The Wheelwright's Daughter

by Eleanor Porter

  ‘Don’t you mock,’ the oldest one put in. It was Herbert Dinmore, who’d been in charge of the horses and the hounds longer than most could remember. He had a slow way about him, like so many who spend more time with beasts than people. ‘It may not be a dragon, though my own grandfather believed in dragons till the day he died – had tales of one too, big as a house and breathing fire, out in the Marches. And which of you does not believe the story of St George? It’s easy to mock, but there’s something stirring, and there’ll be more before it’s over.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ another said, thrusting with his bread to support his words. ‘Like Father Paul says, there’s something evil unsettling the land and we have to drive it out. These are the signs before the flood.’

  Herbert leaned back in his chair. ‘I’ve a cousin who’s a woodsman over in Haugh Woods. You’ve maybe heard the story: he was telling every soul that would listen when he came over to see my mother at Candlemas. No? Well, I’ll tell it you then before we go back out. There’s a man he works with, Wilf, he’s called, crusty old bugger too, but not one to see things. Well, Wilf was out with his son, after catching a hare. Bishop John wouldn’t miss it. It was a stark day with the trees all haggard and lifting up their branches as though they were begging mercy of the sky. For hours they trudged and had no luck. Then the son, who was out in front and more nimble, started a hare out in the open, where the land drops down to the Lugg. Off go the dogs and they after, into the woods, the hare ahead but slow. Before a mile one of the dogs has her in the leg and the boy calls them off and picks her up to show his father, for she’s a beauty, the biggest he’s ever seen. The old man approaches and before his eyes the animal in his son’s hands changes into a woman, a young woman, who spits in the boy’s eye and curses him for the wound she’s taken. No one had seen her before, and no one has seen her since, and the blood that she left on his clothes turned black. For days now the boy’s been in his bed, racked with pains in his leg.’ Herbert paused and stood up. ‘You can say what you like, but I call it devilry.’

  No one gainsaid him. They shoved the plates from them and got up to go back out. I had been away from my work too long, but I didn’t want to move until they’d gone. They shuffled out, Jacob the last to leave. As he went through the door he turned and looked at me, long and silent, just as he had done all those weeks ago when he had seen me sooted and cut in the stableyard. It was as though Christmas Eve, the wild dance of the Fool, had never been.

  I stared back. ‘Think what you like,’ I said.

  18

  Miss Elizabeth’s Promise

  Miss Elizabeth frowned a little as she ran her delicate hand (for once she had removed her gloves) along the lines I’d copied. I feared I had disappointed her.

  ‘They are very fine verses, ma’am, are they by a poet of the court?’

  ‘No, you silly girl,’ she said, but she looked pleased. ‘They are just some idle nothings I have written over the years.’

  I did my best to look surprised. ‘I thought they must be by one who had travelled the world, ma’am, there is so much of it in them.’

  Miss Elizabeth sat down. ‘I have seen very little, but I was at court once, or rather I brushed against the skirts of the court. A cousin of my mother’s was a lady-in-waiting there for a time and we visited her at Windsor. It’s a grand palace, grander than you can imagine. It was a fine day and my mother and I were walking in the gardens when a great hustle and bustle filled the air. I declare the leaves on the trees trembled with it. My mother snatched at a servant as he passed to enquire what was the matter and he told her that the King was close behind, that he would be here in a few minutes. My mother was a shy person, not at all like Sir William, and she had no desire to be presented. Above all she feared being in the way, but there was nothing for it, people were arriving. We stood by the roses, turned to stone, as the great ones swept by us. And there was the young King, with the Duke beside him. As he turned he saw us and gestured to us to rise from our curtsying. He had such merry eyes; he looked right at me. I wept such tears when he died.’

  ‘Miss Elizabeth,’ I ventured, ‘forgive me for asking, but did you dream of staying there, with the jewels and velvet?’

