North Side of the Tree
MAGGIE PRINCE

Dedication

For Chris, always

Map

Epigraph

In transposing Beatrice’s story into modern English,the tone and content of her original narrativehave been preserved throughout,and her exact words wherever possible.

It is the late 1500s. Queen Elizabeth I is on the throne of England…

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Map

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Keep Reading

Glossary

Acknowledgements

Praise For Raider’s Tide

Also by Maggie Prince

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

I walk the Old Corpse Road again. In the dawn light the woods are full of birdsong and the waking voices of sheep. Around me, oak and hazel trees are turning to red and gold and ruin.

I am on my way to visit my sister who is living at Wraithwaite Parsonage in order to avoid being killed by my father. I move carefully amongst the trees, because this is the way he may be coming home, tired and edgy from a night’s robbery on The King’s Strete, some miles to the east of us.

I do not wish to meet my father, but I am not in a position to criticise him, because I too have a secret. I am a traitor. Three people know it, and their silence is all that stands between me and being burnt at the stake.

I reach the rockface that makes the Old Corpse Road such a quick but difficult short-cut to our neighbouring village, and climb the steps cut into it, breathing in the earthy smells of autumn. Stunted yews and clumps of heather grow out of clefts in the limestone, and I hold on to them to haul myself up. At the top I nearly collapse with fright. Two strange men are asleep amongst the roots of a beech tree, perilously close to the edge of the escarpment. They have swords and axes at their sides. I tiptoe past them. These must be some of the men who walked from all over the district to march on Scotland with my father. Last spring we were raided by Scots, as we often are in this part of the country. Our men were to have raided them back, but this has now been put off until next spring, since our enemies have been forewarned by a fugitive Scot who hid for months in a hermit’s cottage in the woods, and discovered our plans.

Oh Robert, where are you now? Are you safe? You may be gone from here, but I wish very much that you could be gone from my mind too.

As I set off through the thinning trees, on to the heathland which surrounds Wraithwaite, I glance back at the two men and silently wish them well. I’m glad this raid has been abandoned, and that they do not have to go to war. Maybe the raid on Scotland will be forgotten altogether now. With Robert gone, and all the preparations for winter needing to be made, anti-Scottish feeling along the border is dying down.

I pass the first cottages along the track to Wraithwaite. A woman is hanging out her washing. We call, “Good morrow, mistress,” to each other, and she glances at the sky and adds, “I’m tempting fate. It’s going to rain.”

A flurry of wind blows the fallen leaves into a spiral ahead of me, and I nod in agreement. “You’re right, mistress.”

Sometimes, relief just washes over me. Little exchanges like this feel such a luxury, after being on the wrong side of the law for so long. I can pretend to be a respectable member of the community again, working the family farm, preparing to become betrothed to Cousin Hugh. Robert is gone. He wasn’t caught, and neither was I. My narrow escape makes me want to be very, very good indeed, even to the extent of marrying Hugh, my childhood playmate, as is expected of me, no matter how ludicrous it might feel.

The parsonage stands on the far side of Wraithwaite Green. It is a beautiful stone house, but in poor repair. There is worm in its doorposts, and its roof slates are pushed out of kilter by tuffets of bright green moss. John Becker, our young and beautiful parson, was my teacher until I turned sixteen earlier this year. He knows my secret. He also saved me from drowning a month back. The warmth which once developed between us during long afternoons in a drowsy classroom has many a time teetered on the verge of becoming something more. I daren’t look too closely at my feelings for John Becker, if I am indeed to redeem myself by marrying Hugh.

I walk up to the front of the house. Over the door, carved into the lintel, are the words Truth and grace be to this place. I can hear someone chopping wood behind the house, so when no one answers my knock, I walk round to the back. John is chopping logs. He is shirtless and in coarse woven breeches and leather jerkin. He looks most unlike a priest. He hasn’t seen me. I pull my cloak tightly round me and watch him swinging the axe at log after log, splitting them with the grace of long practice. The back of his neck is running with sweat. His dark curls look chaotic and unkempt.

I say softly, “Hello John…” and he turns. He is not an easy person to catch unawares, but I do so then. He stares at me for a moment, then secures the axe with a gentle chop into a new log, and comes over to me. I start to say, “Verity sent word that she wants to see me…” but the words dry in my throat as John Becker holds me by the shoulders and kisses me full on the lips. I feel a shock of such proportions that for a moment I scarcely know where I am. I look up at him. Next to us in the stables his black horse, Universe, stamps and snorts.

John says, “I refuse to go on pretending. I know it’s probably too soon after your Scot, Beatie, but…”

There are footsteps behind me, and someone whistling. I turn. It is my sister, Verity.

“Beatie!” She comes out of the house and hugs me, then glances curiously from one to the other of us. “Well, I do declare,” she murmurs.

Universe is now trying to kick the stable door down. John unbars the top half of it. “I’d better let him out into the meadow. You two go in.” He smiles at Verity. “You have matters to discuss, I think. I’ll join you later.”

My sister has been here for many weeks now, after angering my father by her desire to marry not her Cousin Gerald, as the family decreed, but James Sorrell, a young neighbouring farmer. James also had to take refuge here from my father’s wrath for a while, but is now back tending his own farm, protected by two sturdy bodyguards, George and Martinus. They were once my father’s henchmen before they too angered him and were sent away. Many people anger my father. Most end up elsewhere.

I go into the kitchen to greet Mother Bain, John’s deaf, elderly housekeeper, then follow Verity up the narrow wooden stairs and along the landing to her room. The parsonage is in even worse fettle inside than out. The beams over our heads are crumbling to dust in places, and the door is so warped that it gapes against its frame when I shut it behind me. Verity’s bed, though, is beautiful: pale old oak carved with scrolls and animals, and hung about with fine grey velvet curtains. She climbs up against the heap of bolsters at the head of the bed, and I sit on the end. The feather mattress shifts comfortably to the shape of my legs. Verity is still in her nightsmock, a vast linen article of smothering decency. Her day clothes lie on a cedar chest by the wall. “Don’t you want to get dressed?” I ask her.

She twists a corner of the linen sheet round her finger, staring at it. “Nay, Beatie. I have to have some new clothes made. I can’t get into these any more. Will you send Germaine over to measure me? I have to tell you this, and I want you to tell Mother, but no one else. I’m with child.”

Verity, at fifteen, is a year younger than me. I gape at my younger sister and feel many things. I feel impressed. She has done what I have not. I feel jubilant. There is to be a new life in the family, and myself an aunt. Most of all, I feel terrified. What fearsome things Verity has ahead of her – my father’s rage, the whisperings of neighbours, the dangers of childbirth.

“Oh Verity.” For a moment I can think of nothing else to say. She is looking at me intently, looking for my reaction. I add stupidly, “James’s child.”

“Of course. You surely hardly imagined Gerald’s.”

“Are you happy? How do you feel?”

“Sick, but wonderful. Father has no choice now but to let me marry James.”

“Was that why you did it?”

“Heavens no. I did it because I wanted to. Truly Beatrice, you are not being the support I’d hoped.”

“I’m sorry. I’m truly glad for you. How long have you and James…?”

“All year. All spring and summer, until we came here and John would not allow it any more.” She leans back amongst the bolsters and closes her eyes. “James bought me some ginger root from the pedlar, for the sickness. Would you pass me a piece, please?”

I pass her a blue ginger jar from the top of the clothes press. “This must have cost him a fortune. He is truly your slave, I think.”

She looks at me sharply. “And I his.”

I hesitate. “Is it not a problem… that is, might it not at some time become a problem… that he is uneducated? That he cannot read nor write?”

I feel I am on dangerous ground, but Verity simply replies, “No.” After a moment she adds, “Anyway, John is going to teach him.”

I am suddenly flooded with optimism, and an unrealistic hope that my father will accept the situation. I ask, “Does John know you’re with child?”

“He does now. I told him yesterday. He says he’ll speak to Father for me.” She smiles. “So, Beatie, is our unfortunate father to have a double shock then, judging from what I saw earlier? Are you finally seeing the point of heavenly John?”

I feel a blush rising past my ears. “Verity, you saw nothing. I’m going to marry Hugh. That’s all there is to it.”

She smiles, and passes me the ginger jar, and I take a piece and half choke on its savage flavour.

By the time I am ready to set off again the rain has set in, a fine drizzle billowing across the green. “You really ought to get yourself another horse.” Verity stands with me on the front step. “I know how sad you are that poor Saint Hilda drowned, but you can’t keep on walking everywhere.”

“Plenty of other people do.”

She rolls her eyes. “Take Meadowsweet. Germaine can bring her back for me later.”

John comes up behind us. “I’ll take you home on Universe, Beatie.”

“I’d truly rather walk,” I reply, but he has already gone round the side of the house to catch his horse in the meadow. Verity reaches down my cloak from a peg, and Mother Bain comes out of the kitchen to say goodbye.

“Goodbye, Mistress Bain.” I bend to kiss her cheek.

“Goodbye. God bless you, lass. Take care of yourself. I feel there is some darkness hanging over you.” Mother Bain tends to make these apocalyptic remarks in such a practical tone of voice that they take a moment to sink in. She has a reputation as a seer, and has issued accurate warnings before.

“What is it, Mistress Bain?” I rub my arms to take the gooseflesh away.

She frowns. Her thin hand trembles on my wrist. Then she shakes her head. “Nay. Nought. I know not.” She passes her hand back and forth across her eyes, and returns to the kitchen.

Verity drapes my cloak round my shoulders. “You know, Beatie, I think there’s a lot you don’t tell me. You know all my secrets now. Tell me some of yours. We’ve lost touch since I left Barrowbeck.”

For a moment I consider it. It would be such a relief to talk about Robert, but there would be no point. It would be an extra burden on Verity, having to keep the terrible secret that her sister sheltered the enemy. Just now she is quite burdened enough, and likely to be more so. I shrug. “I have no secrets,” I lie. “Except that before, I did not wish to become betrothed to Hugh, and now I do. It is the sensible thing. It isn’t as if I loved anyone else – not in the way that you love James. We’ll keep the farm in the family, and I’ll see more of you again once you’re married to James and living just down the valley.” I kiss her cheek. “Now that Cousin Gerald cannot marry you, he can marry whomsoever he likes, and everything will work out just as it should.”

Verity gives me a cynical look. “How tidy, dear sister. Why do I feel that life is not like that? Anyway, what about…”

She falls meaningfully silent as John reappears at the front door, leading Universe saddled and ready. “Shall we go?” he asks. “Do you mind riding astride? The sidesaddle won’t fit us both.”

I hesitate, transfixed at the thought of riding all the way to Barrowbeck in such close proximity to John Becker. He adds, “We could go the long, easy way, or quickly by the Old Corpse Road.”

