I turn back the cover. It is the copy of William Dunbar’s poetry which I saw in the monks’ garden. It is warm from Robert’s skin. I hold it against my cheek. Outside, the first birds are singing. It is time to go.
Edward is lending Robert, Jonathan and me three good, strong horses on which to travel north. I have decided to send the carretta and Calisto back with Cedric. I dress quickly in clean clothing donated by Flo, and wave Cedric off in the first light of dawn.
Although Robert and Jonathan are still weak, we have agreed that it is better to go now, before the Scots’ presence has a chance to become known outside the castle. We may not be able to travel fast, but with adequate supplies for the journey, we need not risk stopping for food or shelter at farms or villages on the way, and we should reach the Scottish border in two days’ ride. If our men can storm the border, I see no reason why we cannot creep up on it gently, without any great fuss.
Anne and Edward see us off. Anne smiles and waves, and Edward glares and waves. So we go quietly from Castle Clough in the early morning, when only one discreet watchman is on duty, and comings and goings are not greatly remarked upon.
My horse, Mirabella, is frisky and young. She and I get used to one another very quickly. As we emerge from the forest she calms down and settles to a steady trot, her ear against the wind. Later in the day the wind drops, and we travel through misty moorland and hazy slate, until the country changes, and new land lies ahead.
Always yours, in this world and the next. Robert has inscribed the flyleaf of the Dunbar book. I read it by firelight on our overnight stop. The men sleep wrapped in blankets amongst the roots of a pine tree, across the fire from me. I watch them, and then drift into sleep myself, my head on my saddlebags, the scent of pine needles in my nose. We keep the fire burning in case any wolves remain this far south, left over from winter. In a very dark hour, when the moon and stars have vanished behind clouds, Robert comes like a ghost through the trees, carrying sticks he has gathered for the fire. “How does it feel to be going home, after so long?” I ask him.
“Frightening. I’m afraid of what might have changed, and of what might have happened to my parents. They will have thought me dead, this past year. I also fear what you English may have done to our homes and land.”
“You might hate us again.”
He feeds the sticks one by one to the flames, and is silent.
We cross mountain passes, bogland and rivers grey as wolves. We ride bridleways alongside sheer granite drops, in thick mist. We travel north by the sun, and when twilight deepens in the forest, by moss growing on the north sides of the trees. On a bright, open heath, where a few windblown shrubs lean amongst gorse and heather, Robert reins in his horse. “Scotland,” he says.
We dismount. Jonathan looks around him, cool and aloof suddenly. “There used to be a stone here, marking the border,” he tells me, “until the English took it. There’s not much the English wouldnae take.”
“Do you also hate us?” I ask him.
Yesterday he would have hesitated. Now he says outright, “Not you, mistress, but aye, the rest.”
I say goodbye to John, there at the border. Robert and Jonathan take the horses to the beck to drink, and John and I hold each other for a long time. When the Scots return, John clasps their hands and bids them fare well. I remount. I want this to be over now. I hook my right knee over the leather support of my saddle, and arrange my skirts. John says, “Let me see you ride on to Scottish soil.”
Jonathan pauses in the middle of getting on to his horse. “To us it is all Scottish soil,” he says seriously. “To us it is all one land, and the monarch of it all is a Scot.”
Robert tilts his head, as if to suggest that this is not the moment for a lecture. He mounts up, and he and John nod to one another. “Thank you,” says Robert. “We may meet again, since we all live in fire, one way or another.”
I wish I still had my Lenten veil, as the three of us cross the Scottish border, for I can no longer keep back the tears. When I look behind, John has set off southwards already. I watch him go, a lone figure heading towards the trees. He does not look back.
Robert, Jonathan and I ride on through hilly country until noon, when we come to a small pele tower in a shallow valley sheltered by pine forest. “This is where the MacCrundles live,” Robert tells me.
The watchman on the battlements has already seen us. He turns to shout down to those below. We halt on a rocky outcrop. “I’ll go on alone from here, Robert. You get on home to your family. They’ve waited long enough for you.”
