Knight's Acre

by Norah Lofts

  My first fire on my first hearth, Sybilla thought, but joy refused to come at all. Walter chose the driest and slimmest pieces of wood and placed them, tent-like, over the first flames.

  ‘We have no candles, Walter.’

  ‘I’ll get my box. I got one and a half. And a lantern.’

  He went out to the front where he had left the wagon and returned with the old arrow box.

  Thrift rather than generosity had governed Emma’s giving. There was a table, old and battered and unsteady because it had one leg badly worm-eaten; there was a backless bench, capable of holding four people, and a three-legged milking stool. Nothing more and the lack of furniture made the place seem larger than it was; voices and footsteps sounded hollow.

  Instead of the interest and curiosity which would have been natural in the circumstances, Sybilla felt a disinclination to move about, a temptation to remain near the bright burning fire. Such weakness must not be pandered to.

  ‘I’ll take the foodstuff into the kitchen,’ Walter said.

  ‘I’ll bring a light. Boys, see that John and Margaret do not get too near to the fire.’

  Walter was bilingual, his two brands of English, Foul and Decent, being as far apart as any babel tongues. He never confused them. In Foul he had been communicating with himself ever since he saw how the lady had been fobbed off at Beauclaire; to see how she had been treated here—and not by servants, by her own kin, rendered even Foul inadequate.

  In the Decent, from which he never varied in her presence, he said, ‘It’s a good kitchen, my lady.’ It was a good kitchen, with a wide hearth and a bread oven in the wall. It contained a table, bigger and more solid than the one in the hall; it looked as though at some time it had been used as a carpenter’s bench. Laid out on it were such items as Emma had thought essential and which could be easily spared. It was the kind of collection which anyone, living poorly and suddenly inheriting a fully furnished house, might be expected to throw out from his own humble abode.

  ‘We’ll get this straightened out in the morning,’ Walter said, eyeing the rusty spit; the pewter candlestick, so bent that no candle could live in it for long, the pile of platters, wooden, potsherd, battered pewter.

  Alongside this, the contents of the hampers looked munificent. There was even a game pie with what was called a raised crust, patterned and highly glazed.

  ‘We’ll eat this for supper,’ Sybilla said, ‘and then the children must go to bed. All else can wait until morning.’

  Upstairs there were two beds, akin to the one brought from Beauclaire, a frame and a mattress, no more. Bleak. But adequate. And what right had she to expect anything to gladden the eye and say, ‘Welcome’?

  Walter carried up the clothes chest and placed it in the room which contained the larger of the two beds; and then, for the first time in all the years he had travelled with them, she gave a thought to his sleeping arrangements.

  ‘The children will share this bed with me,’ she said, ‘and the boys will sleep next door. That leaves two empty rooms and the bed we brought with us. Make yourself comfortable, Walter.’

  ‘I’ve found myself a place, my lady.’

  His old-soldier’s eye had spotted it as he led the horse to the stable. Slightly to one side, the remains of the original farmhouse, used and patchily repaired by the carpenters, masons and casual labourers who had worked there. Watertight, windproof; what more could a man ask? There was even a bed of bracken upon which Walter Freeman, who had standards of his own, did not hesitate to lie. Bracken did not harbour lice as hay and straw and flock and feather did.

  When Walter had gone to his own place—wherever that might be—Sybilla experienced something new; loneliness. She had spent years at Lamarsh where, if voices were muted and footfalls soft, they were there. Then Godfrey had whisked her into places where voices were louder and gayer and footsteps rang. Here, with the boys rolled together like puppies in one room and the two babies fitted like spoons together in the bed she was about to share, there was a ringing silence, an emptiness, a feeling of isolation.

  I should have bargained for this when I said I should like house of my own. I am under my own roof, my children are sleeping peacefully. I should be thankful. God, I do thank you… She managed two Our Fathers and two Hail Marys before she slept.

  FOUR

  [Spring 1452]

  Father Ambrose was the first person in Intake to be aware of the arrival. The snow had ceased during the night and looking out into a glittering white world he spied the hump of the snow-covered wagon which obscured his usual view of Knight’s Acre’s front door. He called briskly for his heavy boots—so well-greased as to be waterproof—and wrapped himself in the shawl which was his winter wear.

