Knight's Acre

by Norah Lofts

The word “garden” brought Sybilla sharply to mind. She had so loved other people’s gardens, had always wanted one of her own. If she had attained one, it was not of his providing. He had ceased to visualise her at Knight’s Acre now. She could not possibly have managed on those meagre rents, fixed for ever by a well-meaning but short-sighted old man. Sometimes he saw her back in his sister’s house at Beauclaire, Henry and Richard old enough for the discipline of the master of the pages. Sometimes he imagined that—giving him up for dead—she might have married again. He hoped that wherever she was, she was happy. In his mental pictures of her she was unchanged, untouched by time.

  His new work was infinitely preferable to the old. The outdoor slaves, those who worked in the gardens and the stables, lived in comparative comfort in a building made for the purpose and they were well fed. Those who tended the ladies’ garden were far from over-worked, often no more than two hours’ rather hurried labour early in the morning when, even at mid-summer, the air was pleasantly cool. All the work must be done before the women’s quarter was astir. The exposure of his ignorance of gardening, which Sir Godfrey had rather feared—fear being the foremost emotion in a slave world—never came; there was in fact no mention of his Englishness or of anyone’s wish to improve the garden. He was simply one of three slaves admitted, soon after sunrise, to shave and water a piece of grass about the size of a tennis court, take from every rose tree and every flowering shrub any bloom past its perfect best, see that no stray petal or leaf clogged the fountain, renew and tend flowers in the tubs which stood on the steps and the terrace up to which they led, the garden entrance from the harem itself.

  It was a very secret garden, surrounded on three sides by high walls with no windows. One wall was broken by the gateway of iron grille work, opened to admit the workers, locked behind them, opened so that they could leave and locked again. The fourth side of the garden was the outer wall of the women’s quarters; three steps, a terrace and another grilled doorway, hung on its inner side with Zagelah gauze, so closely gathered as to be opaque. Once, planting the tubs—they were of silver, glazed in some way so that they did not tarnish, with lilies of a kind he had never seen before, huge, pink flecked with purple and almost overpoweringly scented, Sir Godfrey spared a thought for the women who would presently enjoy them. They were slaves, too! He thought of the freedom his own countrywomen enjoyed; at every level, from the independent old women like the fishwife on Bywater quay, to the Queen whose lightest word was law to the King of England. Briefly he pitied these women, more enclosed than nuns of the strictest order. But in the main his thoughts, now that food and work in the open air had restored him and his back, so long bent under the heavy marble slabs straightened again—was escape.

  From the quarry it had been impossible; he had tried the only likely way and all that resulted had been a flogging. Here things were different. Slaves seemed to come and go almost as they pleased; they were sent on errands into the streets, into the market; and certainly the comings and goings of those who worked in the secret garden were most loosely overlooked, once the two hours of rather hurried work was complete. Ermin, Sir Godfrey’s new overseer, fat and lethargic—eunuch?—opened that gate, sat down, supervised in a way, occasionally said, ‘Hurry.’ He wielded no cane. Then he ushered them out and disappeared, to sleep, to follow his own pursuits. His underlings were free to do the same unless they were “borrowed” to work in some other part of the palace grounds, a practice Ermin did nothing to encourage, not because he feared his men would be overworked but because he was immensely proud of his own post of trust and felt that some of his importance reflected on his small staff. His usual answer when asked for the loan of his men was, ‘No, they must see to the tanks.’

  The roses and other flowers in the ladies’ garden liked muck but it was unthinkable that the eyes and noses of the ladies should be affronted by stable manure in its natural state. So it was placed in tanks filled with water, stirred three or four times a day for several days and then allowed to settle. The water was then drained off and strained and carried to the garden and applied. A faint odour of stables was perceptible for a few minutes but vanished as soon as the liquid was absorbed.