“Oh… quickly by the Old Corpse Road. I have to get back for the milking.”

I climb up, using the stone water trough as a mounting block before he can lift me, as he had seemed about to. I am becoming more accustomed to the wobbly experience of riding astride, these past weeks, after a lifetime of riding comfortably seated in my sidesaddle. A life of treason does bring some startling new experiences. John swings up behind me. His left hand grips the reins and his right hand grips my waist. He walks the horse forward and I wave to Verity, who pulls a mad, swooning face at me behind John’s back.

On the outskirts of Wraithwaite the woman I saw earlier is pulling her washing off the line and dumping it in a big wicker basket. I call to her, “You were right about the rain, mistress.”

She stares at us with her hands full of washing. “Aye, Mistress Garth. Indeed I was.” She gives John and me a slow, interested look, then glances skywards. “Mebbe you could put in a word for me up there to get it stopped, eh mistress, if you’ve got the influence?”

I laugh. John halts his horse and asks her, “Do you want to go and hang all that in the parsonage barn, Mistress Thorpe?”

She scrapes her sodden cap off her forehead and answers, “Aye parson, I’d appreciate it. I’ll send Alice over. I thank you.” Alice, her maidservant, a ten-year-old orphan from a neighbouring village, comes out of the house with another empty washing basket. I notice she has two black eyes.

John says, “Good morrow, Alice,” and regards her for a moment, then adds, “I’ll call in on my way back, Mistress Thorpe, and have a word with you.”

I can feel the two of them watching us go. I glance over my shoulder at John as Universe quickens into a trot. “You do realise it’s going to be all over the district by evening, John, that the parson has been out riding with Beatrice Garth at daybreak in the pouring rain.”

He laughs, and rests his chin on the top of my head. “Well then, I daresay we shall both be ruined.”

Chapter 2

There are more strangers about now, on the plateau and in the woods, armed men who would have marched on Scotland with my father, emerging from amongst the trees, where they have spent the night.

“They’ll all be at the tower later,” I tell John, “for a paying-off from Father before they go home.” We haven’t talked much during the journey. The full realisation of Verity’s news has been coming over me, and I am deeply apprehensive about my father’s reaction.

When we reach the rim of the rockface we both dismount. John says, “You go first. I’ll follow right behind with Universe. He dislikes this path. He’s a big baby about it. He may need a little coaxing.”

“Truly John, I can go on from here by myself. I don’t need you to come any further.”

He taps his whip against his thigh. “Not with all these moss-troopers about, heavens no. They may be harmless, but we don’t know them.”

I set off down the rough steps, holding up my skirts with one hand and supporting myself against the damp stone with the other. I turn to watch John pulling on the reins, and Universe’s big head stretching out reluctantly. John talks to his horse softly, asking in seductive tones why the animal is making such a fuss, and I feel like making a fuss myself, just to be spoken to in such a way. Universe’s round flanks graze the rock sides; he flicks his tail and snorts. Stones clatter down, hitting me. Finally, we all reach the bottom.

John pats his horse’s neck, and waits for the animal to calm down. He looks at me and says, “Well, Beatrice.” My heart jolts. I pull my hood further forward over my head, even though the rain is easing. John pushes his whip down his boot and scratches his leg. He asks, “Did you love him… your Scot?”

I shiver as a gust of wind is funnelled down through the rift in the rock. I don’t feel capable of talking about Robert out here in the woods, where his ghost shrieks at me from every tree.

“I cared about him,” I answer stiffly. “Care about him… But love? I think that is another matter. What are you asking me exactly? Whether Robert and I were lovers?”

“Robert? Ah, I never knew his name.”

“There’s no reason why you should have.”

“No, I wasn’t asking whether you were lovers. I couldn’t care less if you’d had every man in the valley.”

I give a snort of laughter, but he is being serious, and instantly I feel childish. I ask him, “How old are you, John?”

“Twenty-five.”

“I’m sixteen.”

“I know, but older than your years, I think. Look, we don’t have to talk about this now. I was going to wait for you to get over the Scot, but since you half-drowned, I’m so afraid of losing you…”

I interrupt him. “John, I shall always be grateful to you for saving me…”

“Don’t! I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want to trade on having fished you out of the ocean. There was something between us before that, wasn’t there?”

I look back at the rockface. Dazzling streaks of light are stabbing through the clouds above it. John looks too, and for a moment we are both immobilised by the beauty of it. “Yes,” I answer. “Yes, there was.”

John takes hold of my hand and kisses the palm. “So, can you just tell me it isn’t impossible?”

I touch his hair. It is wet from the rain, and still uncombed. I answer, “No, I can’t tell you that. It is impossible. Verity will be leaving Barrowbeck to farm with James at Low Back. Who will run the farm if I go too? I have to marry Hugh and stay.”

For what seems a long time we stare at one another. When we do speak, it is simultaneously, and reduced to politeness. “I should get back, John.”

“Have you started your lessons with Cedric yet?” He releases my hand and steadies the horse so that I can remount.

“Not yet. I’m still busy with the winter planting, and stocking the root cellar. There’s time enough.” Cedric, also known as the Cockleshell Man, is our local healer, a close friend of my mother, and soon to be my teacher in the arts of healing and herbalism.

John and I ride together in silence down through the woods, across a stream, up a steep bank where ferns and tree roots coil out of the earth. I wish we had not had this conversation. Before, I could imagine all sorts of unspoken impossibilities. Now I have been forced to face reality.

Where the trees thin out, Barrowbeck Tower comes into view in its clearing. I glance back at John. “Now I really do want to go on alone, John. It would be better if you were to see Father about Verity and James when the paying-off is over. Let him calm down a bit after handing out all that money. You must be careful of his temper. It’s getting more violent than ever.”

“I know.” John halts the horse and dismounts, and helps me down. He remains with his hands on my waist. Around us, the woods are quiet. Damp spiderwebs show up on the bushes. A flurry of rainwater splatters down on to our faces. He says, “I’ll come over this afternoon to speak to your father about Verity.”

“It won’t be easy.”

“I know. He doesn’t like me.”

“You’re always reprimanding him.”

“He deserves it.”

I kiss him on the cheek. “Goodbye John.”

“Goodbye Beatrice.” He kisses me on the mouth. Caught unawares, I put my arms round him and kiss him back.

A twig snaps nearby. We both jump. Universe is pricking his ears and glaring into the undergrowth. The bushes rustle and a voice says, “Good morrow, parson. Greetings, mistress.” It is Leo, our cowman.

I step back, speechless. John replies, “Good morrow, Leo. How pleasant to see you.” Leo is giving us an astounded look. I can see through his eyes my untidied hair and flushed face. I wonder how much he has seen. I try to imagine the repercussions if it reaches my father that his daughter has been seen kissing the parson.

“I must get back.” I pull my cloak round me.

John says calmly, as if we had merely been on a nature walk, “Go carefully, Beatrice. I’ll watch you as far as the tower,” but I hurry away, taking another path which leads me out of their line of vision.

“I’ll walk along with you if you’re heading back to the rockface, parson,” I can hear Leo saying behind me. “There’s a sight too many strangers in t’valley today for my liking. I’m just checking a few little snares I’ve set…” Their voices fade as I rush as far away from them as possible.

I am almost out into the lea now, thinking wildly about what I can say to Leo to ask for his silence. I dawdle at the edge of the trees, and decide to wait for him to come back this way from emptying his snares. The rain is heavier again now, and the wind is rising. Grey planks of rain come skimming over the Pike from the sea. I can see the watchman on the battlements of the tower pulling his hood up. I decide to shelter here and rehearse what I shall say. Leo will surely understand. Everyone employed at Barrowbeck Tower knows the necessity of avoiding my father’s temper. I clutch my own hood under my chin to keep the rain out, and this is how I do not see them coming.

“Ha!”

The voice, hands, body all come at once. A massive lout in dark, dirty clothing leaps from the bushes and knocks me to the ground. Another, shorter man follows him. I see a flash of brown jerkin and blue breeches. As I draw in my breath to scream, a stone is rammed into my mouth, crashing against my teeth. Grit and soil choke my voice. A knife flashes before my eyes.

“Back from seeing your fancy man, eh? Let’s have your money, lady.” The first man pinions my arms whilst the second grapples at my waist to see if I have a purse. I writhe and try to scream, but my throat is full of gravel, and all I can do is cough. I struggle to reach my knife, but the first man finds it before I can and rips it from my belt in triumph. “She’s no gold or silver, but I’ll have this pretty bit of ironmongery instead.” He hooks it into his own greasy green belt, then mutters, “Now what else can we tek off her, eh?”

I lash out, sick with terror. Then suddenly it is as if the first man has flown away. He is lifted off me bodily by a pair of strong, brown hands. “Get away, lady,” snaps Leo. “Run for it.”

I run.

Chapter 3

I stand behind Father on the battlements. Below us, assembled in the meadow, are the scores of men who walked to Barrowbeck from all over this corner of England. Whatever one might fear or mislike about my father, one can’t help admiring his reputation as a warlord. He is certainly better at this than he is at farming.

He raises his hands for silence, and shouts, in a voice for once unslurred, that they should all return home and thank the Lord for sparing them. There will be purses for all of them at the barmkin gate, he tells them. Then he wishes them Godspeed on their journeys home.

The rain has stopped, but a cold wind is blowing across the battlements. The clouds shift. There is a flash of blue sky, brown trees, memories of blue breeches and brown jerkin. I feel unsteady, and support myself against the beacon turret. The pain in my mouth is making me feel sick. I touch the cuts and swellings, now liberally plastered with Mother’s marigold balm.

Mother is standing next to Father, her arms folded in her sleeves, smiling serenely. Strange how we keep up appearances in the face of strangers. She turns to me. “Are you all right, Beatrice? You really did come a cropper in the woods, didn’t you.”

I attempt a smile. “I’m well enough, thank you Mother.”

Germaine, music tutor and wardrobe mistress to the household, is standing next to me. She gives me a critical look. “Was it really a fall?” she enquires disbelievingly. Far below, amongst the shuffling crowd, I catch a glimpse of Leo. His gaze is fixed on me.

“Yes,” I mutter, averting my eyes from her, from him, from everyone.

If I had not turned back, after I ran from the men, I should not know what I do know now. After Leo rescued me, I fled along the edge of the woods for quite a little way, unwilling to go into the open in the state I was in, my mouth bleeding and my clothes torn. Then I stopped. There were two of those men against Leo. They both had knives. I seized a hefty branch from the ground, and turned back.

