“Which gentleman?”
“The gentleman …” Master Kent heard her pause. One of the sidemen laughed, he says; she must have mimicked Mr. Quill’s uneasy walk, crunching up her shoulders, possibly. “This gentleman.” She didn’t need to volunteer his name.
Now it was a pleasure for the men to tidy up and step downstairs where Master Jordan and his steward were smoking their long pipes. After fierce and tiring questioning, they reported in bragging voices loud enough for Master Kent to overhear, they had laid bare a covenly intrigue. Once Lizzie Carr was brought wet-cheeked into the room after having been tied all afternoon, and promised that she might keep her green sash if she could prove herself a wise and honest little girl, it was easy to find corroboration of what the women had alleged. Not that Master Jordan needed much corroboration. However, he was a lawful, tidy man who by nature wanted to seem thorough. It was just as he had expected. This grinning Mr. Earle—was that the fellow’s genuine name? Was he the erl-king of some kind?—had always clearly been a busy devotee of the arts, to which the black arts were akin. Lizzie Carr confessed she had been frightened by the man. He was the one who had “made me Queen, and tried to put his hand on me.” Dark practices, indeed. Besides, hadn’t the man admitted only yesterday that he’d been struck by lightning or some such wizardry?
“He said the heavens opened up for him, I think,” agreed Mr. Baynham, “and a tongue of light gave him the body of an old gnarled tree. He is deformed thereby. By alchemy. Something about the devil and an old cracked jar.”
“Collect him, then, and bring him here.”
Mr. Quill was not found in his room, of course. By that time he had already slipped away to throw his arm around the shoulder on the pillory, and then given chase to Mistress Beldam through the night. But there were objects in his room which only deepened his complicity: pestles, grinding blocks and bowls too small for kitchen work, together with powders, paints and grounds which, if separated from his parchments and his brushes, could not seem anything but menacing. There was a fiddle, Satan’s instrument. There was a Natural History of plants, handwritten with his recipes for making potions and procuring spells, and with suspicious vegetation pressed between its leaves. And there were wordless charts too colorful and incautious to be the kind of maps a landowner might need. No, Mr. Baynham had never seen such reckless maps before, although he had experience in such matters. He would expect some helpful keys and labels. These were more like incantations shaped by paint.
So it was that my neighbors arrived too late last night with their doffed caps to ask for the release of their two women and their girl: the captives had already spilled the cats out of their bags and were tied by their wrists and ankles to the heavy newels on the upper landing of the stairs. The three sidemen, looking both excited and shamefaced, were waiting with their cudgels in the lower hall for the sorcerer’s return. The steward was sent out to brush aside the villagers. “I know I should have answered them myself,” says Master Kent, “but I was still confined behind my door. I could have shouted, I suppose …” For Mr. Baynham, though, it didn’t matter who my neighbors named. His master already had the name he wanted most. He’d use the others if he needed to. Besides much of what they said supported what the sidemen had discovered. The Chart-Maker—a sinister title, wasn’t it?—was the Trouble-Maker too. And, in addition, it seemed he was, according to the local word, the one behind the theft of the velvet shawl belonging to Master Kent’s dead wife. And he was, as well, connected in some way—related, possibly—to the vagabond woman, who was evidently loose about the place, and her kinsman on the pillory, who was evidently not. The bloody killing of the mare began to make a little sense to them now. It was part of some dark ritual. No, matters were indeed “in hand.” And this was where the steward told my neighbors, “I’ll repeat you to the master, word for word.”
“And was my name put forward there as part of some conspiracy? I’m told it was,” I ask.
“Indeed, it was,” my master says. “I thought my heart might stop from hearing it.” He sounds a little nettled. “But, Walter Thirsk, it seems you are a man my cousin has determined he can … rely upon.” He spreads his hands and ducks his chin. He means it is a mystery, and one that bothers him.
“And what occurred when Mr. Qu … when Mr. Earle returned last night?”
“He has not come back to the house, not yet,” my master says, covering his eyes with a hand as he speaks. He is embarrassed by the answer he must give. “He will have slept”—he spreads his hands in front of him again—“elsewhere. My cousin’s men are hunting for him now.”
