Mattie the housekeeper had come to the church with the rest. It was she who said, “But what about our Virgin and her baby up on the tower? They’ll be after that, too. I’ve heard it’s happened in other places. On the orders of the king, too, shame on him, and him only a boy, tellin’ us older folk what we can and can’t love! There she be, with her child in her arms, lookin’ out over our roofs and protectin’ us from harm, but they’ll take her away! We’ll never see her again! They’ll smash her!”
“Yes, they will!” Jane remembered what Danny Clay had said in the street at Clicket.
“If they can reach her,” said Will Fuller.
“Well, my ladder’s long enough.” Tammy’s voice was glum. “Couldn’t prune they trees round the churchyard without my long ladder.”
“Then get the damned thing out of sight,” said John Grede roundly. “Put it in a ditch or a hayloft, anywhere! And any other ladders that might be long enough. You, Pete Thatcher!” He pointed at another of his flock. “You’ve got two long ladders—I know you have! Hide them! Are these folk bringing ladders with them, Mistress Allerbrook?”
“I don’t think so. They had one in Minehead but I don’t think they brought any to Clicket. But they’ve got cudgels and staves and some blades, as well.”
“Oh,” said Grede, and now his face was lightened by a smile, “we’re not going to fight them. Hear that, all of you! No resistance. Let them do as they will. Take heed.” He had begun to lead the way around to the stable and its lean-to, but he was talking as he went. “This is what we must do…”
Later, steering Jane into the shelter of the vicarage, he said, “I sometimes think that resourcefulness ought to be accounted among the virtues. With just a little good luck, the things my parishioners treasure will be kept from harm. Here’s my parlour. My housekeeper will bring us something soon. She’s gone back to her kitchen—trying to look ordinary.
“You know,” he added as Jane, who had taken a spade and helped with the frenzied, top-speed digging, sat wearily down in a settle, “this is not too great a disaster. I am not fond of popish images either. Only I didn’t want to go too fast. A good shepherd doesn’t harry his sheep, and vicars are supposed to be like shepherds. Now the images have been removed to protect them, not to harm them, and the villagers are happy with that. They’ll take to a different kind of worship more easily for it. Perhaps the treasures will stay hidden for good now.” He paused, head on one side. “We were only just in time. I think your passionate Protestants are here.”
“Some of them know me!” Jane, also hearing that distant but menacing mutter, was suddenly afraid. “I shouldn’t be seen.”
“Indeed? Then go upstairs and lock yourself into a bedchamber. I doubt they’ll intrude on my private home, but if necessary, I shall say I have a sick maidservant above stairs and that I hope it isn’t the smallpox. I’ve had it and so has my housekeeper but…”
“Another example of resourcefulness!” said Jane, and then, taking his advice, retreated to yet another upper floor.
Afterward, Jane often thought with laughter of that scene in front of the church. Andrew Shearer’s crowd, having discovered that there was little in the church of which they could disapprove, forgathered in front of the vicarage and, as the housekeeper had foreseen, turned their attention to the stone statue in the niche on the tower.
The villagers, who had returned to their various homes and duties, only to leave them again in order to stare at the incomers, were clustering around. John Grede had however ordered them not to resist and they were obeying him, not only with alacrity, but inventiveness. Jane, once again peering with caution from an upstairs window, noticed with delight that almost every North Molton face wore a similar expression. It was one of bovine doltishness, as though the entire population had been suddenly stricken with some form of mental blight.
They had been bright enough earlier, when they were hiding their treasures, but now anyone looking at them might well wonder how any of them ever summoned up enough intelligence to turn a furrow or memorize the paternoster. Will Fuller and Tammy were actually chewing straws.
The intruders, with Andrew Shearer and Danny Clay the most vociferous, were demanding long ladders and the villagers, their faces full of histrionic bewilderment, were turning to each other and muttering and shaking their heads helplessly. A few phrases drifted upward.
“…can’t say as I knows of a ladder that’ud reach that far up…”
“…don’t t’ee recall, that time that storm blew a lot of twigs or summat that stuck on the statue and we wanted to clean it and we couldn’t get up there to do it? Had to wait till the next rainstorm did it for we.”