Leo met me. He was striding along in his usual way, his hands full of snared songbirds. His mouth was thirled in a horrifying, animal snarl, though. I stood and gaped at him. He said, “Mistress Beatrice, what are you doing still out here? You should be home, getting Kate to tend to your hurts.” When I did not reply, he asked, “Do you want to come back with me and let Sanctity see to you?” I glanced beyond him, back along the path and into the undergrowth, and my knees buckled.

Leo supported me through the woods, clutched against his jerkin full of the smells of the cowshed. I could scarcely bear to be touched, but the alternative would have been to fall down. We tottered our way right round the edge of the clearing and down the tiny, briar-tangled path to the cottage he shares with his wife, Sanctity, and their many children. Sanctity helped me to a straw bed in a corner, where I lay on the counterpane of patchworked rabbitskins whilst she mopped my injuries. Sanctity Wilson is a scent-maker by trade, and because she brews potions, she dresses in the fashion of the religious, in high-necked, dark clothing with her hair scraped severely back, to avoid any possibility of being considered a witch. This is how they say Queen Eliza used to dress when she was a princess, as protection against her half-sister, Mary. Several women across the valley dress so. Fear of being accused of witchcraft grows to unreasonable proportions in some.

“Please don’t tell anyone what happened, Sanctity,” I asked her.

She stood by the small fire under the roof hole, rocking her latest baby, and frowned at me. “Well, I won’t if you don’t want me to, dear, but you should certainly tell your mother.”

I lay back and inhaled the musty smell of rabbitskin, and wondered how much Leo had told her of what had happened. All I knew was that no one would hear any of it from me. My mouth would heal. I had not lost any teeth. My clothes would mend. I heaved myself up and sat with my back against the wall. Next to me a tree was growing as part of the wall. One of the house beams had taken root, and was calloused all over where branches kept having to be lopped off. The smell of cow dung, sweet and familiar, came from walls newly rendered for winter. From the tripod over the fire, where Sanctity was brewing scent, the fragrance of rosewater competed with the dead-flesh smell of the rush lights. On a shelf by the door stood bottles of sticky, brown fluid, full of the perfumes of summer.

“Take one of these,” she said. “Lavender will calm you down.”

I can smell it on me now as I stand on the battlements, watching my father move to the parapet and raise his hands in blessing. “Go your ways peacefully,” he shouts. “There’s ale as well as a shilling for you, down at the barmkin gate. God bless you.” I can feel his relief that the opportunity for having a drink himself is drawing nearer. The sunlight brightens, and flashes on something amongst the men below. Leo is polishing his broad-bladed knife. In a moment of light-headedness I imagine it hissing through leather, grating on bone.

My father steps back, hands on hips, face flushed and smiling. He is pleased with his performance. He comes towards us waving his pouncet box to perfume the air, as if to say, that’s enough of the stinking masses, back to more delicate matters. He peers at my injured face and demands, “What’s the matter with you, girl?”

“Nothing, Father. I fell in the woods.” I ponder how strange it is that he can still undermine my antipathy so easily, with just one look of concern.

“Come Germaine, Beatrice, will you help me serve ale to the travellers?” Mother ushers us towards the spiral staircase. “Are you fit to do it, Beatrice, or do you want to lie down? Kate can help with the ale.”

“I’m late with the milking, Mother. I’m sorry. I should go down to the cowsheds and see if Tilly Turner has managed on her own.”

“I don’t suppose she will have. Go on then. We don’t want them getting milk fever. Whatever were you doing instead?”

“I went to see Verity.”

Suddenly I have all my mother’s attention. “How is she?” she demands under her breath, so that my father will not hear.

“She’s with child,” I whisper.

Mother stops, one foot poised, at the top of the spiral staircase. For a long moment she says nothing, then she murmurs, “In that case, the sooner we get her home the better.”

A good milker can do a cow in a few minutes. Tilly Turner takes about an hour. She grumbles and mutters about how sore her fingers are, instead of singing to the animals so that they relax and let the milk down. I have to say that singing to cows is not my idea of the best way to start a day either, but now I sit back-to-back with her on a low stool in the cowshed, and hum a tune under my breath, partly from sheer relief at doing something safe and ordinary. The cow’s warm, gurgling side is against my cheek, and the rhythmic stroking of fingers against palms, the slap of milk into the wooden bucket, combine to soothe away the terrors of what happened to me. For once, I am even thankful for the distraction of Tilly’s tales of injustice and martyrdom. I sneak a look at my aching knees. They are bruised black where I fell. What happened with John now seems so remote and unreal that I don’t feel absolutely sure it took place. It seems more like one of my long-ago daydreams about him.

After the milking, we put on our shawls to soften the drag of the yokes across our shoulders, and toil up the hill with the buckets swinging wide on their ropes, past the crowd, through the barmkin, to the dairy in its rock cave. This is when the screaming starts.

My first thought is that the Scots are attacking us again. Tilly and I look at one another, duck out of our yokes so that the buckets bump to the flagstone floor, and run outside. The screaming goes on and on. We race out of the barmkin. The crowd gathered by the gate is now hurrying up the slope, past the tower, towards the woods.

“What is it?” I ask Germaine, who has remained by the trestle table with a jug of ale in her hand.

She shrugs. “I have no idea.” She pours a mug for me, since all her other customers have gone. Now we can see two of Father’s henchmen emerging from the woods. They are carrying a wooden hurdle. Two homesteaders from the valley follow them, carrying another. The screaming has stopped, but several women from the valley come rushing past us, sobbing. Germaine shoots out her hand and grabs the arm of the first of them.

“Whatever is happening, Betsy?”

“A murder, madam. Two of the men from away have been killed in the forest. We found them…” She gives a gasping moan. “Their throats were cut. Sliced oppen.”

I turn away, hands to my mouth. Germaine lets go of the woman, who hurries away down the hill after her companions. She turns to me. “A murder in these parts – how truly shocking. Your Scotsman did go, I presume?”

I take a mouthful of ale, and walk away up the hill, ignoring her. I feel too sickened to be angry. The bodies are at the door of the gatehouse, surrounded by a silent crowd. There is no other way in except past them, unless I were to go by the secret passage under the floor of the dairy, which is out of the question with so many people about. My father steps forward. “Put ’em in t’wood cellar. ’Tis a poor end for those who only wished to serve their country.” The crowd nods and mutters. A few of the older people are crossing themselves, and for once my father lets it pass.

A piece of bloodstained bedsheet covers the upper part of the first body. The man’s arms have slipped off the edge of the hurdle. As the henchmen lift it by poles at either end, the arms flap, as if alive, and for a moment I wonder if the man really is still alive after all. Then the bedsheet slides off completely, and his lolling head is revealed, his throat open in a frightful turtle smile, his brown jerkin and blue breeches drenched in blood.

The face and shoulders of the second body are covered, but there are drops of congealed blood on the arms, crossed over his greasy green belt.

When the bodies have been taken down the curving slope to the wood cellar, I make my way up the east staircase and along a twisting passage to the east landing. I need above all to be alone. The jakes on the east landing is the nastiest of our several latrines in the outer walls of the tower, a last resort for the desperate when all others are in use. Here I can be reasonably sure of being undisturbed. I wonder if Leo’s son, Dickon, our laystow boy among his many other duties, has emptied the privies today from the hatches one floor down. Understandably, he looks for any excuse to avoid this particular work. Kate, our cook, has been known to pursue him round the tower with a meat cleaver, to persuade him to greater diligence.

The stink, and the hum of flies, make this little sanctuary an unlovely place to be, but peaceful. It is dark here, with only a faint luminescence from the jakes itself. I light a candle on the linen chest, and carry it in with me, propping the broken door shut with it.

I have been pushing away the terrible thoughts in my head, but now they are unavoidable. The sight of the two dead men as I saw them in the woods keeps flashing across my mind. Sometimes they are alive again, and coming at me with the unexpectedness of the attack. Sometimes they are dead, lolling and staring. It is my fault, all my fault. I want to escape from it, from all the events of today, to stay for ever in this dark place with my guttering candle, to be walled in like a Papist nun. My mouth hurts. My knees and ribs and arms hurt. I want to slough off my flesh the way that grass snakes shed their skins. Yet it remains, white and sluglike, painful and unsheddable. The thought that I kissed John earlier appals me. Isn’t he supposed to be spiritual and remote? Isn’t that what I like about him? I want to scream that no, I am not to be touched, not by attackers, not by lovers, not by anyone. The urge to scream, in the way that the women who found the bodies screamed, comes roaring up from my feet, but all that emerges from my mouth is a tiny mew, like a kitten’s.

Chapter 4

There is something freakish about today; everything feels abnormal and unfamiliar. I’m beginning to wonder if the bang on my head was worse than I thought. There’s Hugh for a start, sweet Hugh, fair-haired and funny, whom I thought I knew, but who now looms at me with a predatory look that is new. He has been fussing over my bruises, and teasing me tenderly about being legless so early in the day. Dear Lord, it is grotesque. Normally he would have joked uncaringly, and suggested a ride in the woods, or target practice, to take my mind off it. I wonder if Uncle Juniper has been advising him on techniques for wooing reluctant females. I look at them now, across the crowded kitchen, drinking and conversing by the gatehouse arch. Uncle Juniper, whose real name everyone has long forgotten, is hunched over and gesturing wildly, clearly describing something deeply bloodthirsty. I wonder for a moment if I am really going to be able to do this – seriously do it – marry Hugh and see my future settled for ever within these confines.

I decide to go and hide in the chimney corner. I seat myself facing the flames, my back against the hot stone, my skirts tucked in under my knees. The kitchen fire is roaring, and a tall blackjack of ale stands near me, on a griddle winched to one side away from the flames. Steam curls along the hot poker which Kate has plunged into it, and there is a smell of singed flesh where the poker leans against the lip of the big leather jug. The men who carried the corpses in appear up the slope from the wood cellar at the far side of the kitchen. Kate looks round from plucking thrushes at the table. “Help yourselves to ale, lads,” she calls. “I reckon you’ll be needing it.”

The smell of newly drawn feathers mingles with the other smells of the kitchen, live flesh sweating and dead flesh singeing, and I realise that my mood is shifting. Instead of feeling shaky and terrified, now I am starting to feel angry. I am angry with the men who attacked me, angry that Leo’s saving of me had to take such a terminal form, leaving me as good as a murderer, angry at the droning throb of my bruises, at the loss of my knife, at the confrontation awaiting us all when my father finds out about Verity, and above all, angry that such a good friend and cousin as Hugh has to be turned into a husband for me, by those too old and set in their ways to know what they are talking about.

The four men come over and ladle hot ale into their tankards. They nod to me but I pretend to be asleep. Leo’s son, Dickon, is mending the bellows on the opposite side of the fire from me, pleating new leather into the sides where the old has cracked, and if it were not for the tapping of his hammer I should probably indeed have slept.