11
HAVE FORGOTTEN MASTER JORDAN’S GROOM. I suppose I should have guessed how jealous he would be of the sidemen and the time they spent with female captives in the gallery. I am sure he will have overheard the quizzing and the probings and would have liked to creep upstairs to make his contribution. But he was not allowed. You’re just the horses man, they will have said. And so his comrades had the pleasure. He had none. He had to be the guard outside Master Kent’s bed-parlor. He was ungratified, and therefore he’ll be dangerous. Already, he has been left with too much leisure on his hands these past few days. Of all the Jordan party, he has had the least to do. Once he has fed and groomed his mounts and let them loose on the master’s edges to crop on wayside grass, the body of the day is his to waste. He wanders idly through our village lanes and makes a nuisance of himself with any pretty face he meets. He bothers livestock and scrumps our fruit. He pokes his nose through gates and doors that should be barred to him. He is the only one, as yet, who has the inclination and the time to test out rotten apples and putrid curses on Mistress Beldam’s husband at the pillory. He is the only one who’s been constant in his hunt for the woman herself. Today his efforts have been redoubled because, as he now understands from the events of last night at the manor house, in which he sadly has not played a satisfying part, there is a free-roaming sorceress to lay his hands upon and one not set aside only for those pampered sidemen to enjoy.
It is his misfortune, though, to be spotted standing and facing me, while I sit on my bench hoping for a greeting from a neighbor. He wants to know where I suppose a woman of her kind might find some secret refuge from where she can emerge at night to carry out her killings. I do not think he knows what enemies he’s made for simply being in the Jordan crew. How can he guess, in all his innocence, that I’m not popular today and that being in my company will not seem widely sociable? Certainly, he should have calculated for himself how rash it is, the morning after such occurrences, to walk into our village midst with nothing for protection except a length of rein. I must suppose he hopes to lead a chastened Mistress Beldam to his master on the knotted end of it.
On any other day but this he would be safe. We’d all be threshing, winnowing and sacking, and would shrug him off as nothing but a nuisance, as nothing worthier than chaff. But our women and our Gleaning Queen are still unaccounted for, beyond that talk of witchery. I know better than to enlighten them with Master Kent’s distressing news; they will not trust a word I say. What’s more, our three sons whose beds were cold and empty last night are still missed and missing from their homes. The master and myself are not the only ones to have despairing hearts. So we—yes, we; I still say we—are as tense and volatile as wasps. No one, not a single soul of us, has taken to their tools today. Even I, with my scarred hand, have not gone early to the manor house to labor on the thinning of the vellum square, its pumicing and chalking. I have no duty there, not even if the Chart-Maker returns. I can be of no use to him, except perhaps to find him and warn him about the welcome he’ll receive. I will hunt for him. I have a duty to the man. But since I last saw him scuttling in Mistress Beldam’s steps, I do not like to contemplate where he might be. I fear his injury. I fear that he is intimate with her. So, for the moment, I am sauntering about the lanes or loafing on my outside bench, approachable, but listless with unease.
Our village would seem leisur
ely to any passers-by. At least, our hands are idle. But this is not a feast day with pleasures to anticipate. We won’t be dancing to Thomas Rogers’s pipe tonight, or Mr. Quill’s fiddle, come to that. Our sluggishness is no more purposeful than our scurrying. Already our village fabric is unraveling. The harvested barley is uncared for. A sack has toppled, and spilt. No one is even seeing off the rats. There are sour cattle droppings waiting to be spread, molehills to be kicked over, cow ticks to be removed, unless we want our animals enfeebled by the theft of blood. Whoever was the gong-farmer this morning has not done his duty. The barrow is still clean and free from flies, and the latrines are not worth visiting. Our pigs have not yet received their morning scraps. That diseased bough from the Kips’ old cherry tree has fallen finally, and blocks a path, but none of the Kips has dragged it away or offered it an axe; there’s two night’s winter fuel there at least. Anyone that chances on it barely gives it a glance, but steps around the trunk with a vacant face. The cattle are protesting on the common land, heavy with milk. A gate hangs loose—the rarest sight—and cocks and hens are walking free as if they know these lanes will soon be theirs. But there are greater matters to resolve than hens. A congregation has been called, I hear, for noon. I will not go, of course. Until that time, my neighbors are as bored and puzzled as a pack of parlor cats with nothing close to scratch. With nothing close to scratch, that is, until they see me talking to the groom, not telling him where Mistress Beldam might have found her hideaway.
