‘Come back to the class, Jacob. I will teach you. I should like to.’
He threw his head back a little and regarded me, then all at once his eyes grew colder and he stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘What were you doing the other night, Martha? Why were you walking the fields so late? How did your face get cut?’
It was like a thump. No, not so much a thump, a sick weight of shame fell back on my shoulders, into my guts. So he, too, thought that I’d tumbled with a gypsy in the ashes of his fire, or else been caught and cut a little, but taken nonetheless. Lost my jewel for a snatch of ham, or a few pieces of silver.
‘You already know, don’t you? I’m a dirty slut who’d turn a trick for a piece of pie.’ Without thinking I slapped him, and he near stumbled with the surprise of it, standing on the edge of the hole as he was. ‘Fall,’ I said. ‘It’s where you belong, you and the rest of this midden. You live in filth.’
‘Aye, I live here, Martha. You live here, too,’ he said, leaning in so close it was barely more than a hard whisper. A minute, more, passed. Somewhere close by a cock crowed. Then there was the Widow calling him. She cast me a sharp look.
As he joined her I recovered myself and called after them, ‘Yes, I live here, and I think we are all damned. I hope this whole benighted place is swallowed up and carried down to hell.’
9
Explanations
At first the hole, as we began to call it, was all that was talked of in the village and beyond. Indeed, several gentry rode up on the days that followed to view it, some had come all the way from Hereford; carriages, too, with fine ladies in them, till Tom, the miller, said he was bored of the sight of satin, but that the hole should be the making of us all, what with the pies and cakes and ale that the rich seemed to have need of at every turn. We stepped gingerly by it and glanced at it nervously for fear it might have grown. Mary Tucker, whose cottage was closest, was up several times a night till her husband forbade it; she was convinced that the hole might grow in the night and gobble up her children. We all had troubled nights. There was nothing like the roar the night the hole had come, but there were new noises, like sighs or light moans from the hill. They were so slight that in the day you might take it for the wind, or the cows lowing at the Hall, but at night we lay awake in our beds, afraid of our own rocks and soil.
My father fell into conversation with one of the gentlemen observers, who, astonished at the learning of this country wheelwright, introduced him to others. The learned men pointed to the puddles and the heavy rain and nodded. My father led them up the track to Little Hill where the lie of the land was clearer and the hole looked like a tear in a seam. After these discussions he was happy for days, explaining what the old Greeks said about earth movements. Aristotle was wrong on this one, he declared; he was all for Democritus and his gases. All I could see was the way they condescended, making a show of him before they went off to drink their wine and laugh at the country philosopher. It did him no favours with his neighbours. Rob Tanner wasn’t the only one muttering about godlessness and pride, though he and the rest helped drink the Angels the gentlemen gave my father as a guide fee.
It doesn’t take long for a monster to become a familiar. The visitors dropped off and we began to forget our fear of the hole. Boards were fixed across and people dumped their rubbish; one morning we found the stinking body of a horse had been tipped in. Soon there was barely any hole at all; a scar and a long line of water in the track was all that showed. We marked the edges with rocks to warn travellers, but they kept washing away. More than once my father got work because a cart did not know the road or wasn’t careful. Tom was right: there’s money in disasters. We grew used to the hill moaning. It’s the dragon turning, we’d say, and laugh because we didn’t believe it. Only Goody Reynolds and the Widow liked to shake their heads and mutter about omens. ‘There’s more coming,’ Goody Reynolds would say to anyone who’d listen. ‘Mark my words, this is only a beginning.’
She was waiting for me one late afternoon as I returned from the Hall, laden with good blocks of wood Miss Elizabeth had given me and pastries too, in my pocket.
‘Fling yourself down and ask for His forgiveness, Martha,’ she said. ‘Hell’s door opened a crack with that hole. The Lord has given you another chance.’ She stood before me so that I could not pass and began to poke me with her finger.
‘Go your ways,’ I said. ‘I’m nothing to do with you.’
‘No, don’t doubt it, and you won’t be. This is a good family.’
