by Maria McCann
‘Jacob,’ she quavered, ‘let us stay. The Mistress loves me, she will not permit—’
‘Can she turn back musket balls? There are armed men.’ I urged my horse forward through the door and we were out in the stable yard. Despite having Caro behind him, Zeb soon passed me. I saw his hair whip back into her face. The cobbles shone in the sun; there was a flash, and one of the sapphire earrings dropped into the straw and muck of the yard.
FIVE
Over the Edge
Ihad never learnt to sit a horse. Now I banged up and down, hoping only to stay in the saddle. My brother, light and easy in his seat, had his own trials for I could see how Caro dragged on him. Her face was pressed up against his coat, eyes closed, lips forced back over her teeth, and she looked to be crying. A foul smell wafted to me and I saw that she had vomited onto her gown. My own gorge rose at it, and I turned my head aside.
We were headed for the woodland which lay behind Beaurepair, and which was still unenclosed. To get there we had to go through the gate. I had not seen the keeper at the betrothal, but we might yet be in luck, for he was in love with one of the dairymaids and none too fond of his work. We pounded along the track towards this gate, leaving by the back of the house as our pursuers approached by the
‘God be praised!’ Zeb screamed. I looked: it was one of the keeper’s days for courting, and the gate stood open. We were through it without his having so much as seen us, and clattering along the open road. On the horizon lay the wood, and I prayed we might reach it without being seen.
Zeb kept up the pace. My shirt was soaked, from the labour of staying in the saddle and the terror of being thrown. An ugly twist of sickness came upon me without warning, and my mouth brimmed with bitter juice; I spat, breathing hard to keep the sickness down. There was something metallic on my tongue: I had chewed my lip, and drawn blood.
I am watching out for you, came the Voice, so sudden that it frighted me.
I looked back as we plunged into the wood. There was nothing on the road. A green scent of moss and darkness closed about us and the air at once grew cool. Zeb urged his horse on between the trees until be turned into a narrow track on the right and straightway went crashing down a steep slope, then up a bank on the opposite side. I was hot and cold from feeling the ground drop under me, and I could hear Caro’s sobs. They slackened as the terrain levelled out, and the track widened into a clearing. We continued more slowly. I shifted, trying to ease the pain in my thighs, and spurred my mount until it drew level with Zeb’s. ‘Are you going right through?’
He shook his head. Caro stared piteously at me. She was still wearing the rose chaplet and it vied for pallor with her brow and cheeks. There were blood smears behind her left ear. I reached across and lifted the cursed thing, tossing it into a bush.
‘Here’s as good as anywhere,’ Zeb said, wheeling about. He slipped from the saddle and put up his arm for Caro. Something in me hoped he would not be strong enough to support her, but she got down leaning heavily on his shoulder. I too dismounted, hearing my legs crack as I put foot to ground. We tied our beasts to a thorn bush.
Caro sat on the ground shuddering, her face cupped in her hands. At last she lowered her fingers, sliding them along her arms for warmth, and I saw the bandage was come off. Staring at the grass she said, ‘We have done a terrible thing.’
‘That may well be.’ Zeb looked steadily at me.
I bent to Caro and laid my hands on her shoulders. She was cold as marble. Taking off my coat, I put it round her, but she continued to shake. I remarked a vomit stain on the lace of her gown.
Zeb stood a while watching us. ‘If we knew where they were,’ he said. ‘If I could see them, now,’ and he began pushing his way through the scrub. The branches closed over him.
‘My thighs are skinned,’ I said.
Caro made no reply.
Feeling the lack of my coat, I walked to and fro. My wife laid her head on her knees and snuffled into her blue silk.
‘I’ll starve with cold,’ she mumbled. ‘All this is madness.’ She held up the gold chains around her neck. ‘We can return these, Jacob. Say we went in pursuit of thieves.’
‘You know that won’t wear.’
‘How will we sell them?’ Caro screamed. Some small creature skittered through the bushes at her back, and she collapsed again into silence.
Zeb’s voice suddenly rang out, anguished. ‘Jacob! Jacob!’
Caro leapt upright. I plunged through the branches where Zeb was gone before, seeing nothing but scrub and trees, my wife stumbling after me.
‘There are footpads in these woods,’ Caro hissed.
