The Wheelwright's Daughter

by Eleanor Porter

  It seemed for hours that I spoke like this, without pausing, with my head down by his ear, and I could feel him listening. I could feel the words begin to flow around his body as though they were looking for the place he kept his name. And over and over I said a finding charm and called on God to aid him.

  When at last I lifted my head there was Agnes, drop-jawed, staring at me. ‘Go,’ I said, before she could speak. ‘I think he should have light and flame, if you have candles enough. It will help him find his way.’

  She nodded and came back with a lit stub and her mother. I took the flame and gestured to them to be soft, for any knock would send his soul reeling back towards all its horrors. In the candlelight we sat and stroked his hair and his shoulders and called him and we felt him slowly coming back.

  He looked right at me and then at his mother and back again and we felt he was gathering his breath, as though trying to remember how to speak.

  But then the door downstairs opened and the house was all loud boots and men’s voices. Ann rose and put her finger to her lips. She’d not got down the ladder before her husband was calling for her.

  ‘Ale, wife, and bread for my friends. Has the cripple gone? I’m glad of it. She’s nothing to us, and we owe her nothing. Do you hear me, Ann? Nothing. I don’t want her in my house, d’you hear me? What? Less of that, Ann.’

  ‘I said nothing, Richard, please.’

  ‘Your silence is as bad. It defies me as loud as shouting. Get that look from your eyes, judging me all the time, judging. I will not have it. God damn you, woman, you will do as I say,’ and something was shoved back hard against wood.

  Agnes squeezed my arm and flew down the ladder. ‘Father, you forget your friends. Come, Father, shall I bring the ale? Owen is looking so much better – will you see him?’

  ‘Not now, not now,’ Richard Simons replied, his voice no longer dangerous. ‘At least there’s one female knows how to be useful in this house.’

  I looked back at Owen. He had slipped back. There was some focus in his eyes still, but it was going like a dream that’s not held onto quick. ‘Please,’ I said, bending my head down low to his, ‘don’t go, Owen. Stay, come back. I’ll save you yet, I promise, out of this house too. We’ll live by the Cathedral and eat pies every day for our dinner.’ But he was gone again.

  I did not know what to do. I needed to get back to my father, but knew I could not be seen. In my pocket was the monkshood mixture. I mixed it to a paste with water from Owen’s cup and dabbed it on his lips. Perhaps I would get a chance to give Ann the rest and explain it, too. The bitterness made him cough a little.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I had not seen Agnes come up behind me.

  ‘I have given him the preparation I talked of. I have more. Agnes, I can tell you what to do.’

  ‘You should not have, not without us by and without asking. Father does not want you here in the house. He’ll go wild if he thinks you’ve been doctoring.’

  ‘Your father!’ I burst out, then hung my head, for she’d started back at my tone. ‘Please, Agnes, you saw how Owen was coming back; you saw I was doing him good.’

  ‘You were whispering so strangely, Martha, it was like someone was speaking through you. You frightened me a little. Sometimes you feel as familiar as kin, and sometimes I am not sure I know you at all.’

  ‘Your mother trusts me.’

  ‘And my father doesn’t.’

  I was about to reply, when I caught my own name among the men downstairs.

  ‘She’s Bessie Gould’s daughter, right enough. There’s something more than natural in her, with her reading and her potions, but I still say she en’t no witch. Didn’t she help you find the boy?’

  I looked back to Agnes; my face must have been a picture of fright, for she let go of her stiffness and sat down beside me and took my hand. Next to us Owen had assumed his glassy-eyed stare, but his tongue softly ran over his lips. I felt sure he heard every word spoken. The talk went on.

  ‘I’ll give you that she had no business being out. Her being out at that hour is against her, and with your boy, too. But the Lord alone knows what goes on in that cottage of their’n with her crazy father…’

  ‘He was two sheets to the wind before all this.’

  ‘Could ’a’ done with a sheet – or a shirt, come to that – last I saw on him.’