‘And what does that mean?’ I asked, setting down my sack. She stepped back and just stared, chewing at her lips, nodding and saying nothing till I could not stand it. I darted forward and tweaked out a couple of dirty grey hairs. That made her shudder all right. Christ forgive me, but it felt good to play the witch. ‘Tell me what you mean,’ I said, as she began to back away, muttering, ‘or I’ll light my fire and feed it with these and the devil will come and tell me himself.’
‘You,’ she said, and glanced from side to side. There was no one about. ‘You and your mother, both. She did it and you helped her. She’s trying to find her way back from hell.’
I grabbed her shoulders. I think I meant to shake her till her last few teeth fell out, but her shoulders were so little and her cloak so thin that my anger failed me and in its place I felt weary and sad. She was a frail thing next to her sister; a sparrow, pecking around for rumour and talk. She had half lost her wits – everyone saw it from the moment she arrived; it would be a wonder if she lasted the winter. No doubt the Widow let her know she was a burden. I took out the pastries and held one out.
‘Here, neighbour,’ I said. ‘I’ll thank you not to speak ill of my mother.’
She looked a little nervous, then put out a scrawny hand and snatched it and concealed it in her gown, as though afraid I’d take it back. ‘I will pray for you, girl, that you be brought back to the Lord Jesus.’
‘You had better do it quietly,’ I said, ‘so your sister does not hear.’
When I reached home there was my father, cheerful, with food he had bought from the Hereford market. He had fallen to talking, he said, with some tradesmen of the city. They were of a mind that there was work enough there, for capping was strong again, thanks to her Majesty and there were always carts needing mending for the fulling mills along the river. Hereford, then, not Gloucester. We would be gone before Lady Day he said. We would leave this dismal valley and never come back.
‘I’ll make you a fine lady yet Martha,’ he said. ‘Oh, I can’t forgive myself for the years I’ve wasted. There are pigs with more conversation than the oafs in the alehouse. I thought it was right for you to be in your mother’s country and maybe it was the best thing while your grandmother lived. You’re almost a young woman now. You’re educated, after a fashion; I’ll not have you getting a swineherd for a husband.’
For the first time in all my life I believed it would happen. We would move to the city. I could not speak for joy. All week it bubbled in us, and we grinned when we caught one another’s eye as though people would stop us if they knew. As if anybody would stop us! Miss Elizabeth would smile graciously and say she would do whatever she could, and when she came to the city perhaps once in a while she would bend her graceful head to come into our rooms where she would pull off her gloves carefully, finger by finger, and exclaim how cosy we had made the space. But I thought with a pang of Owen. What would he do and who would speak for him when his father called for him to leave off books and work? Perhaps, I thought with a jolt of delight, he could come with us. That was it! He could lodge with us and continue his schooling and Miss Elizabeth could enter him into the grammar school.
And why should I think of Jacob, who thought me a trollop; why should I think of him at all? I blushed to remember how he had stood so close and blushed again because I could not rid the picture from my mind of his face as he bent towards me. When we moved I would leave Jacob behind and that was good.
I think I
have never been so happy as I was in those days of December. We had more food than we had had for months, and Father barely drank at all, or not to notice. Many evenings we sat close by the fire and made plans, and cared nothing for the cold outside and the frosts, which set in so strong that the world of mud became a world of stone. Little by little it seemed to me that our neighbours were forgetting to regard me with suspicion. Even Goody Reynolds, I fancied, glanced less sidelong at me as she picked her scrawny way along the edges of the lane.
I should not have grown so easy. I should have listened to how the hill kept up its unquiet moaning.
One evening we were sitting either side of the fire, contentedly enough, watching the yellow flames lick the ash in the grate. A low hum came from the ridge, but we were used to this. I paid it little mind at first, until I realised that it had changed its tone and dropped to a coughing growl. My father stood up and went to the door.
‘I think the dragon’s belly rumbles,’ I said, to make him smile.
