North Side of the Tree

by Maggie Prince

  “Still in church.” I have never seen Mother so lost for words.

  We go into the house. Mother Bain comes out of the kitchen, in her nightclothes. “God bless those poor souls and God bless us all. There’s pottage keeping warm on the hearth. I’m away to my bed.” She kisses my cheek. I cannot tell whether she has guessed anything or not. When she has gone, I turn to Mother and Cedric.

  “Pottage then?”

  They both shake their heads. My mother puts her arms round me and holds me tightly. “Shall I stay, Beatie? Will you be all right?”

  For a moment I am a child again. I try to stop my chin from trembling. “Thank you but you needn’t stay. I’m quite all right, Mother.”

  As I walk with them to where their horses are stabled at the back, she says wonderingly, “I treated you like a child.” She mounts up and pats her horse’s neck. “I shall come back to sit with Father in the morning, and we shall talk then. Change out of your wet clothes now.”

  Her words seem meaningless. I am glad when she and Cedric have ridden away into the dark, and I can retreat into numbness.

  John comes back whilst I am wandering round the parsonage, room to room, thinking how it can be improved. Distraction and physical occupation are all that will keep me sane, this night. I stand on the landing considering the replacement of warped floorboards. A carved walnut dower chest stands next to the doorway of my bedchamber. I could start filling it with my things. Two intricately carved walnut chairs stand either side of it, and a brass table clock with a design of the four seasons lies on one of them. It was in my father’s saddlebag when he was taken ill at Haggen Bottom. Perhaps when we hear news of which other unfortunate traveller was robbed on the highway that night, we might be able to return it to its rightful owner. In the meantime, I have never had a clock in my possession before. It is a most wondrous thing. John says it has an alarum which makes a truly frightening noise, and I am trying to activate this when I hear John’s footsteps coming all the way from the back door to the foot of the stairs.

  “Beatrice?”

  I walk to the top of the staircase and look down.

  “You’re late back.”

  At some point he has changed out of his robes and into his wood-chopping clothes. He starts to come upstairs, but half way up he stops. “It’s all right, Beatrice. Shh. It’s all right.”

  “What on earth do you mean, shh? What’s all right? What are you talking about?” I can hear how shrill my voice sounds. I wipe my perspiring hands down the sides of my rain-drenched skirts, which I have omitted to change. I want to be left alone to sort things out, to sort out what I can sort out, those things over which I have control, setting the clock, filling the dower chest, checking the floorboards.

  “Which one was Robert?” John reaches the top of the stairs.

  “What?”

  “Oh for goodness’ sake, Beatie, surely we’ve talked enough about bloody Robert already, to be able to talk about him now.”

  “The last one.”

  “Ah.” John walks into my bedroom.

  “The one with the light-brown wavy hair.” I follow him.

  John sits down on the cedar chest. “Yes. I noticed him.”

  “He noticed you.”

  John looks down at his hands. “There’s nothing you can do, this time. That must feel terrible, but you have to accept it.”

  I sit on the edge of the bed. I feel cold and hard and lost. “It was all for nothing, John. I mended Robert’s arm for nothing. Saint Hilda died for nothing. I was half drowned for nothing. Robert will rot in one of those dungeons under Lancaster Castle until they drag him out and hang him on Gallows Hill.”

  John comes and sits beside me. He puts his arms round me. I pull away and stand up. “Haven’t you been listening to me at all?” I exclaim. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but nothing is any good.” I stand by the door and hold it open. After a moment, he leaves.

  Chapter 11

  John was right. We are able to manage everything between us. I ride early each morning to Barrowbeck, travelling fast on Universe, whom I have now trained to the lady’s saddle, though he doesn’t pretend to like it. My mother runs the dairy and the household, and I run the farm. Some days John comes and helps on the farm, but the gap left by the departure of Verity, Germaine and my father means we are now seriously short of workers, and I wonder how we will manage when spring comes and we once more have to keep watch for raiders.

