‘I won’t lie to you; I was beginning to despair of little Owen. It was in all our thoughts that, what with the freeze and the snow, there was little hope. We searched every knot and scrap of hedge, but the fields are thrown about, Martha. One of us would swear he recognised a thorn, but in the lamplight all shapes are estranged from themselves. Rob Tanner muttered that it was no use and the others agreed with him. I must be soft, they said, listening to the chatter of a witless girl. The snow was getting thicker. Rob said it was the dead: they were calling out for a shroud. Unless Owen made shrift somehow to come to us by himself he was lost. I couldn’t argue with them, for it was plain they were right. But then Master Simons himself appeared with a lantern. Grey as the snow, he was, and his face set grim. He’d heard, somehow, about your vision. I hadn’t the heart to leave, though the others nodded to him and shrugged their way off. We didn’t speak, but set off eastwards, side by side.
‘I’d not gone far when I stumbled over a branch and was flung headlong. My fingers closed on wool – wool, and an animal struggling against my grasp. A ewe. I let out a cry. Richard Simons rushed over, thinking me to have cried out in pain. But it was not pain. I was thinking of your vision, Martha, and what you had taken for snow. Of a sudden I had a great hope the boy was still living.
‘There were three of them, bundled together up against a fallen tree. They were all breathing, although the smallest one had its legs broke and was dying, with a great branch across its back. I pulled the big ones aside as Master Simons held up the lantern, praying over and over. And there was Owen, curled up like a rabbit, his big eyes staring up at his father.’
‘Well, praise the Lord,’ put in his mother, ‘and of course it’s like his lordship said, it’s down to you, Jacob. There’s two souls in this parish as would be facing judgment if it hadn’t been for you, my son.’
I couldn’t help interrupting. ‘Will he live, Jacob?’
‘Aye, Martha, he will. He was caught up between the sheep, wrapped in wool all around. His head was cut – not a bad wound, not deep – but he was distracted. He didn’t seem to recognise his father, not even when the old man yelled and caught him up in his arms.’
‘Well, what do you expect,’ said his mother, ‘holed up like that for two whole days, all alone with the earth roaring above him and around him? Nothing to eat and drink. It’s a wonder if he’s not touched for life. He was never a big strapping child like you were. It may be it would have been a mercy for him to have been taken, rather than to linger on a stranger to his own senses.’
‘Mother,’ Jacob said sharply, rising from his stool, ‘don’t speak like that. I won’t hear that. The boy will mend, God willing. His mother’s tears will cure him. You should have seen her, when we brought him home. I’ve never seen such joy.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be the first child Ann Simons has lost. We will leave you now, Martha. I’ll call by again in the morning. I think you can spare us one or two of these logs Mistress Elizabeth left. Look, Jacob, Sir William gave me an Angel; very handsome of him.’ And the silver coin flashed in the firelight as she held it up.
26
Aggie Visits
People began to call it the Wonder, for they had no words for it or what it meant. The hill was rent and the chapel gone – that we could say easily enough – but that was barely to begin to talk of it. In those days after the Wonder we kept repeating what we knew – the rent hill, the chapel gone – as a man in the flood clings to the wreckage of the bridge; it kept us afloat, but it was wreckage nonetheless. Where we had used to watch the sun set was now an ugly wound. Our old horizon was piled in drifts beneath the dirty snow and even the house of God was buried. For the rest, we were waiting to learn how to talk of it, how to find the words to understand.
The particular truth I clung to was Owen – that he had been brought home – though the Widow told me he was a broken thing now, that he had not said a word since they had scooped him out the snow. In honesty, I thought of the arms that had lifted me out too, but I tried to push that by. Of my father, no one would speak in that first week, except to repeat he was being nursed by Ruth Tranter, in her cottage up at the Hall. When I pressed the Widow or old Goody Reynolds, they exchanged glances and pursed their lips and said he was as well as could be expected, and that surely soon I should have him home to nurse. Just as soon as my ankle healed a little more. ‘It’s the Lord Jesus as can help him as much as any doctor,’ Mistress Reynolds liked to say, and they would piously lower their heads, though not before the Widow had darted a glance at my consternation.