He is a smaller man than any of the Jordan constables, and lighter even than the steward, who, though quite short, is built of oak. That’s not to say the groom isn’t dangerous—but he’d be more dangerous to women or to the horses in his charge than to Lizzie’s father, Gervase Carr, a quietly violent man when it most counts. Where is his daughter, he wants to know, asking roughly but from a distance, at first. The groom just shrugs, but doesn’t turn. He knows enough about the weighing of the world to judge that a gentleman’s groom will tip the scales more heavily than a clodhopper. Gervase takes a step forward toward the bench where I am sitting and toward the groom’s back. Another half a dozen steps and he will be able to reach out and seize this fellow by his scruff. “It’s Lizzie Carr I’m talking of. You’ve seen her, haven’t you? She’s just a little twig of a girl. Your master has her at the house—”
“She’s owned up to all her wickedness,” the groom replies. He really ought to step away. Instead, he turns around finally. He miscalculates the situation he is in, although he can’t but be surprised to see the swelling crowd at Gervase Carr’s shoulder. He attempts a quip. “If she’s a twig, then she’ll burn very nicely with those other sorcerers,” he says, pushing out his hands as if to warm them at a fire. “We’ll have a bit of charcoal from her yet.”
It’s Lizzie’s mother who reaches him first. Gervase is slow to take the groom’s full meaning and is looking more puzzled than alarmed. But his wife is cut from quicker stock. She takes the fellow by the ear. She has two sons, and so she’s practiced at that art. She twists, and then she has him by the hair. Gervase is next. His wife has marked the way. Then all I know is, there’s a sudden rush. The others jostle in. A body hits the far end of my bench and I have tumbled backward, falling awkwardly and with no dignity into the pebbled rain ditch at the foundings of my cottage. A second blow topples me before I can get back on my feet. A booted foot has kicked me in the face. An accident, I hope. But I am wise enough to keep myself rolled up, like a hedgehog, with my back turned to the oddly quiet scrum. No one is calling or saying anything. All I hear is thud on thud, a farming sound, a livestock sound. A thousand stinging grievances are settling on the groom; a hundred angry, waspy fists are hurting him. He might still walk away with bruises and not wounds but then one of the Saxton lads decides to outdo his brothers by stepping forward with his pruning blade and widening his victim’s quipping mouth, from lip to cheek, with one efficient strike.
Without the sudden show of blood, which leaves its mark not only on a dozen of my neighbors but also across my bench and breeches, nothing would have stopped the punching, I’m sure of it. But blood unsettles us. We step away from it. Unless it’s ours, we have to wipe it off at once. And so the beating of the groom loses its nerve as quickly as it was found. Gervase Carr retreats to swab his bloody knuckles in the grass. The Saxton lad runs off to wash his blade. Two sisters spit on each other’s aprons to help scrub out the appalling splashes. Everybody checks their clothes.
Quite soon we are alone once more, the Jordan groom and I. I’m stunned and angry and alarmed, slow to stand and find my footing. He’s hardly moving, but he’s certainly alive. A dead man never made such noise. But I’m the only one to hear his pain, and I’m the only one, I have to say, who hasn’t hit the man. I’m glad he has survived to stand as witness to that truth—if that mouth can ever speak again.
The lane has emptied suddenly. They’re running now. There’s not a person in the village who won’t have realized at once, with the spurting of the groom’s blood and the gory gaping of his face, that everything has changed for the worst. It’s almost safe to roast our master’s doves; it’s possible to kill our master’s mare and not be caught for it. But beating up and cutting through a Jordan man will throw us all at the mercy of a less forgiving outside world, one that will not rest or let us rest until its duty has been done, until its justice has been satisfied. God bless us all, and God help all of us. There isn’t one of us—no, them—who’s safe.
