“I can make you a good life, Anna. You will want for nothing. My father is a rich man. I myself have already—”
“Your father…?”
Robert was not listening.
“I can make you a good husband, Anna. You will want for nothing. I can see to that.”
“Husband?”
“Yes. I am making you a proposal. You will come and live at the manor to be my wife.”
“The manor? You’ll take me to the manor?”
She was so dumbfounded she could not think.
“You’ll take me as your wife? To the manor?”
“That is my proposal.”
“But—you can’t! What do you think? Your father is a knight! Mine was a laboring man. You cannot surely believe your father would agree to such a thing.”
“I will speak to Father. I will get him to understand that I wish it to be.”
“You want me to be your wife?”
“I do.”
“And you’ll take me to the manor?”
“I will. Until such time as I move to my own property.”
“And you’ll bring Tom with me, will you?”
Anna felt the blood of her own body stir in the evening heat now.
She saw Robert’s face, his mouth moving, his eyes dead, as he spoke some words, which were these; “I shall see that your brother is well cared for. We can perhaps send him to the poor house in Deepdale. I will pay a doctor to look at him. Perhaps something can be done.”
“But he’s not to live with me?” Anna asked, trying to keep her voice smooth.
“You can hardly expect that. No, Tom will be ably cared for elsewhere when you come to the manor.”
That was that.
Anna forgot that she was William Tunstall the laborman’s daughter, and that she was speaking to the second son of Sir George Hamill.
“How dare you? How dare you!” she cried.
She swung herself through the church gate and shut herself in.
“You would take me away from Tom? To be your wife? I would never marry you. Not ever! Even if it were such a thing that could happen! You fool!”
Robert’s face burned at her.
He snatched the gate open and went in after her.
“You get away from me, Robert Hamill,” she said, but Robert came on.
“Have a care what you say,” he said, and grabbed her wrist. For one so slight he was strong, and he twisted her wrist so she fell to her knees.
“Stop that,” she shouted. “Stop that.”
But he did not.
He pulled back her lovely long red hair in his hand, tipping her head and then he planted his mouth on hers.
She tried to pull away but he grasped her hair all the harder, and then she bit his lip so deep that she tasted the blood that welled into her mouth before he pushed her away.
He staggered back holding his mouth, blood dripping between his fingers onto the dry grass of the giving ground, and while he stood there, surprised, angry and rejected, Anna made good her escape. She did not stop running till she slammed the cottage door behind her and threw the bolt, and the echo of both came back from the far side of Welden Valley.
Tom looked up from the floor. Suddenly the stupidity of what she’d done rushed into her. If Robert Hamill decided to be vindictive, he could probably get his father to throw them off his land, and then, even this pitiful hovel and the few things they owned would be lost to them.
She stared at Tom for a long time before she realized he was speaking to her.
“Will we eat, Anna?” he said.
Anna shook herself. Her hair hung damp on her forehead; there was heat in her chest. She looked at her young brother.
“Will we eat?” he said again, and Anna could only think of the stupid thing she’d done.
10 SIN
So that’ll be him, thought Anna.
She’d come out of the mill with a bundle to tie, to take up to the tentergrounds, and sensed something. Someone.
There he was, and God, he was as thin as they’d said. Like Anna he was draped in a long black dress, but there the resemblance ended. The cassock hung off him like a shroud on a scarecrow. Where Anna’s skin was pale, his was sallow and gray, and what little hair he had left clung to his skull. But he was tall, and his eyes seemed to have found her the moment she left the mill.
He was standing in the trees, at the edge of Callis Wood. He stood perfectly still and Anna didn’t know whether to acknowledge his presence or just go about her work. They’d been talking about him yesterday. Down at Gaining Water smithy. She’d gone there with the two pennies her mother had owed Jack Smith, since she’d managed to get Ma Birch to pay for the poultices she’d been having. Anna didn’t want Jack Smith to have anything over her, not even tuppence. At the smithy, she’d found Jack and Elizabeth talking to John Turner and Adam Dolen about the minister who’d arrived at the manor house.
Anna kept her distance from Adam Dolen, but he was the one in the know. Since his Grace was living at the manor house now, he boasted, she knew everything that was going on there. She knew all about the Rural Dean, and why he’d come.
So Anna had given Jack the two coins and hurried away.
And now here he was. Standing in the sun pools that flittered down between the thick green leaves of Callis Wood. Watching her.
Her heart pounded.
But Father Escrove turned, walked away along the bank of Golden Beck, and was gone.
11 RIGHT- AND LEFT-HANDED MEN
Dusk in Welden Valley. Owls hooted in the half-light. The faintest of breezes twitched the tops of the trees. Golden Beck danced on as it had since water first curled its way through the cleft of rock that wound its way down to the place where Deepdale now sat.