  ‘We are not so very fine. There was never any chance of my stepping in among them. I was very young and foolish then, and my head was full of dancing and the players. I still write my verses, though I confess that I fear Father Paul might not like them. But I believe the Good Lord does not abhor pleasure. And, child, think how much more simple and good we are here in the country, where people are open in their hearts and love their neighbours, without the malice and the plots of the court.’

  ‘You are very kind to us, but I think we are not so good as you say, ma’am,’ I said, and when she patted my hand with a complacent smile I burst out, ‘There are people who say wicked things about me, ma’am, I am afraid.’

  ‘I myself have heard that you venture off at night alone. You must not, Martha, promise me that. Think how it looks. And there are godless men in the woods at night, child, rogues who’d carry a village girl off and make her their doxy. Imagine! Passed from man to man like a pipe. Here, swear for me now, on this Bible, that you will not do such a thing again.’

  I swore for her, but I crossed my fingers behind my back. I told her that I had slipped out once in a moon to watch the badgers play. It was a lie, of course. Mostly I went to steal her father’s rabbits and his timber. Once I’d said the words she took my face in her hands.

  ‘Don’t think I haven’t heard other idle talk. It will come to nothing. You are clever, Martha. People don’t like that in a girl: it makes you different. Your father is a good man, but he is not always careful in his speech, or in his actions. He is not unlike my own, you know, in that. You must take care not to give offence where none is needed. And remember, I am your friend. I won’t stand by and let you be hurt. You can rely on me, and on my father, too. Come tomorrow after the lesson and I will have more work for you.’

  Let them all come on, I thought, as I walked back through the gathering dusk, the greatest lady in the parish has given me her armour.

  19

  Owen’s News

  I told myself that my father was getting better though I knew in truth that he wasn’t. He shuffled around the cottage, almost mute. Very often he had to lean and grip on a chair to haul the air into his chest and each breath scritched like a warped fiddle. I hated to hear it, and although I wouldn’t say it even to myself, I hated being at home. After chapel on Sunday I took Owen by the hand and we wandered up into the woods to gather snowdrops and cherry bark.

  I asked after his mother and Aggie.

  ‘Oh, she’s very much better. Father says he has never seen her so well, only she and Aggie fight because Aggie thinks only of sweethearts and curling her hair.’

  ‘She is very pretty, your sister.’

  ‘Yes, everybody says she is pretty all the time and she believes it, but Mother says golden hair plants no peas.’

  ‘Chase you to the top, Owen.’

  He ran, and I after him, up the track and into the trees till we got to the top of the ridge where the wood gives out for the lane to pass. The wind whipped up our hair as it blew west towards the mountains and we leaned on the trees to get our breath back.

  ‘One day,’ said Owen, pointing, ‘I’m going to walk all the way to the mountains. It’s where my mother’s people come from.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, Owen,’ I said. ‘We can walk there together.’

  Owen sat down and I sat down next to him and we leaned together against the wind.

  ‘I wish you were my brother, Owen,’ I said.

  ‘I am, Martha, I often think that. You’re much more my sister than Agnes.’

  We were silent awhile, staring out over the valleys, towards the mountains.

  ‘Have you ever seen the will-o’-the-wisp?’ he asked me.

  ‘No. Why, have you?’

  ‘My mother’s
seen them. At Craswall – that’s her village – she saw them dancing over graves. And sometimes it’s like fire and sometimes it’s an old woman.’

  ‘The will-o’-the-wisp?’

  ‘Yes, an old woman carrying a wooden can. People see her on the mountains at night, or when the cloud is thick, just ahead. There was a young man in her village, my mother said, he was a shepherd, knew the hills ever so well, but one night he was returning from market and there she was before him. She just turned a little and smiled and carried on up the path and he followed behind – he couldn’t do anything else – followed behind her, off the path and on, into the high cloud, and he never came home, not really, after that.’

  ‘What do you mean, “not really”? Was he dead?’

  ‘They found him wandering a few days later and they brought him back, but his mind stayed lost.’

  ‘How did they know it was her?’

