North Side of the Tree

by Maggie Prince

  “Is it true?” she demands furiously, her hair dishevelled from her fast ride over here, and her face scarlet with anger. “Answer me, Beatrice. And you, Master Becker, I do not know when I have ever been more disappointed in someone.”

  We sit her down and calm her with honey cakes and hot posset. I give a curtailed explanation of why I needed to visit Lancaster – to have an outing, and some respite from nursing my father – and why John was worried and followed me. She shakes her head in disbelief. “Have I taught you nothing in all these years, Beatrice?” she asks. “You are both as good as ruined. John Becker, they will say about you what they said about your predecessor. And with my daughter! I credited you with more sense. I accept your assurance that it was innocent, but who apart from me is going to believe that? Frankly, if things are as they seem to be between you two, then the sooner you are wed, the better.”

  Chapter 16

  So it becomes public that John and I are to be betrothed. The date of the betrothal ceremony is set for the Feast of Saint Stephen, the day after Christmas.

  At once a number of things change. My position in the village undergoes a subtle shift. I seem to be regarded as less of an outsider. I hear village confidences, and realise for the first time that there is a running joke in Wraithwaite about the relative wildness and unsophistication of the inhabitants of Barrowbeck and Mere Point.

  Village parents assume that at some point in the future I will be happy to teach their small sons reading, writing and Scripture, and their daughters needlework and Scripture. John’s wish to teach reading, writing, needlework and Scripture to all small people, regardless of gender, is regarded as an aberration on his part. When I tell them that if I had time to teach anyone anything, I should most assuredly be doing the same, heads are shaken in wonderment. “It’s obvious he’s filled her full of his foolish ideas,” I overhear Widow Brissenden saying to Mother Bain.

  Widow Brissenden has now moved permanently into the parsonage as my chaperone, and I am having to find ways of coping with her. Ignoring her works part of the time. Sometimes I remind myself that she is recently bereaved, although she seems remarkably ungriefstricken. Sometimes I simply run out of patience with her.

  Our first battle is over a small stray cat which I take in. I miss my own cat, Caesar, left behind to enjoy his old hunting grounds at Barrowbeck Tower. When, one freezing morning, I find a tiny grey kitten half-dead on the parsonage step, it seems like a blessing. I take it in and wrap it in a blanket by the kitchen fire. It is thin and half-bald with disproportionately huge feet and one ear partly chewed off by something. It is too starved to do more than drink a little water and lick at some jelly from the meat, but when I lift it on to my lap it starts purring, and I am lost. I call it Blessing.

  “It will have to go,” Widow Brissenden tells me. “I can’t abide cats.”

  “No madam, you will have to go,” I assure her – it has been a long day – and remove the cushion from her chair for the cat to sit on.

  “Cannot you at least try to get on with her? Do you have to be so aggressive?” John asks me later, when we pass on the landing.

  I look at him, and do not reply, and wonder what I am doing here.

  In the mornings I still ride over to Barrowbeck to help on the farm. I know that at the betrothal ceremony my dowry will be taken out and counted in public, and I dread the moment when the loss of the gold coins which I stole will be discovered. When I told John what I was doing in Lancaster, this was one aspect I omitted to mention. One morning at Barrowbeck Tower I creep down to my father’s secret store under the earth floor of the root cellar, and dig up his box of booty from his highway robberies. With my pocket weighed down by stolen gold, I go up to the chapel over the gatehouse and pray for forgiveness, before riding fast back to the parsonage and replenishing my dowry.

  In the afternoons I ride over to Cedric’s cottage for my lessons in herbs and healing, and sometimes I accompany him on his visits to patients. One day when he goes out alone, leaving me to mix remedies, I steal some seeds of henbane from a jar on the shelf over his door. Back at Wraithwaite I conceal them in a fold of cloth at the bottom of my dower chest.