  ‘You know what some folks have been saying,’ put in another voice. ‘That it’s not to do with the girl at all, but on account of the stripping of the altars. Why else would the chapel be tore down?’

  ‘Tom the mill better be careful who he farts his thoughts at. It’s as like to be the other way around, with the smells and bells we got round here. Father Paul said it’s our idolatry that we cared more for carvings than the Word of the Lord.’

  ‘Father Paul’s the bishop’s man. The bishop’s got his eye on Sir William. He’d happily bring him down. Being a gentleman won’t protect him if he’s been hiding priests.’

  ‘It’ll be the worse for us all if aught happens to Sir William. God forgive me but the bishop’s a bastard. He’d happily see us all starve if he gets Sir William’s lands.’

  ‘You be careful where you talk like that.’

  ‘We’re friends here, aren’t we? The whole county knows it to be true.’

  ‘True ain’t got nothing to do with it.’

  ‘It was a year ago almost to the very day of the Wonder that the Pope in Rome excommunicated the Queen. Damned her he did. A year ago nearly to the very day he did it.’

  ‘God save the Queen and the Jenny Wren. Why would our hill take a tumble at the hest of the Bishop of Rome? And why take a whole year about it?’

  ‘It’s the dead that frightens me. Every night my mother has come into my dreams. She was ripped out of where she lay and now she can’t settle. How many were in that graveyard? A hundred? More? Strewn all about the place now. The Lord would never tear His own house down. It’s the devil’s work. That’s the only certain sure thing.’

  ‘You’re right, Sam,’ Richard Simons’ voice broke in again, ‘the chapel is gone and the graves are gone and my boy is bewitched. Our own earth is infected with devilry – there’s nowhere safe to tread. The hill broke open like a foul sore. Some nights I think I hear the chapel bell ring.’

  ‘My Mary’s heard it, too.’

  ‘What did your boy see that’s struck him dumb? What did that girl do to him? I tell you, Richard, the Good Lord is talking through that bell. He’s saying we’ve got to rip out the source of the demons.’

  ‘We must all pray on our knees for Christ’s mercy.’

  ‘I’ve prayed till my knees are stiff, I tell you. The dead need more than prayers to help them sleep.’

  I sat there listening while the candle danced around the roof beams and played over Owen’s still face. His eyes were open and black. They seemed sightless, but had they turned, just a little, towards me? I felt a pain in my chest that seemed part fear and part weeping, though I did not cry. Agnes put her arm around me.

  ‘I’m sorry, Martha,’ she whispered, ‘for what I said. I do believe in you, truly. You can have faith in me. Didn’t I put violets in your cottage to welcome you home?’

  ‘It was you?’ I said. ‘You placed the violets, Agnes?’

  ‘Yes, silly, who else? Don’t cry, I liked to do it. Now you must go. If I help you, you can wriggle out of Owen’s window and slide down. I’ll run down and whistle. When I do, you let go and I’ll catch you.’

  How we managed it I don’t know, with me half in, half out of the window, afraid any minute Richard Simons would take it upon himself to climb upstairs as I waited for her to come below. A fine sight I must have been for any coming across the fields. I couldn’t help smiling despite it all.

  Then the whistle came and I let go, not daring to look, for I knew she would not catch me well. But the arms I fell into were strong and held me safe, and didn’t hardly stagger. Not Agnes, but Jacob, come with the barrow.

 
Agnes was grinning. ‘Look who I found loitering in the lane, all ready to rescue you again.’ She pushed him playfully and the puzzle on his face broke into a smile. Oh, I felt so wretched and stupid at that moment. That I’d thought he’d gather me flowers! They two were hale and beautiful. The violets were for kindness and pity, not for love.

  31

  The Water Calls

  I would not ride in any barrow. I limped beside Jacob as we walked back, struggling to keep pace, for I knew he would be needed back at the warrens. Once or twice I nearly stumbled, and my bent foot ached in the bone, but I did not let it show. For his part he grew silent after we left Agnes. We walked on through the mud, with the spring sun leaking through the cloud.