“…no call for ladders that long, not hereabouts…”
“…didn’t Farmer Weston have one?”
“…you’m a gurt vule. Course he did, and he went to live over the other side of Somerset and took ladders and all with ’un!”
Like Clicket, North Molton had an inn. The innkeeper was in the gathering and was now urging everyone to come back to his hostelry and enjoy some hospitality. They must all be footsore after their long march; he had cider, ale, viands of the best…
His expression was slightly less bovine than most; there was no harm, he seemed to be saying, in looking like a man who knew how to turn an honest penny. Gradually, like an ebbing tide, the crowd receded.
Jane spent the night at the vicarage and rode home the next day, quietly, having let the invaders depart ahead of her. Most of them had found lodgings in the village for the night (“And will be charged high for their beds and breakfasts,” Grede observed). She went to Clicket first, with caution, but saw nothing of them. Perhaps they had gone straight back to Minehead. She told a grateful Father Drew what had happened, stabled Bella, collected Ginger and went home.
Harry gave her a relieved but resentful welcome. Father Drew had sent Biddy up the combe on foot the previous evening to tell Harry where she was, but he had clearly been anxious and certainly not approving.
Andrew Shearer together with half a dozen of his most devoted entourage, including Danny Clay and, oddly, Dorothy Palmer, presented themselves at Allerbrook one hour after Jane herself reached home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Payment in Full
1550
Peggy opened the door to the deputation and was thrust aside as they surged past her. “I couldn’t stop them, Mistress Allerbrook,” she spluttered indignantly, scurrying into the hall after them. “They pushed me!”
They came in exuding menace. Danny Clay slammed the door behind him and barred it from inside. The Allerbrooks were at dinner and Jane was cutting up Harry’s meat. He gaped in alarm and she rose, putting down her knife and placing herself protectively beside him. She signalled to Tobias and Stephen to sit still.
She maintained a calm front, while her brain whirled in panic and her heart galloped like Bella’s hooves when they’d raced into North Molton. She wished Dr. Spenlove were there, but he was still on the other side of the county. Distractedly she thought that Dorothy had indeed grown like her mother, only worse. Mary Stone had been fat, pallid, greedy and inclined to self-righteousness. But she had never been spiteful nor as physically repulsive as her daughter was now. That Dorothy was wearing pink only made the impression more horrible. She looks, thought Jane with distaste, like a pink slug.
Dorothy, however, was looking at Jane with equal loathing and her voice was triumphant as she turned to Andrew Shearer and said, “There she stands. She went to North Molton ahead of you and made sure you’d find nothing. I know she went! Father Drew sent her. His housekeeper Biddy told me afterward. She came to Clicket Hall last evening to see her niece who works there and I exchanged a word or two with her and that’s when she spoke of it.”
“Biddy told you?” said Jane.
Dorothy’s smile was horrid. “She meant no harm. She doesn’t realize I don’t hold with popishness any more than Master Shearer here does. But I made sure to tell him, when
Master Shearer came back this morning. I was out in Clicket and I saw him coming through the street with his folk, so I went and called to him.”
“And so I stayed in Clicket, ’stead of goin’ on home, and kept a few friends with me,” Shearer said. “We had a talk, sayin’ shall us do this or shall us do that and in the end we settled to pay you a visit.”
“I said burn your barley!” Danny Clay put in. Jane gasped and saw that even Tobias and Stephen were looking at each other in mutual horror. “But he’s a man of chivalry, is Master Shearer,” said Danny with a sneer. “Says we first got to ask what you’ve got to say for yourself, madam.”
“We reckon we saw ’ee,” said Shearer nastily. “When we came out of the mist, on the way to North Molton, we saw a rider gallopin’ off ahead of us, too far off to recognize, but we take it that was you.”
