The Wheelwright's Daughter

by Eleanor Porter

  I thought of Owen coming to his senses, with the world gone mad around him. Perhaps after treating me so ill, Miss Elizabeth would seek to salve her soul by helping him, and if she did it was I who would have made it possible. The thought comforted me. As though reading the direction of my thoughts Agnes nodded. ‘I was let in because Miss Elizabeth sent me.’

  I stood up and turned away for I saw again in my mind the face at the window and the gloved hand on the glass. She loved to wear pearls, stitched in her bodice and threaded in her hair, for the pearl of great price, who was the Christ Child. They spoke of faithfulness and purity, and I had thought her lustrous with them.

  ‘She says she would not have barred the door against you, that she was not told you had come begging, but indeed, whilst she would do what she could it was the Queen’s justice and the Lord’s mercy you must turn to now.’

  ‘By which I am to know I must never presume to use her name,’ I commented bitterly. ‘Never trust the rich, Aggie. They will use you and pamper you, then grind you under their satin slippers for you will always be dirt to them.’

  Aggie raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Who can I trust, pray? Neither my friends nor my family have shown much faith in me of late. But you must hear me out. The next bit you will like even less, I think. Miss Elizabeth wishes me to tell you that, for her part and her father’s, they forgive the gross abuse you have made of their time and patronage, but your practising against children she cannot forgive, though she will pray for your deliverance from the evil into which you have strayed.’

  I spat on the floor. ‘Tell her I don’t give a fart for her or her prayers and may she stink in hell as she stinks here on earth. Tell her that, Aggie. No wait…’ I stopped myself and thought. ‘Tell her I know my father built priest holes in the Hall, that I know where they are and who was lately hid in them, and that if Ruth is not presently released, and Jacob too, I will dig up my father’s drawings and rant in open court about Nicholas Craddock. Nay, more, that I will write to the Queen’s attorney.’

  Aggie’s eyes opened wide. ‘And why should she believe you will keep your word?’

  ‘Because I am going to die and do not wish to ruin those I leave behind. And Owen must have his scholarship if he recovers – she must declare it publicly – say that too.’

  In the afternoon Ruth was taken to a different place and I saw no one for the rest of the day, but one or other of the guards. The next morning Agnes visited me again, flustered and red faced. I could not but see that she was happy, though she tried not to show it. She was barely before me than she began talking.

  ‘I am grown quite brazen with the gentry. I have seen her and she was very gracious and said that whilst all you alleged was false, it was the devil’s greatest joy to tickle idle tongues. She was confident she could help Ruth. Indeed, she had acted on this already. Jacob would be freed when he confessed and that was expected shortly. As for Owen’s scholarship, she declared this was her own idea entirely. She had thought of it long before, but had held off because it might seem, now it was impossible, to taunt my parents with what they’d lost. However, she now believed it might give them heart and would honour what he had once been. Her father had already agreed to announce it after the service on Sunday.

  ‘I was about to leave, Martha, when she called me back, caressing me and saying what a fine girl I was to seek to aid the friend who had used me so cruelly. It only served to show, she said, that she was right in the faith she had felt in me and therefore if I was agreeable I was to take up the position we’d talked of next week, to be trained as a lady’s maid to Lady Letitia Swanson. Oh, Martha, it is as I’d hoped. She is newly married and not old at all. Miss Elizabeth says she is known at court.’

  ‘I’m glad for you, Agnes, only be careful, especially of the gentlemen, for they will lick you up like honey and then spit you out. Tell her Jacob must be freed, whether he confesses or no.’ I sat down, inexpressibly weary. Ruth would be saved. Perhaps Jacob, too, but very soon I would be hanging, like my mother, from a gallows tree. ‘I have played my only card and now I have nothing left,’ I said. ‘Kiss Owen for me.’

  Agnes did not come again. The hours unspooled slowly one by one and outside the world carried on with the bustle of spring. The days went by. I grew filthier and the stench in the cell thicker and more rank, for they scarcely bothered to empty the bucket except when Father Paul came. Night after night he appeared in the early evening as the light through the eaves faltered and the shadows grew and the rats began to grow emboldened. He loathed me, that was plain enough. His body was tense with disgust – the very sight of me appalled him – but still his faith demanded that he worked for my soul to wrest it from damnation.