That first Sunday Father Paul led a service in the open, near where the great yew had come to rest. Two hours in the wind and sleet, till barely a soul could bear it.
‘Oh, he was all fire,’ the Widow told me later. ‘Couldn’t feel the weather, not he. You can imagine how my poor swollen hands and feet suffered with the bone-ache that I have to put up with, rain or shine, and rain in particular. We felt sure that he’d talk of Jacob, of the Lord rejoicing over the bringing back of the lost sheep, but not a word. Two hours and not a single word, mark you. How can he expect us to follow the stony path if good deeds get buried deep as the chapel bell? There we were, with the red earth piled like washing, and for all we knew the bodies of our dead scattered in the soil beneath us and not a word of comfort. If he had dropped his eyes from the heavens for one minute he’d have seen that people weren’t happy about it. Not happy at all. Idolatry, he said it was, that we cared more for the stones than the risen Christ. The Lord needed no roof, he said Our Saviour preached in the desert, under the burning sun of the Holy Land. Mary Tucker nudged me. “Wouldn’t mind a bit of burning sun,” she says. “Any sun whatever would be welcome.” You have no idea, Martha, cosy in your bed, just how desolate it felt, stuck out on that hillside, with the ruin of the ridge above us and Father Paul competing with the sleet to freeze our blood with fear of His vengeance. I’m not one to set my face against the Church, and when all’s said and done Father Paul’s a university man and God’s word is laid open before him, but if he keeps this up there’ll be more than Tom of the mill spending time at the whipping post.’
Miss Elizabeth had charged Widow Spicer to care for me, and she had hopes of another silver coin if she did her duty well. Very often I woke to hear her moving about; my latch was not my own to say who came and went. But I gathered, too, from bits and pieces that she dropped as she chattered, that there was a shift in the air towards me that encouraged her to play the nursemaid. The Lord Himself had a hand in my deliverance, people said, or why else would I survive, and why be found in the holy yew of the graveyard? Besides, I had pointed the way to the boy. People called with gifts of cheese or oats – even, once, a wrapped piece of bacon – at the door. My neighbours pitied me, but to my surprise I did not mind. I sat in my father’s chair and sniffed at the bacon and, amazed at my weakness, found myself weeping with fondness.
‘Come, girl,’ the Widow said, taking it from me to ‘store it safe’, though I knew she’d be cutting off a part for herself as she never failed to do, ‘stop that weeping. You’re not the frost brought in beside the fire to melt. Whatever next! You should be giving thanks – all this kindness, to a waif like you, and one that’s caused her share of trouble.’
Jacob did not come, or rather, he came once. I drifted out of sleep to the sharp rich smell of the warrens and for a moment I lay with my eyes still closed, breathing it in and smiling – because it was the smell of the fields and I was sick of being cooped up. He must have been resting his hand next to my face. I could feel the warmth of it.
‘Fie, boy,’ came the Widow’s voice. ‘Leave off gawping. There’s girls far more worth looking at than she, as you well know. You might have saved her from the hillside, but that doesn’t make you her brother. Come over here and eat your stew.’
He moved away, taking the smell of the woods and fields with him. I slid back into sleep. When I woke the cottage was dark but for a pile of embers smoking on
the hearth. I vainly reached my hand out to where the scent had been and closed it on darkness.
A few days later Aggie came. There was a knock and the latch lifted gently, and there she was, wan and hesitant and hovering on the threshold. I felt so pleased to see her I tried to jump out of my chair and near fell headlong. She leaped forward to grab me and any awkwardness sloughed off in an instant like a spent adder skin.
‘’S’ Truth, Aggie,’ I said as soon as I was settled again, ‘but you are more pretty than the morning. I wish I were a gentleman so I could buy you a silk gown. But how is Owen faring? The Widow tells me nothing, or only shreds I can do nothing with.’