  Evenings at the parsonage are very bad indeed. John sits upstairs in the schoolroom writing sermons, whilst Mother Bain, Widow Brissenden and I sit by the kitchen fire and sew and weave. I am making tapestries to put on the walls for warmth. Mother Bain is embroidering covers for cushions and footstools, her increasing short-sightedness creating designs of startling originality. John bought her a strong pair of venetians from the pedlar, and sometimes she tries wearing them, but on the whole she prefers the vague, misty world to which she has become accustomed. This would all have been quite companionable, had it not been for Widow Brissenden, sitting there pretending to sew altar cloths, but in truth glowering at me from under her eyebrows whilst Blessing sits on my lap grabbing with his big paws at the coloured tapestry wool.

  I take on Esther Turner to help in the kitchen, and it becomes clear that the sooner she and Dickon are married the better. I tell her so one morning in the kitchen, after she has spent her entire time since rising, with her head in the jakes. It is decided that they will be betrothed at once and married at Christmas. It feels strange that it is now appropriate for me to decide such things. For a while that morning Widow Brissenden treats me as a kindred spirit.

  As Christmas approaches, we all go out into the woods gathering holly and ivy to drape round the beams. Mother Bain and I bake cakes, pies and puddings, and store them in wax cloths in the church crypt to keep them fresh. I help the village children make a miniature stable and crib from straw and wood. The baby, though we make him early from old linen stockings and sawdust stuffing, must wait until Christmas morning to be put into place. Cedric brings us a star made from mussel shells, full of the shiny luminosity of the sea. I buy John a daring purple silk nightshirt on Kendal Market, and Mother Bain declares in dismay that he will look like the court jester.

  John makes two trips away during those weeks. The first is to Lancaster to see Hugh Conway, the vicar. The second is to Carlisle to see the bishop. Both trips are fruitless. It seems the Scots in the castle refuse to be visited by a Protestant priest, and the bishop assures John that he has no influence that could possibly stand up against the will of the queen. He advises John as a matter of policy to take no further interest in the matter, if he values his security, and to discourage this anonymous and misguided parishioner who cares about Scots.

  There is no opportunity for John and myself to develop the closeness we experienced during our night at the George. Widow Brissenden takes great delight in watching us, and the atmosphere she creates is one of guilt and furtiveness. For a while we try to make opportunities to talk in private, but soon we give up.

  The weather grows colder. My fathers condition worsens. He lies hushed and wasting in the little room behind the hearth. I wonder if he will see Christmas. I light two candles in the church each day of Advent, one for my father and one for Robert. Each day, also, I go into the lady chapel and read the blessing on the wall and wonder if Robert is still alive, and if he still has his teeth and tongue and heart. Every day I walk back the length of the church, over the uneven, rush-covered stones which pave the floor, and think of the dead who lie beneath. It has become a daily ritual, a containment of death by awareness of its containment under this floor. The paving stones are uneven because the bones of those long buried sometimes come up when the newly dead are interred. Nowadays more and more parishioners are choosing the churchyard outside as their resting place, to avoid disturbing their ancestors before the Day of Judgement, with who-knows-what consequences. It seems a peaceful thing to sleep so, in the company of one’s neighbours. If I could have hoped for such peace for Robert, I should have been content to let him go, but I fear that his end will not have anything of good about it. It certainly will not if my second plan is as dismal a failure as my first.

  Robert comes to me at night, his footstep
s beneath my window, along the landing, outside my door. By day he stands in dark corners, glimpsed from the corner of my eye. His voice is in the chimney as the logs hiss and burn. Aye, lassie.

  I dream one night that his arms are round me. I sink into them, and hold him, and say his name. Then I open my eyes and see that the arms gripping me are broken, scabbed and filthy, the arms of a ghoul. I wake screaming. As I pull myself up against the bolsters I realise that the room is in candlelight, and that John is sitting on the end of my bed, a blanket round his shoulders. He says, “You were dreaming about Robert.” For a moment my longing is transferred to him. He has been here whilst I slept, protecting me from the terrors of the night. I hold out my hands to him. His gaze wavers in the candlelight and he looks away, towards the window. “Dawn’s breaking,” he says, and folds his arms and the blanket more tightly round him.

