by Ann Swinfen
She saw his jaw stiffen, and then he buried his face in his hands.
‘I think,’ she said very softly, ‘that Brendan Donovan had once a wife and children, whom he loved dearly. And I think that they, too, are lost.’
He made an inarticulate sound of grief, and twisted his body away from her.
She sighed and stood up, shaking out her skirts. She too turned away to look down over the beautiful lands of Swinfen, so much more beautiful to her now, since they had come into her care.
‘Land is precious,’ she said, ‘but people are more precious still. I don’t know why you came here, Brendan Donovan, but I do not think it was by chance. A wandering Irish shepherd, in these days when all farms are short of labour, does not make his way right across Wales and Shropshire and into Staffordshire without finding work. You came here for a purpose. I don’t know why, but as long as you mean no harm to me or mine, you are welcome to stay here, as Brendan Donovan, shepherd to Mistress Anne Swynfen. It may be that you will move on, it may be that you will stay and prosper. Perhaps one day you will possess your own land again, although I know that not God Himself can bring back those you love.’
He whirled about, jumping to his feet, and seized both her hands in his, so that she was suddenly very afraid. His grip was fierce, almost cruel, yet she felt a leap in her throat that was excitement more than fear.
‘If I were a superstitious man,’ he said, ‘I would take you for a witch. You read me too clearly. How could you divine so much about me? As for why I came, that is forgotten. I mean no harm to you or yours, not now, never again.’
He leaned forward towards her, his face barely inches from hers, and tried to take her in his arms. Her legs grew weak beneath her, and for a moment she almost yielded, but she fought free of him and pushed him away.
‘You are mistaken in me,’ she cried. ‘I have a husband I love above all else in this world, for he is not only my lover but my dearest friend.’
He did not look chastened.
‘Your husband—your lover—may never return, and the woman I loved is gone past reaching. We are both of us lonely and heart-sore.’
‘Nay, for I have the hope of John’s return soon. I am sorry, more sorry than I can say, for what you have lost. But you cannot have my heart, Brendan Donovan, for it is given elsewhere.’
He looked at her long and hard, as if he would penetrate deep into her soul.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that if there had never been a John Swynfen, that heart might not be so cold, for I can see that the body is warm.’
‘The world is as it is,’ she said. ‘You must understand that I love John. He has been my heart’s twin since we were children here on the moor.’
She clenched her fists.
‘I love him!’ she cried. ‘Almost, I cannot bear to go on living without him. If it were not for the children . . . Can’t you, can no one understand that? Oh, I rule this estate and keep my face calm and give my orders and settle disputes, but my heart cries out in rage. Rage! Do you understand? I love him. Dearer than my heart’s blood. God forgive me, dearer than I love my Maker.’
Suddenly she began to weep, great wracking sobs. Never, in all the time he had been gone, had she allowed anyone to see the depth of her grief and her terror for John. Now, as if some natural disaster had been set in motion, her grief and her terror could not be contained any longer. When Brendan Donovan took her two hands in his again, she did not push him away.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know. Forgive me. Christ God, forgive me! Let me be a friend to you, no more. I ask for nothing more. Friendship, after all, is one of God’s greatest gifts to man. Our lovers may turn cold to us. Our friends rarely do.’
Eventually the storm subsided and Anne was able to wipe her eyes and speak calmly.
‘We will not speak of this again,’ she said. ‘Nothing of what has been said here.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘We will not speak of it.’
‘I came here to speak to you about the sheep. We must speak of the sheep.’
‘Aye,’ he said, smiling a little, ‘we must speak of the sheep.’
When they had spoken of the sheep, and the management of the breeding flock, and on what day Brendan would drive them down again to the home farm for the winter, Anne mounted Brandy, ready to ride down to Swinfen.
‘Did you visit Agnes Lea as you came here?’ Brendan asked, catching Brandy by the reins to hold her.
‘Nay, I came straight here.’
