himself, Benjamin, fully dressed, was upon her where she lay, knowing it was madness, lunacy, folly, but unable to resist her. Thus they were, entwined one about the other, moving in relentless rhythm, when Jenna walked through the door and stood gazing down at them in horror.

  ‘I’ll kill you both,’ she said quietly. ‘Do not think that either of you can betray me like this and live.’

  Benjamin had never known greater despair. He was at the climax of lovemaking and for several moments could not move. But when at last he collected himself, it was to see a Jenna transformed. Her features those of another, fierce and hawklike, as she hissed at him, ‘How could you have done this to me? How could you cheapen a love so splendid?’

  At once he felt base, a shoddy thing scrambling to do up its breeches and hanging its head in shame.

  ‘And as for you, you wretched harlot,’ snarled his wife, turning her attention to Debora. ‘You shall leave this house as you stand. Let you run naked through the village and let all turn their eyes upon you and know you for the whore that you are.’

  As she caught the girl by the throat, Benjamin seemed to see Jenna as a tall, young man, a man whose fingers were choking the life from the girl Benjamin had just loved. It was an illusion, of course, for the next second Jenna had abruptly released her and thrown Debora bodily into the street, slamming the door behind her.

  ‘And now, Benjamin Mist,’ she said, white to her throat, ‘it is your turn.
I wish you ill luck. I wish you no happiness. I wish you nothing but misery until your days are over.’

  Without being able to look at her, Benjamin heard her run up the ladder and throw her few clothes into a basket. Then he heard her come down again and take her pestle and mortar. He looked up at last.

  Jenna stood in the doorway, brimming with hatred. ‘So magic served me ill in the end,’ she said. ‘Then so be it. I will never indulge in it again. Be damned to you, Benjamin Mist, for you have brought me down so low that I doubt I will ever raise up again. Let vengeance be wreaked upon you.’

  Benjamin never knew how long he lay on the floor sobbing, hour upon hour after she had gone. Over and over again he repeated, ‘Jenna, come back. Please come back to me. You are all I was born for, we cannot be separated now that I have found you again.’

  Twenty-eight

  To ride out beneath the gentle slopes of the Downs cradling the manor house of Glynde was always pleasurable to Robert Morley. And at no time more so than on a gentle June evening, when the sun caressed the hills as it dipped behind them, throwing patches of colour on to the fields. For here was England at its best. Gone the ugliness and smell of town, the raucous cry of troublemakers and the thrust of thieves. Here was splendour and sweet scents, the high bleat of native sheep, the freedom to ride forth without fear in the heart of the land.

  The Master of Glynde thought back on all that had passed before this moment. The shortcomings in his life, his wasted years, the women who had been and gone. But most of all he thought of his inheritance, and how proud he was now to bear the title; how inspired to tread in the footsteps of those extraordinary men who had gone before.

  Reining his horse in and looking down on his house — a mere dot in the valley’s depths — Robert felt a pride of possession, a pride of place, a pride in the very Englishness of both himself and the scene that lay spread beneath him. He would, at that moment, have laid down his life to preserve the peace and beauty of that little part of England of which he was lucky enough to be Lord of the Manor.

  His thoughts turned to the future, and away from the splendour of his inheritance. As Master it was now his responsibility to marry and produce a legitimate heir, by a respectable wife. Rather reluctantly, Robert’s mind wandered over the eligible women in his circle and then settled on Susanna Hodgson of Framfield, a considerable heiress and at fifteen years old, obviously a good match to make in a year or so.