  In the second week of December, travelling players pass through Wraithwaite on their way to overwinter at Carlisle, and we give them lodging for a night in the parsonage. In return, they perform for us. Dickon rides over to Barrowbeck and Mere Point and brings back Mother, Verity, James and Aunt Juniper’s household, and we all spend a magic evening in the long-lost world of knights and maidens, courtly love and ancient music. Afterwards, as we sit down to a supper of roast pork, fish pie, Cumberland pancakes, vegetables and preserved fruits, it emerges that the players spent the previous night in Lancaster, at the George. For a while they discuss the relative virtues of the George, the Mare Maid and the Naked Taylor as places of lodging. When John goes out of the room I interrupt their discussion to ask, “Any news of the Scots in the castle?”

  The chief mummer, a grey-haired man, clutches his throat and crosses his eyes. “Dying like flies by all accounts.” He grins. “Natural justice, eh? Gets a bit parky in those dungeons at this time of year. They say there’s a woman in there with them, too.”

  The company’s wardrobe mistress, an ageing beauty with dyed red hair and bleached skin, who is clearly modelling herself on the queen, leans forward so that her bosoms all but fall out of her bodice. “The question is, they say, are they just going to hang them, or are they going to draw and quarter them as well? It’s a tricky legal point, the landlord at the George told me. It’s not exactly treason since they’re not exactly Englishmen. On the other hand, who cares, if it’s near enough.”

  Mother, who is sitting on my right, takes hold of my hand under the table. “Well I certainly enjoyed your play tonight,” she says brightly. “Perhaps you can come back at Maytime and perform a masque of Robin and Marion for us.”

  They nod and smile, and so the subject is changed. I push away my plate and wipe my knife on my napkin, before returning it to its sheath. I am aware of Germaine’s stare along the table. She bows her head briefly before turning back to talk to Uncle Juniper again.

  Later, when our guests have gone home and the travelling players have ascended the stairs, wiping the paint from their faces with their napkins, I follow them up. In the first of the guest chambers the tall, fair lad who played the Lady Guinevere is helping the chief mummer out of his boots.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you.” I pause on the threshold. They nod graciously and wait for me to continue. I glance over my shoulder. I can hear the other players talking and laughing in the adjoining bedchamber, and the wardrobe mistress somewhere, complaining at having to cross the stable yard to get to the jakes. I move further into the room. “I have work for you in March, if you are interested.” I cross to the low oak chair by the long mirror. The fair lad lifts pots of make-up and goose grease out of my way so that I can sit down.

  “Indeed?” The chief mummer looks interested.

  “Might you be in the area of Lancaster round about then, good sirs?” I ask, seating myself, less for comfort than to stop my knees from wobbling, for I may in this moment be signing my own death warrant.

  The lad Guinevere puts down his armful of pots on the clothes press, and both men move closer. The chief mummer assumes a listening pose, one knee on the floor, one knee bent, elbow on knee, chin on elegant hand. “We might.” He glances at his friend. “Tell us about it, lady. We are here to be entertained. Tell us the story.”

  The fair lad comes and stands beside him, smiling. “Indeed, madam, we love a good story. Pray, do tell us how we can help.”

  Chapter 17

  In the third week of December we have violent storms. The cockerel weathervane on the church is struck by lightning and falls down.

  “Oh well, it’s a pagan symbol anyway,” says John, holding the blackened and bent object in his hands.

  “Nay John!” Mother Bain looks outraged. “It is a reminder to all good Christian folk to be ever wakeful for the coming of the Lord.”

  John laughs. “Oh well, it had better go back up then, though it looks more like a reminder of Hell at the moment.” Sometimes I remember what I love about him. Other times, it quite escapes me.

  I sleep increasingly badly now. Fires in all the rooms keep the house warm as the weather grows colder, but I have taken to letting the fire in the chimney hole of my bedchamber burn down and go out. I need to be able to imagine in some small way what Robert is enduring in the dark, bitter cold of the dungeon.

  John is sleeping badly too. More than once we meet in the middle of the night on the landing or in the kitchen. These are the times we talk. I say, “Think what it’s like in the dungeons.” He says, “He may be dead, Beatie. Human beings can only take so much.”