‘There’s been trouble at her cottage. I was nearby two days ago, quite by chance, in search of some ewes which had strayed. There were three or four youths there, trying to steal her chickens, and threatening her. I chased them off, but I can’t always watch over her.’
‘Were they from Hints?’
‘They were strangers to me, but I know very few of the people of Hints.’
‘There’s been trouble there. Richard warned me there were some calling her a witch, but afterwards all seemed quiet, so I thought it was forgotten.’
‘I think not, for they did call her witch, and devil’s whore, before they ran away.’
So it was more than simple pilfering from a defenceless old woman.
‘I’ll ride over there now,’ said Anne, ‘and see how she fares. Thank you for the warning.’
As she rode away over the moor, she knew that he watched her until she was out of sight.
When she reached Agnes’s cottage, the old woman was sitting outside on a joint stool, milking one of her goats.
‘Nay, don’t get up,’ said Anne, tying Brandy to the fence post. ‘Finish your milking.’
While Agnes milked, the two women talked of the harvest, and Anne’s plans for her breeding stock, and Agnes’s prize brood hen.
‘I must give ye some of the pullets I’ve had from her,’ said Agnes, ‘for if they prove as fruitful as she has, then they’ll help to increase your flock mightily.’
‘I should be glad of them,’ said Anne, ‘and in return I’ll bring you a good store of flour and oatmeal for the winter.’
‘Very well.’ Agnes got stiffly to her feet. She was not too proud to accept what she could not grow herself. ‘Come inside. It grows cold, these autumn evenings.’
So they went inside, and sat by the light of the fire, Agnes having moved the cat Peterkin out of one of the chairs. The old woman plied Anne with bannocks and honey, as if she were still a child. Despite her earlier meal with Brendan Donovan, Anne dared not risk Agnes’s displeasure by refusing.
‘I think ye have been weeping, my child,’ said Agnes at last.
Anne’s hand went without intention to her eyes, which were still swollen and hot.
‘I’m worried for John. Captain Stone set off to fetch him home from Wales these two months past, but there’s been no word. I fear one or both of them have miscarried.’
Agnes laid her knotted old hand on Anne’s.
‘I think not. I see young John lost and wandering amongst mountains, amongst snow, but coming home at last.’
Anne felt that hint of fear dart through her mind again. Perhaps Agnes was indeed a witch. She shivered, but spoke calmly.
‘Oh, Agnes, I hope you may be right! But take a care who you speak to in such a manner, for there’s danger in foretelling the future.’
Agnes shook her head.
‘I don’t foretell. I’m no prophetess. It’s merely that sometimes I see things, as in a waking dream, nothing more.’
‘There has been talk,’ Anne said bluntly.
‘There’s always talk.’
‘Do you understand what I am speaking of?’
‘Aye. They’re calling me a witch again, are they? Has someone’s pig died?’ she said scornfully. ‘Or perhaps some lovelorn silly maid asked me for a love philtre, and when I told her I didn’t make such things, went away angry. Has she now lost her lover to another?’
‘Agnes, I think this time it’s serious. There has been a blighted harvest over at Hints, and the plague
also. People are afraid and angry, and they want someone to blame, someone to suffer.’
Agnes sighed and threw another log on the fire. It flared up briefly as the burning logs fell apart, and lit up her worn face. She was looking older these days, weary with so much hard living.
‘What would ye have me do, child?’ she said. ‘I can’t defend myself against whispers. If they lay a complaint with the magistrates, I shall be tried. And like most who are tried as witches, I shall be hanged or burned, innocent though I swear before God I am. If that’s God’s will, then nothing I can do will stay their hand. I’ve had a long life. Perhaps it’s time it ended.’
‘Do not speak so!’ Anne knelt down beside the old woman and put her arms around her. ‘Will you come to live at Swinfen with me? There, we can protect you. No one would dare call you a witch if you are part of my household. You can bring your stock and all your possessions. Please, Agnes, come with me.’