My parents have not arrived yet. I find myself practising speeches to calm my father’s temper when he finds out about Verity and realises that the family’s plans to marry her to Gerald, and keep the two farms within the family, are in ruins. He beat her once for her involvement with James Sorrell, and he tried to kill James. Now, faced with the inevitable fact that they must marry, and quickly, I simply cannot imagine what he will do.

I wonder, too, what Gerald’s reaction will be. I watch him, a younger, darker, more angry-looking version of his brother, talking to Germaine in a far corner of the kitchen, stooping over her as she sits in a tall-backed chair putting tiny stitches into a pair of lace sleeves. Somehow, I don’t think he is going to be too distressed.

Aunt Juniper appears beside me. She points at Gerald and Germaine. “Just look at that, will you Niece? He spends so much time talking to that skivvy that he scarcely gets to see your sister at all. He should be over at Wraithwaite Parsonage at this very moment. I really don’t know what’s becoming of this family.”

“Germaine’s a bit more than a skivvy, Auntie,” I reply, wondering why I am defending the person who annoys me more than any other in this household.

“Nonsense! She’s a serving woman and she’s twice his age, and what Gerald wants to be doing talking to her is a mystery to me.”

People near us glance round and grin. I suspect Aunt Juniper is the only person to whom it is a mystery.

Mother comes in, her cheeks pink and her hair escaping from its cap. “That’s the last of the strangers on their way!” she declares. “I never thought I’d thank a Scot for anything, but I do thank him for forcing our men to stay at home.” She crosses to the hearth. “I’m going to open my elder wine. Give me a hand, Juniper. We have good reason to celebrate.”

“Them downstairs don’t,” mutters Kate.

I peer round the corner of the hearth as my mother and aunt lift out two wooden-stoppered clay flagons from the proving oven. “Give Kate a drink, Beatie, for pity’s sake,” Mother orders me. “I can’t be doing with her endless griping. Get out the silver goblets. I’m not using pewter any more. Cedric says it rots your brain.” She thumps the flagons on to the table and stares round her for a moment, hands on hips. “I can still scarce credit that the march on Scotland is stopped.”

“For now.” Kate slams her rolling pin into a soft mound of dough. “We wouldn’t have given up so easily in my day – one Scot and a whole war called off – I never heard the like of it.”

I take down the best goblets one by one from the dresser, whilst Mother and Aunt Juniper unstopper the flagons. I remember Father coming home with these goblets one Michaelmas, fifty of them in finest silver, beautifully wrought with patterns of herons and reeds. When I have passed everyone a goblet of wine, I go to sit on the bench at the long table, and as I do so there is a commotion in the gatehouse arch and my father comes crashing in. “What’s the merrymaking?” he bellows, and lurches towards the kitchen table. “Are the dead men laid out?” He throws an arm round Kate who is putting the lid on the thrush pie. “What’s in t’tart, Kate?”

“Songbirds.” Kate peers up into his face and scowls at him. “Cupshotten already, master? You wasted no time.”

“Aye well, Katie, you see we don’t have any time to waste, do we, as them downstairs will surely warrant.”

“You’re right there, master.” She stabs the pie crust three times with her pastry knife, muttering, “Father, Son, Holy Ghost.”

“Amen,” intones my father, and the two of them nod gloomily at one another.

I pour myself more wine. The sweet-smelling brew rocks to and fro in the shiny round bowl, red, maroon and purple in the shifting firelight. I see my mother leading my aunt away, arm round her shoulders, heads bent, to seat themselves in my place in the chimney corner. My mother is talking. My aunt is listening. I realise she is being told the news about Verity. With a surge of longing I want my own sister here, back where she belongs. I have no one here now who thinks as I do, who is prepared to laugh with me at the absurdity of our elders, and to defy them with me when necessary.

Suddenly Leo is at my side. I jump. I had not seen him arrive. I take a large swallow of wine, and then have to lean my elbows on the table to keep myself steady. He sits down next to me and asks, “How are you, lady?”

“Well enough.” I realise how ungracious I sound, and stand up to pour him some wine. “I thank you, Leo, for enquiring.”

He rummages at his waist. I catch the flash of a blade. “You’ll be wanting this back.” He produces my knife from where it was pushed into a sheath with his own. I stare at it, so familiar, with its horn handle and curved blade. “Was this what you used?” I ask him, appalled. Our eyes meet. It is as if we were alone in an empty kitchen. He makes a circle of his finger and thumb, touches it to his own broad-bladed knife, then to his lips.

“Nay,” he says. “I used my own. It was a pleasure, lady.”

There seems to be nothing more to say. My profuse and incoherent thanks of earlier cannot be repeated, back in this normal world. I try to work out my feelings. I try to work out whether there was anything else he could have done. I feel a strange closeness to Leo, like kinship. We share one another’s secrets. Perhaps this is how you do feel towards someone who has saved your life. After a while Leo says, “I’ll be saying nowt about the other, neither, mistress.”

I have to think for a moment what he means, then I realise he means John, and the kiss. “Oh. Well thank you. And… Leo, you can be sure… I shan’t be saying anything to anyone about what happened, either.”

He nods. A pact has been sealed.

Germaine comes round with cates, tiny squares of bread fried in goose grease, wafer-thin slices of salty black pudding, candied gooseberries, marchpane comfets. We help ourselves from two big platters. My father, leaning lopsidedly on the chopping block, slips off when he tries to help himself, and bangs his cheek. With a spluttering curse he heaves himself upright and crosses the room to the fireplace as if dancing the galiard, relieves himself into the flames, then pirouettes back. He picks up one of the flagons with both hands and drinks from it. The wine spills down his neck, staining his ruff. “Damnation to the Scots!” he shouts. The assembly raises its goblets. The fire flares brilliant, unfocused, into the room. Germaine goes round lighting the candles, and they shine with rainbow haloes in the smoky air. Leo pats me on the shoulder, and leaves.

As the afternoon draws on, Kate puts on barley broth to stew, for those who might wish to recover their senses later. I grow weary of explaining my injuries to people, and wonder if I would have minded less if my explanations had been the truth.

Tilly Turner, curled on the oak settle by the fire, faints with great drama, smashing her head on the hearth, and has to be revived with a burning feather under her nose. Mother pats her cheeks back and forth with more vigour than is strictly necessary, and William the henchman assists her out into the fresh air. Moments later he returns with a flurry, calling to Father, “Master, parson’s come out of t’wood.”

“Woodworm’s come out of t’wood,” my father mutters, staggering to his feet. William comes over and props him up.

“Is he to come in, master? Is the parson to come in?”

Everyone waits for my father’s answer. They all know his opinion of John Becker.

I creep across the kitchen and take over Tilly’s place on the oak settle, where I can be hidden by its high sides. I had forgotten that John was coming. I’m horrified at the thought of him seeing me hot, sweaty and half-drunk. Germaine comes to sit next to me. “Hiding, Beatrice?” she enquires. I nod carefully, fearful that my head might fly off. Germaine laughs. “He might consign the rest of us to hellfire, but not you, my dear.”

To me, the kitchen already seems like Hell – hot and full of people whose misdeeds are about to catch up with them.

My father blunders across the kitchen, stumbling over chairs and benches. “Might as well show him in, William lad,” he shouts. “Yon whining preacher could do with a drink, I daresay. Can’t do aught but improve him.”

Everyone’s gaze swings towards the entrance. We hear the front door crash open, then William’s voice. “They’re in the kitchen, sir.” My father prepares himself grandly, feet apart, hands on hips. William comes back into the kitchen and whispers something to him.

“Nay lad,” my father replies loudly, “I’ll see him in here. Is he too grand for the kitchen? Eh? Eh?” His voice is thick. His nose stands out purple with a slight knob on the end where a vein pulsates. William departs, and returns with John.

It is a shock to see him, all the more so because he looks absurdly pale and sober and clean, in comparison with the rest of us. I see how we must look to him, red-faced and rowdy. It dawns on me how unsuitable a match I would be for John, or indeed for any decent and respectable person outside the family. “Good day.” He looks round and addresses everyone, then turns to my father. “May I speak to you privately, Squire Garth?”

He is beautiful, beautiful and solemn. I am starting to remember what it was like this morning. He hasn’t seen me yet.

“You can talk to me here, lad. No one’s going to be eavesdropping,” my father answers. Everyone turns away and pretends to be busy doing something else. “We’re all celebrating being alive.” Father waves his arms. “Even you can understand that, I daresay. You’ll take a cup of elder?”

“Thank you.” John smiles at my mother, who is already reaching down another goblet. “It’s worth the journey here just for your elder wine, Columbine,” he says. Mother nods – she obviously realises why he is here – and his attempt to soothe the atmosphere hangs awkwardly in the air. He turns back to my father. “Sir, it is important that I speak to you alone, upstairs in your rooms please, about a matter of great importance.”

Everyone is listening. Germaine stands idly chipping flakes of dried food from the knife marks on the table with her fingernail. Kate studies her pie. The henchmen nod meaninglessly to each other, in a pretence of conversation. Suddenly Aunt Juniper rises from the chimney corner and marches towards John. “Young man, I cannot imagine how you permitted this to happen,” she snaps. Silence falls across the kitchen.

“Juniper…” Mother tries to hustle her away. “It’s better if we talk about this in private.”

“Nonsense. Do you imagine you can keep this disgraceful secret for even a moment, Columbine? My niece was in your care, Parson Becker…” She stands before him, clearly almost speechless with fury, and shakes her finger in his face. Mother hurries round her and takes hold of my father’s arm.

“Come, Husband. The parson wishes to speak to us privately.”

My father brings his fist down on the table with a terrifying thump. “What is this? What brings you here, parson?”

John swings his gaze from my father to Aunt Juniper. “This happened before Verity was in my care, madam, indeed it happened whilst she was supposedly in the care of your two Barrowbeck households. Now please excuse me.” He turns back to my father. “I have already said that I wish to speak to you privately, sir.” He gestures towards the stairway. “Now, will you kindly accompany me?”

My father is silent for a moment. He releases his arm from Mother’s grip, steadies himself and brushes crumbs from the front of his doublet. Then he says, “I had assumed you had come to do the job you’re paid for, parson, to bless the dead. There have been murders here today. We shall find the murderer, you can count on it, and then you will have the opportunity to lead that lost soul to repentance, afore we hang him. These are the jobs you’re paid to do, sir, and not, I think, to decide where and when your betters should speak to you.”

John gives a brief sigh of vexation. “Very well then, Squire Garth, let’s go and bless the dead. Perhaps you would be so good as to accompany me?”

My father nods graciously, and leads the way towards the wood cellar, followed by John and my mother. Everyone watches in silence as they go. Aunt Juniper is in tears. I put my arms round her.