He turned to me, with a frown. ‘Don’t indulge that silly talk,’ he said. ‘There are no dragons.’
‘Will Leigh says it is a wyvern, like the one little Maud found in the legend, and it is waking in anger at the thirst for timber that is causing so much felling of the old woods.’
‘Ssh, girl, let me listen.’
‘And there’s some who hint it is the driving out of the old customs.’
‘Ssh, I told you.’
‘And there are some who say – but they say it very quiet – that it is punishment for them as harbours papists in their walls.’
‘For God’s sake, still your tongue!’ Though he spoke quiet enough Father’s voice was harsh and angry. ‘Damn their stories and their superstitions. The noise has changed, do you hear it? The hole won’t be the last of this. It may be we shall have to move before spring after all. If we get more rain… Stay here, I’ll be back presently. I’ll climb up past the Noggin to listen.’
After he left I stared into the embers and prayed that he did not turn into the inn. Perhaps there was no dragon, but I could not but think that there must be a reason for this wailing, for the hole. There was one explanation, of course, that I had not told him. Goody Reynolds’ words came back to me. I had made the hole to bring my mother back from hell. Mad old crone. But I was uneasy. The fear nagged at me that I was indeed to blame, that I was stained with evil. Why would my father never talk to me of her death? Had he come back here to work away the guilt that stuck to us? When I thought of my mother she was dressed in white, in a white shift in the glow of dawn; she was a white dove, with a collar of black, singing in a tree.
That night Father passed the alehouse and though the door was open he did not go in.
10
Christmas Eve
The days before Christmas were washed away in a cold rain that did not stop. Day after day it puddled in the fields and the tracks, found its way through thatch, leaked down the walls. Wood hissed and steamed on the hearth and the fire would not set. The worst of it was the sense that things were losing their proper shape, the lane and the field a sticking mess of mud, the sky and the land dribbling into one another, grey, and brown and grey. Even our faces sagged and grew pallid as the clouds. When ice came again at last we welcomed it, for it let us find our footing and gave the world some definition.
On Christmas Eve I gathered holly and mistletoe and threaded it through the cottage and the workshop, through my spinning wheel and all my father’s tools. He held no holy days dear, not even Christmas Day itself, but I would not have him working, not this year when I was determined we should have no strife between us, nor with our neighbours. He had been away two days, fixing the wheels of a brewer’s cart in Ledbury. He would be back, he promised me, by Christmas morning, but not before. There was a man he intended to seek out who owned lodgings in the city. I spent hours scrubbing up the cottage, rubbing the wood with lavender and rosemary so that it should welcome him home.
Most years I went with Owen and Aggie to fetch the great yule log, but since she had been so high with me, hauling Owen off as though I would harm him, I had not courted Aggie’s company. A nod, a brief good morning was all we’d exchanged, I as haughty as she, but since the hole, and over the last few days especially, I fancied the affront was wearing thin; we’d both managed a curt smile. Still, I was surprised to find her with Owen when he rootled me out to go along to the Hall.
Sir William had done himself proud. It was a huge piece of oak, and four men straining to pull it now it was off the wagon. Even the hearth of the great Hall would scarce accommodate it. At the edge of the park we caught up with the crowd that had gathered to bring it. There was already a fiddle or two to aid the singing. Owen was delighted, and ran to join the other children scrambling up for the ride, till the men turned and clipped them. Ned Stolley bounded up and turned a cartwheel, and some of the adults cheered. Aggie and I had not spoken much as we walked. She had asked after my father and I had wished her mother well but now she turned to me and smiled. It was the music, it caught at our spirits and made them jig. I took her hand and squeezed it and we fell in behind the log, hand in hand like that all the way to the barns. There was a cold buffeting wind that smacked us cheerfully. ‘Adam Lay Ybounden’ Tom sang, and the fiddle picked it up. ‘All was for an apple…’ the song rang out from man and woman and child, and before us the Hall was lighted up with candles, and nearby the doors of one of the barns were flung open. Later the log would be taken into the Hall itself, but before that we’d all make merry in the barn.