  Most of the time I remained numb to his exhortations; he was a great black fly, with all his buzzing and his hankering for dirt. I could not understand, now, how I had been moved to see myself through his eyes or felt his voice wind itself around my heart. I had my faith and he was apart from it, or only attached as shit is to a wheel. But his words could still bite.

  ‘I expect you would like to hear about Jacob Spicer. He has testified against you, you know. It did not take long for him to turn to the light of Jesus. He reviles you and Satan and all his works. He is at home for now, tended by his mother, poor thing, though it does not look good for him. She has called for me once already in the thick of the night, although the Good Lord did not see fit to take him at that time.’

  ‘He is ill?’

  ‘Oh, yes, very. And he damns you for his ruin.’

  If he dies, I thought, I will gnaw through my own wrist as a rat does in a trap, but I did not know how far to believe the Father. Perhaps Jacob had testified – I half hoped so, for he would be safer then – yet I was sure Father Paul would not have been able to resist the delight of exhibiting the document.

  On the last evening he brought a young man, an officer of the court. They were to inspect my body for the witch’s mark, for where I had given suck to my familiars. He untied me and ordered me to strip. The officer looked away, but Father Paul surveyed me steadily. One by one I peeled each wretched garment off, even the bandages, until I felt my nakedness in every pore. The young man gasped when he saw my back and made many notes on the parchment he held, though it was barely light enough to see. Had I eaten, he asked. He would fetch me food. After he had gone Father Paul stepped up close and ran his nail lightly along the scabs, to check, he said, if they were scabs or no. Then he turned me around and about, sniffing and stroking to check for the devil’s script. I am wood, I told myself, I am a block of wood. I feel nothing. He paused at a mole on my belly, circling a fingertip around and around it. And then he stepped close and placed his right hand on my head as though blessing me like a papist, but his left hand he drew down my body to my secret places and his long fingers searched me there, while he stared into my face without blinking and his fingers rubbed back and forth, back and forth, and his breath grew short.

  ‘Lust,’ he said to the footsteps approaching through the curtain, his mouth so close the sour spittle flecked my lips, ‘she brims with it.’

  ‘There was no nipple?’ the young man asked.

  ‘Look, this mole, here on her belly – look how the skin puckers around it. It is a witch’s mark. You may go. I will stay and pray a little for her.’ Whilst I dressed he dropped to his knees, lifted his hands in prayer and bent his head. But as he prayed he sniffed his fingers, and then he licked them one by one. It was only when the young man reappeared, awkwardly looking for his quill, that Father Paul roused himself and left.

  43

  A Miracle

  I slept in my boots for fear of the rats, and so when they came for me the next morning and bade me come with them, I had nothing to do but stand up and leave. There was the young officer of the court who had accompanied Father Paul the night before, but the others I did not know. The young man told me his name was Pugh and the men were Hereford constables. I was being taken to the city gaol, for no
w. Father Paul, he told me, eyeing me closely, was gone ahead this morning. He hoped I was not too shaken by last night’s questioning? I said nothing, for I was wood and could feel or say nothing. I had doled out far too many words already. He seemed to want to be friendly, though, Pugh, for he had found me a cloak from somewhere.

  ‘Oh, but you’re a poor wretch,’ he said, not unkindly, as he fastened it around my shoulders.

  I ducked under the lintel and the sun dazzled and kindled me. There was a warmth that spoke to me of summer and I could not help but feel it. A cuckoo called. The golden months were beginning once again. I stood in the yard with the sky above me and closed my eyes a moment to the waiting cart. All would be planting and growing, but like the cuckoo, I might not see the harvest.

  Pugh assured me a city constable would ride before the cart; he himself would ride alongside. I should have no fear of a repeat of the savagery that tore my back. I nodded, though just then I scarcely felt present enough to scratch. My mind gusted off till the pain in my joints and a dizzy sickness in my belly recalled me.