* * *
Anna Tunstall sat in Tunstall Cottage. Tom was playing outside in the late evening warmth while she boiled herbs. Her mother had believed there was a cure for Tom’s fits, and had tried many varieties and mixtures of plants, but without success. Despite the heat of another fierce day of sun, Anna bent over a pot on the fire, stirring, watching the tea revolve at the end of her spoon, believing the answer lay in there, somewhere. The endless turning hypnotized her for a while; she gave up wondering if she’d ever cure Tom, and began to think about herself. She still knew she ought to find a way to give that heart back to Robert, but it felt lighter about her neck now. It was by far the most special thing that had ever entered her life and at the very least, she knew she couldn’t leave it lying around for Tom to find and start asking questions about. So for now it could sit as safely under her dress as anywhere, and she’d give it back as soon as ever she could find a way to make him take it.
* * *
Helen Fuller was putting food on the kitchen table at the mill house. She called to her husband, John, but he didn’t hear her. He sat by the now-silent hammers in the mill room, wondering how he could afford to renew the lease on the mill if Sir George put up the rent, as he’d said he would.
* * *
Left-handed Jack Smith was beating his wife because of something she hadn’t done, and outside the smithy, little Harry Smith was thumping Hettie Smith with his fat left fist while Hester stood by, unblinking.
* * *
Sir George Hamill was returning from a constitutional walk with Hector, the wolfhound. Sir George’s walks were slow, but Hector was very old, and they suited each other as walking companions. Sir George reached his right hand out to stroke Hector’s shaggy head.
* * *
In the manor house, lying on his bed, Robert Hamill stared at the ceiling, as he had done hour after hour. When the old servant Edward was sent to fetch him to supper, Robert said he was sick, and would not eat.
Grace Dolen heard that news from Edward.
She stole up to Robert’s room again, and this time, in his misery, he did not send her away. Instead, he poured out his tortured heart to her, and she listened eagerly, joyfully drinking in everything he had to say, though she was
careful not to smile. The boy was miserable, but she saw he had become angry, too, and she knew that was something she could use.
* * *
It was a hot night. All Robert’s windows were open, as were the windows of his little sister, Agnes, who sat awake on her bed, listening in the dark as her brother cried and sobbed and spoke to the wet-nurse called Grace. She didn’t catch every word. But she heard enough to make her excited, because here was her brother Robert telling Grace that he had been bewitched, and some other things besides.
And here was Grace replying, saying, “Yes, sir. She is a witch.”
* * *
Much later in the finally cool night, with only the sound of owls and the rushing of Golden Beck for company, a figure slipped through the trees of Horsehold Wood, heading down into the valley, a stick of charcoal in their left hand.
12 THE CURVE OF LIFE
The axle of the waterwheel of Fuller’s Mill was thick, almost two hands across. Its end was a flat smooth disc of age-pale wood, which constantly turned. And somewhere in the night, a line had been cunningly marked on that disc; a single line that wound to the center and, always spinning, seemed to forever shrink to nothing, and yet never disappear.
Tom had scampered ahead that morning, down the track through Callis Wood, to the mill.
He was enjoying his days sitting in the sun, watching Anna come and go, listening to Helen Fuller talk to him sometimes, and splashing in the millrace when the sun got too hot.
So when Anna arrived at the mill, she found Tom surrounded by a small group of people: John and Helen Fuller, John Turner, Anne Sutton, and from Deepdale, just arrived with a load of cloth on a sweating pony, young Simon Bill.
Anna saw that they were half watching Tom, and half watching the thing that he was staring at, fixedly, without blinking; the spiral on the axle end.
“Who set that there?” said Anna.
No one gave her an answer. There was something about the line that provoked silence. They all stared at it, and then they all stared at Tom Tunstall.
“Come. Come here, Tom!” Anna called, and tried to pull Tom by the arm.
He resisted. Without words, but he shook her off.
“It’s time to work,” Anna said to John Fuller. “Is it not?”
He turned to her, dream-held.
“Hmm,” he said, quietly. “Yes. Time…”
“Who set that there?” Anna asked again. “Helen, who? Did you do that?”
Helen shook her head.
“Anna?”
She didn’t seem to be seeing Anna Tunstall, though she stood right in front of her. Then her eyes brightened a little.
“Anna? Anna.”
“Helen, it’s time to be at work.”
Helen stirred.
“Yes. You are right, Anna.”
But she didn’t move.
Anna shook Tom’s shoulder. Nothing.
She stood in front of him, and slowly he leaned around her, to keep his eyes on the axle, and then Anna spun him hard, forcing him to look away.
“Gentle with your brother,” murmured Helen, and Anna angrily marched up to the axle end, and pulling a rag from her pocket began to rub at the charcoal line. She rubbed fiercely, but couldn’t remove the burnt wood marks, yet she did enough to smear it, spoil its form. Hide it.
She turned back to the group.
“It’s time to be at work!” she yelled, and she watched in amazement as the five of them seemed to wake from a sleep, stand and stare at each other for a few moments and before hurrying off to be at their business, as if they were embarrassed.
Anna turned to Tom, who was now sitting on the flags outside the mill, staring across the water of Golden Beck.
She tried to speak to him, but he was lost somewhere.
She held him and kissed the top of his head and tried to speak to him again and there was John Fuller at the door of the mill house, shouting, “Anna! We don’t pay you to nursemaid your brother!”
