North Side of the Tree

by Maggie Prince

  As the weeks move on, the men improve the pastures ready for sowing and planting, digging out stones and filling the holes from claybeds and dungheaps. When at last the ground softens enough, we start the ploughing. Verity and I sort the seeds for planting – wheat, barley, rye and beans – and I think of the tiny, black, kidney-shaped seeds which lie at the bottom of my dower chest – henbane, a last resort for the desperate. I remember a day long ago on the rough heathland towards Mistholme Moss, and Mother saying, “Don’t touch this plant, Beatrice. It’s dangerous.” I looked at its cream and purple flowers, little knowing the purpose to which I might one day put it. I saw the purple-spotted stalks of hemlock too, and deadly nightshade, and many other subjects of such warnings. Don’t touch this plant, Beatrice. It’s dangerous. I run my fingers now through seeds of barley, wheat and rye, as if through hair. Don’t touch, don’t touch. But I have touched, and it is indeed dangerous.

  My afternoons spent learning the art of healing with Cedric are fewer now, and he more often travels over to me, teaching me bee-cupping as a remedy for Kate’s swollen joints, the preparation of hawthorn and mulberry for Father’s blood, and the mashing of comfrey poultices for his bedsores. Sometimes I look at Father with grief and astonishment, seeing afresh the changes which have occurred in him. When did all his dark hair drop out? When did his mouth fall in on his teeth so, and his cheekbones become wedges? I grasp his dead-wood fingers, and tell him about Robert. He listens, staring into my face and nodding.

  It is on a day when Verity and I are sitting at her kitchen table making tooth-soap from ashes of rosemary and powdered alabaster – the very latest recipe from London recommended by Anne Fairweather – that Verity tilts forward in her chair and says, “Sister, I have a pain in my belly, and my boots are full of water.”

  I had almost forgotten that this was to happen. The lying-in sheets and crib have been ready for months, but Christmas has been so busy, and we have simply become used to Verity being huge. I jump to my feet. “Oh sweet Jesu, Verity! I’ll get Mother. Where’s James?”

  She leans forward and groans. “I think he’s working on the fortifications, Beatie. Will you send for Sanctity Wilson and Mother Bain too? Go on. I’m all right.”

  There is a lot to do all at once. I make up the bed with the lying-in sheets, and help Verity into it. I find George and Martinus in the farm’s tool cellar working at the whetstone and woodcarving bench, and send them off to fetch Mother, Sanctity Wilson and Mother Bain. Sanctity arrives with a brew of raspberry leaves. Mother Bain arrives with her tapestry bag of medications. Kate brings a heap of comfortable pillows, and a moleskin blanket in which to wrap the baby.

  “She should move about,” says Sanctity, putting on her red midwife’s apron, and she helps Verity stretch and walk and bend. Mother views them askance, but holds her peace, since Sanctity’s many births have been of legendary ease and speed. We eat dinner on our laps in the birthing-room at midday, with French wine brought by Mother, then we stoke the fire with dry logs to last the afternoon.

  By the time the cold, wintry sun sets, Verity is no nearer giving birth. Her pains are violent but far apart. By midnight the older women are looking concerned. I go out to where James has been patrolling the landing, but he is no longer there. I find him in the dark lane, lashing at the thorns and briars with his sickle, and weeping.

  In the birthing-room, Verity is white with exhaustion. Mother Bain is listening to the baby’s heartbeat as I return. Everyone has stopped talking. “Lady.” The old woman eases herself upright and gestures to Mother to follow her. I stand in the doorway where I can hear them. Mother Bain says softly, “The child has no water left. It needs to be born now. She will have to have goblin bread.”

  Mother gasps. “Oh surely… is there no other way, Mistress Bain? Childbirth is bad enough without goblin bread.”

  “Her contractions are not frequent enough. It has to be done, lady, or the child will die.”

  I look over at Verity. She is watching us, her expression wary. Mother Bain draws a small package from her tapestry bag and tips a few black morsels of bread from it into her palm. Goblin bread, the evil growth which in a bad year makes the poor see demons and sometimes destroy themselves and others, is here preserved deliberately by Mother Bain for the speeding of childbirth. Thoughts of witchcraft cross my mind, but I push them away, ashamed.