  ‘And not even a fire to welcome you, my lady. Had I but known…’

  His kind heart was genuinely aggrieved to think of anyone arriving at an unlit, unheated house in the middle of a snowstorm—and on Christmas Day too; but he was also concerned for a missed opportunity for ingratiating himself with the lady who was to be his most important parishioner. He had been very much excited about the building of the house. Ladies were usually pious and charitable; they did embroidery, altar clothes and copes; They could usually be relied upon to set a good example which, God knew, Intake could do with. Had he been warned he would have seen to it that the fire was lighted, have been there himself to offer words of welcome. He hastened to repair the situation.

  ‘You’ll need servants, my lady. I think I can put my hand on the very couple. Both named Wade, a woman and her nephew. They have both known service in great houses but are temporarily out of employment.’

  God had called him to what at first sight seemed a sinecure but which had turned out to be hard labour in a very stony field. In the period before Sir Godfrey’s great-grandmother built and endowed the little church the people in Intake seemed to have lost the habit and, in some cases, even the outward forms of piety. The founders of the village had, after all, been an unruly lot, men whose Master at Moyidan had been glad to be rid of. And while Intake had no priest, and during the incumbency of Father Ambrose’s immediate predecessor who was lax in such matters, there had been a good deal of in-breeding which had hardened the mould. Father Ambrose had never succeeded in breaking it, though he never relaxed his efforts. Just before Christmas he had made a round of the farms, reminding everybody of the seasonal obligations. They knew it was Christmas; they were boiling bag puddings and chopping mincemeat; the young children had dragged in the festive greenery—ivy, holly, mistletoe—and they seemed to resent the reminder.

  In the house at Wades Acre—Once a single room of clods and now a substantial place with six rooms, he noticed that Bessie and Jacky were back. He had said, ‘Home for Christmas?’ and the unacknowledged head of the family, an old woman of incredible age, has muttered sourly, ‘Back for good, by the look of it.’

  The two were misfits. The in-breeding against which Father Ambrose had set his face, twenty-five years ago; yes, a quarter century; how times sped! had curious results. Most of the Wades were strong and sensible and very hard workers, far from witless; but the woman, Bessie, nearing forty and very fat, the boy Jacky, fifteen and thin as a rail were, to put it at its kindliest, simple. The woman was said to be a good cook but undependable, the boy willing enough but forgetful.

  Father Ambrose felt it unnecessary to mention this, or the catalogue of jobs found and quickly lost, to Sybilla. Neither of the pair had ever been employed in Intake—for who was there to employ them? And perhaps in far places, Baildon, Clevely, Muchanger, they had suffered from that debilitating ailment, homesickness, and had lost jobs because they wanted to lose them. Here, within easy reach of other relatives and under his own eye, they might well do better. Without hesitation he recommended them to Sybilla.

  She felt better this morning; everything seemed better. She was faintly ashamed of her overnight feelings of which nothing remained except a kind of caution, the feeling that this was rather bi
g house to be sustained on such slender resources.

  She was not without money. The Intake tenants paid their rent twice a year, at Michaelmas and on Labour Day; two pounds. And at a Michaelmas tourney, Godfrey had won a silver-gilt cup which Walter had sold, happening upon a buyer who wanted a cup as a christening present and had not quibbled at paying ten shillings for a thing which on an open market would have brought no more than eight.

  Godfrey had left it all to her; he was taking service under Lord Malvern’s standard; he was well provided for and hoped to come home rich. But something about that looming bulk, the reach of the roof, the width of the hearths and the extra rooms which had, indeed, surprised her, had made an impression that remained, even in this blue and white morning, and she said cautiously that she could not afford expensive servants. Like everybody else who knew the family, Father Ambrose had assumed that Sir Godfrey was well-to-do and Sybilla’s remark roused surprise and disappointment; However, he assured her that Bessie Wade would probably be content with three shillings a year, Jacky with eighteen pence, ‘and their keep, of course,’ he added. ‘I will walk across to Wade’s Acre and arrange it at once.’

