‘Curse this life,’ he said. ‘Curse this wretched hole and all its vermin.’
We stood like that for a while, either side of the stew, neither speaking, bleak as the weather, with the promise that the snow made gone and nothing left but the grey and straggling thaw. Slowly the smell of the ham drifted through the misery in the room. It is the best smell in the world when you are hungry and we were both very hungry. He reached out and took my hand.
‘Come here, Martha. I’m not going to beat you. I was afraid. You did not come home. How did your face get so cut about? You are grown so big and wayward. I think I would go mad if I lost you, child. I have not been a good man, Martha, or a good father to you, especially these last years. I know it. It’s strange how fortune plays out. I was my father’s darling. No one could touch me. I wrote a better hand than any of your university men. My father was a freeman of the city. And here we are. There’s not much left for me in this life, nor any other, I suspect, but do you have to set about undoing yours so quick?’
It was as gentle a speech from him as any I could remember. We sat and ate and I told him the truth. Or some of the truth. Miss Elizabeth’s writing about Father Paul I left out because it did not seem right to mention what was private to Miss Elizabeth. Also, Father Paul accosting me in the lane, because there was bad blood enough already between my father and he. I was shy of telling Father of the priest and his hole. I even lowered my voice, though only a mouse could have heard us. To my astonishment, I saw that he was smiling.
‘So,’ he said, ‘well built, is it not? Ingenious, even?’
‘You know of it?’
‘I built it, child.’
I nearly spilled my broth. He patted my wrist. ‘I am not of Sir William’s persuasion. I’ll pray whatever prayer I’m given, so long as I’m left alone, but his lordship knows me to be close with secrets and reckless of my life and I owe him a debt. Why are you so surprised? You must have heard the talk, the mutterings, even if no one would dare say much aloud.’
‘But to harbour a priest!’
‘It’s a dangerous game, I’ll grant you that, but he plays the bluff country fool pretty well. He keeps away from the great families; he doesn’t go looking for enemies. And Walsingham himself could not doubt Miss Elizabeth.’
‘And Father Paul?’
‘Ha! Him. He suspects, I dare say. It may well be why the bishop placed him here. He’s the bishop’s man and he’ll be reporting back to his master. The more he knows, the more power it gives him over Sir William. Who’s to know when he might want to ask for something Sir William is reluctant to give?’
We sat until only the light of the fire lit the room and I was more happy than I had been for a long time, with the taste of the ham in my mouth and my father talking to me frankly and the shutters drawn against the night.
‘Tell me again,’ I said, ‘about growing up in the city.’
He let his gaze rest on a flame and go far off. ‘I had a friend. Johnny. We’d set off for school together before dawn and in the afternoon when the gates closed behind us we’d slink off to the docks where the ships laid at anchor. Castles in the water, with pinnaces gold, green, red in the sun; beetle-brown sailors who smelled of the oil they rubbed into their hair. You could hear all the languages of the world in the dockyards. Even the English was strange, studded with ship talk and far-off places. We’d set ourselves down outside the taverns and listen to their yarning; Spanish galleons, raging storms, eerie calms when the wind dropped and the sun was a vengeful eye. Calms that could last for weeks. Weevils in the meal and the barrels bitter, but the sea like a bright blue jewel around you. Once they told us of a boy, just the spit of you two, they said, who sat atop the rigging in the full sun of a terrible calm for hours on end, searching the sky for the great white bird the sailors knew brought luck. The blazing light must have turned him, for though the ship hadn’t moved a whisper he fell down. His foot caught in the rigging. Lucky? Maybe. Some of the sailors thought it a good joke, the boy dangling on the rope, his white smock bagging above the crosstrees: “Best start praying, lad. Swinging’s saved you now; it’ll do for you another time.” All of a sudden a breeze shook up. It was an hour before they got him down and when they did his wits were all gone. He cursed the rope that’d snagged him. Said he’d seen sea-girls singing to him in the water, reaching out their white arms. First chance he got he was overboard; by then the wind had picked up lively and he was lost in the wake.’ He chuckled. ‘No doubt they meant to warn us off the sea. Much good it did. Might as well spit in the dust to water your corn.
