The Wheelwright's Daughter

by Eleanor Porter

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose my blood was up. No doubt some good neighbour will report me to Father Paul in the morning. I am near fifty, Martha. I remember King Henry’s time when a statue of Our Mother looked down on us with mercy and the walls were bright with pictures. They smashed the faces of the angels and took away our feasts and holidays. Father Paul and his ilk are all about flogging and work. Bishop John rips off the roofs to line his coffers and plants his people in the parishes. All this, the hole, the ringing, it’s the earth itself is disgusted. But I’ve said enough. You be careful, girl, and less of your gadding about. There’s not much done that folks don’t see and note.’

  ‘I don’t know, Tom,’ I said, ‘I never knew the pictures, only their shadows through the whitewash. Perhaps there’s something in what you say, but it’s safer for folk to say I called up the devil.’

  At my door I took his hands in both of mine. ‘Thank you, Tom’ I said. ‘I’ll take heed.’

  21

  In the Stables

  I made food for Father and set off for the schoolroom well before dawn, for I felt queasy in my stomach with fear and did not want to meet anyone before I reached the protection of the Hall. All night I had lain awake with the vision of those faces in my head, listening for the bell as though it sounded my end. At last I had given over any hope of sleep.

  On the road the stars blinked cheerfully. If a mantle of dread had fallen, the sky was free of it. It felt good to be alone. The boys I could face, and after I would sit in the peace of the library where light fell slow and slantwise and all the books seemed to promise calm. Miss Elizabeth would ask after my father and then the village would be forgotten and if she came again at all her talk would be of books or history. I wondered if I would have the courage to ask her about Owen. It was none of my business, of course, and she might well scold me for impertinence, but I doubted she would resent my interest in him.

  The stables smelled of fresh hay and the only sound was the horses snorting and shuffling in their sleep. I crept up the ladder to the schoolroom. It was ridiculous to come this early. I had no candle to waste and I could see nothing without one. I made my way to a far corner where I remembered some sacking was piled, kicked it in case of rats and picked up a bundle to cover myself.

  I woke to bright light and a scream already in my throat. A lantern was shining in my face and as I began to yelp a hand clapped my mouth. I pulled back my lips to bite it but it pinched my jaws and a familiar voice whispered, ‘Good Christ, Martha, you vixen, it is I.’

  ‘Jacob! What are you doing? How did you find me?’ I shrank back from him into the sacking. The lantern threw his shadow huge on the wall behind. If he meant me harm there was very little I could do, and he already thought me a strumpet. I felt in my skirts for my knife. He must have guessed, for he grinned and sat back.

  ‘Don’t fret, I’ve not come for that. You’re a puzzle, though. You don’t care a bean for your reputation, but you’ll pull a knife on me sooner than let me kiss you in a stable. Am I not the one you were expecting, is it that?’

  ‘I will pull my knife on you indeed if you talk so,’ I said.

  He laughed outright. ‘Or curse me – that’s more in your line, I think. I’ll tell you why I’m here so early, and then you can tell me the same. I was up, watching the heavens. I like to do that on clear nights. Sometimes my mother and aunt make the air in our cottage so thick with all their talk I cannot sleep. You didn’t notice me as you passed, but that’s not surprising – you were hunched like an old tinker woman. I followed you here. I suppose I was curious and, anyways, I had to saddle a gelding. I did not want to talk to you on the road in case of watchers. There was a rider came to Sir William very late last night and I had to see to his horse, so I missed the goings-on at the chapel. I heard the bell, of course, and when I came home I heard the story. He’s an honest man – Tom. That’s a debt you won’t pay quickly.’

  ‘And that is why you came, to tell me that?’

  For a moment he ignored my question. ‘It’ll not go lightly for Tom with Father Paul, what he said. He’ll be fined, I shouldn’t wonder, or whipped.’ He paused. ‘But that’s not all I came to say. Martha, I am sorry for my aunt. She is excitable.’