He brings his horse alongside mine. “Of course, lovely Beatrice, I could always throw you across my saddle and make off with you.”
“Heavens, Robert, you certainly are recovered.” I lean over and embrace him. “Fare well, raider.”
“Next time you see me I shall be differently clad, sweetheart. I shall be different in many ways. Go on now. We’ll wait here and see you in.”
I look at Jonathan’s disapproving face. “Remember me to your mother, Jonathan. I hope she is safe and well. I don’t suppose we shall meet again, so fare well. God bless you.”
I pat Mirabella’s neck, and we set off down the valley.
Chapter 31
My first day and night at the MacCrundles are mostly spent in sleeping. I little know, then, that it is the last sleep I shall have for some time.
Elspeth MacCrundle is a woman of about my mother’s age. I take to her, yet the thought of spending a year here fills me with homesickness and dismay. Elspeth lives with her crippled brother, Frobisher, who seems very clever and spends his days working out mathematical theories. They are both dressed in woven woollen cloth, green, brown and heather-coloured like the earth, fastened with pins and metal brooches. They look neater than the Scots who raid us, but similar enough for it to be disconcerting. When I have told them my story, a room is prepared for me, and after a meal of oatcakes and herb salad, I sleep through the afternoon.
In the evening we talk again, sitting by the living hall fire. I ask them what they do when the English raid them.
“Kill them, of course,” says Frobisher, as if I were mad to ask.
Elspeth smiles. “What else could we do, dearie? My brother does not agree with what Edward, Anne and I do, but just because we help the unfortunate does not mean to say we are traitors. If we are attacked, we fight.”
When I go to bed that night, I remember that today has been my birthday. I am seventeen.
I wake before dawn the following morning, and do not know at first what has woken me, though I am filled with nameless terror. Then I hear it again, the shout which burst into my dreams.
“All men to arms! All men to arms! It’s the bloody English!”
From within the tower comes the sound of a gong being struck repeatedly. It reverberates in the stones of the walls. I leap out of bed and drag my clothes on. I feel sick to my guts. My first instinct is to do what I would have done at home, rush up to the battlements. This tower, though a quarter the size, is so much like our own that I have no difficulty in finding my way round it. On the spiral staircase I meet Elspeth. She is clutching an armful of arrows. She looks at me severely. “You need not fight, Beatrice, but I shall not expect you to hinder us.”
I follow her up to the battlements. Near the beacon turret, two henchmen are settling Frobisher into a wooden seat on an improvised rotating base. “He’s the best bowman in Scotland,” Elspeth tells me, dumping the arrows at his feet. She turns to one of the watchmen. “Where are they?”
“It’s the beacon to the north, mistress. See? There’s smoke above the trees.”
I turn cold. The north? If the English are coming from the north, moving down the west side of Scotland, it can only mean one thing. It is our local men returning. “Elspeth, oh God. I must go out and stop them. They were supposed to be going home by way of Newcastle. I don’t know why they’re coming this way.”
Elspeth and Frobisher look at me. “I daresay they’ve d
one as much damage as they can in the east; now it’s our turn,” says Frobisher. “But do by all means go out and stop them. We should be delighted.”
Elspeth puts her hand on my arm. “Will you know them? Will you be safe?”
With a shiver I remember the two moss-troopers who attacked me, all those months ago. There will be no one here to save me. “I don’t know.” I shake my head. “I truly don’t know.”
“You will have to explain to them why you are here. That in itself might put you in danger. We had better send a man out with you.”
“No, I’ll do better on my own. If I do know them, I can probably stop them. If I do not know them, I will come back.”
Elspeth nods doubtfully. “Aye well, I’m not so sure, but if it’ll save bloodshed, then God go with you.”
