“The others will all be dead by now,” he says.
At the sound of his voice, the truth crashes over me like the tide. He is here. He is with me. Robert is no longer imprisoned in the castle. The months of terror are over. Fumbling, I let down the tailflap and climb into the back of the cart. I put my arms round him and hold him against me. He is filthy, bent and ill, but this person whom I so injured, and whom my people have now injured so much worse, is back from the grave.
“Oh Robert.” I kiss his face and hair, and kneel amongst the hay and rock him. When I look up, the boy is watching us.
I help the two of them into the cave. They both manage to walk haltingly, limping and leaning on me. The cave is deep and dark. Inside, the smell is of dankness and salt and the slow earth. Near the entrance, brown streaks show on white walls in the fitful moonlight, and water trickles down the rockface. At the back, where the ground slopes up to a sandy shelf, it is dry. Here is the tall, narrow crevice which leads to Cedric’s cottage, up on the cliffs.
When I was here last week, working out the tides, the cave was warm. Now it is bitter. I help the two of them along to the sandy shelf, listening to the irregularity of Robert’s breathing. It echoes in the enclosed space. “You’re in no state to travel, Robert,” I whisper, “but I’m afraid we must keep going, once you have rested a while.” I set one of the lanthorns on its stand in a crevice. Images flash in its unreliable light, worm faces in the darkness.
The youth huddles in a natural corner formed by two rocks, hugging his gaudy cloak about him. Robert takes off the black cloak and tries to make me wear it, but I refuse, so in the end we sit close together with it wrapped round both of us. “What is your name?” I ask the boy.
“Jonathan.” He hesitates. “Do you know what became of my mother, mistress? She was imprisoned in the castle with us for a while.”
“Come over here.” I hold out my arm to him. “Sit with us and get warm. So it was your mother, was it? I believe she is probably safe, Jonathan.”
Like a child, he comes and sits by me. I put my arm round his shoulders. “I met her, Jonathan, one night. When you see her, tell her that the woman on the landing at the George sends greetings.”
After a while they both sleep, Jonathan sucking his thumb, Robert rasping with each breath, and I leave them there, blanketed in the smell of the dungeon, waiting for daybreak.
I take the second lanthorn with me through the crevice at the back of the cave. I have to squeeze sideways to fit through. I have never been this way before, though Cedric has on several occasions said he will show me. As soon as I am through, the light goes out with a pop. I am in complete darkness. I consider going back and taking the long way round – climbing the cliff path and walking back through the woods to Cedric’s cottage – but speed is too important. I continue on in utter blackness, feeling with my feet and hands, listening for sounds, terrified of what I might touch with my fingers. A feeling of unreality comes over me. I am too tired to think. Have I really saved Robert from the gallows, or is this just a dream?
I move and stop, move and stop. I know from Cedric that there are no hidden chasms or traps in this rock passage, but it occurs to me that I do not know the precise mechanism for getting out the other end. I could go back for the other lanthorn, but the need for haste is so great that I decide against it. I cannot stop thinking about how exposed the horses and cart are, outside in the cleft of the rock. Once dawn comes up, anyone passing could see them and go into the cave to investigate.
The ground slopes up sharply. I stumble, strain my eyes, pause, but there is not even a hint of light. Suddenly the walls on either side of me, along which I have been feeling my way, stop. There is nothing. I feel with my foot. The ground continues up, but to the sides of me is space. I find the rock wall at one side again and follow it with my hand. It curves away. The other side is the same. I am in a wide fissure, and I do not know which way to go. If I had a light, it would probably be obvious. I decide that I shall have to go back after all. That is when I hear the sound.
I freeze. There was a tiny shift amongst the rocks. I listen with all my concentration. Bats. It could only be bats, a few still here in the dark, not out foraging with the rest. Water drips. The wind and sea roar far off. Then I realise that I can also smell the sea close to. Amongst all the underground smells pressing on me in this lightless place, the smell of the sea is stronger than it should be. Then I hear breathing.