  He held the lantern before my face, watching me closely. His own was cast in shadows so that I could not read it and there was that edge of laughter in his voice that irked. For a while it had gone and I had fancied him my friend. I had begun to think about him far too much but still I could not figure where he stood: close or distant, or sidelong. He asked forgiveness for old Goody Reynolds but the laughter was there, as though my existence amused him, so that I did not know whether to take his hand or spit. I could not see his eyes, but his mouth had not lost its curl. Perhaps I had been awake too long in the night, for now I found that I was weeping. He reached out his hand to brush my cheek and when he spoke his voice was thick and grave. ‘My mother limps since you dropped the wax. I want to know what brings you to the stables in the dead of night. Tell me, Martha, are you meeting someone?’

  I pulled away and sprang up. ‘Only my familiars and Old Nick.’ We were standing facing each other and I could not say why I felt so angry or why I wanted to poke him to a fury. ‘I give them suck, you see, and sometimes we make love among the horses.’ He stiffened, his mouth thin and set. I think he would have delighted in knocking me down, then. I leaned into his face. ‘You are not my brother, Jacob,’ I said.

  As he opened his mouth to reply there was a noise from below. He pinched out the lantern and pulled me down next to him in the sacking. It would not do to be found together like this.

  Footsteps – men’s footsteps – came into the stables. They waited till they were well inside before they struck a light. The unmistakable voice of Sir William rang out.

  ‘If that fellow is right and Bishop John has wind of you, then you’ll have to ride like the clappers, Nicholas, like the clappers, mind. Only keep to the back ways. No doubt I’ll be searched tomorrow and half the county will peer up my backside to find a rosary. The Berringtons will be expecting you in Little Malvern. John’s people will not follow you there.’

  ‘I don’t like to leave, Sir William, amid such portents. It is as though the very ground itself is mourning.’

  ‘Something’s afoot, certainly. Father Paul won’t be happy till he’s sent a few souls to hell on a gibbet. I have to tread lightly. Bishop John knows there may be a profit in bringing me down and he’ll stop at nothing that might bring a profit.’

  ‘They say half the county is bleeding under his yoke.’

  ‘It is. He’s a bejewelled old simoner, and where he can’t steal he extorts. No unseating him; bribed the Star Chamber itself when they had a go.’

  ‘I hear he threw off his wife under Queen Mary. He danced to a different tune then.’

  ‘He’d marry his horse if the fiddler demanded it. Now be off with you – it’s almost light – I’ll not have your blood on my hands.’

  A horse clopped out and footsteps shuffled after it. Then all was silent, but for the crowing of a cock. We looked at one another awkwardly enough and then pulled apart and up.

  Jacob pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Not a word of this,’ he said as he turned to go.

  I leaned and touched his arm. ‘Jacob,’ I whispered, ‘forgive me. I am not a witch.’

  He turned to me. ‘What art thou then, Martha Dynely?’ and without waiting for an answer he left.

  22

  The Ridge Wakes

  All that evening I listened to my father. He was hollowed out with coughing and all his conversation ended with a curse. A frost was creeping through his flesh; it had touched all the tender parts of his spirit so that they had begun to blacken and die. The weight of his hopelessness exhausted me. I knew better than to touch on our leaving, for there could be no thought of that, not this year, at any rate. Our hopes had been blown out easier than a candle at a window. I felt the disappointment like a sharp stone, jagging me – all
our sweet future, gone. But I did not have time for self-pity. There was a rattle at the end of each breath, like loose dice in his chest. What he needed was the bright quick flame of a warm fire. No one could heal in this grey cold, but we had run out of wood for burning, or even for heating the pot.

  I dared not ask our neighbours for firewood – not after Goody Reynolds had pointed her finger at me before the chapel – and in any case we owed all over the village already. It might be weeks – months, perhaps – before Father earned again. I would have to pilfer; it would not be the first time. There were two ash down north of Hooper’s Oak, cut into logs already. All they needed was a bit of splitting and I could carry them home. I could store a small log pile, bring it back little by little, and even if I were caught, and that was unlikely – I was more nimble than the keepers – even if I were, a whipping would be better than this slow freeze. If I went out tonight I could build us a good fire by morning and Father could wake to a broth and oatcakes.

