The Honey and the Sting

by E C Fremantle

  I try to take her arm but she will not be held. It is Lark who manages to calm her eventually. ‘What’s the matter? Try to breathe. Speak slowly.’

  She can’t speak without stuttering and all I can think is that I need her to be calm.

  Lark talks to her sweetly, as if she is an infant. ‘I expect she got herself caught up. I noticed a few snares lying around in the yard. Poor puss.’ Hope sniffs and wipes her face with her cuff. ‘Will you come and give me a hand in the barn? I could do with your help.’

  I busy myself with ordinary tasks, until Rafe appears with a brace of rabbits slung over his shoulder, like a fur stole. The lieutenant is by his side, describing how to make a slingshot. ‘It takes a lot of practice to hit anything with any accuracy.’

  ‘Like Hywel?’ says Rafe. ‘He can hit a sparrow at a hundred paces.’

  ‘I think that’s very unlikely.’ The lieutenant looks doubtful. ‘Don’t you want to show your mother what we caught?’

  Rafe proudly holds up the rabbits for me to see. ‘The lieutenant’s going to show me how to skin them.’

  I am glad to see him so content, but at the same time am perturbed that he seems so changed, the rabbits suspended from his hand, where his toy monkey might once have been. A jolt of loss comes with the inevitability of him growing up and leaving me with no one to care for. I want to stop time. It kicks the breath out of me.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Rafe’s voice draws me back and I see him take an object from his pocket. In my grief, I had forgotten the penknife and that he had lied to me in such an unabashed manner – another sign of his growing up. The thought sends new discomfort through me. His father is an accomplished liar, too.

  ‘That penknife,’ I say. ‘You told me Lieutenant Bloor gave it to you.’ Rafe is biting his lip and will not meet my eye. ‘He didn’t, did he?’

  ‘Oh, but it was me he got it from.’ The lieutenant is smiling.

  ‘I thought you said you had no penknife.’ Suspicion prods at me anew. I finger the enamel ring.

  Rafe is shuffling from one foot to the other. The lieutenant is still smiling.

  ‘I must have thought you meant something else. I’m so sorry,’ he says, with disarming warmth. ‘What with everything.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ I feel embarrassed now for making a fuss over a minor confusion.

  ‘Would you object,’ asks the lieutenant, ‘if I teach your son how to skin and gut one of these?’ He points at the rabbits.

  ‘Of course not. It’s very kind of you to be so attentive to him.’

  The lieutenant explains to Rafe that it is better to let game hang for a couple of days, that it tastes better.

  ‘You’ll let me have one for the pot today, though, won’t you?’ Margie says. ‘A rabbit stew’ll do us all good.’

  ‘Of course.’ Felton, like a conjurer, deftly skins one of the carcasses, then demonstrates to a captivated Rafe how to remove the guts.

  Felton

  The house is deathly quiet. The afternoon heat has sent them all to rest inside. All but Felton, who sits under a tree in the orchard with his book. He stares at the page, not reading, unable to concentrate. The stench of the vagrant, urine and unwashed flesh, clings to him, though he has scrubbed himself several times since. It is the smell of his conscience. He bats it away. The last thing he needs now is a fit of morality.

  He can’t stop running over the conversation with Hester about the letters. There was a moment when he believed he was exposed but he managed to reel himself back from the brink. He convinced her with a lie and a measure of disarming remorse, but he must tread carefully. There is no time to lose – one more misstep and she will not be so easily persuaded.

  There has been talk of the old man being sent to Ludlow tomorrow with Melis’s body. Hester will not accompany them. Felton must persuade her out into the forest on some pretext. Her fresh-dug grave awaits. But she is a wilful creature and will not easily be convinced to leave the house. He cannot imagine what George could possibly have seen in her.

  He wonders if Worley has arrived at Ludlow yet. It is of no use him being there if Felton cannot get word to him and, anyway, the man cannot show himself here as he would be recognized.

  He needs a firm plan.