The old woman laid her hand on Anne’s head.
‘Ye’ve always had a generous heart, child, sometimes too generous for your own good. But I couldn’t leave here. My Nick built this cottage and brought me here as a bride. I won’t leave here until I die. I couldn’t breathe away from the moor, for the low valley airs are heavy. They would weigh on my heart.’
She would not be persuaded. At last, Anne untied Brandy and prepared to leave.
‘I’ll find out all I can, and I’ll ask my shepherd to keep an eye on any who come prowling again. But I wish you would come.’
Agnes shook her head and smiled, and as Anne rode away, she was standing still at her doorway, with one of her goats grazing beside her.
The field crops were harvested, the peas dried, the wheat ground into flour, the beans salted down in crocks, the cheeses made, the onions plaited into ropes, the pompions stored both fresh and dried, the stillroom supplied with fresh simples for winter coughs and colds, the herbs hung from the kitchen beams in bunches. Throughout September and October, they gathered apples from the orchard. As if in recompense for the previous year’s poor crop, the old apple trees were laden with the fruit, and as fast as the pickers brought in the baskets of apples, those working in the kitchen tried to turn this abundant harvest into food that would last through winter.
The most perfect apples of the keeping sorts were laid out carefully, not touching, on slatted shelves in the apple store next to the dairy, where most of them would survive for several months. Others were peeled and cored and sliced into rings, and dried slowly before the fire, as the peas had been, until they felt like soft leather; then they were threaded on strings and hung in the larder. They would serve for pies right through until next apple picking. Anne had invested in a ten-pound loaf of sugar in Lichfield at great expense, fifteen shillings the loaf, because with sugar they could make preserves of all the autumn fruits, including apple jelly—jar upon stone jar of it, as richly red as rubies, for winter puddings and sweetening—and little dishes of apple cheese, dense and toffee-brown, firm enough to be cut into comfits. As for the present, they ate apples raw and baked and roasted and stewed and stuffed and turned into pies, until no-one in the household ever wished to see an apple again.
The hedgerows and woods also yielded their autumn bounty. Anne and Patience took all the children but the two baby girls out to gather blackberries and hazelnuts. If more blackberries were popped into mouths than into baskets, Anne did not greatly mind, for this was a new excitement for her London-reared children. None but Dick had ever gone gathering the wild fruits and nuts before. They came home with stained faces and scratched hands, but presented their harvest to Bridget with great pride.
‘We’ll pack the nuts in crocks,’ Bridget explained to the children, ‘and tie them down and store them on a high shelf, for your household mouse is very partial to hazelnuts. Tomorrow you may help me make blackberry preserves. Tonight, we shall have blackberries and cream for supper.’
Anne was so occupied in managing her large household, in buying and selling at market, and preparing for the Martinmas slaughtering of beasts, that she had little time to think about Agnes Lea. She had hired a slaughterman from Lichfield, who worked quickly and skilfully, but this was never a pleasant business, and it was followed by some of the hardest work of the whole agricultural year, for everyone must turn to and help with the curing, pickling, salting, and smoking of the meat. When Richard came home with a fine stag slung over his horse, Anne was grateful for the venison, but wished that he might have chosen his time better.
The week after the slaughtering, Anne packed one saddlebag with a haunch of bacon and a jar of chitterlings and another saddlebag with apples. When Isaac had saddled Brandy for her, she rode over to Weeford, to the cottage of Liza Martin, the wet nurse who was caring for John Digby.
‘He’s growing well,’ said Anne, looking down at the baby where he slept in his wooden cradle. Long lashes lay on the plump cheeks and his fingers curled like flower petals where they rested on the blanket. At the sound of her voice he stirred a little, but did not wake.
‘Aye, mistress, he’s a fine healthy boy, no doubt, for all that he came so sad into the world.’