Chapter 26
I am paralysed with fright. Here in the depths of the earth, where I should not be, is something that lives in the earth, perhaps watching me. I edge back into the rock passage. I can hear it moving. It is shockingly close. Then it touches me.
I recoil against the cave wall and lash out, gasping.
“Who’s that?” a voice hisses in my ear.
“Oh God! Oh God!” I want to drum my heels, fall down and faint. I want to kill him. “Cedric! Cedric, for God’s sake, what are you doing here in the dark?” I clench my hands against my pounding heart.
“Shh!” Strong arms close round me, and the smell of the sea, which is Cedric’s smell, envelops me. “Don’t make a sound. They’ll hear us. The soldiers are in my house.”
“Oh no!”
A tinderbox clicks and a candle flares. Cedric sets the copper candleholder down on a rock. Now I can see the space we are in. It is a wide, low cave, sloping below head height at the far end, with water dripping down the walls and running away through crevices in the rock. “There’s a way up to my house, through a trapdoor.” Cedric points to a pile of rocks leading up beyond the low overhang at the far end. “What’s been happening, Beatrice?”
“I got Robert out. Another Scot, too.”
In the candlelight Cedric’s face looks incredulous, disproportionate. “Where are they?” he asks.
“In the cave.” I gesture behind me. “But John has been captured. He’s imprisoned in the castle. Will you see that he gets out? Speak to the bishop? I have to get away with Robert. Will you guide us over the sands?”
He is silent for a moment, then he answers, “I’ll take Robert over the sands, Beatrice. You don’t need to come. I’ll take him to the Black Brothers at Cartmel. You go back home.”
“I can’t. The soldiers know me. I stole their cart because ours was taken into the castle with John.”
He gapes. “I see. Do they know that you actually rescued Robert? Could you not pretend you stole their cart in a panic to get home?”
“I think they’ll have worked it out. The captain was already suspicious that I was taking an interest in the Scots. Anyway, I don’t think Robert will be safe even at Cartmel. It will be an obvious place for the soldiers to look. We have to go on north. We have to go to Scotland.”
Cedric’s lips tighten. Before he can argue further, I take his hand and lead the way back down the rock passage. It is visible now in the light of his candle, and I can move more sure-footedly. Outside the big cave, the sky is still reassuringly dark. Inside, Robert and Jonathan lie sprawled asleep. Jonathan is moaning softly. Cedric kneels down and looks at them. After a moment he shakes his head. “Beatrice, if you try to travel north with these sick men, in a stolen military cart, with an English border raid under way, you will fail. We have to hide them for now. The soldiers have searched Barrowbeck Tower already. They found some of your father’s stolen goods in the root cellar, and they’re calling it a den of thieves and traitors, but when they saw the state your father was in, they left him alone. I doubt they’ll go back. They want to go home too. They’re on loan from Lord Ravenswyck, and their tour of duty is almost over. You should go home yourself. If necessary you could hide in the secret passage under the barmkin. I’ll look after Robert and the other lad in the inner cave where we were just now. Then in a month or so we’ll take them across to Cartmel.”
“Cedric, you don’t understand. I’ve got them this far and I can’t take any chances. We have to press on immediately. The soldiers won’t give up so easily.
I assume that stealing a military cart is a hanging offence. I have to get away and I have to get them away too.” I touch Robert’s sleeping face. “We’ll go to the Black Brothers, perhaps stay overnight, then we must continue northwards. If the English raid on Scotland is heading out of Newcastle, we’ll go up the west coast. I have no idea where Robert’s home is, but presumably he will wake up enough by then to tell me. Cannot you give him something to bring him round, Cedric? I seem to have overdone the henbane and usquebaugh a little.”
Cedric raises his eyebrows. “Henbane and usquebaugh?” He gives a short laugh. “You seem to belong to the battering-ram school of healing, Beatrice.” He strokes his beard. “Aye, I’ll give them mustard and milkthistle and charcoal to get it out of their systems, and sea-belt to liven them up. It’s fortunate I keep supplies in the inner cave, for I certainly cannot go back to the cottage just now.”
“Why are the soldiers at your cottage anyway, Cedric? Surely they have no business with you?”
