by Norah Lofts
The letter proposing the adoption only said, ‘Simon would wish,’ but it ended on a disquieting note. After the facts and figures Lady Randall had written, ‘After all, you owe me a son.’
It was just possible that the whole campaign of friendliness had been mounted by a demented woman with one end in view—retaliation. Far-fetched, of course. But John was only seven; handed over completely to a woman who had a grudge against his mother, his life could be made a misery—it might even be short!
And there was another way of looking at it. Sybilla thought—I bore three sons; one I have lost to Walter; one to Beauclaire; must I give away the third?
She wrote, ‘Dear Lady Randall,’ and then the door to the kitchen opened and there was old Madge, making her bob and saying good night on her way to bed. Sybilla smiled and said, ‘Good night, Madge,’ and resumed writing, doing it slowly, testing each sentence in her mind before committing it to paper, trying to sound firm and, at the same time, kindly. For her suspicion of the poor woman’s motive could be unfounded and unworthy. And now and again she paused, wondering what the future held for John. William, when offering the whole family a home, had spoken of sending Henry to the monks’ school at Baildon; perhaps he would do as much for John. Such schooling did not inevitably lead to priesthood and celibacy; it could be the first stop towards a secular profession. The law perhaps.
She read Lady Randall’s last letter again and had a rebellious thought—The rich think they can buy anything!
In the kitchen Walter emptied the jug, stood up and went out on his last, necessary errand—he did not acknowledge the existence of the stool-room and had told Henry that such places were meant for women and sick people. He breathed deeply of the cool night air and for the hundredth time assured himself that he was not drunk, though he was now using a larger jug.
He was not drunk. Drunken men did not care where they relieved themselves; nor did they bar doors with care and see that fires were left in such a state that no log could flare, no spark fly during the night. He did these things because he was not drunk. He doused and towelled his face and rinsed his mouth because, while Sybilla, in the hall, had been making her decision, he, by the kitchen fire, had made his.
Once and for all, he would put an end to his agony, the thing that kept him awake at night, unless he dulled his senses with ale.
He came into the hall where Sybilla was making a fair copy of her letter but he did not say either, ‘Excuse me, my lady,’ or ‘Good night, my lady.’ Instead he said, ‘It is cold in here,’ and placed a fresh log on the moribund fire, a dry log which broke instantly into a blaze which eclipsed the candle by whose light she had been working and made Walter, on the hearth, look enormous.
‘I’ve got something to say to you.’
‘Just a minute Walter and I shall be done.’ She wrote her name and laid the quill aside. She was reasonably certain of what Walter was about to say. Nobody could be expected to make a farm out of wasteland, work it, bring it to moderate prosperity—and all for nothing. Some time ago she had offered Walter a wage and he had turned surly and said when he needed money he’d ask for it. Now he was about, she thought, to ask not for money but for land. She was prepared to yield. Walter could have the third field, and any other land he could clear, in return for overseeing her two remaining fields and her stock. Tom Robinson, with some help from Henry, was capable of doing the actual work. It was the kind of arrangement becoming common in these shifting times.
She straightened herself, folded her hands in her lap and, because Walter for once looked so awkward and unsure of himself, he who had always been so self-confident, and was sweating, though he had remarked upon the coolness in the hall, she spoke most kindly.
‘Walter, sit down. And speak freely. What is it?’
He did not accept the invitation to sit—he never had done so in her presence. Over the years—thirteen of them now—though other people’s servants had called him arrogant and overbearing and the people of Intake, she knew from talk with Father Ambrose, detested him because he treated them with contempt, towards her his manners, as his devotion and loyalty, had never once failed.
So when he said in a strange, half-strangulated voice, ‘I’m asking you to marry me,’ she could not have been more astounded had the roof fallen in. She was momentarily dumbstruck and by contrast, Walter, ordinarily so sparing with words, was now articulate and fluent.
It all poured out, from the moment at Dover, when she had played the lute and enchanted him, inspired in him the simple wish to serve, on and on. This, he thought, hearing himself, is not ale talking, it is me, the very core and centre of myself.
