by Ann Swinfen
As dusk began to fall, they seemed to be far from any village or crossroads or wayside inn. The countryside here was a kind of upland, not as bleak as a moor, but open and with little cover. Perhaps two hundred yards away, there were the outlying trees of a forest. Here, where the ground was high and sandy and better drained, the cart no longer became bogged down, and the four soldiers, exhausted from their efforts and bleary with the drink they had taken, were dozing—three lying on the floor, and the fourth, Will, asleep where he sat on a box, his mouth hanging open.
John had taken care to spend most of the day sitting at the back of the cart. The flaps of canvas were still unlaced, though one was no longer tied back, but had fallen down and billowed in and out in the wind. It seemed as likely a time as any to make his attempt at freedom. Wishing for a greater degree of darkness, and for trees or other cover closer to hand, he sat with one hand on the tail-board of the cart and the other holding his bundle on his knee. His heart began to thump, his breath felt constricted, as though a tight collar was pressing against his windpipe. Then, cursing himself for every kind of fool, he rolled over the back of the cart and let himself down as softly as he could into the sandy mud of the road.
There was no shout, no sound at all from the men. Crouching down low, he began to run away from the cart on the blind side, where the flap hung down, and in the direction of the wood. As he reached the rough ground of the upland, he stumbled, but escaped falling, and ran on, as hard as he could, his heart pounding with the unaccustomed effort.
He had covered about half the distance to the wood when he heard a shout. Risking a glance over his shoulder, he saw that the cart had stopped. The driver was standing up on his seat, pointing with his whip as the four soldiers tumbled out on to the road. Three of them began to run after him. The fourth—it looked like Tize—climbed up beside the driver. John lowered his head and ran on, wondering why Tize was not joining in the chase. He soon knew why. Almost at the same moment, he heard a loud crack behind him and something hit the ground to his right. For a few seconds he could not place the noise, then he realised. Tize had loaded his musket and was shooting at him.
John changed his course and began to zigzag back and forth across the ground to make a more difficult target. Presumably Tize was no longer worried about whether they delivered him alive or dead. If he was killed trying to escape, that would be justification enough. He could hear the panting and shouts of the other three soldiers, but they were only gaining on him slowly. Weighed down by the beer, they were not the danger they might have been, and probably did not relish coming too close to him in case Tize missed him and shot one of them instead.
Crack! Another musket ball landed closer than the last. The man must be a very fine shot, in this poor light, aiming at a running man, with a weapon that was notoriously unreliable.
Only a hundred yards to go, and he would be in amongst the trees, where he would have some chance of eluding them and Tize would no longer be able to take aim at him. The others, he could hear, were beginning to be winded. While he had despair to drive him on, they had only the fear of what might happen to them if they lost their prisoner.
He was growing tired. The rough tussocks of grass clawed at his legs and twice he slipped in the wet slurry of cow dung, where a herd must have grazed earlier today, although he had seen no sign of farm or cottage. He seemed to have been running endlessly, the belt of trees forever unattainable, like some mockery of a dream. But his pursuers were not gaining on him, and he had heard no further shots from the cart. Either Tize thought the range impossible, or he was taking a long time to reload.
His breath came in harsh gasps and he knew he could not run much further, when he became aware that the shadow of the trees was closing over him, and underfoot the coarse grass had been replaced by a soft and treacherous quilt of leaf mould and dead twigs overlaid with last autumn’s new fall of leaves. He stumbled and slowed. It would do him no good to turn his ankle in some hidden hollow or to fly headlong over a fallen branch.
In the distance he could hear the soldiers shouting, and once again the crack of the musket, but Tize must be firing now from mere bravado or fury, for within the trees and cloaked with the growing darkness, he could not possibly be seen from the road. He went on, as swiftly as he dared, but circumspectly, with no plan in his mind of where he should head. Like some frightened creature of the wild, his instinct was merely to find some dark place to hide.
