by Ann Swinfen
She was forced to continue.
‘The rent. You did not pay the rent due on Lady Day. And now Midsummer Day has come and gone. I will collect both rents now, to save you coming over to Swinfen to pay.’
He turned and spat into the empty hearth. Anne flinched.
‘The rent? Nay, Mistress Swynfen, you are mistook. I owe you no rent.’
Anne felt the colour rising in her face.
‘Three months’ rent due last Lady Day, and now the next three months. I have the contract of tenancy here. Twenty-five pounds each quarter. Fifty pounds you owe me.’
She drew the contract out of her pocket and gripped it between both hands to try to stop their shaking. It was the most valuable rent and she needed the money badly. Sylvester did not even bother to drop his eyes to the document.
‘I have no agreement with you. The contract was signed between myself and Master John Swynfen. Show me your husband, madam, and I may show you the colour of my coin.’
In a sense it was true. But during their absence in Westminster Sylvester had paid his rent without demur to old Master Swynfen. She represented John as truly as his father did.
‘My husband is not here at present and my father-in-law is sick abed. Therefore I am come to collect those rents which you are obliged to deliver in person each quarter day to Swinfen Hall, which you have not done.’
Her voice sounded breathless and strange, but she was determined to hold her ground against him.
‘I will not stir until you have paid what you owe.’
He narrowed his eyes and she saw a flash of something there—predatory, lustful. He took a step towards her, too close, and she backed away. He laughed then, and gave a sharp whistle. At once a hulking farm labourer stepped through the open door. He must have been standing in the hall just outside.
‘Mistress Swynfen is leaving,’ said Sylvester, walking out of the room and throwing the words carelessly over his shoulder. ‘Show her to her horse.’
The man gripped her by the arm and marched her out of the house and down the steps, where Brandy was tied to a hitching ring. Anne did not sacrifice her dignity by struggling against his grip, but as she rode down the drive towards the high road she turned back her sleeve and saw where his fingers had marked her arm. There would be bruises later. Far worse bruised was her self-respect. She rode home in a red haze of anger and humiliation.
The picking of the peas began. Some would go to market in Lichfield, but most of them must be podded and then dried. They would provide vegetables for the winter, along with the produce from Anne’s garden, for making soups and stews and pease pudding, and eking out the supply of meat. The kitchen was full of peas drying on metal trays in front of the great fire. Anne was glad to escape from the intolerable heat of the kitchen in the dog days of late July, to the cool of the dairy or the water meadow. The first of the wheat was cut, and after it was threshed Josiah took a load along past the lake to the mill, where he watched critically as Matthew Webster ground it, the great millstone turning under the force of the mill wheel. The weather had continued hot, which promised well for the harvest, but when the summer was very dry, the millstream sometimes ran a little sluggishly. This year the millpond was full after the spring rains and, with the sluice gate to control the flow, the water supply was sufficient at the moment. Josiah pronounced himself satisfied with the milling, and all the women of the house set to the baking of the Lammas loaves.
There would be no Lammastide celebration in the church and no blessing of the first bread from the new season’s wheat, but, to Anne, Lammas had always seemed a most sacred festival, in its way a kind of Easter, marking the resurrection of the land, and a giving of thanks to God that His bounty had brought forth again bread for His people. She dared not draw attention to her celebrations by holding them too openly, but at dinnertime on the first day of August, the whole household sat down in the great hall, to break bread together. The table was laid with the finest of the linen napery, the Venetian glass, the silver dishes. Brendan had been sent for, to come down from the moor. Poor, childish Joane Swynfen sat beside Bridget, picking at her bread and rolling it into little pellets. In the sluggish heat of mid-summer she had become quieter, and there had been no attacks on Bridget for several weeks. Anne was most pleased that she had managed to bring Master Swynfen back to his table for the first time. Christopher and Richard between them had carried him downstairs and propped him up in his great carved chair at the head of the table. After Bridget’s long months of loving care, he was beginning to be able to feed himself again with his left hand. And amongst the tortured sounds coming from his mouth, a few words could now be discerned.