‘Women,’ he said, ‘I never cared for. But I fell in love that night and stayed so. I reckoned it’d be enough to serve you, help to take care of you. And time you was married, I managed… Time I had my own place, I managed… It’s the nights I can’t do with. Nothing but a wall between us…’ The words came out jerkily, interspersed by hard breathing as though he had been running.
Sir Simon’s declaration of love had not quickened a pulse or made her face colour; unmoved, untouched, she had been in complete control of the situation. Now she was not. She attributed her hot-faced confusion, her jumpy heart to shock, to insult. She made a clutch at dignity but she was short of breath, too.
‘Walter, you know that I shall never remarry, I refused Sir…’
‘A silly boy! And you were right there. You’d had one, hadn’t you? Here today, just long enough to get you in pup and off again. Took the very ring off your finger to help buy that great horse. Never thought of putting a roof over your head till everybody was so sick and tired…’
The old Abbess had said that it was unwise to show anger; anger merely begat anger; but Sybilla was past heeding such precepts. She stood up and said,
‘Stop! I will not listen to such talk. You are drunk, Walter Freeman. Go to your bed.’
He was drunk, more so than she realised or than he would admit to himself. He did not stir, he stood there, a great hulking shape between her and the fire. He said, ‘Try me! You’ve never had a real, loving man yet.’
Abruptly she realised the precariousness of her situation; alone in a lonely house with children, a deaf old woman and a man, drunk and lecherous. It was as though he sensed her fear—as dogs were said to do. He moved, he took her into his arms. He said, ‘Don’t be scared, my lovely. I’d not hurt you…’
She fought him and she screamed, idiotically since a scream was a call for help and here no help could be forthcoming. She screamed, twice, and then Walter’s mouth came down on hers and something she had never known, and was never to know again, overwhelmed her. Her very bones melted; she was weak, yielding, willing, eager… it lasted only a moment but it taught her something not to be learned in convents or in years of placid marriage; it was a moment to be remembered with shame but it changed her life. It lasted only a moment because Walter, holding and caressing her as though she were a kitten, suddenly collapsed and fell, bearing her down with him to the floor, and something warm and wet spouted from his neck.
Halfway down the stairs, his face as white as chalk, Henry stood, fitting another arrow… The one he had already launched stood quivering for a second or two in the great vein of Walter’s neck and then fell away.
Henry said, ‘Walter!’ in a voice of utter amazement. And she tried to staunch the wound with a wadded handful of her skirt. Useless. Walter died there, on the floor. And Henry cried.
He said, sobbing, ‘How could I know? I thought it was another raid; I heard you cry out… Walter! He made me the bow and the arrows; he taught me…’ It was a cry of desolation.
‘Darling, it was an accident. Walter had taken too much ale, and he was angry with me… about… about something I was writing…’ Must one thank God that one’s son could not read?
All the letters lay there on the table and it was extraordinary how blood, more than any other liquid, spread itself about. The papers were all soiled.
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br /> ‘He’d changed his clothes,’ Henry said. ‘I thought it was another ruffian. And it was Walter…’ In a voice of intense bitterness, he added, ‘I missed the deer.’
‘It was an accident, Henry, and I am entirely to blame. I was writing a letter, the content of which Walter did not agree. In his sober senses he would ever have done such a thing but he was drunk and tried to take the letter from me. So I screamed…’
‘And I heard and came and killed my best friend.’
‘By accident, Henry, sheer accident.’ On one remote fringe of her mind she noted what Henry had said about Walter’s change of clothes. Yes, in order to prepare for his audacious, impossible proposal, he had clad himself in his best.
Time enough to think of that afterwards. Henry went on sobbing and accusing himself. ‘I didn’t even know that he had a blue jerkin… And now they’ll hang me. And I deserve it.’
‘Do I?’
He stopped on a gulping intake of breath and stared with wide, tear-smeared eyes.