“Did you know about this, Beatrice?” she asks. I nod. She sinks on to the bench and covers her face with her hands. Hugh and Gerald hurry over to her, whilst Uncle Juniper watches nervously from a distance, fidgeting from one foot to the other.

“What’s happened?” Hugh asks me, and since everyone will soon know anyway, I answer, “Verity and James are expecting a baby.”

Kate splutters over her pie. “James Sorrell? Yon farm lad? Nay, never!”

I turn on her. “That’s enough, Kate.”

She tightens her lips in outrage, marches to the hearth, flings her pie into the baking oven and slams the heavy iron door shut with a clang that echoes round the walls.

Aunt Juniper rises to her feet and sweeps out of the kitchen, saying tersely to William, “Saddle our horses, please.” Her husband and sons follow her.

People are starting to take in the news. There is a shocked murmuring across the kitchen, and a growing feeling of apprehension as we wait for my father’s reaction. It does not come. Instead, when he returns alone to the kitchen, he seats himself calmly at the head of the table and says, “My friends, we have found our murderer. I want four men to come with me to Low Back Farm at once, to arrest James Sorrell.” He points over people’s heads to William and three other henchmen standing by the gatehouse arch.

“No!” My mother has followed him up the slope from the wood cellar. “This is madness, Husband. James can’t possibly have killed anyone.”

“Silence!” my father shouts. “We have a witness.” He beckons to Michael, a new henchman who joined us last Lady Day, a tall, sly man who never looks anyone in the eye. “Michael, you witnessed this murder, did you not?”

A look of complete bafflement crosses Michael’s stupid face for a moment, then he nods vigorously. “Aye, master.”

“Say what you saw.”

“It was Master Sorrell as did it, master.”

“And you’ll bear witness to that, before the magistrate?”

“Aye master.”

“Then we shall see Master James Sorrell locked in Lancaster Castle before this week is out, to await the assizes and the hangman’s noose.”

I feel cold, as if there were no fire, no heat. I stand up and climb on to the oak settle. People look at me. I call out, “Father?”

He scowls. “What are you doing, girl? Get down.”

“Father, these injuries… look at them.” I hold out my arms, touch my fingers to my swollen mouth. “I didn’t fall in the forest, Father. Those two men are dead because they attacked me. They tried to hurt me. I lashed out at them, and I must have accidentally…”

My father gapes. Suddenly all his drunkenness is gone. He moves with startling speed and before I know what is happening, he has pulled me off the settle, pinioned my arms behind me and is half-carrying me out of the room. I scream and struggle. People rush forward. I think to myself, where is John, where is Hugh, where are they when you need them?

My father is very strong. My ankles knock painfully against the edges of the stone stairs as he hauls me up the spiral staircase. I can hear my mother pattering behind, crying out, “Be careful, Francis! You’re going to hurt her worse than ever.” Voices from the kitchen, raised and incredulous, fade away behind us.

When we reach my room Father drags me inside and slams the door, and both my parents stand with their backs against it. I try to get past them and escape, but my father pushes me away.

“Father, this is ridiculous. Let me…”

“You’ll stay there until you get this idea out of your head,” he interrupts me. His voice is surprisingly mild. “You’ve had a knock on the head and it’s turned you daft, girl.”

“Mother…” I appeal.

She comes forward and puts her arms round me. “Sweeting, for once your father is right.” She glances at him sternly to neutralise any effect this unusual state of agreement might have. “You’ve had more ale and wine than is good for you, and a knock on the head too. It’s addled your brains. You don’t want to be saying anything which people might misinterpret. Now we all know you didn’t kill those men. However, I think there are things here that you’re not telling us, Beatrice. So do as your father says and stay here for the time being. You can decide in your own time when to tell us the truth. I’ll send Kate up with some barley broth.” My parents bow to each other politely and walk out of the room.

“No!” I shout. “No, I won’t stay here!” My voice cracks humiliatingly.

My mother turns round, the big iron key in her hand. “I’ll return shortly, Beatrice. First, I want to have a word with Parson Becker.” She closes the door and the key grates in the lock. Their raised voices retreat down the stairwell, growing angrier with every step.

Chapter 5

Occasionally in life there comes a moment when you just have to lie down and say, for now I can do nothing; for now I give up. I do so then. I lie down on my bed with my face to the wall. Then I get up, close the bed-curtains and lie down again in darkness. I feel betrayed. How could they? Worst of all, my mother has colluded in my imprisonment. How could she who defies convention herself? I thought I knew her. I have never felt more let down.

“Beatrice, it’s for your own good,” she says when she returns an hour later and whips the bed-curtains open. “People heard what you said. Stupid, stupid girl! Do you want to be hanged for murder? I don’t believe for a moment that you did it. You’re obviously just trying to protect James. Do you think that great lummox can’t look after himself? We’ve told everyone you have a brain fever, brought on by the fall, and didn’t know what you were saying. Now we have to let it die down, so please be good and stay here in your room for a week or so, while people forget about it.”

“And James, Mother?” I enquire. “Is he in the meantime to be hunted down and hanged?”

“Well, presumably not, if you tell us who really committed this murder. It wasn’t James, was it? Are you going to tell me what really happened? It may not go so badly for the murderer, if he was indeed saving you from the men. Who was it, Beatrice? You do know, don’t you?”

I turn my face away. “No. I don’t know.”

“Was it James?”

“No.”

“Then you do know. Come along, child, who was it?”

“I don’t know!” I shout.

My mother turns away. “Then I’m afraid your father is set on incriminating James.” She crosses to the door. I jump off the bed and follow her.

“Mother, you can’t allow it! It’s obvious that Father only wants him out of the way because of Verity.”

“I can’t stop him, Beatrice. I have tried.”

“Then I shall tell everyone – the magistrate, everyone – that I did it.”

My mother walks out and slams the door behind her, calling through it, “Not from here you won’t, Beatrice.” It is ridiculous – ridiculous and humiliating. I cannot quite understand how I managed to get myself into this situation, from which there appears no way out. I have heard of girls being locked away before, but never dreamt it could happen to me.

They manage my imprisonment very well. I almost feel as if they have been waiting to do this, as if there were some unspoken agreement between everyone that I have been getting above myself. By the end of the first week I am beginning to think I truly do have brain fever, the boredom and sense of being trapped are so great. By night I lie awake listening to the shrieks of owls, and by day to the screams of pigs, as autumn slaughter gets under way along the valley. It is necessary work, so that we may all eat through the winter, and make soap and black puddings and leather gloves. Usually on our farm I decide on the pig, and the day it shall be dispatched. This year my mother tells me they are managing the autumn work quite well without me – the barns are well filled and she will be asking Leo to kill one of the pigs in a fortnight. There will be no more Scots this year, so now we can settle down to preparing for winter.

One day I hear sounds of fighting from further down the valley, and I learn later from Germaine that a pitched battle has been fought at Low Back Farm. Verity has, it seems, moved there from the parsonage, and my father and his henchmen have been attempting to retrieve her, and to capture James Sorrell. However, James now has henchmen of his own, and my father’s forces were driven off.

I have a few visitors, always with the door locked behind them and a henchman on duty outside. It is mortifying. They come as if to an invalid, all keeping up the ghastly pretence that I am ill with brain fever and must be enclosed for my own good. Mother, to whom I cannot bring myself to speak, looks concerned and tired. Kate brings hot possets and titbits from the kitchen, and the news that John has called every day but has not been allowed in. Germaine comes with her sewing, and books of poetry to read to me. One day I wake from an afternoon doze to find Gerald here with her. From where I lie in the dark recesses of my bed they are framed by a gap in my bed-curtains, clutching each other in a wild embrace. I watch the soft triangle of Germaine’s underjaw as they kiss frantically, and am filled with sadness. I think of Robert, and the moment I chose not to go to Scotland with him, and for the first time I believe I made the wrong decision.

The weather turns cold and windy. Kate lights the fire in the chimney hole in my room, and the draught under the door fills the chamber with smoke and half suffocates me. I sit with tears pouring down my cheeks, only partly because of the smoke. Kate jerks her chin at the door which Michael, the sly new henchman, has locked behind her. “I don’t hold with this,” she says, “shutting you in here when there’s work to be done. Farm’s going to rack and ruin. Brain fever my arse. You’re no dafter than you ever were. Your father gets nobbut gristle from me till he lets you out.” She hammers on the door for it to be opened.

“Kate,” I whisper, “Kate, please let me out. Please, I beg you.”

From outside comes the sound of Michael unlocking the door. Kate turns her short-sighted gaze on me. “Oh lass, we’d all fain let you out if we could, but what would your father do? Our lives wouldn’t be worth the living, if we still had them to live.”

Michael stands in the doorway, listening. “Best be careful, Goody Kate,” he says with a grin.

I could have warned him, had I been so inclined, that it is deeply unwise to antagonise Kate, but I do not, since it will be a pleasure to ponder the frightful things which she will now do to his food.

“I thank you for your advice, lad,” she says to him as he pulls the door to. “For certain it will guide my actions.” Michael gives a self-satisfied laugh.

Sunday comes, and I am not even allowed to go to church. John comes over again afterwards. I hear his horse, which has a distinctive, petulant whinny, and I catch a glimpse of him arriving as I peer out of the awkward angle of my window. My father, whom I can hear coughing and wheezing upstairs, does not go down, and no one opens the door to the visitor. After a while John gives up hammering on it and instead stands shouting up at the battlements. Eventually he comes round the tower looking for my window. I rap on the glass and finally he sees me. He stands up in his saddle, then ducks, as a stone flies off the battlements at him. I can hear my father shouting above, “Give that bow to me, lad, if you’re too lily-livered to use it! What, you’ve never shot a parson? What have you been doing all your life? Call yourself a henchman?” An arrow hisses past my window, and another, and I recoil in horror, then realise as they land quivering in the grass that they are not intended to hit John – my father’s aim is better than that – but merely to cause him to go away. He does not go away, however. He sits there for a long time, arms folded, whilst arrows fly past him, then he turns his horse and moves away to the edge of the woods, a one-man siege.

By Monday I have had enough. I have looked at all ways of escaping. It might well be possible to break my window with the warmingstone from my bed. My bedsheets tied together could possibly reach near enough the ground for me to jump. The problem is that the tower is too well guarded for me to get away. There is always a watchman on the battlements, and they fear my father too much to turn a blind eye. I have considered bribery, and ponder what it would take to bribe somebody to leave the door unlocked. What can you offer someone, to risk their life? Do I indeed ever want anyone to risk their life for me again? In the end, when it happens, it is in an unplanned way. Kate brings my supper on Monday evening, and tells me that my father and his men are to attack Low Back Farm again tonight, under cover of darkness. They believe that today’s rough weather, which is rapidly turning into a wild night, will enable them to creep right up to the farmhouse undetected.