‘Not that my father would have let me go. We were rich. Our house was big: three floors, it had; room for two servants or more along with the family. There was a horse in the stable and meat every day. I and my sister lacked for nothing.’ He was quiet for a while. ‘And then it was gone. All gone. I was thirteen years old. There’d been crowds in the streets revelling that Queen Anne was put to death. We were all asleep. The flames took hold in the kitchen. Old Adam got me and my sister out, but it was too late for my mother, my father. Too late for the warehouse, too. But you know this story.’ His voice grew bitter. ‘All my life I’ve been riding Fortune’s wheel. The fall comes and knocks the breath out of my body. Just when I have learned to breathe again I am thrown down, harder than before.’
I knew the story. How he’d had to leave school, how he’d been apprenticed to a wheelwright and, not long after, his sister married off to a widower near twice her age, with children who resented the gown on her back and were barely civil to her relations. This kind of talk led to the tavern. I took his thick working man’s hand in mine. How strange to think he was born to dress in velvet, with a servant to cook him roast meat every day.
‘Father,’ I said at last, ‘does my aunt still live in the city?’
He looked at me, puzzled. ‘Should you like to see her? She’s alive, if she has not died since summer.’
‘Could we not go? Not for a visit, but altogether. Leave the village? You are still strong. You could show me the fine people’s houses and we could sit in the Cathedral and listen to the choir. You could ask Sir William for work with the people he does business with. Oh, Father, how I should love to go to the city. What is to keep us? My grandmother is dead. You have said yourself, there is nothing here but mud.’
It was not the first time in the last two years or so that I had urged it. He railed against the village but would not leave. He was threaded into his life here, and even if the threads were of contempt and anger he seemed to fear to snap them. Sometimes, when I pressed him, he grew angry; sometimes he patted my chin and smiled, as you might to a child who said a pretty but a silly thing. This time – perhaps it was a memory of the courage he’d felt in patching Sir William’s house with holes, or perhaps he felt too that things had changed, that there was a murmuring, like the rustle of a wind before a storm breaks – whatever it was, he neither scolded nor scoffed, but caught my eye and held it.
He said nothing for a long while. I waited. Still he said nothing, so I got up and began to set the place tidy. Only when I had half forgotten I was waiting did he speak.
‘It could be done,’ he said. I turned in surprise. His eyes were shining, as though he were gazing at the streets and the crowds already. ‘You would have a chance of meeting some fine fellow, not one of these country idiots. It could be done. I could… I will write to my sister. Sir William will know people. Don’t pester me. It’ll take time, but I’ll set about it. Ask me again in the spring, Martha. In the spring.’
8
The Road Rips
It was not many nights later. I dreamed I was walking over a high level plain, pulling a small wagon with all my things piled high. Now and again the cloud dropped so low the road before me was hidden. I knew my father had gone on ahead a little way. It was a lonely place, with the cloud drifting across me and not a soul around. The only birds to be heard were crows that wheeled in and out of the mist. I came at last to a crossr
oads. The mist cleared and I saw right in front of me the ruin of a gibbet. With the strangeness of dreams I knew I should wait here to meet my mother, though it made me shudder to sit so near the scaffold. ‘Mother!’ I shouted and the wind and cloud threw my call back to me. Why did she not come? I shouted again, ‘Mother!’ This time a voice answered, but it was harsh, not my mother’s voice at all. It seemed it was the ground itself that called me, over and over, and then it was my father’s voice. He was standing over my bed, shaking me awake. He shoved my cloak at me and pulled me towards the door. The bed itself was rocking; dust fell from the thatch, from the walls. There was a terrible sound, a tearing, coughing sound, like a monster puking. Just as we stepped outside, the cottage juddered and the noise abruptly stopped.