I shook my head. ‘He’s seen something.’
We stood straining our ears.
‘Zeb?’ I called.
And then I saw him, not far off. My hands flew to my mouth as I took it all in. Zeb had climbed a tall tree as a lookout. Now he dangled from a branch by his arms, legs kicking free. Below him, on the grass, lay a freshly broken bough. A strip of torn bark drooped like a hangnail from the trunk.
Caro’s eyes had followed mine. ‘Elm,’ she moaned. ‘Hateth and waiteth.’
I moved forwards, wondering if I could catch him. He had about fifteen feet to fall. A man dropping from that height might well break the bones of one beneath.
‘He’s going!’ Caro screamed. I saw Zeb’s hands peel from the branch. There was not time to get beneath the elm. His legs strained upwards in a wild attempt to scissor them round the trunk, but it was much too thick for him. He fell fists clenched, with a howl which exploded in terror as he struck the ground.
There was silence, broken by Caro’s whining, ‘O Lord, Lord, O Lord, O.’ We clambered over logs and leaves. He was stretched on his back, face white and eyes closed. She wet her finger and held it to his nose and mouth. ‘I can’t feel anything! Jacob, there’s no breath, he’s not – he’s – Jacob—’
‘Calm yourself’ I felt under Zeb’s coat and shirt, pressing my palm flat to the skin. Strangled sobs came from Caro. My brother could not be dead. He was warm. Only that morning, looking on his nakedness, I had remarked how strong he was grown.
‘He lives, be at rest,’ I said, feeling Zeb’s heart leap under my hand.
‘Let me.’ She pushed my fingers aside, pressed her own to him and at once sighed. I saw her shoulders loosen and her head drop forward as if praying. Then she stiffened again.
‘He’s not right here.’
Here was his waist. I unfastened his coat properly, from top to bottom, and pulled up his shirt. Zeb groaned without coming back to us. I saw now that his flesh was darkened and puffed up round the lowest rib, and he was not lying straight.
‘There’s something broken,’ Caro wailed. ‘O, look there!’
I did look and saw that he had landed across a branch lying in the grass. I covered him up again, thinking that we were in the very worst plight for tending him – no surgeon, not even a blanket. He groaned again and opened his eyes.
‘Zebedee!’ Caro kneaded his hand. ‘Do you know us?’
He muttered, ‘Too well.’ But even this feeble joke lost all relish when he tried to sit up and fell back crying.
‘Move your foot,’ Caro implored him.
His right foot flexed.
‘Your back’s not broken,’ she whispered, but he had swooned from the pain.
‘We have to go on,’ I told her. ‘Here we are like to be surprised.’
‘He can’t.’
‘Do you want him hanged?’ I urged.
Caro wrung her hands. ‘Will you carry him?’
‘We’ll put him on horseback.’
We tortured him into the saddle. I walked on one side of him and Caro, trembling, rode on the other horse, at every minute afraid that her animal might bolt. Strung out like this we had great trouble in passing along the narrower paths, and our progress was slow indeed. I was close to tears, having not the slightest idea where we were headed or how we would do now that Zeb was hurt. We walked
seemingly for hours, and many were the groans Caro and I heard before we at last stopped near a stream: Zeb had twice been sick, and had once fainted onto my shoulders. I stood ready to catch him as he dismounted. He gasped – ‘Ah!’ – but was able to walk almost to the water, sinking down just before he reached it. Caro knelt by his side, stroking his cheek and pushing his hair out of his eyes.
‘Don’t put me back on the horse,’ Zeb begged.
‘No, no,’ she murmured.
I said, ‘Tomorrow we will get you a surgeon.’
‘I’m thirsty.’
Caro cupped her hands in the stream and I supported him so that he could drink. Most of the water dropped onto his chest and he shivered. The wood was beginning to grow dark.
I took Caro by the sleeve and led her away. ‘Sit down,’ I urged in a whisper. ‘What think you? Is there more than a rib broken?’
‘What do I know!’ Her voice came cold and dispirited. ‘Why should there be?’
‘He faints. I didn’t faint when mine was broken,’ I reminded her.
‘O, you…!’ She got up and went back to Zeb, soothing him with soft pitying noises as one might a child.
