by Lynch, R J
‘You would make me a farmer.’
‘And that is enough?’
‘It is.’
‘I will never again be used in that way. I will give you no children beyond this one I carry. It is a cold bed you would make for yourself, for I swear you will not share mine. I see that makes you pause.’
‘If that is your condition…’
‘Yes?’
Tom thought. ‘I would still marry you.’
‘To be a farmer.’
‘And no labourer. Yes.’
‘I have a mother and father, two younger brothers and a sister yet at home. They will come with me. You pause again.’
‘I accept your terms.’
‘You want so much to be a farmer?’
‘I want so much not to be a labourer.’
‘Do you think it fair that we can be treated like this?’
‘No.’
‘But you want to be a farmer.’
‘I do. And I have no other chance but you.’
‘Do you like me?’
‘I have always liked you.’
Lizzie paused. ‘I did not know that,’ she said at length.
‘There is no reason why you should. Of course, we never talked before. You are young, and anyway I was afraid you would reject me. I did get up the courage to knock at your door, but you were so angry...I did not know then what I know now.’
‘You liked me? I am amazed. But why?’
‘The Greeners have spirit and pride, and I admire you for that. You are poor, like so many people here, and you carry yourselves with dignity.’ He blushed. ‘And I have always found you pretty.’
‘And now? Do you still feel the same way?’
‘Today? In the way you speak to me? No. I do not like you.’
‘And I do not like you. And you are right. If you had spoken for me I would have laughed at you. You bring nothing that I would look for in a husband. And you will have that position in name only.’ Lizzie turned away. ‘You had best go to the Rector and arrange our wedding day.’
‘When shall it be?’
‘That is no matter to me.’
Tom watched her go. A part of his mind told him to walk away now and forget about the whole thing. A larger part said that that would mean abandoning the chance to have a farm of his own. And the largest part said, “She cannot remain angry for ever. Cherish her, care for her and her child, let her see how you feel and one day she will truly be your wife.”
But how he wished he had not been too scared to say that his first reason for wanting to marry her was just that—to marry her. Not to be a farmer. For had he not gone to ask for her hand at a time when there was no prospect of Chopwell Garth?
Chapter 19
It was the afternoon of Friday, the eighteenth of March. A good deal of time had elapsed since Blakiston had asked George Bright to find people who had seen Joseph Kelly on the road and the Constable had drawn a blank. Blakiston suspected that they did not have a sufficiently good idea of what Kelly looked like, and had asked both Bright and Martin Wale to meet him at his home to remedy this.
The Curate was truculent from the start. ‘He cannot find him? What do you expect of a dissenter? He probably does not want to find him.’
Bright walked out of the room, opened the front door and spat loudly into the road before returning. He said nothing.
‘You are not supposed to be a Constable,’ said Martin.
‘I was elected.’
‘Then you should have found someone to take your place, as the law requires, and paid him.’
‘I am a farmer. I have no money to pay substitutes.’
‘Gentlemen,’ said Blakiston. ‘We are here to find a murderer, not to fight among ourselves.’
‘The murderer is a Catholic and the Constable is a dissenter,’ said Wale. ‘One will not catch the other.’
George Bright’s normally swarthy complexion was suffused with angry red. ‘You think I’d help a papist? You are right! Into the jaws of hell is where I would help him. Though he will find his way there with no help from me.’
Blakiston smacked the table with the palm of his hand. ‘Please! Let us have no more of this. Mister Wale, do as I have asked and give us the clearest description you can of this man. And I will not hear one more word of papists and dissenters. From either of you. How tall was he?’
‘He was about my height,’ said Martin.
‘Five feet and five inches?’
‘About that.’
‘His face?’
‘Dark. Dirty. He had small eyes, too close together, and a scar on his left cheek. Just here,’ and Wale pointed with his finger at his own face. ‘What are you laughing at?’
‘This is a story,’ said Bright. ‘You are making it up.’
‘Hair?’ said Blakiston before Martin could respond.
‘He wore a hat. A tricorn hat, like yours, but old and frayed.’
‘On his feet?’
‘Boots, I suppose. I did not look at his feet.’
‘His attire?’
‘He was in rags. A black coat, woollen, with a rent here.’ He pointed at his shoulder. ‘A white shirt, dirty. I do not recall a waistcoat. I believe he may have been wearing leather breeches but I cannot be sure.’
‘Thank you. George Bright, is that a clear picture? Do you have anything you wish to ask Mister Wale?’
‘Was there any trace of a shamrock?’ asked Bright. ‘Had he a shillelagh about him?’
Wale turned on the Constable a look of withering contempt. Blakiston was about to intervene yet again when Wale said, ‘He was not Irish. I have never said he was Irish. People hear the name Joseph Kelly and they assume he came from Ireland. As I told Mister Blakiston, his father may have been from there, but this man said he was from Hornsea and the way he spoke bore that out.’
Bright smirked. Wale turned to Blakiston and said, ‘Is that enough? Must I spend any more time in the company of this godless person?’
‘Thank you, Mister Wale,’ said Blakiston. ‘You may go.’