  At length, he stopped abruptly and regarded me, head thrown back. ‘You think I can’t see? Every step and your mouth is tight with pain, but you won’t ride. You are the proudest creature alive. No stooping, never, not to the likes of us. The Queen herself couldn’t hold her nose higher.’

  ‘What do you mean? It does me good to walk, is all. I’m grateful to you and to Aggie, both of you together,’ my voice began to wobble so I made it harder. ‘What do you want me to do, grovel? I will if you wish it. I’ll down in the dirt on my knees. Is that it?’ As soon as the words were out I regretted them. ‘No, no, I didn’t mean that, that’s not what I meant at all. I’m sorry, Jacob. I’m thankful for all you have done for me, and for Father, truly. As soon as I am able I shall tell Miss Elizabeth how good you have been to us.’

  I was never good at mollifying; he turned away with an oath as I spoke. For a moment he stood with his back to me, his fists all balled up. I did not know, I could not fathom what I had done. Always this seemed to happen. Yet people said he was steady. Steady Jacob, no surprises, true as oak, but to me he was as flighty as a fairy clock seed, when they lift on the breeze for the children to snatch and wish on. I could not catch hold of him at all. And I was so tired. My eyes welled up.

  ‘Please,’ I said to his back, ‘please, Jacob, I don’t mean to provoke. I’ll get in the barrow. What would you have me do?’

  ‘It’s not safe, Martha,’ he said, turning back, all brisk and steady once again, ‘the way the talk is turning. Is there someone you could stay with awhile? Your mother’s family at Moccas?’

  ‘No. There’s no one. And I cannot move my father. It would kill him. But you are wrong, Jacob. Things cannot have turned so quickly. Only a week ago folks were leaving presents at my door. And anyhow, Miss Elizabeth loves me; no one would dare move against me or my father. This will pass. In a week or so, when Father is recovered, I will open the school again. I’ll just be the lame girl who is good with herbs.’

  It was not a comforting picture. I would become a hobbling spinster, pounding village boys with letters, crooked as the tinker woman I glimpsed the day I threw Jacob from the class. I gazed at my future, full of pity, till Jacob yanked me back by the arm.

  ‘Stop it, Martha. Can’t you see? You won’t open the school again, not ever. Not ever, do you hear me? The hillside fell on top of you and you crawled out, but the earth hasn’t settled. There are those who’ll pull it down around your ears and bury you again.’

  ‘Miss Elizabeth promised to protect me, Jacob. She and her father. No one would dare lift a finger against us.’

  ‘Miss Elizabeth!’ The mockery in his voice surprised me. ‘Miss Elizabeth, who puts on her gloves before she talks to you! You don’t know much, Martha, for all your reading.’

  ‘She values me,’ I said, stung, ‘and she has an obligation to my father. You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t I? Well, so be it. Damn you and your pride both.’ He looked at me a long while and said nothing, so that I became awkward. When he spoke his voice was different. ‘I want to help you, Martha – you cannot guess how much – but even I, sometimes…’

  ‘Sometimes? What do you mean, sometimes what?’

  ‘I’m not lettered like you, Martha, but I’m not a fool. It’s dangerous to dabble in things you can’t rightly control. No, don’t turn up your nose and snort. It’s gone past time for that. There is something stirring, you can’t deny it. Breathe it, go on, the air is full of it.’

  ‘It’s just the spring is all.’

  ‘The spring, is it? If it is, the spring is cankered. There’s a worm in it. Listen,’ he leaned forward and lowered his voice, though there was not a soul by, ‘I don’t believe you’re a witch, or not on purpose. But any fool can see that you have gifts. I fear you may have awoken something; that you won’t be able to rein it in, that perhaps you didn’t even know you had a hand in it.’

  He stretched out his palms as though he were handing me the matter; as though it were a bundle of clouts. As though I were a washerwoman, like his mother, who could scrub them clean. I frowned down at the rough strong hands that had caught me and held me so that for a moment the world seemed safe and simple. There was a white scar on his right thumb just above the knuckle, shiny and smooth and white like a dove’s wing. Like silk, it would feel, next to that rough skin. And suddenly the pale golden light was gone and there was only cloud and a fine rain. It struck me he was right, there was a devil whispering through my flesh. Didn’t the light itself flee from my thinking? I had awoken something. ‘What art thou, Martha Dynely?’ he had asked me once. I had no idea who or what I was, not any more.