“What…what you…a-talkin’ about?” Harry heaved himself up from his chair, groping for his stick. Pushing Jane aside, he lurched around the table. “M-my wife…she’s not been away from here! Was here…all…all…” His slurred speech almost defeated him, but he forced out a few more indistinct words. “All day…all yesterday…silly lies…”
“Not lies,” said Dorothy coolly. She turned to Andrew. “You know this family! You can’t trust any of them.”
“You can’t trust any papist,” said another of Shearer’s companions. It was the beefy man who had brandished a billhook at the vicar of St. Michael’s in Minehead.
“Quite,” said Dorothy viciously. “The elder sister, Sybil, was nothing but a whore and this one’s as bad. My husband’s been after her, and if you ask me, he’s had her. A wife can always tell.”
Jane, with the memory of Ralph’s kiss suddenly burning on her mouth, and the memory of the strange yearning he had awakened churning in her guts, felt herself turn scarlet, but supporters were coming to her aid. Peggy, arms akimbo, shouted, “How dare ’ee? ’Ee’s a foul-minded besom!” at the top of her voice, and was echoed by Stephen as he, too, came to his feet and indignantly joined in.
“That’s right! Filthy lies!” Stephen shouted, his voice cracking abruptly from treble to baritone. “Mistress Sybil was my mother and no one calls my mother a whore….”
“No?” said Dorothy unpleasantly. “Do you know how she died?”
“Yes,” Peggy broke in. “He does. I once let it out by mistake.”
“Peggy!” Jane cried.
“Sorry, ma’am, but I also told him it come about because his ma was just too kind to say no. I told him not to hold it against her.”
“I don’t even remember her,” said Stephen. “She ran away when I was a baby. Maybe she had her reasons. But Katherine Lanyon told me who sired me. Interesting to meet you at last, Father.” He scowled at Shearer. “Later, it seems, she had another lover. I don’t know who that one was and I don’t care. None of it matters. She was still my mother and I won’t have her insulted.”
“And no one says things about my mother either!” cried Tobias, who had also sprung up, and was clenching his nine-year-old fists. The effect was almost comical, except that his fury was real and the cause of it very adult, and only his lack of years and inches made him look more endearing than dangerous.
Dorothy said, “Mistress Hudd’s face condemns her. Look at her. Scarlet as a poppy!”
“It’s embarrassment!” Jane gasped. “To hear such things said of me…! I have never, never been unfaithful to my husband. I’ll swear it on the Bible, on the cross, on anything….”
“Only papists swear on the cross,” said Shearer.
“And what’s wrong with being a papist?” shouted Tobias. “It’s better than being a foul-mouthed bully!”
“And who invited ’ee here this day?” demanded Peggy. “Pushin’ past me and burstin’ in as if ’ee owned the place! Clear out, all of ’ee, and leave a decent household in peace!”
The beefy individual stepped forward and hit her across the face. She would have fallen, except that Stephen darted from his place and caught hold of her. She clung there, a hand to her bruised mouth. “You bloody savage!” bellowed Stephen. “Get out of our house!”
“It’s not your house,” said Dorothy disparagingly. “Just an orphan that’s been given a roof, that’s all you are.” Danny Clay sniggered.
“It’s his home!” said Peggy indistinctly. “The only one he’s got, since his father didn’t offer him one!” Glaring at Andrew Shearer, she withdrew her hand from her mouth and looked at it. It was stained with the blood from her lip where her assailant’s fist had driven it against her teeth.
Shearer, who had been staring at Stephen appraisingly, laughed. “Yes, I’m findin’ it interestin’, too, to meet Sybil’s brat. I b’ain’t never been too sure he were mine.”
There was a startled silence, while his audience considered this further new facet to the drama in progress. In the kitchen doorway Letty and the other maids were clustered, frightened, and out in the yard Tim Snowe and three of the other men had gathered, though they could not get in. Danny had taken up a position in front of the barred door. Peggy wiped her mouth again and glowered afresh.
“Shame on every one of ’ee! You’m a boor and she’m a harridan!” She pointed at Andrew and Dorothy in turn.
“Don’t call me names!” Dorothy snapped.