  Kate struggles past me, lugging the heavy wooden cradle on rockers. “Goblin bread? God help you, Mistress Verity,” she shouts. “Just remember that what you see ain’t really there.”

  “Be quiet, Kate!” Mother snaps.

  Kate shrugs. “I’ve brought a knife to hang over the baby’s cradle to keep the snatching fairies away.” She brandishes a large carving knife. Mother rolls her eyes and ushers her away.

  After Verity has eaten two small pieces of goblin bread, everyone else draws back into the dim candlelight to allow her to rest, but I pull up a stool close to her red-curtained bed, and hold her hands. She closes her eyes and says through scarcely moving lips, “Remember you are to be godmother, Beatrice. Take care of this baby for me.”

  There is no point in replying. I can see that she is gone away and cannot hear me. I squeeze her hands, by way of a promise.

  By dawn, Verity is screaming and lashing out at things we cannot see. By next midnight, she is silent. All of us are on our knees. I fall in and out of sleep, my face on the bed cover. Sometimes I wake because I am face down and suffocating myself, sometimes because my knees have gone to sleep. I wake with a jump as Mother Bain, on the other side of the bed, stands up and straightens her red apron. The muttered prayers, running like an incantation round the room, falter and stop. The old woman cups Verity’s cheek in her hand. “She’s in right piteous case, mistress,” she says to my mother. “You must send for the Cockleshell Man to cut her.”

  Kate shrieks and falls face down on the floor.

  “No.” Mother’s single word catches the echo which this room sometimes holds. No, no, no.

  “There’s a chance he could save the baby, mistress, though I doubt it.”

  Verity has been lying very still, her eyes closed, her mind far away, but suddenly a rictus convulses her body, and a groan comes from her.

  “Kneel her up!” exclaims Sanctity. “Something’s changed!”

  Mother Bain rushes to the foot of the bed. “The head’s out. Thank the Lord.”

  Between us we haul Verity to her knees amid the wreckage of the bedclothes. She is back-breakingly heavy and limp. I support her with my shoulder under her armpit, and find myself straining with her. I mutter. “Push, Verity. Don’t die. Push, and you’ll have everything you wanted, James, the farm, a baby. Don’t die. Remember your plan, darling. Just remember your plan.”

  The only sound she makes is a whisper in the back of her throat. I stagger to hold her weight. People are sobbing. It fills the room. Then, above it all, comes a small cry, a new voice in the world.

  Triumphantly Mother Bain lifts the tiny, bloody baby. “It’s a boy, mistress.” Sanctity ties the cord in two places and cuts it with neat efficiency, then wipes the baby’s mouth. My mother holds a linen cloth and the moleskin blanket ready, and swiftly wraps him in them without bothering to wash him. She passes him to me.

  “Keep him warm, Beatie. He’s half dead. You must take your vows as godmother immediately, and stand in for the other godparents. Plenty of time to wash him later.”

  John, who is to be one of the godfathers, has been back and forth to the farm over the long hours of Verity’s labour, but now he is absent with a dying farmworker at Mere Point, and anyway, men have no place in a birthing-room. Hugh and Gerald are to be the baby’s other godfathers, and Germaine his other godmother. I hold my nephew, and listen apprehensively to the fragility of each of his breaths. He is a red-haired boy with dark blue eyes and curled shrimp hands. His weight and solidity feel miraculous.

  “If he survives the day he’ll survive the week,” says Kate.

  L
ike most midwives, Mother Bain and Sanctity Wilson have dispensations from the bishop to baptise the newborn when necessary. Now they approach in their red aprons, a strange aura of holiness about them, amid the meaty physicality of birth. Sanctity pours holy water into a bowl, and Mother Bain enfolds the baby in the family’s silk and wool chrisom, then baptises him Thomas Francis, after both his grandfathers.

  “Best pass him through the branches of an elder tree as well, just to be on the safe side,” pronounces Kate. “You can’t be too careful.”

  Mother wipes the tears from her face with both hands and answers, “Maybe later.” Thomas’s whimpering stops as I rock him, and he blinks at the first rays of dawn shining in through the window.