  Two nights before Christmas I go to bed early. I am weary from all the Christmas preparations, and sick of the sight of Widow Brissenden. The fire in my bedchamber is all but out. I take off my cap and let hairpins come tumbling loose to the floor. I kick them aside. I take off my loose wool mantle and detach my sleeves and collar, then unlace my bodice and take off my kirtle, petticoat and chemise-smock. My black knitted stockings have sagged. I untie the garters and rub the weals they leave behind. When I am naked I lie on the cold wooden floor and close my eyes. It is impossible to sleep. When I am shivering uncontrollably, and ready to weep with cold and misery, I get up and go to bed. I wanted to spend the night there, to know what it was like, but in the end I make excuses – I will be no good to Robert if I am weak and ill; I cannot save him if I am dead of a chill myself. Angrily, I get into bed without my nightsmock or warmingstone, and lie there shivering. How will Robert get through the winter? How will I? How will the festivities of Christmas be bearable?

  Inevitably drowsiness comes and the bed grows hot. The feather mattresses are a pit into which I sink. I dream. I am standing in a field full of crows, and the villagers are beating them with sticks to drive them off the crops. After the birds seem all dead or flown, I find one injured crow left, hiding in an alley of the village. I want to nurse it back to health, but do not know how, even if I were able to catch it. I wake, thinking at first that the crows represent the Scots, and the injured crow Robert. Then I understand that in truth the crows are death, beaten off by our midwinter fires and festivities, and that the injured crow is Robert’s death, perhaps surviving to do its work, perhaps not.

  Lying awake in the darkness, I suddenly realise that the shouts and crashes from my dream are still going on outside.

  “I might as well talk to the wall as talk to that lot,” says John’s voice from the doorway. A candle flares.

  I pull the bedclothes hurriedly round me. “What’s going on?” The commotion seems to be coming from the front of the house, near the church.

  John comes into the room and passes me my thick woollen nightgown and nightsmock from the end of the bed. He is wearing several layers of warm clothing himself, and his outdoor cloak. “You might as well come down and find out something new about your neighbours, Beatie.”

  From the warmth of the bed I look up at him. From dreams of death to a real, warm person and a real, warm bed. I say, “John…” He comes and sits next to me on the bed. After a moment we lean towards each other and kiss, softly and lightly.


  “Paganism! Paganism!” The shriek comes from the landing. “We shall all be damned!” It is Widow Brissenden, roaring along the landing in her night attire, tassels flying. John gives a snort of laughter and stands up.

  “I’ll meet you in the kitchen, Beatrice. Come and be shocked at how we celebrate winter in Wraithwaite.” He bends his head and kisses me again on the lips. “That is not to say I approve of what is going on out there, but oh dear, what the hell.” He turns and leaves.

  Downstairs in the kitchen I put on my cloak over my nightclothes. Mother Bain and Widow Brissenden are standing in the open doorway. The night outside is knifelike. I wrap my cloak round me with both arms and go to where John is standing outside in the frozen courtyard. He puts his arm round me and leads me out on to the green. My breath floats ahead of me, a wraith. Hearte and hearte raithe. From across the universe stars of dazzling beauty light up our village green. The half-moon hangs low in the sky, and the pink berries of the spindleberry tree on the green are lit from behind by white light. Music and dancing continue somewhere unseen. John and I walk over the crunching ground to the church, and the graveyard.

  The villagers are dancing under the moon, over the graves, laughing, shouting and singing, drinking from narrow-lipped jugs. They are wearing their best clothes, bright cloths and leathers of red, purple, blue, green and russet. As we watch, they make a formation, a circle, and start to move slowly, with a little skip every four steps. Gradually they speed up as the musicians – church minstrels and others – play faster and faster, stamping and laughing, their breath in clouds about their heads. There are strands of ivy round the dancers’ necks. The musicians wear circlets of holly on their heads. The blacksmith, Alan Smith, is wearing ram’s horns on his head. Suddenly he climbs on to the churchyard wall and with a chilling scream hurls himself into the centre of the circle, beating with his hands on a small drum which hangs about his neck.