  We rolled onto the track towards the village, and all above us the wind played softly in the branches while sunlight strained the new veined leaves like church glass. I drank in the clean air. On either side there were lambs in the fields. Only, up on the ridge the great red wound was still open, strewn with the wreckage of trees and hedges. Somewhere in the clay lay the chapel bell and the scattered bodies of the dead. The thought set me shuddering.

  Pugh must have been watching me. ‘You must not give up hope. There are many men of learning who could tell you how it was weather and not witchcraft caused this slide. I came, you know, after that rent in the road. I met your father. He was a man of sense. You must trust in God. They can only hang you if there is proof you have harmed the boy or the baby who died. It’s true the evidence against you is strong and the father is an ardent man. But there’s hope for you yet.’

  I looked at him properly. He was not so young as I had thought, only his good clothes and his clipped beard made him appear so. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘is there news of my husband, Jacob? Father Paul told me he was like to die.’

  ‘It was feared so, indeed, for he took a fever from a wound, but it has broken I hear and it is hoped he will live. Sir William has of late become his advocate. He is determined that Jacob Spicer be a witness only, and not charged along with you.’

  ‘Did he not testify?’

  ‘He declared that he was ready, and I sat down with my parchment and my quill, but his deposition was not to the Father’s liking. Much persuasion was used on him, I am afraid. It was little surprise he took ill. Then they swiftly declared him raving and his testimony void, and sent him home. It was his mother, you know, who made the deposition against you, declaring him bewitched, but she is a canny woman. When she saw she might unawares be weaving her son a noose she stepped back a little to think on her words. She would happily see you swing, but she does not wish her malice to leak back and stain her own hearth.’

  I was sitting facing back towards the Hall and this was just, for I did not wish to look ahead. I could see only the rutted track I had passed through already. If I bent my eyes very hard on the road then I might keep all in check. Soon we would pass his house. I would be a few feet from where he lay and he would not know. Husband. The word lingered on my tongue and it felt strange to me: it belonged to the life I would not have. If he survived all this then in a year – two years, three – he would wed another girl and bring her home, and perhaps, God willing, he would be happy. I tried to imagine it, yet could not bring myself to. In my mind’s eye, I pictured him walking alone to the warrens or the stables. When the blackbird sang he would hear the bird that chorused our bridal bed in the wood and he would remember.

  I was looking back at the lane so steadily I did not at first register the crowd, though I had expected them. With a jolt I heard Pugh shout, ‘Make way, make way, I tell you. I am the Queen’s officer and I am about her business. Make way.’

  And there they were, on the track before and around the cart: women, men and children. The boys I had taught, their brothers and sisters, the Tuckers, Laddings, Stolleys, Tanners, even the Clutterbucks come from Putley. There were others, too, that I did not know. And at the front stood Richard Simons, his face set on me in hate and anger; beside him Goody Reynolds, shaking her skinny old fist. Not the Widow, though. I lowered my eyes to the planking in the cart and tried not to hear the jabber. It was only words: things my familiars had done with me, things my neighbours should like to do themselves. I ventured to look and perceived not all were shouting. There were some who looked back at me and nodded, as though I were simply Martha Dynely still, the wheelwright’s daughter, who could be gone to for a cure. Will Stolley, Mary Tucker, others too. And there at the back Tom, come back, and by his side a gentleman riding. I tried to smile at Tom, and something in the crowd snapped.

  ‘Look at her grinning like a pig in shit,’ someone shouted. A clout of mud hit me and there was a whoop as a man on the bank lifted his smock and waggled his member.

  ‘That’s enough! Let us through.’ Pugh sounded unsteady. The cart trundled on, but at every step it seemed to me that the shouts grew louder, thicker, though the constables would not let them at me. Richard Simons was beside me, glaring. I made myself stone, but the memory of the scratching jagged at me. Oh, how I wanted my father, wanted Jacob. It was so lonely on the cart. I looked for Aggie but I could not see her. I could hear my breath in my throat, straining. I could barely haul it in. It was heavier than a loaded wagon; I could hear the whine of it. Little Georgie Ladding wriggled through, grinned at me, tossed something at my feet. Oh God! A stinking rat, its eyes pecked out, maggots rippling under the skin. It bounced at my feet.