When we were young Miss Elizabeth herself would pass among us handing out ribbons to pin to the log, but she had reserved herself from village customs the last few years. It may be she had grown a mite too refined, or perhaps she wasn’t sure of the sanctity of decking the oak with gaudy stuff. It was her chambermaid, Mary, who oversaw the decoration, but Sir William himself handed out ale to the men as they undid the ropes, clapping them on the back till beer sloshed over the jugs.
‘Well done, men, that’s a fine log. Bishop John won’t have a better, I dare say. Drink up and there’ll be pies and the wassail cup a little later. Very good, very good, what better than a fiddle and such pretty girls…’ catching Aggie round the waist and swinging her round.
She bounced back into me blushing and I handed her my ribbons to pin. Across at the back of the barn I had noticed Jacob putting up tables, and now, to my consternation, I saw that he was looking back at us. He smiled. Well, who wouldn’t smile at Aggie, flushed and happy, her fingers full of ribbons? I shot a glance at her, but she hadn’t noticed him. She was taking direction from Sir William, who was gallantly helping her to press in the pins.
Soon the wassail singing began and the whole place felt warm and jolly, with holly and mistletoe on the walls and the glow of candles. I felt a hand slide into mine.
‘Look, Martha,’ Owen said, ‘they are bringing pies and the wassail cup, and Jacob says we’ll have dancing.’
I followed where he pointed and there indeed the cup was already going around from hand to hand and mouth to mouth, Sir William, in great high spirits, urging it on. Goody Reynolds took a peck at it, like a biddy hen, but Tom put back his head and drained the cup. Owen threw back so much he fell to coughing. I allowed myself a good gulp. It was sweet and rich. The ripple of the cup passing from hand to hand warmed and loosened us till neighbours who an hour before could not abide each other linked arm in arm. All the world seemed good and happy.
Sir William took Aggie’s hand and led off the dancing, and her gold hair outshone the candles. Jacob had been hovering, but he’d have to wait, for he could hardly step in before his lordship. I grabbed Owen and when it came to threading down the line we whirled and laughed till I felt as silly and young as he. The candles swum before me and the faces were yellow moons. I left Owen to sneak more pies and took my ale outside to let the cold air and the pricked stars settle me. Perhaps my father was even now walking home. He hardly ever came to
dances and some years forbade me, too, but I thought how this time, this last time, perhaps he might like it. It felt odd to me to think that I should never spend another Christmas here, nor perhaps dance with my neighbours again or drink the wassail cup. Not that I wasn’t glad to be leaving, but it was odd, nonetheless.
Someone nudged my elbow. ‘I’ll partner you for the next round, Martha.’ It was Jacob. I was so surprised that I assented before I thought what my response should be.
‘But what shall we talk of to avoid falling out?’
‘I think you’d best decide that,’ he said.
‘Then we’d best say nothing at all to any purpose,’ I replied, ‘or I’ll vex you and then you’re like to trip me up again. But where’s Aggie? You’ve not danced with her yet.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ve not.’
I didn’t know what to make of his tone at all for he turned to his ale and drank it off and looked away. Then the music stopped and he took my elbow, almost roughly. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘it’s time.’
Just as he did so Owen appeared before us. ‘Martha…’ he said. ‘Oh, good evening, Jacob. Look, I’ve got a pocket full of pies—’
He was cut off by Sir William, with Aggie breathless and laughing a step behind him. ‘Here he is. A fine young swain for a pretty maiden. That’s it, that’s it, take her hand. Don’t be shy, boy. For goodness’ sake, anyone would think you’d taken vows. You know her well enough.’ And he seized Jacob’s hand and joined it with Aggie’s. ‘Go and dance, go and dance. I must be off, but I’m not such a blackguard that I’d leave a lady standing with nothing but her curls for company.’
Jacob frowned and threw me a glance and a slight shrug, but Aggie was leading him back into the barn and I watched as he put on a better face and smiled down at her and handed her into the set. Sir William was right, they looked fine together.
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