At last, peering ahead through the gloom, he saw what he was seeking. Some time in the past this wood had been used by the local people for coppicing. Not thirty feet in front of him was an ancient hazel coppice, which had grown, as such coppiced trees will do, into a ring of bristling coppice-wood, like the crown for some vast giant’s head. But it had been long neglected, so that the once young and pliable withies had put out sprigs of their own, which had grown into small branches, and the centre, which would have been open and bare in a managed coppice, had filled with hazel growth and scrubby brush. John pushed his way into this great tangled birds’ nest of branches, to where a hollow large enough for a man still remained, arched over with the bare whippy branches. He sank gasping to his knees. As his breath quietened and his heartbeat slowed, the silence of the wood folded itself around him.
Chapter Eighteen
When Anne rode into Lichfield, she went first to see Robert Verey at the Black Swan.
‘Hay?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I know of none with hay to spare for selling. I had worries enough to lay in my own supply. I own a small parcel of land over at Shenstone, but it never yields me enough, even in a good year, not for my own horses and those at livery. And this last year was the worst I’ve ever known, even in the run of bad seasons we’ve had. The ’thirties were a lean time, to be sure, but since the war began, farming has grown worse with every year. What the weather doesn’t destroy, the troops do, with their looting and their trampling of the crops.’
He poured two glasses of fine French wine and joined her beside the fire, where she was warming her numb fingers and toes after her cold ride.
‘I bought some hay from a farm over Burntwood way,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘and I had to haul another load all the miles from Stafford, but that was at the end of the summer, before folk realised how bad it was going to be. The woman at Burntwood was selling up, that was why she was willing to let me buy her hay. Her husband was killed in last summer’s fighting and the children were all small. She decided to sell everything and move back to her people. If someone else was selling up . . .’
He shook his head.
‘None I can think of. ’Tis market day today, you’ll know that. Try amongst the farmers, though I doubt you’ll have any luck. I’ll ask a few people who might know.’
‘So there’s still a market in Lichfield, despite the hard times?’
‘No great show of a market. But there are some selling stock they can’t feed for the winter, like you. And there’s bargains to be had, for those with fodder laid in, because nobody wants to buy. Aye, any man who could think of a way to feed stock easily over the winter would soon become very rich indeed. I wish I was that man!’
Anne went out in search of hay, promising to come back in an hour or two to learn whether Robert had found anyone with a surplus. The market was indeed a miserable affair—gaunt and hungry beasts selling for a handful of coins, gazing out from their pens at the passing crowds with lacklustre eyes; a few withered vegetables; an alewife with a small supply of earthenware flagons displayed. A stall selling farmers’ sheepskin jerkins was the only one doing a brisk trade. She eyed the beasts, thinking of her need for meat, but the creatures were no more than scabby hides clinging to a brittle framework of bone. There was nothing there to feed her family.
Despite the poor state of the market, the people of Lichfield were walking about in the snow, examining what was on offer, not so much with an air of those planning to buy, as looking for company and gossip. Anne approached one of the yeoman farmers who
se face she recognised as someone John had dealt with when they had lived at Thickbroome. His cousin now rented Thickbroome from the Swynfens.
‘Mister Sylvester?’ said Anne. ‘I hope you are well.’
The man turned to her in astonishment. He was a thickset fellow with a complexion ruddy from hundreds of tiny red veins. The hair hanging down from his hat almost to his shoulders was grey and tangled, and he wore rough homespun clothes that were far from clean. He was so taken aback at being addressed by her that he simply gaped.
‘You used to do business with my husband, Master John Swynfen, when we lived at Thickbroome,’ said Anne, thinking he had not recognised her.
‘I know who ye are,’ he said. ‘What d’ye want?’
His tone was rude. Anne shrank back, realising she had offended him by breaking all conventions in thus approaching him boldly in the market, but she must ignore his attitude, and those of his friends, who were staring at her in a way she did not like, if she was to achieve her purpose.