  In the doorway he looked about at the waste of hard trodden, wood-littered ground on which the new house stood and another dream revived. ‘I expect your ladyship will be making a garden.’ Ladies cared about such things, farm wives did not; he visualised the altar decked with roses and lilies. The only flowers it now knew were occasional offerings from young children, primroses, oxslips, wild daffodils and bluebells, all gathered much too short and damaged by hot little hands.

  ‘I shall hope to—in time,’ Sybilla said. She also looked at the unpromising ground and once again felt the weight of the task she had undertaken. As she had slept in other people’s beds and eaten at their tables, so she had enjoyed their gardens, their roses and lilies and gillyflowers, their lavender and rosemary. Would this waste ever flower?

  Self-pity was not an actual sin but it showed weakness of character. She braced herself. Here is the house I wanted and asked for and here in due time will my garden be…

  Walter looked at the cleared land before and around the house with a different eye. Fourth son of a yeoman farmer and as much the victim as Sir Godfrey of the Norman institution of primogeniture, he had always been land hungry. Now here it was, enough even for a land hungry man; acres of it. Sir James’s men, fearful of seeming idle, had cleared the ground well. Walter could see that, even under the covering of snow.

  This year it would be hit or miss; no autumn-sown seed, lying there waiting. It would mean spring ploughing and spring sowing; but he’d manage.

  Because he must.

  He knew far more about Sir Godfrey’s finances than either Sir Godfrey or the lady knew about his. Four pounds a year and some prize money soon earned, soon spent did not, in Walter’s view, represent security. A place of this size should, must, be self-supporting. And would be, if he had anything to do with it.

  Water bitterly resented the twelve wasted days of Christmas; all very well for the rich, playing the fool and guzzling. And the poor, blind, stupid, copied their betters. Everything stopped for Christmas and it was twelve days before Walter could really get to work. What could be done in the interval he did. He coddled the old horse which responded gallantly, he bullied the Wades, too, who, if they had, as the lady said, ever been in service before, showed no signs of any training. A great fat slob of a woman, a flibbertigibbet boy. The lady, as always, had listened to soft talk, this time from the priest, and Walter distrusted priests, monks and friars; Even the one bishop he had encountered, William of Bywater, who literally starved himself, and his guests, in order to support a Lying-in Hospital for fallen women and Foundlings’ Home for the children who were the product of the falls.

  In Walter’s opinion William, Bishop of Bywater, should have fed his guests better and as soon as he heard that the lady, his brother’s wife, was about to be moving, should have sent wall hangings, some chairs, a settle with cushions.

  The lady would have such things in time, because Walter would obtain them for her. In the meantime, first things first…

  The men of Intake no more liked Walter than the servants in great houses had done. He hadn’t a pleasant manner and they could not as they said, “place” him. He was only a serving man but his manner was brusque and lordly and they thought his speech affected. It was not Suffolk. Bessie and Jacky Wade reported unfavourably on him, too. He’d threatened Bessie with the sack unless her cooking improved, he’d given Jacky a clip on the ear. Such behaviour from a master would not have been worth remarking, coming from a fellow servant it bred resentment.

  Dislike of him took the form of refusing any of the mutual aid usual in a small, isolated community. No one was prepared to lend him a plough; he could hire one and it’d be a farthing a day.

  From afar, they watched his first ploughing with malicious curiosity. Ploughing with a horse; what ignorance! Some of them were interested enough to inspect his furrows, certain of finding many crooked ones, dog’s legs. Ploughing was an art and straightness of ridges was closely related to evenness in the planting and ease in reaping. There were no dog’s legs in Walter’s fields; in the last light of the daylight the furrows lay straight sure, washed with a faint mauvish light on one side, deep brown on the other. Such performance—and comparatively quickly done, since a horse moved faster than an ox—was not endearing, and as Walter went the round again, this time offering to buy seed corn, nobody had any to sell.

  Walter made the first of his raids upon Baildon.

  What sort of fist would he make of the sowing? Disappointingly good. He had the rhythm of it; striding along and matching the throws to his paces. Walter, with a stern father and even sterner elder brothers, had been well trained. As he sowed the boys followed, dragging branches like rakes, to cover the seeds.

