Mistress Agnes Perceval is no fool. If she pressed Robert for further and better particulars about Mistress Arundell, and Robert revealed who she was, keen to impress her with his privileged knowledge, then Mistress Perceval would suspect where it was that her husband went after dark, returning so late to her their bed. I did not tell Anne, for fear I should laugh in the telling.
I knew most of the regulars who came to Hay Hill. I had my favourites. One of these was a Captain Combe, an affable fellow with a familiar West Country way of speaking. He lived in Bridport. This endeared him to me if only because I knew of the place and it is where Dick and Weasel somehow found one another before they fetched up in Shaftesbury. I often sat and chatted with him. He knew where I was from and we always found much to talk about.
This Captain Combe is a boat-builder, with an interest in a chandler’s establishment upstream from London Bridge at Queenhythe. This brings him into London, as does his periodical mastership of what he calls cogs – merchant vessels – trading from the port of London up the east coast. He shows no interest in the easy ladies at Hay Hill, but drinks his ale and takes himself off at a reasonable hour. God only knows how he first found his way to Mistress Arundell’s.
I was occupied with other customers when I heard Captain Combe’s voice above the hubbub:
‘Mistress Agnes! Be so good, when you are able, as to bring a jug of ale for myself and my good friend Master Mompesson!’
What? What? I looked round, and saw Captain Combe seated at one of the small tables. His companion was a thickset man with dark curly hair and beard turning grey. Peter Mompesson.
The sky did not fall. It was astonishing and yet natural. I fetched the ale, drew up a stool and sat with Captain Combe and Peter and we talked in a desultory way as if we had seen one another only yesterday. There was no need for dissimulation. Captain Combe knew our story and was a benign third party. He tactfully absented himself from our table for a while.
I learned in short order that Peterkin – ‘My son,’ said Peter; ‘Our son,’ said I; ‘Yes, yes,’ said Peter – did not want to be a farmer. He has been gripped by the story of the Mary Rose, the late King Henry’s warship which sank to the bottom of the sea off Portsmouth for no apparent reason.
‘He is obsessed, he is convinced there must have been a design fault. So he is studying the construction of vessels. He has taken himself off to Bridport to learn ship-building with Captain Combe. It is a fine thing to have such a strong desire, like a vocation.’
I agreed, and felt proud for our son. I dared to ask, afraid of the answer:
‘Does he know that I am his mother?’
Peter was trying to find the right words, I could tell.
‘He is familiar with your name and knows that it is the name of his mother. He knows that his mother is an honest woman who entered a convent. He knows the name of his grandfather, your father, and who he was. I would not, could not, leave him in ignorance.’
I felt the colour rising hot in my face. What he said was little but it was good enough. It was everything.
‘One day he will have children of his own and will need to tell them who they are. There are no Peppins in Bruton any more, not since your parents died, but the name pleases him. He says it sounds like a little bird.’
‘A French nun in the Abbey told me that it meant the pip in an apple, or the stone in a plum. And in Spanish a pepino is a cucumber.’
Thomas told me that.
‘You Peppins surely grew in a garden then, one way or another. He said to me that when he has a son, his name will be Peppin Mompesson.’
My eyes brimmed over. Peter leaned over the table and laid a hand over mine.
‘How have you fared, Agnes, since you left the Abbey? How have you fared?’
I would not have known where to begin, but at that moment Captain Combe took his place with us again.
‘We were speaking just now of Peterkin,’ said Peter.
‘He is promising,’ said Captain Combe. ‘He is a fine lad, your boy, a hard worker, and a natural for the job. His mates call him Skipper. I have him working on lerrets at the moment. Flat-bottomed.’
I was out of my depth there. But why was Peter here?
‘To meet with the Captain and finalise the terms and conditions of Peterkin’s apprenticeship.’
Captain Combe was off in the morning on a long voyage on what he called a hulk, taking heavy cargo up the coast to the port of Hull, then on to Scotland.
I’ll be away for many weeks,’ said the Captain, ‘and everything must be shipshape before I leave.’
The two of them had completed their business and were taking their ease. I sat quietly with them as they talked, overwhelmed by such quantities of new information.
Suddenly Peter interrupted Captain Combe in mid-sentence, sniffed the air and said:
‘Do you smell smoke?’
Yes, we did. And other guests were rising from their benches, knocking over trestles and trenchers, calling out that they smelt smoke.
The doors burst open and in rushed Luke, distraught, shouting:
‘The barn is afire! The barn is afire!’
Everyone, guests and servants, rushed outside, pushing and shoving and stumbling over each other. I lost sight of my companions in the confusion. I was outside just in time to see flames from the barn licking the thatch of the main house. It flared up like a furnace. From the blazing barn came the frightful screams of horses.
The sober and able-bodied were throwing pails of water onto the house and onto the further wing. There is only one pump and there were not enough pails. It was hopeless. The heat was intense, the smoke made us cough and choke, and there was no possibility of salvaging anything from within. It is a miracle that no one was hurt. Except the horses in the barn.
My first thought was, where is Anne? I bumped into Luke, running wild-eyed, and caught him by the arm.