  The moon was high: the woods would be well lit. Not a good night for hiding, but there were few abroad these days for fear of witches and thieves and goblins crawling from the unsettled earth. I resolved not to think of all that and broke off a bit of rowan and slipped it into my kirtle for protection. Then I took the axe down from its hook and pulled my cloak about me as quietly as I could, but the latch on the back door was stiff and the click was enough to make my father call out. I turned back towards him and he clutched at me. He can’t have been properly awake, for all he said was ‘No’, holding tight to my cloak. The shadows pooled so dreadfully around his eyes in the candlelight he looked for a moment like a dead man staring. An old man. I gently unclasped his fingers and bent my head down to kiss his forehead.

  His eyes closed once more, but just at that moment the hill let out a bellow. A great wrenching, sudden enough to send the crows wheeling up against the moon, louder than anything on the night of the hole or the bells. Then, as sudden as it had come, it subsided. The roar became a sob, then a scraping echo. Yet the night remained clear and still, with the frost hanging in the air, ready like a net. There was no wind. It seemed wrong that the trees, pricked out dark against the sky, should not notice. Or that the stars and moon should not bend to listen.

  I turned back to my father. His breath was rasping. When I touched it his forehead was warm. He followed me with his eyes, but said nothing as I piled my blanket on his.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed, Father. It was the hill. I am just going out to get some wood. You sleep. I shall not be long.’

  He pointed to his chest. ‘It has got inside me,’ he said. ‘Did you hear how it roars inside of me?’

  At first I thought he made a joke and offered him a puzzled smile, but I saw he was not joking. It must be the fever, I thought, that had confused him. He needed heat to sweat it out.

  ‘I’ll come back soon,’ I said. ‘Then I’ll make us up a fire and I’ll sing to you.’

  I slipped out the back of the house before he could answer, but then I hesitated, trying to blink back the foreboding that sat like a shadow at the corner of my eye. All was quiet. The ridge rose up as it had always done and the night had resumed its silence, but for the snoring of the pig. I rubbed my fingers and let the stillness and the stars drift through my mind till I felt clear and still, and could push aside the dread.

  I set off over the fields to join the way towards Hooper’s Oak. It was not easy going, for the mud was churned and not frozen enough to hold me. I kept to the hedges for fear of being seen. Once I reached it, the wet path gleamed like the trail of a snail on cloth, or a ribbon laid down for me to follow. There was nobody about, though I heard voices far down in the village below me. Up here, the land was lonely and free. All my life I had loved to go walking under the moon. People said there were places where the fairies yet danced, though in all my ranging I had never seen them. I had once seen a man, just at dawn. He must have been standing still as a tree for a long, long time. I would have walked straight past him if an owl hadn’t caused me to glance up. There he was, scarce five paces away, above me on the ridge, hooded like death itself. I ran and ran. When I glanced back he was still standing there, gaunt as a winter tree.

  The moon slid behind clouds and the slopes shrank into shadow. Clusters of sheep glimmered in the hedges below. It was a night for ghosts and strange imaginings. Even a fox startled me, loping long and low across my path. I gripped the axe and told myself I had no reason to feel so flighty, but the roar had left a kind of humming in the air, a kind of unsteadying, as if the trees were loosening their roots.

  I found the log pile easily. It was a piece of luck, it being left to be stolen by the likes of me. They would surely move it soon. I steadied a log and began the work of splitting. The blows rang out so loud I was sure they must wake every sleeping soul for a mile or more. I paused and looked around for any sound of a keeper, but there was no one. Only an owl low-hooting after a mate. I placed a fresh log and swung the axe high above my head once more and there, right as I brought it down, the earth rucked beneath me. I was thrown off my feet sidelong into a great mound of ivy. A family of ravens flew up like rags out of the trees.