  Picking an apple from a low bough, he slices it with Bloor’s knife, finding its flesh crawling with maggots – like Hester, he thinks, innocent on the surface and rotten beneath. Flinging the fruit away, he notices that one of the bee skeps has been upended and is lying in the nettles at the edge of the paddock. Curiosity draws him towards it, only to discover that, not only is the fallen skep empty, all of them are. He cannot find a single bee, no sign even of any recent activity, just some vacant combs, brown and crusted with age and a few dead insects.

  It makes him wonder what the mad sister was doing out here all the time and about the welts that covered her body. He has tried not to ponder on her disturbing visions but the disquiet will not entirely leave him. She had described George’s death so vividly and the image has planted itself in his head.

  Felton is a soldier, a rationalist: he has always wanted to see those who claim to know the future as charlatans, fleecing the weak and impressionable. But Melis … His blood chills as he recognizes that there may well be some truth behind her madness. George had said it. These women have been designing his fall. A new urgency takes hold in him, but he is bereft of ideas.

  Returning to his book, which has been lying open in the sun, he notices that the page is charred where the magnifier had rested on it. Annoyance wells. It is the book from George and is dear to him. He notes, with a sardonic huff, that the obscured passage of text is an essay on Truth.

  Gazing at the charred circle, an idea scores itself into his head, a new idea.

  Hope

  Rafe is making a paper fan. A bee hovers close, humming as loudly as a corn crake. Rafe tries to bat it away, exciting the puppy, which jumps up, snapping at it.

  ‘You’ll make it angry,’ Hope tells him.

  She imagines it is Melis come to haunt her.

  She is darning Hester’s stockings. It might seem a futile exercise, given Hester goes about barefoot, but it has a soothing effect, as if she may be able to put herself back together, one minuscule stitch at a time.

  Rafe sits down on the floor and begins to rummage through the sewing bag, rearranging the pins in the pincushion to spell his initials. They are in the blue room, where the doors to the balcony have been secured with a plank nailed across them, a brutal reminder of her sister’s fall.

  She must not think of that.

  There is nowhere Hope can escape the oppressive sense of the house turning on its occupants. She can tolerate this room only because she knows the lieutenant is a few steps away across the landing writing in his journal. She saw him through a knot in the wood of his door, couldn’t stop herself peeping, and wants, desperately, to know what he writes, whether he writes about her, whether he thinks of her.

  The room is unusually quiet, as if something is missing, or not quite as it should be. Sweat trickles beneath her clothes, but she refuses to go about in her shift, like her sister. Lark had said it was going to rain tomorrow, said she could smell it on its way. Hope doesn’t believe her, not for a moment. Lark is not right about the lieutenant either. For what reason, other than jealousy, would she cast aspersions on the man sent to protect them?

  Hope holds to this belief tightly, with both hands. She thinks she understands jealousy. It was always the reason Melis used to give her as a child, when the village girls didn’t invite her to play with them. ‘They envy you your prettiness,’ she would say.

  A sudden sharp pain burns her ankle, as if someone has held a flame to it, making her cry out.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ The pincushion falls from Rafe’s hand. His face opens up with sympathy.

  ‘That bee must have stung me.’ She lifts her foot, bringing it across her knee, rolling down her stocking so she can see, telling herself it i
s just a bee, nothing more sinister, but her imagination wants to take her down a darker path.

  She finds the puncture, a red spot, and squeezes the sides of it gently, but no black sting appears.

  ‘What is it?’ Rafe peers at the bead of blood.

  ‘I’m sure it was a bee, not a wasp, but I can’t find the sting.’ She has a momentary suspicion that Rafe has stabbed her with a pin. ‘Open your hands.’ He does as she asks, without hesitation. His hands are empty and she feels bad for having suspected him.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ He takes out his handkerchief to dab at the puncture. A small crimson smear interrupts the linen. ‘Shall I kiss it better?’ Without waiting for a response, he plants his lips lightly on her ankle. ‘Poor you.’ Then something seems to occur to him, and he meets her eyes with a limpid gaze. ‘It might have been a queen. The queen doesn’t leave her sting behind. She can sting as many times as she wants without dying.’

  Hope hears Melis’s voice coming from his mouth and suddenly has the feeling of having stood up too quickly, though she is rooted to the chair.