A bone-bright moon picked out the lane like a woodcut. People huddled in doorways. Crows cawed around the trees and the branches swayed a little, but the rest of the lane was still, and seemed just as it always was, clearer than by day, if anything, for the moon silvered the damp thatch and the mud and threw long inked shadows from the elms. We stood there unsteady and afraid. Had we all of us merely dreamed a monster? I glanced at my father; it was not a dream. He would not entertain such a fancy. He was frowning, glancing at the huts, then back up towards the hill. A sharp breeze blew out our lantern and we became part of the darkness.
Then Goody Reynolds let out a scream and pointed. We none of us had seen what was at our feet. One of the long shadows was no shadow at all, but a great black hole. The road had wrenched itself open. There was a gash along it, deep as a horse and more than a perch long. We stepped as near as we dared to the edge and stood close together, staring into nothing. Looking could make no sense of it. People turned to Rob Tanner’s father, old George, who must have been near eighty, and had lived in the village all his life. He’d heard of such like happenings, he said. Over Leominster way, back before King Henry died, for example, there was a drover who’d dined well across two counties on a tale of how he’d been sleeping out by Kimbolton one night with his animals when he was woken by a monstrous gulping noise. The beasts had been near dead with fright. And no wonder. Scarce three yards off, the grass had torn wide open, with a pit so big it had taken a whole steer. The drover swore it was the fairies, on account of how he’d scorned to pay them passage. But folks said as how he’d had a gill too many at the Stockton Cross. I felt better listening to George, sucking his three teeth and grinning at his own story, but Rob snorted the old man aside and turned to my father.
‘You, Walter, with all your learning, what’s done this?’
My father paced out the length of the hole, then picked up a long branch and probed the sides and the depth of it as far as he could. People shuffled back for him to pass by and leaned in to watch his expression. There was a monk of Poland, he told them at last, who died during King Henry’s time, and this monk showed that the earth we live on is forever moving, turning and circling round the sun. And the rocks and soil are moving too, and jostling and shifting. This is what that is, he said, a bit of earth has slipped out of kilter with its neighbour.
There was a murmuring at this, and more than one glanced up to check if the stars had wandered. I think I did so myself. There were clouds gathering, but the stars were in their places. My father looked serious, but it was hard to know at times when he was taking you for a fool. He talked in his own patterns and would not bend to the grooves of people’s thinking, and this offended. Here, now, he turned to the hole, kneeling to rub some earth between his fingers, oblivious to the frowning at his back. I walked round behind him. In despite of his words I did not feel it could be explained so easily. It drew my eyes like a horror in a dream.
‘More ale talk,’ Robert Tanner burst out. ‘If you can’t talk sense, you’d best put a stopper in that mouth of yourn, Walter. I’ve heard it before, that story, the earth gallivanting all around the sky like a child’s ball, and the sun, that we see moving every day, standing still as a post. You might get away with that with papists and atheists, but what does the Bible have to say, eh? That’s what we want to know.’
My father turned back, with a countenance of strained patience and spread his hands, as though he were fitting a wheel to test if it was true. His hands were large and strong, but I noticed that they shook a little. They did not use to do this, I was sure. Perhaps he needed the wood, the perfect circle of the wheel, to steady them.
‘The Bible is not an almanac,’ he said. ‘You’d be better looking to the weather and the hills to seek out your answers.’
Robert Tanner spat into the dark, but another voice rang out in rich, familiar tones.
‘I will tell you what the Bible says.’ It was Father Paul. We had not seen him approach, long and thin and black, like the trench before him. He was silent for a moment, letting his eye fall on each one of us in turn. We felt ourselves gathered in his gaze, wrapped around and held by it. When he spoke his voice was so soft we had to crane to hear, just at first, but bit by bit it grew till it rang out like a knell. ‘Hear the Gospel of Luke: And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and hunger, and pestilence; and fearful things and great signs shall there be from heaven.’ He stared at my father as he spoke and my father stared back, unstooping in the gloom of the early light.