When the Curate had left, Blakiston said, ‘You do not believe in this Joseph Kelly, do you?’
‘A man in a tricorn hat, which no working man any longer wears, with eyes set too close together and a scar on his face, has walked the roads of this parish for hours in daylight with all the busy-bodies we have here and no-one noticed him. Had Wale decided on a tight-waisted jacket and wide-bottomed trousers, in the style of a seafaring man, he would have told us of a parrot on the man’s shoulder. No, sir, I do not believe it.’
Blakiston recalled Thomas’s words. “A man who should stand out in a country parish spends hours on the road, yet no-one sees him but my curate.” He had thought at the time that Thomas’s distracted air concerned whatever matter was clearly troubling Lady Isabella. Now he was less sure.
‘You do not think you may be biased against Mister Wale? For religious reasons? Tell me, how did it come about that a dissenter is Constable?’
‘The parish elects new officers each year, sir, with a Constable in each chapelry. They chose me in Ryton. I did not object. I have always got on well with the people here. I met all the other requirements. Keeping the place where I live free of strife is in my interests as much as those of people of the established church.’
‘You do not call them Protestants?’
‘They are Protestants, sir. But so am I.’
‘Forgive me. I am never sure what it is that dissenters dissent against. You may be right to doubt the story. Nevertheless, I should like you to ask some more people. I had thought we had identified Reuben Cooper’s murderer. Let us not give up the search until we are more certain.’
‘As you wish, sir.’
‘One
more thing. When Reuben Cooper’s house burned down, the remains of an old bucket were found there. It is possible there may have been blood in it, and I should very much like to know how that blood came to be there, but the bucket vanished from the porch in which it had been left. It ended on Dick Jackson’s fire.’
‘He burned it?’
‘He did. He says someone left it in his garden and it was no use as anything but firewood. Talk to him, Bright. Talk to his cousin Jeffrey Drabble, too. Is it true that someone left the bucket there? Or did Jackson take it from the Church porch? And, if he did, why? What was he covering up?’
In two days, Blakiston would be going to the Rectory for his regular Sunday evening dinner engagement, but he felt sufficiently concerned that he locked his front door and walked over now to see whether the Rector was at home. Sitting in Thomas’s study nursing a glass of Madeira, he said what was on his mind.
‘When I told you about the search for Joseph Kelly, and how difficult it was to find someone who had noticed him, you said something about it being only Martin Wale who had seen him. You seemed preoccupied, but I had noticed that Lady Isabella, too, was abstracted and I believed that you were both troubled by the same matter. Now, I am not so sure.’
‘James, I came to be distressed by the same thing as Isabella, for that was the knowledge that Lizzie Greener’s child had been fathered by the Earl of Wrekin, but I did not know that when you and I were talking. You are correct; I suspected that this Irishman who is not an Irishman was an invention.’
‘If you are right, I shall have to go back to my intention to question all of Reuben Cooper’s children that I can find.’
‘But why Martin should mislead you in that way, I cannot begin to imagine. Unless he is protecting one of the Cooper brood.’
‘It may have been a matter of simple dislike. He resented my treatment of him at the time Cooper was murdered and sought to throw me off the track.’
‘That is no way for a man of God to behave. No ordained minister should ever lie. Not even when he believes, as I am sure Martin does, that he is God’s only messenger in Ryton parish.’
‘Well, whatever his reasons, if he has done what we think he has done I must go back to the beginning. It is seven weeks since Cooper died and here I am, wasting time on a search for someone who may not exist.’
‘I am sorry, James. Will you stay for dinner?’
‘Thank you, but no. I enjoy my Sunday evenings more than I can say, but I do not wish to become a burden on the only true friends I have here.’
‘I assure you you would be most welcome.’
‘Thank you again, James, but I shall take my meal at the inn.’
He let Thomas lead him from the study towards the door. In the hallway he heard a voice he recognised immediately. ‘Excuse me, Thomas,’ he said and turned to follow the sound. In the kitchen he found the person the voice had led him to expect to find, with a hand on the door, speaking to Rosina. She bobbed a curtsey in the direction of both men. Blakiston was struck, as so often before, by the girl’s calmness and that she never looked flustered by the presence of those more powerful than her.
‘Kate Greener,’ he said. ‘I am pleased to see you. You hold the door. Are you leaving?’
‘Yes, sir. I have brought one of our chickens for the kitchen here, and now I must go home.’ She smiled, and though he had seen the sweetness of that smile before his heart lurched.
‘There is something I must say to you. Let us walk out together.’
‘You must meet in the road outside,’ said Thomas. ‘It is not fitting for you to leave by the back door.’
‘I am not too proud to use the same door as a Greener,’ said Blakiston and waited for Thomas to say that, in that case, then of course Kate must leave by the front door, too. But Thomas did not say that. Blakiston held out his hand to shake the Rector’s. ‘Till Sunday, my good friend.’
‘What was it you wished to say to me, sir?’ asked Kate when they were outside.
‘Kate, it has grieved me many times that I said such thoughtless things about your sister. Now I know why she was so angry. I want you to know how sorry I am.’