  ‘Why, Martha, who else could it have been? Like I said, he knew the hills. Only, do you think your dad might have seen the will-o’-the-wisp? Not the old woman – she’s only over there – but the flame? I’ve been thinking about it and I wondered if it was that, because if you follow after it, it breaks your heart. Maybe that’s why he’s so sorrowful.’

  I hugged him tighter. ‘It could be that, you’re right, Owen, but if he did, I think it was a long time ago.’

  ‘Martha?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Miss Elizabeth visited us last week. She looked so tall and bright in the house, like a red swan. She brought a lady and a gentleman with her and the lady said Aggie was so pretty she might take her to be a lady’s maid, and then they all sat on the bench and she asked me to read, and while I read Miss Elizabeth kept looking and nodding at the gentleman and gesturing at me as though he mightn’t be able to see me, though I was right in front of him and if he stretched his foot out he’d have kicked me. I stumbled on quite a few of the words, but she was pleased with me and brought out tarts for everyone while the gentleman went to talk to my father.’

  ‘What did they talk about?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ and he jumped up and started picking the snowdrops.

  I held his hand as we walked back down. Owen might not know what the gentleman was saying, but I thought I did. Miss Elizabeth had not given up on her protégé. Soon, no doubt, when the time came for such things, he would be packed off to the Cathedral School and it would be the making of him, and I would become nothing to him but a village girl who once was kind.

  20

  The Chapel Bells

  When I was a little girl Sir William still had hunting parties from time to time. Aggie and I would lie in wait near the Hall for their return, to watch the fine gentlemen and catch up a coin or two if they chanced to throw them. She was pretty even then, with a great mop of yellow curls. One time a young gentleman swept her up and placed her on his pommel, declaring her the queen of the hunt, and the ladies who had come out to greet them laughed and ruffled her hair. One took a blue silk ribbon and tied it round Aggie’s forehead for a coronet. I stayed by the hedge, small and brown and silent, and I would not look at the ribbon when we ran back home, or listen to her prattle. Poor wench, she had little enough to treasure; I should not have begrudged her a ribbon. It was right she should work for a lady among perfumes and ribbons and silks. She had the Simons’ pale frailty; she could not long have sustained a life like her mother’s. All the same, I could not help envying her. It seemed wrong that Aggie, who could barely write her own name, who was frothy as May blossom, should be lifted into the velvet and not I.

  It was well past noon. Smells of cooking drifted through the lane. My father would be hungry and cold. I began to hurry, bracing myself for the dreary room. But as I approached I noticed smoke rising. He had lit a fire and was at his bench mending a shutter! I put the snowdrops I had picked in a cup, smiling.

  ‘Why do you pull so many? I’d have thought you’d be wary of bringing bad luck into the house. They won’t last, you know.’

  ‘They will last today, Father. I am glad to see you are so much stronger.’

  ‘Well, who’s to make the fire if you spend the day dallying about the fields? Who were you with? Not our neighbour’s lout, at least. He came by with some kindling.’

  ‘Very neighbourly of him.’

  ‘No doubt he was on his mother’s business, checking whether they could soon take possession.’

  ‘You can be pleased to disappoint her then.’

  We grumbled on together through the afternoon. He did not cough so much, and his back seemed straighter, but there was a coldness in him, even to me. I couldn’t bear the thought of that. It pained me almost as bad as our dashed plans. Every few moments he leaned his elbows on the desk to gather his breath again, and in one of these pauses I came up behind him and laid my head on the crook of his neck as I used to do when I was a little girl, but he shrugged me off with a curse. Old Whittle, the Widow had said, had grown so after the ice had touched him, a bit of his heart gone black and dead with the frost. I felt very lonely just then, as I went about my work. He had felt bitter towards all the world, but never towards me. It frightened me. This is how I would live now, with this ailing angry man, as months fell into years; Owen would leave, and Aggie too, and sooner or later Jacob would fold a girl into his arms and marry her.