He lay staring at the branches above. I heard him say, ‘Sister, I’ll die.’
‘Pain talking,’ I said, going over to him. ‘You’ll not die. Now act the man.’
‘I’m starting a fever.’ Zeb reached for Caro’s hand and pressed it to his forehead.
‘He’s very hot.’ Caro looked at me helplessly.
‘Broken bones do get hot.’
‘Feel, here,’ Zeb pleaded with Caro. He indicated his chest.
‘Let me.’ I fingered his shirt front. It was soaked with sweat.
‘I can cool him,’ said Caro, loosening the collar. ‘Put my handkerchief in the stream.’
‘No,’ I said, laying my hand on hers as she began easing the shirt up over his chest. ‘Best he sweat it out.’
‘I’m burning,’ moaned Zeb.
‘He shouldn’t be half naked like that. Cover him up.’ I straightened Zeb’s shirt and pulled his coat close over his breast. The wind, growing stronger, stirred the tops of the trees so that they hissed like a poker in ale. ‘Come away and rest,’ I told Caro.
We lay down together a few yards from Zeb, barely able to see one another. I took my coat from her and arranged it over both of us. It was not much of a blanket, for cold air crept in on every side. Faintly from under the stench of horse and vomit came the scent of her pomaded hair.
‘How will you get him a surgeon?’ whispered Caro.
I pulled her on top of me. ‘We have gold.’
‘But—’ She checked herself. I felt her shake as she went on, ‘We could go home with him. Take back the jewels, say you feared a false accusation – you were in drink. What is whipping, what is gaol, even, when Zeb may die?’
‘I can never go back, and nor can you. It means hanging.’
‘What, for a few pamphlets?’ She twined her arms round me. ‘Let me go to the Mistress. Let me beg mercy. Peter burnt all the papers – it is their word against ours—’
‘Take it from me, wife, we are tarred with the same stick.’
‘I can face it out!’
There was no light left in the wood. I knew what I had to do, and it was like sliding down ice in pitch darkness. I had stood on the brink of this slide for so long now I was come to desire it, was dangling the first foot over the edge. Better push off boldly, I thought, than crouch there forever.
‘Caro,’ I breathed into her neck. ‘It isn’t what you think.’
One foot on the ice.
‘Patience fled for fear of me. She’s out for blood, and Cornish too.’
Both feet.
Caro lifted her head. ‘You? You and Patience?’ Her voice was thick, stupid with baffled suspicion. ‘The child! You – you—’
‘No!’ I shouted, so hard that I hurt my throat. ‘Don’t you see it? Caro!’
‘Jacob, don’t—’
‘Caro, it was I killed Christopher Walshe.’
I had pushed off. The polished blackness of the slide dropped away to a place I could not see; I was falling out of life. Caro’s breath heaved and choked. Her body lay against mine rigid as a plank.
‘I heard noises and went down in the night. Cornish and Patience were in the garden by the maze, only I did not know who they were, then. I was listening. The boy jumped me.’
‘Why would he!’
‘I had not time to ask him,’ I retorted.
Caro’s breathing slowed a little. After a while she asked, ‘And Patience? Doing what?’
‘I told you, I did not see.’
‘You did not see,’ she repeated as if she had been there. ‘But you saw it was Patience.’
‘I saw a woman, and next day Patience was gone.’
‘Not true,’ Caro kept saying. ‘No.’
But it was true, and not the worst of the truth neither.
When first the boy leapt out to bar my way he took me unawares. I thought him a man, but then the moon coming out showed me the little fool standing about a yard off, waving his dagger. Though furious at his insolence, I laughed aloud. He was so easy; I had the knife off him and his arm twisted up his back before he could make one good pass with the blade.
‘Be quiet,’ I said, ‘and come along with me, or I’ll slit your throat.’ He came along like a lamb, and I marched him away from his friends, over to the large trees near the pond.
Not daring to call out, Walshe fell to whining for pardon. ‘O Jacob,’ says he, ‘you see it is only me, pray let me go,’ and all the time he was looking out for his father, but I had taken care to get the trees between us and any help that might come to him. At last he fell silent, gaping at me much as he had gaped from the protection of my brother’s arm.
‘What of dear Zeb?’ I mocked. ‘Not here, is he?’