I’M NOT SURPRISED THIS AFTERNOON to see it is the Carrs and Saxtons who leave the village first. They know they have the most to fear. It was their fists and their pruning knife that did the greatest damage. There’s no escaping punishment. Even neighbor John and his wife, Emma, have been persuaded that it’s best to pack their burdens and their sorrows in a shoulder bag and join his brother’s family in their flight. No one with that name is safe, not once the groom has dripped his blood-blinded way back to the manor house and shown the stabbing and the beating he’s endured for being nothing else but Master Jordan’s loyal man.
John is hollowed out, a husk. His shoulders slope not only from the weight of his bundles and packs but also, seemingly, from having to leave behind the bones and body of his customary life. This will be a bitter day for him, for all of them. He does not look at me when he steps away from his front door for what could be the final time—we made our lasting peace this morning, in the darkness of my room—but should he have chosen to I would not have tested him on the fate of his young niece. What else are they supposed to do? I know it’s not their intention to abandon Lizzie coldly to her fate. But there are other Carrs to think of now, other Carrs to be protected first. They need to make them safe beyond our bounds, and then I’m sure there must be other plans to make the family whole again. A farmer knows to gate the herd before he hunts the stray. Fleeing now can make no difference. And staying in the village would not secure the girl. She’d still be orphaned; her parents are the instigators of the beating and so cannot expect to live, once enforcers have arrived. Already they have heard the whinnying of a horse, protesting at its saddle and its reins. And they have harkened to the hoofbeats of a rider—Mr. Baynham, I would guess; the sidemen will be needed now, to bruise and bully us—setting off up the same lane along which he descended when the Jordan party first arrived. It is not long before the village hears the four blasts on the steward’s saddle horn to let us know that he has ridden into safer ground.
Our village is not purposeless this afternoon. It’s like another working day. Except it’s busy with the tying up of bundles and the stitching up of skins. It’s busy with farewells, from which I find myself excluded. I only watch, and hug my neighbors in my dreams. The next to confess their departure are the Higgs and Derby families. For them it is an easier choice. Their sons have gone ahead of them. They’re following. They’ll be reunited on the road. Each of the four remaining family men takes a corner of the winnowing screen which serves as old mother Derby’s lit
ter. She shares it with their luggage and their clothes, but does her best to keep it light by lying still, with her knees drawn up against her chest. There are no tears as they set off, so far as I can tell. They’re being calm and competent. They are not fools. It’s best to get away before the trouble really starts. They’ve guessed what Mr. Baynham’s mission is. He’ll come back either with a pack of twenty sidemen, meaner than the three already here, or a troop of soldiers, armed for a battle and disappointed if they can’t start one. That saddle horn has sounded their defeat.
At first, some of the more reluctant families, the ones who’ve hardly punched the groom and so imagine they’ll be spared the very worst of punishments, say they’ll take the risk and stay. They have not quantified the risk; they’ve only quantified the loss. The tally they draw up contains the anxious and the menial—“We haven’t finished sacking up our barley yet. What happens to the hens?”—but also the weighty legacies of family and land, too weighty to be carried on their backs. “We’ve plowed these fields since Adam’s time,” they say, counting back the granddads on their fingertips. They’re ancient families. They’ll not easily be driven out before the torrents of the law, to disappear in towns or villages where their names and faces cannot ring a bell, robbed of their spirits and their futures, as well as of their fields. But people who have bounced between feast and famine all their lives are nothing if not tough-minded and hard-nosed. A sack of barley is not worth a life, they realize, as they watch the afternoon sun dip into the latticework of trees. They’re short of time. And so they start to gather up their things. There’ll be no plowing if you’re dead, or anchored to the wall of some dark cell. Besides, departures do not need to be final, they tell themselves. The prodigal comes home. The swallows and the swifts return in spring. It’s prudent, though, to fear the worst and run for cover if the clouds are black enough. And the clouds are clearly black enough today. No matter how these ancients play it through their minds, the stabbing of a master’s man, on top of everything, must mean the end of their tranquillity. They’ll have to find tranquillity elsewhere. Surely life beyond these fields cannot be as sinister and dangerous, as fearsome, loathsome and bizarre, as Master Kent has claimed when he is drunk and telling them of imps and oceans, tree fish, mermaids, cannibals, men with hoofs and women who lay eggs. He is only teasing them. Surely, he is only teasing them.