  Chapter 20

  On the day when it becomes clear that Thomas is going to survive, we hold his christening feast. John and I take him a set of silver apostle spoons and a coral teething ring. The pedlar has brought lemons, a rare treat, and Kate cooks hare seethed in lemons for the festive meal. Verity’s eyes are black-ringed, and weakness still trembles in her voice, but she is full of elation. “Thank you for bullying me back to life,” she says, as we walk outside, viewing the men’s latest work on the farm’s fortifications. “I heard you from a long way off.”

  For a while, that February, life seems almost normal again. The ploughing is interrupted by hard frost, but we are glad of it to sear the ground. The necessary work pushes thoughts of the march on Scotland to the backs of people’s minds, though some of the young men, who work at hard and tedious labour day after day on the land, are clearly finding the idea of invading Scotland exciting. For me, with February half gone and Robert’s trial just weeks away, it is time to move ahead with my own plans. Some nights I scarcely sleep. When I do, I have nightmares. On the farm every innocent piece of chain is a prisoner’s shackle, every innocent piece of rope a hangman’s noose.

  In late February Mother, Aunt Juniper and I visit Hugh’s new lady, Anne Fairweather, at her house in Hagditch. She has an Irish wolfhound at her gate, and an elderly manservant at her door. He greets us saying, “I pray you be welcome herein.” We are deeply impressed, and I wonder if I could teach one of the henchmen to do this.

  We are also impressed by Anne’s possessions, silver and gold plate, mother-of-pearl candle shades, brilliantly coloured tapestries. In the library stands a spinet, its lid painted blue, red and gold, its keys intricately carved. Anne plays it for us whilst Mother and Aunt Juniper walk amongst the snowdrops in the garden outside the open library windows. I browse along the bookshelves, and when I find what I am looking for, say hesitantly, “Anne?”

  She looks up from her playing, and smiles. “Yes Beatrice?” Her veil is turned back over her cap today. I realise, seeing the exceptional beauty of her smile, how little pockmarks really matter.

  “Anne, I believe you have a cousin in the Lancaster judiciary.”

  She nods. “Yes, my pompous Cousin Edward.”

  “Oh… pompous?”

  “Quite, quite unbearable, my dear. Are you interested in the judiciary? You are very welcome to meet him. He’s coming to dinner on Sunday.”

  This is more than I had hoped. I wrote, necessarily anonymously, to the Lancaster magistrates in the autumn, explaining that Robert Lacklie was committed to stopping the border raids, but I had little hope of altering their minds, and indeed clearly had not done so.

  “Thank you… thank you very much. I should like that. Will Hugh be here?”

  “Er no. Not this time. Bring John, of course. He will be a fitting counterpoint to loathsome Edward.”

  “Why do you invite him if he is so loathsome, Anne?”

  She turns a page of her music and begins a different tune, fast and intricate. She concentrates for a moment, then looks up again. “Because I want him to get someone out of the castle for me, Beatrice.”

  I drop the book I am holding.

  Anne stops playing. “Are you shocked? I had begun to think you a kindred spirit. Do not tell me I was mistaken.”

  I sit down carefully on a carved chestnut chair. Anne goes back to her playing. “You may find my Cousin Edward charming, Beatrice, and not loathsome at all. He tries to dazzle ladies. He is very handsome, in a fat sort of way.”

  I bend, and pick up the book I dropped. It is The Compleat Herbalyste.

  “Who… whom do you wish to get out of the castle, Anne?”

  She sighs. “Oh, it is a tenant woman of my Cousin Elspeth. I have Scottish relatives, for my sins. Needless to say, we have little contact. This foolish woman tried to get herself into the castle disguised as a laundress, with some idea of rescuing her son who is imprisoned for border raiding. She escaped, but they caught up with her again at some inn in Lancaster, and now she is imprisoned herself. It is clearly wrong that she should hang with the rest of them.” She closes the lid of the spinet.

  I go over to her and rest my hand on the instrument. I can feel the buzz of music still in it. “I also want to get someone out of the castle, Anne,” I say. I glance over my shoulder as Mother and Aunt Juniper pass the window.