“Peggy can call you all the names she likes, with my right goodwill,” said Jane furiously. “If I had gone to warn North Molton, well, why shouldn’t I? Why should anyone have to put up with all of you, behaving like barbarians, like…?”
“Like decent Protestants, keeping the laws laid down by the king!” shouted Clay.
Thump! Thump, thump, THUMP! Harry, pounding on the floor with his stick, brought the ugly exchange to an end. Tobias went to help him stand steady and Harry, forcing words out the side of his mouth that still functioned normally, said, “You’re wrong! All wrong! Don’t care what anyone told ’ee…! My wife…was here, I tell…tell ’ee! She wouldn’t leave me…go off to Molton…lies…all lies. And she’s never had aught to do with any man but me, either!”
The last sentence came out with astonishing clarity, as though his own strong feelings had burst through the physical hindrance. “I know! You think I’m some gurt vule as wouldn’t know? I’d…have…smelt him on her. She’m honest…good woman. Good wife. No one…slanders my wife and gets away with it…bitch…tellin’ lies, lies…!”
Abandoning Tobias’s support, he staggered forward and swiped at Dorothy with his stick. Dorothy stumbled back with a shriek of fright. Shearer stepped between them and Harry, with a sudden and explicit curse, aimed a blow at him, as well. But the blow lost impetus halfway. The stick did not reach Shearer and it was Jane who cried out, horrified, as for the third time, Harry’s illness struck.
Once again his cheekbones flushed reddish-orange. Once again spittle formed at the side of his mouth, and he fell, a look of wild bewilderment in his one good eye. On the floor, he jerked, drawing noisy, greedy breaths as though struggling for air. Tears ran from his eyes.
Then the breathing ceased.
Jane found herself kneeling beside him. Tobias was on the other side. Stephen and Peggy rushed to crouch by Harry, too. Blood still ran from Peggy’s cut lip, but she was taking no notice. She was crying, and simultaneously feeling for the pulse in Harry’s neck.
But his face had already lost its flush, was fading to a greyish tinge and Peggy, looking at Jane, slowly shook her head.
Jane stood up. “Well, Master Shearer and Mistress Palmer, are you satisfied? Do you feel you’ve done enough, had sufficient revenge for this crime you imagine I have committed, despite my husband’s testimony to the contrary? My husband is dead. Come and see for yourselves.” She stood aside for them.
There was a new kind of silence, except for an uneasy shuffling of feet and some clearing of throats. Even Danny Clay looked awkward, while Andrew Shearer had become suddenly hangdog. “We never meant that,” he said.
“I daresay, though I do wo
nder what you did mean,” said Jane icily.
“To give ’ee a fright, make it clear that we can’t be fooled,” said the beefy individual, but not very forcibly.
“Aye. That’s the truth of it,” echoed Danny, apparently forgetting that he had recommended burning the barley.
They hadn’t, thought Jane, really decided on their intentions at all; they had just come here on a wave of rage and excitement, urged on by Dorothy. She looked down at Harry. Grief would begin soon. She hadn’t loved him, but there had been something between them, something that had sprung from sheer physical intimacy, from working side by side, from having a child together. In the end, knowing perfectly well that she really had been to North Molton, he had lied in her defence.
“I think,” she said, turning to the intruders, “that you should all go.”
“So do I,” said Stephen belligerently. “Including my father. I don’t want to acknowledge him any more than he wants to acknowledge me.”
Father and son stared at each other inimically. And Jane, watching, saw their resemblance to each other suddenly flame out. Stephen was mature for a lad of fifteen. Their colouring was different, but the long yet shapely bones of their two faces and the set of their shoulders were identical. Furthermore, they had seen it themselves. It was pulling at them, the tie of blood relationship that was stronger than any ideological loyalties.
Andrew voiced it, after a fashion. “Maybe you are my son. Looks like you are. I wish you well. Seems you’re provided for, even though it’s no thanks to me. Well, all right, I’m glad.”
Stiffly Stephen said, “Thank you.”
If they could, they would have walked away together and sat down in private to further their acquaintance over a drink, but in these circumstances it wasn’t possible.
The House of Allerbrook Page 23