Anne had said a prayer in thanks for the first wheat to be garnered, and called down a blessing on the first loaf, when there came a loud knock on the front door. Margit went to open it, and showed in Robert Verey, the innkeeper from Lichfield.
‘Nay, I thank you, Mistress Swynfen,’ he said, ‘I’ll not take dinner with you, for I have a full house to see to at home. But this letter came enclosed in one to me, in which Captain Stone bade me to bring you his letter at once, for he knows that none from your household come to Lichfield more than once a fortnight.’ He glanced again at the table. ‘A Lammas loaf, you say? Why, I’ll try a morsel of it gladly, then be on my way.’
While he tasted of the loaf, eaten with the first of the matured cheese, Anne retired to the parlour to read Captain Stone’s letter in private. It was brief. John had been moved from Stafford to Denbigh Castle, possibly during the very time when Stone himself was in Stafford kicking his heels, waiting for Danvers’s answer to his proposal. After a long delay, the governor of Stafford accepted the ransom in jewels and in return gave Stone a document authorising John’s release from Denbigh, on an additional recognisance of £1,000, which Henry Stone had underwritten himself. He was now setting off immediately to ride to Denbigh, but Anne must understand that matters might not go smoothly. The governor of Denbigh was not known to him. Moreover, he might not be willing to accept the authorisation from Danvers as valid. She must strive to contain herself in patience.
Anne felt a surge of anger. These petty men, these ‘governors’, who had climbed to power by clinging to other men’s shirt-tails—they were playing a game with John’s life. Where was Denbigh? Somewhere in Wales—but how far away?
When she returned to the hall, the innkeeper was about to leave.
‘Stay a moment, Master Verey,’ said Anne. ‘Did Captain Stone give you no directions for reaching him, in the letter he sent to you? There are none in mine.’
‘Nothing, save that he’s going to Denbigh. I suppose he may be addressed at the nearest stage post.’
‘Where is it, this place? Do the coaches run there?’
‘Not by any of the regular ways. It’s deep into the Welsh mountains, I believe. I suppose he would ride to Shrewsbury first, and from there into Wales, but it’s dangerous country along the border, full of deserters from both armies, turned renegades. I’d not like to be travelling there myself.’
When the innkeeper had gone, Anne resumed her seat at the table. Although some of the company gave her curious looks following this interruption to their meal, she kept her own counsel.
This was a season which left little time for thinking about any matter other than the safe gathering in of the harvest, which proceeded apace throughout August. Everyone on the estate laboured hard for long days in the heat—cutting, stooking, loading and threshing. Anne had commuted many of the cottagers’ rents to a certain number of days’ work during harvest, an arrangement that suited all parties, since it meant that the harvest was garnered with good speed, and the labourers went home each with a portion of the bounty, which Anne shared with them.
Despite the troopers’ destruction of part of the wheat, the yield from the rest was good, and Anne was sorry when she heard rumours that many farms in the neighbourhood, particularly over towards Hints, had been affected by a blight on
their wheat and poor yields in their crops of oats. After the bad harvests during all the years of the war, and last year’s famine, more would go hungry again this winter. In the breathless heat of late summer, word also reached Swinfen that the plague had broken out in Tamworth. Then an entire family living in a cottage between Hints and Tamworth died of the plague within a week.
Richard had taken to riding off for a day or half a day, never saying where he was going, and abandoning his share of work in the harvest. Once, Dick had gone off with him, without a word to his mother, who had fretted with anger and worry until they came back, whistling and merry and smelling strongly of ale. Anne had given Dick such a lashing with her tongue that for once he had no impertinent answer for her and stayed meekly at home afterwards. But it was not so easy to rein in her brother-in-law. When he returned late one night at the end of August, Anne confronted him angrily.