  I remembered how I had stood in the chapel and picked out words from the Holy Book. Cover us, and to the hills, Fall upon us. And the hills had fallen and Owen had been hurt. If it was a prayer it had been answered. Who had answered it? And now, even now, when Jacob spoke to me of danger I could not listen, for the thought of his calloused fingers on my lips and the small white scar.

  ‘Jacob,’ I said, ‘don’t doubt me, I would not do anything that’s forbidden.’ I stretched out my hands and pressed his lightly, and I tried to smile away the puzzle in his face, but I had to drop my head for fear my eyes would talk too plainly. We started on again in silence.

  ‘Well, God be with you, Martha,’ he said as we neared the cottage, and his voice was sad. ‘My good wishes to your father.’ He waited while I raised my head, then gave a short nod and left. I limped off to my door. Somebody had left a message – a bundle of rowan. Witchbane. I kicked it aside and looked up and down the lane. Jacob was striding towards the Hall, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his breeches. There was no one else around. Cowards. No doubt it was the same folk who only days ago had left me gifts.

  The Widow, God be thanked, had gone back home, and my father was sleeping, his breathing steady, if shallow. He had eaten (or the Widow had eaten) the porridge I had left for him. A swimming in my head recalled to me that I had not had a bite since yesterday, but I was too much in a whirl for eating. I sat down on the cot next to him and waited for my thoughts to stop their eddies. There was talk against me, but it was just talk, surely. It would die down once people felt the fields quickening and the darkness and the fear shrinking back into the earth. Owen was worse than I had feared or imagined. It would not be easy to see him. But all the better part of me was with him… with him and my father. I would bring Owen back and we would be as we were before, and no school would ever part us. Then I remembered the men at the Simons’ house, and Richard Simons’ anger. And Jacob. He was in love with Aggie and she with him – it couldn’t be otherwise. Both had looked at me bewildered. If even they could not trust me…?

  Perhaps they had reason. I did not know any longer. I looked into the last weeks and months and they drifted from me like the mist. What had I done? What might be working through me? I considered how my blood rebelled against me; it burned. It whispered of deeds a maid should not think of. I had come out from the earth twisted. I had called up havoc and set it loose.

  I rocked to and fro on the bed and the panic in me clutched and tightened, but I could not weep. When I tried to stand, the walls of the cottage reeled. Even my father’s face I could not see clearly. I bent my head to the blanket and s
tuffed my mouth with wool to keep from shaking. Please, God, I prayed, please, God, bring me back to righteousness. And the prayer steadied me till I could raise my head and look about me once again.

  My father’s breaths began to sigh and knock. I remembered how, when I was a little girl, we would sit and listen to the storm wind straining through the door and he would smile and hold my hand and I felt safe. And now his chest heaved and he sighed with the weight of the gale pushing at him.

  Was I damned? Was it my wishing that had wrenched the earth apart and brought down the horizons? But then there was my vision of Owen – that had done good, at least. Maybe that was a last flicker of God’s grace before the spirits blew it from my soul for ever. My deformity affirmed it. A terrible blackness opened up before me and I forced myself to look. You ripped the hole, the blackness said. You let out demons; your father lay down in it and it made him mad. He is dying. Why is he dying, why is Owen dying and not you?

  It all became clear. My eyes were opened. When I swallowed the flung dirt that day before the chapel, I had bargained away my soul. It was thick with filth. I had not died on the hill because filth cannot kill itself. With each breath now I smelled it, dank and rotten on my skin. I patted my hair, expecting a slick of clay on my fingers. How could I limp through life with hell already in my soul, bringing dirt and ruin and pollution? I was a stain on the earth and in God’s eye. My death would be a cleansing, that my father and Owen might live.