by Ann Swinfen
Roland caught hold of one of the older, steadier ewes and led her over to Brendan, who stood near the gap leading to the passage, which was blocked with a loose hurdle. The old ewe, after her initial resistance, seemed to remember what this was all about, and submitted patiently when Brendan gripped her head between his knees, plunged his left hand into her wool for a firm hold, and seized his shears with his right hand. The previous night, when she was visiting her hens, Anne had heard Brendan sharpening those shears. Now she watched as they slid through the heavy wool and the fleece peeled away as cleanly as an apple skin. It looked so easy a child could do it, no more difficult than removing a cloak from a man’s shoulders, but the cunning of patient skill lay behind that apparent ease.
Christopher brought a ewe for Zachary and Roland bundled up Brendan’s fleece, laying it on the grass outside the enclosure, while Brendan removed the loose hurdle and thrust the ewe into the passage leading to the other pen. She ran halfway along then stopped, confused, and tried to retreat. Anne slapped her on the rump until she ran on into the further enclosure, where she stopped and began to graze calmly, as if she had already forgotten what had happened.
‘Thank you, lady,’ Brendan called over his shoulder, already occupied in shearing the next ewe. ‘Now, if you could be sending that great lad of yours up to see the ewes through the run, that would be a great help to us, so.’
Anne saw the other men exchange furtive glances, uneasy at the familiar way he addressed her, but she said calmly, ‘I’ll send Dick to give you all a hand. He had rather that than study his books any time. I came only to see that you have all you need. Margit will bring you ale and a cold pie by and by.’
Before she went back to the house, she picked up the fleece and examined it. It was so bulky, she could barely lift it. The wool was dense and silky, of the very best quality. She would keep about half the fleeces for spinning on the estate—many of the cottage women took in spinning and weaving for a small extra income. The cloth could be used by the household or sold on finished. The rest of the fleeces she would send to Tamworth with Josiah, to the wool merchant there who had handled the Swinfen and Weeford wool for twenty years past. As she walked down the meadow, she rubbed her hands together, working in the oil from the wool, for the natural oil from the fleeces was sovereign for softening the skin. Her hands were in dire need of it, for they had grown quite coarse. She must search her receipt book for a strong cream she could make. There was one, she remembered, using elderflowers.
At the end of the two days, Anne assessed her pile of fleeces in the barn with pride. She had plans to overwinter a larger flock this coming year, so next spring it would be even bigger. Wool was a valuable commodity, in spite of the uncertainties of foreign trade. That evening the household held a supper for the sheep-shearing, inviting the tenants as well as the day labourers with their families. While it was not such a great affair as the harvest supper, it was a merry occasion, for the shearing marked the first garnering of nature’s bounty, which would occupy all the summer and autumn. After the meagre yield of the previous year, the losses to storms and floods, and the depredations of the soldiers, the whole company gathered in the scrubbed and garlanded barn could feel the confidence brought by the new season, despite the illness of the old master and mistress and the absence of Master John. Thomas and Mary Pott rode over with their eldest son to join the party, and Thomas generously proposed a toast to Anne’s management of the estate. Dick and his cousin drank a mite too much ale, and were discovered, after most of the guests had gone home, fast asleep on the stack of fleeces, with an empty flagon between them.
‘Leave them be,’ said Thomas, when the two mothers descended on their sons in fury. ‘Their aching heads will be punishment enough in the morning. Every lad must learn for himself the folly of overindulgence.’
So Thomas and Mary rode home without their son, and in the morning two green-faced boys—who had spent the entire night in the barn—refused breakfast with a shudder and spent half an hour pouring buckets of cold water over each other’s sore heads in the farmyard.
e
Without asking Anne’s permission, Brendan began to teach the three younger boys to swim, now that the weather was warmer. She only discovered what was afoot when they came in one afternoon with dripping hair and their clothes, which had been thrown aside on the shore, covered in mud.
‘How dare you!’ she stormed, confronting Brendan outside the barn. ‘I never gave you leave! What if one of them had foundered?’
Brendan gave her a curious look.
‘I had them only in the shallows, lady, holding them up one by one while they kicked and felt the water lift them, so.’
Jack had followed her out of the house and stood solidly beside Brendan.
‘Brendan wouldn’t let us come to harm, Mama. And I want to learn to swim. You couldn’t teach us.’
Indeed I could, Anne thought, but held her tongue.
‘Very well,’ she said ungraciously, ‘the lessons may continue. But I must be told every time, do you understand? Every time.’
Once again she had felt that sense of menace about Brendan, yet he seemed to be acting from nothing but good will. The next day she spent half an hour watching them in the lake, and again the next. Brendan was a good teacher and soon Jack and Francis were dog-paddling a little off shore while Ralph splashed about in the shallows, more interested in making great fountains of water than in swimming.
