My father said women were not let on the ships, that a woman on board was held to be unlucky. I should never have been a girl. If I’d been a boy I could become a mariner and learn the stars and sail till the ocean and the heavens were one bright blue bowl, and maybe I could’ve brought the vision back to him.
It was time to be going home, but I wanted to be sure the boys had gone so I lingered. The chapel walls were plain. I stroked the plaster for its knags and hollows. To the eye it was smooth, but not to the hand. Not so long ago it was painted. Sometimes I’d hear people talking of the old religion, back when the carved angels still had faces and the walls were alive with bright, bright pictures. If Father Paul got wind of talk like that he’d hiss and shout about papists and plots. To his lights, crossing yourself was halfway to murdering the Queen. But people were careful how they were overheard. I didn’t remember Queen Mary, let alone King Henry’s time. To me it all sounded like another country, full of saints and incense and Latin enchantments, the air so thick with spirits you could breathe them in.
The whiteness of the walls soothed me. Here and there, where the coat was thin, I could make out the shapes of the old paintings underneath the whitewash. Perhaps it was the slant of the light, for I had not seen them before so well. I traced the outline of a creature, running. It was a hare, I thought, long ears pressed back in fear and speed. Just behind it were the hounds, open jawed, tongues lolling. Poor hare, was it glad when they came to paint it away? It must have been so tired with running. Or it may be that the hunt had never stopped, and this was why it was coming back now, through the white. The hare hoped it might still be free. Was the whiteness freedom? It was very pure, but it offered nowhere for the hare to hide itself. The walls were full of ghosts.
I glanced around. There was no one to see me if I stepped up to where the Bible lay and touched it. I laid my hand on the open page and traced the letters with my fingers. They thrilled me. My grandmother told me a story once, of a door in a mountain that opened into fairyland, and when she told it my father laughed and said it was a story about reading. I didn’t understand him till he taught me letters, and felt how it was to step through the lines, into a different world, one I could walk freely in. The boys were right: there was a magic in the letters. They were like the colours that the chapel window sent dancing across the floor. The Bible was open at Hosea. It was getting too dim to read, but I made out the words, just.
The high places of Aven, where Israel doth sin, shall be destroyed: thistles and thorns shall grow upon their altars: then shall they say to the mountains, Cover us,
and to the hills, Fall upon us.
How strange it was that all of our past and our future, the running hare and the hills themselves, should be clear and known in a blink of the Lord’s eye and that they should be gone again as quickly. I saw it clear as day: the hills tumbling down like the walls of Jericho. Yes, I thought, there’s not one I would miss, barring my father and Owen, and Owen’s sister, Aggie, I suppose. As to the rest, their minds are earth already; they might as well have done with it. I traced my finger over the text. ‘Cover us,’ I repeated aloud, ‘Fall upon us.’
The words echoed into and around the dark recesses of the chancel. I had not noticed how fast the night had come in. There was something moving in the shadows of the apse. A bat perhaps, or a bird thinking to roost. Then a light was struck and I gasped, for it was no bird, but Father Paul advancing towards me, holding a candle that sent his shadow craning over the walls. He paused while I stepped quickly down, but he did not take his eyes off mine. The flame lit up the thin line of his mouth and glittered in his eyes. For a while he said nothing, then he pressed the candle towards me till I could see nothing else.
‘Look how the fire likes you, Martha. You and he will spend time together by and by, is that not so?’ There was a singsong in his voice that frightened me. It sounded gentle but I felt that it was not. ‘Whom do you call on, Martha? Did you come here to pray?’
I found my voice at last. ‘Yes, Father,’ I whispered.
He put the candle down and peered at me, resting his hands on my shoulders. I’d rather have faced any number of boys than him.
‘Did you, Martha, did you in truth?’
‘No, Father.’
‘But you need to pray, Martha. The devil is looking into your soul and he thinks he might find a home there. Ha!’ And with a strange smile he jerked his long thin nose this way and that in the half-dark around my head. ‘Do you smell it, Martha, do you smell it?’