‘But sir, you said so at the time.’
‘And I am saying it again.’ He smiled, and Kate smiled back. ‘So that you will know I mean it.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘You are to walk home? Alone?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Take care, Kate. There are bad people in the world. Somewhere there is a man who hit Reuben Cooper on the head so hard that he died.’
‘I will be careful, sir.’
The atmosphere between the Rector and his wife was still frosty that dinner time, but Lady Isabella knew the dangers of allowing bad feelings to go on too long. She allowed Thomas to talk to her. Afterwards, she wrote of the conversation in her journal.
Friday 18th March 1763
It is as clear as a pikestaff that Martin Wale knows who murdered Reuben Cooper and is protecting the killer—for what reason, we may only surmise. Thomas and Mister Blakiston would fret until Christmas over the question: How did the bucket get to Dick Jackson’s garden? And yet I was able to answer that question in a moment, and I did so, and now Thomas will tell Mister Blakiston and we may consider the matter closed. It was Martin Wale who took it from the Church porch, and therefore one assumes it was Martin Wale who placed it where Dick Jackson could make use of it. And how do I know this? Because I was there, in the Church, renewing the flowers and, though Martin did not see me, I saw him.
And now we know that Martin invented the idea of an itinerant Irishman on whom to throw suspicion. Why would he do that, if not to protect someone else? But, of course, that is too simple for Thomas’s mind. He sees only that Martin has done something wrong, and that is true, for it must be wrong to help a murderer escape. And yet, as with Mistress Wortley, one sees the good in him. For the person on whom he casts blame does not exist, and therefore cannot be tried, and the person to whom he makes a present of a bucket that is essentially firewood is one most earnestly in need of it to warm his hearth this desperate cold winter.
But still the question remains: Who is it that he is protecting? Who is it that Martin Wale would consider must be kept safe from justice and the hangman? I wonder whether we will ever know.
Blakiston sat long by his window that evening. He had no desire to read, no wish for society. Or perhaps he did, but it was not a wish he could bring himself to think on.
He had believed himself cured of any thought of love. After the blow he had felt when his engagement was ended, he had wanted only a life in which his own company was enough. He still wanted that. Was it so much to ask? Could a man not put these feelings behind him? How did monks do it?
In the few moments he had spent in Kate’s company, he had been conscious of a feeling of peace, of being at one with the world. And yet, it could not be. Though she would soon be a farmer’s sister-in-law and not a day labourer’s daughter, Kate Greener was still too far beneath him for there ever to be any reasonable possibility of...he would not go on, would not allow his thoughts to edge near to such a thing.
But that sweet smile. That air of calm. One day a man would marry Kate, and it could not be him, and he believed he would hate that man with all his heart.
Kate, too, could not get their meeting out of her mind. She lay in bed beside Lizzie in their two roomed hovel and pictured the tall Overseer, eight years her senior and so far beyond her hopes. She did not think that the match was impossible, for she did not think of it at all. She knew, had known since she was small, that the likes of Blakiston were not for the likes of her. Such a thing could never be.
But that did not prevent her, as she drifted into sleep, from imagining those strong arms around her, holding her close, or those handsome lips moving slowly forwa
rd to kiss hers.
It did no harm to dream. Thinking such dreams could ever become reality, that was what damaged people’s lives. And Kate knew it.
One more person dreamed that night of the person he loved, and he was the only one of the three who hoped to have his heart’s desire. Tom Laws had already moved into Chopwell Garth, for the Robinsons had had to go and someone must look after the place. Blakiston had made it very clear that, if the marriage to Lizzie did not happen, Tom would be replaced. But here he was, in a farm of his own, one of his two dreams achieved. The banns must be read twice more, and then he would have the second. She would not share his bed, would allow him none of the privileges of marriage, but she would be his wife and, with time, when she saw how he cared for her and for their child, who knew what might happen?
There could be no happier man in the whole of Ryton parish.
Chapter 20
George Bright was a conscientious man. He did not believe that Joseph Kelly existed, but he had looked for him as earnestly as though he did. Nor did he believe it likely that the bucket burned by Dick Jackson had contained blood, or that it had anything to say about the murder of Reuben Cooper, but Blakiston had told him to ask Dick Jackson about it and he set out to do so.
All work in the fields was over for the day, and George mounted his modest but cared-for horse and road in the dark to Jackson’s hovel. It was empty. The light of a candle was visible through cracks in the wooden shutters that covered the glassless windows of Jeffrey Drabble’s equally squalid home near by, and Bright rode to it, dismounted and rapped on the door.
‘Jot!’ exclaimed Drabble when he came to the door. ‘Come in, man, and take a dish of tea with us.’
“Us” proved, as Bright had hoped, to be Drabble and Dick Jackson. He was struck, as he had been before, by the difference it made in a house when only a man lived there. No matter how poor they might be, the homes he knew where the wife still lived preserved at least some minimum level of cleanliness and decency. But when the woman was gone and the man had the place to himself, those things were rarely to be seen, unless the man had daughters living near by. He thanked God that his own wife had been spared, for what delight he had in life came from that quarter.