“If everyone’s going down to Low Back Farm, who’ll

be on watch?” I ask her.

“Leo, that slitgut, him as should be off tending t’cows.” Before she has finished speaking, I have made up my mind.

As night falls, I can hear them preparing for the attack. Swords scrape and tinderboxes click. The smell of hot tar rises up the tower walls as arrows are wrapped and dipped. I offer up a prayer for Verity and James, then rip the sheets off my bed, drag the clothes press against the door, retrieve the warmingstone and wait for it to become silent outside.

It takes a long time. My stomach churns with nervousness as I wait, straining my ears. Raindrops beat against my window, driven by the wind. I can see nothing beyond the wet glass but a great darkness full of moving shadows.

The gale battering the tower becomes too loud for me to know whether or not all the men have gone. I can only hope it is also loud enough to cover the sounds of my escape. Kate will be asleep in her room behind the kitchen hearth. Germaine, I do not know. I just hope she is off on one of her unexplained absences.

For a moment I cannot do it. I hold the green granite warmingstone, and can think of nothing but how expensive this fragile glass was, and how cold my room used to be before the window was glazed. I listen. Will Leo really be on the battlements in this weather, with no Scots likely and no one to check his vigilance? What will he do if he sees me? It is, after all, for his sake that I am imprisoned here. I swing the stone high above my head, and bring it crashing against the window.

In a second it is gone, precious glass smashing and tinkling away into the night. I am almost knocked back against the bedpost by the wind roaring in. Now I must hurry. I stuff the knotted bedsheet out of the window, but it blows back over and over again. When it is finally out, it will not hang down. I think of Robert climbing the wall on his swaying rope ladder, his face at the window, my hands pushing him and the terrible injuries he sustained when he fell. The height and the precariousness of these walls seem suddenly fearsome and impossible.

There is a lull in the gale. Is this the moment to go? No one appears to have heard me so far. The bedsheet whips round and catches on some shards of glass. I free it, prise the fragments out, check that the other end of the sheet is still firmly knotted round the leg of the bed. There is a sound from above. I must just go, never mind the sheer drop and the frightening fragility of the knotted sheets. I drag my cloak round me and climb backwards on to the deep windowsill. The wind rips at my skirts and I feel as if I am being sucked through the narrow aperture before I am ready. I kneel there, holding on to the sheet and the window-ledge, staring back into the room, and as I do so, the clothes press which was jammed against the door starts to move. It judders along the floor towards me. I stare at it, paralysed. Someone is coming in, and I hadn’t even heard the key.

With the opening door, the gale rushes right through the room. Hangings rattle and ash swirls. “What’s the matter with this door?” enquires a voice. “I knocked, mistress; is everything all right?” With a final push, Leo enters. “Sweet Jesu!” He rushes across the room and grabs my arms as I frantically try to lower myself out.

“No!” I hit out at him. “No! Let me go, Leo! Let me go at once!”

Almost effortlessly he drags me back in and sets me on my feet in the chamber.

“Leo, how dare…”

“Shh.” He goes to the window, pushes the knotted bedsheet out again and watches it spiral around the window space as the wind catches it. Then he crosses to the door, holds it open for me and bows. “An easier way, mistress. I heard nothing, with this terrible wind blowing.”

We look at one another. All manner of things are in that look, acknowledgements of deeds done and faith kept. Leo looks away first, as he unhooks a piece of hessian twine from his belt. “Come on, lady, out with you.” I step on to the tiny landing that leads to the spiral staircase, and watch as Leo loops the twine round a leg of the clothes press, then hooks it under the door. “Anything more you wish to take?” he asks. I look back, and shake my head. I have all I intend to take bundled into a large pocket attached at my waist. I watch as Leo closes the door and locks it, then pulls both ends of the twine so that the clothes press scrapes back into position, barricading the door on the inside.

“Thank you.” My voice is hoarse. I have to clear my throat. “Thank you, Leo.”

“Come lady, we’d best get you moving. I’ll saddle a horse. You’ll be going to the parsonage?” I nod. Down in the blowy barmkin, whilst Leo puts my sidesaddle on Germaine’s little mare, Mattie, I stand and watch my bedsheet high on the tower wall, flailing about in the rising gale.

Chapter 6

If I had not gone to stay at John’s, everything would have been different.

For my first few days at the parsonage, I am filled with melancholy. I miss my home, my room, the rhythms of life on the farm. I have to remind myself that I was a prisoner there, and that the past week was intolerable. On the many occasions in those first few days when my father comes beating at the parsonage door, only to be turned away, I feel almost glad to hear him, simply for the familiarity of his rage. From a small, high window I watch him walk back to where his horse is tethered at the trough on the green, and I see that he has a severe limp, presumably from his latest encounter with James and the men of Low Back Farm.

My mother does not visit me, but instead sends such of my clothes as I might need for a short stay, and a note berating me for supposedly risking breaking my neck by climbing out of the window, and commanding me to mind my tongue and under no circumstances to speak about the deaths of the two strangers.

The day after my arrival John and I sit in the kitchen where Mother Bain is baking bread. Smoke rolls through the late afternoon sunlight as she lifts out trays of flat, black loaves from the bread oven, and tips them on to the wooden rack. The bitter scents of smoke and rye fill the kitchen.

“I’ll mull some ale.” John looks tired. He has been up half the night with one of his parishioners who is dying of consumption. “Will you have some ale?” he asks Mother Bain.

“Nay lad. The bread’s done and I’m off to lie down. I daresay the pair of you are safe to be left?”

This has become a joke between the three of us. John watches her go to her room behind the hearth, which she took over when James left, since stairs have now become too much for her.

“We should get a chaperone for you,” John says when she has gone. “It’s well enough to joke, but your being here is a very different matter from Verity’s being here. I don’t think it can be entirely unknown to people that you and I have some fondness for each other.” He pushes the poker into the fire to heat. “I want you to stay. I want you to stay as long as you’re willing to, and I want there to be no whisper of scandal to spoil it.”

I do not distress him by telling him that there is already considerably more than a whisper of scandal surrounding my presence here, amid speculation about my imprisonment and escape. I have seen groups of villagers on the green casting curious glances at the parsonage, and we have had a stream of visitors here these first few days, bringing pies and puddings. They say it is to welcome me to Wraithwaite, but I know it is in fact to see the state I am in, since my father’s notorious temper appears to have driven yet another daughter to seek refuge here. On the occasions when my father comes galloping up to the parsonage door, a surprising number of people appear to have business requiring their attendance on the village green. John goes out and talks calmly to him each time, locking the door behind him, and in the presence of so many witnesses there is little my father can do but eventually leave.

“Surely Mother Bain is adequate as a chaperone,” I reply. “Unless your designs on me are more drastic and immediate than I anticipated.”

John smiles. “The problem is that Mother Bain has failing eyesight and hearing, and is also seen as somewhat unorthodox, with all her soothsaying and predictions. I think we need a woman of narrow views and a reputation for utmost propriety. The widow of one of the strangers who was killed in the woods has journeyed to Wraithwaite, looking for work. She is destitute now that her husband is dead. I spoke to her. She seems exactly the sort of person we need. Her name is Widow Brissenden.”

I stare at him. “You spoke to her without consulting me, John? I have heard of this woman. They say she is truly dreadful. They say she is carping and narrow-minded and criticises everyone in her path.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, you know what people here are like, particularly about strangers. They’ll get used to her. She has relatives in Hagditch who speak very highly of her. She’s staying with them but does not wish to be dependent on them, which is admirable. One of her nephews rode over here to recommend her to me. It seems only sensible to take her on, since she needs a position and we have one to offer. Also, I almost feel we owe it to her, since her husband was murdered whilst here at the command of your father.”

I pace round the kitchen, feeling angry, yet not in a position to vent my anger. I am John’s guest, and also I feel partly responsible for this woman having become a widow. The thought of having her as a constant reminder of the attack appals me though. I stop in front of John. “Please do not employ her, John. I shall not be here for long. It does not generally bother you to flout convention.”

He pours ale into a battered silver jug and tosses in some cloves, a cinnamon stick and a nutmeg. “It only bothers me because it concerns you,” he says mildly. He takes a moleskin mitten, pulls the red-hot poker from the fire and plunges it into the jug. A hissing billow of steam pours out, searing our cheeks.

“The bishop is coming on Friday,” he adds, stirring the mixture with the poker then pouring the ale into our two earthenware mugs. “I want to take him to visit your father – he can hardly refuse the bishop entry – so that we can arrange Verity’s betrothal and marriage as quickly as possible. Time’s going on. She can’t continue like this. The bishop can impose fines on your father, or exclusion from Communion, if he continues to attack Low Back Farm. It has become ridiculous. He can’t go on refusing to accept the situation. I’d intended that the bishop should also effect your release, if you hadn’t already done so yourself.”

I take the warm mug from his hands. “I’ll come with you to Barrowbeck, John, when you go there with the bishop.”

“Is that wise? Your father could have you seized again, and then you would have to… er… climb out of the window a second time.”

“You doubt that I climbed out of the window?”

“Sweet Beatrice, I know you. You do not lie well. I think some brave soul succeeded where I failed, and let you out.”

I gaze through the smoky firelight. “You were a brave soul, John. I watched you standing there with arrows flying all about you.” I pause, made suddenly miserable by the recollection.

He takes hold of my hand. “Who let you out? Tell me. I shall say nothing to anyone. Was it the gallant Hugh?”

I stand up and pull my hand free, finally giving up the battle to be gracious and conciliatory. “Oh please, not another of you making gibes about Hugh. I had enough of that from Robert.” I hurl the name at him deliberately, wishing to hurt him because he has engaged Widow Brissenden without asking me, and because the recollection of him being shot at makes me sick to my stomach, and because I do not wish to feel this way about anyone just now. It is too inconvenient. It is too demanding. I have had enough of it, and I know suddenly that with John it will be worse, because he lays claim to my mind, as well as to other parts of me. He is too clever. He could know me too well. If I let John into my head, how will I ever have secrets again?

He makes no response.

“How controlled you are, John,” I remark.

“It doesn’t come naturally, Beatie. Unfortunately it is part of my job. I would vastly prefer to go round shouting and hitting people.”

I am forced to smile. “Well, I have known you to do that quite well too. I apologise for my rudeness. Please forgive me.”

He stands up. “The fault was mine. I should not have questioned you.”

“No.” I shake my head. “No, of course you have the right, with my father hammering at your door, and an endless stream of the residents of Barrowbeck begging refuge of you.”

“Truly, say no more, Beatrice.”