‘Well, he is doing well, or not well yet, but we have hopes. He is getting stronger, but he will not speak. Father Paul says he saw the devil and is struck dumb with fear.’
‘Why the devil? Why not an angel, calling the sheep to shield him?’
‘No, Father Paul says it is a devil, or one of the walking dead, ripped from the earth by the hill as it fell, but Sir William – he’s come himself, you know; stayed ever so long – he said it was more likely the boy was exhausted and needed time to mend and that he had more faith in ham than exorcists.’
‘What do you think, Aggie?’
She glanced at me and all her mask gave way. After a bit she took my hands in hers and leaned in towards me so that our heads touched. I could not see her face, but I could feel that she was crying. ‘Oh, Martha, I don’t know. It is all so horrible, and just as our lives were about to change! Poor Owen, Jacob says that without you he may never have been found. That you had a vision. Is that true, Martha? The whole parish is talking of it.’
‘I don’t know, Aggie, it is all a whirl. There was a kind of picture, but Jacob and your father would have been led to him without me. Has Jacob been visiting, then?’
‘Oh, yes, he’s been on his own account to check on Owen and, then, the Widow is always sending him – for gossip, I suppose.’
Not just for gossip, I thought, looking at Agnes’ lovely face, and you know it, or you wouldn’t smile so. I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against hers. I had no right to mind him visiting her.
‘Will you tell Owen I love him,’ I said, ‘and that I will come as soon as my leg will bear me?’
‘Oh, Martha, I will. Of course I will. But you won’t believe the change in him. He lies curled silent on his cot and barely seems to know a soul, except Mother, although that is her say-so. I am not sure he knows even her. His eyes are open and he looks at you, but it’s like he has shutters drawn. His soul is all closed off. People say he’s not likely to ever speak again. It’s so cruel. You know there was plans for him to be sent to school? People say he’s like to be an idiot for the rest of his life.’
‘Nonsense, idle prattling, there’s people who always love to see the worst. He’s had a fright, that’s all. Think, Aggie, what it must have been like for him in the cold, with those dying, bleating animals about him and the earth giving way as if hell itself were opening. His head is more full of fancy than anyone’s at the best of times. It’s no wonder at all he’s retreated a while. There’s herbs can help call him back. I can make a remedy that might help him, Aggie. Monkshood.’
‘Wolfsbane, you mean? I don’t know, Martha. It can kill a grown man. I know you helped Mother so, but I’m sorry, after the baby, Father would not like it, and Father Paul said very strongly we must trust in prayer alone and any other meddling was sinful.’
‘What does he know of herbs? Remember when old Father Geoffrey was vicar here? He used to call my grandmother in himself. He had no thought that it was wicked to be cunning with plants. Wolfsbane is a poison, it’s true, but used right it could purge the stoppage that holds Owen from himself. I would not want anyone else to give it to him, but I could bring it myself, when I come.’
‘Well, you might ask Mother, if Father is not by.’ She got up, but I could not let her go without asking about my father. His absence hung around the cottage, around every object, every corner and yet no one would speak of it.
She looked a little nervous and then sat down again. ‘Miss Elizabeth said it would distress you,’ she said, hesitating. ‘Said we weren’t to say a thing about him till you had recovered.’ She sat down again. ‘But if it was me I should want to know. He is very ill, Martha.
‘This is all from what I’ve heard, mind,’ she went on. ‘We were out in all the roaring, searching for Owen. The fever must have grown on your father after you went up the ridge, and in the early morning he was raving. You could hear him from the lane, they say, hollering fit to burst, but everyone was too busy being afraid to pay him any notice, what with the hill collapsing, and the earth buckling and sliding. Folks was running back and forth, one minute believing the houses were about to fall and the next hiding under their beds. And no one knew you weren’t there within. Then just before noon he appeared at Robert Tanner’s door in his nightshift, screaming that he could see the devils dancing and that they had carried you away. He was going to dance with the devils all the way to hell and get you back. And he started tearing at his shirt.