‘You? They couldn’t blame you. You didn’t do anything.’
‘I meant did I deserve to see my son hanged—because of an accident?’
She already knew what she intended to do; but she needed Henry’s help—and his full consent. There must be no chance of his thinking her callous.
He was silent, except for a few more gulps; and she waited.
‘I suppose we could… Could we? Bury him somewhere and say nothing?’
‘I think it is the only thing to do.’
‘I know where…’ The resilience of youth was already coming to his aid. ‘We can’t dig much and the place mustn’t show… I could dig a little by the wall of his house and then pull the wall and the rest of the thatch down to cover…’ Now healing self-justification came along. ‘I loved Walter but he shouldn’t… have laid hands on you, whatever you wrote.’
‘He was drunk.’
‘I’ll fetch a blanket,’ Henry said. She noticed that he brought one from his own bed, not Walter’s. Not without difficulty, for Henry, though strong and tough, was only fourteen, and she was small, they got the heavy corpse rolled into the blanket, an enormous sausage. Henry lit the lantern, Walter’s lantern, and fetched the spade, Walter’s spade, and placed them both by the fire-blackened wall and the now leafless periwinkle. The lantern gave them something to steer by. Then he went back into the hall and said, ‘Take his feet, that’s the lighter end…’
His voice had been in process of changing, alternating between a growl and a squeak, all his lamentations and self-accusations had been made in a shrill, childish tone. Now he used the voice that would go with him all his life and, despite all the differences of upbringing and background, it was curiously like his father’s. But the way in which he handled the spade to dig a shallow grave and then, from the inner side of the wall, pushed it and the remnant of thatch down, was Walter’s, purposeful, sparing of effort.
He allowed himself one sentimental thought; he said, ‘He will feel at home here.’
It was an unhallowed grave but Sybilla felt none of the scruples which she had felt about the raiders. Walter had always sedulously avoided the church and would not, she felt, have desired Christian burial. But as the clod wall, brittled by fire, crumbled down and the last of the thatch rustled into place, she crossed herself and murmured, ‘God have mercy and rest you in peace.’
The best, most loyal, most devoted servant any woman ever had. But in a cold, convent room the Abbess had said, Bear in mind that none but the very devout, and they are few, ever act without some ulterior motive.
There was still much to do. Everything concerned with the “accident” must be disposed of; the soiled papers, the bloodied rushes on the floor, her own blood-soaked dress. The mended fire on the wide hearth consumed them all.
Deaf Madge was the first to miss Walter because, rising early, he kindled the kitchen fire and brought in enough water to last her for the rest of the day. But for his absence she gave herself, and everybody else, a simple explanation.
‘He never was happy or settled since his little house was burnt. I noticed. Always on the fidget, he was. He liked his house and once it was gone one place was the same to him as another. So he took off.’
Outside the house interest in Walter’s disappearance was minimal. Nobody in Intake had liked Walter. His fourpenny pension, when given a considerable and generous sum but now nonsensical, had come to him, by way of a complicated method of exchange tokens, through a wool-chandler in Baildon, an honest man who for weeks put the now miserable sum away and waited for the claimant who never came.
At Knight’s Acre there was the farm and the work to be done on it.
‘Mother, I can manage,’ Henry said. ‘Everything I was taught, I remember, I swear. With Tom… But I must be master, though it is for you to tell him so.’
It sounded ludicrous; a boy of fourteen, helped by another, four years older; and about to be helped by a child of seven, for Henry gave John a baleful look and said, ‘He can start to help. When I was his age I made myself useful.’ She would not commit herself, saying, ‘I must see. I must think.’ Much of her thinking was done in the dark, in the night when cheerful thoughts were rare and no prospect pleased. She would wake and think—What is to become of us? The only alternative to staying at Knight’s Acre and trying to manage was to seek shelter with one of the family, meekly dependent after all, and would Henry fit in anywhere now? Would he even try? And where else but in her own home would poor Margaret be so happy, free from criticism or comment?