  ‘Aunt Hope. Aunt Hope!’ It is Rafe, waving the paper fan in front of her face, speaking with his own voice. ‘What is it? Are you going to faint?’

  She takes a few deep breaths. ‘It’s very hot, that’s all. Let’s tidy these things.’

  As they are putting everything away into the sewing bag, she realizes what is not quite right about the room.

  The clock has fallen silent.

  With everything that has happened she has forgotten to wind it.

  The clock stares, hands spread at ten past ten. The thought flickers into her head that that was the time Melis fell, that the clock is part of the house’s conspiracy, but she reins in her imagination before it runs away with her.

  No. Her mind is fooling her.

  Hester

  I didn’t collect the eggs today. I can’t muster the will to do anything but sit with my sister in prayer. I can hear Rafe and Hope descending the stairs, speaking in hushed voices, not wanting to disturb me.

  The chapel is cooler than the rest of the house. A putrid sweetness hangs in the air. Her face is sinking, her eyelids hollowing. Someone has crossed her hands over her breast. Did I do it? I can’t remember. Sorrow has rubbed away my sense.

  Gifford will be leaving shortly with her and though I want, desperately, to say prayers at her burial, I cannot risk Rafe’s safety. Melis would understand. The living must come first.

  I notice one of the stained-glass panes is broken, a jagged aperture open to the sky. The trees outside rustle and murmur, the poplars whispering. Am I dreaming or has the stagnant air finally caught a breeze? I become aware of the faint smell of smoke. It must be from the kitchen chimney.

  If the smoke is coming from the kitchen chimney why, then, can I hear, I am sure of it, the faint crack and spit of flames from this side of the house? A bonfire? Gifford must be mad to light one with everything so parched.

  The sound becomes more insistent, the smell too, luring me out onto the landing where a large casement gives onto the yard. To my horror, I am confronted with the sight of the henhouse ablaze, thick tongues of flame licking skywards and a pillar of angry smoke rising, billowing up to obscure the trees behind.

  I run down the stairs, two, three at a time, shouting, bursting into the kitchen to raise the alarm. Ordering them all to get to the well and draw up water to quench the flames, before the whole place catches. ‘The wind’s up. We’ve got to stop it.’

  The lieutenant stands immobile, looking at me in stupefaction, as if he hasn’t understood what I’ve said, before taking to his heels and rushing outside.

  Hope is out of her seat hurling words in his wake. ‘Rafe! Rafe’s in there!’

  I think I have misheard, but she says it again.

  I crash across the smoke-filled yard towards the henhouse but am confronted by a jabbering wall of flame sucking up the wooden structure. Gifford is shouting about buckets. The entrance has not caught yet. I step forward into thick smoke, calling Rafe’s name, my voice swallowed by the roar of the fire. Heat blistering. Lungs burning. A hand grabs me, pulling me back.

  The lieutenant forces me aside, barging through, disappearing into the conflagration.

  A deafening howl fills the air then, louder than the fire, louder than Gifford’s shouting, louder than the wind picking up, louder than the barking dogs.

  A sharp smack stings my face, bringing me to my senses. It was I who was screaming. ‘Pull yourself together!’ It’s Hope, thrusting a bucket into my hand and dragging me towards the well. ‘We need to put out the fire. Leave Rafe to him.’

  Margie is at the well, winding the crank with a squeal, while Lark runs back and forth from the barn with the big milk churns.

  Margie, strong as an ox, hauls each full bucket up and out and into my arms. I run to Hope, passing it to her, water slapping everywhere, then Gifford takes it, flinging it into the flames. On and on, pail after pail, churn after churn, but the fire seems to grow in the wind.

  The lieutenant hasn’t reappeared. A glut of dry matter is stuck in my throat. It is dread. No time to think. We continue. On and on. Each bucketful of water woefully inadequate.

  My throat is sore, eyes smarting, tears pouring.

  It seems a thousand hours but must be only moments later that the lieutenant emerges, just as the roof collapses with a crash, in a tower of flying sparks.

  His face is black. Rafe is in his arms, his face black too. Upright. Moving. Alive. He is alive. The bucket falls from my hands. Water runs everywhere. I take him into my arms, welding him to me.