  When I came home after evensong the weakness returned and Father had to lie down, but he was softer with it, and held my hand as I sang to him. There are some songs that can make you cry, though you have sung them ever so many times, but the tears are not sad tears, for there’s a feeling of fullness with them, like eating well. I was afraid his heart was shrivelling so I sang him the saddest, fullest songs I could think of, till he squeezed my hand and said, ‘For the Lord’s sake, Martha, sing something a bit more bonny, can’t you?’ so I sang him the song of the frog and the mouse, I was halfway through it when the shutters rattled and the chapel bell rang out.

  ‘Whyever would it ring, Father, at this hour?’

  ‘It’ll be some foolery, no doubt.’

  I took up the song again.

  Mrs Mouse, will you marry me?

  Fa la linkum larum

  A loving husband I will be…

  But then the bell sounded again, slow and dreadful, as though tolling a death. I could no longer ignore it, but put on my cloak and hurried out into the night. There were others in the lane and together we walked to the chapel. All who could stir from their beds were gathered at the door, but it was locked and there was no one within that we could tell. There were mutterings and glancings, but none could agree whether it was a warning from the Lord or whether the chapel itself were bewitched. I pulled my cloak around my ears and said nothing. All at once there was a hush and Father Paul strode through, carrying a lighted torch so that his face blazed fearfully like one of the carved heads on the chapel eaves. At the door he turned and faced us and the wind whipped up his skirts and hair. He said nothing, just looked sternly from face to face with the fire flickering on his features. We waited for him to speak and it seemed he was about to, but on a sudden he turned, unlocked the door and went inside. Some braver ones looked in after him. He went directly to kneel up by the altar table, his head bowed in prayer. Nobody dared approach him.

  We loitered around in the dark, listening to the howl of the wind and the bare trees creaking, and then suddenly there came again the tolling of the bell. A couple of the women screamed; many fell to their knees. I looked about me at the faces that loomed in the lanterns. People were shouting and crying, but no one looked my way. Then Tom strode forward, waving his big arms.

  ‘If the Father will not speak, I will. Listen up. Something is amiss. You’ll agree with that.’

  People murmured their assent.

  ‘But what it is we don’t rightly know. It could be that we have offended, as the Father has told us. I’m not saying no to that, but it could be the offence was not on our part but rather that the Good Lord is not pleased
with the Father’s newfangledness. Father Paul likes to tell us all we’re in hock to the devil, but mebbe us poor folk are not alone in sinning. Some might say there’s sins been done to our Church and a reckoning to be made, and the Almighty pays His debts.’

  Folk began to move closer, to attend to him above the wind, but at that moment Goody Reynolds caught my eye and raised her stick.

  ‘It’s the devil as is riding on those bells. Look! There she is! Daughter of the devil’s harlot. I’ve seen her, walking the woods at night with the soot of hell upon her. Why does our milk curdle in the pot? And my sister even now abed with a sore heel after she dropped her wax at Candlemas.’

  People turned from Tom towards her and there were nods and murmurs. I looked around at the faces. I had known every one of them all my life and yet many looked at me as though they did not know me at all, as though I were a horrible thing.

  ‘Martha,’ someone cried out of the dark, ‘what did your familiar do to the Simons’ baby?’

  ‘Enough of that foolish talk!’ Tom shouted at their backs. He walked up to stand beside me and challenged each accusing eye. ‘Let the girl be. Can’t you see how she is shaking? Jane Reynolds, you’ve lost your senses to set people on so. We should all go quietly back to our beds and pray.’

  He took me by the elbow. ‘Best I walk you home, girl, but don’t be afeard, there’s not many take heed of the old crone.’

  People parted from us, looking shamed, I was glad to see, or maybe it was that Tom was bigger than the lot of them, and liked a good fight. I bent my head; it was more of a run home than a walk. When I recovered my wits I glanced at him. I would not have taken him for a papist. I wondered if he knew about Sir William.

  ‘It was dangerous, what you said about the old religion,’ I said.