  I should have run. I should have found the axe and run. The roaring was all about my ears; the earth itself staggered. I tried to pray, but my teeth chattered too much in my head. Oh, if this was Judgment Day I was not ready to be judged. Not yet! And what of my father – what state was he in for St Peter? I buried my head in the ivy and counted, one, two, three, four, five… At some point I realised that the earth had stilled; it was my own hands that shook the stems. Slowly I got to my feet. Birds still cawed about the sky and down in the valley the chapel bell was ringing. I should get back to my father and my bed. I took a step, but my legs wobbled beneath me, so I leaned back against a tree and tried to sing to steady myself.

  Come over the burn, Bessie

  My little pretty Bessie

  Come over the burn, Bessie, to me.

  * * *

  The white dove sat on the castle wall;

  I bend my bow and shoot her I shall;

  I put her in my glove, both feathers and all.

  These were lines that my father sang, when he was well and working. I know he thought of my mother when he sang it, for he’d often repeat ‘my pretty Bessie’ to himself after he’d done, but it always heartened him, and me, too. I sang it over and over in the dark while the wood quietened about me, till I could trust my legs not to buckle and fold. I was so restored I thought to stuff the logs I’d split into my sack and hide more of them in the hollow that the tangled ivy covered over. The moon was sinking low through the bony branches. It was still early, but nobody would be asleep, not with the bells ringing out in alarm. I’d have to go north towards the Cockshoot if I did not wish to be seen. I could cut cherry bark for Father’s coughing along the way.

  The sack banged against my back and it was hard going, with branches down, and in one place an old elm fallen into the fork of an ash. I had to drop to my knees to get past that. On Green Hill I left the woods to find easier footing at the top of the pasture where it tumbled down to the village. The hedges made black lines over the iron-grey fields, and in the corners pale sheep huddled. Then a movement caught my eye: a bit of darkness was racing up the grass, as if coming right for me, hopping and darting up the hill. Too small for a man, much too small. My breath caught in my throat. It must be some kind of sprite or goblin, cast out with the roaring. It was coming for me. I ducked back towards the hedge, looking for a way over. The creature began lolloping more slowly, bent down to the earth. It was very close. I could make it out quite clearly now: not a goblin, a boy. Owen!

  I stepped forward and near frighted the life out of him. ‘Owen, what in our Saviour’s name are you doing up here at this hour?’

  ‘’S’ Truth, Martha,’ he said when he had recovered, ‘did you not feel it? Agnes fell out of her cot! My father kneels and prays; my mother wails. Goody Reynolds runs from door to door in he
r nightcap. “It is come!” she shouts, “the great day of His wrath is come. Blow up a trumpet in Zion, and shout in my holy hill. Let all the inhabitants of the earth tremble: for the day of the Lord is come, for it is nigh at hand. A dark and gloomy day, a cloudy and black day. Oh, you better pray for mercy now,” she shouts, “for He shall wash His feet in the blood of the wicked.”’

  Owen grinned, but he was as pale as the shift beneath his thin cloak and he skipped from foot to foot. I put down my sack and pressed my hands on his shoulders to quiet him.

  ‘And you ran up the hill in your shift for fear of an old trot, a mackabroine like Goody Reynolds? For shame, Owen, what will your mother and father think? She’s nothing but a loose nail that needs hammering. We are too young for the world to end. Miss Elizabeth says fearful talk is the devil’s work.’

  He cut me short. ‘Listen, it’s starting again. Martha, I think it’s the dragon. The dragon that sleeps under the ridge.’

  At my back I heard it too: a low growl, like the sound a dog makes when he hears a scrit-scratching at the door. I grabbed Owen’s hand, heaved my sack over my shoulder and started walking briskly. ‘Come, we’ll go home by the Cockshoot Lane. It’s not coming from that way.’

  It was easier to be brave with a child by my side. Every few steps I paused to rest from the sack. The growling did not cease. We could feel it at our shoulders, through our foot soles. Owen’s eyes were wide with fright. I tried to set my face to a smile. Perhaps I should have put the sack down and run, but I had settled somehow that we should treat this as a dog that barks and threats; we should not turn our backs and skirr away. And anyhow, my father needed fire. The sky was turning grey in the east and a freezing rain, more sleet than rain, had begun spitting in our faces.