The moonlight showed me tears on Walshe’s cheeks. He was panting with fear, breast rising and falling beneath his white shirt. Show him, said the Voice, what becomes of a boy who insults a man.
‘Well, little warrior.’ I pushed him up against the tree and pressed my left hand hard over his mouth, and just tickled his belly with the point of the knife before driving it in. He tried to push away my arm with both of his but could not, and his struggles were so feeble that the savage fit in me was still not worked off. I pulled the knife down and out, and feeling my fingers warm and wet from the blood, I said to him, ‘Let us see what Jacob will do now.’
Twisting his arm again to keep him in front of me, lest he bleed on my coat, I wrestled him over to the pond. On seeing where we were headed he turned his face to look up into my eyes, and I tightened my grip on his mouth, and smiled and nodded. By the time we got there he was very weak, and too confused to call out when he got his chance. I held him by the legs into the deep water at the side of the runway. There was not even much splashing.
‘It was dark,’ I pleaded to Caro. ‘Else I should never – I took him for a robber—’
My wife clamped her hands to her ears.
‘Caro, hear me.’ I reached up and prised the hands away.
‘You put him in the pond! O you should have brought him back – fetched a surgeon—’
‘Too late, he was dead. I thought to hide the corpse. Besides, he was a Judas, they all of them meant us harm—’
Caro cried, ‘O what do I care what they meant!’
‘I am telling you how it was!’
‘You killed him. And here have I been—’ She began weeping again, a breathless, driven sob. ‘Here have I been – wondering – if I drove Patience away. We had words that day.’
‘Do you hear me? Patience—’
‘Patience saw it.’ Caro’s voice was become a lash. ‘And for that she left, and returned.’
For once her quick understanding struck fear into me.
‘Who knows? Possibly she heard.’ I tried to keep my voice calm.
‘All this because he spoke against
you!’
‘Not for that, not at all,’ I said. ‘You don’t listen.’ I tried to put my arm around her but she rolled off me and lay by my side. ‘Caro, I was set on in the dark, Walshe set on me—’
There was a scuffling in the leaves and Caro spoke from somewhere above my head. ‘I am going back to Beaurepair.’
‘Don’t you understand?’ I was exasperated: there she stood as if nothing had happened. ‘You cannot go back.’
‘I shall try whether I can or no.’
‘You read the pamphlets and stole the gold with the rest of us,’ I answered. ‘As for Walshe, I did it for you. He would have—’
‘Did it for me!’ Caro screamed. There was a sharp pain in my side: she had kicked out, and not in jest. ‘When you didn’t know what he was! How, for me?’
My side throbbed. ‘Another kick,’ I promised, ‘and you’ll wish you hadn’t.’
‘Don’t ever say you did it for—’
‘Enough! The thing is done. You stay here,’ and I sprang up.
Caro leapt back, panting. ‘You let me contract myself to you.’
‘You cannot go back,’ I hissed. ‘Do you want us to be taken?’
‘You were keeping ahold of me until the betrothal. I don’t know you, O God, God help me.’
‘O but you do know me, Mistress.’ I stepped forward to where her voice had been, but found she had moved further off. I heard her pushing through branches. Then a frenzied whisper: ‘Zeb, Zeb! Zeb, wake, please, O God, Zeb—’
I closed in on her voice as it floated upwards from where she crouched over my brother’s body. There was a faint slapping sound which I took for her patting his face. Zeb groaned once or twice, and Caro shrieked, ‘He’s here! He’s—’
I was upon her before she had time for more. Pawing my brother like that, calling myself, her lawful husband, He…! I dragged her upright by the hair and forced her along with me, ignoring her wails, until we were some yards off, tussling all the way.
‘Lie down,’ I said.
‘Jacob, let me—’
Amorous propensities heated by struggle, whispered the Voice. Other men took their pleasure, even with sluts like Patience, whilst I, a loving fool, had waited weeks, months for a wife who at the first trial offered to leave me. I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her down. The wedding gown was heavy and in the dark I knelt on it. My fingernails tore in trying to hitch it up. A squib exploded in my head: she had hit me in the eye. I brought my fist down on her face as if chopping wood. She commenced screeching, and I gave her another, and another, until she learnt better. At last all I could hear was stifled gasps.