A day or two later she was caught up in discussions with Josiah about one of the horses who was favouring his off hind, when the boys said they were going swimming again. She let them go, but afterwards walked down to the lake. Ralph was sitting, stark naked, on the muddy bank constructing a model farm out of pebbles and twigs. Francis was solemnly swimming back and forth along the shore, keeping his chin anxiously crooked up from the water. Not far from Ralph, Brendan was standing with his arms folded, staring out across the lake. He wore nothing but his breeches, wet to the knee, and did not heed her coming. Nowhere could she see Jack. Everything about her seemed suddenly to go silent and she felt herself turn icy cold. She seized Brendan by the elbow and shook him.
‘In the name of God, where’s Jack?’
Brendan turned towards her slowly, his eyes blank.
‘What?’
‘Jack! Where’s Jack?’
He turned back to the lake and pointed. More than halfway across she could just make out a small head. Jack was splashing frantically and as she watched his head dipped below the water.
‘He’s in trouble!’
She kicked off her shoes and ran towards the lake. She was in the water up to her thighs, her heavy skirts dragging her down, when Brendan plunged past her.
‘Don’t be a fool, woman,’ he cried, and slipped smoothly into the water. He struck out strongly towards that broken place in the lake. He seemed to move too slowly as the fear froze Anne there in the water, her feet in the mud, weed floating about her thighs. She saw him reach the child and there was a violent churning in the water. Jack gave a shriek and she heard Brendan shouting at him.
Dear God, he was drowning her son. She waded further into the lake. Could she reach them in time, weighed down by her water-logged skirts? She would strip off, and be hanged what anyone might say, but it would be too late, too late.
The splashing ceased and she thought her heart had been squeezed into a hard ball by some giant hand. Then she saw that Brendan had caught Jack under the arms and begun the slow swim back.
When they reached the lake shore she was standing in her streaming clothes amongst the trodden ruins of Ralph’s model, with the two younger boys gaping at her in alarm. Jack coughed and retched and collapsed on to all fours, his hair over his eyes, vomiting water over her feet. She turned on Brendan, incandescent with fury.
‘May God damn you to Hell, Brendan Donovan, you tried to drown my son!’
He stood before her gasping, but still with that queer blank look in his eyes.
‘No, Mama, no!’ Jack croaked, tugging at the hem of her skirt. ‘Brendan saved my life. I was caught in some weed and it was pulling me down. Brendan saved me!’
She narrowed her eyes, studying the shepherd, but he avoided her look and turned aside to pick up his shirt. If she had not come, would he have stood there and let Jack drown? Brendan was rubbing himself dry on his shirt and did not answer her. She did not know what to believe, but she banned all swimming unless Dick was also present. Two days later, Francis suffered a recurrence of the fever and infected throat that had struck him down in London, and all swimming came to an end.
On the last day before Dick started his lessons with his cousin, he helped Brendan herd the sheep up to Packington Moor, to save the time of one of the labourers, who were busy now with the increased milking and the endless hoeing to keep the crops free of weeds. They went up to the moor on foot, leading one of the horses loaded with Brendan’s supplies for the summer—bedding, food, and cookpots. He would come down to the home farm perhaps once a fortnight to replenish his stock of food, but otherwise they would see little of him until his help was needed with hay-making.
When Dick rode back that evening, he conceded grudgingly that the Irishman seemed a decent enough shepherd, without the wild attributes of his countrymen.
‘Though there’s something strange about him,’ Dick said.
‘I know,’ Anne agreed uneasily. ‘Perhaps it’s nothing but his foreign manner.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
As the year turned towards summer, and the floods of early spring subsided, everyone began to hope that this year, at last, the weather would be kind. The vegetables in Anne’s garden grew rapidly, and the raw salads, which were a new London fashion, still regarded with suspicion by the Swinfen servants, broke the monotony of their diet. The spinage was abundant, and they ate early lettuces and the young carrots thinned out to allow the rest to grow large. Pompions and onions were beginning to fatten for winter storage. The abundant yield of fresh milk allowed the cheese-making to increase, using fresh lady’s bedstraw gathered from the meadow’s edge, so they were able to set some of the big round cheeses aside to age on the slatted shelves of the dairy, turning them every few days and rubbing them with salt once a week.
There were now several broody hens, kept purely for the purpose, and the flock was increased to nearly fifty. Besides her gifts of eggs and pullets to the cottagers, Anne was occupied with supervising Hester and Biddy as they tried a new method of preserving eggs in brine. The children, free at last to roam about the estate in the better weather, were growing as wild as the cottagers’ children, so that Anne imposed a regime of lessons supervised by herself and Patience every morning between breakfast and mid-day, after which the older children must help with simple tasks before being released to play.
Anne herself rose every morning at four, and after half an hour of private devotions, spent four hours working at her desk or weeding her garden or walking about the home farm, before returning to conduct prayers for the whole household and to teach the children. These lessons were as much a penance for her as for the children; she had grown impatient since the days in London when she had valued sharing the lessons and taking pride in the children’s progress. She blamed herself for her impatience, and tried to conceal it from the children. Dorothea was now learning to read and the boys must do their figuring and learn their globes. Anne strove valiantly to master Euclid with Nan and Jack, but she knew that she fell far short of Nan’s expectations, after her time at the Perwicks’ school. Dinner time came as joyful release for them all.