I go out quietly, watched from the doorway by a henchman. It is just a short walk to where the trees start. The woods immediately become dense and dark. I creep silently from tree to tree, through patches of sucking mud underfoot, round fallen, rotted branches, always watching for movement ahead. The warning beacon looked to be about a mile away, but that might not be any indication of where the raiders are, since it could have been passing on a warning from a beacon further north. I might have a long way to go yet. I dare not move more quickly, for fear of being seen or heard. I know our men can move as silently and invisibly as I can. I wonder again why they are coming home this way. Though this route is certainly quicker for our men, it is more usual for all the troops to demobilise together at Newcastle.
Suddenly I hear sounds ahead, clumsy sounds, voices and coughing. I move out of sight behind a tree, and watch them come.
Gaunt-faced men are moving between the trees, some walking slowly, some riding drooped over their horses, some staggering. They stop in the clearing ahead of me. Green light filters down to the forest floor and illuminates them. They are covered in mud and blood, some bandaged, some half out of ripped and blood-stiffened clothes. There is one young man strapped to a hurdle behind a tall bay horse. Gerald is beside him, bent forward over his own horse’s neck, his face ghastly white. I lean forward, disbelieving. I step out from amongst the trees. In a universal reflex, the men reach for their weapons. I know them all, men from Mere Point, Barrowbeck and Wraithwaite. Gerald stares at me blindly. Others move incredulously forward, calling out to me.
I go to the young man on the hurdle. There are no words for this moment. It is Hugh. Hugh, my friend, my cousin, and he is dead.
Gerald dismounts. He says, “Beatie? How can you be here?” and then, as if in a dream, “You have the look of Hugh about you.”
I know I do. I always have. How dare I, with the look of Hugh about me, be alive when he is dead? He looks waxy, not visibly injured. I kneel next to him. I talk to him. I think I may go mad, seeing him so. Beside me one of the other men faints, slumping softly to the pine needles amongst the roots of a tree. The front of his jerkin is solid with dried blood from a neck wound.
I say to Gerald, my beautiful, warlike cousin, “This is waste. Just waste.” I smack my hand to my forehead. “No no. No!”
“I don’t know how I shall get them home.” He is like a man in a trance.
I get slowly to my feet. “Come with me.” I take his hand. “There is someone who will help you.”
More than a fortnight has passed since my flight from Lancaster by the time I once more take the long track round the bay, riding escort to my dead cousin. Whether the soldiers will be waiting for me or not seems irrelevant.
Our eventual journey back from the MacCrundles has taken more than two days. We stayed overnight in a tiny, turf-roofed inn at the foot of a pass, sleeping all together on the straw-strewn upper floor reached by a wooden ladder. All the men are now fit to ride, some of them travelling two to a horse. Hugh is wrapped inside a thick blanket, strapped now to something the MacCrundles called a whirlicote, a sort of horse-drawn litter on wheels.
The track down from the hills brings us at last to Wraithwaite. The drummer was killed in battle, but as the villagers gather in groups, gasping and weeping, another of the church minstrels joins us. Alan Smith, the blacksmith, walks ahead of us, beating out the dead beat on his drum. More people come out when they hear the slow, single beats. They follow the procession, helping the wounded to their houses and supporting those who still have further to go. John comes out too, looking distraught. He quickly saddles Universe, and joins us on our way to Aunt and Uncle Juniper’s. As we ride side by side to the Old Corpse Road, I tell him what happened.
“Thank God you’re safe,” he says. “You should go to Barrowbeck and fetch your mother and Verity. I’ll go with Gerald to Mere Point.”
It takes us all a long time to descend the steps in the rockface of the Old Corpse Road. Some of the Wraithwaite villagers are still helping the more severely wounded along. At the bottom, where the paths divide, I veer off and gallop through the woods, my old familiar woods where I know every path, to Barrowbeck Tower.
William is on watch. He waves, and comes down to let me in. I find my mother and Kate in the wash-house beyond the kitchen, boiling clothes in the two huge cauldrons over the firepit. The room is full of steam. The two women look like ghosts as they move to and fro in it, heaving out dripping linen underwear with tongs, and depositing it with slaps and shoves into wooden buckets, and from there into the stone rinsing tubs. The walls are running with water.