The baby’s mouth puckered and his eyelids flickered, then opened. His gaze wandered over Anne, then fixed itself on her face. The faintest shadow of a smile crinkled his cheeks and a dimple jumped and vanished again. Anne reached down and lifted him, gathering a blanket round him like a shawl.
‘He’ll be wet, I’m thinking,’ said Liza.
Anne cupped her hand around the child’s small buttocks. ‘No, not at the moment.’
She carried him across to the window, where she could see him better, and he screwed up his eyes against the light. She could feel the soft flutter of his heartbeat against her breast and thought again of his child mother, as her heart stuttered and stopped, lying there on the stained grass beside the pond.
Poor little fellow, she thought, what sort of a world have we brought you into? A child of rape and death, with no family and a bloody inheritance. Would it have been better to let you die along with her?
The baby reached out for a strand of her hair which had worked loose. His movements were not yet well co-ordinated, but again and again he tried to grasp it, making little chortling noises at his own game. She could feel the energy in him, the will to gain that small victory. Perhaps he would find his own strength, make a place for himself in this new world, despite everything. What kind of world would it be by the time he came to manhood? Surely by then there would be peace of some kind, and John Digby had as much chance of making his way in it as her own children, the children of a man cast out and imprisoned.
She laid the baby gently in Liza’s arms and turned to the saddlebags she had brought into the cottage.
‘Look, I’ve brought you apples and some fresh meat from the autumn slaughtering, and a side of bacon, though it’s not done salting yet.’
At the end of November there was a sudden snow storm. The snow lay for no more than a day, and was gone again in the first sun, but it was a warning of a bitter winter ahead. On the day the snow fell, Anne caught sight of herself in the glass in her chamber. She rarely looked at herself now, combing her hair hastily in the morning as she walked about, then bundling it into a plain cap and never stopping to see that she was tidy. That accidental glance in the mirror stopped her short.
Looking out at her from the good piece of imported glass, in its embroidered cushion frame, was a face she did not recognise as her own. All those months ago when Dick had come home, he had said she looked brown. Now, like her other children, he was quite indifferent to her appearance. Brown her face certainly was, brown with sun and wind and weather. But more than that, her face seemed to have changed shape. Where it had once been softly curved in its contours, with an almost child-like roundness about cheeks and chin, it was now composed of flat planes and sharp angles. Her chin seemed more square, more masculine, her cheeks were slightly hollowed and her
cheek bones more prominent, not as if her face were fine drawn with hunger but as if a sculptor has started with that old, soft, womanly face, and had smoothed away with his thumb the gentle curves which had given the face its former appearance. I look like a young man, she thought with surprise.
She ran her hands over her body, aware, as she had not been for months, of her own shape. Gone was the softness of constant pregnancies. Her breasts and waist and stomach were firm, her arms and legs hardened with the strengthening of her muscles. For the first time she realised how the release from child-bearing had restored her youthful body. It was as if she had become a girl again, that girl who used to ride the moors in her brother’s clothes. Suddenly, gloriously, she had rediscovered her true self. She was still pondering this strange transformation later in the day when Peter rode in from a trip to Lichfield market, and asked if he might speak with her.
‘’Tis Goody Lea, Mistress Swynfen,’ he said gravely. ‘She’m taken up for a witch and lodged in Lichfield gaol. ’Twas all the talk of the market, for there’s been no trials of witches this long time past.’
Anne felt a sense of shock and also of guilt, for somehow she should have prevented this.
‘When was she taken there? Is she to go before the magistrates? Who are the magistrates now in Lichfield? After all these changes, are there any that we know?’
Peter looked confused by all these questions.
‘She was taken yesterday,’ he said slowly. ‘Leastways, that’s what I heard tell. No one said aught about magistrates.’
Anne was thinking rapidly as she hurried out towards the home farm. Agnes’s stock must be safeguarded, or it would all be stolen as soon as it was known that she had been carried off. It did not amount to much: a flock of chickens, two or three ewes and her small herd of goats, and of course Peterkin, the cat.