‘I’ve winked my eye long enough, Richard,’ she said, hardly able to contain her rage. She felt her face flushing and had to clasp her hands together to prevent herself slapping him. ‘I thought when you’d visited your friends at Barton, that was to be an end to it, but now you slip away two or three times a week, leaving others to do your work. We have not so many strong young men on the estate that we can spare you during harvest.’
He looked somewhat sheepish.
‘I work all the harder when I’m here, Anne.’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. But whatever it is you’re plotting, it must wait until the harvest is in. I can spare neither you, nor the horse you take, until then. And I have another worry. The plague is abroad again. If you’ve been visiting the places where it has struck, you could carry it here. You may be careless of your own life, but I can’t allow you to endanger the children and the rest of the household. Your parents are both ill, and Bridget has never been strong. Do you want to risk bringing the plague to them?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he muttered.
‘Well, think on it now. No more riding about the countryside until the harvest is in. And no visiting places which have the plague.’
‘I’ve been to Hints a few times,’ he admitted, ‘but I wasn’t near the cottage where they had the plague. The cottage has been burned down now, and no more cases reported. But there’s another kind of sickness abroad that you should know about.’
‘What is that?’
‘You know old Agnes Lea, who lives up on Packington Moor, that some say is a wise woman?’
‘Of course. You’ve known her all your life, Richard.’ Anne gave an exasperated sigh. ‘You know as well as I that she’s wise in the way of herbs and simples. That does not make her a “wise woman” in the way I think you mean.’
‘Since the crops have been blighted at Hints, folk there are openly calling her a witch. One fellow said that he asked her to cure his cow, and she said she could not, for it was dying, unless he should do thus and such, which he took to be the devil’s magic. He hit her for that, and now he says she’s called down her curse on him.’
‘Surely he’s merely a bad farmer,’ she said, ‘and an ill-natured brute, who seeks to lay the blame for his own failings on someone else, a woman he has injured already.’
‘I think you take this too lightly, Anne. It’s grown to a general complaint.’
‘Then I hope you told people roundly not to be such fools.’
‘I tried, but I’m a person of no great consequence. They’re not likely to listen to me.’
Anne was deeply troubled at this news, although she sought to hide it from Richard. When a few people muttered that someone was a witch, it could be damaging, but not serious. When an entire community turned on an old woman, working themselves up into a fever of hatred, determined to fix on her as the cause of all their misfortunes, it became dangerous. If some of the people of Hints were resolute enough to lay a complaint of witchcraft before the magistrates, then the magistrates were obliged to make an enquiry into the matter. Agnes Lea lived solitary, an old woman without family or near neighbours to protect her. Matters could go very ill for her.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The prison at Denbigh Castle was located in one of the three towers of the mighty gateway. The castle itself was vast, one of the monstrous fortifications built by Edward I to keep the Welsh nation in subjugation after his defeat of their princes. In occupying the site of a former Welsh stronghold, now totally destroyed, it added an arrogant English insult to the initial injury. It was plain why this place had been chosen by both Welsh and English, for it commanded the view in every direction. Such a castle could never be taken by surprise, although the stone walls bore pale gashes from the Parliamentary bombardment three years ago, which had eventually led to capitulation.
John had been able to appreciate the strategic importance of the castle when he arrived at the foot of the steep approach leading up to the gatehouse, for he reached the castle in the prolonged twilight of an early autumn evening, when the honey-gold of the setting sun lapped over the grim stone walls like lichen, lending a deceptive softness to their appearance.
His departure from Stafford had been sudden and unexpected. During one of his periods of respite in the comfortable tower chamber, when he had been about to retire for the night, one of the guards had arrived and told him to gather up his possessions, and make ready to travel. For a moment his heart had leapt, thinking they were setting him free, but then he realised that if he had been released, Danvers would probably have come to tell him so himself. Glancing around the room, he saw that a heel of bread was left on the table from his last meal. Heedless of the guard’s impatience, he crumbled it on the stone windowsill, and watched the thrush swoop down at once. Tame as a lady’s pet songbird, the thrush had lately consented to perch for a moment on John’s finger, gripping it with cool claws delicate as straws, but tense with life. He could see the throb of its small heart now beneath the soft speckling of its breast feathers.