‘What should I smell, Father?’ He was performing, but I felt no temptation to laugh. I could feel the mist of his breath on my cheek. He stood for a moment regarding me, then all at once his face twisted in disgust. He picked up the candle and yanked my head towards it until my hair singed and stank.
‘It is the smell of burning flesh, girl, it is a little wisp of hell. You must cast it from you, Martha. You must ask mercy of our Redeemer.’
Just as I was sure he meant to burn my scalp he pulled my head away and tilted it so that I had to look directly up at him. His eyes peered right down into my soul. All was laid bare to him, I was sure of it: all my blackest thoughts. He glowed in the candlelight, but beyond the light the dark pressed close and I stood in that darkness. When at last he let me go I was unable to step away. I was all confusion. He began to trace his free hand slowly down my forehead. He still said nothing, just stared at his fingers as he drew them down across my lips, my neck, my bosom.
‘So much sin,’ he said in a queer, thin voice. ‘How I have prayed for your soul, Martha Dynely!’ His fingers pressed like a burning rod against my breast. Then he was at the door, opening it, ushering me out, his voice brisk, normal. ‘Tell your father, when he is conscious, he must come to church next Sunday or be fined. I will brook no more excuses.’
The message had to wait, for it was hours later that my father reeled in, chuckling as he flung himself into his cot. He reeked of the alehouse. We had little bread, but it seemed he had money enough for ale. Three days his tools had sat idle in the workshop, though there was a carriage out at Hellens waiting for its wheels to be mended. ‘He’s finishing work over at Checkley,’ I had told their man, ‘he’ll be over as soon as he’s back.’ They would not wait much longer. The Clutterbucks at Putley would take on the work, if they hadn’t already. They’d do it quick, too; turn it around in a sneeze. What were we to eat if my father did no work?
He talked as he slept. By day it was hard to eke words out of him – a week could go by without his saying barely a word to me – but night unstoppered him and he’d converse with the darkness for hours. When I was younger I’d creep over to listen to mutterings like these. Occasionally words rose up out of the early life he would never speak of. ‘Oh, but she’s fine, Johnny, fine as a swan,’ he’d cry out, ‘for all that she leans to starboard.’ And I’d picture the docks and the great river pouring out into the world; my father free of muck and bitterness. There’d been times when he’d suddenly speak of my mother, so that my heart yearned in jealousy and longing for them both. ‘We two, Bessie,’ he’d say, ‘we two…’ Or else he’d say things I didn’t understand and knew I could never ask him: ‘I’ll not let them, Bessie. By God, I’ll plant a chisel in his head.’
From habit now, I strained to listen. ‘Damn your eyes,’ he was saying. ‘Damn your eyes, William Nesbitt, you tinker’s whoreson.’
I turned to the wall and tried to think about the lights that had washed over my hands in the chapel – red, blue, yellow, pink. Above me, rain trickled from the eaves.
3
In the Schoolroom
Next morning I got up before dawn. My father had given over mumbling and was snoring instead. He’d be out a good while yet unless I roused him. I picked up the blanket that had fallen off his back and made gruel for us both, but when it came to it I did not wake him. The truth was I didn’t feel like facing either his glowering or his remorse. So I let him be and sat and sipped my breakfast by th
e light of the candle stub, while my eyes wandered through the shadows and the light on the familiar walls, and I wondered why I was so full of choler.
My belly was knotted up with fury. It wasn’t only my cupshotten father snoring in his bed, though that had a part in it. I woke and it was there in the darkness, waiting for me. Every day of your life, it said, will be clutter. I performed my chores, spoke politely to neighbours, went about my work, and all the while hot thoughts and words knocked about my head. Lately I had appeased them with small acts of recklessness, like dropping a curse in Harry Stolley’s lap. There was a demon in me, and no amount of praying would seem to shift it. I reasoned with myself, counted my luck. If I was not pretty I was learned; I had my grandmother’s understanding of simples and my father’s knowledge of letters. We had the favour of the Hall and a good cottage. There were quite a few ready to say it was too big for one man and his daughter, with a workshop where only the dust moved for days at a time. Our neighbour, Widow Spicer, was crammed into two small rooms with her son grown nearly a man and her penniless sister newly arrived to live with her. I should have been glad of what I had, I knew, but I was not.