  ‘There’s one of your familiars back for you,’ a man cried.

  When I saw the rippling belly I fell forward retching and gasping, and I rubbed my wrists against the ropes until the pain loosened my chest. I could hear myself wailing; I was like a pig that knows it’s to be stuck and killed, but I could not stop. We were nearing the Simons’ house. I could not let Owen hear me like this. I must not. Perhaps Ann was by him, stopping his ears. Somehow, I pushed down on my shrieking breath till I could contain it. The mob had grown quieter to listen to my squealing and they were quite hushed for a moment. From the corner of my eye I saw Richard glance at the door and sign angrily. Ann was there, clutching a handkerchief, silently weeping. As she caught my eye she stretched out an arm to me. A murmur went through the crowd as strangers grasped whose house this was, that the boy lay suffering inside.

  ‘Martha Dynely,’ a strong voice rang out, ‘confess. His mother points the finger of guilt at you. Her boy lies dying. He saw you cavorting with your Master to bring down the hill.’

  Richard Simons broke his silence. ‘We don’t need her confession. Look at her, twisted in her guilt. Here, here, he lies dumb on the bed!’ His voice was broken with pain and the crowd sucked on it and buckled in fury.

  The cart stopped. Men had blocked its passage. I saw Pugh’s horse begin to prance uneasy, beside me.

  ‘We don’t need a trial,’ someone shouted.

  ‘Aye, hang her here, on this tree.’

  I looked about in horror. The constables had staves, but there were fifty in the road at the least. Pugh glanced in panic at Tom and the gentleman beside him. I could see they were trying to push through, and others with them, but what could they do against such odds? An egg broke and spattered on my cloak. Then the air was thick with all the grit and shit and loose mud of the lane. A stone hit Pugh’s horse and it reared and whinnied.

  ‘In the Queen’s name, I command you,’ he was shouting, but nobody heard him. I hid my head in my arms. Pugh’s voice rang out again, ‘In the Queen’s name, I tell you…’

  I peered through the crook of my arms through the hail of stones and filth. Pugh was forcing his horse through the rabble, slashing the air around the cart to prevent men climbing on.<
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  ‘There will be justice,’ he cried. ‘I tell you there will be… Oh, by the Lord Jesus, look!’

  A gasp went through the crowd. The fury of the tumult died away all at once, just as a wind can drop and draw in silence in its stead. Even the birds stopped singing. ‘Angel,’ someone whispered low, and the word went from mouth to mouth. ‘Angel…’ There, at the door, in a long nightgown, his hand in his mother’s, Owen had appeared. The crowd parted for him. I had not noticed how his hair had turned white like the snow that had buried him. Richard Simons took a step towards his son, his face knocked open with astonishment. Owen did not see him. He was advancing alone, falteringly, towards the cart, and when he reached it he began to try to pull himself on. Pugh nodded to one of the constables to help him up and there he was, standing in the grime on the planking opposite me. Somewhere, far away, a ewe called. There was no other sound. Owen put out his hand to push away the hair that had fallen in front of my face and I felt a great sob rise and break, and he flung his arms around my neck and was wiping the tears and blood from my cheeks.

  ‘Don’t go, Martha,’ he said. ‘Martha, don’t let them take you. Please, Martha, please. Stay here.’

  It was only a moment. I looked into his eyes and saw he was all himself again, his gaze as clear as May. It was only a moment, but it was enough. Even as I buried my face in his hair and clung to him I felt how the fury had dropped from the air.

  ‘Be strong, Owen,’ I whispered.

  Then someone was pulling him free; he was bundled out of the cart and handed back to his mother. I held out my arms to him. The crowd was a silent congregation that parted without a word. We rolled on. Long after the cart had turned and the cottage was lost to view I held out my empty arms.