We are silent for a while, sipping the ale, which is too hot. Eventually I say, “The reason I wish to come to Barrowbeck with you is to visit Verity, John. I haven’t seen her since she moved to Low Back Farm, and I’m worried about her, particularly with my father’s temper as it is.”

John is watching me, sprawled in his chair, flushed from the fire. “I think your presence here is keeping your father occupied and saving Verity and James a deal of trouble. Yes. Come. We’ll keep you out of his way. I’ll be delighted to have your company, and I’d like the bishop to get to know you better too.”

On Friday the bishop arrives. He is a man of charm and humour. “So, I am to brave your father,” he says to me as we sit in the kitchen finishing the bottle of claret he brought.

“I hope it will not be too alarming an experience, my lord. I fear he is intolerant of the clergy.” I am deeply anxious about tomorrow’s expedition to Barrowbeck, and have already lost a night’s sleep over it. I excuse myself to go to my room to catch up on some rest. As I am leaving, the bishop says quietly to John in Latin, “So is the lady Beatrice to make an honest man of you, John?” I pause on the threshold. John is looking at me with an expression halfway between laughter and despair.

“Master John was my schoolmaster, my lord of Carlisle,” I answer the bishop, also in Latin. The bishop clasps his hand over his eyes.

“My child, please forgive me.”

“I fear it is I who will be begging forgiveness after you encounter my father, my lord, so please disregard it entirely.”

He stands up, so that from deference I must remain. “And the answer, Beatrice? What is the answer to my question?”

John is shaking his head, trying to silence him. I wish above all else that I were lying down in my room, and not having this conversation. I drop a curtsey and reply that on the contrary, his lordship has made a mistake, and that I am to marry my Cousin Hugh. It is whilst I am saying this, that I realise it is no longer true.

The bishop arrived in a red and gold coach most unsuitable for our country roads, and which was mired several times on his journey here, so we travel to Barrowbeck on horseback the following day. We go first to Low Back Farm, and find that James has begun building a fortified pele tower on to his farmhouse. His henchmen, led by George and Martinus, are moving blocks of limestone with pulleys, ready for the Irish builders to lay the foundations.

I stand in this familiar place, and breathe in the smell of first frost, and let the distress of the past two weeks seep away. The ground is getting colder. I can feel it like a great stone under my feet. Overhead, seagulls scream and head inland, a sign of fierce weather coming.

It is wonderful to see Verity again. John, the bishop and I stay for an hour, eating hot buttered wheaten cakes and drinking more wine. Verity has begun keeping bees, and shows us her trussed straw bee-skeps, and the workroom she will use for producing honey and beeswax candles and furniture polish. She is noticeably increased in size.

“Now madam, you must marry,” says the bishop sternly as we are leaving.

“Gladly sir, if you can obtain my father’s permission,” Verity replies irritably. “It is not of my choosing to live thus.”

“If necessary we will dispense with your father’s permission.” The bishop stares along the valley to where Barrowbeck Tower dominates the horizon. “Nevertheless, we will reason with him first.”

“God bless your efforts.” Verity’s expression does not indicate a great measure of confidence in them, with or without God’s blessing.

As we are leaving, James arrives back from chopping trees for winter fuel. He is riding bareback on one of the two carthorses which are dragging the huge pallet of tree trunks. He jumps down when he sees us, and I am struck by the change in him, as he smiles and asks if we cannot stay a little longer. He is clearly overawed by the bishop, yet he makes an effort, and converses with us, instead of retreating into silence as he would have done until recently.

John explains our mission, and we bid them an affectionate farewell and set off up the valley. I have told John that I shall visit my aunt whilst he and the bishop call upon my father. I have not told him the purpose of my visit. Behind us, from all along the valley, comes the dull beat of axes on wood, as logs are chopped for winter, and I find I am worrying about our own farms winter supplies. Has anyone thought of cutting trees for Barrowbeck’s winter fuel yet? My father will not have, since he spends his time roaming the countryside causing grief of one sort or another. Wood needs at least two months to season, before being burnt. Last year we were late with it, and the burning of green wood all but smoked us out of the tower. Then there is the root cellar. When I left, it was already piled high with parsnips and carrots, safely covered with black woollen cloths to keep out the damp, but has anyone thought to lift the first of the turnips yet and bring them in? Anxiety and homesickness overwhelm me. I think with a pang of all my summer’s herbs so lovingly cut, dried and hung on their S-shaped metal hooks, filling the root cellar with pungency. This winter I shall be a guest in another house, and it will not be the same.

We part company at the edge of the clearing. “Go carefully,” says John. “We’ll meet you back at James’s farm at sundown.”

I guide my horse on to a less-used path towards Mere Point, which will keep me out of sight of Father’s watchman on the tower. The path is strewn with bright leaves. Berries like jewels glow on the stripped autumn trees. This is my first time alone in the woods since I was attacked. I duck under the low-hanging branches and ride deep into the forest, and everywhere I go two dead men with their throats cut march behind me.

Chapter 7

At Mere Point they are also chopping wood. Hugh and Gerald, red-faced and sweating, are swinging their axes at a pile of tree trunks near the edge of the clearing.

“I’ll be along in a minute,” calls Hugh, as I head for the tower.

The sea is far out, distant and innocent-looking under a wide blue sky. Sea birds drop and swoop in the great space below the cliff, turning deftly and rising again on the breeze.

I find Aunt Juniper in the smokehouse at the side of the tower. She is standing on an old stool, hanging black sausages perilously over the glowing embers in the smoke-pit, where several sides of pork already hang. The atmosphere in the smokehouse is thick and greasy. Aunt Juniper looks round as she hooks the last looped sausage on to the chain, and turns the handle to trundle them along.

“I should be asking you to do this for me, Niece,” she comments, “since heights appear not to trouble you.” She climbs down and embraces me. Her face is blotched from the heat. “Are you well? Safe and well and in one piece? Welcome, my dear. I’faith, young women today, not willing to be locked in towers any more. I don’t know what the world is coming to.” She laughs. “Have you come to visit Hugh?”

I avoid replying, and instead wave to Hugh across the clearing as we walk towards the tower. Hugh wipes his face on his sleeve and waves back. Suddenly I feel very fond of him.

“I’m smoking the pork with applewood this year,” my aunt continues. “Your mother’s was so good last year. What is she using this year? Do you know? I have forgotten to ask her with all this business of Verity going on.”

“Rosewood and elder, I think.” I am glad to avoid more contentious topics as long as possible, but eventually the moment arrives when I am sitting opposite Aunt Juniper at the kitchen table, waiting for Hugh to come in, and there is no longer any getting away from it.

“Auntie, I am here to tell you something. I must say this to you first. I cannot marry Hugh.” I say it as fast as I can, then wait.

Aunt Juniper looks at me, then purses her lips and spreads her hands flat on the table. “Is it because of Parson Becker, Beatrice? They are saying you have a fondness for the parson… that you and he have a fondness for one another. Can this be true?”

Hugh comes in. I can see from his face that he has been listening. His hands hang tired and red from hewing the wood. He is unsmiling.

I turn in my seat. “I’m sorry, Hugh. You’re like a dear brother to me, and always will be. We’re too close to think of marrying. Please forgive me.”

Hugh looks hurt and puzzled. He looks as if his pride is wounded, but I wonder if I am imagining that he also looks a little relieved. Aunt Juniper appears distressed and bewildered. “Is this attachment of yours to the priest something of a religious or spiritual nature, Beatrice?” she demands.

I opt for the truth. “I’m not sure.”

She shakes her head. “First Verity, now you, going your own ways. What’s happening to the world, Beatrice? I warrant the queen started all this, setting her face against good husbands, God bless her. I’m sure I don’t know where it will all end.”

Uncle Juniper comes in, hurls a log on the kitchen fire and claps me on the shoulder. “They’re real killers, my new dogs, Beatrice,” he booms. “Canst hear ’em, out in t’barn?” I smile and nod, and he goes to sit in a corner and scratch himself in private places.

Aunt Juniper leans her elbows on the table. “Beatrice, I would like to think you will not make any hasty decisions about this.”

Hugh turns away, flushing with anger. “Mother, she has decided. Your plans cannot always go to order.” He marches out.

Aunt Juniper watches him in astonishment, then continues as if she had not been interrupted. “You see how much you have upset him, Beatrice? I hope now that you will reconsider. ’Tis no wonder you have been shut up in your room, with such wilfulness on display. Have you and your sister no thought at all for the work and distress your behaviour causes? Marriage is a serious business, not a matter for idle preferences. In heaven’s name, what sort of income do you imagine a village priest will have? A lot of thought and planning goes into securing your futures and your fortunes, to give you the best security you can have. I don’t mind doing it. It’s no more than my duty. But Gerald already has to be found someone else, with Verity gone. I’m considering Mistress Fairweather of Hagditch. She’s badly pocked, but has fortune enough to make up for that, and is very young to have been left a widow. Gerald would make her – or anyone – a splendid husband.” She pauses, as if struck by an idea. “You wouldn’t consider…?”

I bite my lip. “I think I’m unfitted for marriage, Aunt. To anyone. Truly, I am not ready even to think about it.”

We sit in silence for a while. Hugh returns and pours elderflower wine and hands it round. He gives me a brief, rueful look, a glimpse of the old Hugh, which fills me with a strange pang of relief and regret. Aunt Juniper intercepts it. She asks quickly, “Would you care to come and stay here, Niece, rather than at the parsonage? Your uncle and cousins would protect you from your father. You need have no fear of that. You would be closer to Verity and to your mother. It would be a blessing for me to have another woman in the house. You could read Holy Writ to me of an evening, whilst I sew.”

There are voices in the gatehouse. We all look round. I have been half aware of someone arriving on horseback. Now Gerald enters, glancing behind him, holding out his hand to an unseen figure. A woman’s voice answers him, whispering uncertainly. Gerald steps back, vanishes, then returns with his arm round Germaine, forcing her forward. Aunt Juniper stands up, staring at Gerald’s arm. “What in heaven’s name are you doing, Gerald?” she exclaims. “What are you doing with that serving woman?”

He moves forward into the kitchen, and Germaine has no choice but to move with him. “I’m glad you welcome the presence of another woman in the house, Mother,” Gerald says. He kisses the top of his mother’s head. “Germaine is coming to live here. She is coming to stay with us.”

One look at Aunt Juniper’s face seems to indicate that this is a good moment to leave. I move round the table kissing each of them on the cheek, though hardly noticed by them in their shock-eyed immobility. I stroll out into the bright autumn afternoon, full of relief that my own mission is completed, overwhelmed by startled admiration for Gerald and Germaine, that they have dared to do this.