  In the afternoons I ride over to Cedric’s cottage at Mere Point for my lessons in medicine. I had looked forward to them, but now my mood is irritable and I cannot be bothered. One golden autumn day, on my way to Mere Point, I understand in a great flash why my father robbed on the highways. It gives you power, and it is very, very exciting. I wonder if I would not have been better apprenticed to my father, than to Cedric.

  It becomes clear that my father has quietly lost his senses. He is not fit to be moved back to Barrowbeck, and he lies motionless in the little room behind the hearth at the parsonage, one leg hanging over the edge of the bed, his head resting on his chest. “’Tis well he don’t know where he is,” Kate comments one day when she has come over with my mother to visit him. “Mebbe he’s bewitched,” she adds hopefully.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, Kate.” My mother ushers her out of the room. Nevertheless, I feel a chill myself, and for a moment wonder how indeed such strange evil could occur, if not imposed from outside. Cedric shows us the veins which have burst in Father’s nose and cheeks, and tells us he thinks something similar may have happened in his brain. Mother Bain brews a potion which makes our eyes water even to go near it, and which briefly rouses Father from his torpor, but nothing helps for more than a few minutes. I sit with Father, and read to him in the evenings by candlelight, and he looks at me as if I spoke another language.

  “Pig sticking, mistress,” says Leo, in the second week of my father’s illness. “We’re late already. I’ve herded ’em into t’sty. It’s for you to say which one.”

  I make my way down the hill to where the pigsty stands, out of smelling range of the tower. The pigs snuffle towards me and look at me through the bars of the gate. They are used to roaming the woods, and do not like being enclosed.

  I sigh. It has to be Veronica Pork. The others are all too young, too thin, too fertile. She pricks up her ears and comes to look at me. Leo arrives, and she pushes her snout through the gate, expecting food. “How are you, mistress?” Leo asks, with unusual directness. I realise this is the first time Leo and I have been alone together since the night I escaped from the tower.

  “Mending, Leo. I thank you.”

  “Aye well. Teks time. No harm done, then.”

  I do not welcome this discussion. “Well, less harm than you’ll be doing to Veronica Pork,” I reply shortly.

  “Oh aye, that one is it to be? I thought as much.”

  I move away. I have to leave before Veronica Pork is seized. I vow not to give the pigs names in future. A sudden vision of the knife going in confronts me, and I have to hold on to the gatepost for support. Leo says, “Best come away now. Sit down.” He helps me over to the low wall which supports the midden, and I sit down on it. There is a trickle of evil-smelling liquid seeping from it down the hill.

  “It was just… just the thought of it, Leo. Poor Veronica.” I try to disguise my exhibition of weakness as everyday soft-heartedness, rather than let it be a reminder of other dispatchings by knife which lie between us, but Leo looks as if he understands perfectly.

  “She was born to be pork, mistress. She won’t have time to think owt about it.”

  Veronica Pork is looking at me through the gate. I am overcome by utter bleakness, and an awareness of all such vulnerabilities – Robert’s most of all. “I’ll send three of the men to help you,” I tell Leo, and turn away.

  “Aye lady. You go on up and send three of the men down. I’ve got Tilly Turner and some other women coming to shave the skin later. Best go and lie down a moment, eh?”


  “I’ll leave it to you, then.”

  Leo’s hand is caressing the knife at his belt. I walk away, up the hill. My legs are trembling. I trip over a tussock, steady myself. I should have stayed with Veronica Pork. There are different sorts of betrayal. I try to think of her as hams, black sausages, brawn, legs of pork, soap, dripping, beautiful leather gloves, but all I can think of is the way she will be – the way they always are – tiny eyes open and watchful, right up to the end, never flinching, even as the knife goes in.

  I send William, Jonah and Michael down to help. Michael clearly does not know what to make of me, now that I am running the farm, and his master and protector is no longer here. I feel a shocking temptation to bully him. I ask him awkward questions, and watch him trying to work out what sort of reply I want. This is how he operates – the truth not being a concept with which he is familiar. I try to feel ashamed of giving him all the worst jobs, and fail utterly. I can only remember his complicity in my father’s plot against James, and the enjoyment he took in helping imprison me.