The baby Jane was partly weaned now. Bess was feeding her a pap of new milk and crumbled bread, and she was growing as fast as the young lambs. Freed of nursing the baby, except for one feed last thing at night and one during the day, and encouraged by the success of her farming, Anne was full of energy, striding about her demesne, or riding to the outlying farms and cottages. She watched the growth of the wheat with delight, rejoiced in the abundant blossom in the orchard, and went each morning to pick and eat a handful of young peas, pods and all. Sometimes when she found herself feeling happy, a terrible cloud of guilt overcame her. How could she possibly be content, when she did not know what had become of John? But usually the loneliness and aching she felt for him only assailed her at night in the great empty bed, when she would wrap her arms around a bolster for comfort, and muffle her sobbing in the smother of its goosedown. During the daylight hours she had blessedly little time for thinking.
A problem that had been troubling her for some time was solved with the help of Thomas Pott. Jane was unbaptised still. In earlier days, when her own eldest children were born, the christening was held on the first Sunday or saint’s day after the birth, to ensure the salvation of the child’s soul, in case it should die in early infancy. But such practices had been set aside with the severe reforms of the church. With so many young men away at the war, there had been no births on the manor or in the village since Anne had returned home, apart from the Webster baby. She did not know what form of baptism was now practised in Weeford. Jane must be baptised, yet still Anne delayed, as though holding the ceremony without John was proof definite that he would never return. At first she had waited because the baby was strong and healthy, and she did not want to take this momentous step without him. Then finally, as it seemed more and more likely that he would not come, she had approached the new minister at Weeford church. The former curate, Richard Pegg, had conducted her wedding to John that April day in 1632, and was married himself in the same church just three years later. But Richard Pegg had been deprived of his living by the new Puritan regime, and turned away, and a new man put in his place. The minister was a sour-faced, grim man, whose endless sermons contained no glimmer of light. When Anne spoke to him of baptising the baby, he glowered at her.
‘We no longer perform such papistical rituals,’ he snapped. ‘All that is required is that the father of the child should bring it to church and answer for it.’
‘But my husband is away,’ said Anne. She suspected the minister knew exactly why, and it made him even less friendly towards her, as the wife of one of Cromwell’s enemies.
‘Then it may be brought by a man of your family,’ the minister said.
Thomas Pott agreed to act in John’s stead, and the Sunday after the sheep were moved up to the moor, Jane was duly presented at church. She beamed happily around, for she was a sweet-tempered child, but Anne had to contain her anger that this youngest child of hers was deprived of the blessing of the church, her rightful welcome into the community, and the gift of godparents, which all her other children had received.
With the sheep up on the moor, Dick at his lessons, and the hay not yet ready to cut, the early summer seemed the most peaceful time any of the household had known for a long while. There was food enough at last, a burden of anxiety lifted from all. In recent days the weather had grown hot and still and Anne feared a thunderstorm might flatten the hay before it could be cut. She was sitting one evening in her chamber beside the open casement, idly turning over the pages of a book of poetry by Edmund Spenser which she had found on the shelf in the parlour. It had been published back in the previous century, and had probably belonged to John’s grandfather, that other John who had named one of his sons Deveroxe. Although she had heard of it, she had never read it—one long poem in several sections, entitled The Faerie Queen, an Arthurian tale of quests and chivalry, but on closer examination revealing itself as a philosophical allegory. Had she not been so tired, it might have held her attention, but she was bone weary after a day of working in her vegetable garden, turning the heavy cheeses, and riding the entire circuit around the estate, which she now did once a fortnight.
The heat, which had barely eased with the coming of nightfall, and the heavy stillness of the air which presaged thunder, kept her from sleep, despite her weariness. She laid aside her book and went to the window. Leaning on the sill,
she breathed in the rich scents of the night air after a hot day, which laid their spicy taste upon her tongue. Many physicians warned against the dangerous humours lurking in night air and advocated always fastening windows close at night, but Anne felt she could not breathe this night with the casement shut. The moon was nearly at the full, and its drowned reflection swam in the lake like a disk cut from mother-of-pearl. Away beyond the woods, in the direction of Packington Moor, the sky flickered eerily with veils of lightning, but no breaking thunder eased the pressure in the air. The silence was so dense it pressed against her ears like a heavy blanket, increasing her sense of breathlessness. Then she heard some small creature shriek, followed by the bark of a fox. Amongst the shadows of the spinney, she fancied that she saw movement.
Closer to hand, much closer, there was a furtive sound. At first, she thought she was mistaken, that some sound from the home farm had been carried here on the still air, some trick or echo making it seem to come from almost beneath her window. She held her breath, listening.
This time she heard it more distinctly—a soft footstep, and a faint gasp, as if someone exhausted with running were trying to silence the sound of his breathing. John kept a pistol in this chamber, but it would take her minutes to find and load it. By then, the intruder would have gained the house or run on—where? To the farm? Or had he come from there? Who would come here, unless he sought Swinfen itself? A traveller on the way to Weeford or Lichfield or Tamworth was unlikely to come this close to the house, though he might cut a corner off his journey by walking across the further fields. Perhaps it was John himself, having evaded his captors and found his way home.