It is whilst I am mounting my horse outside the stables that I first hear the sound. I hear it, then it is lost again amongst the faint beat of axes that resounds all round the bay. I stop and listen, one foot in the stirrup. The sound comes again. It is different from the woodcutting. It has rhythm and resonance. It grows louder then fades, carried on gusts of wind across the water, two slow beats and three fast, the sound of a drum. I mount up. I cannot imagine what a drum is doing on a clear autumn day with winter coming on and no conflicts threatened, but it seems unimportant, and as my mind returns to the confrontation probably going on behind me in Mere Point Tower, I soon forget about it.

John and the bishop have already returned to Low Back Farm, when I arrive there. They meet me, with Verity and James, at the gate.

“How did you…?” I scarcely need ask how they fared. Their expressions tell me.

“We gained entry,” the bishop tells me as he helps me down from my horse. “That much we did achieve, but only to be harangued at great length and ejected again. Your father did not wish to listen to reason.”

I see to my horror that he has a red swelling on the side of his face. “And this, sir?”

“The doorpost. In his haste to see us on our way, your father deemed some assistance was necessary.”

I stand with my hand to my mouth. This is worse, far worse, than I had anticipated. “Oh, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Please excuse him. He is unused to suggestions from others as to how he should behave.”

“I have forgiven him,” the bishop declares graciously. “I think it probably does me good to experience life amongst the farther reaches of my wild and scattered flock. It has a most humbling effect.”

Verity widens her eyes at me, and I know that despite everything, she feels inclined to side with my father. She leads the bishop indoors, to soothe him with wine and cakes. James hesitates, preferring to stay with us, whom he knows, but when John catches hold of my arm and holds me back, James follows them indoors.

“What?” I respond to John’s anxious expression.

“There’s something else, Beatie. Your father – I think he is unwell.”

I stare at him in alarm. “In what way, John?”

“His colour is bad. It is most unwholesome looking, a very choleric purple in his cheeks and nose, and he seemed short of breath. I suggested to him that he needed a doctor, but the idea seemed to drive him into a further rage. I do think it would be wise for him to consult either a doctor or the Cockleshell Man, before the day is out.”

“Was my mother there?”

“No. Was she not at your aunt’s?”

“No.”

“Then she will be with Cedric.”

I glance at him. “Do you disapprove?” When he does not reply, I save him the embarrassment of having to, by adding, “I think I should go and take a look at my father. I will ask James if George and Martinus may accompany me.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“I think not, thank you John.”

When I explain my intention to Verity, she also insists on accompanying me. James, John and the bishop escort us up the valley to the edge of the clearing, and watch as Verity, the two henchmen and I go on alone. As we draw near to the barmkin I can see that Michael, the new henchman, is keeping watch on the battlements. We see him calling down to someone. A moment later the door of the pele tower flies open and my father rushes out.

Although there are four of us, we instinctively draw back. I see at once what John referred to. My father’s face is dark purple, and as he comes nearer, I hear his breath gurgling in his chest like water from a bottle.

“Daughters!” he shouts, and teeters to a halt. “Oh Daughters, have you come home to me?”

“Is he drunk?” Verity whispers.

I shake my head. “I don’t think so.” I take a step towards him. He staggers where he stands. “Father, let me help you back into the tower.”

Verity takes his other arm. She has not touched him since the day he tried to kill James. He bursts into tears. I feel close to tears myself. Between us we coax him up the slope and through the gatehouse, into the kitchen, closely followed by George and Martinus.

The kitchen is empty, but I can hear Kate singing somewhere in the cellars below. Father is struggling for coherence. The effort is plain on his face. “Daughters,” he attempts again, “dear, dear Daughters…”

We help him sit down on the settle. Martinus brings some water.

“Should’st be on watch, lad?” Father asks, peering at him with difficulty.

“You’re confused, Father,” I tell him. “Martinus doesn’t work here any more. Drink the water. Will you let the Cockleshell Man come to see you?”

Father drinks the water quickly. “Nay lass, whatever for?” He wipes a trickle from his chin. His colour is cooling a little. He sounds calmer and more articulate as he enquires, “Beatrice, what are they saying about you, lass? I cannot credit it. You cannot want yon poxy parson! You cannot. You cannot, lass. Come home. There’ll be no more locking in. I give you my oath. And we’ll forget about the window. I’ll not beat you for that.” He holds out his cup for more water, and Martinus hurries forward. I reflect how quickly he has fallen back into his old role of serving this familiar master. My father lays his hand on my arm and looks into my face, and I reflect how quickly I, too, have fallen back. He says quietly, “Beatrice, I’ve cared for you, have I not? It has been my pleasure to provide for you. Many girls in your position would have been married off at twelve. Yet I allowed you to learn. Did I not? Did you not have this privilege which most young women do not?”

I lower my eyes. “Yes, Father.”

“Yes. Well then.” He sits back. “Now I ask for you to return a little of what I have done for you. Come home. Resume your duties on the farm. All will be forgotten. I shall hold nothing against you.” He turns to Verity without giving me a chance to reply. “And you, Verity, naught shall be held against you, neither. Nor against your child. Your babe shall be the apple of my eye. I shall permit no one to call it bastard, and it shall, with your sister’s children, inherit all that I have. There’ll be no disgrace to you. The yokel violated you. I know that. All who know you know that. There’s no disgrace. Come home. Stay with me, Verity.”

Verity leans forward and takes his hand. “Father, dearest Father, you know how I love you. Never doubt it.”

He nods, and there are tears in his eyes. “Never doubt it,” he repeats under his breath.

Verity kisses his brow, which is slick with sweat, and adds, “But I also love James, Father, and you must accept that, and accept James. Please, Father.”

She is cut off as he jumps to his feet. The settle crashes over. George and Martinus rush to stand in front of Verity. Father’s face is undergoing a horrific change, becoming even more livid at the high points of his cheeks and nose. He pushes George aside. “Must?” he shouts in Verity’s face. “Must? You dare say must to your father? You traitorous harlot! I shall never accept that witless fool. Never! You spout what those vile clerics have taught you to say. Well, you shall see, and they shall see.” He crosses to the door, leaving us all gaping. “They shall see indeed. Yon fair coach I spied on Wraithwaite Green would be a hard job to miss, out on the highway.” He goes staggering out of the kitchen, and out of the tower.

I rush after him. I can hear Verity sobbing behind me. The tower door is standing open. Outside, Father is striding unevenly down towards the barmkin. I hear the high-pitched whinny of Caligula, his black stallion, greeting him.

“Oh no…” I run after him. “Father!” He is puffing with the effort, and I catch him up easily. “Father, stop! You’re not fit…” I lower my voice. “You’re not fit to go out robbing. You’ll get caught. I beg you, Father, don’t go out now. Please, let us talk some more. If you wish me to come back, then…” but he is not listening. I pray that John, James and the bishop are keeping out of sight as Father proceeds at a lolloping run round the barmkin wall towards the entrance.

Suddenly he stops, and turns back to me, gasping. “He vexes me, your parson, Beatrice. He vexes me greatly. Your babbling bishop vexes me worst of all. Mayhap this night his lordship will learn it is more blessed to give than to receive.” He struggles to regain his breath. After a moment he lays his hand on my head and says, “I hope you shall be here when I return, Beatrice. Pig sticking this week, I think? It will never salt down enough, else. Speak to Leo. You know best which of the swine to choose. Fare thee well, Daughter.”

I watch him open the barmkin gate and duck into the turf-roofed overhang of the saddlery. Caligula comes trotting up to him. For a moment, faintly on the wind, I hear the sound of the drum again.

Chapter 8

I do my best to persuade the bishop not to leave, but he is expected at Hagditch for Matins early the following morning, and at Kerne Forth for Vespers the following afternoon, and he puts my anxious insistence merely down to good manners.

Verity has given me Meadowsweet, her dimwitted, golden-eyed mare, since she does not wish to endanger her unborn child by riding any longer, and anyway will soon be too big. Mother has given her the carretta from the tower, to be drawn by one of James’s slower and less flighty horses. I feel reluctant to replace dead Saint Hilda with any other horse, yet as we ride back to Wraithwaite, taking the long way round the edge of the woods rather than haul the bishop up the rockface, the sound of Meadowsweet’s hooves tapping along the rocky bridleway cheers me more than I had expected.

This path, which borders James’s land, is hedged along with blackthorn bushes. They have lost most of their leaves now, and only a few slack black sloes remain on the bare branches. Instead, rows of dead moles hang there, upside down like colonies of bats, their tiny, rosy hands outspread. We pass more and more of them, flapping at our passing with a brief mockery of life. James will be wearing new moleskin breeches this winter.

I kick Meadowsweet into a gallop and leave John and the bishop behind. The moles are such an embodiment of mute helplessness that I cannot bear them. They seem to represent all that is inarticulate – James too tongue-tied to be taken seriously by people such as my father, my father himself whose attempts to express affection are nullified by incoherent rage, all of us who are bound to keep Father’s own criminal secret, myself locked into the secret I now share with Leo, and worse still, the secret knowledge of everything I shared with Robert, which can never be told. The moles are silent, writhing on their thorn trees. I must outrun them.

My hat ribbons lash my face, and one flicks me in the eye, making it water. My eyes are streaming by the time the bishop catches me up. He says, “Forgive me that I could not help you more, Beatrice.” He edges ahead and turns his horse, so that I have to slow down. “Please, do not distress yourself, my dear. I pray that your father will relent, now that he is banished from Communion. John will perform Verity and James’s betrothal immediately, without your father’s permission, and the first banns will be published this Sunday. All shall be well. I shall visit you again soon.”

He repeats his promise later, as he leaves, with just enough time to reach Hagditch before light fades. I look up at the words carved into the lintel as we bid him goodbye at the parsonage gate. Truth and grace be to this place. I could tell him the truth. It is clearly wrong to let this man go out on to the highway, conspicuous in his red and gold coach, when I know what probably lies in wait for him. Yet if I were to tell him that my father is a highway robber, not only my father but also my mother would be ruined. Nor, I realise for the first time, would it bode well for John’s career in the church if his house guest were revealed to have such scandalous connections. Take an extra lanthorn; take the coast road not the high road; wait for George and Martinus to join you at the crossroads in case of highway robbers. Verity and I have done and said all we can. Now we must just pray.

“I love you,” says John under his breath, as we watch the bishop’s coachman whip up the elegant piebald gelding which pulls his coach. The bishop waves and the coach moves off.

My state of distraction is such that it takes a moment for John’s words to sink in. I look up at him. Here is someone who does not have secrets, who says what he thinks, regardless of the consequences, who says it in measured terms, and then listens to a person’s reply, whatever it might be. I have a moment of feeling quite overcome by wonder. “I could love you very easily, John,” I tell him. “Perhaps I already do.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.