My mother looks at me through the steam, and bursts into tears. “Oh Beatie!” She runs over and folds me in her arms. “Oh Beatie. Stupid girl! Stupid girl to get into such trouble for… for a Scot!” She whispers the last word, and it is drowned out by the noise of boiling. She rocks me to and fro and does not let go of me for a long time.
Kate stands with her hands on her hips. “Well well, whatever have you been up to, young woman, to upset your mother so?” she enquires, and I realise that most people probably have no idea at all what has been going on.
It is hard to tell them about Hugh. My mother sits on the settle with her head in her hands. Jonah is sent to Low Back Farm to bring Verity and James, then we all ride together to Mere Point. When we arrive, Uncle Juniper is shouting and raging and weeping in the smokehouse. Gerald is sitting with his mother in the kitchen, gripping her hands, whilst she stares uncomprehendingly into his face.
Germaine seems affected by a tremor in her hands which she cannot control, as she moves rapidly from one unnecessary task to another, in that well-ordered kitchen.
Later we go upstairs with Aunt Juniper to where Hugh has been laid in the small chapel over the gatehouse. He looks heavy and pale, like a statue. My aunt does not speak. She does not appear to hear what we say. We stay for a while, John talking to her in a low voice, then she gestures that we should leave her alone, and we do so.
In the kitchen Leah, the new skivvy, keeps serving cups of hot posset. The proportions are all wrong – too much wine, too much milk curd or disastrous amounts of cinnamon and nutmeg – but Germaine leaves her to get on with it and does not intervene. John brings Uncle Juniper in from the smokehouse and makes him quieten down. Later, Cedric arrives, then goes straight out again to Hagditch to inform Anne Fairweather.
Aunt Juniper remains in the chapel as noon comes and goes, and the tide marches up and down the bay. I join her again for a while. Afterwards I go outside, and stand amongst the screaming seabirds on the clifftop.
Friends and neighbours arrive in the afternoon. Aunt Juniper neither weeps nor speaks to them. She never does speak again. Instead, as evening approaches, and in a moment when our vigilance must have faltered, she walks down the spiral staircase, out of the tower and over the cliff.
Chapter 32
After the funerals of Hugh and Aunt Juniper, it takes us a long time to return to anything like normality. Little by little life settles down again, but nothing is the same. All the family is grieving. Going back into hiding is not an option now. I am too much needed here. We continue the year’s work on the farm, but our
hearts are not in it. Unremarkable, everyday events – family meals, churchgoing, visits by the pedlar – are made terrible by the absence of Hugh and Aunt Juniper. Mother enters a state of deep melancholy. I find her one morning in the dairy, turning the handle of the churn, tears pouring down her face. The slap of cream inside the churn thickens to a dull beat. “The butter’s coming,” she says, raising her face to mine, and then walks out, leaving it half done. I start to follow her, but realise she needs to go alone to Mere Point, as she so often does, to stand on the cliff at the place where Aunt Juniper fell. I turn back and finish the churning.
Our mourning seems to bring out other sorrows too. One evening I find Kate sitting at the end of my father’s bed, weeping. He lies half propped up, staring blankly at a heap of child’s coloured counters, which she has been trying to persuade him to arrange into patterns. “He won’t look at them,” she sobs. “I thought he’d like to play with them. Where’s he gone, Beatie? Where’s he gone?”
Midsummer comes and goes. We do not hold the usual Midsummer Revels, though we can hear the homesteaders celebrating somewhere down the valley. All the things that mattered so much to me before – music, reading, preparing for a good harvest – now seem meaningless. Music I simply cannot bear. Germaine grinding away on her lute drives me to distraction.
Then there is John. I simply cannot be bothered with him. I cannot summon up the emotion required. He understands. I know he does, because he tells me so, but the fact that he needs to remark on it feels like a reproach. As for his church work, his talk of holiness and everlasting life, I cannot listen to it. It becomes a regular occurrence for the churchwardens to call round and collect fines from me, for not attending church.
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