‘What happened?’
I had to shout to be heard above the roar of the fire. Luke looked at me with utter hatred.
‘Two of them,’ he yelled, gasping through the smoke, ‘two ruffians with torches came into the barn and set fire to the hay. They shouted at me that this was a gift from Mistress Agnes. What in Hell’s name have you done?’
‘Not me!’ I screamed at him. ‘Not me! The other Mistress Agnes!’
I caught hold of him. He pulled himself from my grasp but I ran after him.
‘Where is Mistress Arundell?’
‘She is gone, I dragged Minstrel out in time and led him round to the back field and she’s well away by now. But you, Madam, for Christ’s sake, what kind of a hell-cat are you?’
He had not understood, how should he? He glared at me with his red-rimmed eyes, tore my hand from his sleeve and was away.
So Anne was all right. She will be, she would be. Good. Fine. I hope she had time to snatch up her diamond ring.
I escaped from the choking smoke into the field on the opposite side of the track where I had talked with Finch. I collapsed on the grass and watched the blaze. I saw everyone leaving, singly and in twos and threes, silhouetted against the flames, trailing on foot through the darkness down the hill towards the highway. I saw the flames subside. As dawn came grey into the sky all that remained was a red-smouldering black mass and clouds of smoke. The smell was horrible.
I began to think about what I had lost. All my clothes. A bag of small money.
And my books.
I sat on in the field, smuts and flakes of ash drifting over me, attempting to face up to the losses. The Hand of God lay heavy upon my shoulder. For what was God punishing me, what was my sin? Peterkin? Thomas? Eleanor? Abigail? I seemed damned all my life to lose everyone and everything, including now my reputation. Luke would be telling the tale of the arson for the rest of his life: ‘A gift from Mistress Agnes.’
I steadied myself. No one has heard of Agnes Peppin. Anyone in the know will be aware who the vengeful Agnes was. Piers Perceval had not been at the house whe
n the fire broke out. Probably his wife kept him at home on some pretext. She would not want the supplier of her life’s luxuries to be burnt to death. Only, she would have hoped, Mistress Anne Cathcart, and she had been foiled in that.
I was cold and shivering and hallucinating. The Hand of God upon my shoulder was firm and warm.
It was the hand of Peter Mompesson.
‘I have been searching for you everywhere. I feared you were caught in the fire.’
He drew me to my feet, wrapped some kind of a blanket around me, and led me away from that place.
He was as an angel to me. A sensible, capable angel. I was exhausted and in shock. I remember we travelled into the city on a farmer’s cart loaded with beets. I remember walking with Peter over London Bridge into Southwark, he holding my hand over the unstable planking in the middle. I remember finding Honor’s yard, and collecting my money and the precious belongings which I had left with her. I remember Peter leaving, and returning with a stout grey mare, saddled, which caused no end of commotion in the narrow yard.
‘I’ll take you home now,’ he said. ‘You will be with me now. I shall take care of you.’
‘What home? Where is home?’
‘The farm at Brewham.’
‘I do not want to go back to Bruton. I cannot go through Bruton.’
It was all that seemed to matter at that moment. Stupid.
‘We need not pass through Bruton. We can come into Pensel Wood and ride home through the forest.’
‘There were battles in Pensel Wood in the long ago. There are bad spirits in the trees.’
‘I have never seen them.’
He stowed my belongings in the saddle-bags. Honor gave us bread, a couple of onions, a strip of dried fish. I wrapped myself in the blue cloak and pulled up the hood. Peter set me up behind him on the mare and off we went, keeping on the Southwark side of the river and bearing towards the south-west.
I know, only because Peter told me, that it was a journey of more than a hundred miles and took us more four days. I clung with my arms round his waist, my cheek against his back, half-sleeping. We stopped only to eat, to water the mare and let her graze. At night we were so weary that we cared little where we lay.
This long ride together was a time out of time. We hardly spoke. By the time we reached Brewham I was almost myself again. And Pensel Wood is like any other wood apart from some inexplicable mounds and ditches.
A dog ran barking to greet us as we clopped into the farmyard.
‘Her name is Nell. No need for fear, she’s a good girl.’
It was late in the day. Peter caressed Nell and kicked her aside. Nell did not come into the house. Peter unlocked both halves of the door with heavy keys retrieved from the back of a woodpile.
‘You will have your own keys.’
‘Will I?’
The place looked well cared for. The house had a new stone-tiled roof.
‘I must stable the mare and rub her down and feed her. And fetch us up some watercress for our supper. Make yourself at home. Look around.’
I went into the house. The hall room was like a parlour, with a flagged floor, a trestle, two chairs and some stools. Capes and cloaks on nails behind the doors, pairs of boots in a row. I did not care to penetrate further before Peter returned. I sat down and waited for him.
‘Come now and see the kitchen. Look, I have made a fireplace, with a chimney to take the smoke up out of the roof. I brought that lintel stone above it from the Abbey, Sir Maurice Berkeley cannot have everything, and look, I built ovens at either side.’
‘It is beautiful.’