So she left Tom sitting by the water as the sound of the fulling hammers starting their day’s pounding battered them both.
13 SIR GEORGE IS DEFEATED
“There is a pestilence here,” said Father Escrove, “but it is not a bodily one. It is a pestilence of the soul.”
He stood square in front of Sir George in the arching high hall of the manor, while Sir George, sitting in his dining chair, rested his leg. He’d been on it too long recently, and the heat didn’t seem to help things. It ached terribly and whenever it did he relived the pike going into it as if it was happening now, and was not something that happened thirty years ago.
And to add to his trouble, there was this black creature in front of him, buzzing at him like a blowfly.
“These are good people,” began Sir George, but he was weary, and the minister’s patience had run out.
“Good? There are no such people. That is something I have learned through my work. There are no good people. There are only people who haven’t been caught at their wrongdoing yet. And this parish is full of them. There is wickedness on every side. Heathen dances on the high ground, right in the face of the church! I know of at least two burials that were conducted outside of Christian ceremony! There are bastards on every side; sins of lust and lechery!”
Here he looked with full meaning at Sir George, to give him to understand that a wife young enough to be his granddaughter was, in his eyes, a wickedness.
Sir George sighed.
“It is not so terrible as you say.”
“Not so terrible?” snapped the minister. “Nay, you are right. It is worse! How dare you lecture me on God’s business? You have allowed such devilment to foster itself here, under your nose! Do you deny these things? Do you defend them?”
“No, of course not. But it is only dancing. Some license with the law…”
“You call these things acceptable?”
Sir George was being backed into a corner and he knew it.
“No,” he said. “No. Of course not. But these are simple people. They do things their own way, sometimes and—”
“And not the way of God?”
Sir George said nothing, because there was nothing he could say to that. But the minister was not finished.
“I have come here,” he spat, “to restore a priest to the church, to restore the name of God in this village and, by God, I will do that. You can either assist me in my work, or obstruct me, but I will do these things either way. And if you do not assist me I can promise you that life will be all the harder for you. This may be your land here, but the law of God trumps the law of England! Or had you forgotten that? Here, tucked away in this valley with your good people?”
Sir George Hamill hung his head and sighed. How his leg ached, and how he wished this devil would be gone.
“You are a Justice of the Peace, are you not?”
Sir George knew that Father Escrove knew that he was, so he didn’t trouble to reply.
“You are a Justice of the Peace. You have the full power of the law in your hands, and a refusal to do so could be greeted with the deepest concern by the king, could it not?”
Sir George troubled himself to give the faintest nod of his head.
“So?” asked the minister. “I can count on your assistance?”
When Sir George lifted his head again, his eyes were glistening.
“Yes, Father,” he said.
14 WITNESS
There were screams.
Outside the mill.
Anna ran from the dark hammers and saw Tom in a fit, scraping himself on the flags, his head banging on the stone. The Smith twins were there, watching, and their brother Harry, as were Adam Dolen, Ma Birch, Anne Sutton, and others, all watching Tom on the ground.
Anna ran, pushing roughly past them to get to Tom, where she began to calm him, speak to him, settle him, hold him while the fitting passed. It took longer this time to bring him back and while Anna spoke she felt all the eyes around her, staring at her, staring at her broth
er, and she turned and shouted.
“Go away! I hate you. Go!”
Her shouting only upset Tom more. He struggled in her arms, so she clung to him whispering as calmly as she could.
“Tom. I’m here, Tom. I love you, Tom. I’m here.”
Over and over, until eventually the shudders became only shakes, and the retching and wracking let his muscles alone.
Now, Anna turned, and saw that the crowd had left her, just as she’d wished, though she saw Adam Dolen still watching her from the trees across the far bank of Golden Beck.
There was a voice at her shoulder.
She turned, looked up to see John Fuller.
His face was empty.
“Take him home, Anna,” he said.
“But there’s still half a day’s work to be done,” she said.
John shook his head.
“Not today. Take him home.”
* * *
It took Anna half an hour to get Tom back to the cottage. He ambled along, stumbling frequently. He said not a word, didn’t even seem to recognize that Anna was speaking to him. Slowly, step by step, she got him up the track and back home, where she lay him on his narrow bed.
“I’ve something for you to drink,” she said. “Tom, did you hear? I’ve something for you to drink, that will make you well.”
Tom’s eyes were pointing at the ceiling, and stayed that way.
Anna looked at him a moment longer, then went to the pot and began to get a fire going to let the tea warm before he drank it.
When it was ready, she propped him up on the bunk and held the cup to his lips, letting him sip it slowly, letting the tea slip into him steadily, and she prayed that it would make him be properly alive again.
He lay back down again when the tea was done, and then he slept, deeply.
* * *
They came for Anna that afternoon.
The sun had moved round to beat on the front of the cottage, pouring burning light into the dark space, setting bright squares on the earth floor inside, when there was a thump at the door.
Just one, and then the door flew open.
With the glaring sun behind them, Anna couldn’t see who it was outside her house.
The Ghosts of Heaven Page 8