I understood, as clearly as if they had had swords in their hands, that this was a duel, although my father said nothing for a long time, but just stood there, facing the minister, with everybody watching him and the trench and Father Paul.
At last Father spoke, turning away from the minister to our neighbours. ‘Hold fast your souls with patience,’ he said, and turned away and ducked into our cottage. I lingered after him, gazing at where he had stood as though that might explain his words.
Father Paul looked around the knots of people triumphantly and his voice rang out.
‘Look into this darkness – surely you can see that it is a sign? Take it, take it into your hearts, and root out evil. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things that are written may be fulfilled. There is sin among you and heresy among you, and I have seen the devil and his kind walking on the highways and the pathways and the fields. Even now God wounds the earth of the parish as a sign. Which of you will heed it?’
There was a general murmur and nodding. Father Paul smiled and opened his arms wide. I dropped my gaze to the ground. When I raised my eyes he was gone.
Across from me, on the other side of the trench, Goody Reynolds lifted up her stick and squawked, ‘It is coming, it is coming, the judgment of the Lord.’
She was pointing her stick right at me! I looked around. No one else much marked her; the daylight was coming and it was time to be moving, the end of the world or no.
‘Come, sister,’ the Widow Spicer said, taking her arm, ‘I think we should go home and pray. Come, Jacob.’
The two women moved off and the other groups did too, till the lane was all but deserted again. A soft rain began to fall. I was glad of it, because it flowed down my cheeks so gently. Father Paul and then the Widow’s sister; they both believed a devil had entered my soul. A worm of fear stirred in my belly. Why were my eyes so drawn to the hole, to the dark rip in the earth, wide enough to lie down in? I had no doubt that if I were to fall, just to lean a little more and topple, it would take me and cover me over. I could close my eyes in the cold clay and the rain would fall and wash me till I ran like water into the earth. I edged a little forward.
Under the elm tree opposite someone moved. It was Jacob. I had thought him gone in with the others. The surprise made me start. I teetered at the edge and felt a prick of panic, then took a good step back. I could not but be mindful of our last meeting in the stableyard, but there was no avoiding him. He was almost in front of my door and I on the far side of the hole; I could hardly walk round the village, half dressed beneath my cloak, with day near full upon us. It struck me we were stood exactly as my father and Father Paul had stood, him on one side, me on the other. I swallowed and met hi
s gaze.
‘I must apologise to you, Jacob. I did not talk like a Christian to you in the class. I beg you will stop nursing the grievance.’
To my surprise he smiled. ‘Very like you, Martha, to say sorry and then take it half back, but in truth I barely remember the occasion.’
‘Very like you, Jacob Spicer, to pretend it is of no consequence. You have not forgotten it at all. Truly, I am sorry.’ I paused and tried to offer a smile, but he looked as serious as ever and my patience failed. What good was it abasing myself to such as him if he played the prelate? ‘Just as you should be sorry for tripping me at the dance two years back and laughing.’
‘Did I? Oh, yes, I remember. You snarled like a vixen and looked like you would tear me with your nails. I’ve half a mind to trip you up again to make you more polite to your elders.’
He grinned and there was such a warmth in it I could not help grinning back. The little shame I had been carrying sloughed off; the little resentment, too, seemed suddenly a paltry thing. I felt lighter towards him than I had for a long while. We stood a while, smiling, with the rain running down our hair. ‘Trip me then, I challenge you. But I think you daren’t jump the trench, for if you slip the devil will have you in the pit.’
‘Daren’t I?’ he said, and without a pause or a run he took a leap over it, straight to my feet, where he slid in the mud and went down on his knees. It made me laugh after his vaunting, and as I bent over to help him up I saw that he was laughing too. There was a great slap of mud across his cheek. I would have wiped it off with the corner of my cloak, but he had not let go of my hands, even though he was up now and looking at me and not laughing any longer. His hands were warm, calloused, a man’s hands, not a boy’s. His breath made a mist in the cold air. I pulled my hands away and faced him, but my voice came out knotted.
The Wheelwright's Daughter Page 6