“They went to Wraithwaite looking for you, Beatrice, and Widow Brissenden kindly suggested to them that my cottage was a place you might head for.”
I feel a surge of fury, and a sense of regret that I shall not be here to make Widow Brissenden pay for this. “I am truly sorry, Cedric. I am truly sorry that you have become so involved.”
He smiles. “I have been involved for some time, Beatrice.”
I realise suddenly that I can see him better than before. There is a faint lightening of the sky outside.
“Oh God. Cedric, it’s nearly dawn. When can you take us across?”
He looks towards the cave mouth. “It’s too late now to get you across before the next high tide. I could take you in the morning, when the tide is out again, but it will be broad daylight and there’ll be a risk of being seen. Can’t you leave it until the following low tide, after dark?”
“We can’t wait that long. We’ll have to take our chances. I’ll go to Barrowbeck and get food and water whilst the men rest some more.” Even as I give food as my reason for returning to Barrowbeck, I know the truth is that I must see it one last time. I think of my mother, of Verity and Thomas, Aunt and Uncle Juniper, all the other people whom I may not see again. I think of John.
Cedric is speaking again. “…you’ll be less conspicuous in the carretta than in that cart.” He goes to the cave mouth where the horses are snorting in their sleep. “We’ll leave these beauties somewhere for the soldiers to find. I’ll stay with the lads in the inner cave and get them into some sort of state for travelling.”
With difficulty we drag and push the two stumbling Scots along the rock passage. When we lay them down in the damp cave they instantly go back to sleep again. Cedric looks up at me. “Beatrice, reconsider. These men are not fit to travel.” He stands the lanthorns and candle around them, then pulls out a wooden chest from behind the rock overhang. From it he produces two large, rabbitskin coddling bags of the sort Sanctity Wilson makes and sells. “Help me get them into these,” he says. He seems very out of sorts with me suddenly. As we heave the two trembling Scots into the musty bags, and lace up the sides, he adds, “Think of John, Beatrice. Think of your mother. How can you even be considering this?”
We stare at one another, then I blunder away into the rock passage and leave them together in the flickering dimness.
I drive the soldiers’ cart as quietly as I can along the shore and up through the woods to Barrowbeck Tower. Dawn is struggling somewhere behind the clouds, but it is a dim, wet morning, and I am thankful for it. I look at these woods, which have occupied so much of my life. I want to seal them in my memory, so that they are with me when I am in a very different place. I have not slept for more than two days. Twice I fall asleep and almost topple off the cart. I drive to the place where the Old Corpse Road begins, and leave the cart by the beck, so that the horses can drink until they are found. Then I walk the rest of the way. At the edge of the woods I pause, and look towards the tower, my home. The watchman comes into view. It is Michael. Clearly fate does not intend to make this easy for me. I wait until his patrol takes him out of view, then dash across the clearing. I am reminded of when I made this same dash with armed men charging at me across the clearing, Robert amongst them.
The door is bolted on the inside. No one else can be up yet. I am dismayed. Dawn is up and the household still asleep. Truly, matters are deteriorating here on the farm. All our minds are so much on other things that normal routines have gone to ruin. Kate’s suggestion that Verity, James and little Thomas should move here has never been taken up. I realise now that this is exactly what Barrowbeck Farm needs.
I hear bolts being withdrawn on the inside. My first reaction is to go and hide – what if some of the soldiers are still here? – but it is too late. The door swings open and Michael stands there.
He bows. “Good morrow, mistress.” He draws back to let me enter. Cautiously I step past him.
“Good morrow, Michael. The parson and I have been delayed in Lancaster. I trust I find you well?”
His expression is unreadable. How much does he know? “Indeed. And you also, mistress?”
I incline my head. “I thank you. You may return to your watch now.”
He bows even lower. It is most unnerving. Here at Barrowbeck we are not so gracious as to be constantly bowing to one another. Michael retreats up the spiral staircase and I step under the low arch into the kitchen.