The fireplace was in the new style, set in the wall, like the one I saw at Place Farm.
‘I brought a pipe from the pump through the wall so that we have water in the kitchen. In this little tank.’
‘You have thought of everything.’
Upstairs was just one long chamber with a darkened plank floor. The big bed stood in the middle. The bed-curtains were old and worn but they looked clean. The bed-coverings and pillows were piled high.
‘It was my parents’ bed. I was born in this bed and my parents died in it. It is a good old bed.’
‘Where did the children sleep? You and your sister?’
‘Through here.’
A half-room, a closet, with its own little window. A cell.
‘Peterkin slept here. It can be yours, for your clothes and books and your own things.’
My books are burned. I have no books. I did not say it aloud. I stood for a moment in the closet. I breathed in air to the bottom of my lungs, inhaling particles of Peterkin.
Downstairs, Peter took a white sheep’s cheese and two pewter platters from a cupboard. He set them on the trestle with his bunch of watercress and some dry biscuits. He drew ale from a barrel in the kitchen. We ate and drank. The food tasted good. But I found it hard to say anything. Time moved slowly.
He pointed out of the window at the back of the room, to where grass sloped downwards towards a line of trees.
‘The Home Field. You could make a garden there. And an orchard.’
I looked out at the field, still sunlit at the far end.
‘I see that one could.’
‘The river runs along the bottom, the cresses come from there.’
Silence. I looked at the backs of my hands in my lap, I turned them over and looked at my palms. I knew what was coming.
‘Well, Agnes? Will you live with me here and be my wife?’
‘Thank you. Thank you. I will have to consider.’
‘What is there to consider, now?’
‘May I go outside, by myself?’
‘Of course. It’ll be getting dark soon. I’ll feed Nell and close up the fowls and check the ewes. My man came in to see to them while I was away but you never know.’
He let me out through a back door opening on to the Home Field.
I walked down to the bottom, in and out of lengthening shadows. I looked back up at the farmhouse, solid and settled. I heard sheep bleating in the fields on the far side, and Nell’s bark. I heard the river, sunken between deep banks, a few yards away. The river is small here, running fast down towards Bruton.
I was being offered something serious. The affection and protection of a good man. I did and do believe that Peter Mompesson is a good man, and he is the father of my son. I would sooner or later see my son. I was being given a home. The fact that I was still a Bride of Christ was irrelevant. I acknowledged that I no longer believed that at all, and felt no pang.
It was the fairy-tale ending. ‘And they lived happily ever after.’ So what was wrong with me? Why this dragging dread? I sat there on a fallen tree until the sun went down and the dusk crept about me.
When I returned to the house Peter had lit the rushlights. He looked at me as I came in the door, searching my face. It was sweet, pitiful. I went to him where he sat. I stood over him and put my arms around him and bent to kiss his cheek above the beard. His hands, around me, were trembling.
‘I am tired,’ I said. ‘Can we talk in the morning?’
‘I am tired too. And, I have to tell you, I am glad to go to the bed. I have some pain tonight. It is a pain in my gut that comes and goes. I’m sure it does not signify, but it depletes me. I am no longer a young man.’
He laid his cheek against mine, and we rocked one another. We went upstairs. We took off our clothes. We lay down side by side on our backs under the covers in the big bed. We held hands. He turned to me, kissed me on the forehead, then gently not forcibly on the mouth, and turned away from me.
‘Sleep now,’ he said.
‘Sleep now,’ I said. ‘I hope you will be better in the morning.’
I rarely dream, but dreamed that night that I was trying to fit Peter’s house on to the cart of beets which brought us into London. It was not quite his house, it was a wooden model such as I have seen somewhere of a church. It splintered and broke, but still would not fit on the cart.
When we woke in th
e morning, it was I, not he, who was unwell. I could not face climbing down from the bed. Peter brought me ale and a last year’s apple, soft and crinkled. He drew back the bed-curtains and then the shutters and went out to the farm.
I lay in that bed all day watching clouds pass across the window. All my available strength was channelled into making the decision. That was why I felt ill. Peter knew nothing about Thomas Wyatt, nor about what he had been to me. He did not know the horrors that I had seen, he did not know anything of what I had done. He did not know about Eleanor Wilmer. He did not know about Abigail either. All of which meant he did not know who I was. He really did not know me at all. But the thought of telling him everything made me quail. More than that, the notion of telling him was distasteful to me. He would not understand any of it. It would bewilder him.
My mind kept wandering away. I preferred to think about the sea.
I asked Peter at day’s end:
‘I know we live on an island. Where is the sea, the ocean, nearest to us here?’
He smiled, surprised, and thought a bit.
‘You could travel from here in any direction except eastwards and you would reach the sea. The best might be up through the Mendips and the Quantocks, but then it is not quite the sea, it is a wide tidal river running out west into the ocean. You can see land on the other side. That land is Wales.’
‘What are Mendips and Quantocks?’
‘They are hills, I’ll take you that way one day.’
I sat up in the bed.
‘But the open sea, the ocean?’
The Butcher's Daughter Page 30