  The men go off down the hill. I climb the spiral staircase to the beacon turret, and watch for an enemy who will not come.

  There is squealing, men’s voices, the screech of the pigsty gate. In my mind I see them tying the ropes. Someone shouts, “Heave!” and there is a thud as a pig heavier than a man lands on the low, flat killingstone with its drainage groove. I see it as if it were painted on the insides of my eyelids. Now the little curly tail will be held down hard, immobilising her, and the ropes pulled tight.

  I run. I cannot keep vigil for Veronica Pork. I go rushing and slipping down the spiral staircase to the kitchen.

  I had hoped to get to the ale cask unimpeded, but Kate is there with a young woman from the village, Tilly Turner’s daughter. I slow down and struggle to be calm.

  “Greetings, Esther.”

  “Ah, Mistress Beatie.” Kate beams. “Just in time to hold the earlobe for me. Little Esther here wants to be ornamented like her mother.” This is a secret joke, as Tilly Turner is known for jewellery of excessive gaudiness and shoddiness. The pedlars find a ready market in her for some of their more outlandish wares. Now her daughter, Esther, is here having her ears pierced by Kate, our local expert.

  “No Kate, you do it.” I cross to the ale cask, hold my mug under the spigot and release the peg. It is last year’s ale, almost clear, very strong. I drink a mugful, fast.

  Kate wipes Esther’s earlobe with vinegar and pulls it until it is thin, white and taut. The girl’s frightened mouth is round and open. Then Kate draws back her hand holding the long darning needle, rainbow-ended from the fire, and plunges it straight through. The skin explodes with a pop. Esther screams. Outside, there is an echo of it, primeval and distant. I turn to escape, but it is too late. The walls circle me like birds of prey, and the flagstones come up and hit me in the face.

  “She’s been doing too much, what with coping with the master’s mazed state, and all the extra work to do, and her aunt on at her all the time.”

  I am lying on the settle and Kate is looking down at me. Esther Turner, with a sliver of willow bark through one ear and a darning needle through the other, is looking at me too. I try to get up. “Stay there,” Kate commands me. “I’m sending one of the lads for the Cockleshell Man.”

  “No no, there’s no need for that.” I push myself up, leaning against the roll of sheepskin which Kate has placed under my head. “Veronica Pork has just been killed and it upset me. That’s all.”

  Absentmindedly Kate twists the needle from Esther’s cringing ear and follows it quickly in with another sliver of willow bark. Copious blood drips down the girl’s neck into the cloth which is wrapped round her shoulders. “Keep the willow in for the pain until tonight, then I’ll fix the gold rings in,” she orders. “You can go over and fetch the Cockleshell Man for me. That’ll do as payment.” The girl pales even further, and looks as if she would rather pay ten times than visit the Cockleshell Man. I sometimes forget how feared Cedric is amongst those who believe he practises magic, rather than what is simply his own unconventional brand of medicine.

  That day is a turning point. It is the day I realise that no amount of work and frenzied activity is going to blot out thoughts of Robert. As the shortening days go by, his journey will have ended at Lancaster. He will have been examined by the visiting magistrates and consigned to the underground dungeons to await the assizes. Perhaps he is ill or going blind in the darkness. Everyone knows about those dungeons at Lancaster Castle, surely the most evil place on earth. I pray that you, my friend, may never have cause to see them.

  At the parsonage, John is careful but friendly. I find it intolerable. I would rather he raged at me. He goes about his duties in his parish, preparing sermons, visiting the sick and bereaved, teaching small village boys to read, and at his own insistence, where parents will allow it, small village girls too. I see their parents’ bewildered expressions when he explains to them that it is not such an eccentric idea as they might think. Sometimes I remember some of the feelings which made me agree to marry him.

  My father needs much care. Verity, my mother and I take turns sitting with him, but most of his daily tending falls to me, since I am there at the parsonage. I feed him from a cup with a spout, spoon mashed vegetables into his mouth as if he were a baby, change his clothes and his bedding.