  With two fields ploughed and sown, he turned his attention to making a garden; the house would need peas and beans, carrots, onions, cabbages. He made small spades for Henry and Richard so that they could help with the digging. ‘And he’s nigh as strict with them as he is with us,’ Bessie said.

  A household also needed livestock of its own. Sharp-eyed in the market, Walter found a bargain, a cow with two defective teats. It took longer to find a sow going cheap but his luck served him again; an elderly sow, in pig; she was a known good breeder but savage tempered. Her owner had recently died, his widow was afraid of the beast and, in fact, the sow was offered for sale immobilised in fishing net. Everybody knew what that meant!

  ‘And a net thrown in,’ Walter said gleefully.’ Handy for catching pigeons.’

  Pigeons mattered.

  Dame Marjorie had not envisaged a household with no resources, no pork or beef salted down in casks, no sides of bacon in the smoke hole. She had merely seen that, leaving so suddenly, on the brink of Christmas, Lady Tallboys needed the festive seasons trimmings. She had packed the game pie and that delicacy, the sugar-cured ham, cooked and garnished. Once they were consumed, the household had been dependent upon what could be bought from the grasping villagers, snared, trapped or shot in Layer Wood.

  Water had not even been able to indulge in ritual swapping. When you kill your pig let me have half, or a quarter, and when I kill mine, you shall have the same. Presently he would be able to do so.

  Once he had shot a deer and Sybilla, glad enough of the meat, had been rather dubious about the law.

  ‘There are so many rules about venery, Walter. We may have no rights in layer Wood.’

  ‘It was on our field, my lady.’

  ‘I am not sure that that justifies… I seem to remember…’ The convent at Lamarsh had included amongst its properties a belt of forest and the Abbess had been very meticulous about her rights.

  ‘Never mind, Walter just this once. I will ask Sir James when I see him. He will know. Meanwhile, roast venison! Can you fletch it, Walter?’

  ‘ I should hope so, my lady.’


  When I see him, Walter thought, dealing expertly with the deer’s carcass. Once, in a forgotten siege in a forgotten place, he had flayed what remained of a dead horse. To himself, in Foul language of an extreme sort, Walter denounced Sir James of Moyidan. Not a … visit yet! … his gout, could the … not have come in a … wagon?… Well ashamed to show his … face, to look at the … stuff he had allowed his … wife to send! … her and him and all connected with them.

  It was over the deer’s carcass that Walter found a fault in the house. It had no smokehole, that wide chimney in which meat could be hung, a slow burning fire of turf or sawdust burning below. But he improvised. The hearth cold, he set a stool amongst the ashes and reached up as far as he could and drove in a nail. Anything hung on it would be beyond the scorch of a flame. The whole process might take longer than usual. In his home, with a proper smokehole, a ham and a side of bacon took about a month to be cured; here with the smoking anything but steady, reckon six weeks.

  ‘Walter,’ Henry said, ‘why don’t you shoot pigeons?’

  ‘Because there’d be nothing left. Just a smear. I’ve sent an arrow through a four-inch door. Ask yourself what a pigeon’d look like.’

  To Walter, as to everyone else, the boys had been almost indistinguishable, Handsome, noisy, badly behaved. But since the move had been made Walter, somewhat surprising himself, had taken a fancy to Henry because, given a job, Henry would stick at it until he dropped. Henry was the stuff out of which men were made. About Richard, Walter was not so sure. Always wanting to be treated as an equal but not prepared to measure up. Henry, Walter had concluded, was teachable in a way that Richard was not.

  Now that the boys spent so long doing things with Walter, the house was reasonably peaceful for long hours at a time. Sybilla tended the two young children, John just beginning to totter about and Margaret, soon to be four, still very childish. Reaching back to her time in the kitchen at Lamarsh, Sybilla resurrected her domestic knowledge and tried to teach Bessie who was incapable of remembering anything from one day to another and seemed not to care. Really, Sybilla sometimes thought impatiently, it would be quicker and cheaper to do things myself!