‘I’m looking to buy hay,’ she said, aware that she sounded conciliatory. ‘I’m just home from London, and I find we are short of fodder after a bad harvest.’
‘And why has your man sent you out to do men’s work?’
Anne felt her face flushing. The man’s manner, and the way he was eyeing her, were abominable.
‘My husband is not yet returned from London,’ she said with all the briskness she could muster, ‘and the matter cannot wait. Now, have you any hay to sell? Or do you know any who has?’
‘I heard tell Master Richard Swynfen and his wife were both took ill,’ said one of the other farmers to his neighbour, but loud enough for Anne to hear.
‘Aye. Both gone mad, I heard tell,’ said another with a laugh.
Anne opened her mouth to protest, then clamped it shut again. It would do her no good to start an argument with these men, who had now moved to surround her. They were not exactly menacing, but there was hostility in the air.
‘Well, Mister Sylvester,’ she repeated. ‘What do you say? I have the coin.’
For a moment greed flickered in the man’s eyes, then he shook his head.
‘I’ve none to spare, and if I had, I’d not sell it to a woman.’
And with that, he turned his back on her and walked off, followed by his friends.
After this discouraging encounter, Anne tried several other farmers in the market, some of whom she knew by sight. Though none was quite as ill-mannered as Sylvester, all were adamant that they had no hay to sell. She could not be sure whether they were speaking the truth, or whether they were prompted by the same prejudice as Sylvester, unwilling to sell to a woman. A crowd of boys had gathered, and followed at her heels. She could hear them whispering amongst themselves and even jeering at her openly. Eventually, cowed into fearfulness and shame, she returned to the inn.
Robert Verey had better news for her.
‘There’s one place you may be able to buy hay, but it will be expensive. Twice the usual price, I fear.’
Anne gave an exclamation of relief.
‘Where? Oh, this is good news indeed!’
Robert shook his head.
‘’Tis too dear. But it’s all a part of these strange times we live in. You’ll know that the bishops’ properties are held in a kind of trust, until the government decides what to do with them?’
‘Aye.’
‘Well, the reeve who’s in charge here in Lichfield says he has more than enough hay to provide for the estate this winter, since much of the stock has already been sold. And there’s the tithe hay as well. You can buy what you want, but at a scandalous price. It’s my belief the extra goes into his own pocket. He’s making himself a rich man out of the pickings of the job. I tried to argue the price down, but he wouldn’t be stirred. He knows he holds the prize to bargain with.’
After that, the business was concluded quickly. Robert fetched the reeve for the episcopal estate into his own parlour and witnessed the transaction so that Anne should not be cheated. The reeve had a long, guileful face with eyes too closely set together, eyes which avoided Anne’s. She had no wish to fill his private coffers with her coin, but swallowed her distaste and concentrated her thoughts on the Swinfen beasts. The man promised to deliver the hay to Swinfen the next day. Anne rode out of the town relieved to have secured the fodder for the beasts, but reflecting soberly that it would not be an easy matter for her to run the estate until her father-in-law recovered or John returned. Living in London, she had been accustomed to hearing news from all over England and she knew that, since the start of the war, many women had been obliged to undertake their husbands’ duties. Here, in this small market town, such activities were still regarded as little better than a blasphemous overthrow of the heavenly ordained hierarchies. A woman setting herself up in man’s estate would be cheated, ignored or vilified. Somehow she must contrive to retain her neighbours’ respect, or circumvent their hostility, for she had to live amongst them.
It was well into the afternoon by the time she reached Swinfen, so she decided not to ride the additional miles to Weeford that day, to visit Mary and Thomas Pott. The matter of Bridget might require some delicate negotiation, for which she must allow sufficient time. Besides, this was the first occasion that she had been on horseback since the birth of the baby, and she found herself very sore and tired. The soreness of her breasts was telling her, too, that it was long past time to feed the baby. The difficulties of negotiating for the hay had driven from her mind her intention of searching out a wet nurse in Lichfield. She was torn between wanting to continue feeding the baby herself, now that she had begun, and knowing that if she was to become the gentleman manager of the estate, nursing the child would be very difficult.