The kitchen – how can something so ordinary as a kitchen provoke tears? I put it down to extreme tiredness. An unwashed cooking pot stands on the table, with dried flakes of turnip broth curled on its rim. A poker stands in a jug in the hearth where they have been mulling ale. The fire is sunk into ash, but heat comes from within it.
I want to go for one last time to every part of this place – to the dairy to see the churns in silent rows, waiting for my mother to arrive and start shouting at Tilly Turner; to the passage under the barmkin to make sure the wolf-pit is closed so that no one can come to harm; to my bedchamber, where so many of my dearest possessions are stored. I want to stand on the beacon turret and watch the woods for raiders. I tiptoe across the floor, nervously aware of Kate sleeping in her room behind the hearth. My cat Caesar comes butting at my ankles. I push him away, burst into tears, pick him up and cradle him against my chest. For a moment he purrs and pushes his face into my neck, then he becomes tired of so much wetness dripping into his fur, and struggles to get down.
I am being too slow. It is as if I had taken henbane myself. I light a candle and hurry down to the root cellar. I collect bread and cheese, wrap them in oilskin, and fill a leather bottle with water from the copper cistern. Then I hurry back up to the kitchen. It is still empty, but a door is banging somewhere in the tower. People will be waking. I must go.
In the barmkin I hitch my father’s second-best horse, Calisto, to the carretta, and stow the oilskin package under the seat. There is no sign of Michael on the battlements. I lead Calisto out under the stone arch and close the gate behind me.
Chapter 27
The sky starts to clear from the east, and the sun shines through holes in the clouds creating a strange light, as I descend the cliff path back to the cave. I feel tense and watchful now, all my tiredness gone. Cedric is waiting. Between us we help the two Scots into the back of the carretta and hide them under piles of fishing nets. The bay is the colour of coral as we race across it, Cedric at the reins. We see no one on the way.
The old monastery is in worse ruins than I expected, destroyed by King Henry’s men when they rooted out Papism from the land. Part of the church is still standing. Cedric tells me it is called the Town Choir, and that it survived because King Henry’s soldiers regarded it as the villagers’ parish church. The monks are not allowed to go there.
We drive on a short distance and come to a wattle and daub longhouse next to a ruined wall. It looks very poor. The tattered reed thatch, and mottled clay-and-lime-daubed walls, are more decrepit than the worst dwelling of an
y homesteader in our valley. Two men in shabby black habits appear from round the side, carrying straight-sided iron buckets hanging from yokes across their shoulders. They wave. Another who was sitting on a seat cut from a tree trunk, reading a book, comes over to us. Somewhere round the back, a voice sings a chant of delicate descending notes. There is a pause, then the chant is repeated, with ornamentation. Robert sits up in the back of the carretta and asks in an unsteady voice, “Where are we? Who is singing De Profundis?”
“Cartmel, Robert. We’re at Cartmel.” I hold out my hand and he grips it. Cartmel, at last, after so long. “We’re stopping for a short rest,” I add, finding my own voice unsteady.
“And then?” He kneels up and takes hold of my hands.
“Scotland.”
Cedric turns his head away.
“Good morrow, Cedric!” The monk who was reading the book has come to stand by the carretta.
“Father Wolf of the Order of Saint Augustine, Mistress Garth of Barrowbeck Tower, and two refugees who need your help,” Cedric introduces us.
Father Wolf inclines his head, and helps me down. “God bless you, madam. I will send two of the brothers to assist your friends.”
As he walks away into the longhouse, I look at Cedric. “They know you?” I ask.
“I come here to Mass.” He jumps to the ground.
I close my eyes briefly, and laugh. “Oh Cedric.”
I wonder why I never guessed it before, but then why should I? Papism is frowned upon. Papists are sometimes still burnt. “Have you always been a Papist, Cedric?” I ask him.
He looks up from where he is letting down the tailgate of the carretta and says, “Aye.”
Robert and Jonathan are taken to the infirmary, whilst Cedric and I are led to the longhouse kitchen, where a young monk makes us a hot posset of roasted barley, cream and sweet white wine. “It is most restorative,” he assures us, swirling the cream on top with a flourish, and floating a sage leaf on it.
North Side of the Tree Page 18