  Shock has struck him dumb – struck us all dumb.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ I check his skin for burns. His hair is singed, his hands scorched but only slightly. It seems impossible that he has survived virtually unscathed. His grey eyes, rimmed in red, are round and bright in his sooty face.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother.’ He is astonishingly composed, so stoic. ‘I wanted to get the eggs as a surprise for you. You were so tired. But the door blew shut when I was inside and I couldn’t undo the latch.’

  ‘No, no, no, my sweetheart, don’t be sorry.’ I am gabbling with relief. ‘Thank God.’ I cling to his thin little body. We are both shaking now, too shocked to cry. ‘Thank God for the lieutenant. He saved your life.’

  ‘Wind’s pushing it towards the barn,’ cries Gifford.

  I wrap a wet cloth round Rafe’s hands and sit him on the steps so I can help. We all know that if it catches the barn the house will be next.

  Summoning all the strength we can muster, we continue lugging the buckets along the line, on and on.

  Just as the flames have begun to diminish a new gust of wind blows, rattling all the doors and windows, shaking the trees, causing the flames to flare up again, higher than ever. Hopelessness descends and someone suggests we turn our attentions to saving the barn. The henhouse burns with renewed vigour while a ladder is found and leaned against the barn. The lieutenant climbs it, and containers of water are handed to him, which he heaves up with his one good arm to fling across the thatch. Even Rafe helps now, running to and fro to pass the empty buckets back to Margie.

  The sky turns dark with a great boiling bank of black clouds, as if an angry god has doused the sun. We are all silently, hopelessly, praying for a downpour.

  Then it comes, a sudden miraculous squall of heavy ram-rod rain, buffeting and drenching us all. And the flames are finally smothered. The rain stops as fast as it came, leaving the gutters gushing, the eaves dripping and the yard slick with mud, while a few surviving hens peck nearby, seeming oblivious.

  Charred struts rise from the black pile of steaming embers where the henhouse once stood. I look back at the house, its twin, half expecting it, too, to be gone, but it is drenched in sunlight, its bricks a smug pink, windows shimmering.

  Only now do I fully comprehend the horror of what might have happened had the lieutenant not been so quick to intervene. My relief is so grea
t I feel unsteady, as if I am drunk. I lead Rafe back to the steps to sit, the lieutenant sinking down beside us.

  ‘You saved his life.’ I begin to thank him, the words seeming inadequate, but he holds up his hand, shaking his head.

  ‘It’s what anyone would have done.’ Slumped by the door, head back against the brick wall, he looks not only dog-tired but distraught. I wonder if the incident has brought back the horror of the battlefield.

  ‘It should have been me.’ I am struck then by the truth of that fact. ‘I am the one who always collects the eggs … Every morning.’ Then it hits me, like a crack on the head. Melis predicted this: the fire, Rafe inside. I must blanch because he asks if I am all right. ‘It is shock,’ I say, by way of explanation, for how can I tell him that my sister knew this would happen?

  I take Rafe into the kitchen, washing the soot from his skin and tending his scorched hands, anointing them with salve. Upstairs I carefully peel off his clothes and find him clean ones. He is silent and withdrawn, white with exhaustion beneath the smut. Waves of blessed relief break over me whenever I consider what might have happened.

  ‘What’s that?’ He is staring at the nub of wax on the windowsill, the remains of the little figure he’d carved for me and I berate myself for not having hidden it. ‘You said you would treasure it.’

  I don’t know what to say to him.

  Hope sidles into the room on tiptoe, closing the door quietly and asking in a whisper after her nephew. She is still filthy, soaked to the skin and covered with soot and mud. ‘This was what Melis saw, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I believe so.’ I cannot continue to pretend and Melis is gone now, so what do I have to protect Hope from? ‘Our sister predicted other things that came to pass. It was her curse.’

  ‘But you always told me …’

  ‘I know. I thought the truth would trouble you.’

  She begins to cry, tears making runnels in the smears of soot on her face. ‘Poor, poor Melis. I can’t imagine how terrible it must have been.’ I draw her into my arms, noticing an object in her hand, a blackened ring the size of a cup’s rim.