I stared at the stain on the wall left by the evening candle, which would not come off, but only seemed to get worse with rubbing. How was it, I wondered, that light left a smear of the dark behind? Perhaps darkness left its mark in us, too, when we stood in the sunshine. Perhaps behind the borrowed light our spirits were black with tar and grime. How could anything be pure and good?
From out the back a cock crowed. The day was getting on; there were already people in the lane. I collected my things, nudged my father on the shoulder and quickly stepped out before he could halt me.
For two hours every morning, bar the Sabbath, I taught the village boys to read. Miss Elizabeth had had benches laid out in the room above the stables at the Hall. The Bible was Christ’s bread, she declared one harvest, and no boy in her parish should have his soul starved of salvation. At first she couldn’t find a teacher. Father Paul tutored the yeoman sons and not a soul else that knew their letters wanted to give up the time – feeding souls did not pay well. She’d tried to persuade my father, but he’d convinced her that he did not have the temperament. ‘Why not Martha?’ he had said. ‘She can read as well as a grammar school boy.’ Miss Elizabeth had turned in surprise and beckoned me over from the corner where I skulked. ‘Can you?’ she’d asked. ‘Should you like to be a schoolmistress?’ I’d burned redder than her velvet gown.
For days after I could scarcely see the ground I walked on.
‘Aggie,’ I’d said – we were gleaning and the yolk-yellow sun burned our stooping necks – ‘what do you think the boys should call me as their teacher?’
She’d grinned and poked me in the ribs. ‘They will call you a saucy cocket wench, and worse than that. Stop your strutting, Martha. Folks won’t think it decent.’
She was right, of course, the village did not like it. They said as much to my father, which pleased him no end. Miss Elizabeth cared nothing for their grumbles. ‘Why not a girl?’ she said. ‘Aren’t we ruled by a learned Queen?’ She insisted on the boys coming to her school, said she’d fine the parents if they denied them. People shifted their feet a little but they could not argue. As soon as harvest was done they sent them, for as many days as they could be spared, until something more pressing arose. The Queen herself couldn’t have stopped their fathers calling them to work when the fields began to quicken in the spring.
It had been two years now, and if it didn’t set me preening as it had done, I still cherished the dignity. It felt to me a feather from the peacock’s breast, all shimmering blue, had been woven into my kirtle.
‘You’ll not have dirt under your nails for long, Martha wench,’ my father would say. ‘You’ll not stay here long.’
And I agreed, for Miss Elizabeth Mortimer had drawn me out of the corner and smiled while I read to her. She had inclined her head and said to my father, ‘Walter, what a gem you have been hiding. Let us see if we might not let her shine a bit more brightly.’ How I wished just then that my grandmother had been alive to hear her say that! Or then again perhaps not: Grandam had always looked sideways at gentry, even the Mortimers themselves. ‘We go on foot and they ride,’ she’d say, ‘and no matter how good they are they won’t have us riding along with them; they’ll leave us in the dirt sooner than slip out of the saddle.’ She had taught me how to read plants, but she had barely been further than Hereford. It was my father’s reading that could open up the world.
Somewhere or other the sun had risen, for it was light enough when I turned into the lane to walk the half-mile to the Hall. The cold was a coagulate grey, heavy as jelly. There would be snow very soon that was pretty clear. I prayed it would not come too fast, and prevent my father’s going to Marcle, and that he would get the animals housed. The puddles in the cart ruts were heavy and grey as iron pots, and many as deep, too, so I stepped with care. The thought of the winter frightened me. What if the snow gripped us for months and there was no work? We’d precious little stored up and nothing much to trade. Even wood was scarce.