  Three weeks after Verity’s betrothal, Germaine and Gerald’s betrothal takes place in the church. A week after that, Verity and James are married. It is a day of jollity in a miserable month. Verity now has to lace her skirts and bodices looser, and there is no mistaking the condition she is in, but no one comments on it. By now everyone is used to the idea.

  It drizzles on their wedding day, fine drops that drift upwards on the breeze as I help her dress in her old room at Barrowbeck Tower. Here, together again, it seems impossible that so much has happened and that our lives have become so different. Mother has attached loveknots of bright ribbon to every item of Verity’s clothing on which she can lay hands: russet silk to her chemise-smock and petticoats, yellow satin to her cream bodice and skirt, red and fawn silk to the beautiful and foresightedly vast new kirtle and gown in dull green and autumn colours which Germaine has made for her. Her pearl and garnet earrings pick out the muted reds and creams of the hooped and padded skirts. “Tears and blood,” mutters Kate gloomily.

  Despite the season, I have managed to find enough flowers to make a garland for Verity’s head, with ears of corn woven through it.

  “Truly Sister, do I look as if I need corn for fertility?” she enquires, looking at herself in the mirror. “I look bloody ridiculous.” Mother clicks her tongue in disapproval and adjusts the complex patterns of plaits and combs in her daughter’s hair.

  The bride cup, a huge silver goblet, is waiting in the kitchen, and when Verity is ready we all go downstairs and drink from it, then Kate puts a branch of rosemary tied with ribbons into it, for it to be carried ahead of us to Wraithwaite.

  The bridecake, an astonishingly beautiful confection studded with coloured shapes of marchpane, is being investigated by my cat, Caesar, when we go up to the living hall to admire it. “I’ll kill that cat,” Kate declares. I feel suddenly overcome with affection for my home, and everyone in it, and for no reason I can fathom, sit down and burst into tears. Kate assures me she didn’t mean it, and that for certain it will be my turn soon to have a beautiful wedding cake and a lot of fuss made over me. I pick up Caesar and hold him close, getting his black hairs all over my red silk gown, which has a history of being ruined, particularly during my adventures with Robert.

  Verity and James are married in the morning, so that a long day’s festivities can be fitted in before darkness. Relatives and friends from all over the district come, and the mood is extremely merry. Church musicians play their shawms and crumhorns on Wraithwaite Green in the rain, as we arrive. In church, Verity and James stand solemnly by the carved rood screen and make their vows of love and f
aithfulness. I am overwhelmed. Just words, yet there is no undoing of them.

  After the ceremony, we all go in procession back to Barrowbeck Tower. The little-used series of interconnecting rooms below the living hall, called the Saints’ Gallery, has been decorated with flowers and greenery for the occasion. Around the walls are ears of corn plaited with ribbons. The musicians are assembled on a low platform at the end.

  Verity and James lead the first pavane, and the formal dance, so much less familiar than our usual country dances, causes a certain amount of confusion and hilarity. The people who do it with most elegance and style are Hugh and his partner for the day, Mistress Anne Fairweather of Hagditch, veiled, as always. It looks as if Aunt Juniper’s matchmaking is paying off, even if not quite as she expected. By the time we get to the galiard, with frequent droppings-out for refreshment, most people couldn’t care less what the steps are, and simply improvise.

  Later, when the rain stops, we dance the old dances in the wet meadow, getting our feet soaked and our shoes ruined. The musicians go up to the battlements and play more and more wildly. A few villagers come up the valley to watch what is going on.

  I dance with John. I dance with him all the time. Today I want to be normal, the girl I was. It is easy. It is fun. In the late afternoon we all go in to feast and drink some more. John and I sit side by side, and after a while, I lean against him, and he puts his arm round me. A few people glance at us and smile. Aunt Juniper glances at us and scowls. When the last remove has been cleared away, and the bridecake cut and shared, we all dance back out into the pale evening, and escort Verity and James down the valley to their home at Low Back Farm, where with much ribaldry they are escorted upstairs and the door slammed on them. “’Tis well to keep to the old customs,” says Aunt Juniper, “even when they’re not strictly necessary.”