Sleepless, in the dark, Sybilla looked back and regarded decisions that had possibly been erroneous; setting up house here; refusing to leave when Godfrey was known to be dead; refusing a perfectly honourable offer of marriage.
There was always the comfort of touching rock bottom with the thought that at least starvation was not imminent; the hens continued to lay and to produce clutches of fluffy yellow chickens. The sow farrowed. Somehow the makeshift arrangement—I must see; I must think—took on a permanent air.
Presently the lilies bloomed again. Sybilla took an armful to the church. ‘How very beautiful,’ Father Ambrose said. ‘Our Lady’s own flower. Any news of Sir Godfrey, my lady?’ ‘He died in Spain.’ ‘I am sorry indeed. I will say a mass for his soul.’ Going back, past the lily bed, Sybilla snapped off another and dropped it amongst the periwinkles and nettles under which Walter lay. Three men loved me, she thought; and I have outlived them all. And now I must feed the pigs…
SEVENTEEN
Although his latest attempt at escape had passed unnoticed, the failure—and more particularly the cause of it—threw Sir Geoffrey into deep depression. How could he have been so unobservant? So witless? The answer was that slavery unmanned a man.
So he must remain himself and plan better; obtain, by hook or by crook. some clothes which would pass unnoticed in that crowded gateway. Not easy, for even cast-off clothes cost money and he had none; nor any means of obtaining it. But he must try …
Then something strange happened. He, the least fanciful man in the world, began to fancy that he was being watched. Employed in his proper occupation he would have understood exactly what that slight uneasiness, a crepitation between the shoulders and at the back of the neck, implied. An enemy, in hiding. Here he could only relate to it his escapade; somebody knew, though nothing had been said, somebody was watching for him to put a foot wrong again. More than once, at work in the quiet, secret garden, he was so conscious of an eye upon him that he straightened up from what he was doing and wheeled round. And there sat Ermin, half-asleep as always, having assigned jobs, knowing they would be done. The other slaves busy. So who was watching? Not only in the garden. It sometimes happened in the stable yard.
That summer the silver tubs on the steps and the terrace had been planted with orange trees of a peculiar kind; they flowered profusely but did not fruit. They had a strong, heady scent and they needed watering every morning. In early September they were still
in a state which elsewhere would have been highly regarded but Ermin ambled round and said that they were past their best and on the morrow must be replaced by hyacinths, forced into unseasonable flowering by a special method of rearing. ‘Water the tubs well,’ he said, ‘it will loosen the roots for tomorrow. And we shall need a lot of liquid from the tank. Be ready with it when I open the gate tomorrow morning.’
A voice said, ‘Do not look round. Come to the tub nearest the doorway but turn your back. And listen—if the answer is yes, stand still; if not walk away. You wish to be free?’ He stood still. ‘You will take a risk? Flogging? Branding?’ He stood still. The voice was very soft, hardly more than a whisper, but it had an incisive quality. ‘Death? Unpleasant death?’ He stood still. ‘Tomorrow, immediately after the third prayer. The street of the shoemakers. The shop of the blind man. You will ask for red shoes, lined with blue.’
He waited, diligently watering the little orange tree, but no more was said.
He was now in a quandary. It could be a trap. Confirmation of his suspicion of having been watched, that his attempt to get away, though unremarked upon, had not gone unnoticed.
Why should someone in the harem seem to plot with him?
One appalling answer did present itself. He was the man who had refused to train Selim’s men in western methods of warfare; he had been sent to the quarry and forgotten; brought out by a sheer chance. Had the King identified him, remembered a grudge and planned to destroy him in the most hideous manner? The King’s women were sacrosanct—there were shocking stories whispered about concerning the fate of men who, even inadvertently, came into contact with one.
Deeply troubled, Sir Godfrey went along to the stable yard where everything was in a bustle. At dawn the next day the King was leaving for Escalona where another attack from the Christians was expected. Horses and harness, weapons and gear were being put into a state of perfect readiness and even the garden slaves were pressed into service.