  Anne raises an eyebrow. “Oh. Might one ask…?”

  “A Scot. His name is Robert.”

  “Do you know, Beatrice, I used to think you were boring. Now I think we might truly be friends. Is he your lover?”

  Mother and Aunt Juniper re-enter the room.

  “May I borrow this book?” I ask, clutching the herbal.

  “Of course you may.” Anne opens the spinet again, and breaks into something remarkably like a Highland reel.

  Later that day I ride over to the parsonage. John is out and Mother Bain is asleep. I go upstairs and burrow down into my dower chest. The seeds of henbane are still safely there, together with a tiny, stoppered flagon. If time allows, best results will be obtained by steeping the seeds in wine before mashing, Anne’s book tells me. Time does allow, and I hope the usquebaugh which I have been keeping by me will be even more effective than wine. “Whiskybae…” I practise the pronunciation which Robert taught me. It is possible that what I am doing may prove unnecessary, with the advent of loathsome Edward, but I am taking no chances.

  I tip the usquebaugh from the flagon into a small, marble mortar, make some calculations, check and recheck, then count out a precise number of seeds into the strong-smelling spirit. They float on the surface, like black commas. Then I put the lid on and push the whole thing away to the furthest corner of the hastening cupboard, above the bread oven. I know Mother Bain cannot reach to the back of it. They will be safe there. In the window I put a pot of rue, dug up from Cedric’s garden, as a gesture of apology to the Almighty for my efforts to pervert the course of justice.

  On Sunday John and I ride over to Hagditch straight after morning service. Edward is there already. He is indeed handsome. His skin is smooth and flushed, his hair bright chestnut, his expression very confident. We eat a lavish meal during which Anne explains in great detail to Edward why he must arrange at once for the release of their cousin’s unfortunate tenant. Edward smiles, nods loftily and assures her it is impossible, but behind his grand manner I can see from the adoring look he gives her that it is not impossible at all.

  After the meal Anne takes John’s arm. “I am taking your betrothed for a walk in the garden, Beatrice dear. He is far too righteous and I wish to corrupt him.”

  John smiles and allows himself to be led away, and I am left with Edward. I feel at a terrible disadvantage, unamusing and inarticulate compared with Anne. Edward wanders round the library, sipping his goblet of raisin wine.

  “So,” he says, after a brief silence, “I gather from my cousin that you also wish someone released. At this rate the castle will be empty. Perhaps you had better explain.”

  I feel a disbelieving flutter of hope. “Sir, yes, it is so. I also have a Scottish connection, as you and the lady Anne do. I know that the Scot of whom I speak desires only to stop the border raids. His family has the influence to do so. His name is Robert Lacklie. Releasing h
im could bring peace to parts of the border country. Hanging him would probably just incite more revenge.”

  “So your motives are noble and altruistic.”

  “My motives… do include a desire for justice. Robert is not an enemy of England.”

  “Has he ever raided our country?”

  I hesitate. “He repents any raiding he might have done, and wishes all the more urgently, because of it, to make amends.”

  Edward turns sharply from his perusal of the bookshelves and stares at me. “Madam, if it were not for my gentle cousin’s intercession for you, I should have to question you most severely about this matter. It is my duty to uphold the law, and there is little that could ever deflect me from that, save, perhaps rarely, for the love I hold for my Cousin Anne. I despise myself for it. Indeed, she despises me for it, but, you see, we do strange and inadvisable things for love, as you most obviously are aware.” He pauses, draws a deep breath and folds his arms across his plump chest. He looks at me angrily, as if I had deliberately persuaded him to say too much, then adds, “You are a member of a family which is threatening to take my cousin away from me for a second time, though I cannot imagine for a moment what she sees in your Cousin Hugh. Well, I still hope to persuade her of her folly. Ladies have these weaknesses, and sometimes need to be guided towards what is best for them. Clearly your Cousin Hugh has aspirations. Well, I can understand that, but I shall do my utmost to see that they remain unfulfilled. As for you, madam, I suggest most fervently that you reconsider your association with this Scot.” He turns and strides towards the door. “There is nothing I can do for you. I would not help you even if I could. Now, good day to you.”