  Sir Godfrey, in his free time, drifted naturally to the stable yard where beautiful horses lived in conditions far preferable to those of the quarry slaves. It took him a little time to break the habit of enforced silence acquired at Andara, where talk during work hours was regarded as a waste of breath and time and where, when the gruelling day’s work was over, there was no energy left for chatter. After a day or two in this easier atmosphere he found his tongue again and showed himself knowledgeable about horses, thereby making himself welcome to this community within a community. One day he said to the friendliest of the stable slaves, ‘That horse is of different breed.’

  ‘A true word. That is a son of Shaitan. A vicious horse, taken from the Christian invaders. He killed two men and maimed several before he was turned loose. The King set high store by him and forbade the treatment that would have tamed him. And perhaps he was right. He sires good colts.’

  The horse they were studying had a brown hide, with a golden glimmer.

  Arcol’s colt?

  I had three sons.

  Now again, definite plans. A runaway slave must not immediately draw attention to himself by begging. Food for at least three days must be saved and that meant bread and cheese. And, perhaps by design, the clothes of a palace slave, though of finer quality than those of the quarry workers, were less adaptable for hiding things. The outfit which Sir Godfrey had been given on his arrival in Zagelah was a pair of drawers, longer and more dignified, halfway down the shin, and a jacket, short-sleeved, somewhat skimpy. Both garments were of far finer substance than those the quarry-workers wore and they were not without decoration. Around the edge of the trouser legs, the front and the sleeves of the jacket there was a kind of braid worked in red and white.

  In such a uniform with no pockets, no pouches, enough of even humble bread and cheese to keep a man for three days was difficult to conceal; he got it away from table openly, ‘I’ll eat this later. I tend to wake, hungry, in the night.’ Nobody questioned, nobody suspected. It was high summer, August; he had been released from the quarry in July; under his mattress in the slave dormitory the cheese sweated and the bread dried.

  He carried the food—all he owned in the world—openly, in a little linen bag, when he set out to make another bid for freedom. It had seemed to him, so recently released from the quarry, that palace slaves came and went as they liked but even on this heavy, somnolent afternoon there was a man at the gate used by slaves and other inferior people.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Ermin, my master, has shoes to be mended.’ That explained the parcel.

  He made for the market. Morning trade was over, the best of everything had been sold; this was the waiting time. Four hours after midday the muezzins would call again, for the third prayer hour of the day; then business would brisken again, selling off cheaper stuff, wilting, bruised, not worth carting back home. Meanwhile, in the narrow shade of buildings or awnings, the market people rested. Sir Godfrey found a patch of shade and chose the family he would accompany. There was concealment in numbers and this was a sizeable family; an old woman, brown and wrinkled as a walnut, two men, a woman and three children, and a donkey. His mind observed without knowing that it did so, that whereas all the family had sought shade from the afternoon’s glare, the donkey had been left tethered in the full sun.

  The call to prayer came and with the rest he obeyed it, bowing towards Mecca and saying, ‘God help me.’ Then he hung about while the evening market rush went on and attached himself, unostentatiously, to the family he had chosen as his stalking horse. Out of the still sunlit market square and into the cool tunnel that pierced the wall, the place where Sir Stephen had lost a eye, the place where victory had seemed certain.

  Useless to think back; grieve, yes, grieve for the dead, all
part of a past that in retrospect seemed golden and gay, but the past was gone beyond recall. There was only the present; this moment.

  And a bad moment.

  There were guards on the gate.

  Unchallenged the old woman, the donkey and the children, quarrelling vociferously, had gone through, Sir Godfrey, thinking that anywhere two men could go, three men could go, had attached himself to the two men, in the company of men less noticeable. Out of the cool dusk of the tunnel, into the evening glow; and a harsh voice:

  ‘Here you, where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘On an errand for my master.’

  ‘Then you’ll have a pass.’

  He had no pass; he carried a bag which was in itself evidence of ill intent. Over and beyond that he must be mad, for every border of every garment he wore announced that he was a palace slave.