Perhaps my father would wake up sober and walk to Hellens to fix the wheels. Tomorrow he would be back with silver in his pocket. It was likely enough, though there was a tavern on the Ledbury Road he’d have to walk past. I shrugged the thought off and tried to look about me. The track climbed slowly towards the park and the trees either side were thick with birdsong. Birds sing louder when the snow is coming. I think the notes echo against the quietness that’s about to fall. A blackbird eyed me from the field’s edge. One had flown through our window yesterday morning – this very same bird most probably – and I had fallen to my knees to pray, to ward off the evil that was coming, even though my father laughed and said I was a goose to mind such things. The bird looked at me now with its black bead eyes and cocked its head to the side. When I did the same the air whispered colder on my upturned ear, but I still saw only what lay just before me. The blackbird could hear the slow winding of the worm beneath the grass; it saw two different worlds all the time – the world of the left eye and the world of the right. Who’s to say that all that is to befall us isn’t threaded through what a blackbird sees and hears? I was looking at the blackbird as though he might tell, but then a familiar voice accosted me and he startled and flew off. Widow Spicer had come up behind me; I forced a smile and bobbed.
‘Good morning to you, Martha. Whyever are you mopping and mowing like a mad thing? You certainly look well pleased with yourself, although I don’t know what there is to smile about with the sky so heavy, unless it’s a piece of wickedness. And how is your father this morning, my girl?’
‘Well, in God’s mercy, thank you kindly,’ I lied. The Widow took in washing for the Hall, but her tongue found and spread whatever dirt it could far quicker than her hands could scrub and launder.
She looked at me slowly and drew in her breath. ‘I am glad to hear it, glad to hear it indeed. He was certainly well last night – the whole village could swear to it – although God’s mercy had little to do with the song he was singing. It’s lucky for you Sir William lends Walter Dynely his protection, or it’s likely come Lady Day you’d be asked to skip. You’d best tell him be careful. There’s quiet decent folks enough, natives of this village, too, who’d make good use of that house of yourn.’
Meaning your son, of course, I thought, though I did not say it. A pretty cottage for that oaf, Jacob, when he came to marry, just next door so her meddling fingers wouldn’t have far to stretch. Give me a life elsewhere, I thought, and I’ll leave tomorrow. At least my father was not like her, all scrawn and cunning, not an ounce of softness on her.
‘I am sorry, neighbour,’ I said. ‘It must grieve you to see us so well provided for when you have both your son and your sister in so small a place. There’s not many could count on a sister’s generosity as Goody Reynolds has done. I am sure she must prize your kindness very much. I heard Miss Elizabet
h herself say so.’
‘Did she? What did she say?’ the Widow eagerly leaned forward, touching my arm like a friendly aunt.
‘That it was a Christian deed to take your sister in. She was talking to Father Paul in the stables,’ I lied. ‘May I help you with your bundle?’
‘Yes, well,’ the Widow smiled, passing me the sack of sheets, ‘you’re a mite too sharp sometimes, Martha, and you’re a funny dark little thing, but as I said to my sister the other day, Jane, I said, she’s a soul worth saving, in despite of everything.’
I was pleased with myself then, for handling her so well. It was only later that I wondered what she meant. No doubt it was my father’s wildness, but I couldn’t help thinking there was something else, some new shift in her manner, and that of others, too. We were not liked – my father saw to that – but lately I had felt there was more. Harry Stolley had played free with my mother’s name, there in the street where people heard, and no one had stopped to cuff him. Something had changed, but what it was I did not know.
When I reached the schoolroom there was no wood stack. I sent a couple of boys to filch some scraps but they came back empty-handed, with a stable-hand cursing at their backs. The timber was being watched, they said. It had got to such a price and scarcity that Sir William himself had sworn he’d bring down the law on anyone snapping off so much as a twig from his woods.
‘It’s true an’ all,’ Ben Ladding piped up. ‘My pa has always had what he wanted from Hoar Wood and welcome, but last week he was beat off. Sir William’s had enough of thieving, they told him. Said he should be thankful he wasn’t taken to the pillory.’
The Wheelwright's Daughter Page 2