John was hurried down the stairs as fast as he could go—a lame halting pace, for the periods of torture had left his legs and feet in a perilous state. Outside the gate of the castle a close carriage was standing. Two soldiers seized his arms as he climbed in, and took their seats beside him. Within moments they were driving away down the steep hill into the twilight which lapped the base of the castle hill like water.
The sudden rushed departure, the hurried descent of the stairs on his maimed feet, left John weak and confused. The carriage was barely underway when faintness overcame him. When he came to his senses again they were travelling along a dark tunnel under trees, with no light to be seen from any habitation. His head swum and both sight and sound were blurred, as though he were under water or groping through fog. His hands trembled, beyond his control, and his heartbeat was irregular. Was it the aftermath of torture, or had his very body begun to betray him?
It was to be a long time before his body and his mind were to begin to come together into some kind of whole again. The journey was slow, travelling on a roundabout route: south-west first, until at Water Eaton they reached the old Roman road—still the soundest road in these parts—then westwards into Wales. Compared with the long and painful journey from London, it was relatively comfortable in the carriage and after a while John began to notice his surroundings. His guards, although hardly friendly, were not cruel and loutish like the four soldiers who had accompanied him before. They were quite willing to tell him where they were going: Denbigh Castle, amongst the mountains of Wales, where he could more easily be kept in close custody. The older man, Captain Godbarrow, a man as brown and wrinkled as an old saddle, told him this frankly, without mockery or malice. Hughes, the other soldier, younger, awkward, said little and regarded John with something akin to awe.
John wondered why the decision had been made thus suddenly to move him so far away. He asked the captain, who shrugged.
‘Not my affair. But, ask me, it’s because you’re too well known about Stafford. Maybe the governor thought someone might be thinking o
f trying to carry you off.’
If this were true, the outcome had been an unhappy one, yet John felt more heartened than he had for many weeks. If Danvers feared that his friends might be planning a rescue, it meant that he was not entirely forgotten. The remoteness of Denbigh, and the impregnable nature of the castle, would make rescue a very poor proposition, but merely to know that he had not slipped for ever out of men’s minds gave him greater strength and resolution.
Had the journey been made by his own choice, the first part might even have given John some pleasure. Their road lay through fertile English countryside at the height of harvest time. Between the dense green of the forests, fields of wheat, oats and barley were a rich gold in the fine late summer weather. Although in many places they passed through ruined villages and saw, standing amidst their neglected estates, houses of the gentry which had been put to the fire, yet there were signs of recovery. There were some villages where the inhabitants were working at the harvest in their strip-fields. And they saw at least two manor houses where carpenters and masons were busy repairing damage.
Yet in Shrewsbury, the streets were crowded with beggars new-made by the war—some of them injured and maimed soldiers, turned away from the army to fend for themselves, others the famine-stricken poor, who had crawled to the town in a last hope of food. They huddled in the doorways of shops, or lay stretched out at the roadside up the steep curve of the Wyle, many of them with scarce rags to cover their nakedness. Women’s faces peered from beneath their shawls, faces like death’s heads—their cheeks so sunken that the bones of their skulls seemed like to pierce the skin, their teeth blackened and broken, their hair, where it could be seen, fallen out in clumps and the remainder like frayed rope. Seeing the young children who clung to their skirts, John realised these old women were mostly less than thirty. As for the children—John averted his eyes, with the pity and shame of it. The children staggered on legs as thin and bent as twigs, above which bellies swollen with starvation bulged like the pigs’ bladders that the London apprentices used for football. Their eyes had become the clustering home of flies.