  The expression on Sir Godfrey’s face when he realised that he had failed again and been so stupid—how could he have overlooked so vital a thing?—justified the guard’s assumption that his wits were astray. And a certain kindliness towards the mad was traditional among the Moors. Also the guard, though in public employment, did not favour the regime of King Selim and Hassan ben Hassan, it was too strict for a man who had liked his kaffe and his wine. So instead of holding this demented fellow and later taking him to the palace, there to be flogged and possibly branded as a would-be runaway, he gave him a half-rough, half-friendly push and said, ‘Be off with you, fool.’

  SIXTEEN

  Walter disliked living in the house. It meant that he had no privacy and that the places with which he was concerned—the kitchen where he lived and ate, the still-room in which he made and kept his ale, the bedroom in which he slept—were distant from one another and, since the one staircase and the still-room both opened out of the hall, he must for ever be crossing and re-crossing that apartment. He always said, ‘Excuse me, my lady,’ or ‘I’m sorry to disturb you.’ Sybilla was usually sewing, occasionally writing, and she invariably looked up and smiled and said a few amiable words but he always felt like an intruder and if he had a jug in hand he felt self-conscious about it.

  He always liked his ale but in moderation. Drunkenness he despised; since the burning of his little house he had drunk more and he spent a good deal of time arguing with himself, producing proof after proof that he was not a toss-pot.

  Drunkards reeled about and shouted and laughed at nothing. He was never even slightly unsteady on his feet and his behaviour did not vary.

  Drunkards slugged abed in the morning, neglected their work or their business; their sight was not true, their hands grew unsteady. He was always brisk and early in the morning, did the work of two, even three men all day, was as good an archer as he had ever been.

  Drunkards craved the stuff, couldn’t do without it. He could. On market days, when all other men resorted to inns, he came straight home. It was just that lately, if he went to bed sober, he could not sleep. He tossed and turned and groaned inwardly as a sick man might. He had tried to discipline himself by going sober to bed for as many as three nights in succession, thinking that weariness must win and sleep come. It did not, except in brief, dream-haunted snatches just before morning, and after such nights he felt good for nothing.

  Now it was October again, one year and seven months since the raid; and apart from his need for the lulling effect of the ale, Walter had good cause to feel pleased with himself. Knight’s Acre now had three fields under the plough and the crops had been so heavy that hired labour was needed. Walter had chosen carefully and well; one of the young Robinsons, a boy called Tom, hard-working and teachable.

  Walter had also ‘happened upon’ a good young horse to replace the old one from Beauclaire which, coddled along, had done marvellously but was now failing. The very way in which Walter had set about obtaining a new horse, cheap, was proof that he was not a drunkard; drunkards were incapable of making clever plans and carrying them through.

  Walter had begun to haunt the horse-market in Baildon—it was separate from the general market. His attitude was casual, he studied what was on offer, noted the prices which were iniquitous, what with the lessened value of money and the brief but inconclusive war. However, he did at last find exactly the animal for which he was searching; a black horse, young, thickset, strong enough to pull a plough or wagon but not too heavy to trot. Nice-natured, too; it suffered Walter’s inspection with calm.

  ‘How much?’

  The dealer named his price, iniquitous, of course, to anyone old enough to remember the old days but by current prices fair enough.

  ‘I’ll give you half that,’ Walter said.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  Walter said, ‘You take what I offered or I’ll call the market overseer and the constable and ask if anybody has lately lost a grey horse.’ Surreptitiously—Walter never believed in calling attention to his undertakings—he held out a bit of damp soapy cloth, black, and at the same time indicated the small pale patch on the horse’s neck.

  The dealer turned as pale as the patch—horse stealing was a capital offence.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  Adding insult to injury, as he took possession of the horse, Walter said, ‘Next time try walnut husks, not soot.’

  He went home jubilant.

  October produced some of its golden days. Tom Robinson could be trusted to thresh out what remained of the corn and Henry was eager to try out his skill with the bow on some worthy target.

  For deer it was known as the ‘grease season’; full-fed through summer, they were at their best.

  ‘We’ll take a day off, Harry, and go hunting.’