She slid down from the mare in the stableyard and handed the reins the Josiah, half groaning and half laughing.
‘I shall be stiff tomorrow, I fear. I’d little cause to ride in London and I’ve become quite weak. It’s fortunate she’s such a well-mannered mare.’
‘Aye, she’m a good ’un, this ’un,’ said Josiah, running his hand fondly down the horse’s neck. ‘Brandy, we call her. Sired by one of your father’s stallions over at Weeford Hall. I mind when you was a bit of a girl there, you could ride anything on four legs.’
‘Ah well, I thought I could. I remember taking a nasty tumble into the Black Brook once, when I rode my father’s stallion Zephyr without leave. He bolted when a hare sprang across the path, and landed me right in that deep pool where we . . . where my brothers used to swim.’
‘Zephyr, that was a fine stallion! He was sire to this mare’s sire. Of course, the Brandreths are all away to Kent now.’
‘My father thought he was best to keep watch over the estates there. The army has been a little too free in its looting of the counties near London, and with the Potts able to move into Weeford Hall . . .’
She began to move purposefully towards the house, before Josiah could engage her in a discussion of the entire stable of Brandreth horses, which he had always coveted. Even here in the stableyard she could hear the baby’s frantic screams.
‘I must see to the baby, Josiah, but I bring good news for you. I contrived to buy hay from the bishop’s estates. It’s to be delivered tomorrow.’
Leaving Josiah staring at her in disbelief, she ran for the house and the baby.
When Anne went down later to the kitchen, she found Hester, Biddy and Margit sitting in a dispirited group around the stool on which Josiah had set up the quern. The open sack of wheat stood beside them on the floor, and next to the quern was a small pottery bowl holding no more than a handful of flour.
‘’Tis no use, mistress,’ said Biddy, with what sounded like gloomy satisfaction. ‘Us’ll never make flour with that old thing.’
Anne stood over them, looking down at the quern. Some of the precious wheat was scattered across the stool, more of it was on the floor. She noticed that Margit’s hands were red and sore, and her
eyes swollen with tears.
‘I tried my best, mistress,’ the girl gulped, ‘but ’tis so heavy and I can’t rightly turn ’un and when I must put more wheat between the stones I must get the others to help me lift the top stone and then when us put ’un back the wheat it spills everywhere . . .’
She burst into tears.
Anne patted her absently on the shoulder, studying the quern more carefully than she had done before. The upper stone, the grindstone, rested on a lower stone which was slightly dished and had a shallow lip at one side. There were two holes in the grindstone—a larger one in the centre, which was bored right through it, and a smaller one offset to one side, which was about half the depth of the stone.
‘I wonder,’ she said, picking up some of the spilt wheat. ‘Perhaps you don’t need to lift the stone. Doesn’t it go in here?’ She dropped the grains into the central hole, then laid her palms on the grindstone and tried to turn it. The girl was right, it was deadly heavy.
‘Then I think the flour should flow out over the lip, so you need to put a shallow dish under the edge to catch it.’
‘Flow!’ Biddy snorted. ‘It’s been all we could do to scrape that bit flour off the stone.’
‘Well, I suppose you need to have more flour for it to flow.’ Anne leaned over the grindstone again, struggling to make it move. It stuttered round two or three turns, and already her palms were burning.
Peter came in, empty-handed, from his rabbit snares, to find them still wrestling with the heavy stone. Anne was near tears herself by now. He looked at the quern curiously.
‘My old grand-dam had one of them,’ he said. ‘Always ground her own flour, to save the miller’s cut.’
‘Do you know how to make it work?’ Anne asked desperately.
He studied it. ‘I wasn’t more than a little lad . . . but I think there’s something missing with yon. Aye, I remember. There should be a sort of a handle, nay, nothing more than a stick. See that other hole? You want a peg in that, to drive the stone round.’