‘His eyes were terrible, blazed like branding irons, I’m told. They tried to wrap him up, but he wouldn’t have a stitch of blanket on him, just cast it aside, though it was near freezing. He was running with sweat. There was a great scream, then, from the hill. He grinned wide and started pointing. “That is Moloch,” he said. “He is waking up. Go lock up your children. He has taken mine.” And some of the old people made the sign of the cross and drew back from him. Mistress Reynolds began howling that he must be possessed, that they should call for the priest, that he should be bound and held for the Justice.’ Agnes glanced at me. ‘Shall I go on, Martha? Do you want me to?’
I nodded.
‘Very well, then. There was a gaggle round him then, and he pointed at Goody Reynolds. “You have Bessie’s blood on you!” he cried, and he started rubbing at her with his shirt. “It will not come off! Moloch and Lucifer, Moloch and Lucifer!” Then he grabbed her by the scarf shouting, “They came to thee and said surely thou know her for thy speech bewrayeth thee, but thou curst and swore thou knew her not. Listen, Mistress, the cock crows.” And it was true – there were roosters crowing all over the village. Oh, Martha, I’m sorry, my mother said you shouldn’t hear of all this. Bessie was your mother, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes, she was. Oh, I think he must have been raving. I can’t think what he meant. Goody Reynolds grew up in Woolhope, which is not so far from Moccas. Perhaps their paths crossed when they were girls. Oh, he’s mad.’
But I remembered the look he gave her after Plough Monday and knew in my heart there was more to it. And subtly, like a pulled thread, I began to see how the unravelling had begun when the Widow’s sister had come. She had been picking at our past, and especially my mother’s past, peddling stories I could only guess at. It must be that.
‘There, Martha, don’t weep. Please, stop weeping. I think you should be told, but I’ll stop if you wish it. Very well, then. He was wild, Martha, and it seemed he might do something violent so men laid hands on him and bound him. And he spat in their faces. Mistress Reynolds gave him a sharp kick and others might have turned on him too, but that a violent fit of coughing made him collapse in their arms. “For the Lord’s sake,” Tom cried, “he’s sick. There’s been whipping enough; the man needs physic, not the constable.” That brought them to their senses. By good fortune a number of the gentry happened by, out to see the Wonder. Sir William was among them. He commanded that your father be taken up to the Hall to be looked after. He is lodged with the gardener, Ben Tranter, and his wife, and he’s quiet now, but he’s very poorly, Martha.’
After she’d gone I lay in the dark and listened to the night thickening around me. Pictures of Owen and my father drifted through my head, the one locked in silence, the other broken into speech that made no sense. I could not bear to think. Tears ran down towards my ears and I let them, for they comforted me, like the s
ound of rain pouring from the eaves.
27
Bessie Dynely
Aggie had promised me a cart to take me to my father, but it took her days to wheedle it. Widow Spicer insisted on joining me, for she was taking mending up to the Hall.
It was near two weeks since I had been outside. I opened the cottage door to the morning and the bright grey sky was endless. Worried as I was, I could not help smiling at the light and the cold air that had the sting of newness in it. The ridges in the tilled fields glinted. He would recover – I could not believe otherwise on such a morning. I stretched out my bad leg before me on the cart and braced the ankle in sacking. At every lunge of the wheels it rolled a little and pained me. Beneath the hedge by the Yapps’ place I saw primroses. He would get strong again. It would just take a little time. Like my leg.
The Widow was watching me and now she cut in on my thinking. ‘Well, Martha, you know I’ve always been your friend, and it’s as your friend I tell you that any fool can see that that ankle is not going to mend straight. It’s twisted good and proper. You’ll be lame, my dear, like old rolling Mary out at Aylton. It was God’s will and you must bide with it and be content.’
The Wheelwright's Daughter Page 14