  ‘May I try, Walter? With my new bow?’

  It was the third that Walter had made for him but it was not full size and Walter doubted whether any shaft launched from it would be lethal. Not that it mattered. Walter would be there, just behind the boy—who was his boy now.

  Layer Wood had gained its name long ago when “lay” meant “pool”. The pools, after the fine summer which had brought the good harvest, were depleted; the first two or three were mere puddles, surrounded by dried, cracked clay. But they came upon one at a lower level, its mud edge marked with hoofmarks. They hid themselves and waited and presently a deer—a lone young male—came down to drink. Henry looked at Walter, a silent question; Walter nodded. Henry loosed his arrow and missed, by that little which had given rise to the saying that a miss was as good as a mile; and as the animal raised its head, alarmed, alerted, Walter shot it dead.

  Henry was momentarily depressed and apologetic but Walter said not to mind, everybody missed a shot sometimes, and after all they had the meat which was what mattered. ‘We’ll gut him here,’ he said. ‘Easier to carry.’ Bearing the carcass slung on a pole between them, they went home, happy hunters at the end of the day.

  Before Walter sat down to his supper he fetched a jug of ale from the still-room and offered Madge a cupful, as he often did, but she refused.

  In the hall, with supper over and Henry gone yawning to bed, Sybilla sat down to write a very difficult letter, the latest of a number in what was surely a very peculiar correspondence. It had begun with a violently vituperative letter from Lady Randall. Simon, her only son, had been killed at St. Albans in the first battle of the civil war; and Sybilla was entirely to blame! Had she married him and made him happy, he would have settled down at Cressacre and not gone running off to fight in a war which did not concern him at all. What was more, Sybilla had not only robbed Lady Randall of her son but of her grandsons, too, for Simon could never bring himself to look at another woman. Lady Randall was left to face lonely old age with a broken heart—and all because of Sybilla.

  Sybilla thought—Poor woman, she is distraught with grief. She wrote a brief letter of sympathy, such as one would send to any bereaved mother. That should have been the end but was not. Gifts began to arrive, accompanied by letters which were not denunciatory but still not quite in order; ‘Simon wishes yo
u to share our plenty…’ The letters became fond as though the lonely woman at Cressacre had transferred some of her affection from her dead son to the woman of whom he had been fond. Rather as a mother might cherish a dead child’s toy.

  Every letter had been answered, kindly, civilly but without undue sentiment. The cool common sense, which the Abbess of Lamarsh had inculcated, still held against all the wear and tear of the world. But Lady Randall’s last letter was difficult to answer. She wrote that she was certain that Simon would wish her to adopt John. That extraordinary statement was followed by a lot of facts and figures all meant to show that Cressacre was an independent property. Nobody, no great lord, not the King himself, had any claim upon it. Between her husband’s death and Simon’s coming of age, she had held it and improved it… ‘where only rabbits ran, sheep now nibble and dung the land as they nibble. Next year there will be grass and cattle…’ She listed the acres that comprised the estate, rents that were paid, income derived from the sale of produce; ‘in addition to which I have monies of my own’. All this wealth would in due time pass to her adopted son.

  To a mother who could just about feed and clothe a growing boy it was a tempting offer indeed and Sybilla gave it serious consideration for several days. She sought no advice from James or William, knowing what form it would take. William was unworldly, up to a point, and lavished his own money on the poor, but he had a sensible man’s respect for security and this was security indeed, a chance in ten thousand. But…

  Sybilla had kept all Lady Randall’s letters and, before beginning her own, she read them through again, taking especial heed of the sentences which roused unease. Simon was often mentioned, sometimes as though Lady Randall realised that he was dead but just as frequently as though he were still alive and were in close communication with her. Perhaps the strangest letter of all was the one which had arrived together with a blaring heifer calf. In it Lady Randall wrote, ‘Simon seems to think that you have lost a calf. Please accept this in its stead.’ The fantastic thing was that about a fortnight earlier the Knight’s Acre cow had aborted.